Zumwalt

by Larry Berman

  By BuPers order, “When relieved on 30 June detached duty as CNO, proceed to your home of selection. You will regard yourself relieved of all active duty effective 2400 on date of detachment.” Bud and Mouza’s destination was a rental home at 6509 Walters Woods Drive in Falls Church, Virginia. Bud planned to spend the next few months organizing his papers, giving some lectures, and exploring his new freedom. After all the years of navigating charted waters, the prospect of setting a new course was an exciting one.

  Bud Zumwalt left office as he entered it, fighting for a strong navy. He was only fifty-four years old, thirty-five of which had been spent in the navy. By his own admission, he was departing “with as much relief as regret.” He needed to distance himself from a corrupt administration so that he would be free to criticize its policies, as well as its procedures that were “inimical to the security interests of the United States.” The bugging and break-ins paled in comparison to the “deliberate, systematic and unfortunately, extremely successful efforts of the President, Henry Kissinger, and a few subordinate members of their inner circle to conceal, sometimes by simple silence, more often by articulate deceit, their real policies about the most critical matters of national security.”

  Appearing on Meet the Press, Bud was asked seven questions about SALT. He kept his word to Schlesinger by dodging each one. What ended up making headlines was that he had turned down the Veterans Administration position. When asked about the job, Bud explained that “the domestic political condition at the present time is such that important innovative programs have very little chance for success.”77

  Before leaving office, Secretary Schlesinger told Bud that, in his judgment, Nixon and Kissinger had already “set up a new plumbers operation, to start tracking where all the leaks were coming from. This was while they were dying, they set it up.”78 This was no surprise to Bud, who had become accustomed over the past two years to “a positive policy to destroy the adversary process. Advice was not only not wanted, it was manufactured to fit the mold fashioned by the president or his principal advisors. If it couldn’t be molded, it was discouraged. If it couldn’t be discouraged, there were threats. If the threats didn’t work, they were sometimes carried out.”79

  Meanwhile, Henry Kissinger flew directly from his meeting in Moscow to China. In a recently declassified document, Ambassador Huang Chen mentioned to Kissinger that he had been reading about Paul Nitze and a former Joint Chiefs member’s criticisms of Kissinger. Knowing immediately that the ambassador was referring to Zumwalt, Kissinger joked that “when I read them I get scared myself! We don’t have the practice in our country of sending our military leaders off to the provinces. [Laughter] This is just nonsense.”80

  The United States might not send them to the provinces, but the Nixon administration had other ways of dealing with recalcitrant retired admirals. The day after the change of command, a navy captain arriving from the Pentagon at Bud’s home with papers that needed to be signed reported that he had been followed. The next day, Bud and Mouza noticed a black limousine with a driver and “co-pilot” circling their home for almost forty-five minutes with the co-pilot taking notes. Bud was scheduled to leave home for a speech the next day. Knowing the White House sentiment toward her husband, Mouza placed a call to Michael Dingman, then CEO of Wheelabrator-Frye, asking whether or not she should be as concerned as she was feeling. When Bud returned home, he called Michael to apologize for Mouza’s excessive concern. “Whereupon he reported that, after reflection on his conversation with Mouza, he had had second thoughts. He had driven from his headquarters in New Hampshire to see Governor Meldrim Thompson, Jr., about the matter.” Thompson later told Michael, “Mouza may be right; he could be in danger. Tell them to move to New Hampshire and we will provide security by state security officials.”81

  Within six weeks, the Nixon administration would collapse. Henry Kissinger would emerge with even more influence.

  In August 1974, Captain William Cockell reported that he had discovered being bugged and followed while going to meetings with Senator Scoop Jackson. On August 27, 1974, Bud called Scoop Jackson, who was on vacation. Jackson “had contacted the FBI at the highest levels to find out what was going on with regard to keeping track of people who were having contact with Senator Jackson. . . . Jackson is prepared, if necessary, to call Haig and Kissinger and put them under oath to find out if they initiated this tap and trail which he believes they have put on Captain Cockell. He also said that he plans to hold hearings beginning in another month or two on the whole question of where SALT is going.”82

  Bud Zumwalt was already focused on the target of his next war.

