by Larry Berman
In June 1963, Secretary McNamara told Nitze that Roswell Gilpatric, deputy secretary of defense, had decided to return to his law firm. He asked Nitze to take the position as deputy secretary, and Nitze agreed to do so. Nitze had already instructed Bud to get the special security clearances required to be his executive assistant at the new job when Nitze learned that there was Senate opposition to the appointment. There were also a spate of stories that Bud believed had been started by Gilpatric, saying that “Nitze was too much a mirror image of McNamara, and too similarly cold and analytical, lacking in charisma to be a logical counterweight to McNamara.”35
Meanwhile, Secretary of the Navy Fred Korth was under heavy fire for misusing the navy’s yacht, Sequoia, for old business associates.36 Korth was an extroverted Texas banker with many friends. He had offered his successor at the bank use of the yacht for entertaining clients. A copy of the letter was leaked to the Washington Post. Nitze was called to the White House and asked by President Kennedy to take the job of secretary of the navy. Nitze considered the job a demotion and one that removed him from national security policy formulation. Service secretaries were responsible for recruitment and training of personnel and for the development, acquisition, and maintenance of equipment. They are not in the chain of command with respect to the use of military forces in combat. That command goes through the unified and specified commanders, up through the Joint Chiefs and the secretary of defense to the president.
Nitze insisted on taking the matter directly to the president. Kennedy listened patiently and then made two points: He needed to fill Korth’s position that day and wanted Nitze to take it, guaranteeing him that within six to nine months, he would get Nitze out of the navy job and into a central policy job. He laughed at the idea that anyone in Washington would consider being nominated to be secretary of the navy a demotion. “I had to agree. So we shook hands on it,” recalled Bud, who urged his boss to take a job where he would have his own command rather than being a deputy to McNamara.37 “My view is that it’s one hell of a lot better than being Deputy Secretary of Defense. It’s the difference between having your own ship and being a staff person.” Cyrus Vance was then appointed as McNamara’s deputy secretary of defense.
Nitze took Bud with him from ISA to serve as executive assistant and naval aide. “I wanted him,” said Nitze. “McNamara told me I could get anyone I needed. He could write a speech, contribute to policy discussion, speak well, possessed a certain eloquence and qualities of character and loyalty that have defined him and his career ever since. I needed someone on my staff to keep me alert on what was going on among uniformed Admirals . . . he was my eyes and ears on uniformed Navy.”38
Nitze assigned Bud to serve as the transition officer responsible for getting him confirmed. Kennedy’s nomination of Nitze on October 15, 1963, was a controversial one. A major effort led by Senators Harry Byrd, Strom Thurmond, Richard Russell, and Stuart Symington was already under way to kill the nomination. While it may have looked strange to place a military man in charge of a political process, it reflected Nitze’s deep trust in Bud’s talents. It’s unusual for a military person to be made responsible for winning the political clearance of a presidential appointee, but in this case personal trust trumped politics. Bud quickly organized a team under Robbie Robertson from the navy judge advocate general’s staff to help with the upcoming confirmation hearings.39
“Paul Nitze made enemies almost as rapidly as he made friends,” wrote his grandson Nicholas Thompson.40 Nitze had written and spoken candidly on controversial issues for over thirty years. Several members of the Senate Armed Services Committee focused on two documents that they believed portrayed Nitze as a dangerous liberal. Donald Rumsfeld, who had just been elected to the House from a district in Illinois, circulated a letter denouncing Nitze to the committee. The basis of the denunciation was that Nitze had once chaired and moderated a panel of the World Council of Churches that had passed a series of extremely liberal resolutions, including one that advocated admitting the People’s Republic of China into the United Nations. Other members of the committee focused on a speech Nitze had given at an Asilomar conference in which it sounded as though he was advocating taking nuclear weapons away from the United States and putting them under NATO command.
