Zumwalt

by Larry Berman

  Contributors to the research for the NILO section included Larry Serra, Phil Babb, Paul Baker, Don Brady, Nick Carbone, Tim Corcoran, Pete Decker, Ed Dietz, Bob Doyle, Jess Foster, Jim Glavin, Allan Grace, Rich Gragg, Charlie Kirchoff, Lou Lesesne, Merek Lipson, Ed McDaniel, Bob Melka, Billy Roberts, John Vinson, Robert Laney, and Phil Ziegler.

  I conducted numerous interviews and conversations during the course of my research. I especially thank Walter Anderson, Stephan Minikes, Charles DiBona, William Narva, Bill Thompson, Roberta Hazard, Zoltan Merszei, Robbie Robertson, Chick Rauch, Charlie Hamilton, Chuck Wardell, Joe Roedel, David Halperin, Howard Kerr, Tran Van Chon, Philip Lader, Qui Nguyen, Richard Schifter, Robert Sam Anson, Rex Rectanus, Donna Weakley, Arnold Schecter, Mike Spiro, Nguyen Trong Nhan, Phu Nguyen, Weymouth Symmes, Emmett Tidd, Bob Powers, Burt Shepherd, Homer Murray, S. Scott Balderson, Leslie Cullen, Nicholas Thompson, Mark Feldstein, Matt Dallek, Seymour Hersh, John Sherwood, John Prados, Ron Spector, Steve Sherman, William McQuilkin, Mark Clodfelter, Bill Burr, Susan Hammond, Richard Eger, Joe Kinsella, Joe Sandell, Roger Thompson, David Winkler, Robert Ancell, David Zierler, Edward Miller, Edward Marolda, and Maggie Tate.

  The Zumwalt family was unfailingly helpful to me, especially when they became aware of my problems with NHHC. Bud and Mouza’s three surviving children, Mouzetta Zumwalt-Weathers, James G. Zumwalt, and Ann Zumwalt Coppola, provided me with boxes of papers, documents, and supporting materials. Bud’s brother James G. Zumwalt, a retired schoolteacher and self-professed amateur historian, invited me to San Diego and provided dozens of his unpublished family vignettes. Jim answered every one of my e-mail requests for additional information. Dr. Michael Coppola helped me understand issues related to Bud’s final days and executing a health-care proxy. I benefited from conversations with Lauren and Camille Zumwalt Coppola, Barbara Zumwalt, Gretli Zumwalt, Fran Zumwalt, and James P. Zumwalt. I owe a special debt to Saralee’s son, Richard Elmo Crowe, who came to visit me in Davis (he is an alumnus of UCD) and shared with me the results of his family research on Anna Frank and later his extensive research files on Mouza’s lineage. Lavinia Mohr, who with Richard provided the conclusive DNA testing results, provided much helpful insight on Frances. Saralee’s other son, Fred Crowe, was a source of realism and wit.

  The Vietnam Archive at Texas Tech University is the depository Admiral Zumwalt chose for his personal papers and memorabilia. He did so because he wanted historians to have access to his materials. Director Steve Maxner did everything possible to facilitate my research in a proactive and professional manner. Vietnam Archive staff, Khanh Cong Le, Ty Lovelady, Victoria Lovelady, Justin Saffell, Mary Saffell, Kelly Crager, Kevin Sailsbury, Sheon Montgomery, Katrina Jackson, and Amy Mondt, were always helpful and proactive.

  My problems with the command structure at NHHC were mitigated by the professionalism of archivists who actually wanted to help me and expressed frustration with how others were thwarting my research. I thank Dan Jones, Gregory Ellis, Tim Pettit, John Greco, and John Hodges. Photo curator Robert Hanschew and Marissa Knack, an undergraduate intern in the photo archive, assembled photo materials for my review. Frank Arre of the Navy Historical Foundation helped me secure images for the book. At the United States Naval Institute (USNI), Janis Jorgensen, manager of the Heritage Collection, expedited my purchase of oral histories. Benjamin Peisch at the Washington Post writer’s desk was instrumental in securing the photo of Tran Van Chon visiting Admiral Zumwalt’s grave.

  Along the way I have also benefited from the support of friends Andy Burtis, Arthur and Cathy Delorimier, Ron Smith, Ed Costantini, Stephen Routh, Bruce Murphy, Ron Milum, Ron Reisner, Charlie Benn, and my mentor, Fred Greenstein. I also thank John Shelton and his chariot for making certain that I never missed an interview and was always on time at the Navy Yard.

