Oral History Interview with Ken Carr
November 14 & 15, 2013
Part 1
Key:
Q:
Dr. William Inboden and Geoffrey Connor
A:
Admiral Ken Carr
Q:

Alright, this is Will Inboden and it is November 14th, 2013. I'm here with Geoffrey
Connor and Admiral Ken Carr in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, and we're going to be conducting
an oral history interview with Admiral Carr. Admiral Carr, can I confirm that you are
aware that we're recording this and you consent to be recorded?

A:

Yes.

Q:

Fantastic. Admiral, the first question we'd like to ask is if you could tell us how is it that
you first met Bill Clements. I understand that you were in the Navy at the time, and he
had just become Deputy Secretary of Defense, so how did you first meet him and how
did you become a candidate to be his military aide?

A:

I was in Norfolk, and I was the Deputy Commander of the Atlantic submarine fleet for
Admiral Robert Long. He called me in and said that they've sent for you in Washington.
They want you to go up and interview with the Deputy Secretary of Defense for the job
of military assistant. He said do you know anything about that, and I said no I haven't
any idea of what it is. He said well it's just a trip up there to talk to them and he wants to
interview I don't know how many people from the Navy, but usually they get a Navy guy
and they get an Army guy and they get an Air Force guy; it's kind of a liaison between
them and the head of the force and they usually take somebody senior enough that he
knows he can arrange things from the standpoint of his service. If the deputy wants to
talk to somebody, he'll know who to tell him to talk to. I said okay, sounds all right. So
they said you’ve got to be up there at a certain time. I don't know what it was, but it was
some time in the afternoon. And he said oh by the way, don't worry about it; he's
interviewing quite a few Navy guys probably, and we sent him some names and we've
got Larry Burkhart picked out to go do that job. He said so he'll talk to you, but that's
who we think that he'll probably hire, because that would be our recommendation from
the Navy.

Q:

Just to clarify Larry Burkhart was another Admiral?

A:

No, Larry Burkhart was a Captain at the time.
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Q:

Okay.

A:

He had worked for me on Nautilus when I was the engineer for the overhaul Portsmouth
Navy Yard and he had just graduated from submarine school and came up there as a
nuclear trained officer and worked in the engineering department during that overhaul.
And that was the first overhaul of a nuclear submarine, so I had quite a few officers
working for me in the engineering department at the time. Admiral Wilkinson, the first
skipper, had decided that no officers would be detached during the period in the yard,
because you need the experience to keep the overhaul going all right. So to make a long
story short, I reported up there and on the way out of SUBLANT, Admiral Long says
stop by and see Admiral Rickover before you go over there, he wants to talk to you. So I
said okay, so I stopped and I went into to Admiral Rickover’s office and he sat me down
and said well you're going over to talk to the Deputy Secretary of Defense about being
his military assistant and he said that's an important job, but we slated Burkhart to do that
job, so just talk to him, find out what kind of guy he wants, what he wants to think about,
and so forth so we can get a heads up and get going and then I said okay fine. He said by
the way let me know what he says when you come out. I said okay. So I went over to
the Deputy Sec Def’s office and I don't remember exactly whether I had to wait to get in
to see him or not, but I don't remember waiting. I remember him calling me in and we sat
down, he introduced himself, and we shook hands. He said where you from and I said
Kentucky and he said whereabouts? And I said Paducah and he said I had an uncle in
Paducah or a relative that sold cars, had an automobile agency. He said I know Paducah;
it's a nice town. And I said were you from Kentucky? He said no, but I've got relatives
that were there and so we started talking. He said you know anything about this job and I
said I don't have any idea. I had one job in Washington already, but it was two years in
research and development and I had head down and tail up, I really wasn't paying much
attention to where everybody else was or what they were doing. So we chatted a while
and talked about everything from hunting to bird dogs to whatever. So he said well, have
you had a job in the Pentagon before? And I said yes and he said well what were you
doing? I said I was in research and development. Well, what did you get done in there?
I said well when I got here we were shooting torpedoes from the Nautilus that were built
in 1898 and I said we had to slow down to shoot and by the time we got slow enough that
we could shoot without the torpedo sticking in the tubes, the carrier was out of range so
we'd have to run catch up with them. Then we have to slow down to shoot and I said I
decided something had to be done about that, so I said we got to get that torpedo finished
and they said we don't have enough money. We need more money to get that, I said well
what are we doing? Well, I found out we were paying a project; we had a submarine at
the time that could dive to 4,000 feet. It didn't have any tubes. It was a test to learn
something about the ocean and the sound waves in the ocean. But they had a project out
of Louisville, Kentucky that was working on a buoy that they could release and go to the
surface that would send a red flare up and say we need help. I said the problem was
there's no way that anybody could help them if that buoy surfaced. I said why are we
spending money on this thing? It won't even mark the grave let alone help them. Well,
it's been working for six years and they're almost where they can get it to surface. So I
killed that one. We got there, there was somewhere around 50 projects and when I left
we had about 15 that were worth funding just because we needed the money to get things
2

done. There was a Naval officer that did aviation, one that did submarines, and one that
did the surface ships. There were three of us that worked for an Admiral. So when it
came time to defend my program, I went over to the Admiral's office and said I'd like to
sit in when the budget officer comes in to talk to you about the budget for your section. I
said I want to sit in on that, because I didn't think he could defend my programs as well
as I could, because I knew I needed them and all he was a “bean counter.” The Admiral
shook his head and said okay you can sit in, he said nobody ever asked me to sit in. But
that was a private meeting between him and his budget guy and they thought they knew
where everything ought to be anyway, because they had been there a lot longer than I
had. Anyway, I defended my program well enough the two years I was there. When I
left, we had a sonar that was building and it was the first digital sonar that we were about
to get. I had the torpedo, we had two bidders that were building torpedoes either one
would've been satisfactory. We happened to go with the one I didn't want, but I wanted
the other ones, because it was quieter, but it wouldn't run as deep. We had a periscope
that we needed because the Air Force was flying around at 50,000 feet taking pictures of
license plates and we were holding a camera up to the periscope and hoping that it was
still focused on the target when we took the picture. We had to develop it on board and
then if didn't get it we had to keep shooting until we found out whether we were taking a
good shot with a Polaroid camera. So we got Kollmorgen to design us a periscope that
had a camera in it and that was the type 18 scope. And when I got to my submarine that I
put in commission, the USS Flasher, I had one of those type 18 scopes. So that wasn't
much later, then I was able to get payoff of my funding and use it. We talked a little
while longer and he said well you know anything about Polaris and I said well I have
been on one of the ships. I was exec for a new construction and I said yeah I understand
how it works and I commanded one of the submarines and so I knew what was needed
and what we need to do. He said well we're going to get this new missile on my watch,
Trident is going to come in and he said that's going to be my high priority one. He said
do you think that—you know, I said well I haven't really looked at it. I've just been with
Admiral Long for a short while, but I'm sure it's a necessary thing for us. He said well it's
going to be one of my important jobs and he said you want this job? Do you know what
this military assistant job is? I said no I don't know. He said I don't either. As I
remember, that conversation from then on went like this. Do you want the job and I said
well I don't know what it is, but yeah it sounds like an interesting job. He said well if you
take it, you have to stay four years, because he said I'm going to be here four years and
any job that people take from me while I'm here, they're going to agree to stay four years
or they don't get the job. I said that's fine with me. I need some shore duty. I have just
had shore duty once in my 18 years plus. I've had a lot of shipyard duty, I said, but that's
harder work than just shore duty. He looked at me with that harder work thing and he
said well if you want it, it's yours. I said I'll take it. He said don't you have to talk to
your wife first, and I said no, I don't think so. She's always gone where I've gone and it's
one of those things. I could see his eyes kind of smile. We made a deal, he said okay
you're signed up. And so I went back by Rickover’s office, he said how did go? I said
well it went all right I guess, he hired me. He said, what?! I said well he hired me. He
offered me the job and I thought I better not turn it down. I think I'd like it. Well,
Rickover wasn't very happy with me at the time. I went back to Long and he was less
happy, because he wanted me to be his Chief of Staff, but they were happy to have a
3

submariner in the job, so they couldn't very well fight the issue. So I got detached pretty
soon. Larry Burkhart relieved me as Chief of Staff. I went up there. I was a Captain and
he was a Captain, but I went up there. Since this was a Navy two-star billet (which was a
one-star rank) you were lower half Admiral, but later on they changed that to where they
had a Commodore who was only a one-star. People who ran divisions or had a division
of officers or ships or something were called Commodores, so they wiggled around that
and got a lower half Admiral and an upper half Admiral. So it satisfied the Air Force and
the Marines and the Army so that our guys weren't outranking them. So I went to work
for him.
Q:

