by Larry Berman
60. Stillwell, Reminiscences of Admiral Zumwalt, Jr., 229.
61. Ibid., 245.
62. Ibid., 246.
63. Ibid., 247.
64. Ibid.
65. Ibid., 247–48.
66. Ibid., 248.
67. Holloway letter, Executive Correspondence file, Plans and Policy Division of the Bureau, Zumwalt Papers, NHHC.
68. Ibid.
69. Stillwell, Reminiscences of Admiral Zumwalt, Jr., 253.
70. Letter, Oct. 2, 1995; Rear Admiral Robert Hanks, Oct. 2, 1995, ZFC.
71. Hanks came to see Zumwalt as a superlative commanding officer, from whom he learned seamanship, leadership, and compassion for those under him. He also felt that Mouza was for the ship’s wives what Bud was for the men aboard ship—always there for them. Fiftieth wedding anniversary reminiscence, ZFC.
72. Ibid.
73. Stillwell, Reminiscences of Admiral Zumwalt, Jr., 275–78.
74. See Zumwalt, On Watch, 186–89. An E, for excellence, is generally awarded to a ship or component of a ship as a result of top performance in competition with other ships during a given time period.
75. Letter to Admiral Bruton, Jan. 30, 1956: “We had, as I recall, four of the six reserve officers on the Isbell extend or go career while I was on board, and that took a lot of doing, both on my part and on my wife’s part, who worked with their wives to help them understand some of the great fun that you can have in the Navy and the togetherness that goes with being part of a Navy team. And that was at a time when not very many ships were having that kind of success.” Stillwell, Reminiscences of Admiral Zumwalt, Jr., 278.
76. Stillwell, Reminiscences of Admiral Zumwalt, Jr., 278–79.
77. Draft, “The Cut of My Jib,” ZTT.
78. Personal memo from Vice Admiral Holloway to Richard Jackson, assistant secretary of the navy, at the Pentagon, Oct. 2, 1957, ZPP.
79. Ibid.
80. Stillwell, Reminiscences of Admiral Zumwalt, Jr.
81. First draft “The Cut of My Jib,” ZTT.
82. Zumwalt, On Watch, 86.
83. From 1955 to 1957, as CO of DD, he had qualified three different chief engineers and felt that he had been his own chief engineer for those two years.
84. Norman Polmar and Thomas B. Allen, Rickover: Controversy and Genius (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1982), 215. I draw extensively from this pathbreaking biography.
85. Bud later overtook Peet because Rickover required a five-year commitment from Peet.
86. Bud and Jim Calvert were first in class to make Rear Admiral in 1965, a year ahead of Peet.
87. Letter, Charles Dewey to Bud, Nov. 19, 1970. “How prophetic can one be?” “Keep the Z-grams coming!!” ZFC.
88. Stillwell, Reminiscences of Admiral Zumwalt, Jr., 308–9, 316.
89. E-mail to author from Joe Roedel, Oct. 23, 2011. “He loved his men, his ship, his duties. . . . Many times Capt. Zumwalt would go up to the flying bridge and get a couple of seamen, including me, and we would toss the medicine ball back and forth during our lunch break. He was never afraid to mix with the ranks of the seamen and always seemed to enjoy it. He had a great re-pore [sic] with the men and they in turn had the same for him.”
90. Letter, Dec. 9, 1959, from S. M. Alexander, supervisor of shipbuilding, regarding Bud’s performance at Bath and Dewey, ZPP.
91. Letter, “Dear Bud,” W. L. Read, lieutenant commander, Flag Secretary Destroyer Force, Atlantic Fleet, ZFC.
92. Letter to Saralee, Sept. 8, 1960, ZFC.
CHAPTER 6: PLATO AND SOCRATES
1. “Paul Nitze,” ZTT.
2. In the class were Naval Academy classmates James Holloway, Jim Calvert, and Richard Armitage.
3. Paul Stillwell, Reminiscences by Staff Officers, 338–40.
4. In a January 23, 1962, letter to Charles Bohlen, then special assistant to the secretary of state, Bud explained his research and sought authorization to use materials from the interview. The interview occurred on January 2, 1962. ZPP.
5. “Paul H. Nitze,” Academy of Achievement, www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/nit0bio-1.
6. Paul H. Nitze, From Hiroshima to Glasnost: At the Center of Decision—a Memoir (New York: Weidenfeld, 1989), 181.
7. Ibid., 182; “Paul Nitze,” ZTT.
8. Paraphrased from Nitze evaluation of Captain Zumwalt, ZPP, and Paul Nitze, remarks at Bud and Mouza’s fiftieth wedding anniversary celebration.