  I started Zumwalt while a faculty member at the University of California, Davis, and finished it as dean of the Honors College at Georgia State University. I have incurred debts on both sides of the continental divide. At Davis, my former chair John Scott allowed me to retain my office for six months after retirement so that I could write each day before starting at GSU in January 2012. Davis colleagues Alan Taylor and Miko Nincic offered advice and support whenever I asked. My undergraduate research assistants, Veronica Cummings, Brendan Ripicky, Leslie Tsan, James Baker, and Liron Feldman, all made significant contributions. Baker’s work on Agent Orange and Tsan’s in-depth research on multiple assignments merit special distinction. Finally, I want to thank Michelle Hicks, Cindy Simmons, and the entire staff at UCD for their daily assistance and good cheer.

  In the Honors College at GSU, special thanks to administrative assistant Lannetta Somerville for preparing the final manuscript and photos for production. I could not have met my deadline without Lannetta’s diligence. My undergraduate research assistant Shelby Lohr did a terrific job tracking fugitive materials and proofreading. Whenever I asked, student Jerel Marshall of the Honors College was ready to assist. I also want to thank my entire Honors College team for understanding that their founding dean was working a new day job as well as finishing his book early morning, late evening, and all weekend. The support of Karen Simmons, Jeffrey Young, April Lawhorn, Greg Chisholm, and Annahita Jimmerson was indispensable to surving the transition.

  My adult children, Scott and Lindsay, as well as son-in-law Juan, were always sources of encouragement. This book is dedicated to my two grandchildren, Isabel and Ian. Both could find no better role models than Bud and Mouza Zumwalt, for making a difference in the world.

  Most indispensable is Nicole, who understands how important this book is to me. For the past year she gracefully accepted my refrain, “I am almost finished.” But I wasn’t. Now that Zumwalt is done, it’s time to find out what weekends are all about.

  Larry Berman

  Atlanta, Georgia

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Larry Berman has written four previous books on the war in Vietnam: Planning a Tragedy: The Americanization of the War in Vietnam; Lyndon Johnson’s War: The Road to Stalemate in Vietnam; No Peace, No Honor: Nixon, Kissinger, and Betrayal in Vietnam; and Perfect Spy: The Incredible Double Life of Pham Xuan An, Time Magazine Reporter and Vietnamese Communist Agent. He has been featured on C-SPAN Book TV, The Public Mind with Bill Moyers, and David McCullough’s American Experience. He has been a Guggenheim fellow and a fellow in residence at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He received the Bernath Lecture Prize for contributions to our understanding of foreign relations and the Vice Admiral Edwin B. Hooper Research Grant. Berman is professor emeritus at the University of California, Davis, and founding dean of the Honors College at Georgia State University. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.

  NOTES

  CHAPTER 1: CONSCIENCE OF THE NAVY

  1. Zumwalt had made hundreds of tapes while his memory was fresh from the events of the day. Many of the recollections and assessments on the tapes never made their way into On Watch. I have made frequent use of these candid and unedited recollections from the Zumwalt Personal Papers (ZPP) at the Vietnam Archive, Texas Tech University. Many of the tape transcripts have no identifying markers, so they are cited as Zumwalt tape transcript (ZTT).

  2. United States Naval Academy Chaplain’s Center, www.usna.edu/Chaplains.

  3. Time cover story, “The Military Goes Mod,” Dec. 21, 1970.

  4. William J. Clinton, “Remarks on Presenting the Presidential Medal of Freedom,” Jan. 15, 1998. The ceremony can be viewed at www.c-spanvideo.org/program/98416-1.

  5. Author interview with Ambassador Philip Lader.

  6. These remarks were made at Hilton Head, South Carolina, Jan. 1, 1999. A significant portion of primary source materials used in this book was provided by the Zumwalt family, who understood my frustration in dealing with the Navy History and Heritage Command (NHHC). I cite these materials the first time as Zumwalt F
amily Collection and afterward as ZFC. By agreement with the family, the bulk of these materials will be given to the Vietnam Archive as part of the Larry Berman ZUMWALT collection, so that scholars may make use of these materials.

  7. July 25, 1968, personal letter to “My Dear Bud,” signed “Much love, Jim,” ZFC.

  8. June 3, 1970, personal letter, ZFC.

  9. I am especially grateful to Bud’s brother James G. Zumwalt for providing me with his extensive collection of unpublished family vignettes, from which this recollection comes.

  10. Nov. 5, 1995, letter from Saralee to Bud and Mouza, ZFC.

  11. James G. Zumwalt funeral vignette plus personal interview with author.

  12. Letter to Roger Himmel, May 24, 1994, ZFC.

  13. These are the words on Mouza’s tombstone at the Naval Academy, where she is buried next to her husband.

  14. Remarks of Admiral Mike Mullen at Mouza Zumwalt Memorial Ceremony, United States Naval Academy Chapel, September 3, 2005.