Okay. Someone told me, I believe, I can't remember who, it might have Tom Reed that
when Bill Clements became Deputy Secretary and you knew he needed a military
assistant that he deliberately sought out a submarine officer, someone who had submarine
experience. And obviously you did, now was that the case? What was his particular
interest in having a submariner?

A:

He told me later on, he said you know how you got this job? And I said no. He said well
I knew when I got here that the problems I had to solve were going to be--the Army was
going to need a tank. The Navy was going to need the missile, the Trident was what we
were working on. He said and the Air Force was going to buy an airplane. In fact, the
Navy was going to buy an airplane too and the Navy was going buy missiles. He said
then the Army is going to buy a tank and the Air Force is buying a plane so the
submarine force is going to buy--he knew that Trident was going to be one of the big
things and he knew he was going to have to scuffle with Rickover. He asked the Chief of
Naval Operations for a list of candidates, he asked Rickover for a list of candidates and
he asked the CNO, Rickover, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Well, the Chairman
of the Joint Chiefs had a military assistant himself who was a Naval academy classmate
of mine and I was one of the few 49’ers who was nuclear trained.

Q:

This was Chairman George Brown, right? General Brown?

A:

No, no.

Q:

It's not General Brown yet?

A:

No it wasn't. It was the Navy guy from--names escape me and I couldn't find my list of
people, but he's famous. You can find it in--

Q:

Not Zumwalt?

A:

No, it was before Zumwalt. It was a Naval Admiral, Tom Moorer--later a good friend of
Mr. Clements, if he wasn’t already because of Mr. Clements’ study of a year looking at
the defense department with a study group that led to his (and a Justice from the Supreme
Court) writing a minority report to publish with the study report. But he was trained to
find out why we didn't go help somebody when the Israeli's got to our spy ship and he
4

took that on as a career, that guy did, trying to find out why we didn't send help when
they asked for it.
Q:

Okay in the '67 war?

A:

Yeah.

Q:

Okay.

A:

All three of those guys were asked to give him a list of people and he said your name was
the only one on all the lists. So I said well I'm glad it was, because I enjoyed the tour.
(But he didn't tell me that until the second or third year.) So I went to work for him and I
don't have that picture. I was trying to think of where I might have it, but it's a picture of
me, Zumwalt, Chairman of Joint Chiefs, and the Secretary of the Navy, Warner. He lived
with Warner while he was getting settled.

Q:

So Bill Clements lived with John Warner while he was settled?

A:

Yeah, on Warner’s farm in Middleburg, in the gatehouse.

Q:

Oh, my goodness.

A:

Warner and he became pretty good buddies.

Q:

This was before Warner was married to Elizabeth Taylor, right?

A:

Yeah, that story about Elizabeth Taylor we'll get to.

Q:

Don't forget that.

A:

So he lived with Warner and Warner lived out on the farm in Middleburg. It was some
family connection he had on that property, and they had a gate house at this property and
Clements lived in the gate house. So he got friendly with Warner for a while and Chaney
the secretary, he had a driver and the driver drove him back and forth and it was quite a
drive.

Q:

Yeah, from Middleburg to the Pentagon.

A:

About an hour almost every day, morning and night. So he hired John Jones, an Army
guy, and he was a tank guy and he knew he was going to have to build those tanks. Then
the Air Force guy, he went through a couple of guys in the Air Force and he was never
very fond of the Air Force, frankly. The Air Force and the Army ran a different kind of
operation than the Navy. I don't know whether it was better or not, we had Pete
Dawkins, the all American Heisman Trophy winner who was his Army guy. We had
John Jones was an Army guy, but he kept Pete Dawkins and another Air Force officer
working on modifications to the curriculum in the Academy. He said we've got to do
5

something to make sure that the academies are giving the people something that the
average college can't get them, because it costs us a lot of money to train a guy at the
Naval Academy when we can train them at the ROTC unit saying it looks like we're
getting the same quality people, because nobody's complaining about those ROTC guys,
so we got to do something to prove that it's worth the money. So they did a study for him
that supposedly jacked that up and they now have an award at the Naval Academy I
think. Clements gives an award to one of the professors there every year. He gets some
kind of award as the outstanding professor, but it's known as the Bill Clements Award I
think.
Q:

I never heard that before.

A:

He's got another award at the place where they train guys to be purchasers in Navy and
the military. These guys were up and they didn't know how to deal with people who sold
things.

Q:

The contractors and...?

A:

Well, not just the contractors. These were guys who were selling units of things. If you
want to sell the Navy something that was going to be used by everybody or whatever, but
there's a school now for guys that manage budgets and things like that down, not at Fort
Meyer. It's down further, Belvoir I think.

Q:

Fort Belvoir, okay.

A:

They also have a Clements school type thing and he set both of those up, because he said
we can't defend it if we get up there and the Congress beats us over the head. He was
politically acute; he really understood things. So those projects were our main focus, but
the job was interesting because the civilians down at the lower level said don't get
changed when the administration changes. If you don't dig deep enough, you don't really
get the decision makers, because the guys that come in haven't got the background to
argue with them about--don't know enough about their programs. I soon learned that if
you want to get those programs, you’ve got to know more than that guy about your
program if you're going to get anywhere. One night I'm in there. John Jones and I were
kind of the preferred assistants in that I don't know why, except we weren't captured by
our services I think is the truth. We were independent thinkers as far as the service was
concerned; the service didn't necessarily like that. He convinced me once, right away
when I got there he told me get a hold of Warner and tell him I need to see him. He says
I want to talk to him about something, then he told me what he wanted to talk to him
about. So I called Warner's office and they said okay and they put the secretary on the
phone. They said do you know what he wants to talk about and I said, well he said he
wanted to talk about this. Okay. When that conversation was all over, Mr. Clements
called me and he said, did you tell him what I wanted to talk to him about. I said yes,
being I couldn't very well say I don't know, because you'd already told me what you're...
He said well we don't do that. I said okay that's fine with me and later I said somewhere
along the line, I said honesty is the best policy. He looked at me right in the eye and he
6

