by Larry Berman
When the airlift began to show results, the Soviets threatened to send troops into the war unless the United States stopped Israel from destroying the elite Egyptian Third Army Division. Nixon accepted the compromise, because the Soviet navy outnumbered the U.S. Sixth Fleet by three to two and could have brought overwhelming air power to bear. In an October 24, 1973, letter to Nixon, General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev made clear “that unless the Israelis were forced to end their encirclement of the 3rd Army, the Soviets would go in and free them.” British prime minister Edward Heath’s office called the White House just before eight p.m. to ask to speak with Nixon. “Can we tell them no?” Kissinger asked his assistant, Brent Scowcroft, who had told him of the urgent request. “When I talked to the president, he was loaded.”23 Nixon was asleep and too drunk to be awakened, so Kissinger took the lead as part of a WSAG group, which placed two million U.S. troops on the high state of nuclear alert called DEFCON 3, leading the Soviets to back down in return for U.S. support in enforcing the cease-fire on Israel.24
During the winter and spring of 1974, the JCS had written a number of memorandums dealing with SALT, multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRVs), and the Threshold Test Ban (TTB), registering grave concerns. In almost all cases, the chiefs had requested that Schlesinger present their views to the president, but the bureaucratic process was not bringing the Pentagon’s professional opinions to him. Lieutenant General Edward Rowny was the JCS representative to the SALT delegation. During a dinner party at Rowny’s home in the fall of 1973, General Alexander Haig invited Dr. Wikner, the director of the Defense Department SALT Task Force, to call on him whenever he thought a matter required so. On May 26, Wikner, who had a home in Key Biscayne, somehow managed to get through security and visit with Haig at the general’s villa at the Key Biscayne Hotel. It was a remarkably candid meeting, one that resulted in Wikner being fired.
The director informed Haig that Defense and the JCS were not having their views aired with the president. Kissinger was keeping the president in the dark. Haig told Wikner that “Henry has mentioned to me that there have been differences between himself and Jim (Schlesinger) but he has talked with Jim about this and has reported back that the two of them settled their differences.” Wikner told Haig, “This is a very inaccurate report. All due respect to the Secretary of State, but he is acting as a very selective filter in the reporting of information to you and the President on Defense views.” Wikner handed Haig a report that had been written by Paul Nitze, saying that it represented the views of the chiefs and that, while the secretary agreed, “Jim thinks the letter is very good but feels that he cannot forward it without attaching his resignation.”
After spending close to ten minutes reading the letter, Haig commented, “There is no reason why Jim shouldn’t have sent this letter.” There had been dozens like this. “As you can see,” said Wikner, “there are really fundamental differences between the Department of Defense and Kissinger; both on technical matters and on negotiations . . . it is clear we have substantially different opinions on how negotiations in SALT should be conducted.” Haig must have reported this secret meeting to either Kissinger or Nixon, because within weeks Wikner was out of a job. “In the wake of this episode, I became increasingly convinced that my talents and expertise could be put to better use elsewhere than on the delegation,” wrote Nitze.25 Nitze went to Schlesinger to say he wanted to resign, but “Jim said his particular concern was Haig, whom he regarded as unpredictable and fully capable of trying to organize a military coup d’état to keep Nixon in office.”26
Schlesinger wanted Nitze to remain in service of the government and offered him a position he had previously held, assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs. This time, the intent was to head off Kissinger, who Schlesinger feared would offer too many concessions in the upcoming SALT negotiations. Bud urged his mentor to accept. “Paul, you know it’s essential that somebody take over ISA and really run it and that somebody is you.” A reluctant Nitze agreed, but Senator Barry Goldwater, who eleven years earlier had voted against Nitze’s nomination as Secretary of the Navy, informed the White House that if Nitze’s appointment went forward, he could not be counted on as a sure vote if impeachment proceedings reached that point.