In the course of Zumwalt’s research, a more complete picture of the truth emerged. Nitze had been asked to be the moderator of the World Council of Churches panel by none other than John Foster Dulles, when Dulles was serving as Eisenhower’s secretary of state. Dulles hoped that Nitze would be able to get the participants to water down their recommendations, but “he got rolled over on most of them,” recalled Zumwalt. “The only thing that he had failed to do, as you don’t worry about doing when you’re not in public life, he hadn’t put in a specific disclaimer. As a matter of fact, he hadn’t even been consulted on the report.”
With regard to the Asilomar conference. Nitze had been asked by the organizer of the conference to deal with “far-out new ideas.” He began the speech by saying he would follow the definition of an economist, “a man who lightly passes over the minor inconsistencies, the better to press on to the grand fallacy.” In reality, Nitze did oppose the Eisenhower proposal of putting all nuclear weapons in one basket. Instead, he favored beefing up conventional power so that the United States did not have to rely exclusively on nuclear weapons. At Asilomar, Nitze listed all of the assumptions on which this proposal rested and then said, “Now, assuming that these assumptions are followed, here’s what I think would happen. You wouldn’t have the conventional forces to withstand an assault; you’d find yourself progressively backing down here, backing down there.” Then in his final paragraph, he said, “Now, let me leap to the grand design or the grand fallacy, as the case may be—I suggest that if all these assumptions are followed, and if all these things come to pass, that about the only thing left for us to do would be to place all of our weapons, our nuclear weapons, under the command of NATO and have NATO be responsive to the United Nations charter.”
Nitze decided to visit Democratic senator Stuart Symington, whose father had been a good friend of Nitze’s father at Amherst College and who had held young Nitze when he was christened. It was rumored that Symington was one of the major opponents of Nitze’s appointment. Symington told Nitze that his confirmation would be dead if he tried defending the speech’s logic in the context of the time and circumstances it had been given in, three years earlier. Instead, he needed to say that the entire body of the speech was a grand fallacy and not to be taken seriously. With some reluctance, Nitze followed this advice.
Meanwhile, Nitze sent Bud to meet with Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson. Nitze had first won Jackson’s trust and admiration for his role in writing the 1950 National Security Council reexamination of U.S. grand strategy (National Security Council Report 68, or NSC 68), which established the main lines of American policy for the Cold War.41 “Jackson agreed completely with NSC 68’s conceptual framework of a long-term struggle between American freedom and Soviet totalitarianism, and with the expensive means that it called for to combat the Soviet threat: a vast military buildup in conventional and nuclear arms, the alternative to which was the enslavement of the free world,” wrote Robert Kaufman.42 Jackson had later recommended that Kennedy appoint Nitze as secretary of state, the position filled by Dean Rusk.
Jackson took an immediate liking to Nitze’s protégé. He advised Bud to lie low and find “everybody who is a firsthand witness in both cases that can contribute anything, and get affidavits from them. Stay out of the newspapers and come over here for confirmation hearings with Paul Nitze, having given me all those documents, and I’ll give a speech both at the hearing and on the Senate floor and put those documents into the record.”43 When the hearings began, most of the attention was on the Asilomar conference speech. Nitze insisted that he had just “thrown out” the idea of a handover to the UN. It was intended for discussion. “That’s not the way it reads,” said Senator Harr
y Byrd of Virginia. “I recognize that, Mr. Senator,” said Nitze.
Senator Strom Thurmond made the unprecedented request that Chairman Richard Russell put Nitze under oath, after his testimony to Byrd. It was now personal. Thurmond’s first question was, “Mr. Nitze, have you ever been to Cane?” Nitze didn’t understand the question. Thurmond repeated, “Cane, France.” Now Nitze understood the question, recalling he had been to Cannes, France, for a conference of the Bilderberg Group. Thurmond asked if there were any Russians there. Nitze replied no, but there were plenty of Americans, including General Lyman Lemnitzer, George Ball, David Rockefeller, Dean Rusk, Ted Heath, and Senator Bourke Hickenlooper. Thurmond dropped the line of questioning and next asked whether Nitze owned a farm in southern Maryland and whether he had sold part of the farm to the American Telephone and Telegraph Company. Nitze replied that he had reluctantly sold three acres so that the company could put in a microwave tower and switching station. Thurmond charged that Nitze had received more for the land than it was worth because AT&T was a contractor to the Defense Department. Thurmond requested an eight-week adjournment so that the committee could run down all the details on this transaction. Chairman Russell granted the request.