said honesty is the only policy! So early on, I was getting the guidance I needed, but the
best day I had was the first news conference he had. We went down to Chief of Staff’s
room, down the basement and all the newspaper guys, this was their first meeting with
Clements. So he had a little speech that he was ready to give them, but it was all his. He
knew what he wanted to tell them and why he was there and what he was doing. So he
gave this little chat and then when he got through this reporter said, what you meant to
say Mr. Secretary, and gave him kind of a summary of what he thought he meant, he
looked him right in the eye and he said what I meant to say was exactly what I said. I
thought yep and that was the way he approached everything. He and I could, we were
eye to eye for the whole four years and it was a pleasure to work with him and be around
him. John Jones was always a European guy. He had run tanks in Germany and he had
been all over the East and I was Pacific Ocean guy. I had been on most of my time in the
Pacific, except for my SSBM patrols in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. So I traveled
to the East with Clements and he traveled to the West. In fact he went on a honeymoon,
John did, with him after he divorced his wife and remarried. I thought the remarriage
was kind of interesting. He called us in one day and he said his first wife, he said, she
and I are getting divorced. It's not something that just happened, because it's been going
on a long time. He said, but she came to Washington reluctantly. She really didn't like
Washington. The house they had it was near where my mother-in-law's house was in the
District. She lived in Washington. My mother-in-law was an appointee of Eisenhower's.
She was a foreign war claims commission lady after World War II, where she was
responsible for dividing up the money we had confiscated in the banks in the U.S. and
she was on the war claims commission, it was called then. She and the other two
commissioners divvied up the money and paid the claims of the people that had been
maltreated by, and so she lived in this same area. There was a very nice area, he called us
in and said they were divorcing and it wasn't too long later that he married Rita. It was
the night before he married Rita, he called us in, John Jones and me in, and he says you
know in all the planning we've done, I forgot I had to have ushers for the marriage. He
said would you guys be my ushers and I said well I don't know. I never ushered at a
wedding, but I'd be happy to! John and I were ushers, we were in uniform, and he had
every guy in the defense department that wore a uniform was at the wedding. It was out
in the Navy chapel out where the communications installation was and that's where they
went and trained our communications people in those days. I learned a lot from him,
because he had been in more shipyards than I had. I had been in a lot of shipyards
building submarines, but those offshore oil rigs that he built and he knew more about--he
said we can sit out there in 4,000 feet of water and take the drill rig out and put it back in
with nothing on the bottom but the sonar sounders, just position our self with that back
and forth. So he taught me a lot about everything; it was an educational tour for me. He
educated me a thing about how he handled people and how honest he was. He says you
know I'm the only S.O.B. that does business in the Middle East and have never yet passed
anything under the table, which is a standard practice. He said any time you deal with
those guys, but he said they know my practice and they don't even try to get any. He had
friends; I mean Prince Bandar and all the guys he knew, all the Saudis. He and I
disagreed on which side we should be on in the Iraq/Iranian war. He didn't think we
ought to--he was in favor of the Iraqi's I think because I don’t' know what he had against
Iran, because I think he drilled oil wells in Iran too. He said Iran was a company that he
7

had merged with, the Shaw and I got the job touring the Shaw through the F-14 when
they had the F-14 and F-15 fly off for the Iranians. It was about the time of the Paris Air
Show. So we went over to the Washington DC airport that's owned by the Air Force.
Q:

Andrew's Air Force Base?

A:

Yeah. And they had the F-15s flying in competition with the F-14s. I mean that was the
fly off. So the F-14, because it was able to, never went out of sight of the stands. The
Navy gave what they were going to do at the Paris Air Show. He put on the air show for
the Shah. The Air Force made their passes and went clear out of sight and they circled
around and come back, so they got about 30 minutes screen time and the F-14 got about
45 minutes of screen time. Plus then they pulled up and parked then at the bench and
Shaw went down and looked them all over. So I escorted him down, climbed up and
looked into the cockpit with him, to make sure that he was okay and didn't fall off the
ladder or something. That picture ended up in the Time magazine. I thought I better
make sure that picture doesn't get too far, but it's somewhere in my collection in
Connecticut, but all those kinds of things. I traveled with him to Saudi Arabia. We went
to the King's birthday party in --the first country that recognized the U.S. when we first
became independent from the British.

Q:

Oh, Morocco.

A:

Morocco. We went to the king of Morocco’s birthday party. I told him on the flight
over, I said do you realize that the last time that king had a birthday party they tried to
shoot him out of the sky? He said now you tell me! I said well the guy that's his aide
now is the guy that saved him, but they didn't kill him. So we went to that and the
women could not go, women were not allowed at the “official” functions, evidently. We
stayed in a great hotel there and whatever the big city is in the middle.

Q:

Rabat probably?

A:

No, it was...

Q:

Marrakesh?

A:

Marrakesh. We were on the second floor of the hotel and it opened out on the balcony at
the end of the hall. And the balcony you looked out over this big field and all the people
out there were in tents and they had a whole outfit. And every morning they got up and
made charges at each other with their spears and put on some kind of a show.

Q:

That's maybe the Mamounia Hotel.

A:

Yeah, it was. That's the way you pronounce that.

Q:

Famous old hotel. Let's come back around to something you were talking about earlier,
which is how Bill Clements’ background as a drilling contractor and the CEO of SEDCO
8

had prepared him for the position as Deputy Secretary of Defense. Tell us more about
your initial impressions of him in the job and what you as a career military man thought
of this drilling contractor from Texas-A:

He and Rickover, early on got, I'll say an understanding. Rickover called me and say I
need to talk to your boss, so I'd tell him. And he'd say well invite him over for breakfast.
So I'd invite him for breakfast. When Rickover invited you for breakfast, he gave you a
piece of toast and a glass of milk and Clements always gave him kippered herring and
eggs. So then I got to sit in on the meeting and so forth. Rickover was trying to work
him over and he said look you just mind your submarines. Rickover was beefing about
the shipyards and he says I can handle the ship yards. I know how to handle the
shipyards. You just take care of your submarines and I won't bother you if you don't
bother me, or words to that effect. So they had an understanding and they talked
together, but he respected the fact that Rickover could get things done, and Rickover
knew how to handle the Hill. And Clements really learned how to handle the Hill. I
think he probably already knew it, because I don't know how much he had been in the
political campaign for Nixon, but before that he wasn't really interested in politics that I
could tell. He talked to the chairman of the committees (the level he went in on) and they
respected him and he respected them. Schlesinger came in--when Mr. Clements went in
he had an agreement with Nixon that he could take care of all the Pentagon business and
Richardson would take care of the NATO and the outside the Pentagon business, but he
had permission to hire all the secretaries, all the under-secretaries, any of the political
appointees that had to come in, he had a say. Well, evidently that was fine with Secretary
Richardson; he didn't want to be bothered with it anyway it was personnel stuff. Then
Clements, first thing he did after he settled the newspaper people he called, I don't know
how many people, but I think Tom probably told you about some of this, but he called
General Motors, he called all the major construction companies, and the people that could
build anything and he had a meeting. They were all in the same room and his pitch was,
if you guys don't like the way the Pentagon is being run and you don't like the way you're
making money and he said, the reason we can't get anything done here is we don't have
good people. So he said I want you to get me good people's names, don't nominate
anybody up here that's a good way to get rid of them, because I'm looking for talent; I'm
not looking for guys you don't need any more. He said it's important, if you're going to
get anything done, if we're going to get anything done that you give me good people.
They all nodded appropriately and he probably put the best team together that's ever been
in the Pentagon. I mean the guy he put in--unfortunately ended up having to put him,
sometimes he had to put him in the number two job instead of the Secretary, like both the
Secretary of the Army was Bo from Alabama, he was a former Congressman.

Q:

Okay.

A:

But he wasn't...

Q:

Not Bo Callaway?

A:

Callaway, yeah.
9

Q:

Okay.

A:

And the Navy secretary Middendorf.

Q:

Bill Middendorf was the Navy Secretary?

