Dear Jack,
I think that we will just have to agree to disagree, but we can certainly do it in good humor.

I have waited to answer your letter of July 20, 2000, until I was able to get a duplicate of the VCR tape of my appearance on national television following the publication of McNamara's book "In Retrospect."  Reed Irvine of Accuracy n Media called me requesting that I appear along with himself, Joe Goulden and Dolf Droge knowing that I had been part of the "whiz-kid" group under Alain Enthoven. I am sure that you will find it interesting enough to review it at least once and then you may dispose of it as you wish.

I am sorry that there was not enough time left in the hour program to answer the last question from one of the callers but it had already been answered by a combination of my point regarding Fred Bardshar's recommendation to the CNO, VCNO & staff at a meeting of which I was a participant, along with a quote from Jim Webb's discussion with me.  Then Dolf Droge put the cap on that with his statement that Congress lost the Vietnam War by their refusal to support the south with the money that had been vouchsafed to them by the United States as a result of the treaty that ended the war.  (Recently Jim Webb had a superb article published in the Wall Street Journal that outlined, in great detail, the background of our failure to support South Vietnam and its affect on their eventual loss and takeover by the North.)

You will also be interested to know that the other member of the Enthoven team watching LBJ's speech to the nation on TV in the Pentagon Gym at the time was your classmate, Tom Randall, then my couonterpart as a Marine Colonel and one of the finest gentlemen I have ever known.

What I am leading up to is how much I new from the inside at that time because I was sent there by the Chief of Naval Personnel in a personal one-on-one conversation for the purpose of ingratiating myself with the McNamara team to provide maximum support for the Navy's requirements.  Despite my seniority at the time, the fact that I had an advanced degree in management made my nomination acceptable to the "smart boys" in Defense Manpower.  Subsequently, when Enthoven was given the responsibility for manpower analysis in addition to force planning along with weapons development and acquisition, I was in a position to convince him that he needed someone who knew military manpower law from the inside and he made me a member of the team.  Junior to me in Systems analysis and the McNamara group at the time were names familiar to you such as then Commanders Stansfield Turner, Carl Trost, Lieutenant Commanders John Poindexter, Robin Pirie and Charles DiBona.  In short, I became a "mole" and in combination with jerry Miller, then aide to Horacio Rivero but subsequently part of the McNamara group under Pat Parker, we managed to turn things around to our benefit.

The "pilot shortage" became my problem and we finally prevailed in getting over a billion dollars appropriated to rebuild Navy's flight training system but only at the cost of antagonizing the Air Force and Marine Corps who had to give up some of their money or pilot output in the zero sum game being played by Defense.  It also took a covert liaison with a young reporter to get stories in the New York Times and elsewhere in the press about how our pilots were "bleeding to death" in Vietnam that shook McNamara at a time that the Stennis Committee on Preparedness was breathing down his neck.  In fact, when McNamara was finally convinced that there was a problem with the Navy, he signed a directive to my desk that I had prepared for his signature that referred to the Navy's "pilot shortage," but when the Air Force later climbed on the idea for their interests and sent a similar request using the same language he crossed out the word "shortage" and inserted "increased requirements" with the notation to "retype and sign."

Satisfying the Navy's requirement, however, was not the end game.  The Marine Corps had reason to believe that it had been treated unfairly by my analysis and the upshot was a negotiating session with Deputy Commandant, Lieutenant General Leonard Chapman and Major General Keith McCutcheon (DC/S-AIR, USMC) representing the Marine Corps on one side and Assistant SecDef Alain Enthoven along with civilian analyst Frank Sullivan (later Chief Counsel for the Senate Armed Services Committee) and me o the Defense side.   It was not pleasant for me as a Captain to have to stand toe to toe with General Chapman and argue against his requirements but it was something that had to be done at the time.  We finally came to an agreement whereby the Marines received the 100 pilots that they had lost (due to my analysis) from the Air force in return for which they agreed to testify to their complete satisfaction with the Department of Defense before the Stennis Sub-Committee.  What the combination of Navy and Marines walked away with was the billion dollars in additional appropriation for aircraft, personnel and associated systems to increase the pilot output for both the Navy and Marine Corps.  It would not have come about in any other way since Enthoven had made it quite clear that he would merely cut Navy & Marine requirements unless both services agreed to testify accordingly.