  CHAPTER 14

  THE WATCH NEVER ENDS

  You exemplify what is best and noble in our armed forces.

  —PAUL NITZE1

  Arleigh Burke warned Bud how difficult it would be adjusting to a completely different lifestyle.2 After operating on forced draft for thirty-five years of navy life, and especially after carrying the burdens of senior leadership in the last six wartime years, the sudden absence of responsibility created a “vacuum and a sense of loss.”3 Two weeks into his retirement, Bud wrote to Representative John Hunt that he was “already experiencing the withdrawal symptoms of not working, but that will pass.”4

  Remaining on the sidelines was not an option. Bud recalled his 1950 meeting with General Marshall at Pinehurst, when he asked Marshall why he was not taking it easy, playing golf, and enjoying retirement after so many years of government service. “I never forgot his reply,” recalled Bud. “ ‘When you have commanded forces in wartime, you have two lifelong responsibilities: first, to care for those who fought under you; and second, to assist in binding up the wounds with the enemy to ensure a stable peace.’ ”5

  Committed to addressing the challenge and fulfillment of carrying out General Marshall’s prescription, Bud knew he would remain involved in shaping the country’s debate on national security policy. The only question was, How could he get into the game? The final collapse of the Nixon presidency occurred just six weeks after his retirement. “The uniqueness and the horror of the disregard of the constitution by senior officials of that Administration convinced me that all those who had been close to the events had an obligation to record their experiences,” said Bud.6 Thus began the eighteen-month process of writing his memoir, On Watch.7

  Rumors swirled that Bud would return to California to seek elective office where he was being wooed by both political parties.8 He had not run for election since 1942 when elected president of the Naval Academy literary society. Tulare was still Bud’s legal residence, but for the past seventeen years he had lived in the Commonwealth of Virginia. After considerable thought, Bud decided to run for the United States Senate, believing that even if he lost, the media coverage would help him.9

  Several major hurdles needed to be overcome, the first being that as a nonpolitical military officer, Bud did not belong to a political party. Both of his parents had been lifelong Republicans, and Doc Elmo had run unsuccessfully as a Republican for Congress. The Republican Party was clearly more aligned with Bud’s thinking on foreign policy and military strength. Bud also felt comfortable with President Ford’s approach on national security, especially when they had worked together during Ford’s vice presidency. Moreover, his brother Jim had been a lifelong liberal, and throughout their adult life, Jim and Bud engaged in spirited debates on the war in Vietnam and the role of the military. Bud agreed with very little of Jim’s views on foreign policy. Logic suggested that he join the Republican Party.

  But there were two motivating factors for registering as a Democrat. The first was the overpowering need, bordering on obsession for the truth, to rebut Henry Kissinger’s “Spenglerian” view that the United States was a civilization on the wane, facing a Soviet Union that was rising to supremacy, and that Kissinger’s task was to preside over the smooth transition to the reversed power relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union.10 Running as a Democ
rat and taking on Secretary of State Kissinger would provide Bud with a forum for stimulating public debate on the issues of military strength, expenditures, and direction of policy.

  The other reason for joining the Democrats was that most retired military were Republicans. Bud hoped to “contribute within the Democratic party to moving the Party to take a stronger position on national security.”11 He saw himself aligned with his friend Henry Jackson and the Jackson element of the Democratic Party, which included Jeane Kirkpatrick, Eugene Rostow, and Paul Nitze. “In the end I concluded that the best political leverage to highlight my issues could be achieved by campaigning as a Democrat.”

