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In a promotion system which operates on the principle of "up or out,” there is something intriguing, almost mystical, about the men who sit atop the Navy pyramid and how they got there. Today’s four-star ad?nirals share the distinction of having been picked for their present positions as rear admirals. They were then moved quickly through key assignments u hich provided the necessary maturity and experience. A
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In 1963, former Secretary of the Navy Paul NitzC' drew up a plan in concert with a noted civilian
management consultant. In its simplest form, the plan categorized naval officers and identified those with exceptional potential. It is axiomatic that sut' cess comes from visibility gained through outstand' ing performance in difficult jobs. Career officers are faced with this from the time they are commissioned to the pinning on of a captain’s silver eagles some 20 years later. “The main function served by past per' formance is to render visibility and identify potential flag officers,” says Admiral Harry D. Train If Commander in Chief Atlantic Fleet. “Selection to flag rank is not a reward for superlative performance as an 0-6 [captain] and below, but rather a recogni'
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abi° Carr’e<^ an A’ or ‘B’ classification, and consider- enc& tlrtle WaS sPent piorring the additional experi- sta eaC^ man nee<^e<^ t0 fluaflfy for eventual four- ar command. Nitze continues:
We wanted to have three three-star fellows W^° looked as if they had the talent and the background that was needed. The next effort was to try 1 get these people promoted quickly, so that
rticular care was taken to segregate the officers
^hen they became four-star admirals they would e young enough for other jobs. We wanted to try
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and
Wh;
tl0n °f potential performance as a flag officer.”
r is this recognized potential that triggers iden- n 'cation as a “comer” by the Chief of Naval Opera- U>ns an<J the Secretary of the Navy immediately after 0^ to flag rank. Secretary Nitze made up a set 0 • x5-inch cards, one for each of the 245 admirals 1cn on active duty. He asked the Chief of Naval perations, Admiral David L. McDonald, to join 1lrn 'n grading each flag officer from ‘A’ to ‘D.’
An A was a comer who appeared to have what 'C took to be a CNO,” Nitze explains. “A ‘B’ °oked like three- or four-star potential but not necessarily CNO. ‘C’ was pretty good, but upper a ‘ rcar admiral was probably all he could aspire °‘ ^ was the lower half. There was an enormous ‘‘mount of correspondence. The number of cards \\y we differed was only like 10 or 15%.
hen we talked about those men, I found out cDonald knew much more about them than I, and so I changed my viewpoint to his.”
get some of the younger ‘A’ fellows up r°ogh all the necessary background so we'd have at least three young enough to be CNO and then young enough to be Chairman of the Joint Chiefs ' tf‘at came about. I can remember who my ^oices were: Admiral [Gerald] Miller was one, cimiral [James] Calvert was another, [Elmo] Bud -umwalt was third. McDonald and I devoted our tlrne to getting these three through all the various ^periences they needed in order to get them qual- ^*ed at a young age to be CNO.” an*pulation, sponsorship, career planning—by ceratever name, the strings were pulled to move offi- tapped for advancement through a series of posi- ns designed to give the right credentials. It is im- ant t0 n°te, however, that although these young j lrals were earmarked for greater things, the bur- fQn °f proof rested squarely on their shoulders. Perth ar,ce could not slacken in any way. “There cer- y *s a well defined set of rules for attaining f^ell S^ar rank’” notes retired Vice Admiral C. Edwin l ' 1° addition to hard work, plans, and broad
wledge, I would have to say that it is important
to always get as much command as possible, and for a naval officer, taking the toughest jobs in planning, operations and policy when on shore duty.”
Anything less than consistent excellence spelled failure. There was no place for a second chance. And equally important were factors which seemed far removed but played a key role in a flag officer’s rise to the top. “My duty to the Navy and my country always was put first," declares Admiral Fred Boone, “but I was helped immeasurably by my good fortune to have a wonderful wife who always fulfilled with ability, grace, and charm the responsibilities which each assignment placed on her, who accepted each of my assignments without complaint, who never pressed for a preferred duty, who was my constant counselor and supporter, and who loved the Navy as much as I did.”
The list of comers could change, of course. Some officers who showed great potential at the two-star level fizzled out at three stars. Others were found to be what one man called “late bloomers.” The more the responsibility given them, the greater the growth. Their sudden outstanding performance did not go unnoticed, and often their names were penciled in with the others who had been picked early in their flag officer careers. Even so, performance did not always guarantee recognition. “Working hard at professional improvement is indeed essential,” says Admiral Isaac C. Kidd, Jr., “but extreme good fortune is what’s needed.”
