ADMIRAL MOORER, GENERAL HAIG AND THE NIXON WHITE HOUSE

by Frederick J. Graboske

None of the recent obituaries of former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) Admiral Thomas Moorer mentioned the most salient event of his tenure: the exposure of a military spy ring within the National Security Council (NSC) staff, operating under his cognizance. The so-called Moorer—Radford affair was a hot topic in the Oval Office for several days, as I know from my experience as supervisory archivist in charge of processing the White House tapes. President Richard Nixon and his closest aides regarded it as a very serious affair. Some historians have likened it to the 1960s novel Seven Days In May.

Before discussing the affair and its implications, I should start by tracing a bit of the history of the NSC. Under President Dwight Eisenhower it served its statutory function as a coordinating agency among the defense, foreign policy, and intelligence communities. It generated endless studies and updated them frequently. During this period the JCS established a liaison staff within the NSC; the liaison staff's presence facilitated the development of the coordinated plans and policies. Starting with the Kennedy administration the NSC staff began to play a larger role in the initiation and even execution of plans and policies. Thus began the politicization of the NSC staff that continues to this day. By politicization I do not mean Republican/Democrat partisanship; rather, this is bureaucratic in-fighting, as between the Departments of State and Defense.

Lt. Gen. Charles Cooper wrote an article several years ago about a meeting between Johnson and the JCS. Cooper was present as an aide to the Marine Commandant, General Wallace Greene. As Cooper describes the events, the Chiefs began their briefing only to be interrupted by Johnson, who told them with considerable vulgarity that they were fools, that he knew more about military policy than they, and that he would tell them how to conduct the war in Vietnam. General Greene confirmed this account in a personal conversation with me.

Johnson's perception of the Chiefs' ineptitude was in large part a result of their inability to agree on a coordinated strategy for Vietnam. In 1964 Air Force Chief of Staff General Curtis LeMay argued, as the Air Force does to this day, that massive bombing would solve the problem. General Greene agreed with LeMay on the need for bombing North Vietnam, but he also argued for the Marines' traditional littoral warfare: seize the coastal population centers and work outward from them. The Army used its World War II experience to argue for large search-and-destroy operations, assuming that the enemy could be forced to engage in pitched battles, in which superior American firepower would prove decisive. Army General Earle Wheeler was the Chairmen during this period, so the Army's policies went into effect, absent any consensus from the JCS. Greene believed that Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and his "whiz kids" preferred to run the war on their own with little reference to the Chiefs' opinions. He was convinced that, if Johnson and McNamara botched the war, they would blame the JCS.

All during this period the JCS maintained their liaison office in the NSC. Increasingly it became a conduit of information from within the NSC to the JCS about Presidential planning that the Chiefs would not otherwise have known. The Chiefs likely gave at least some of this information to Representative Melvin Laird, then the ranking Republican minority member of the House Armed Services Committee. (When later apprised of the Moorer-Radford affair, Laird remarked that something like it had been going on for a long time, leading to my suspicion that he was a recipient of the Chiefs' "take" from the NSC.)

When Admiral Moorer became Chairman of the JCS he quickly replaced the staff of the liaison office (previously Army) with Navy men. Captain Rembrandt Robinson took command. Robinson later was replaced by Rear Admiral Robert Welander, who reported directly to Moorer. Welander was assisted by Yeoman Charles Radford. At this point, if not before, the nature of the information-gathering activities of the liaison office changed to the active systematic gathering of intelligence on White House planning. The reasons for this change probably lay in the way in which Nixon did business.

When elected in 1968, Nixon intended to maintain personal control over what he determined were the major areas of national policy: the war in Vietnam plus relations with China, our major European allies, and the Soviet Union. Foreign policy for other areas of the world was delegated to the Department of State under William Rogers. Laird ran the Defense Department, but Nixon distrusted him and rarely met or talked with him. Richard Helms, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, was anathema to Nixon because of his liberal Ivy-league background. Consequently, all major foreign policy decisions were made by Nixon with the assistance of the NSC staff, headed by Henry Kissinger and his deputy, then-Colonel Alexander Haig.

The consummate Cold Warrior, Nixon pragmatically reversed some of his former policy positions and decided to end the war against communism in Vietnam short of victory, because the South Vietnamese were unreliable allies and because he was unwilling to expand the war against North Vietnam. Expansion would have included attacking the surface-to-air missile (SAM) sites, mining Haiphong harbor and bombing Hanoi and the dykes on the Red River. (Subsequently, when the North Vietnamese proved intransigent in their negotiations, Nixon ordered the mining of Haiphong in May 1972 and the bombing of Hanoi in December of that year.) Nixon used the war in Vietnam as part of the global struggle with communism: Vietnam was to prove his—and the American—commitment to the use of military force when required. He relished the reputation of "Mad Bomber": it proved to the world that he was a strong leader. Nevertheless, he could do little to change the parameters of the war he inherited. Anti-war activists vociferously complained about any increase in the bombing. Attacking the SAM sites ran the risk of killing Soviet or Chinese technicians. Politically it was not possible to call up the reserves and National Guard.

Nixon sought détente with the Soviet Union through the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) negotiations, the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT), and negotiations on the European flash point, Berlin. He sought to open a dialogue with the rulers of mainland China, in part to reduce their support to their supposed clients in North Vietnam and in part to act as a strategic counterweight to the Soviet Union. All of these efforts were secrets from everybody in the government, except for Kissinger and his closest staff. Through Yeoman Radford's efforts, Admiral Moorer knew them all and, by his own account, he didn't like any of it. The Chief of Naval Operations since July 1970, Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, virtually accused Nixon of treason in his book. Leaks of NSC plans and policies to New York Times reporter William Beecher seem to have dropped dramatically after the closing of the JCS liaison office. The military did not like Nixon's policies and may well have played an active role in his fall from power.

