307. Transcript of a Telephone Conversation Between the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (Moorer) and the Chief of Naval Operations (Zumwalt)1

0925—Telecon/Incoming—Adm Zumwalt, USN (CNO)—Fri, 1/19/73

CNO—Is it possible with the change in affairs to do anything to let our minesweeping people start getting ready?

JCS—No, I just asked HAK that question yesterday and it is only … in the first place, we want to go very, very slow. In other words, he said the last thing he wanted to do was rush down there and start sweeping like mad. In fact, we don’t want to do anything effective. We might go there and go through the motions but not effective sweeping until our POWs are back. He said absolutely not—he wanted me to work up a plan where I could drag this out and even through the motions of sweeping but dragging our feet to the utmost.

CNO—That’ll be pretty easy in just trying to get ready.

JCS—I told him that we had it built in. I explained to him that we are not ready and haven’t be able to train, etc. He said that’s fine so I think one of the problems here we always try to do something to the [Page 1092] best of our ability and charge out but in this particular instance we shouldn’t pursue it with vigor in fact I have my people in here now trying to figure out some artificial means of dragging our feet.

CNO—It’ll be a pleasure to screw this one up.

JCS—We can, to our heart’s content, according to him he didn’t want us to be efficient and hasty.

CNO—Good luck!

  1. Source: National Archives, RG 218, Records of the Chairman, Moorer Diary, July 1970–July 1974. Top Secret.