The shuffling of “comers” will inevitably result in the movement of other officers into retirement and obscurity. Nitze explains:
“If you are going to promote the nuggets—we called the ‘A’ fellows nuggets—you have to select-out a lot of the dubious fellows to make these slots open up. One of the most difficult things was designing an effective selecting-out process. The Navy had always had such a process, but when we looked at it in terms of numbers and time and so forth it turned out we had to select out more admirals than before in order to get the flow going fast enough. This was a painful thing because many of the admirals were very good people. But you can’t buy something for nothing.”
This movement creates patterns. It becomes possible to recognize who is being moved up and who is being shoved out. Even the most casual observer begins to notice trends in assignments. The Chief of Naval Personnel is a high-visibility three-star job. According to Vice Admiral Damon Cooper, he is “. . . usually assigned a four-star billet as a reward for his surviving this very difficult assignment.” The
current chief aside, three of the five men who held this position from 1970 to 1980 pinned on four stars.
A similar trend has been found in other positions. "OP-06, Deputy CNO for Plans and Policy, was considered a sure stepping stone,” says Admiral Charles K. Duncan, a former Chief of Naval Personnel who went on to four-star rank as Commander in Chief Atlantic. Six vice admirals have commanded the U. S. Sixth Fleet since 1970, and four attained the rank of admiral. In the early 1960s, the Sixth Fleet commander had unusually high visibility. George W. Anderson went directly from there to become Chief of Naval Operations, and David L. McDonald was selected as CNO shortly after moving from the Mediterranean to the post of Commander in Chief, U. S. Naval Forces Europe. Former Secretary of the Navy Fred Korth observes:
“Visiting the Sixth Fleet, being with him, being impressed by his knowledge of the Navy and its missions, I felt that he would be a completely top-notch representative of the uniformed personnel of the Navy. 1 felt he was someone I could work with. You cannot make a selection solely upon personal contact, of course, and I looked at McDonald’s record and his fitness reports and duty assignments. I totaled up the whole picture. If there were others in the field of choice who I had not met, well, I would have to tell you that would have operated against those individuals. Exposure to me, by McDonald, operated in his favor.”
The assignments which herald promotion to admiral are almost always predictable. Admiral Trail1!' notes:
“A three-star candidate for four stars is, by hlS| very nature, highly visible. His qualities are verfl apparent to juniors and seniors alike. These qual'l ities are catalogued, and when they match a net“| in the four-star ranks the gehtleman is so assigned
On one occasion, the need may be for a hard' nosed, highly trained technocrat. On another, 11 may be for a personable harmonizer with an exte®' sive background of dealing successfully with th( bureaucracy. On still another, it may be for a salt) ‘diamond in the rough’ who can win battles at sd even if he loses bureaucratic battles ashore.” Picking the right person for the right job takes of considerably more depth at this point. As Admit3 Train says, there must be a fit. The CNO augment- his list of comers with the recommendations of h1’ fellow four-star admirals. Admiral Thomas H' Moorer, a former Chief of Naval Operations aPj Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, observes:
“I would consult with them every three mondv and ask them to send me their recommended IN I just kept them in a little table: the position those that were recommended for that position and who recommended them. 1 kept that up (l date all the time because it’s important that wlN you appoint somebody to a four-star position l’1 has a broad base of support in the system. T'1 worst thing you can do is put somebody at the tOf and have everybody oppose him. You have to P confident this individual has fairly wide servC support, no matter what you think of him perso® ally.”
John Warner, while Secretary of the Navy, coP stantly felt the pulse of the Navy’s senior leadership Like Secretary Nitze, he kept a highly confident!-1 tally of flag officers:
“I had a private file in which I kept notes. I h3 a policy where every three star, when he came r Washington, would come and visit with me. A
r
°ur stars would meet with me, just the two of us ‘>lone. I would keep a set of notes—not a black °°k full of demerits or anything like that, but a record of the professional capabilities of these men ar>d in some cases their personal qualifications. It Was one of the two or three principal duties of a Navy secretary to acquaint himself in every respect with the senior officers under him. I had a very rarefully guarded list.”
