Welcome to mid Rats with sal from Commander Salamander, an Eagle one from Eagle
Speak at Seer Shore your home for a discussion of national security issues and all
things maritime, and welcome aboard everybody. We're glad to have you with us
today for another edition of mid Rats, and because we are alive this week
after being absent for a little bit, I want to remind everybody that if
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the hour, that's a great place to do it. And let's go ahead
and just dive right into the show. Really looking forward today because we're going
to talk about a name that whether you're a new power guy or a submarine
or not, you know the name. There are a few naval leaders that
have had such a legation for so long in the United States Navy, as
Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, and if you talk to, I'm a man
of a certain age, but if you talk to any submarine officer and they're
above their late fifties to sixty, they're probably going to have a personal story
about Admiral Rickover. Are just one person removed from Admiral Rickover, and as
a result, he has developed a certain aura, maybe some of it deserve,
maybe some of it isn't, and a certain reputation in our navy,
and not just about his role in creating the nuclear submarine and the nuclear surface
force that we have today, but a lot of the culture around it.
But there are other parts of the individual, as are anybody else, that
maybe it not be as well known. And we have an opportunity today to
talk to one of the co editors of the primary source, and that's Admiral
Rickover himself. And our guest is no surprise guest to anybody who's been with
us at mid Rats for a while. He is one of our plank owner
guests, Claude Barbee, who with Samuel lemnios Co edited a book that's just
out now and you can find a link to it on the show page called
Rickover Uncensored. Claude, Welcome back. To midrack. Thanks, gentlemen,
I appreciate being back on and for your listeners. If I miss a date
or anything here in the next hour, or I mute myself for just a
second, I'm fighting a head cold, so I may have to sneeze a
coff and I'll try to spare you from that. So thanks for having me
on. Well, like all great naval professionals, you know how to fight
hurt, and we'll start off with an easy one here is always easy when
you're bringing on a book. But I want to add a little twist to
it is I want to ask you just to kick things off and kind of
set the table for everybody. Tell us a little bit about your book.
Last time we had you on, you were talking about your latest novel in
the Connor Stark series of the Philippine Pact. Little point there for the latest
novel. But this is a work of nonfiction, and I know as a
historian and for those that like to read nonfiction, it's really exciting because what
we're working here with is we're working with primary sources. So you didn't author
this book, you co edited it, and it is Admiral Rickover in his
own words from his private paper. So what else can you tell us about
the book, And also tell me listen a little bit how you came to
get access to this body of work. Sure, let's see. The book
itself incorporates the years nineteen twenty nine, when the first letter is available from
this collection, to just about a year before his passing. About ninety five
percent of the documents that were transcribed and are available in the book are his.
There's a few others that I thought were important, things from presidents,
you know, when he was captain and did not promote to admiral. An
interesting short letter from a young Senator Jack Kennedy, who expressed interest. These
documents incorporate his letters to his first wife, Ruth, especially in nineteen thirties.
They include transcriptions of telephone conversations in the nineteen seventies and eighties, and
you could still do such things. They include letters from a lot of it
was fan mail. He was extraordinary at publicity for the Navy. I know
people said that he may have been self serving, but the fact is people
knew the Navy, they knew the nuclear Navy because of Admiral Ricover. There
are some surprising things in there too. You always heard. I mean,
I think since we're all of a certain age of these famous interviews that happened
between Rickover and Mick Shipman, who were designated for the Nuclear Navy, and
the first time I came across a transcript of one of the interviews, I
said, this is no longer just hearsay. And as a historian, certainly
oral histories are important and people remembering, but here was clear evidence of what
he was asking them. And I'd say there's probably about a dozen or so
of from at least in the papers that I saw, So that's and also
memoratave for the record. That's very important because at each major meeting, from
say nineteen fifty two nineteen eighty two or so, after every major meeting,
he's writing a memo of what transpired, who was there, what was said,
and he kept it. Now, there have been about nine books about
Rickover, and they're all good. Each author brings their expertise that's really important.
However, I think the two that are most applicable are the ones by
Francis Duncan, who was who was the official biographer of Admiral Rickover and spent
the most time with him. So there are some notes in there that that
Duncan wrights that I thought were also important to put in there, because then
you start to see what was Francis Duncan thinking when he was writing this,
for example, and in the contract with Francis Duncan, I saw what the
limitations were of what he could and he couldn't write about. Ask so where
did I find this? I should probably I want to mention Sam my co
editor on this verse, because Sam is an incredible young academic scholar. He
was the assistant archivist who at the Naval Academy and he's now with another organization,
and I think he's got some little promise and I wanted I asked Sam
if he would help me out. He so he knows this collection. He's
got a photographic in a great analytical mind. So how did I get to
all these documents? About five six years ago, I was a dinner at
the Army and Navy Club and a gentleman I knew at another cable said,
Hey, Cloud, when you come over here, I want to introduce you
to some people. And among the people at the table was Eleanor Rickover.
So I just sat down and chatted with her for a couple of minutes and
didn't think anything of it. I mean, it was certainly this isn't missus
Ricover. She's legendary as well. And a while later I was I was
called up and say, hey, would you come over to Arlington to meet
with missus Ricover. He said, okay, sure, and she still had
the condo that she shared with the admiral, and so I went there.
Went there a couple of times, and the one of the last times I
was there, we chatted. I asked her about how did you meet the
admiral and he laughed and said, well, I was a Navy nurse at
Bethesda. He was just out of surgery and he had this mess of paper
newspapers all around and I came in and I was so upset. I yelled
at him and told him to clean up his mess and that I would never
clean this up for him again. And he asked me out after that,
uh so, And at the end of the conversation she and set some paperwork.