  15. Author interview with Philip Lader, former ambassador to the United Kingdom.

  16. Radarman second class (RD2) Joe Muharsky, U.S. Navy, Vietnam, USS Brister, Destroyer Escort Radar (DER) 327, 1967; Patrol Craft Fast (PCF) 78, Danang, 1968; PCF 94, An Thoi, 1969.

  17. Jan. 4, 2000, personal letter to Mouza, ZFC. The letter can be found at www.mwweb.com/ndc/zumwalt/zumwalt.htm.

  18. This reference is found on an undated Zumwalt tape transcript titled “Paul Nitze.”

  19. Letter to Mrs. Adjemovitch, Hebrew Immigration Aid Society, Fort Indiantown Gap, June 10, 1975, ZFC.

  20. Qui Nguyen, personal correspondence with author.

  21. Phu Nguyen, personal interview with author in Saigon, Dec. 2011.

  22. Elmo Russell Zumwalt, Jr, “After On Watch,” unpublished manuscript. In July 1997, the U.S. Navy’s senior enlisted man, the master chief petty officer of the navy (MCPON), John Hagen, requested that Bud write an update to On Watch as a report to sailors on his activities since retirement on July 1, 1974. The unpublished manuscript, dated “as of September 9, 1999,” provides an extraordinary window into Bud Zumwalt’s twenty-five years of retirement. I have drawn extensively from this manuscript. He hoped to revise the chapter in 2010 at the age of ninety to cover future activities, ZFC.

  23. The Vietnam Center and Archive collects and preserves the documentary records of the Vietnam War and supports and encourages research and education regarding all aspects of the American Vietnam experience: www.vietnam.ttu.edu. My debt to Founding Director Jim Reckner and his successor, Steve Maxner, is expressed elsewhere.

  24. See Elmo Zumwalt, Jr., and Elmo Zumwalt III, My Father, My Son (New York: Dell, 1987).

  25. Award of the Silver Rose to Lt. (JG) Elmo Russell Zumwalt III, Nov. 11, 1997, ZFC.

  26. Bob Hartzman letter to Mouza following Bud’s death, undated, ZFC.

  27. Letter from Togo West, Secretary of Veterans Affairs, Jan. 6, 2000, ZFC.

  28. Zoltan Merszei, letter to Citizen’s Stamp Advisory Committee, Sept. 1, 2009, ZFC. Also author’s interview with Merszei.

  29. Zumwalt letter to President Clinton, Oct. 19, 1994, Zumwalt Personal Papers, Vietnam Archive, hereafter ZPP.

  30. When Zumwalt became CNO, he asked Wages to serve as a personal aide and special assistant. Wages letter to President Clinton, May 31, 1996, ZPP. Wages was buried with full military honors on Aug. 20, 2008, at Arlington National Cemetery.

  31. Wages thanked the president for adding prostate cancer to the list of conditions linked to Agent Orange.

  32. Elmo Zumwalt, Jr., On Watch (New York: Quadrangle/New York Times Book Co., 1976), 183.

  33. “Regrettably, I was right. He did backtrack, and the good guys he promoted to Admirals, ahead of their senior peers, backtracked (read “betrayed”) him. He was a good man, but as I described them, the interbred, intermarried and intellectually sterile establishment destroyed him.” http://forums.military.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/7010097960001/m/9440045361001/p/2.

  34. Churchill’s assistant, Anthony Montague-Browne, said that although Churchill had not uttered these words, he wished he had: www.winstonchurchill.org/learn/myths/myths/quotes-falsely-attributed-to-him.

  35. Letter to Ruth Kaplan, editor of BNS News, 000 box 86, folder 5, Navy History and Heritage Command, Operational Archive, hereafter NHHC.

  36. In Z-gram 117, Zumwalt said, “Admiral Ernest King, in speaking to my graduation class, stated that true military discipline is the ‘intelligent obedience of each for the effectiveness of all.’ As I have said before, it is through enlightened leadership that we obtain that true military discipline about which Admiral King spoke some 30 years ago.”

  37. I am grateful to Howard Kerr for first making this observation in Paul Stillwell’s Reminiscences by Staff Officers of Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt, Jr., U.S. Navy (Annapolis, MD: U.S. Naval Institute Press, 1989), and then elaborating during our interviews.

  38. Ibid.

  39. Bill Norman interview, ZTT.

  40. Ibid.

  41. Dov Zakheim, Remarks to the Executive Program for General Officers of the Russian Federation and the United States, JFK School of Government, Jan. 10, 2000, ZFC.

