[tanknetter]

Actually, since the USN has abandoned naming traditions (carriers after people rather than battles or historic USN ships) and is now in the practice of naming ships after living people, naming SSN-23 after Carter is about as appropriate as you can get.

USS Carter is designed to replace Parche (which replaced Seawolf and Hallibut) in the undersea special missions (specialized intelligence gathering) role. This includes underwater cable-tapping. According to "Blind Man's Bluff" (p.296 and 297), it was Carter who authorized the highly successful tapping of the Soviets communications cables in the Sea of Okhotsk and the Barents Sea.

[fooman]

I thought the tapping exercises had happened beforehand