9. Ibid., fiftieth wedding anniversary celebration.
10. People at the War College “thought that it was dullsville, that it was committee solutions, constant wrangling for this phrase and that comma in the inter-service rivalries.” Stillwell, Reminiscences of Admiral Zumwalt, Jr., 350.
11. “And, you know, who’s to say that they weren’t right, had it not been for the accident of Paul Nitze becoming Secretary of the Navy? I think that by the time I came up for rear admiral, that the thinking had changed enough, under McNamara’s imprint, that it was recognized that the policy really was set in OSD, not on the Joint Staff. I believe that even had Paul Nitze not become Secretary of the Navy, that a selection board would have placed the ISA duty above the previously selected for that rank.” Ibid.
12. Ibid.; “Paul Nitze,” ZTT.
13. Nitze evaluation of Captain Zumwalt, ZFC.
14. “Paul Nitze then decided to move me over and put me in as director of arms control, which took me from an 0-6 slot to an 0-8 slot.” The pay grade for a navy captain is 0-6; 0-8 is for a rear admiral. Stillwell, Reminiscences of Admiral Zumwalt, Jr., 353.
15. “Paul Nitze,” ZTT.
16. Nitze regularly consulted on general foreign policy problems, seeing Bud as an expert on the Soviet Union. Nitze then took Bud with him to be his executive officer when Nitze became deputy secretary of defense and later when he became secretary of the navy.
17. “Paul Nitze,” ZTT.
18. This became most apparent when serving as Nitze’s Cuba contingency planner.
19. Memorandum of conversation with Daniel Ellsberg, May 13, 1974, ZPP.
20. Nitze, From Hiroshima to Glasnost, 256.
21. “Paul Nitze,” ZTT.
22. Stillwell, Reminiscences of Admiral Zumwalt, Jr., 354.
23. Nitze, From Hiroshima to Glasnost, 218.
24. “Paul Nitze,” ZTT.
25. “Bud told me later that he memorized an acrostic so that he could recreate the instructions in their correct sequence since he was without pencil and paper.” Nitze, From Hiroshima to Glasnost, 228.
26. Nitze offers a similar account. “Bud, I think you got it. I want you to know that McNamara told me to fire you if you missed a single instruction.” Ibid.
27. See Deborah Shapley, Promise and Power: The Life and Times of Robert McNamara (Boston: Little, Brown, 1993), 241. “He stood at attention while the secretary barked at him and indirectly bawled out the entire navy. Zumwalt refused to bend over to pick up the pad and pencil to make notes, to avoid debasing the Navy.”
28. Stillwell, Reminiscences of Admiral Zumwalt, Jr., 371. Bud always thought this minor change was crucial to the outcome.
29. Nitze, From Hiroshima to Glasnost, 228.
30. Ibid., 230.
31. Ibid., 230–31.
32. “Paul Nitze and Cuba,” ZTT; Stillwell, Reminiscences of Admiral Zumwalt, Jr., 371–73.
33. Letter, Jan. 16, 1997, ZFC.
34. Cyrus Vance, letter of commendation, Nov. 7, 1963.
35. “Robert McNamara,” ZTT.
36. See Andy Kerr, A Journey Amongst the Good and the Great (Annapolis, MD: U.S. Naval Institute Press, 1987). On August 1, 1963, Admiral David L. McDonald succeeded Admiral Anderson as chief of naval operations. Anderson became U.S. ambassador to Portugal.
37. January 15, 1987, materials provided by Bud for Nitze’s memoirs; prepared by Robbie Robertson. ZPP.
38. Ibid.
39. The special assistant for legal counsel was Commander Horace B. Robertson. Robbie was the judge advocate general (JAG) officer
. The administrative aide was Commander Dick Nicholson, a surface-warfare officer.
40. Nicholas Thompson, The Hawk and the Dove: Paul Nitze, George Kennan, and the History of the Cold War (New York: Henry Holt, 2009), 195.
41. Robert Kaufman, Henry M. Jackson: A Life in Politics (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000), 57.
42. Ibid.
43. Zumwalt draft chapter on Paul Nitze, ZPP.
44. Nitze, From Hiroshima to Glasnost.
45. These details are in the Zumwalt draft chapter as well as Stillwell, Reminiscences of Admiral Zumwalt, Jr., 375–80.
46. “I remember being in Paul Nitze’s office on an arms control issue, however, when the phone rang. Margaret, his secretary, said something to him. I saw Paul’s face go white, which I’d never seen, and he kept saying, ‘No, no. Oh, my God, no, no, no.’ It went on for about three minutes, and he put down the phone and said, ‘President Kennedy’s just been shot’ and dismissed everybody. We turned on the radio, and we just sat there totally almost unable to function for the next several hours while we listened to the news reports.” Stillwell, Reminiscences of Admiral Zumwalt, Jr., 379.