A:

Yeah. He had a guy picked out for the Navy Secretary that was head of the President
Line in San Francisco and his father had been killed in World War II was an admiral and
was killed early on in the Guadalcanal battle somewhere, he got killed. And this guy was
a terrific guy and he was ready to do the job. It was all set up, at least according to Mr.
Clements thought it was, and then Bill Middendorf flew back to Arizona with Goldwater
for a flight and came back with Goldwater's boosting him with Nixon to be the Secretary
of the Navy. So Clements gritted his teeth and then went out and got a guy from General
Motors who was running the General Motors plant in Los Angeles that built something.
He ended up running all the spook business in the Navy as the Deputy Secretary of the
Navy. So he had him in that job, he had the guy that went on to become the head of the
major competitor for General Dynamics right now as Deputy Secretary for Bo Callaway
in the Army.

Q:

Lockheed Martin?

A:

Yeah.

Q:

Was this Norm Augustine?

A:

Yeah.

Q:

Okay.

A:

And Augustine, interestingly enough, my brother-in-law is Stan Pace. Stan Pace gave
Norm Augustine the award for really honesty in business. He was the number two guy in
TRW.

Q:

Norm Augustine was, at the time?

A:

No, my brother-in-law, Stan Pace. Stan was with Ramo-Wooldridge (Thompson
Products). And Ramo and Wooldridge took turns picking the next guy to run the
company. And when it became Stan's time, when his seniority was such that he should've
been running the company, the other guy had the choice. So he retired from TRW and
when he retired from TRW coincided with when the Greek ran off with the money from
Electric Boat Company, so they hired Stan then to come down and straighten out Electric
Boat. So when I was Commander Submarines Atlantic later on, he was building
submarines at Electric Boats. So if we had a new submarine, he and I were on the stage
together so that was a side issue. He would call me up and say I need to get together with
Ike about--I want to go out to visit an oil rig.
10

Q:

This is Ike Kidd is the name?

A:

Yeah, K-I-D-D. His father got killed in the Pearl Harbor attack I think, it may have been
the ___ sea battle in the Slot in Guadalcanal--but he was an Admiral in charge of the
Atlantic fleet and Clements wanted to go out and look at an pil rig platform as a antisubmarine problem and also to try to figure out whether he could use them as part of the
defense operation because they don't allow any guns or any ammunition or anything that's
flammable out there. So I went along on that trip with the two of them. In my first tour
in the Pentagon, I had been the guy in R&D that was responsible for going out and I was
a member of the outfit that was going to try to get the Glomar Explorer submarine back
to the U.S. So I had go to that meeting and come back and debrief and I also could
arrange (anytime I thought a submariner made a good operation intelligence-wise) it so
he could go down and view it with the joint chiefs of staff. He was very pro submarine
anyway. I like to think it was because basically the Navy is more forthright and honest
with the civilian part of the government in the Pentagon than the other two services are.
He was so mad at the Air Force, Perry Smith was the guy who wrote--Mr. Clements gave
a speech one day it was very good speech and so he came in the morning meeting and
said who wrote that speech and Perry Smith said I did. Well, he hadn't done it; it had
been done down in ISA and somebody had drafted it. As a matter of fact, it was a
crippled girl who was a very good writer and she had done a good job, but Perry Smith
took credit for that and Clements found it out. He wrote his fitness report up, he got rid
of him, but he wrote a fitness report up on him and said this officer should never be
promoted past his current rank.

Q:

Wow. Tell us a little bit more about--you've alluded to this, but Bill Clements leadership
and management style, you talked about how he valued honesty, he valued straight talk,
but tell us more about the notable characteristics you saw in his leadership and his
management.

A:

Honesty was the only policy with him. If he didn't like something, he would go over and
see the guy in the Congress that was holding the problem up and come to an agreement
with him and he didn't win them all, but he won most of them. He'd come back, in the
meantime, Schlesinger would go over there and come back and he'd come in, boiling
mad, Clements would come back from a meeting with Schlesinger who was supposed to
debrief him on what he had done and he says he's lying. Because he'd go over there and
talk to him and the guy didn't tell him at all what Schlesinger said he told him. He really
thought Schlesinger was just--I don't know how he stood it. The guy he kind of enjoyed
was Middendorf, and Middendorf evidently was a brilliant banker or something. They
just said he had the first computer-driven bank. It took the whole bank building to have
the computer in it, but when he got there, the Joint Chiefs met in a meeting, secretaries of
the services and the Joint Chiefs and Chairman of Joint Chiefs and us guys sat against the
wall taking notes. We were in there and he asked his secretary, Middendorf said can I
hang--they had the great white fleet pictures up around the room--and he said can I hang
the originals of those here while I'm in here as the Secretary of the Navy? Secretary
Schlesinger looked at him says yeah if you want to. And he at one time owned more
11

more Morans than anybody in the U.S. He sold a lot of them when he was at the
Pentagon and Clements would always say I'll bet you a new baton you can't do this, he'd
say. Secretary Middendorf put on his bear suit and conducted the orchestra down in one
of the parks in Washington DC while he was the Secretary of the Navy. He was almost
embarrassing, but when he'd visit the submarine force over in Scotland, he'd go fishing.
Q:

This is Middendorf still?

A:

Yeah. Middendorf would go fishing and they really didn't appreciate him showing up
over there. He didn't pay much attention to what--he went over there to fish.
Fortunately, his deputy ran the thing, kind of like me I like to keep some bosses out of
town, because I could get more done. My final tour was Deputy CINCLANT Fleet and
when the boss Wes McDonald was out of town I could run his fleet for him.

Q:

Tell us a little more about the Clements/Schlesinger relationship. You had mentioned
earlier it was--

A:

He did everything that he could to keep him out of trouble (Schlesinger) but privately I
think he thought very little of him.

Q:

Clements thought little of Schlesinger, to clarify?

A:

Yeah, and Schlesinger couldn't really tolerate Clements’ way of doing business, because
he was too straightforward. Schlesinger worked behind the scenes. Fortunately,
Schlesinger had a good Army guy who he took bird watching a lot. Schlesinger would
go to Alaska and go bird watching and come back and tell you what ought to be done in
Alaska. The Army guy had a pretty good relationship with Clements and kept him
informed of what he thought he was headed in a direction that the Secretary was going to
sabotage. Everybody respected him. Janie I don't--you didn't meet Janie, because Janie
retired and married a general.

Q:

I knew Janie Harris.

A:

Janie Harris was his secretary all the time he was in the Pentagon.

Q:

Can you tell us how that came to be? Did he just interview and she applied?

A:

No, she was there.

Q:

But how among all the employees at the Pentagon did he choose her as his assistant?

A:

I don't think he chose her; she was in the job I think when he got there.

Q:

I see.
12

A:

And he just--it worked out fine. He and she had a very--they respected each other for
their ability to get things done.

Q:

Absolutely, and she followed him home to Texas and worked for him at the Capitol.

A:

She didn't follow him; he took her! He brought her back there, because he needed her.
She knew what made him tick and she was very good at keeping everything going.

Q:

Please remind me the name of the general that she later married. I couldn't think of it.

A:

I’ve got it in my--Janie died. I called and there was no answer. General Hollingsworth.

Q:

Yes, I think just last year.

A:

Yeah, it was. I talked to her a year ago and I called her this year. She told me last year
that she wasn't in good shape and she probably wouldn't last another year. The one we
hired in as our a gal, we got her from down in the Joint Chiefs. She was somewhere
down there and she worked with Janie well too, because we had a little fly by night gal
that was--the gals in Sec Def's office, they kind of talked to each other to try to keep their
bosses from getting crossways with each other. The one we had for the assistant was too
talkative, she knew too much and spread it too much and so we let her go and hired the
gal out of the Joint Chiefs who then went on to be the head of--she worked for the guy at
General Dynamics that relieved Stan Pace as Chairman of General Dynamics.