Would you consider it? I said sure? And it was. She
showed she had shown me what was in the condo that stilled of the admirals
items in the Congressional Gold Medal. This in his rocking chair that he's gotten
because of a recommendation from John Kennedy. There's Rolodex, which is phenomenal.
The Rolodex which not only has the private numbers of politicians, it has the
private numbers to the producer for das Boot for economists by John Kenneth Galbraith and
Milton Friedman. And this is the Archbishops. I mean, it's incredible it's
in there. However, there was there were also these boxes of papers,
and so she said, I want to donate these to the Naval Academy Museum,
and I want you to have them. I was like, okay,
So I accepted them on behalf of the Naval Academy, as is my part
of my job currently. And as soon as I did that, I signed
a memoryanum agreement with the director of the library. I said, the most
appropriate place for these to be is in the Nimit Library Special Collections. And
the reason why is because the museum doesn't have a staff the catalog and provide
research space from researchers for something like this of the scope. So the library
staff was phenomenal and the only reason that this is available to researchers now is
because of the extraordinary efforts that the staff went through and that would all passed
away. A couple of years ago and a few months ago, I got
a call from one of the executives, executives of their estates, that hey,
the family would like you to come up over to Arlington for the internment.
So this was I guess late August, and so I was there.
It was about two dozen people or so, and it was just really very
moving. It's in an older section of Arlington Cemetery, section five, which
is not what you think of when you think of Arlington National Cemetery and the
lines of symmetrical tombstones, et cetera. And I was just happening to look
around at some of the names right around Goldberg, and I see Ginsburg,
Uh, Potter, Stewart, Uh, you know, about a dozen Supreme
Court justices that he was right next to. And it was it was kind
of amusing to me because I said, oh Jesus, he had private numbers
to some of these folks and had conversations with them about the law. Uh
So yeah, that's all I came about it. And Gottonville Eldor a great
lady, really truly wonderful One of the things that struck me in reading through
this Cloud was it he starts out when he was a pretty young man,
and you can you can almost see the well, you can read the maturation
program progress that he made. I mean, he's he's full of uh.
He's a really interesting character. And his first wife, uh, and he
had quite the intellectual symbiosis maybe it's the right word. I mean they were
they were pinging off each other pretty well. Could you talk a little bit
about that relationship and what you see as far as his maturation as time went
on. Absolutely, And I should probably note before that why I decided to
go this route rather than write a biography. I was going through all of
these documents for months, and I said, I've got to figure out what's
the right take on this. And suddenly I came across one of the many
letters that he had received about somebody offering to write his biography. I don't
think most of them knew about Francis Dunk and they may have, I don't
know. And at one point he responds to the person, Look, I've
got plenty of boxes of papers in my apartment, and maybe someday somebody will
write a biography. Based on that, but you're not going to get them.
And I said, you know what, that's it. I need to
let I need to not be a historian here. I can select the things
that i've I think are important, but I want to set the stage for
other people who are going to access these records. So that's why I went
with the edited route of his papers, to let him speak for himself,
because in a lot of ways, Rickover censored himself. People are probably going
to be surprised with that comment, but he was very careful about managing his
image, and that's why he fought so hard against some biographers. As one
biographer, for example, the paperwork goes back to nineteen eighteen sixty four or
sixty three where he says, don't you dare write a biography in me?
Movies that they proposed that Hollywood proposed writing about him, he opposed that.
He was very careful and very scripted. So that's why I call this Rick
Over uncensored, because he's finally able. You're finally able to as the reader,
hear and read what he is saying. That's a great point, Eagle
one about the letters to his first wife, I think one I think those
could be the most important ones. I considered writing a book called the Education
of Hyman G. Rickovers, because when he's a lieutenant and lieutenant commander nineteen
twenty nine and nineteen forty, he has a daily correspondence with Ruth, his
first wife. He didn't see her as an equal. He saw her as
her his intellectual superior. She had a doctorate in international relations, he had
met her at Columbia, had incredible respect for And as you're reading these letters,
yeah, there's part of the letters that say, I'll give you an
example of one. This is rick Over writing to Ruth. There is more
genuine kindness in this world than I ever believed possible. Wherever you have been
there you have created a desire to be kindly and considerate and tender. This
kindness and love which is being showered upon me moves me as nothing has ever
moved me before. Okay, it goes on, and this is like almost
every letter, but you get a sense now that there's more to the man
than what we know of as simply the father of the nuclear name or the
acerbic individual, that the person who had ultimate power in the navy. But
in these letters he's also describing what's happening on the ship or the sub And
I think especially at the point where he's in Shanghai as commander of a ship
as he's watching the Japanese come in for their war against China, these are
incredibly important first hand accounts. So I think about the first quarter or first
third of the book is includes his letters to Ruth because I thought they were
so important in his intellectual development. He's talking about the plays he's seeing,
the operas he's seeing, he's examining poetry, he's picking apart some of the
most difficult Russian books. He's explaining to her that, you know, I'm
learning this German language, you know, for a couple of reasons, not
the least of which is I want to translate this German officer's book on U
boats. But also Ruth, that wasn't her name, and he was very
protective of her. I think the reason why her birth name was Oga Howe
and her father had committed a murder in Germany and it became the basis for
the how Riots of nineteen well, shoot, it was nineteen oh three,
nineteen oh seven, I think it was nineteen oh seven. Oh, So,
Rico, thanks Rick over was very, very protective of the loop.
