"Mr. President,that piss-ant knows nothing about the navy." The admiral turned toward me and raised his voice now to a fearsome shout. "You just want to get rid of me, you want me out of the program because you want to dismantle the program." Shifting now toward President Reagan, he roared on: "He's a goddamn liar, he knows he is just doing the work of the contractors. The contractors want me fired because of all the claims and because I am the only one in the government who keeps them from robbing the taxpayers.

As I sat there in shock, the previous year of careful orchestration of Admiral Hyman Rickover's hoped-for graceful retirement flashed before my eyes - and cratered in flames. The maneuvering had begun during the pre-Inaugural transition in 1980, when I told the secretary of defense designate,

Caspar Weinberger that one of my first orders of business as secretary of the navy would be to solve, at last, the Rickover problem. Rickover's legendary achievements were in the past. His present viselike grip on much of the navy was doing it uch harm. I had sought the job because I believed the navy had deteriorated to the point where its weakness seriously threatened our future security. The navy's grave afflictions included loss of a strategic vision; loss of self-confidence, and morale; a prolonged starvation of resources, leaving vast shortfalls in capability to do the job; and too few ships to cover a sea so great, all resulting in cynicism, exhaustion, and an undercurrent of defeatism. The cult created by Admiral Rickover was itself a major obstacle to recovery, entwining nearly all the issues of culture and policy within the navy.

Taking on Rickover and his culture would, I knew, be a grueling task. But I had by then experienced some epic Washington combats and had the confidence earned by those scars. Nothing, however, had prepared me for what was happening in the Oval Office. For a relatively young secretary of the navy, new to the job in 1981, it was most discomforting to be in the presence of the president of the United States and the object of Admiral Rickover's legendary temper and vocabulary. As the bureaucrat say, such experiences can be "non-career-enhancing". I rarely have a drink during the week, but as I poured a double whiskey that evening, I told my wife, Barbara, I had wished that a hole could have yawned open there in the Oval Office floor into which I could have quickly leaped. Not only was I embarrassed and shocked at the president being subjected to such lese majeste, but also my immediate boss, Cap Weinberger, was glaring daggers at me. He had strongly opposed scheduling this meeting, which I had initiated while he was on an extended trip. While he was away, I had assured Frank Carlucci, his deputy and the acting secretary of defense, that Hyman Rickover had calmed down and accepted his fate in the several months since we had told him that he must retire.


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