It was just as well. No longer able to function under the dark cloud of Watergate, Nitze felt he had no option other than to resign in protest. “I believed that in an effort to rescue his administration and to rally the public behind him before impeachment proceedings began, he would make imprudent concessions to the Soviet Union on arms control to strike a deal.”27 On May 28, Nitze notified Schlesinger and the president that he was resigning, effective May 31. He enclosed a statement that made his position perfectly clear. “For the last five years I have devoted all of my energies to supporting the objective of negotiating SALT agreements which would be balanced and which would enhance the security of the United States, and also of the Soviet Union, by maintaining crisis stability and providing a basis for lessening the strategic arms competition between them. Under the circumstances existing at the present time, however, I see little prospect of negotiating measures which will enhance movement toward those objectives. Arms control policy is integral to the national security and foreign policy of this nation and they, in turn, are closely intertwined with domestic affairs. In my view, it would be illusory to attempt to ignore or wish away the depressing reality of the traumatic events now unfolding in our nation’s capital and of the implications of those events in the international arena. Until the office of the presidency has been restored to its principal function of upholding the Constitution and taking care of the fair execution of the laws, and thus be able to function effectively at home and abroad, I see no real prospect for reversing certain unfortunate trends in the evolving situation.”
The Zumwalt intelligence service was in high gear, providing a steady flow of information on Nixon’s emotional fragility and the jockeying for influence between Kissinger and Haig. One report from Captain Cockell noted that “mention of Nitze provoked strong reaction from Haig: ‘That God damned guy—he and his overbearing ways did the country great damage under McNamara. It’s just as well that he’s going.’ ”28 Years later David Halperin took the time to write Nitze. “It has been some years since we met—I worked for several years while in the Navy for Bud Zumwalt and he was kind enough to bring me along to your house one fourth of July. That must have been in 1968 or 1969, shortly before I went to work for Henry Kissinger as his Personal Assistant. In that year I recall that we occasionally met, on one instance (which was as confusing to me then as it is to me now), when I had the responsibility of editing certain records of the SALT negotiations which Henry was prepared to have you read, in the West Wing, without others present. Why the record provided to you was incomplete I did not know then (or now) understand.”29 Halperin went on to say, “I don’t believe there exists a man with the country’s interest more at heart and with the intellect and the years of involvement with the Soviets to be able to make judgments of such awesome importance. . . . By your example, you affected Bud powerfully; by his example, he has similarly affected me and countless others. In this very attenuated way, I feel you have touched my life. . . . It is of great comfort to me to know that you are there, watching over the nation’s future in these years when critical decisions will be made affecting the nation’s destiny.”
In order to have an orderly transition, Bud advised Secretary John Warner that it was important to choose Bud’s successor at least six months before July 1, 1974. Warner assured him that they would work together to assemble a list for Schlesinger, but Warner kept stalling. Warner had his reasons, which Bud only accidentally discovered when Warner asked that they meet in Schlesinger’s office. Once Bud arrived, Warner remarked that the timing was perfect because they were meeting about Bud’s successor. Bud sensed a trap, thinking that Warner was trying to “make it difficult for me to put my thoughts together.” Warner
began by saying that there was just one viable candidate, Ike Kidd.30
Kidd was a very strong threat to all the personnel programs Bud had set in motion. He was also someone not committed to the high-low mix in Project Sixty or strong enough to take on Rickover. Moreover, Bud knew that Kidd had been part of the Anderson cabal during the Hicks hearings period, when his name was usually the first cited as replacing a sacked Zumwalt. “His friends had made him the man whose appointment as CNO would be perceived by the fleet as heralding a return to the status quo ante. I therefore regretfully concluded that Ike could not be on my list of CNO candidates.”31 Bud also believed that Kidd lacked the character to keep the navy “from being suffocated in the political miasma that was enveloping ever more closely the Nixon-Kissinger-Haig White House.”32
John Warner and his top aide, Deputy Secretary of Defense Bill Clements, favored Kidd for the very same reasons Bud was opposed to him. They believed the navy personnel system needed to be returned to its pre-1970s style. “Both of them were anxious to slow down the rate of integration. Both of them objected to the provision of equal opportunity to women, to the extent that the Z-gram had provided it. Both of them felt that Ike Kidd would work with them to accomplish their turn-back objectives.”33 Bud had refused to do so in November 1972, and he was certainly not going to do so in June 1974. Conversely, John Warner had failed to accomplish his objective in 1972, but saw a new opportunity in 1974. “John Warner had been unhelpful to me in just about every way a Secretary of the Navy could be unhelpful to the Chief of Naval Operations,” said Bud.