And now there are gaps, and I think the most important gap in the
collection is forty one to forty early forty five, where you don't see much.
Now, it's possible he didn't write much because he was so busy with
war. It's possible that he simply removed those I don't know. Yeah,
that's one thing that caught me early on in reading that, because like most
people before I read this, I had the image of Rick Over the nuclear
engineer and all the still that I heard as a midship and in a jo
from from my superiors that it had known him and his closet rather personally,
and it really opened And I'm sure during the course of the show we'll we'll
touch a little bit on the Renaissance nature. But the letters, especially to
Ruth that he had, it reminded me, and I agree with you about
her and her relationship. It reminded me in some ways about John and Abigail
Adams, where the great man was only great in many ways because of the
woman that he decided to marry and to make his life partner and for as
long as as long as she lived, and it it opened up I think
for later on, as as he develops as a as a man and as
an officer, whereby reading that really that great gift of that personal relationship there,
it lets you see him in a much more nuanced manner than you otherwise
would with just this post. You know, this post World War two view
that everybody has a brickover absolutely. In fact, when Ruth passes, he's
writing to some of his own friends from the academy or for other ships,
his closest friends, and he says, I never would have been the man
today had it not been for Ruth. And I think he was right.
Ruth challenged him mentally and the back and forth on these letters. And I
only included a couple of Rooth's letters. I wish they had been one of
them more. But I think as historians were realized, there are probably eight
to ten more books that could be written out of this collection. I think
there could be a great book about Ruth. Yeah, I think another connection
they had, and I guess nobody here is a pop psychiatrist. But I
thought what was also interesting what you mentioned is Ruth's name that she had with
her in the US was not her born name. And though Admiral Rickover's last
name was Rickover. That was not Hymen, was not his given name.
It was heim Gala David I can't pronounce the middle name. Born in Poland,
and he was appointed to the Naval Academy from I believe it was a
representative from Chicago that was also Jewish in the right after World War Two,
which for those that study their American history that the nineteen the period between World
War One and World War two was not the best time in the world to
be Jewish, especially a Jewish immigrant from Poland, and that always in some
way set him apart, while at the same time he strived so much to
be as institutional an American as you can. It's harder, I think,
to be that than to go to one of the service academies. And when
you absorbed that early on, I think it informs a little bit of his
his toughness, but also his ability to rely on himself and not so much
what most people will consider normal social networking institutions. Caued you there. Oh,
it's trying about that, all right. You know, Ricover is sorry,
Ricover is the American successfully you'd great to point out Poland, he accounts
how he left Poland his mother and his sister. His father was already in
the United States, and there are Cossacks coming back from the war with Japan
that are, you know, tapping on their cart as he's going over there.
He talks about the poverty that his mother could only afford to buy two
oranges a year for them, and only on a special occasion. And I
think that stuck with him throughout because again, another aspect of rickover that I
was surprised about was his compassion, his deep compassion, especially for the poor.
You see this on the streets of Shanghai where he's telling Ruth. I
saw this man, I'm pretty sure he was dying. I stayed with him
as long as I could. I gave him some points to be able to
buy something for himself, and throughout his life he's donating to a lot of
charities, especially for children. And that's not something I think people would expect.
But again, people are far more complex generally than just summing them up
in a few words or a few sentences. I think the most powerful letters
I came across that really made me stop to sing. In nineteen eighty two,
he received a letter from a young kid from San Francisco, nine year
old. His first name was Hymen. He's Jewish, and he wrote,
as many people from around the world wrote to Rick Olberg, just fan mail
and again, try to imagine any flag officer in American history or today getting
thousands of pieces of fan mail every year. And the nine year old says,
my mom told me that your name is tim to two and that you
build ships, and do you get angry when people make fun of your name?
And hit about a page of this. Rick Over didn't always respond to
people, but in this way he did this time, and he said,
let me explain to you how this name came about in our faith, even
though rick Overley Leader admit he was atheist and became Episcopalian for the roof.
And it's just this very compassionate letter. But then it hit me. I
had seen so many letters written by Ricover that were signed HG. Rickover.
This was the only one I could find that was signed Hyman G. Rickover.
And I think he was trying to connect with that young I wish I
could find that young man. I've actually tried to do a few searches to
see, you know, what impact did that letter have? On me,
but I haven't been successful. Yeah, I think is compassion comes through.
But it also what comes through in his letters is once he seizes on a
project, whatever it is, he pursues it with an amazing amount of diligence.
And I you know, as you go along, you realize that this
is why he's so intolerant of people who waste their talent. So talk about
that a little bit. He had high standards, but he sacrificed a lot
of his life. He again, by his own account, throughout his navy
career, he only averaged four and a half days of vacation per year.
I don't know how he operated on that way, but the fact is he's
writing a lot of speeches about his thoughts on life. He brought something like
two hundred speeches on various subjects, a lot of on education, a lot
on national security. But he really came to the basis that without having a
vocation, that you're truly passionate about what effect are you going to have?
How are you going to be able to work that at what you're doing,
whatever it is, And you can distinguish between the nuclear physicist and the barber
or whomever he wanted people to get their jobs right because they understood that they
had a mission. And I think what he sacrificed was a lot of time
with people that need, you know, a lot of friendships. He had
a few friends obviously, but he got to know members of Congress very well,
and he tended throughout his career to do something that admirals don't do today.
In fact, I asked the retired four star admiral about this. I
said, he Sarah, got to ask you, did you and your wife
ever go to, say, a play in DC with a senator and his
wife? He said, are you kidding me? We could never do that.
I said, okay, just want to just want to make sure.