47. “There was absolutely no doubt about where Paul Nitze stood on defense, and the Committee gave him its endorsement but it was an education to me to see the way in which dissent is registered by interested groups and how carefully their concerns are reflected in the Congressional questioning.” ZTT, “Paul Nitze.”
48. Tape 33, side A, ZTT.
49. Tape 33, ZTT.
50. Kerr, A Journey Amongst the Good and the Great, 110. Paul R. Ignatius, On Board: My Life in the Navy, Government, and Business (Annapolis, MD: U.S. Naval Institute Press, 2006), 163–64.
51. “Rickover,” ZTT.
52. Ibid.
53. In On Watch, Bud noted that Rickover was the consummate infighter and strategist, which Bud had learned from time with Nitze as aide to the secretary of the navy. “Holland wanted some access to US Navy nuclear reactor technology, which Nitze thought should be rejected. Nitze asked for Rickover’s opinion since he was the admiral in charge of nuclear propulsion. The reply came back not on Navy stationary, but on AEC stationary, allowing him to circulate copies to members of congress and avoid the navy chain of command.”
54. Rickover (Box 37) interview, Jan. 27, 1977, by Rudy Abramsen of the Los Angeles Times, never published, Paul Nitze Papers, Library of Congress.
55. Ibid.
56. Bud insisted that he was not disappointed with never having a major command: “No, I really don’t. I am pleased with the fact that I got the jobs that I got as a result of having been selected for rear admiral early. They were all fascinating jobs. I don’t think in reflecting back that I, having ridden cruisers as my flagship when I was flotilla commander, that the skipper of a cruiser gets anything like the fun and zest that I had had in three previous commands. Nor, because he’s so layered in, does he have the broadening that you get in the destroyer commands. I really believe that it’s not harmful to skip that command.” Stillwell, Reminiscences of Admiral Zumwalt, Jr., 434.
57. A remarkable set of future leaders was in the E ring at this time. Dave Bagley was executive assistant to the undersecretary; Ike Kidd, executive assistant to the CNO; Jerry Miller, executive assistant to the VCNO; George Brown, military assistant to the secretary of defense; and Alexander Haig, military assistant to Joseph Califano.
58. I am indebted to Admiral Bill Thompson for providing me with a copy of chapters 18, 21, and 22 of the manuscript of his personal memoirs, later published as Gumption: My Life—My Words. It was copyrighted 2010 (self-published), and for allowing me to make extensive use of his recollections. “Once he determined that an associate or a subordinate had the experience, background and integrity to handle a task, he brought him/her into his confidence and shared the task and would work with them until fruition and then give him/her all the credit.”
59. Ibid.
60. Ibid.; author interview with Bill Thompson. Thompson recalled that the first time he ever heard the term was “when listening to Bud addressing a convocation of the Naval District Commandants in Washington, I learned the term and after struggling with a dictionary, learned how to spell it.”
61. Bill Thompson memoirs.
62. Bud was aware that he was on the selection list but was wary of counting it a done deal. Nitze had sworn him to silence.
63. “Paul Nitze,” ZTT.
64. Ibid.
65. Ibid.
66. “It was almost five years to the day that Bud Zumwalt called me from Washington—I was at the Harvard Business School—to relate that he was nominated by the President to be the Navy’s Chief of Naval Operations.” Bill Thompson memoirs and interview with author.
67. Ibid.
CHAPTER 7: PATH TO VIETNAM
1. Plaque presented to Bud by the F-111B study team.
2. Stillwell, Reminiscences by Staff Officers, 432.
3. Ibid.
4. “Zumwalt Assumes Flotilla Command,” Tulare Advance-Register, July 26, 1965.
5. Stillwell, Reminiscences of Admiral Zumwalt, Jr., 440–45.
6. “We had a very busy social schedule, as a result. Mouza and I, I think, were out every night—at least to a cocktail party and sometimes to a dinner party. Our oldest son was then away at college, but the other three we were able to see quite a bit of, more so than in Washington duty.” Ibid.