Q:

So back to the Clements/Schlesinger relationship then, you mentioned one way that they
were different was Clements was more straightforward and Schlesinger was a little more
cagey and behind the scenes. But did they have big policy differences? Did they have
different approaches on what they thought American defense policy should be, or was it
more personality differences?

A:

I think it was more Schlesinger thought he could put something over on everybody, and
Clements didn't try to put anything over on anybody. He was not going to outsmart other
people; he was just going to out-work them and he could convince them that he was right
and they were wrong. Schlesinger wouldn't be convinced and he was arrogant, I think.
His staff, in my opinion, from just watching his staff, didn't have the same respect that
Clements’ staff had for him. I mean nobody that worked for Clements--the two guys that
were trying to take advantage of their position were doing it for themselves; they weren't
doing it because they tried to get Clements in trouble. They were trying to move
themselves up. He wasn't looking for wall climbers; he was looking for--all he wanted
was somebody to get the work done. Did you unearth all the notebooks?

Q:

We have some and I brought a few along as representative samples. They're spiral type
notebooks.

A:

There was a book for--you logged everything that went on then one of us attended all the
meetings that he went through nearly. Once in a while he had a private meeting with
13

somebody, but then later you may have heard what it was about and then you could fill in
the blanks.
Q:

So the spiral notebooks were not maintained by Clements? They were maintained by you
or Colonel Jones?

A:

Somebody sat in on every meeting.

Q:

I see. One of the military aids usually?

A:

Yeah. And so we kept the notes and then he'd ask us once in a while, he'd say what did
he say about that, but most of the time he remembered it. He had a memory like a trap.
He didn't forget how they said it or what they said and in the meetings he held, he didn't
waste any time in the meetings, he got down with the subject. He had an agenda when
they came in. If it was their meeting they came in and said what they wanted to say in a
hurry and then they got a yes or no or whatever. One example, I was--John would work
late one night and I'd work late the next night, because one of us was there until he went
home and sometimes he'd work until 9:00. The other guy would come in early the next
morning and then he'd go home early. So every other day John and I would be late or
early. Before he left, we'd take all the papers in that were ready to sign and get him to
sign them and put them in the system. And then the next morning, you'd have what was
laid out. But he'd take reading home I'd say five nights out of six and he'd read it, every
bit of it, and usually mark it up a little or have a note on it for what we needed to do.
Well, late one evening one of the R & D secretaries down in the bowels came up and they
had a meeting on helicopters. The Army had a helicopter program and the Navy had a
CH-53, it's helicopters that can go all the way to 5,000 feet with a howitzer. That was the
spec from the Marine Corps. They wanted to bid somebody who could lift those 155s or
whatever the big heavy armor was, heavy gun up to the top of a mountain side and they
didn't have a helicopter that could do that. So the CH-53 was being built by Sikorsky.
So this civilian guy came up and convinced Mr. Clements that we ought to award that
program to the Army helicopter should be the one that was supported. So I didn't say
anything, because I didn't know anything about helicopters or the program, it wasn't
mine. It wasn't my watch in the Marine Corps. So Clements said okay so he signed the
paper and gave it back to him. Next morning, I get in there for the early morning and I
was sitting there and the Marine general comes in and sits on my desk and says I need to
see your boss early. He said they've killed my helicopter and I need it. I said okay and
so we went in and he made his case, Clements looked up at me, and he says cancel that
piece of paper. I said well it hadn't gone anywhere yet. He says go find out which of
those helicopter programs we ought to substantiate. I said I don't know a damn thing
about helicopters. He said we got an expert down the hall, an Army guy who knows
everything about helicopters. Go find out, take him with you, and come back and tell me
whether we ought to build that helicopter or not. I said okay, so I walked out and that
Marine general was looking like boy you better do it right. So I went down and got this
Army guy who was an expert in helicopters. He had been following helicopter programs
all his career. So we toured the Army program and we toured the whoever that and the
other one was a Marine Corps really was pushing; it was in the Navy budget. We got to
14

the plan and Sikorsky and they had the helicopter, they had one built that was runnable,
but they had just tested it on an anchor to the ground and it was still sitting on the ground,
but it was all one piece and it was helicopter and it hadn't have a test flight yet, but they
had a few things. But it had more engines, it was a multi-engine helicopter and it had big
rotors and it could meet the criteria that the Marines wanted. So then we went and looked
at the helicopter program for the Army and they had a bunch of things. They had the
rotor program, they had an engine program, all these pieces were going to come together.
So I talked to this guy about it and I said hey one guy’s got a helicopter and the other
guy's got a program. He said yeah, the helicopter is ready to fly; they just haven't flown
it yet. So I went back and told Mr. Clements I said all I can tell you is, if you want to
build a helicopter you better take the Marine's program, because that other program is not
going to get together to build anything for three or four years I said at the earliest. So he
reversed it and disapproved it and told them to build the other one. Well I lost, I was
forever an enemy of that guy that got him to sign it late at night, the Marine Corps wasn't
the only user of that. They got what they wanted, but the Navy turned that helicopter into
a mine sweeping helicopter and they had three detachments of those helicopters sweeping
mines in the Gulf. They were rigged; it's a big helicopter, and it's got lots of engines and
it had lots of horsepower, so he didn't hesitate to make a decision. I was a little leery of
coming back with a story saying I don't know anything about it, but I just told him if you
want it on your watch, you better buy the Marine one right now. Besides I said I don't
think the Army will ever get theirs built and they didn't. In fact, the CH-53 is still the
backbone of the helicopter force.
Q:

Well this is something we keep coming across are all these different weapons platforms
and equipment platforms that, as Deputy Secretary, Bill Clements really oversaw the
development.

A:

When the guy that came back in and said these were all programs of his; he came in
before Clements left; they got a new Secretary of Defense when Schlesinger left.

Q:

Then Rumsfeld came in?

A:

Rumsfeld came in and killed everything, stopped everything until he had studied them.
When he studied them, why then he let them go and then when he came back for his
second tour recently, all these weapons that were over there, the Abrams Tank and all
these things CH-53 and F-14 and 15.

Q:

The F-16, the F-18?

A:

16 and 18 were his programs of course, and he took credit for all those had been built and
it was Clements who built all those. Clements didn't like the fact that the Air Force didn't
use the Navy F-18 instead of the 16, but he flew in an F-15. He took a flight in an F-15,
took him off from the airport straight up in the air to about 30,000 feet I think. They
didn't get quite that high, but they took him straight up over the airport. He said it was
really an interesting ride.
15

Q:

Did Clements help to develop or to oversee the development of the F-18 then also?

A:

Yeah.

Q:

Oh, I didn't realize that. I knew the F-16 and a lot of these others, okay.

A:

The big argument was they said we can't land an F-16 on a carrier; it’s not enough
understructure that's good enough to take a catapult in the trap, when they stop them from
flying in and snag them with the wire. In the Air Force, that's an emergency stop. Yeah
he got the Abrams Tank, he got the Trident, the big missile, he got everything he went
after, he laid it out. But he funded, he didn't diddle around, once he decided to rebuild, he
gave them what they asked for and took them task if they didn't use it wisely. It was a
great education for me, but the biggest education for me was the talk. I was listening in
on the phone when he was talking to some of these people, recruiting his people. He'd
talk to them and he'd say what did they say, what do you want that guy for and he'd say
oh comptroller. “Hell, you don't want him, he's a drunk.” He'd say okay, well give me
somebody I need. At that level, they were really honest with each other about the
qualities of the guy, because he had convinced them at that meeting that he held that if
you don't send me good guys I can't get the job done. And if you send me the right kind
of guys we'll play ball. I'll tell you one thing you're going to have give those guys a nice
bonus before they leave or you ain't going to get them back and he said I only need them,
but I need them for all four years, and every one of those guys that he hired he said if you
don't stay four years, your name is mud. We got to stay four years and get this thing
done. He hired one guy that ended up working for TRW, or might have come from
TRW, but he was DDR&E and I don't have my list of guys, it's somewhere.