  42. David Woodbury, “Musings of an Ancient Mariner, on Being a Naval Aide,” unpublished manuscript supplied to author.

  43. Prior to the surgery, Bud was told he needed to gain weight in order to increase his stamina. His longtime physician, Dr. William Narva, ordered him to eat bowls of ice cream and begin a walking regimen to build up strength. Rear Admiral Horace B. Robertson, who served thirty-one years on active duty in the navy, first as a general line officer and then twenty-one years as a judge advocate before joining the faculty at Duke Law School, came to the hospital every morning to take Bud on walks around the hospital grounds, trying to prepare his friend for the next battle. Robertson served as Bud’s legal counsel during the CNO years when racial disturbances on the USS Constellation threatened to end Bud’s career. “He is the best example I have ever followed in life,” said Robertson. “I patterned my life after the standards he set.”

  44. From Scott Davis, Oct. 7, 1999, ZFC.

  45. From Rosemary Mariner, Oct. 12, 1999, ZFC. See also Rosemary Mariner, “Adm. Zumwalt Changed My Life,” Washington Post, Jan. 9, 2000.

  46. From Joe Ponder, Sept. 29, 1999, ZFC.

  47. Joe Ponder, e-mail to Mouza, Jan. 13, 2000, ZFC; also personal correspondence with author.

  48. Bud to Joe Ponder, undated, ZPP.

  49. Harry Train, undated, and Arthur Price, Oct. 8, 1999, ZFC.

  50. Nov. 18, 1999, ZFC.

  51. Undated letters, ZFC.

  52. Author interview with S. Scott Balderson.

  53. An undetected anomaly in the configuration of his heart resulted in a surgical error being made that drastically reduced Bud’s chances for survival.

  54. Letter from Paul Nitze, Nov. 29, 1999, ZFC.

  55. Note from Bill Clinton, Dec. 14, 1999. Another note came from Gerald Ford, who had spoken at Bud’s retirement change of command in 1974. “With great recollections of our longtime friendship . . . the Navy was in good hands under your leadership. As a four year veteran naval officer in WW II, I was proud of the Navy with your stewardship.” ZFC.

  56. The letter is in the Leslie Cullen Collection at the Vietnam Archive.

  57. Author interview with Ambassador Philip Lader.

  58. This personal note was inserted into the coffin; copy courtesy of Ann Zumwalt Coppola.

  59. Mike Spiro, personal interview with author, and letter from Mouzetta Zumwalt to Mike Spiro, ZFC.

  60. Letter from Rick Hind, Jan. 4, 2000, ZFC.

  61. Letter from Bill Clinton to Mouza, Jan. 4, 2000, ZFC.

  62. Author personal interview with Burton Shepherd.

  63. Oral History of Admiral William Crowe, Naval Historical Foundation, p. 612.

  64. Philippians 4:8–9, New International Version.

  65. “From the U.S. point of view, Israel was a stationar
y aircraft carrier in the Middle East.” Author personal interview with Richard Schifter. Former prime minister Ehud Barak said, “Admiral Zumwalt was a man of honor and a great friend to Israel.” Relayed by Ehud Barak to Jim Zumwalt at Grand Hyatt, Feb. 19, 2000.

  66. William J. Clinton, “Remarks at Funeral Services for Elmo R. Zumwalt, Jr., in Annapolis, Maryland,” Jan. 10, 2000, online ed. Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, American Presidency Project, www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=58232.

  67. Bill Pawley, who served in Vietnam from 1969 to 1970, wrote to the Zumwalt family, “If I were to put an epitaph on his tombstone it would read something like this: ‘Returned to Sender, with Great Pride and Love.’ ” ZFC.

  CHAPTER 2: THE ROAD FROM TULARE TO ANNAPOLIS

  1. I again express debt to James G. Zumwalt for sharing dozens of his unpublished written family vignettes from which I draw extensively.

  2. The account was provided by Bud’s father in a letter dated Nov. 29, 1952, as he remembered the moment: “I gazed upon a rounded bit of humanity that was ruddy, chubby and in spite of a formal introduction, totally ignored me as he continued to sleep peacefully thru ‘ohs and ahs’ of a doting parental gaze.” ZFC.

  3. Letter to Captain E. R. Zumwalt, Jr., Nov. 16, 1960, aboard USS Dewey. “I doubt that little in the world know your real name,” his father wrote. ZFC.

  4. Letter to Admiral Rucker, May 19, 1973, responding to handwritten letter of May 8, 1973, emphasis added, NHHC.

  5. “Augusta Jane Evans (Wilson) (1835–1909),” http://public.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/evans.htm.

  6. See Paul Stillwell, The Reminiscences of Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt, Jr., U.S. Navy (Annapolis: U.S. Naval Institute Press, 2003). I make extensive use of Stillwell’s oral history interviews throughout the book. Fellow historians owe him an immense debt. Indeed, this book could not have been written without benefit of his materials. Excerpts and printed volumes of USNI oral histories are available at www.usni.org/heritage/oral-history-catalog.