Hyman G. Rickover - Forced Retirement

Forced Retirement

By the late 1970s, Rickover's position seemed stronger than it had ever been. He had survived more than two decades of attempts by the Navy brass to force him into retirement — including being made to work out of a converted ladies room and being passed over twice for promotion. Over many years, powerful friends on both the House and Senate Armed Services Committees ensured that he remained on active duty long after most other admirals had retired from their second careers.

But on January 31, 1982, in his 80's, and after 63 years of service to his country under 13 presidents (Woodrow Wilson through Ronald Reagan), Rickover was forced to retire from the Navy as a full admiral by Secretary of the Navy John Lehman, with the knowledge and consent of President Reagan. This was done in a premeditated fashion. As Lehman, a reservist naval aviator while serving as Secretary of the Navy, put it in his book, Command of the Seas:

ne of my first orders of business as secretary of the navy would be to solve ... the Rickover problem. Rickover's legendary achievements were in the past. His present viselike grip on much of the navy was doing it much 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.

Fitting to the end of the decades-long reign and reputation of Rickover, his career concluded in both a battle with the defense establishment and a coming-to-terms with his own human limitations.

In the early 1980s, structural welding flaws — whose nature and existence had been covered up by falsified inspection records — led to significant delays and expenses in the delivery of several submarines being built at the General Dynamics Electric Boat Division shipyard. In some cases the repairs resulted in practically dismantling and then rebuilding what had been a nearly-completed submarine. While the yard tried to pass the vast cost overruns directly onto the Navy, Rickover fought Electric Boat's general manager, P. Takis Veliotis, tooth and nail at every possible turn, demanding that the yard make good on its shoddy workmanship.

Although the Navy eventually settled with General Dynamics in 1981, paying out $634 million of $843 million in Los Angeles class submarine cost-overrun and reconstruction claims, Rickover was bitter over the yard having effectively and successfully sued the Navy for its own incompetence and deceit. Of no small irony, the United States Navy was also the yard's insurer — though the concept of reimbursing General Dynamics under these conditions was initially considered "preposterous" in the words of Secretary Lehman, the legal basis of General Dynamics' claims included insurance compensation.

Outraged, Rickover furiously lambasted both the settlement and Secretary Lehman, who was partly motivated to seek an agreement in order to continue to focus on achieving President Reagan's goal of a 600-ship Navy. This was hardly Rickover's first clash with the defense industry; he was historically hard, even harsh, in exacting high standards from these contractors – but now his relationship with Electric Boat took on the characteristics of an all-out, no-holds-barred war (Running Critical: The Silent War, Rickover & General Dynamics, 1986).

Veliotis came to be indicted by a federal grand jury under racketeering and fraud charges in 1983 for demanding $1.3 million in kickbacks from a subcontractor. He nonetheless eventually escaped into exile and a life of luxury in his native Greece where he remains a fugitive from U.S. justice.

Subsequent to accusations by the indicted Veliotis, a Navy Ad Hoc Gratuities Board determined that Rickover had received gifts from General Dynamics including jewelry, furniture and exotic knives valued at $67,628 over a 16-year period. Charges were investigated as well that gifts were provided by two other major nuclear ship contractors for the navy, General Electric and the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock.

Veliotis also charged, without providing substantiating evidence, that General Dynamics had given gifts to other senior naval officers, and had routinely underbid contracts with the intention of charging the government for cost overruns. These charges were not pursued by the Navy, at least in part due to Veliotis' flight from justice.

Secretary Lehman admonished Rickover for this impropriety via a nonpunitive letter and stating that Rickover's "fall from grace with these little trinkets should be viewed in the context of his enormous contributions to the Navy." Rickover released a statement through his lawyer saying his "conscience is clear" with respect to the gifts. "No gratuity or favor ever affected any decision I made." Senator William Proxmire of Wisconsin, a longtime supporter of Rickover, later publicly associated a debilitating stroke suffered by the Admiral to his having been censured and "dragged through the mud by the very institution to which he rendered his invaluable service."

Beyond any personal enmity or power struggles between the two naval leaders, it was Rickover's advanced age, singular focus and waning political clout regarding nuclear power, and strong, near-insubordinate stance against paying the fraudulently inflated submarine construction claims that gave Secretary Lehman substantial political capital to have Rickover retired. A moderate loss of ship control during the sea trials of the newly constructed USS La Jolla (SSN-701) — over which Rickover had direct supervisory control and, as the man-in-charge, actual culpability by way of human error — provided Lehman with the final impetus for ending Rickover's career.

Upon being apprised of Lehman's decision that it was time for the admiral to finally retire, President Reagan asked to meet with Rickover. As quoted from Lehman's Command of the Seas, Rickover was unhappy with the course of events and held forth in a tirade against Lehman, with Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger in attendance, at the meeting with the President:

(Rickover, referring to Lehman:) "Mr. President, that piss-ant knows nothing about the Navy." The admiral turned toward (Lehman) 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."

(Lehman, as later quoted by CNN:) "... it was a difficult moment for the president in the Oval Office. And he was so concerned about the man, about Admiral Rickover and that he not be embarrassed, that he asked us all to leave. He said, "Admiral Rickover and I see things the same way. Could you leave us a while? We want to talk about policy."

According to former President Jimmy Carter, who had served as an officer in the nuclear submarine program under Rickover, the meeting ended thusly:

"Admiral Rickover never had much political judgment, but he understood the relationships among the Congress, defense contractors, and the Department of Defense as well as anyone. His long and distinguished career ended abruptly: in late 1981 Rickover's wife heard on the radio that President Reagan had retired the admiral, who was on a new submarine conducting sea trials, and she had to give him the news. Several weeks later, he was invited to the Oval Office and decided to don his full dress uniform. He told me that he refused to take a seat, listened to the president ask him to be his special nuclear advisor, replied 'Mr. President that is bullshit,' and then walked out."

The Navy's official investigation of General Dynamics' Electric Boat division was ended shortly afterward. According to Theodore Rockwell, Rickover's Technical Director for more than 15 years, more than one source at that time stated that General Dynamics officials were bragging around Washington that they had "gotten Rickover."

On February 28, 1983, a post-retirement party honoring Admiral Rickover was attended by all three living former U.S. Presidents at the time, Nixon, Ford, and Carter. President Reagan was not in attendance.