But time and again Rickover and his wives first and second are doing this or
they're going to the Speaker of the House's home where the Speaker of the House
is playing the piano. For Rickover, work was his life because he believed
in the mission of the Navy and the United States and how he was committed
to it. And I think he accepted those sacrifices as a result of what
he wanted to do. And that's I think very understandable and I think,
quite frankly, if ric Overhead retired on his own in November nineteen eighty at
the height of his power. When Jimmy Carter, I think Jimmy Carter was
defeated. I think ric a lot of the negative notions about rick Over would
have been mitigated. The reason I say that is, well, maybe we
can. We can talk about another time. But I think, sorry,
I must be the antibiotics or whatever the heucts. I'm taken. I lost
my train of thought. Sorry about that. That's okay with him, that's
the first time. Yeah, we can, we can re engage with the
with the post eighties here here in a bit. Oh, that's go ahead,
I got it. Sorry about that. I think what pained him so
much by being forcibly removed in late eighty one early eighty two is he had
such passion. It wasn't about I don't think it was about power. This
was his life's mission, and he had done it for so long he didn't
know what was next. That is my impression. Again, I'm not a
psychologist. I'm a simple historian. But after reading everything I have about Rickover
and buy Ricover that's my assessment. I could be wrong, and I hope
historians will have a different perspective on them. And I can imagine as a
historian being able to access somebody who was passionately and goodness knows, he could
outwork almost anybody for over half a century. I think that's also rather unique,
as opposed to somebody who just put twenty or thirty years in and when
you look at him, an incredibly intelligent person who got to where he was
not because of like one of the people he mentions in one of his letters,
because of his the money his uncle had or anything like that, but
of his own hard work. He went to the Naval Academy I think it
was nineteen forty six. He went to MIT to be one of the first
people to learn about nuclear power. Yet he was not a credentialist. He
did not wear his academic background or judge other people like that. And there
was a in one of his letters to I believe it was Ruth in nineteen
thirty this is something that I found. I wish more and more people thought
like this. I'm gonna do a little bit of extended quote from adamal Rick
Kobert here quote I am becoming more tolerant of these men who have no book
education, they are more likely to make decisions and can see matters cleary,
I mean intelligent men. Of course. The thing that shocks me is all
these officers who represent the younger generation already have closed minds from purely professional subjects.
They are dead mentally. Certainly, there is something woefully wrong with our
system of education which brings about a condition such as this ut And you can
see that a few times in his letters where he seems very frustrated by the
people around him, like a lot of people like that don't share his enthusiasm
for the broader requirements of the profession, or that are willing to make the
effort to think beyond the immediate. That part of his personality really comes out
real early on as a junior officer. Yeah, I agree. He throughout
his career he's making comments about the elites, and those could be the elites
of the Navy, it could be the elites of corporations, of those who
had, you know, extraordinary backgrounds and their family connections. I think he
trusted that he really was more of a humanities person when you think about it,
than a technologist. He wanted to understand can these individuals think? And
I want to say something else about, you know, the people around him.
This is something else I started seeing. I started seeing the same names
and actually the nicknames of his staff. He's joking around with his staff in
a great way. There's some great memos in there that he's sending to them
and to other people, and there's a continuity to it. There are people
who are staying with him for twenty thirty years. All right. Rickover was
a difficult individual, no question, but he also engendered loyalty from people.
And I think that's the next step maybe that your storian should take, is
what was the difference between these populations. Why were some so incredibly loyal to
him that they stayed around their entire careers working for the man. And I
think they saw what he was doing, and at his heart he was doing
the right thing, and he didn't took care of folks. I mean,
there's one young lieutenant that he knows. Lieutenant is moving out to the West
Coast, I believe it was. And he said he here's a few thousand
dollars still by yourself the house. Pay me back over the next five years.
Okay. I want you and your wife to be okay, not have
to worry about anything. And again, these are these are the things that
people don't see. In fact, the first letter I came across that is
in the files, the earliest letter, and I wish they went back to
his naval academy days of nineteen eighteen and nineteen twenty two. But he's at
the US Naval Hospital in Brooklyn, and he writes to Ruth. In the
next room, a young officer is dying. His bride of six months has
just arrived from California. I can see that a brief period of happiness now
about to become nothing but a sad, sweet memory. How terrible it is,
bright hopes of being shattered, What poignant sorrow there is. And I
think that's what initially drew me into this collection, is this was not an
automaton. This was not a technologist, This isn't This is a man of
passion. Perhaps he was able to hide it sometimes better than other times.
I guess we all do that, but really very complex. And I what
I hope is that when people read this in its entirety, they'll understand that.
And there's actually reason why I didn't put the index in the in the
book, there's something called the Washington read where people in Washington, d C.
Will automatically go to the index of the book to see if they're in
it or their bosses in it. And for this time, I figured,
Okay, so it's going to be on Kendo, which I believe it's up
now. It's available at Barntonoble and Amazon. People can search on kind.
But I really truly wanted people to see from beginning to end what the Smith
and I think Eagle One hit on it is. You see this evolution of
Rickover, who was the man in the seventies and eighties hot eighties. How
did he get there? What was he thinking about? And you get a
lot of answers by seeing the first couple of decades. You see somebody who
is writing a memo to the Office of Legislative Affairs in I think nineteen fifty
or fifty one, and you can tell he's nervous writing this memo to OLA
because I don't know what to do. I was just contacted by a Senator's
office should I what do I do? And I laughed out loud at one
point, and fam who was working there at the time, heard me laugh,
as he did many times, and I said that's extraordinary because later on
you start to see these letters where a congressman goes to Rickover because he can't
get access to this. I think it was the House Appropriations Chair because he
act that the chair isn't seeing anybody, and I was told to come see
you because you might be able to help. So Rickover calls the House Approach
Chair on his personally and says, hey, can you see Congressman so and
so. He said, yeah, no problem, rick, I'll take care
of it. Boem. And it's that kind of evolution of how impactful he
was. And again we will not see his kind again for a couple of
reasons. Number one, granted, and our nuclear raptors is what six I
think it's a six year billet. Now forgive me. I'm not a nuke.
