Admiral May Have Been Entitled To Wear ‘V’ Decorations After All

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 dislosure 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 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.”

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.”