How did Yeoman Radford winkle out these secrets? It's in the transcript of the interview of Admiral Welander by David Young, a member of John Ehrlichman's staff, available on the Nixon Era Center website. Welander describes how Radford, as NSC staff support, accompanied Haig on trips, rifling burn bags and even Haig's briefcase for documents. Having received a recommendation from Haig, Radford accompanied Kissinger on some of his secret trips, doing the same thing. Of course, the next stop for the purloined documents was the liaison office, where Robinson/Welander would read the documents and debrief Radford, and forward the most interesting information to Moorer.

When relations between India and Pakistan deteriorated and armed conflict broke out in 1971, Nixon "tilted" toward Pakistan. He didn't like the Indians, with their constant moralistic carping about the war in Vietnam, and he owed a debt to the Pakistanis for facilitating Kissinger's secret trips to China. Yeoman Radford and his wife were sympathetic to the Indians and had personal contacts with Jack Anderson, a political columnist. When Anderson began publishing articles about the "tilt" in December 1971, Nixon was incensed. He ordered Ehrlichman to conduct an investigation to find the leak, believing it to be someone on Kissinger's staff. The investigation quickly led to Radford and, as the scope of his actions became clearer, to Welander and Robinson. Nixon considered, and dismissed, the idea of prosecuting Radford, Robinson, Welander, and Moorer. The liaison office was closed. Radford was re-assigned and kept under surveillance. Robinson returned to his assignment in the Pacific, where he shortly thereafter died in an accident. Welander was re-assigned to the Pentagon by Moorer, who was left undisturbed in his position.

Richard Nixon was a patriot. He believed in mutual loyalty between the Commander-in-Chief and the military. Earlier in his administration he had Kissinger tell Moorer that, as Chairman of the JCS, he was the President's chief military advisor and could talk with him at any time. This was a dig at Laird, Moorer's nominal superior as Secretary of Defense. At no time did Moorer meet alone with Nixon; Kissinger or an NSC staff member would always have been present. At the time the news of the Radford spy ring reached the President, the popularity of the military with the American people was very low. Nixon took no action against Moorer so as not to further tarnish the military's image. The full story of the spy ring was not revealed during Nixon's tenure. Moorer later steadfastly denied to Congress that he was personally involved. In a subsequent interview with author Len Colodny, he admitted having seen some of the "stolen" materials, but said that he had learned nothing new and had returned "the materials to Haig". Nixon, H.R. Haldeman, and Ehrlichman believed from the beginning that Haig had some involvement with the ring, as evidenced by their Oval Office discussions, but they never made any attempt to investigate him.

If Moorer is truthful in saying that he returned the purloined documents to Haig, then Haig had prima facie evidence of the spy ring and he apparently did nothing about it. This is very odd for someone supposedly loyal to the President, a President by whom leaks were considered acts of disloyalty to him and to the nation, a President who had prosecuted Dr. Daniel Ellsberg for leaking the Pentagon Papers. The story of Moorer-Radford raises interesting questions: why did Nixon continue to trust Haig enough to make him chief of staff, and did the military play any role in the downfall of Richard Nixon?

Nixon admired men with strong personalities: John Mitchell, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Haig, Charles Colson, and John Connally. He needed such men around him because he disliked personal confrontation and needed a small coterie around him to carry out his wishes. He made important decisions himself, but he did need the approbation of his intimates. With the departures of Haldeman, Colson, Mitchell, and Ehrlichman in 1973—and the Republican Party's distaste for Connally, an apostate Democrat—Nixon was left with only Haig. The general had been insinuating himself into the President's favor for years, bad-mouthing Kissinger and expressing his strong support for Nixon in the growing Watergate scandal. Nixon had a curious ability to forget distasteful facts, in this case Haig's putative involvement with the spy ring. Richard Nixon placed his future in the hands of a man whose loyalty was not to the President, a man whose key decision in the coming months was not to inform Nixon that Alexander Butterfield was about to reveal the existence of the White House tapes to the Senate Watergate Committee. Haig could have ordered Butterfield to invoke executive privilege or he could have ordered the destruction of the tapes, or he could have asked Nixon's opinion, but he did not. He possibly could have saved Nixon's presidency, but he did not. Nixon had clasped an asp to his breast.

As Nixon noted in his conversations with Haldeman and Ehrlichman, the White House is honey-combed with members of the military services. The after-hours telephone operators were from the Army Signal Corps. Camp David is operated and staffed by the military. The White House drivers and other support staff are military in civilian clothes. Many NSC and other staff members are current or former members of the military. Was "Deep Throat" one of these individuals, or an amalgam of them? Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward formerly (1969-70) had been a Naval briefing officer for the Pentagon; Haig knew him. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that "Deep Throat" was an amalgam of disaffected military officers, in the Pentagon and in the White House. In any event, the questions and possibilities raised by the military spy ring are too important for it to have been ignored completely in Moorer's obituaries.

Frederick J. Graboske served 12 years in the National Archives as supervisory archivist in charge of processing the Nixon tapes. He subsequently served 30 months on the NSC staff. He now is head of the Marine Corps archives.

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