I was a simple intel dude. But Rickover had decades, and he
established relationships directly with members of Congress and policymakers and presidents. At one point,
he's having an event and three former presidents show up. So I think
what's important is I don't think and I don't know this. I don't think
we could have gotten the nuclear program up as quickly or as safely or with
as much support from Congress. If it hadn't been for Rickover. I know
that it was a contrahistory or counterhistory, but it's tough to imagine something like
that happening. If you know, what if Washington had hadn't crossed the Delaware
or something. What if it hadn't been Ricover? What if he as a
captain. In fact, Ricover says this that writes this at one point.
I think it was in the seventies, he says, you know always because
he's talking about this memo that he gets from insiders. He said, you
know, Rick, this is I just want to let you know. All
the admirals met over in Monterey last week and they said the biggest problem the
mayby has is and everything it's Rickover. And he laughs and he says,
you know they what they don't realize is Millington or US. I wasn't anoying
at the time, but it was a few person in DC. All few
person had to do in nineteen fifty one or fifty two is assigned me a
glomb or some other place, and they never would have heard from me again.
But instead I had access and learned that access from the British. In
fact, he develops very strong relationship with Lord Mountbatten. They have a correspondence
going on for about twenty years. In fact, Count Baton I asked Eleanor
about this when she was talking about one story, and I confirmed it in
the papers that mount Batton had off. Mount Baton had Eleanor and Rick over
for dinner and rickover comes storming out of the salon or something to Eleanor and
she says, what's wrong. He goes, he should know me better than
that. He just offered me a knighthood in exchange for nuclear information or agreements.
And he says, I guess you're not going to be a lady now.
She goes, oh, I'll always be a lady. So those relationships
were very important to Rick over here and overseas and to the Navy. Yeah.
I can't remember the exact quote from the book, but the lot but
when he got the assignment too had to get into the nuclear business. Uh.
The quote was something like, well, nobody likes him. He's a
he's a he's he's a you know, an awful human being, but he'll
get the job done. And I'm thinking, you know that is that is
the problem with and I think he pointed out, this is the problem that
the good old boy, you know, I'll do enough to get things over.
I'll keep this job for three years and move on. His view was
completely opposite that. And all he wanted to do was get the job done,
and he was going to understand the job. He wanted to be in
the job long enough to get a good grip on it, and and he
wanted his you know, his people to be on the job long enough to
get a good grip with it. He really, he really was lambasting the
the Navy system of putting some uh, you know, ridiculous line officer like
me and charge a bunch of technical people and leaving him there for a year
and a half or two years and moving on to some other position. I
mean, he was he was quite at about knowing your job and knowing your
people and knowing what they're up to. Yeah, and that was part of
his interviews. Now, I should say in the around sixty three or sixty
four, there was a letter from the CNO that said, Hey, Rick,
I'm gonna be retiring here in a few weeks. And you know,
loved work with you all this time. And by the way this interview thing,
would you kind of ease up on the kids? Please just for me,
please do this? And of course the interviews went on for a while,
but one of the certainly probably the most famous person to come out of
those interviews was Jimmy Carter, who we established a relationship, especially in the
nineteen seventies, because when he interviewed Carter, he said, did you do
your best? And Carter said, well, not always. He says,
why not the best? And so Carter took that on as his campaign's logan,
why not the best? And early on, and I think Carter was
still government at the time. This is what seventy and you two or seventy
three was really early, and Carter wrote to him and said, Admiral,
I just want to let you know I'm running. I plan on running for
president and seventy six I would like your support. I'd like to ask you
about national security issues. And so begins a correspondence between the two to the
point where Rickover could call the White House and say, I could I talk
to the President? Could I go see the President? I'm sure to the
consternation of every Navy officer at that point, but at one point, Rickover's
in his condo and there's a knock on the door, and Eleanor had put
out I think it was seven Oh, no, it was five. I
think it was five plates. He says, well, who's coming over tonight,
and said, oh, I just invited a couple of people. And
there's a knock on the door and he opens it up and it's President Carter
and his wife and Amy and a couple of Secret Service agents and he looks
over. Eleanor said, I wasn't expecting this. Well, the nice thing
about this collection is we know everything that was discussed at that dinner because rick
Over wrote a memorandum for the Record that was about I think eight pages long,
and all I could think of was this that apparently Eleanor and Missus Carter
had been on a trip and Eleanor had said, why don't you come over
to dinner sometimes? So the two of them concocted this, and I thought
the intent, I assume the intent was let's just have a nice evening,
relaxing. Well, when you start to see this memorandum for the Record and
all the topics that covering that are really being covered by rick Over talking,
I can't imagine what that that dinner must have been like. But it's just
one of those stories where he has this incredible relationship with people, and I
think that's, you know, one of the lessons that you know, hopefully
younger people of an interest we'll get out of this. And you know,
it's one thing that I think I've mentioned on the show before that I never
cried the code of I wish I had until I was like a mid grade
oh four is the importance of networks, not glad handing, you know,
kiss up, push down, but just as you go through your professional career,
maintaining a connection of acquaintances and friends and nurturing that and maintain that because
not only does it make for a more enjoyable, richer life, but there
can be points down the road where you can tap into that network. And
when you mentioned the Carter story, I was like, he was right after
World War Two exactly A Carter graduated from the Naval Academy in forty six and
then he went into you know, did her his naval So sometime in the
early nineteen fifties was when he had his initial interaction with Rickover and then lo
and behold a couple of decades later, that connection gets reached back and it
goes on for another decade and a half. I thought, I thought there
was a really sweet note towards the end in the mid eighties that President Carter
sent to Rickover after he had gone through all his travails, and you can
I think a lot of that comes from the fact. And I want to
because it's we had the full hour. I could do extended quotes from the
book here. I wanted to tie together a few things, so correct me
if I'm scrolling as I scroll through here that goes back to nineteen twenty nine.
