In previous threads I've raised the question of whether Kerry's pre-Vietnam contacts with William and McGeorge Bundy of the Johnson administration may have led to some string-pulling in connection with his medals. Following up on that, after reading this I thought I'd check into Zumwalt. I haven't found anything conclusive yet, but I do notice that Zumwalt is mentioned in Len Colodny and Robert Getlin's Silent Coup while the authors are discussing a spy ring within the military, the Robinson-Radford ring, which was leaking classified information to Jack Anderson of the Washington Post. Zumwalt is not named as part of the spy ring but is mentioned as being in contact with some of its members, one of whom, Robert Welander, was also linked to Bob Woodward. I'm looking for an online summary--here's a little:
Joan Hoff, "THE NIXON STORY YOU NEVER HEARD"
As early as 1976 Admiral Elmo Zumwalt publicly made these military suspicions and resentment abundantly clear in his book, On Watch: A Memoir. "I had first become concerned many months before the June 1972 burglary," Zumwalt wrote, "[about] the deliberate, systematic and, unfortunately, extremely successful efforts of the President, Henry Kissinger, and a few subordinate members of their inner circle to conceal, sometimes by simple silence, more often by articulate deceit, their real policies about the most critical matters of national security." In a word, Zumwalt, like many within the American military elite, thought that Nixon's foreign policies bordered on the traitorous because they "were inimical to the security of the United States." This atmosphere of extreme distrust led Admiral Thomas Moorer, head of the JCS, to first authorize Rear Admiral Rembrandt C. Robinson and later Rear Admiral Robert O. Welander, both liaisons between the Joint Chiefs and the White House's National Security Council, to start spying on the NSC.").
I also note that about the same time Zumwalt appeared at this conference with Kerry, "President Clinton awarded Zumwalt the Presidential Medal of Freedom in January 1998." (Retired Adm. Elmo Zumwalt dies) There is also a little on Zumwalt in Nicosia's Home to War.
THE FIRST thought that Hashed into my mind on receiving Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt's On Watch* was that it contained the author's platform for his campaign for the U.S. Senate. . .For three years, 1962-65, he learned much, as an assistant in the billet of Director of the Arms Control Division, International Security Affairs, from that great public servant, Paul H. Nitze. He acquired what he says was the equivalent of a Ph.D. in politico-military affairs that later stood him in good stead when he became Chief of Naval Operations, thus a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and principal naval adviser to the President. As Commander U.S. Naval Forces Vietnam, he faced not only "the fire of the enemy in the field but the indifference or even the contempt of an all too large segment of the public at home." (p. 34) He decried the massive American involvement in Vietnam because it consumed resources better used to support American interests elsewhere. Thus, he applauded the Vietnamization program and then cheered America's withdrawal. It was from what appeared to be a dead-end tour with the "brown water" (riverine) navy that he was called to be CNO-a surface sailor following nine years in that billet of naval aviators-and began his battles with such administration favorites as Henry Kissinger and Alexander Haig and the redoubtable leaders of the congressional armed services and appropriations committees.