I was accused at the time by the Chief Counsel of the Senate Committee, speaking red faced and through his teeth, of being the person behind the reversal of what they had assumed would be testimony so detrimental to Defense that it would cause McNamara to resign and some members of the Committee such as Stuart Symington were so outraged as to publicly insult our Navy witness on the stand, then-Rear Admiral Gerald Miller, causing Senator "Scoop" Jackson to phone Jerry Miller with an apology on the part of the Committee following the hearings.  But this was all part of an initiative known and approved at the highest "military" level of the Navy staff and, to put it bluntly, the McNamara team was manipulated by a "mole."  I would have given the Marines all the plot output they wanted in the first place but I didn't have the money - McNamara had the money and if I hadn't played the part of being one of their team, neither the Navy nor the Marines would have received a cent.

The point I want to make here is that just getting rid of McNamara was not the answer because he was simply the "merest utensil of his master's will" (to use a Churchillian phrase) as the real culprit was Lyndon Johnson.  Indeed the Joint Chiefs did far more to state their case than most people know about as my friend, Lieutenant General Charlie Cooper so eloquently writes in his Naval Institute article, "The Day It Became the Longest War" published in the Proceedings in May 1996 (copy enclosed).  If you think that they should have resigned then, how about three successive submarine CNOs who could have just as forcefully stepped forward against women in the service academies and women in combat units?

With regard to Jerry Atkinson whom I support in much of his endeavors, I never gave him a nickel until I asked that he make copies of the tape that I am sending to you.  But I think it interesting that you sent him a check for $100 about two years ago -"for the cause"--or so he has advised me.  I note that in your first letter to me that you questioned Atkinson's qualifications in that you did not believe he had had a major command.  Just what was Maguire's major command?

With regard to the overview of the Ethics course by Bernard A. Maguire [see Hot Item for this 'whitewash' report], I find it interesting that according to the Academy register he resigned at the end of his obligated service and spent the rest of his life in various occupations outside the Navy for which the American citizens had underwritten his education.  To me that is the very antithesis of the kind of person who should be used as "an expert" in what constitutes training for a lifetime career as a naval officer.  However, it fits right into what the Naval Academy has become thanks to those responsible for over-emphasizing humanities to accommodate the women as opposed to professional subjects and engineering.

One final point about Maguire and NE 203.  I note that he quotes his classmate Bob Timberg at one point in his discussion of the course on page 10 of this year's July/August Shipmate.  Bob Timberg and I are now great friends as a result of his book, "The Nightingale's Song."  You see, I was an essential key that he had to turn to write it as the power behind the Poindexter Defense Fund.  By happenstance, I was one that knew all the principles (McCain, McFarlane, Webb, North and Poindexter) well enough through close working associations and, in addition, he couldn't get any information on John Poindexter until I was certain that he would be on John's side.  In speaking publicly about it, he will start by acknowledging that when I ran him off at first about cooperating , he assumed that I thought him a "jerk."  Not so!  I just knew that he had never had the inside experience to recognize the difference between the cut and dried rules laid down by regulation and the subtle methods one had to employ in the Byzantine world of the bureaucracy that the U.S. Government has become.

Following many hours of interviews that I granted him that he taped, I am certain that he finally understood that the "ethical" decision was often completely different from that which the chain of command would demand, i.e., "barely visible on the horizon."

               [On the Title page of my copy of "The Nightingale's Song," Bob Timberg wrote (on 7//10/95): "To Admiral
                 Mark Hill, whose insights and eye for detail and sense of history added immeasurably to this book - With
                 Thanks,
                                                                                                                                                  /S/   Bob Timberg]

You see, John Poindexter's desk was right next to mine for a year and a half so that he was privy to my conversations with this Associated Press reporter who was, through his stories in the New York Times, revealing for the first time the dilemma that we faced in meeting our pilot requirements in Vietnam while being refused the necessary resources by McNamara.  But I knew from meetings with Admiral David McDonald, then CNO, that the one thing that he had been promised by LBJ during the initial build-up for Vietnam was that he could have all that was required to increase the Navy's aviation capability and pilot output.  Failure of the President to keep his word was part of the double game that went on continuously with Systems Analysis, in short, you can have it from within your budget but you can't have more money.  Without covert resort to the press, we would never have succeeded.  But it came at a price.