Now nineteen twenty nine. Ricover is only thirty years old. He's kind
of an old soul. Early and in this letter to Ruth in September nineteen
twenty nine, as a thirty year old beginning to quote, I met an
interesting officer at the country club near Westinghouse, Captain Mcattee. We talked for
quite a while about world affairs. He recommended that I read das Capital.
One statement he made was surprising that a man on the New York Times staff
who writes the naval editorials is a retired British naval officer. If you can
vary up this. That would be a fine point to make in one of
your seminars. I'll break from quote again that talks about how they communicated about
their mutual professional activities. Anyway, returning to the quote, I find that
I am always very much at ease in conversing with older officers because they generally
talk about international affairs and cultural subjects. The younger ones are not that way.
They talk more petty matters and various technical details. Captain McAtee quoted Eddington
the physicist is saying that a man has to mind but half open, who
believes only those things that are true which he can actually see and hear,
that there is a great deal more that must be accepted on faith. And
then a little later on, if I shift over here a few pages,
if I can do this confidently, he also talks about tolerance, going back
to that level of tolerance, and this is in late twenty nine, so
he's still a thirty year old officer here. My own experience has taught me
that if I had been judged according to the strict interpretation of the law our
naval regulations, that I would have been court martialed more times than I can
count. Therefore, I have learned to be tolerant of transgressions of those about
me, and treat my subordinates as leniently and decently as I myself have been
treated. And then we go all the way over to I think that's page
eighty six. I can't be tolerant of me as I scroll around my kindle.
Here here we go. This is in thirty five thirty five year old
man. Quote, by the way, we have last learned why we are
This is the cynical part of it, which is great. Go back to
the quote, quote, by the way, we have learned that we are
here to celebrate. It is one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Commodore Perry's retirement
for the Navy. Now isn't that a wonderful excuse for dragging a number of
warships all the way to San Francisco? For I understand he was about to
be Corp Marshall, so he conveniently retired, And you have this later on.
He wasn't very good culture critic. He before they made the movie,
he got the book Gone with the Wind that he recommended and then said,
I don't think this book will last very long he wasn't too oppressed with it,
and that he quotes another book that I don't recall about reconstruction, but
now I want to read it. So he also and I believe nineteen thirty
six he recommended that I believe I had this right. He had just finished
mind comp and was sending mind coomp to Ruth to read, and they talked
a lot about German, and they communicated in German on ready the basis.
So this is not the hyper technical, grumpy engineer who was just focused on
things nuclear and making sure that everything was gone by it by a checklist.
This was a learned man who understood a whole variety of subjects that he cared
about deeply. Though he did really have what we have nowadays call a stem
bias and how he viewed the proper education of a naval officer. Yeah,
and I think you see that reflected in as sorry about that, that's my
dog. I think you see that reflected in the topics of his speeches on
say, competency based education or humanity, humanity and technology. But even of
the two hundred plus hearings at which he testified between nineteen fifty and nineteen eighty
two, which I think is a record that will stand for any American.
I don't know if anybody who's done that much. But when you look at
the variety of committees, Yeah, there's the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy Arm
Services, but then Committee on Labor, Committee on Banking, Committee on Labor
and Public Welfare, et Center, a small select Committee on small Business.
Rickover is everywhere. And certainly some of the admirals were saying, you know,
he's in our lane. Get him out of our lane, because he
doesn't know our lane. I would argue that he probably because of the amount
that he read and absorbed and he thought about. Because his books that we
got that we sent over to the library are all marked up, the articles
that he read are all marked up. He's thinking about this and commenting to
hisself, so he could understand these issues in a way. That's why he
could call these people like Milton Friedman and have a conversation about, you know,
economics. He could talk to the Chief Justice at a party about a
certain a certain case that had just come up, because he delved into it
in a way nobody else did. And again, maybe I'm sounding hagiographic.
I don't mean to sound that way. But I think again what I said
at the beginning is rick was far more complex than the two or three bullets
we normally hear about him. And even when Francis Duncan is writing his biography
the first he did two books. When he's writing his biography, he's interviewing
people and he collects about three pages and he just goes to and says,
what's the first word that comes to your mind when you think of Rick Over?
And there's a lot of negative things in that, but you know what,
there's a lot of positive things in there too, So I think it's
very dependent, and I think that's why you need to understand the whole individual
and his whole career rather than just his being a cerbic with reporters or the
people that he interviewed. Yeah, I was talking with my wife on the
way down to Virginia Beach or where we were. I was talking about one
of the things, the advantages you want to call it, that that Rickover
had is that he had fewer distract and to deal with than we do today.