  The next decision was where to run. As early as December 22, 1974, columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak speculated that Bud would take a shot in 1978 at unseating the most conservative member of the Senate, right-wing Republican William Scott of Virginia. The combination of being viewed as liberal on social issues and a hawk on defense was seen as potentially lethal for Scott. Bud’s dynamic personality and speaking skills also offered a sharp contrast with the incumbent. Evans and Novak downplayed the significance of Bud being a legal resident of California; he could scarcely be called a carpetbagger in Virginia, where he had lived for almost two decades.12

  But 1978 was too far down the road for Bud. He could not wait that long, especially with a presidential election scheduled for 1976. He therefore decided to challenge incumbent Independent Harry Byrd, Jr., of Virginia, whose Senate seat would be up in 1976. In doing so, he would be challenging a dynasty in Virginia politics.13 Bud was always realistic about his chances. “I believed that the book [On Watch], combined with the media coverage that I would secure during the Senate campaign, should I win, lose, or draw, would give me the best opportunity to highlight my concerns about our country’s future in the world.”14

  Before politics, however, came the tug of Vietnam. Bud’s thoughts were on Admiral Chon, whose country stood on the precipice. Bud’s fear that the Paris Peace Accords negotiated by Henry Kissinger would be a suicide pact for South Vietnam had become reality.15 Bud understood the depths of Kissinger and Nixon’s deception ever since the November 30, 1972, JCS meeting where Bud listened to Kissinger and Nixon explain the draft treaty. The U.S. negotiating position for any settlement had always been premised on the concept of a return of American POWs, the creation of a political process allowing the Vietnamese to resolve their differences, and “mutual withdrawal” of troops from South Vietnam. In the secret negotiations, North Vietnam’s Le Duc Tho insisted that the United States was the only foreign army in South Vietnam. Kissinger soon capitulated by agreeing to a unilateral withdrawal in return for North Vietnam accepting that South Vietnam’s president Nguyen Van Thieu could remain in power, pending elections. This was a condition that Tho had always opposed, but by late October 1972, the balance of forces in the South was decidedly in Hanoi’s favor for an in-place cease-fire. The Politburo instructed Tho that he could concede on the point of President Thieu remaining in power, leading Kissinger aide John Negroponte to quip, “We bombed them into accepting our concessions.” Bud shared Negroponte’s view that Henry Kissinger seemed to have a “death wish for South Vietnam.”16

  On January 27, 1973, American involvement in the war ended with the signing of the Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam. By the terms of the deal, over 150,000 North Vietnamese troops remained in the South, whereas the United States, over the course of Nixon’s presidency, had unilaterally withdrawn over 500,000 of its own troops. President Thieu and his fellow countrymen understood that the diplomatic battle had been won by Le Duc Tho. President Thieu had agreed to nothing more than a protocol for American disengagement. Thieu only agreed to the deal because Nixon had guaranteed brutal retaliation if the North resumed any aggression. Nixon assured Thieu that if he went along with Kissinger’s plan, he would be able to rally America’s Silent Majority—“people with character of steel”—to support renewed bombing.

  But could these guarantees be trusted? The fate of his country depended on them. Nixon was intent on maintaining South Vietnam until he turned the keys of the White House over to the next occupant in 1976. Nixon was even prepared to take on Congress in a possible war-powers battle involving the resumption of B-52 bombings. Kissinger and Nixon privately encouraged Thieu not to hold elections until the communist troops went home. Kissinger advised Thieu to use Vietcong political prisoners languishing in jails as hostages for getting the communist troops out of the South. There was no reason to risk a political solution until after a North Vietnamese withdrawal from the South.

  Watergate derailed the plan. The resignation of Richard Nixon on August 9, 1974, unraveled the private assurances of retaliation if the communists violated the paper truce. Moreover, Americans were ready to turn away from Vietnam, to bury the entire sordid history of the war. Political factors were already in play. The November 1974 congressional elections had given Democrats forty-three new seats in the House and an additional three in the Senate. In a final plea for assistance, President Thieu penned a personal letter to a man he had never met, President Gerald Ford. “Hanoi’s intention to use the Paris Agreement for a military takeover of South Vietnam was well-known to us at the very time of negotiating the Paris Agreement. . . . Firm pledges were then given to us that the United States will retaliate swiftly and vigorously to any violation of the agreement . . . we consider those pledges the most important guarantees of the Paris Agreement; those pledges have now become the most crucial ones to our survival.”17