As John Poindexter, then a LCDR, was witness to all this, I have always felt that his subsequent actions in defense of the President, in his time, was partially a result of is exposure to the requirement as well as the willingness to take any risk necessary to accomplish a mission.  I also knew that he was a man of the utmost integrity with the courage of his convictions.  I was joined in that opinion by your classmate, James L. Holloway, III, for whom John Poindexter, as a Captain, was Jim's aide when he was the CNO, along with Jerry Miller, so that the Poindexter Defense Fund Trustees were Holloway, Miller and hill - and we made sure that he never had to spend a cent out of his pocket for a very expensive legal defense.

I seriously doubt that anyone in the ethics department at the Naval Academy would use my McNamara experience as a model for today's midshipmen.  But as a final note on that score, it was through this same reporter that we were able to get the first stories about the POWs into the press.  We knew that no one in the McNamara group was the least bit concerned about our aviators that were prisoners.  Then Commander Jim Mulligan was shot down.  Jim had been my Operations Officer when I had command of VA-72 and when the North Vietnamese allowed the POWs to write their first letters home, he inserted a note about a mythical incident that involved "Aunt Ginny and Uncle Mark" so that his wife Louise would get in touch with me.   Then when he wrote his book, "The Hanoi Commitment," he had this to say regarding that letter: "I knew that if 'Mark' Hill saw that letter, the information in it would get to the right places."  (A copy of that letter and his page in the book appended).  Jim was right!  I not only got in touch with my friendly reporter but, since Jim was from Boston, I wrote to the two senators named Kennedy -Bobby and Teddy - outlining the problem on the POWs, telling of Jim's letter and within three days they were in McNamara's office.  From that time on, until they were released, I kept in close contact with the wives through Louise Mulligan with all the support that I could render, particularly on how to get through the curtain of silence imposed by the bureaucrats in Defense and State for much of the time on what was being done to protect the POWs from torture and/or to secure their release.

I am amused by your statement that Carl Trost has had far greater experience in handling tough issues (like how to support Elaine Donnelly) than either of us.  Who do you think started the action on her defense fund?  It was Chief Yeoman Jerry Miller who prepared the fund raising letter for Tom Moorer's signature initially, then routed it through Yeoman 1^st Class "Mark" Hill who made revisions and then arranged the conference with Tom Moorer to get his signature to go to the addressees who were retired four-star officers in the four services that Tom Moorer thought would be willing to sign.  We got four signatures in reply without comment on the content of the proposed letter.  They were Jim Holloway, Tom Hayward, Carl Trost and Carl Mundy.  If you want to demean yourself by taking a back seat to Carl Trost, do so, but I do not accept that role.  And if you are so intent in your belief that everyone should blame McNamara for all our problems up to this time, why not ask Carl Trost what he did to upset him when he was sitting in McNamara's front office?

Jack, you must know by now that I am really not interested in continuing a dialogue designed to convert one or the other with regard to how we think about the current state of the Naval Academy.  Indeed, I intend to state my views publicly as I always have and without equivocation.  With regard to the Naval Academy, I know that it may be extremely difficult to "walk the cat back," but I think that a program modeled after the Marines that would separate the men from the women in certain subjects at the Naval Academy could be a start.  Removing women from all our combat units is my major objective which both you and others at the Academy seem to favor with regard to submarines, but I recognize that such may not be possible in today's political environment until they start sending women home in "body bags" as a result of some useless deployment in "new age world control."

As a result of my years of association with the young A.P. reporter, now an aging author and recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Journalism, I am frequently approached by other writers for aid on Naval subjects.  This occurred when we had a Chief of Naval Operations commit suicide so that both Peter J. Boyer, writing for the New Yorker (September 16, 1996) and Nick Kotz, writing for the Washingtonian (December 1996) each spent more than half a day with me to make an outline for their respective articles.