Bud’s ambivalence regarding Kidd was a personally troubling one. Kidd’s father was killed aboard the battleship Arizona at Pearl Harbor, and in memory of his father’s name, Ike became an object of veneration. But as time went on, Bud saw him as a man who developed very early an overriding ambition with no ethical limits, although he had high regard for his professional competence. Their first close association came when Bud was working as Nitze’s executive assistant and Kidd was executive assistant to CNO Dave McDonald. “In that role, Ike’s relationship to me, although he was senior, was one of absolute unctuousness. He appears to maintain that attitude toward all those who are in positions of authority, or in positions to help him. It almost defies the imagination to watch him come into a room, and speak to his seniors as ‘you giants’ and men of gigantic intellect, you gentlemen who are so much smarter than I am, etc. Yet, the impact of this flattery seems to have helped more than it has hurt him. . . . Over time, I came to the conclusion that he was a very devious man. But I retained a tremendous admiration for his ability, as a professional man.”34
By the time Bud became CNO, Kidd was a three-star admiral in command of the First Fleet, with orders to next command the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean. John Chafee overrode Admiral Moorer on this appointment because Kidd was not an aviator. Bud promoted Ike to his fourth star and made him chief of naval material. He had to convince Chafee, Laird, and Packard that Ike was right for the job, hoping that Ike had outgrown the earlier characterizations. Before long, however, “Kidd began the practice of almost routine end-running the system.”35
As early as December 17, 1973, Bill Cockell had passed on a No Eyes—Sensitive message from Paul Nitze that “he did not think Ike was the right man,” but “the one person really working for the job was Ike. He had much support from the retired flag officers and had sold Clements [William P. Clements, Deputy Secretary of Defense] on himself.” Nitze reported that in a recent meeting, Secretary of Defense Schlesinger made clear that he was not high on Ike but did mention Worth Bagley. Nitze said “he thought the world of him.” Schlesinger also asked about four other flag officers as possible replacements for Bud—Noel Gayler, James L. Holloway III, Maurice “Mickey” Weisner, and Stansfield Turner. Nitze told Schlesinger that Gayler, commander in chief of the United States Pacific Command, was fifty-nine, hence would require a special congressional act to extend his active service. Nitze thought more of Weisner than Holloway. “He is tough, capable of making decisions and fighting for them.” He was “not sure Holloway has the strength of character to do so.” Nitze did not know Turner very well, “but from all he had heard, he was a competent officer—perhaps more in the analytical line than in command, however.”
Schlesinger had gotten to know Kidd when they were both at the Naval War College—Schlesinger an instructor and Kidd a student. Schlesinger shared Bud’s assessment of Ike and confided to Bud that for him, Kidd was a nonstarter. Still, no one knew what Nixon would do.