  President Ford had already accepted the political reality that Congress would not fund another supplemental budget request. While personally reviewing the first draft of his address to a joint session of Congress, the president read the proposed words “and after years of effort, we negotiated a settlement which made it possible for us to remove our forces with honor and bring home our prisoners.” President Ford crossed out the words “with honor.”18

  By the final days of April 1975, a mass evacuation was under way from Saigon. Bud understood the danger Chon faced if he remained in Vietnam. He would be a prize catch for the invading North Vietnamese army. Bud arranged, through the Defense Attaché Office, seats on a flight for Admiral Chon and his entire family. Chon hurried to the coastal city of Vung Tau to fetch his parents for their flight to freedom. After explaining the situation to his eighty-eight-year-old father, Chon realized he faced a personal dilemma. His father could only sit in silence, with tears streaming from his eyes, distraught at the idea of leaving the place where his ancestors were buried. His father would not leave their family’s homeland. Chon felt he had no choice other than to honor his father’s wishes. Assembling the family, Chon advised them that they were remaining. “I hoped that the good deeds that my parents had done would be repaid to my family.”19

  But not all of Chon’s family members were in Vung Tau. His eldest son, Lieutenant Chanh, an officer in the South Vietnamese navy, was commanding a gunship bringing CNO Admiral Cang and chief of staff Admiral Thuy to a destroyer that was part of a flotilla waiting to evacuate thirty thousand Vietnamese refugees. Another son, Lieutenant Junior Grade Tran Minh Truc, a recent graduate of Annapolis, was serving as an electronics officer on another Vietnamese ship joining the flotilla.

  After completing his mission, Chanh sailed back into Saigon, still flying the colors of the flag of the Republic of Vietnam. Mooring his ship at Pier Five in Saigon Harbor, Chanh went directly to get his parents and family so they could all join the evacuation. “We are staying,” Chon said. Chanh knew he could not abandon his parents, but he first returned to his ship where the crew was waiting to depart and join the flotilla. After deliberating with his crew, Chanh decided to sink the ship and dismiss the crew. “Chanh’s loyalty and devotion makes me very proud of him and my Navy,” recalled Chon. “What he and his PGM [patrol gunboat, missile] crew had done proves that the Republic of Viet Nam Navy had built up an extremely strong unyielding spirit among their n
aval officers, petty officers and enlisted men.”

  Bud was worried about having no word from Chon. On May 6 he received a letter from Captain Pham Manh Khue, fleet commander of the Vietnamese evacuation. Khue was already aboard HQ5, the flagship of the Vietnamese fleet. Admiral Cang was aboard HQ3. “As you know, our beloved Vietnam has fallen to the Communist’s hand since 1st May 75,” wrote Khue. “I feel my heart broken when I think that tomorrow will be the last day of the VNN Fleet, the day all of us will leave forever our dear warships on which we have fought for the last decade throughout the SVN territorial waters. . . . I think that all of you fellows in the U.S. Navy, ex-Naval Advisors and sailors who had fought hand by hand with us in Vietnam would have wanted to share our sorrow.” Rightfully proud of the role played by the Vietnamese navy during the evacuation, Khue reported that all of the warships of the Vietnamese navy, the large percentage having been part of the ACTOV turnover, were just sixty miles from Subic Bay, where they planned to retire their fleet, disembark all crew and families, and “then the VNN Fleet will be dismissed and be turned [over] to the U.S. Navy.”20

  Khue beseeched “his Admiral” to use his influence to help in their resettlement and living in the United States. “I still remember many programs, such as ‘Helping Hands,’ the ‘Buddy Base’ and ‘Navy Shelters’ you had previously initiated and that were very fruitful with regard to the VNN during the period from 1969 to 1972.” In closing, Khue said he had heard no news about the family of Admiral Chon, “but it seems to me that he was not able to leave Saigon.”