I had no objection to being quoted as long as they were verbatim and, as in the case of Bob Timberg, they would check with me prior to publication to ascertain that they were accurate.  I say that because the "break-out quote" in the Washingtonian article on page 109 by Nick Kotz (copy enclosed) was correct but Nick Kotz did not explain the precise circumstances.  What happened was that at Admiral Moorer's 80^th birthday party, I was standing virtually toe to toe with CNO Admiral Frank Kelso and Navy Secretary Garrett when Admiral Charlie Minter came up and said to the assembled group that he had just read about my horses and that I had named one after Tom Moorer.  It was then that I replied, "That's right and my next macho colt will be named "Tailhook" and no one is going to cut his balls off."  In the moment of dead silence that followed, both Kelso and Garrett remained stone-faced and so did I.  Larry Garrett resigned a month later and Frank Kelso found himself the target of the Senate's females until an early retirement.  Had both Frank Kelso and Larry Garrett taken immediate action against the miscreants - both male and female - in the aftermath of the Tailhook Symposium as Jim Webb has maintained, they could have both left their positions in due course with honor along with the plaudits of all the graduates of the "old school."

This story, in the form of a parable, is absolutely true:
Following the incident written about in the preceding paragraph, I registered the name 'Tailhook' with the Jockey Club, used it a month later when my foundation broodmare foaled a colt sired by my stallion, Admiral's Flag, raised him and sent him to be trained at the track.  Unfortunately, he was so unmanageable around the fillies that my trainer, himself a top jockey, wanted me to have him gelded.  I resisted at first because of my vow, but when I observed his actions at the track, changed my mind and agreed to allow the veterinarians to perform what they sometimes refer to as "equine brain surgery."  What I feared would happen, did!  He became a "pussy cat."  In one race in the starting gate, he didn't even want to come out when the doors opened - maybe because he heard them shout "they're off" and was too embarrassed.  We were ready to quit on him after one more race - a claiming race at Laurel going seven furlongs.  Also entered in that race was a horse named Admiral, also sired by Admiral's Flag.  It was the day that the comet was passing overhead and as the horses paraded to the post, the rain came down in torrents.  As expected, Tailhook was last at the quarter, next to last at the half mile but then started to move up approaching the stretch but still seven lengths behind Admiral, who was first.  Then, like a shot, Tailhook started to run, coming down the stretch like gangbusters, catching Admiral at the wire to nose him out for first.  We have no clue as to what made him run like he did.  It might have been the comet, it might have been the fear of losing the good life in Navair Stable.  But the moral of the story may be that Tailhook will knock out an Admiral every time! [Chart of the race enclosed.]

It so happened that a former neighbor of mine who served as the Washington-based vice President for Hughes Aircraft and then General Motors (Hughes) when GM took over, was an inveterate horse player and often entertained his Congressional clients at the track [which included virtually all of the members on appropriations in both Houses of whom he boasted that he "owned a piece of all of them" - and I believe that he did.)  He was there and when we happened t meet some days later, asked if the Tailhook in that race was owned by me.  When I said yes, he revealed that he was there with one of his friends and when they saw the card for the fourth race with the two names, Tailhook and Admiral, both entered they agreed that they couldn't miss by boxing them with one first, the other second and vice versa.  As a result they each walked away with more than a thousand dollars.

I now have four colts either at the track or in training t race this year.  They are all colts ranging from two years to six years in age.  They are well behaved and all have "sire" potential.  So the larger moral of my story is that you "CUT" the ones that do not meet the standards required, while preserving and nurturing those that do, without destroying the family at large.  That is what we failed to do after "Tailhook."

I am enclosing copies of an e-mail message received by Jerry Atkinson and my memo to him regarding it in reply. Please note that the originator of the e-mail to Atkinson is a trustee of the USNA Alumni Association and is pictured with other trustees on page 48 of this year's July/August Shipmate.  Seems like we may have a trustee who has been reading from the text book on 'Critical Theory' and believing it.

Also enclosed is a copy of a letter that I sent to a Mr. Otto Scott who publishes a monthly journal.  His film review of the most recent submarine epic - Jonathan Mostow's "U-571" - it turns out had more than one error in it which I sought to correct. I would far rather write about the halcyon days of the invincible Navy before the advent of the political correct sterility that is so pervasive today.

Best regards, always,

/S/  'Mark'
Clarence A. Hill, Jr.
Rear Admiral, U.S. Navy (Ret.)

Cc:
Admiral Thomas H. Moorer
Vice Admiral Gerald E. Miller
Rear Admiral Ned Hogan
Captain Bob Jones
Dr. Gerald L. Atkinson
Admiral Hank Chiles