Schlesinger held Bud in such high regard that he offered his CNO an unprecedented two-year extension, promising to secure congressional authorization. Bud rejected the offer based on the fact that during his own tenure he had enforced the daisy chain, that is, the policy that flag officers should move “up or out” in order to provide promotional opportunities and incentives for those who were more junior. Bud knew that he had no chance of serving as chairman of the JCS, because it was on a rotation basis and Moorer was navy. Bud also turned down an offer to serve as head of the Veterans Administration. The offer was made by Alexander Haig on May 14, 1974. “While I am honored that you would consider me for the position, I cannot accept,” Bud wrote in a letter to Haig. “I deeply regret having to decline since I sincerely believe that the Veterans Administration must provide assistance to those who have served our nation so honorably and so well. However, I must base my decision upon your expressed views of the Veterans Administration’s future and do not feel that I could perform a useful function within the limited possibilities outlined during our meeting.”36 The Zumwalt intelligence service reported that “Haig was furious when Zumwalt leaked turning down the offer.” After having lunch with Zumwalt to feel him out on future plans, Haig returned to Kissinger and said, “I’ve just had lunch with Bud Zumwalt, the most hypocritical man in Washington.”37
Schlesinger instructed John Warner to poll the admirals for their opinions as to who should be the next CNO. Warner told Bud that he should find out whom Rickover favored and not share the complete poll results with Schlesinger. Rickover refused to get involved, saying it was none of his business. “I never had any confidence in John Warner’s word and found many occasions in which he had actually lied to me,” said Zumwalt. Warner soon forwarded three names for vetting—Mickey Weisner, James Holloway, and Worth Bagley. “Each of these candidates would have made a superlative CNO,” wrote Bud, who felt a special affinity for longtime friend Worth Bagley. Bud had brought Worth to Washington for Project Sixty and promoted him to deputy CNO for program planning, a three-star job. In 1973 Worth got his fourth star when he was sent to be commander in chief of U.S. Naval Forces in Europe and served superbly during the Yom Kippur war. He came from a distinguished family, the son of Vice Admiral David Bagley; his brother David served as Bud’s chief of naval personnel.
James Holloway III was likewise from a family of admirals and was the youngest man in Bud’s own academy class. They had known one another as classmates but were not close friends. During the Battle of Leyte Gulf, both men had been serving on destroyers—Bud aboard the Robinson and Holloway as a gunnery officer on the USS Bennion. Both were selected a year early for captain. On that occasion, Admiral James Holloway, Jr., Bud’s former mentor, wrote in a personal letter to Bud that “it’s a special delight to me to discover that my son was the junior man on the selection list and that you were the junior man on the alpha list.” They were together again at the National War College in 1961 and 1962, which is where they became good friends. When Bud went to Nitze’s office, Holloway went off for a period of indentured service with Rickover to command the nuclear carrier Enterprise. He was promoted to rear admiral one year after Bud and James Calvert, the second increment of their class to make admiral.
Holloway was heading off to command a carrier division at sea when Bud entered as CNO. He performed so well with the Sixth Fleet during the Jordan Crisis of 1970 that Bud decided to groom him as a potential successor. A
fter the tour as carrier division commander, Bud nominated Holloway to be the deputy commander in chief of the Atlantic Fleet under Admiral Charles Duncan, wherein he did so well that Duncan recommended him as his own relief. Bud wanted to reduce the criticism leveled at him for not having sufficient operational experience in high command in both oceans, so Bud sent Holloway to be commander of the Seventh Fleet in the Western Pacific. He did a great job and was one of the eight or nine in the daisy chain about whom Bud threatened to resign if Warner did not honor the promotion list. Holloway got his fourth star as vice chief of naval operations.
Like Holloway, Maurice Weisner was an aviator. Weisner commanded the USS Coral Seas during the early years of the Vietnam War. As a vice admiral Weisner was appointed commander of the United States Seventh Fleet and held that position until June 1971. Bud then brought him to Washington as deputy CNO for air and soon promoted him to a fourth star to serve as his vice CNO. He was then relieved by Holloway and next took command of the Pacific Fleet in Hawaii.
By March 1974, the nomination list with these three names was forwarded to the White House, two months later than Bud desired. Preoccupied with Watergate, Nixon sat on the nomination, refusing to make a decision. Each time Bud asked Haig about it, he was told that the president was still thinking. In truth, Ike Kidd was lobbying for himself directly with the White House. A team of retired admirals was trying to make their voice heard, but many of them had already been discredited by their 1972 anti-Zumwalt campaign. Support for Kidd was seen as a vote against Zumwalt.