people business in the Navy can be burden- sornely rigid at times, and the movement of candi- -s from two to four stars must allow for the inevi- 1 e changes in course. Admiral Moorer continues: You ve got to remember that you’re dealing Wlth a very, very small group. The Navy has only seven four star admirals. You can very carefully plan where you’re going to put certain individuals, and this is what happens: you pick one and all of a sodden he’s got cancer and six months later he’s c‘ad. Then all of a sudden your house of cards starts falling. You have to jerk this guy out, and send him over there. If you had your druthers you VVould have taken this other person, but he’s been ordered to his job only a month ago, and he’s taken over, moved into his house, made all the ^'S'ts and everything, so you don’t want to pull lrn out and move him again. You’re dealing with so few people that you don’t have that kind of exibility, when all of them are over 50 years old. ou don’t always wind up with the person in the !°b that you preferred to have in the job.” in S StronS as the CNO may be, he is only one piece ale C'1C Prornot‘on puzzle. The men he has brought under his wing must pass muster with the ci- 'an side of the Navy Department, the Secretary of g " tnse and, ultimately, the President of the United j^tt'S- More often than not, the Secretary of the job^ S° along with the selections for four-star d° s offered by the CNO. In some cases, however, ISagreement occurs. Says Admiral Moorer:
There were times when I was overruled. All c service chiefs have the same experience. Every t|me I Was overruled, it developed later that I was r,gbt and the secretary was wrong. I never could btt: across the idea that I’ve been to their wed-
dings, I’ve been in the same bombing formation, I’ve been to their second wedding, I’ve watched them in the war college and so on. I could almost write down from memory every assignment they ever had. I had a pretty good idea as to how they thought, whether they drank or not, whether they fought with their wives, or whether they got along with other people. All these things I knew. The service secretaries don’t have the time to know people that well. You have to try to explain these things, and most of the time you are able to prevail.”
There have been times in recent years, however, when the Chief of Naval Operations got his way but the end result was less than favorable. Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt, himself a product of the executive pawn moving, exerted great pressure to bring his handpicked choices as his successor into the positions which would give the best exposure and leverage to move one of them into theCNO’s job. In his book On Watch. Zumwalt wrote:
49
“In the fall of 1972 I had prepared what I intended to be the last big daisy chain before my successor was chosen. The daisy chain started by moving Mickey Weisner, already a four-star, from Vice CNO to the Pacific Fleet, and giving Worth Bagley, who had continued to demonstrate unique qualities, his fourth star as CinCUSNavEur. To replace those two, I proposed to bring Vice Admiral James Holloway III from his command of the Seventh Fleet to Washington as four-star VCNO, and give Rear Admiral Daniel Murphy, Mel Laird’s executive assistant, a third star and move him into Worth Bagley’s job as Director of Navy Program Planning. Behind these moves were a number of others, amounting to a dozen or more in all.”
Admiral Thomas Moorer, seen with Vice Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, was opposed to Admiral Zumwalt becoming his successor. "The only major command he’d had was a bunch of boats running up and down the Mekong River,” Moorer said. But Moorer’s civilian superiors overruled him and selected Zumwalt.
Secretary of the Navy John Warner, who had to approve Zumwalt’s list, had some serious doubts about the rapidness with which some of the admirals ascended the promotion ladder. Warner recalls:
“We had a major confrontation on Worth Bag- ley. The background was that he and Worth were very close friends. I saw in Worth Bagley, as he did, one of the great naval officers, but I took the position that he ought to be given a sea command before he was given his fourth star. I wanted to send Bagley to sea rather than push him up so quickly that he could never get that operational experience. We fought hard on it, but he won by going to the Secretary of Defense. In this instance Zumwalt said that unless Laird supported him he would resign as Chief of Naval Operations. In my judgment, and in Laird’s judgment, that would have historically been a bad precedent for the Navy. I was absolutely trapped and I had to be overruled.”
Bagley received his fourth star, as did Holloway. A year and a half later, after a long and bitter fight between Zumwalt and Warner over who would be the next CNO, Admiral Holloway was chosen as Zumwalt’s successor. Admiral Bagley moved into the VCNO job, but stayed only a year. He retired a few weeks before his 5 1st birthday. “The tragedy of all this was that Bagley was kicked up and then lost very quickly to the Navy,” Warner says. “If Bagley had gone on and taken a sea command he likely would have been eligible to succeed Holloway at the end of his term.” The tragedy encompassed more than Worth Bagley. Admiral Zumwalt himself fell victim to rapid upward movement and forced early retirement. Only 54, he could have served six more productive years in the Navy.
It should be noted that Admiral Moorer opposed Zumwalt’s selection as Chief of Naval Operations in 1970. Moorer recalls:
“Everybody in the Navy looked at it the same way I did. We agreed Zumwalt had the potential but didn’t have the maturity or experience. The only major command he’d had was a bunch of boats running up and down the Mekong River. I
told him myself why I didn’t recommend him. that the civilians had sided against me and that was their decision. I told him I wanted our relationship to be entirely above board.”
Rapid promotion of talented young flag officers must be tempered with restraint to ensure that levels of experience are adequate. Admiral Anderson says: “I have long advocated accelerated promotion, even in the lower ranks. However, the important factor in this regard is that officers so selected if advance of what might be considered the normal practice should not be denied the opportunity of occupying billets which should be a qualification for higher rank. This means that there should be some anticipatory assignment of billets. . . . Furthermore, if it is the intention that a flag officer is to be considered for early selection in a very senior capacity such as the Chief of Naval Operations, then he should be given an assignment first if command of a fleet and second, in an activity that gives him experience with the Joint Chiefs of Staff organization. I feel that these requirements were fulfilled in the case of myself and Admiral McDonald and Admiral Moorer, but not in the case of Admiral Zumwalt.”