There was no television, radio was kind of in its infancy, so
he you know, what do smart people do when you don't have radio or
television and are interested in the world. You know, in those days,
you read and I think that really set the pattern for his life. He
would get into our subject. If he wanted to study about economics, he
would, he would, you know, get into economics. They didn't uh
mess around with with the distractions. In fact, he was very critical the
Naval Naval Academy's efforts at athletic supremacy. He didn't think that that that that
shouldn't even be a part of the academy program, although he was in favor,
I guess of intermural athletics. But it's just interesting to me that you
know, the focus he had and how he how he kept pursuing this stuff,
and and you know, you keep wondering about the the the the the
number of efforts to get him fired made by uh set deaths and Secretary of
the Navy. And only have have the people who knew him, a lot
of these congressmen and others and respected him, save him and promote him.
And I'm sure that just didn't endear him to every CNO and and uh uh
Secretary of the Navy that came along. Talk a little bit about how his
how his termed life review was was. I mean, we already talked about
he laid the foundation for his termal life, he worked hard to get there,
but we talk a little bit about the people who really disliked him and
how much of that was based on the power that he actually, uh was
able to maybe unintentionally, but that he didn't seek power, but that he
had a lot of power. Uh, he did. I think the key
one is the is that Monterey meeting of the flag officers that said, yeah,
he's he's uh, the biggest problem we have in the Navy, but
he's got Congress on his side, so we just have to deal with him.
But to get back to a point about athletics, Yeah, he actually
makes a lot of comments about that. He's one of the comments he makes
to an efficient biographer is, uh, you know the biograph saying you know
what contributed most of your successes is well, while I was studying, the
other officers were playing golf. And that's the difference. He certainly didn't have
love for, you know, some of the athletic programs because it took away
from the mission of what the Navy was supposed to do. So yeah,
he didn't endear himself with some people, and that goes to organizations as well.
Yeah, yeah, I think the yeah that he wasn't a raw,
raw Naval Academy graduate where it couldn't do no wrong. I think he was
as as critical and blunt and upfront with the expectations he had of the institutions
that he deemed were important or should be important as he was with himself.
So I guess it's it's fair in the reading that he affected no more of
other people he didn't expect of himself. And you see that arc too,
and something that every naval person is familiar with in the US, and especially
those who spend way too much time in DC buffed into all the time,
and that's the US Naval Institute and Proceedings. And the first time that we
see it mentioned in the letters is again a letter in Ruth in nineteen thirty
five where Proceedings was still paying authors. And let's see I did write that
in my notes here. I think it was an article quote on international law
in the Submarine in nineteen thirty five. It must have been after he got
through reading his German where he was happy that he got money in the mail
because they didn't pay naval officers all that much during the height of the depression.
But then again, the wealth of information we have half a century fifty
years later. By the time we reached the mid eighties, he has gone
through a comp arc of his feelings towards and his expectations of the Naval Institute
and proceedings. It's a really interesting arc about not only the person but the
institution as well. Yeah, what I thought was interesting, And of course,
you know, the Institute is always touting that Rick Over wrote for them
as as a junior officer. However, when you're reading these letters and he's
writing to and from Ruth again, he really keep in mind that this article
was probably either co written or certainly highly influenced by Ruth because they started writing
about this topic about five years before the articles published, so this is a
long term thing, and she had more expertise in international relations obviously. But
the only thing he really mentions when it's publishes, Oh, I got my
check from the Institute and that's it. It's not like, hey, I
was published by the Naval Institute. Didn't matter to him. And then Ruth
makes a comment, well, I read who I read the article? That
won the General Essay, and it seems like they're just like three things you
have to do, talk in some you know, keywords, and talk about
a big navy and something else, and then they dismiss it. And then
in the fifties and sixties and seventies and eighties you start to see more of
his letters to and from the Naval Institute, and at one point he resigns,
then joins up again. He is displeased with the content that's being provided.
He's he's pretty harsh. In fact, he writes to the one of
the cnos like, why is the Naval publishing leadership articles by people who are
lieutenant AG's and lieutenants? What do they know? Shouldn't we have business leaders
or admirals writing about this? So he's pretty critical, and in fact maybe
it was the Vice Chief. It was the Vice chief at that point said
you know what, you're right, they shouldn't be doing that. But of
course it continued. So, yeah, there's a lengthier history with the Naval
Institute and Rickover. But again it hasn't some of the stuff hasn't come out.
You know. It's the same when they talk about how Prebble Hall the
Naval Kedemuseum was built by Naval Institute, and it's it's far more complex,
and it's a story for another day, but it's not it's really not true.
They provided a portion, but there's a reason they provided that because anyway,
I'll leave it at that. So, yeah, but it's just one
organization, and yeah, you could be critical of a lot of organizations because
he expected better of everybody, including himself. He did not expect anything of
anybody, whether it was working harder, learning more. And going back to
your comment Eagle one, you know, certainly there were there was TV in
the fifties, sixties and seventies, but I didn't see much indication that Rickover
watched television much until he was really retired around eighty two eighty three. Before
but before that, it's all it's all books. He's absorbing information at an
incredible rate. I don't think I've ever seen evidence of a flag officer or
any other officer as prolific in their reading as as rick Over. Yeah,
I think he was. He was. So you know, one of the
one of the interviews in the in the book is the one where he's talking
to the young midshipman. I guess who majored in English literature? And and
he asked this this young man, uh, you know, who are your
favorite poets? And you know, he lists a number of names, and
then they started asking questions about this bos and this kid knows nothing, you
know, I mean, he couldn't remember the dates, you didn't know what,
you know, who wrote, who wrote on a Grecian arth. It
was it was you know, what what what? What education did this kid
have? And how ared he apply to himself if he if he didn't know
somebody? And rick Over was not looking for people to memorize stuff, but
he did think that if he had studied English literature, how to know something
about English literature? And I thought that was just that was just perfect.