When the facts emerged, it turned out that when AT&T first approached Nitze for an option on the three acres, he refused, because his wife, Phyllis, did not want microwave towers overlooking their fields and woods. However, the location was necessary for the Pentagon’s new communications systems, so after consulting with general counsel in Defense and the relevant congressional committees, attorneys on both sides approved the AT&T option.
Thurmond was forced to drop this conflict-of-interest line of inquiry, choosing now to question the conclusions Nitze had reached at the National Council of Churches in 1958.44 Bud had already found a Quaker preacher who said he could certify that Nitze was against those positions. “As a matter of fact, I did a lot of debating with him,” swore Bud’s witness. “He was on the opposite side on all of those issues. . . . Paul Nitze was against me on every one of those issues, and he was taking intellectually honest positions, and it’s just unconscionable that they’re going after him for this.”45 Senator Byrd provided perhaps the most comical moment in the hearings, saying it was incredible that a man would so carefully and logically consider the pros and cons of a proposition he considered to be a grand fallacy. Byrd ultimately voted for confirmation, unlike Senators Strom Thurmond and Barry Goldwater. The New York Times headline, NITZE Opposed IN NAVY JOB FOR ALLEGED PACIFIST VIEWS, had little effect on the majority of the committee. Scoop Jackson had kept his promise to Bud by working on the more reasonable opponents. Richard Russell was the first one to fall off, but President Kennedy’s assassination ultimately diluted the opposition.46 Lyndon Johnson was an old buddy of the senior members of the Armed Services Committee and was able to call them up and say, “Look, I’ve got to have this guy confirmed fast.” And it went through just like that in the aftermath of a national tragedy.47
One of the first visitors to congratulate the new secretary of the navy was Admiral Hyman Rickover, who could not resist popping his head into Bud Zumwalt’s cubicle. They had not seen each other since the interview. “Now remember, Captain Zumwalt, I didn’t reject you, you rejected me.” That was true. And by his own admission, Bud was fascinated by the man, speaking incessantly to others about him and trying to break the code of what made Rickover tick. Bud came to see Rickover as “essentially a broker of power, and only secondarily a Naval Officer. He would have been the same type of personality had he been a Rabbi.”48 Many years and battles with Rickover later, Bud said candidly, “I suppose at bottom we acted like two wary old dogs who kept circling each other because neither dares lunge first. The hair on the backs of our necks always seemed to bristle when we encountered each other.”49
In some respects, Rickover was just like Bud—one of a kind. Brilliant, sly, tireless, blunt, devious, arrogant, foresighted, vain, angry—attempts to define him will forever fail. Former secretary of the navy Paul Ignatius used many adjectives to describe Rickover—short, wizened, devious, calculating, manipulative, dominant, demanding, focused, unscrupulous, egotistical, and effective.50 Bud felt it was his responsibility to educate Nitze about what a formidable problem Rickover was going to be for the navy.51 Rickover was always on the offensive, always attacking and seeking to discredit people who got in the way of his vision of a nuclear navy. Bud thought Rickover “lived on the edge of madness.”52 Rickover’s office was technically only a division within the Bureau of Ships (later Sea Systems Command), and he was nominally under the command of the chief of the Bureau of Ships, his junior in rank. Nevertheless, for all intents and purposes, Rickover was autonomous. His power derived from Congress and from his second hat as director of the Naval Reactors section of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). Rickover had built strong support on the Hill with the Joint Atomic Energy Committee, the House Armed Services Committee, the Senate Armed Services Committee, and the House Appropriations Committee. He was literally three-hatted, reporting to the AEC on nuclear issues, to the secretary of the navy through the Navy Material Command, and to the Joint Atomic Energy Committee (JCAE). Nobody really had control over him. Any directives from higher authority that were not to Rickover’s liking received a reply either from the AEC or the JCAE. The Atomic Energy Act literally gave JCAE plenary power in all matters dealing with atomic energy.