History has shown that even though the Chief of Naval Operations has the inside track on his picks fo[ top command, and usually receives support of the Navy Secretary, the Secretary of Defense will continue to play an important role in the selection of senior flag officers. Former Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford agrees with Admiral Moorer that the CNd nearly always has his say, but quickly added that the civilian side does not rubber-stamp any promotions: “The decision is, of course, made within the Service. The top admiral would give attention to it, then it is put in final form and goes to the Secretary of the Navy. The inclination on the pad of the civilian secretary is to follow the recommendation. The admirals who make the recommendations not only know the man, but have grown up with him. What the Navy Secretary
wants to do is find out, as well as he can, whether the recommendation is based upon merit or whether other factors might have come into it. Ordinarily, though, he takes the recommendation. He is perfectly right in doing so. The Navy wants to bnng its best men to the top. Then the recommendation, or nomination, goes to the Secretary of Defense.”
A Secretary of Defense usually has a close relation- Slip with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and uses 1lrn as a sounding board. Clifford continues:
I saw the chairman at least once every day. Often we stayed down and had dinner together in rhe evenings in order to talk out important mat- rers. The Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of [he Joint Chiefs can be completely frank. Even though the chairman might be an Army man, he might say, ‘1 know already that’s the right fellow.’ Or he might say, ‘I’m wondering a little if this is the right fellow, and I know some sources where I can get good information.’ The Secretary of De- cnse then has done his best, after making that mquiry, to be sure he has the right man. Then he takes it over to the presidents-He tells the presi- ent the type of investigation he has made, whether anything has turned up, and the president las t0 depend almost entirely on the judgment of e secretary because he’s so pressed in other areas, believe that the system works quite well. The military takes a very important part in it, but they know that their judgment is always subject to the most careful review by the Secretary of the Navy, the Secretary of Defense, and the president.”
There are minor imperfections in the process, and occasionally political pressure such as what Admiral Moorer terms "a constant drum beat from the Congress,” but for the most part the sponsorship of bright, young rear admirals continues to be an integral part of the U. S. Navy’s promotion system. A future Chief of Naval Operations or Commander in Chief Pacific is on duty today, somewhere in the world, as a two-star admiral. As he moves up the ladder, others will take his place. Admiral Moorer sums it up this way: “It’s so important to try and put the best people in the top jobs, because you owe it to the people underneath them.”
Lieutenant Commander Ancell is a graduate of the University of New Mexico with a B.A. de- a —^ A ■ gree in communication arts. He served with the Vfc U. S. Army Security Agency near Ankara, Turkey, from 1962 to 1964. Since 1971, he has been a Naval Reserve public affairs officer. He has held dtL. It: a variety of news media positions, including tele
vision reporter, photographer, assignment editor, and producer. He is now associate editor of Colorado Business magazine, published in Denver, and lives in Parker, Colorado. Lieutenant Commander Ancell’s interview with German Admiral Karl Dbnitz was published in the March 1973 Proceedings, and his comment on Samuel Eliot Morison appeared in September 1979. He is at work on a book about four-star officers of the U. S. armed forces.
--------------------------------------- And Now the Bad News--------------------------------------------------
bleeding $40,000 to pull off the 35,800 feet dive of the Trieste in the Marianas Trench, Su^ tenant Don Walsh flew to Washington and went from office to office, failing to find a rce °f funds. But through persistence he was finally granted a hearing by the Chief of °Peratlons' Admiral Arleigh Burke.
^ter describing his project he was asked by Admiral Burke who would be responsible for Sejf .,eep~^'ve 0Peration. “The two officers with the project; Lieutenant Shumaker and myope' answered. “One will be on board and in charge of the Trieste's submerged
tons, and one will be topside in charge of the support for the submersible.” tO'ral Burke pondered this answer for a moment, then gave his decision. “Okay, I’ll Pol ^ rnoney ^r you. But understand this, the Navy’s had a ration of problems with their try IS fnissde development and NASA’s had failures with the space program, so this counass Can C Stan<^ another disaster in the newspapers. Do you understand?” Walsh nodded in
ten Burke pointed a finger at Walsh and, with a solemn voice and a twinkle in his eye suK etp ^ the Trieste goes down and fails to come back up, it’s the fellow in the Marine who’s the lucky one!”
Captain W. J. Ruhe, USN (Retired)
CThe
Naval Institute will pay $25.00 for each anecdote published in the Proceedings.)