Q:

What does DDR&E stand for?

A:

Director of Defense Research and Evaluation, or something, I don't know. But the guy
that had that job was a long-time guy, but he tended to move around a lot and me
understanding something that was a little more interesting than what he was supposed to
be doing. He was brilliant and he headed that shop of research, but he was kind of
trapped by Schlesinger and that didn't set well. They kind of ganged up on Clements
every now and then.

Q:

You've mentioned before some of the early mornings and the late nights, tell us about
what would a typical day look like for Bill Clements at the Pentagon? When would it
start, when would it end, what would he be...?

A:

His driver would pick him up out there and bring him to town. He did spend nights in
town, he spent nights with Rita.

Q:

At their place out in Virginia?

A:

Yeah. We had parties out there. John and I got invited to the parties. The story that they
told me about, I think she told me this about Mr. Clements that John Warner came up one
16

night; there was a knock on the door out there. John Warner came in through the door
and this gal comes in behind and John said hello to Mr. Clements. Mr. Clements said
hello to John and turned around to look at the other gal and said who's this? It was John
Warner's wife who has purple eyes. Clements didn't recognize her, and so Rita was
kidding him about not recognizing her. She came in one day, it was for a change of
command for somebody and John Warner brought her in the office. She was all dressed
up for cold weather; it was in the winter time. It was somebody's change of command. I
forgot who it was, but it was somebody in one of the services. And he had brought her in
and they had changed the service to inside from outside, so she was dressed up in all her
woolens and everything and she was so mad at him that they had changed things and she
was too hot. She couldn't take any clothes off, because she didn't have the right things to
take something off and she was in there. So my job was to entertain her and keep her
happy until Warner got back and went off wandering around the halls somewhere. So
I'm sitting there with Elizabeth Taylor, and you know she does have purple eyes!
Q:

Those famous violet eyes.

A:

So we chatted a while, but she was a very unhappy lady I'll tell you. But when she
walked in and he didn't recognize her., Rita said he didn't really recognize her at all he
really didn't know who she was. But it's not unusual for him. There was a rumor running
around when he divorced his wife and married Rita, they said well this was a Texas
rumor I heard. Said there's one thing about it, she didn't marry him for his money. She
had more money than he did. But that's when they were, were they the guys capturing all
the silver?

Q:

No, that was the Hunts I think, and she was married to a Bass.

A:

I thought she was married to one of Hunt guys, wasn't she?

Q:

She was married to a Bass.

A:

Oh yeah, Bass that's right. She used to fly up and ski down. Her ski trips were by
helicopter at the top of the mountain and they'd ski down.

Q:

Oh really, wow.

A:

Molly and I stayed in his place in--I've down there, that he built to give to the university.

Q:

Oh in Taos, New Mexico right? That they gave to SMU.

A:

Taos. So once you drive down and spend a couple weeks after I retired, so we drove out
there and spent a couple of weeks. At the time his son Gil and his wife were in the cabin
next door. They had another one over there I think, it was kind of tiny, but we had run of
the other one. The picture in there that I told you was my friend, Culligan, he was living
in (where the playhouse is there in New Mexico) down the hill from Taos. Santa Fe. He
was living in Santa Fe so I went out and saw him and Clements says bring him up. So I
17

took him up there. He and I were in V12 at the University of Louisville together when I
got back from the South Pacific in World War II to go to V-12. He and I met each other
before I married my wife. We knew him before I got married and she knew him. She
offered to get him a date to the Pi Phi formal and he said thanks I think I'd rather go to
Formerly Feenies--it was a bar, so he was that kind of a guy, but he was from California.
He died one month before Molly did. They were born on the same day!
Q:

You were starting to tell us earlier about what a typical day would be like for Bill
Clements. What time would his driver pick him up, what time would he get in, how late
would he work?

A:

It varied, unless he had something going he'd usually show up, I'd say by 7:15 in the
morning in the Pentagon and then want to know what's on for the day. Janie would brief
him before he left the night before, but he wanted to review that a little bit and he
would've done the homework that was necessary for whatever he was going to do that
day. We usually didn't--one of us would accompany him if he was going to some
meeting somewhere that was important enough to, but we didn't go to the JCS. If the
Joint Chiefs of Staff had a meeting, we didn't go. He went to those alone. He went to the
meetings over in the White House by himself. We normally, for the day, the day that you
got there early, you were in charge that day of making sure he didn't miss anything that
he was supposed to be doing. Then the other guy would take over for the next day. We
each had certain pieces of things we were working, but most of the time it was--he ate in
the office all the time. Once in a while, he'd have somebody in for lunch. One of his
stewards went with me when I left the Pentagon; he left the Pentagon and went to work
for me for a year, until I went to Omaha. When I went out to Omaha to target nuclear
weapons, he didn't want to go, so I got another guy. I had two different stewards. I had
three three-star jobs, which was unusual because nowadays they get one maybe and if
they're really something, they get two. I didn't tell you the story about, why I didn't get a
forth star.

Q:

No, do you mind telling us?

A:

He had an agreement with the guy that relieved him as Deputy Secretary of Defense. He
was Ambassador to Portugal, the guy that relieved him, I can't remember his name either,
but he also is a head of a big firm that he started after being Dep Sec Def that's got
business all over the world.

Q:

This would have been after Carter became president? When Ford lost the re-election
that's when Clements went back to Texas, right? So this guy, the one you're talking about
here who succeeded Clements, this was when Carter became President or am I getting
that wrong?

A:

No, the guy that relieved him, he heads up some firm right now, worldwide.

18

Q:

I'm just going to look it up real quick. Tom Reed told me that when Rumsfeld became
Secretary of Defense, Rumsfeld brought in another Deputy Secretary alongside of
Clements, which was awkward.

A:

Yeah.

Q:

Oh that's right, because I found that stationery at the Ford library said Deputy, and it had
a different name and I couldn't figure out. Yeah, Tom Reed had explained that.

A:

It wasn't the guy from Texas was it that got fired?

Q:

I can't remember the name.

A:

The guy that came in. One Deputy Secretary relieved him and got fired right away.

Q:

Anyway, I'm sorry I didn't mean to...

A:

Anyway this guy was an Ambassador to Portugal and then he came back. Anyway, he
had an agreement with Clements I guess because when I was in Omaha for three years
targeting nuclear weapons as a Deputy to the Air Force Chief there, the CNO Watkins,
my classmate and Long the guy who had taken me back to be his Chief of Staff, came out
and wanted to have a meeting with me. Watkins was the Chief of Naval Personnel at this
time and the other guy was the Vice Chief. So they said you know that we're being held
up by the Deputy Sec Def, because he wants you to get four stars before you're retired,
because he had that agreement with Clements. They said but we don't have a four star
job for you. I'm now a senior three star in the Navy and I think there's 8 four stars, I got
the book up there. They said there's only one four star job open and you wouldn't want it.
I said well what is it? They said it's a NATO rep in Brussels and I said is that the job
Blackie Wynell had? And he said yep that's the job. I said you're right I wouldn't want
it, because when I visited there with Clements, Blackie Wynell and Clements were good
friends. I don't know how they became good friends, but they were good friends. So we
went over to see Blackie and Mr. Clements asked him, he said Blackie what do you do
over here? He said well there ain't much to do so I race carrier pigeons. I said what? He
said there's nothing to do in this job. You're here and all you're here for is to show the
flag. So he says I race carrier pigeons and then he says I got a pretty good group of
pigeons to race too. I said you're right; I wouldn't want it. He said well what kind of job
would you want before your retire? He said you've had three-star jobs, two of them for
three years. The next one was going to be two years and they were going to retire me that
was two years before I had to retire, but that was alright; I was ready to go. I said well
what jobs you got open, and he said well Deputy CINCLANT Fleet is open for Wes
McDonald. Well, Wes McDonald was an aviator who had never had much experience
except in aviation and wasn't the shiniest coin on the table, but he was somebody who
had him picked for four stars and CINCLANT Fleet. I had worked for CINCLANT Fleet
for the Operational Reactor Safeguard Examining Board so I knew what was going on at
CINCLANT Fleet and I said I'd rather be the Deputy to Wes McDonald, because I get to
do more and I get to run his fleet for him. He won't know it if I'm running it or he's
19