Nitze and Zumwalt spent much time trying to figure out how to deal with Rickover, even trying to force him into retirement. Nitze knew Rickover would fight back, so he first checked with key members of Congress, including Richard Russell, chairman of the Armed Services Committee. Russell told Nitze that while he would not actively support Nitze’s action, he would not oppose him. Rickover reached the mandatory retirement age of sixty-four in 1964 but was recalled to active duty for a two-year term. Nitze asked Zumwalt to prepare the brief, which Bud accepted with great enthusiasm, seeing it as his chance for ultimate payback. Bud spent a great deal of time writing up a bill of particulars that provided legal authority to get rid of Rickover. “I typed the memo myself and it was never run through the Secretary’s mailroom,” said Bud. No one else knew, except one naval aide. Nitze took the brief to Cyrus Vance, who approved it. Nitze then set up a meeting with Scoop Jackson, but when Nitze arrived at Jackson’s office for the meeting, he learned it had been moved to the committee room. Opening the door, Nitze saw Senator Jackson sitting in one seat and Rickover at the witness table. Nitze was asked to sit at the opposite table. Nitze now understood why Rickover, along with J. Edgar Hoover, was considered the most established bureaucrat in Washington. “Rick doffed his admiral’s suit whenever he found himself in conflict with Navy policy, and sniped at the Navy in his civvies,” recalled Bud.53 Without the support of Senator Jackson, Nitze’s closest ally in Washington, the plan to retire Rickover was abandoned.
When the time again came to extend Rickover’s tenure, Nitze took a different strategy, informing him that he was being extended but that he needed a deputy who would be competent enough to carry out his job once he retired in two years. “Rick was furious about this and said there wasn’t anyone who could take his place and so forth and so on. Rick would get rid of every Admiral who was competent to take his place. He wouldn’t have anybody succeed him or be in a position to succeed him. He once quipped, ‘Deputy? Deputy? Did Jesus Christ have a deputy?’ ”54 A joke around the Pentagon was that Rickover didn’t buy a grave site; he just rented a tomb for three days.
One of the major issues on which Rickover and Nitze clashed was which ships in the ship-construction program should be nuclear powered. Rickover believed that all combatants destroyer size and larger should be nuclear powered. No one disputed that nuclear-powered ships were more capable, having longer endurance and freedom from the tanker “tail” required by fossil-fueled ships. But the costs were enormous in comparison to conventional-propulsion ships. Nevertheless, Rickover and his staff could always pro
duce a study proving the cost-effectiveness of nuclear-powered ships in comparison to conventional ones. These studies had great resonance in Congress and forced the navy to produce its own studies of equal or greater weight to defend shipbuilding decisions that ran counter to Rickover’s ideas and claims.
Nitze recalled one major confrontation when the navy determined that the next class of destroyers should be powered by gas turbines and not steam turbines. With Nitze’s encouragement, the navy was attempting to move ahead on the development of propulsion systems other than nuclear and fossil-fueled steam. The Soviet navy in particular had enjoyed success with gas turbine propulsion, either as a primary system or as a boost system for a diesel cruising configuration. Nitze and Zumwalt saw several advantages in such systems—lighter weight, greater simplicity, and lower maintenance demands. The U.S. Navy had yet to install a gas-turbine system on a large surface combatant, however, and Rickover fought this tooth and nail.
Nitze had all of the studies done and received McNamara’s support, but Rickover objected because he wanted them to be nuclear. Nitze was scheduled to make the budget presentation to Congress, the details of which the president, the Bureau of the Budget, and McNamara all favored. Nitze was startled to learn that Representative George Mahon had also called Rickover to testify. Nitze reminded Rickover that he was expected to give the administration’s position and that if he disagreed with the administration, he would still need to provide the reasoning for both sides.