That was one of those those one of those great questions and interviews that so
it was a good point. Yeah. Certain Also he also, yeah,
I also hated administrators. I mean just the concept of people being in charge
of people who who administrated I guess, I mean there's a he was really
gone off on this in one of his speeches, and you know that there's
a whole unnecessary layer of the bodies and the way of getting things done to
kind of talk about that a little bit. Sorry, even when you broke
off the bodies the body, Yeah, the bodies of administrators who've got in
the way of actually accomplishing or anything. I you know, I know,
we don't have a lot of time left both. I will say this regarding
all the administrators. There was the Night of the Long Eyes and Rick Over
lost his power in eighty one eighty two. And this was told to me
actually by a vice admiral who was one of his contemporaries. He's still alive,
class of nineteen fifty and he was a vice admiral during Carter's administration,
and he said, you know, Claude, I think his biggest problem was
once the members of Congress and senators who started either losing their elections or dying
because they were older by then, he didn't have as much power on Capitol
Hill. And would that I'll use your term, the administrators could move in
for the kill. And that's what I think. People have long memories and
they seize that opportunity. Yeah, power can be ethereal at this when you
lose your access to people in influence. Those that are still around that don't
wish you well, they can they can always be always be very careful around
long dwel bureaucrats. It's a good rule to use. As we're getting near
the top of the hour, Claude, I wanted to pull out one part
from towards the end of the collection. This is from nineteen eighty three,
and ironically it takes place right after what we were talking about a few minutes
ago about the Lieutenant Jgs telling everybody how to be a great leader. It
was a conversation with Admiral Watkins. This is a phone conversation the transcript of
it that was put in later and right after say how ludicrous what that was?
Admiral Watkins asked him, quote how was your trip to China? And
Rick Over responded, and again this is nineteen eighty three, and I'll just
break in here. You know, there's been a lot of people in the
last five ten years and all of a sudden sobered up about the People's Republic
of China and their navy, and a lot of us, a lot of
the people who are one, two three star animals right now, senior captains.
We all grew up hearing about how primitive it was, and oh,
all these people are surprised. They should not have been surprised because it was
well known. And Rickover is one of those people that tried to warn people.
And again this is January of nineteen eighty three, Rickover responding to Watkin
about his recent trip to the People's Republic of China. Rickover, it was
well, I was well received there. Don't kid yourself about their navy.
They are first rate and anyone who thinks otherwise should be aware. Their ships
are among the cleanest I've ever seen, Watkins surprise Watson. Watkins replied,
quote absolutely, although their ships are predominantly old, there's sailors are superb.
They are standing seafarers. And I agree that anyone who puts their navy down
does not know the facts. End quote. And I think that that was
just a great eye opener to people who when they read that, they should
back up and go Okay. If two of the most powerful and influential people
in the navy knew this about the People's Republic of China, and if you
track your economic growth from maybe three to now, you can have a rough
corollary to the military. Why did that not sink in earlier? And there's
people who I'm sure can get their PhDs on that as well. I thought
that was a neat Easter egg to see. And this is Rick Over,
somebody who at that point had forty five years to look at China because as
a as the CEO of a small ship in the late nineteen thirties, he
was right there in the heart of the growing conflict between China and Japan.
And I think thirty six through thirty eight. Yeah, definitely, he was
there mostly in thirty seven and I think part of thirty eight as he's watching
this and any treks across part of Asia to sensibly meet up with the roots.
He wasn't able to meet up with her, I think in India was
but he writes a very lengthy assessment about his route and sends it to the
Office of Naval Intelligence and a copy is in this. He'd made a great
intelligence officer. He was. He was in Israel and Egypt in the seventies
and early eighties, so he's being given, uh, you know, the
red carpet treatment to everybody. At one point he's over in the Soviet Union
with Vice President Nixon. That's how they established their relationship. During the Eisenhower
administration and they're talking back and forth. He remember when we were on this
ship and you ask this question, and well we've we've eaten up the hour.
This is this book. I think many people will be surprised by,
as you said, the human side of Ricover, because most people, including
my generation of naval officers, knew only the cantankerous reputation. And with you
ever and Marryland Naval ship Guard, when he was going to make an appearance
that the the recover is coming, recover is coming, you know, like
like some fearsome giant. And he is a fearsome giant in a lot of
ways because he led this country into a into a the leading position of the
enterprise that he was in charge of. And you can't say more than that
for a for a for a man who work as hard as he did,
it was a great job. Anyway, I think this book is is a
brilliant addition to the to the Ricover story and I hope it to hope it
does very well. Thanks thanks for being with us today, Claud. Thanks
guys, I appreciate it, and again thanks Claud for coming on and joining
us. And I think you're exactly right. The there are five or six
books that are are in this collection for for future people to be able to
grab hold of and run with. And the resources and the work that the
archivist and the library has done that you mentioned at the start of the show.
I think is going to pay dividends for a long time. And personally,
I would love to see they did it. They did a young Indiana
Jones, how about a young Hymen and Ruth from his time when he turned
over command in thirty seven in China to the world before the war. I'd
watched that movie. But I wish you the best of the holiday season,
Claude, and we look forward to having you on again sooner more than later.
Thanks and thank you everybody for joining us for another edition in mid rats,
and until next time, I hope everybody has a great Navy Day.
Cheers. Mike wants to marry me and leave us. Friend, be comily
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