7. Ibid., 440.
8. Ibid., 445.
9. Ibid., 449.
10. Ibid., 450. See also David Vine, Island of Shame: The Secret History of the U.S. Military Base on Diego Garcia (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009).
11. Ignatius, On Board: My Life in the Navy, Government, and Business, 161; Bill Thompson memoir.
12. Charles J. DiBona stood second of the 681 graduates in the Naval Academy class of 1956 and subsequently studied as a Rhodes Scholar. In 1967, as a lieutenant commander, he resigned from active duty and became chief executive officer of the Center for Naval Analyses.
13. Author interview with Charles DiBona.
14. Stillwell, Reminiscences of Admiral Zumwalt, Jr., 451.
15. Ibid., 520.
16. Ibid., 453.
17. A few months into his tour in OP-96, Bud made the decision to replace the Franklin Institute and hire the University of Rochester to manage the Office of Naval Analyses. As part of the process of getting Rochester to agree to manage the office, a powerful and vigorous president of the center was needed. Charlie DiBona was the only logical candidate.
18. The navy finally won, and the F-111 became an air force fighter-bomber that had little success, while the navy’s substitute version, the F-14, a successful interceptor with its Phoenix missile system, remained in the inventory into the next century.
19. Stillwell, Reminiscences of Admiral Zumwalt, Jr., 451.
20. Ibid.
21. The Reminiscences of Vice Admiral Gerald E. Miller, U.S. Navy (Retired), vol. 2, USNI Oral History Program (Annapolis, MD: U.S. Naval Institute, 1984), 594.
22. Stillwell, Reminiscences of Admiral Zumwalt, Jr., 454.
23. Paul Stillwell asked Bud, “Did you study gas turbine propulsion?” Zumwalt answered, “Yes, and I became a firm devotee of it and insisted upon it when I was CNO. It was one of the significant sources of friction between me and Admiral Rickover. And I think that that’s one area in which we’ve been proven to have been absolutely right, that they had proven to be magnificent.” Ibid., 460.
24. About Rickover, Zumwalt wrote: “He’s the only military man I know who can destroy a professional career willy nilly. He has more power over money than probably anybody in the executive branch—maybe even including the President—and he’s got administrative control of what to do about the money really nailed down. Power to control the whole management method that goes probably beyond anything other than the Manhattan project itself.” Zumwalt, On Watch, 456.
25. Ibid., 406. Bud delighted in telling the story of th
e running feud and vendetta between Rickover and the chief of naval personnel, Vice Admiral William R. Smedberg, who was “a great fighter for the interests of people and who found himself constantly in battle with Admiral Rickover who put people a distinct second.” CNO Fred Korth brought them both to his office, read them the riot act in four-letter words and told them he never wanted to see them in his office again on matters like this. As they left, Smedberg said, ‘I’ve never been talked to by anybody in my life like that.’ Rickover said, ‘You deserved it.’ ”
26. Briefing 2, tape 30B, ZTT.
27. Polmar and Allen, Rickover: Controversy and Genius, 394–95.
28. Ibid., 406.
29. Stillwell, Reminiscences of Admiral Zumwalt, Jr., 462–63.
30. All nineteen guerrillas were killed, as were four MPs, a marine guard, and a South Vietnamese embassy employee. See Larry Berman, Lyndon Johnson’s War: The Road to Stalemate in Vietnam (New York: Norton, 1989).
31. Zumwalt’s data indicated that “we could have been even more decisive in killing the F-111.” ZTT 28, side A.
32. This account comes from Elmo Zumwalt, Jr., and Elmo Zumwalt III, My Father, My Son (New York: Dell, 1987).
33. Personal letter, Jan. 16, 1997, on the occasion of Nitze’s ninetieth birthday. “Your graciousness in letting me listen to and participate in policy discussions over the years.” ZFC.
34. Nick Thompson provided me with the following description of the farm: “A half mile paved road runs from the house past some corn fields and tobacco barns down to a tennis court and a swimming pool. There was also a trampoline down there when I was a child. There are horses stabled about two miles away that Z and N probably rode through the woods. Other things I remember: metal chairs out back, a beautiful full-wall mural in the dining room drawn by Nitze’s old friend Charlie Child with foxes, snakes, and birds drawn into a beautiful nature scene on it, a piano that N used to play, a gravel driveway with magnolia trees in the middle, sheep just across the driveway from the front barn, pigs in another field, a large silo and a cow barn near to the house. It smelled and looked like a farm, and there were real farmers that worked it. But I don’t think my grandfather was out there all that often milking the cows or sowing the corn crop.”