In the early summer of ‘84, I went camping with some buddies in the foothills of Lake Tahoe. We were planning to go rafting down the American River, but the current was too strong from the melting of snow from the nearby mountains. As we were hanging out by the river, I saw a capsized raft along with two people being tossed about by the rapids. Without pause or consideration, I dove in to the river and was able to rescue both rafters. The incident only lasted moments and once again it felt like an out of body experience in that I was not in control of the situation.
I didn’t know how to process what happened with the rescue as my obsession was still on all the massive corruption I was exposed to and the concern for my well-being (except when making dangerous rescues oddly enough) . I did have the sense that God was present, but my Catholic upbringing didn’t provide me with any answers that would give me comfort. When I got back to my Navy buddies, one of them said that I was a freak to which another buddy responded “No, he’s a super freak”. I had so much anxiety going on that I didn’t know what to think. I was so miserable that I soon began to isolate and go on benders when we were in port.
During this period, there would be a complete turnover of Officers which helped quell some of my fears of retaliation. I also began reading just about every news periodacle I could get my hands on as I wanted to know what was really going on in the world. I had subscriptions to the weekly Washington Post and Chicago Tribune along with Foreign Affairs, Time, and Rolling Stone. The ships library had subscriptions to US News and World Reports and Newsweek and I read every article that focused on world affairs and the Military.
The S-1 Division of Supply (Stock Control) had a new Division Officer Lt. Heckleman who offered me the position of Financial Analyst and I accepted. Once again I was in way over my head, but I was ready for a change and face new challenges. The following was from Lt. Heckleman that described my position with each of my tasks -
#3 on the list is to reconcile the Unmatched Expenditure Listing (C,H, & J/A&G ) that came from the Fleet Accounting and Disbursing Center. The C,H, & J listing consisted of all the inventory items that were sent to the Carl Vinson that were never received. This would include all the items that were dumped in to the ocean during the 1983 deployment. The A &G listing was a report on inventory items that the Carl Vinson claimed to have received, but were never sent by the Supply Depot. The vast majority of items on both lists were from input errors where any deviance would wind up on the list. If the person processing a receipt entered the wrong unit of issue, document number, or any other measure, the items would end up on the unmatched expenditure list. At the time, the Navy was using BASIC computer language along with batch cards for input (how’s that for irony?) AKC Milleran and I came up with a program where we had the computer provide a listing of unmatched expenditures where most of the data would match the receipts except for a few variables. When we ran the program, the computer calculated over 90% of the unmatched expenditures and I was able to make the correction and clear most of the listing. To my astonishment, what remained were the items that were dumped in the ocean in ’83 with a value of over 50 million dollars. So not only did I witness the items being dumped in the ocean in ‘83, I now had evidence from the listings proving that only a fraction of items dumped in the ocean were consumables as the NIS had claimed. The listing had engine parts, non-operational ready supply (NORS), and many other high-value items that Grumman, McDonald-Douglas, and other contractors for the Military were all too happy to replace. Out of concern for my well-being, I told no one and my anxiety and depression would only get worse. From my recollection, this is when I went off the deep end mentally and emotionally.
#4 on the list was also very intense for me as I was given a top-secret clearance to review all messages that came from the Fleet looking for information that pertained to supply. I was on a ‘need to know’ basis as these messages were used to track top-secret items that were in route to the Vinson that needed to be tracked. What became quite apparent was that parts for the F-14 Tomcat would make it to Naval Supply Subic Bay Philippines, but never make it to the Vinson. It turned out that Iranians were stealing the parts for the F-14’s we sold to the Shah of Iran prior to the 1979 coup. And from the top secret messages I had access to when I was in QA, I learned that we stood down when a KAL airliner went off course on its way to Korea and was eventually shot down by the Russians when it entered their airspace. We could have intercepted the airplane before it entered Russian airspace, but we chose not to as part of the ‘cat and mouse’ games we were playing with Russia.
To all my shipmates and officers on the Vinson, I was the happiest person they ever knew by their account. On the inside, I was seathing with anger and resentment.