ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, May 18, 1996 TAG: 9605200069
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: The Washington Post
Adm. Jeremy M. ``Mike'' Boorda, who killed himself after questions were raised about two of his Vietnam-era decorations, may have had a right to wear the combat ``V'' pins after all, according to a 1965 Navy awards manual and interviews with former military officers.
That disclosure came as the military mourned the loss of Boorda, the Navy's highest-ranking officer, and struggled to understand the reason for his suicide. Boorda, 56, shot himself in the chest at his home in the Washington Navy Yard Thursday shortly after learning a magazine was questioning his right to have worn two tiny bronze pins normally awarded for combat duty.
Defense Secretary William J. Perry, speaking Friday at Armed Forces Day celebrations at the opening of the annual air show at Andrews Air Force Base in suburban Maryland, dedicated the day to Boorda and said his death was ``a loss to the Navy and the nation.''
Boorda is to be buried in a private ceremony Sunday at Arlington National Cemetery. A memorial service open to the public will be held Tuesday at 11:30 a.m. at Washington National Cathedral. President Clinton is scheduled to attend.
Boorda killed himself after leaving two notes expressing concern that the controversy over the ``V'' pins would destroy his reputation and damage the Navy. Reporters with a small news service that searched the awards record contended Boorda did not have a right to wear the pins, saying that his award citations failed specifically to give him that right.
However, the Navy awards manual issued in 1965, in the early years of the Vietnam conflict, appears to vindicate Boorda's decision to wear the ``V'' pin on his Navy Commendation Medal. That was one of the two ribbons on which he wore a ``V'' pin for years until a query was made last year about whether he had earned it.
The manual did not list the other decoration, the Navy Achievement Medal, as one for which the combat ``V'' would be awarded. But former chief of naval operations Elmo R. Zumwalt Jr. said Friday in an interview that he was confident Boorda also could properly wear the pin on that ribbon as well.
Joseph Trento, bureau chief here for the National Security News Service, the organization that challenged Boorda's decorations, rejected Zumwalt's arguments Friday night. Trento said that only the secretary of the Navy had authority to award the pins in the citations - and Boorda's citations did not mention the ``V'' pins.
``The reality is that the Navy is going to have face up that he [Boorda] was wearing medals he wasn't entitled to. This was not an innocent mistake,'' Trento said.
Separately, Pentagon and law enforcement officials, speaking on condition they not be named, offered new details of the two suicide notes the admiral left before he shot himself with a .38-caliber revolver in the yard of his residence. In the notes, Boorda suggested he was not killing himself because he believed he had been caught in a lie, but because he feared the media would be so skeptical that his act would be blown out of proportion, military officials said.
``The sense of the note was that reporters wouldn't believe it was an honest mistake, and perhaps sailors wouldn't either,'' a Pentagon official said. ``Boorda [wrote that] he didn't want to give Navy critics another opportunity to give the Navy a beating. ... Boorda understood how things can get twisted and spun.''
Law enforcement officials said one of the letters was addressed to two of Boorda's Navy friends, and a Pentagon official said that at the top, it said, ``For the Sailors.''
``That's vintage Boorda,'' said the official, referring to the admiral's well-known concern for the welfare of even the most junior seamen.
The admiral, the only former enlisted man to rise to the Navy's top job of chief of naval operations, spent much of his time as head of the service disentangling it from scandals. Navy officials believe Boorda feared questions about his medals could cause the Navy the kind of bad publicity he strove to avoid.
A law enforcement source described one of the notes as a love letter to his wife, Bettie, with whom he had four children, in which he apologized for bringing trouble to the family. The other letter, to friends in the Navy, was divided into two parts, the law enforcement source said - the beginning was typed, and the latter part was handwritten.
The typewritten section bore the date May 15, the day before his death. Investigators do not know whether he did not know the date, or whether he had typed the earlier passage Wednesday, and wrote the final section the next day just before taking his life. Navy officials have said Boorda was informed of reporters' questions concerning his medals only hours before his death Thursday.
Navy officials said they have withheld release of the note to the public in deference to Boorda's family, and have not decided when to release it.
While Navy officials say they believe sensitivity about news coverage led to his suicide, Boorda broadcast the opposite message to Navy personnel. In an address at the Naval Academy April 24, Boorda said Navy personnel should not be defensive about critical news reports, but learn from them.
``You won't hear me lament reporting about the Navy,'' Boorda said in the ``State of the Navy'' speech. ``It may be painful, but it is also helpful. Sometimes it makes you go look, and quite often you come across things that need to be worked on.''
It could not be determined Friday whether Boorda had any recollection of the 1965 awards manual and its conditions for wearing the ``V'' pins.
LENGTH: Long : 102 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. Adm. Jeremy M. Boorda committed suicide on Thursdayby CNBover the legitimacy of his Vietnam combat medals, marked "V."