running it. So they said okay, so they made that happen. Well, I get a call from the
Deputy Secretary of Defense who had promised Mr. Clements for me not to retire
without four stars and he said you sure you want to do that? I talked it over with
Clements first, he said are you sure you want to do it first? I said yeah I really don't--so
you get four stars the work is more interesting and I said I'm not in it just to get ahead.
To retire as a four star is not as much fun as being Deputy CINCLANT Fleet where I can
run the fleet if I want to. He said okay, whatever you want to do, but he said it sits there
if you want it, it's up to you. So I said okay and so I took the job and sure enough Wes
McDonald was gone a lot. But it happened to be the same time that we had the Island in
the Atlantic where the medical school was, so we were in all of a sudden-Q:

Oh, Grenada.

A:

The Grenada experience. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs came down. He was a
Marine general and he was a good guy. I had known him. He was also an Atlantic
command general, FMF Atlantic, when I was SUBLANT so I knew him well. He came
down and he said, they had asked for help this group of islands down there asked for help
when the Cubans started making their runway there on Grenada. Wes McDonald looked
at me with a what can we do look and we didn't really have anybody available to. I said
well there's one solution. I said we've got a group underway already going to the
Mediterranean and I said it's a group of Marines going over there and they're ready to
fight. They all were set up, but I said the only problem is their communication systems
publications are for the Med and that's all they're carrying is a Mediterranean
communications package and they may not be able to communicate well. So that's why
we got a little publicity that they couldn't--first they didn't have the maps that he needed.
So they were using AAA road maps for their intelligence work and the guy had to go
ashore and make calls out of a pay phone in order to get somebody where he wanted to
talk to. We were not equipped for that thing, but we sent the Marines in to rescue the
general that went on to be a hero in the Gulf War.

Q:

Was that Schwarzkopf?

A:

Yeah. He was held down by the enemy in Grenada. They had him isolated down at the
airport there and he needed some help. So we sent some Marines in to rescue him. The
Marines did get in, and did rescue the governor and then the kids that came out of that
medical school, got off in Charleston, kissing the ground for being rescued. We lost
some Special Forces guys who wanted to test their equipment. They bailed out of their
airplane, and then when their boats hit the water they smashed and didn't run and they
were too far out to swim to the beach, so we lost a Senior Chief and I think three or four
other Seals or Army specialists. I don't know who they were. All in all, it was pretty
well taken care of. I think it lasted less than a week. The guy that was running it was
Commander Second Fleet and these guys captured all those Cuban guns and they were
going to bring them back home. He said okay, tag those guns with your name and he said
until I get permission for you to keep them, we're not going to give them out. Well, the
word got out, the press got somehow notice and so they were met by the customs agents
when the planes landed with them and the guns. NIS came down; it was my scuffle with
20

NIS. NIS came down and said they wanted to open a full blown case and the guy in
charge, the three star said hey it's my fault, I told them they could bring them down.
They're all tagged with the names. I said we didn't tag them so you could arrest them.
We tagged them so they'd know whose belonged to what, if we got permission to keep
them. Well, they didn't like that. They were going to court martial the whole batch and I
said no you're not. He's already taken responsibility. I held Captain’s Mast on the
admittedly guilty one at CINCLANT Fleet and straightened him out. So we did and we
saved his--but he was totally innocent, but the press tried to make a big thing out of it.
When that guy died, Wes McDonald, I think died first. They made a big thing in the
Washington Post about those two guys were in cahoots and that their career had been hurt
by that thing and I wrote a letter to the Post, and said hey, I tried to straighten it out. I
said you maligned two good Naval officers’ names by writing that article without having
all the facts, but I don't think anybody ever published it, but at least made me feel better.
I was the guy that stopped the investigation, because it was a dumb thing to do.
Q:

So back to Vietnam, when Bill Clements became Deputy Secretary, did he worry that the
Soviet Union was getting stronger in the world, because America was seen as having lost
in Vietnam? Did he see that as part of his mission to respond to the Soviets?

A:

I don't know for sure that he was that oriented on a global scale. I got the impression he
was more operationally oriented on today's problems. I was with him when we spent the
night in the Bay of Pigs or whatever it was where we authorized--over when the Bay of
Pigs, but it was in Vietnam when we really--

Q:

Cam Ranh Bay?

A:

Yeah. He was worried about authorizing something that far away, and so I would say he
was more or less just making sure that what they were doing was making sense. I called
him out there. He vacationed sometimes in California at a place they had out there in
Indian Wells, where President Eisenhower kept his golf clubs and where my brother-inlaw is. He owns a place and two of his sons own a place out there. I forgot the name of
it now; it will come to me in a minute. He was out there, he played tennis a lot, and he
played tennis after he got operated on too. We went out and played against him, he was
getting around, he shouldn't have been playing on that leg. Anyway, I called him up, he
was at the resort there, and I called him up when they had the tree cutting in Korea, and
Acting Joint Chief was the Air Force guy and he wanted to go bomb them right then. I
called him up and said you better get back here, because he's in charge and the guy that's
in charge here says he's going to leave him in charge. So he came back and took the
watch and calmed things down and got Admiral Holloway back in time to relieve the Air
Force general that was going to bomb and calmed it all down. We sent a plane out and
got him in a hurry, but it was the other thing, it was more, the action was already going
on, so it was a case of what's going on and who's firing at who and who started the
shooting and all that stuff. I don't think that's ever been answered satisfactorily; at that
time it sure wasn't. There was a lot of things on both sides it seemed like that who knows
who was right at the time or who shot who or who fired the first gun or whatever. But
the other one I was in on, because it was Air Force General was going to do something
21

about it. I don't know, that Korean thing is still hot. But I don't think that son is as crazy
as people think he might be.
Q:

Yeah Kim Jong-un, yeah, well, don't get us started on the North Koreans. I know we got
to be mindful of time and let the Admiral get some rest, but Jeff you've done a little
research on the Operation Paul Bunyan thing, maybe you want to do one or two followup questions on that, since that came up and then we can wrap up?

A:

What's your background?

Q:

I'm trained as a lawyer. I was at the Ford Library over the summer and I was looking at
papers related to Clements and there were minutes from the National Security Council
meeting after the incident of the tree cutting. So in that meeting, it records that Clements
advocating to Henry Kissinger that we ought to cut the tree down. Kissinger says I don't
disagree with that, Bill, but I just want to talk it through some more. So they go around
the table and they discuss it without reaching a conclusion.

A:

What the risk is in cutting that tree down.

Q:

Exactly, and Kissinger obviously then went and talked to President Ford, because then
from separate documentation I can see that two days later Operation Paul Bunyan is
authorized where an overwhelming force goes over, cuts the tree down to a stump, and
comes back. So can you talk to us about how that came to be? I only know what I read
in that one National Security Council meeting between Clements and Kissinger, but
Clements was apparently not on the side of bombing, like the Air Force General that you
talked about, but he felt there ought to be a firm response.

