Running Critical: The Silent War, Rickover, and General Dynamics

Based on diaries, tape recordings, confidential documents, and exclusive interviews, this expose illustrates fundamental weaknesses in the defense industry by chronicling the scandalous dealings between the U.S. Navy and General Dynamics.

Washington Post Review from Oct 12, 1986:

ACADEMICS OFTEN complain that books by reporters are marred by lack of homework. They fault the reporter/author for merely stringing together a few sensational facts with scant regard for history or social context. Attacking from the other flank, full-time authors are apt to dwell upon the reporters' lack of style or narrative pace. In Running Critical, his history of the submarine construction program of the late '70s with its monumental attendant scandals, Patrick Tyler knocks these two criticisms out of the park. His is reporting of the highest order, successfully interweaving historical perspective, social setting and the devastation wrought by the hubris of powerful personalities too long unchecked.

The writing in this book is also infused by two other attractive qualities, a degree of compassion and occasional bursts of righteous wrath. Some of the facts that Tyler lays out so well -- attempts at stock manipulation by General Dynamics directors, the construction of faulty submarines to satisfy the whims of an aging Admiral Rickover, the kickbacks taken by Electric Boat Company construction genius Takis Veliotis, the attempts to foment labor trouble to gain votes by then-congressman Christopher Dodd -- make him see red. But he has the perspective to see the white and blue also. While deploring the rigidity and moral blindness that led the superannuated Rickover to accept gifts, Tyler also gives the back of his hand to the way "Navy Secretary Lehman tallied up everything that could arguably have been classified as a gift during Rickover's last two decades in office." The result was a report that he then "released to the press with undisguised relish . . . . " Tyler then correctly makes the point that: "Lehman, whose gift to the shipbuilders was the most profitable contracts in navy shipbuilding history . . . and who showed a conspicuous disinterest in new evidence suggesting that the Treasury had been raided in the 1978 [submarine] claims settlements, should have disqualified himself from sitting in judgment on Rickover."

In his final summary, Tyler calls the tale he has unfolded "a story of towering potential and achievement and a tragedy of lost American resources." Those of us who have seen the best of America's young men go forth to battle in three wars with weapons often outmatched by those of the enemy can only figuratively shout: "Amen."

The book commences with a masterly exposition of how in official Washington secret intelligence is power. As long as then-defense secretary Robert McNamara and the "whiz-kids" around him were able to use a slow 25-knot figure as the top underwater speed of the majority of the Russian submarine fleet, they could outmaneuver the attempts by Rickover and other submariners to fund another new class of faster U.S. submarines. But then the submariners became able, through a tiny piece of intelligence work, well dramatized by Tyler, to prove that the old slow November class of Soviet submarines actually had a speed of at least 31 knots, so that the old supposed Soviet slowpokes were in truth faster than the new American speedsters. This changed the bureaucratic power equation and a new class of U.S. submarines became inevitable. The heart of the book lies in the exploration of the flawed design, construction, and funding of these new submarines.

HERE AGAIN research has transformed what would have been merely a riotous and angry study of the contest between an imperious Rickover and a shipyard beset by poor and venal management into an insightful exploration of American defense problems. Badly performing, expensive weapons come into being because the initial requirements of how the weapons will be built and should perform are faulty. But few understand this basic part of the problem. And fewer still have the knowledge and ability to discover where these requirements are put together -- or "generated" to use the defense argot -- and then make this important but arcane bit of knowledge available to the general reader.

The tale told here is a sorry one. A Congress often using its prerogatives to press for weapons the members do not understand but that mean jobs for their consituttents. A Navy so rent by intraservice rivalries that new weapons must be evaluated as bureaucratic threats rather than considered on their war-fighting merits. A civilian secretariat out of touch with what is actually happening inside the service to which they are supposedly giving direction. Or else looking forward to a lush industrial berth after government service.

Here I would add, though Running Critical does not, the absence of an informed press. This too contributes to poor weapons. The time was in the early 1970s and a major weapons buy, the SSN 688 class of attack submarines was being decided. The press knew that Rickover was growing old. That all was less than perfect at the Groton Navy Yard was hardly secret information. There was a major dispute raging inside the Pentagon over both the size and nature of the Soviet program and what the proper American response should be. But unfortunately in those days there was an even greater gap between the military and the rest of America than exists today. Defense decisions were made outside of the public arena and the strength of the nation suffered. Press coverage that should have been present was not there.

Once the flawed design had been approved, the contract went to General Dynamics. Here the second sorry half of the narrative starts to unroll with the new cast. There was David Lewis, Wunderkind of aircraft production while at McDonnell Douglas; but lost when it came to the shipbuilding activities of General Dynamics. Tyler paints him as an untrustworthy charmer who, on taking over General Dynamics, moved the headquarters of that company from New York City to St. Louis because he did not want to give up his membership in his country club there. Enough said.

There was Nathan Crown and his son Lester, both powerful members of the General Dynamics board of directors. The father kept billing General Dynamics for his expensive vacations to such places as Gstaad and Acapulco, claiming they were business trips. His questions about how losses could be hidden so his stock would rise became so bad at one board meeting that the corporate secretary threatened to leave the room so that he would not be party to a criminal proceeding. The son had been an unindicted co-conspirator in an Illinois bribery case. Then there was also Takis Veliotis, who could run a shipyard but believed kickbacks were part of his perks.

There were heroes too, though few of them. Arthur Barton who had the temerity to keep honest books. Evelyn Small, the yard inspector who discovered and had the courage to report that many of the hull welds reported as made and inspected on submarine 698 were not there. There is no record that they were ever promoted for their displays of patriotism or plain, out-of-fashion honesty.

Running Critical is a cautionary tale well told. During World War II, Under Secretary of the Army Robert Patterson, who handled procurement, used to wear around his waist the belt of a German officer he had killed in hand-to-hand combat during World War I. He did this to remind himself of the seriousness of decisions made at the top. Unfortunately for America there are no such men or women executives in this book.