A:

His approach was we ought to do something, and the easiest thing to do is presumably the
reason for the problem was that the tree was blocking the view of what was going on, so
the answer is cut the tree down. That seems like if that's a trouble spot, go get it.

Q:

I heard from Clements’ grandson, George, that a portion of that tree stump they
shellacked it and put a plaque on it and it hung in the governor’s office in Dallas.

A:

I wouldn't be surprised.

Q:

I went and looked at it a few weeks ago when I went up to see George, but I wondered if
you knew about that tree stump souvenir that he had.

A:

No, but he had a souvenir for everything. He had a little piece of this or a little piece--in
fact, my best information says they buried a piece of Scrimshaw with him. It was a
whale's tooth that matched the one that Jacquelyn Kennedy buried with Jack. He bought
the other tooth and had the Texas flag engraved on it.

Q:

I never knew that.
22

A:

It sat on his desk in the Pentagon and I asked him, I said that's pretty interesting. He said
that's where that tooth was--I don't know. I still got this tooth here that he gave him, it's
in my drawer in there in a white sock, but I'd be happy to donate it to you guys if you'll
tell me what it's worth so I can deduct it as a gift. You can put it in your museum.

Q:

We'll investigate that. Thank you for letting me know.

A:

I'm sure what I've got the supposedly the guys that were supposed to know at the whaling
museum up in New Bedford, Massachusetts. One guy thinks it's Lord Nelson that's
carved on that piece and another guy says couldn't be Lord Nelson, he's got both arms.
Another guy says well I don't know what it is, but it's obviously a whale's tooth in the
1800s. Supposedly when he told me, when he gave it to me, he said this whale’s tooth
was carved by a POW from the War of 1812. He said there's 13 of them and they're all
cataloged. Well, knowing him, he didn't lie, so he somewhere and I think he bought it
somewhere probably in London, because he bought a lot of paintings and things from
London when he went over there. It's the kind of thing he would pick up, but I gave him
a sword when we parted company. I had a Navy sword engraved with his name like they
give you, and I presented it to him. I told him he would have made a good submariner if
he didn't build so many oil wells, but he understood the problems.

Q:

You know George Seay, his grandson, has that sword now and wanted us to tell you
thanks for that and know that he still has it proudly displayed.

A:

So we both gave him, Felter and I, George Felter and I gave him the sword. So he gave
me that piece of Scrimshaw and said it was out of the War of 1812 and he said they're all
cataloged, so I'm sure if I can get in touch with Sotheby’s or whoever handled over there.
Quite a few things over there, that somebody, one guy said first time he had ever heard of
anything about POWs in the War of 1812. I said well gee they got on each other's ships
all the time and in fact they impressed a lot of sailors and made them fight for it. So I
need to do more research, but I was going to donate it to the Navy Museum. Of course,
the Naval academy when you go to the Naval Academy, you're sworn in under a flag that
says “don't give up the ship” by Perry. The flag he had on ship that's all ripped into
shreds, I thought well they'd be happy to have that, they'd give me a value of it. I was
going to donate it in his and my name to them and then take the value off my income tax,
so I can afford this kind of living. He'd be happy for me to do that I know.

Q:

I know he'd want to know you're well taken care of.

A:

Yeah. There were a lot of things that he did that we didn't know about I think in the
office. He was always thinking and never quit working; he was working all the time he
wasn't working. He was thinking of ways to do things better. He really liked solving
problems. He'd sit there and eat a hamburger for a lunch, on a bun. He had two favorite
stewards and they liked him. But he'd get a burger about this size and he had almost
looked like quart nearly of hot sauce, Louisiana, you know, the standard brand.

Q:

Tabasco?
23

A:

Tabasco. And he'd hit that thing with Tabasco and sit there and eat that for lunch and
work all through lunch. He'd seldom get out of--lunch to him was kind of a bother, but
he knew he ought to eat it. We dined out quite a few times, but he took good care of his
people and all the people that worked around him, worked for him. I was the envy of
everybody that had a military assistant, because my boss was universally liked around the
Pentagon, except from Schlesinger. I think Schlesinger was the only guy that didn't
really like him. Clements detested Schlesinger is the best way to express it.

Q:

Sir, it's been reported that Schlesinger wanted to fire Clements and talked to President
Ford about doing it and was unsuccessful and instead himself was ousted. Do you have
any insight about that? Did Schlesinger actually try to get him fired?

A:

I would think that yeah, I'm not surprised if he tried to get rid of him, but I don't think
Ford fired Schlesinger. I don't know where Schlesinger went as a matter of fact.

Q:

Ford did fire Schlesinger. Ford got tired of Schlesinger going in and lecturing to Ford
and talking down to him, and Ford said I'm the President of the United States, you work
for me, you can't talk to me that way. He caught him in a lie a couple of times too.

A:

Anybody could catch him in a lie. You could catch him in a lie if you just talked to him.
It was amazing. Schlesinger knew he was disliked, but he was above it all; he didn't
know what to do about it. He had an Army guy that worked for him who was a
crackerjack guy. He retired. You might want to talk to him about Clements.

Q:

What's his name?

A:

He's living in Tucson, retired there, I see him.

Q:

Tucson is my hometown.

A:

It's amazing at 88 when your memory tries to focus on something, you might as well
forget it. It will come back and I won't call you at midnight, but I'll write it down.

Q:

And we'll be seeing you tomorrow, yeah, because I'll be going to Tucson for
Thanksgiving, so I would love to--

A:

I used to have a little plastic covered card; it had everybody’s phone number and
everybody’s name on it, but it's in Connecticut. I thought I had it here, but I couldn't find
it today, because I needed those names. I got the Defense Department phone book for the
time I think and I can look it up there.

Q:

We can come up with that tomorrow.

A:

I'll do a little research.
24

Q:

Yeah.

A:

Because I wake up early.

Q:

Well Admiral we should close the loop on that name a while ago, you were talking about
later deputy Secretary of Defense that had also been ambassador to Portugal and so that
would have to be Frank Carlucci.

A:

That's him.

Q:

But now, it looks like that right after Clements, there was Charles Duncan who was there
two years and he had the Houston, Texas and Rice University connection.

A:

Okay, well, I worked for Duncan until he's got his feet on the ground and then my tour
was up, I went over to Op O6 and worked with them for about a month and then I went
back to the submarine force.

Q:

I see, okay. So you did overlap with Duncan?

A:

Yeah, in fact, I worked for Duncan I would say a couple months, maybe three.

Q:

Then there was briefly a Graham Claytor.

A:

Well, Claytor is an interesting guy.

Q:

And then Carlucci. Tell us about Claytor.

A:

Claytor was a guy who was one of three brothers. One of them heads up the Norfolk and
Southern Railroad. That Claytor was the guy who was on the ship where the torpedo
sunk the ship after dropping the--they're the one that carried the bomb over and on the
way home they got torpedoed by the Japanese submarine.

Q:

The Indianapolis?

A:

Indianapolis.

Q:

The sharks attacked them.

A:

Claytor was CO of the destroyer that finally turned around and went back and picked up
the survivors. He was a crackerjack guy, he was a fun guy, but he went without orders.
He just disobeyed them when they didn't stop and turn around and go back to look for
anybody. It was two days later before he turned around and went back and recovered
what people survived. But then he got to be the Secretary of the Navy and did a pretty
good job. The other brother worked for Admiral Rickover and was a classmate of mine at
the Naval Academy--Richard “Rick” Claytor, Class of ’49 President.
25

Q:

Admiral we should probably wrap it up here for now.

26