KELSO: I've always been an optimist. I think the state of the Navy, if you get outside of the Beltway and see what it was doing operating, it was very good. I thought we had the best ships in the world, best aircraft at sea in the world, and the best people. That hadn't changed for a very long time.

Q: And the problems? Were they different problems? Were they different than they had been before you took over?

KELSO: Well, the problems were different in lots of ways, from the time I took over till the time I left. But in general, we were a much smaller Navy. We can't be in as many places with a smaller Navy as you could with a larger Navy. But ship for ship, pound for pound, we were a better Navy when I left the Navy. I'm not trying to blow my horn. You asked me for an assessment. I'm telling you what I thought. We had downsized people considerably, and we're still in the process of downsizing. So that was left for Mike Boorda to finish, because we had to get to be a little smaller than we were. Most of the downsizing had been done. We had made decisions to reduce bases. Those were tough decisions. But they had been agreed to and approved, and the Navy was in a process of doing that. Those were tough problems. How do you do that? To make a decision to close a base, knowing a sailor owns a home outside the base, its price is going to go down the morning after the announcement is made, is not a decision which you like to make. Okay? It also is not a very pleasant decision on the Hill, because nobody likes their bases to be closed. Those sort of things. Those were the kind of problem that had been made toward the end of my tour, that were very difficult and hard to do.

The problem I have is that I measure the Navy by what it can do as a Navy. A lot of people don't measure it that way. They measure it by how we make mistakes, or those sort of things. But we haven't made too many mistakes at sea. The safety record of the Navy during the period of time I was there has improved almost the entire time. Less people getting killed in automobile accidents. All those kind of things. All of this publicity that was taking place, we had taken seven three-star positions out of the Navy. Not very pleasant to do, either. Whether those things were the right things to do or not, I can't measure today. I believe they were at the time, and I still believe they were. When you ask me what the state of the Navy was when I left, it was fine.

Q: A lot of people say one of the problems that Admiral Boorda had was....the demands, the constituencies, the people he had to keep happy, the different forces at work on him, from the feminist lobby on the Hill to the Senate Armed Services Committee to the Tailhook stain on a lot of the promotions of his aviators and others......And it was almost an impossible job to do.

KELSO: It's a big job. When you got 400,000 to 600,000 people and lots of ships and aircraft and those sort of things to deal with, base issues and all those sort of things, there's no doubt about that. But I think it's a mistake for us to try to rationalize what Mike did or didn't do. I just don't think I can do that. Mike was a great person. He was a wonderful naval officer. He made a decision in his life that I can't understand. But I don't think I can rationalize why a man chooses to take his own life. And Mike had been in a lot of big jobs. Remember, he had basically set up the forces in Bosnia. He'd been a Chief of Naval Personnel, and been the commander of our forces, Naval forces, in Europe. He'd handled all of those extremely well. And so I just don't think it's fair for any of us to say why Mike did what he did. He did a great job. I'm very sorry that he chose to leave as he did. But I can't rationalize why he did. I don't know.

Q: Did you support his appointment?

KELSO: Sure I did.

Q: I talked to people like Admiral Moorer.... former Secretary Webb. Some of them are very critical of the leadership of the nineties Navy. What's your reaction to that criticism?

KELSO: (laughs) Well, when you take a job like that, you're going to have some who like you and some who don't like you, for whatever their reasons. Secretary Webb is certainly can have his opinion. Only history is going to say whether it was good or bad. It was not a time where it was going to be easy to have the kind of leadership that you had over many periods of the Navy. It was not a time where the Navy was growing. When I walked into the Navy Department, the A-12 problem was about to spring on us. I had to deal with the Iowa, to finish the case about the Iowa ... downsize the Navy. I didn't think it was going to be a period of time where I wouldn't have to make policies and decisions that some people would not like.

Some have accused me of political correctness. I find that very hard to believe that anybody could say that, when I decided to close a base in the Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee's district, and a base in the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, because I thought it was the right thing to do. Now boy, if that's political correctness, looking for some Valhalla they're going to give me out that's about the dumbest decision you can make. People are free to have their own opinion in this country, and they can. I don't have trouble looking into a mirror in the morning.

Q: You talked about Stan Arthur. He was Vice-CNO for you?

KELSO: Yes.

Q: Senator Durenberger puts a hold on his nomination. Do you remember the story?

KELSO: Yeah.

Q: What did you think about that?

KELSO: I think it was a travesty for both Stan Arthur and the country, because he was clearly the most capable guy to go do that job at that time. He'd been in the Pacific much of his career. And he made a decision, like all of us have to make from time to time, about a pilot, whether she was capable of flying or not capable of flying. It was his judgment that she should not fly. And yet his nomination gets held up over an issue like that. I think it's a travesty for both him and the country.

Q: Mike Boorda said one of the great mistakes he ever made, was not supporting him.

KELSO: That's Mike Boorda. He was willing to stand up and say that he was sorry he did that. That's a man. He's a leader. If you'd asked the average sailor in the Navy what they thought of Mike Boorda's leadership-- Go ask them. I think they'll tell you they thought he was wonderful.

Q: What do you think was up with Stan Arthur being pulled? Do you think it was as simple as Durenberger's hold? Do you think it was more complicated than that?

KELSO: No, I don't think it was fundamentally more complicated than that. There might have been a lot of complications associated with it, but the real issue was that his nomination was held up by the decision he made, and one person disagreeing ... I don't know whether it was more than one.

Q: What does it tell you, Admiral, that a disgruntled pilot and a Senator can blow away somebody that 500 missions over Vietnam could not blow away?

KELSO: I'm sorry that those sort of things happen. You've got to understand that those sort of things have happened for a long time. This is not the first time those sort of things have happened. It probably won't be the last time that they'll happen. The Constitution gives the Congress the right to make the laws for the military. This stems from that. I don't want to change that. The judgment or decision might be quite different. I have a great deal of trouble with the decision.

Q: What's happening?

KELSO: I don't know what's happening In many cases, you have to know all the details to know what's happening. It's like you and I probably would read a case, and you might not think it's so bad, and I might think it was bad, based on how I looked at it. Okay. That happens. All right? That isn't McCarthyism. That's a judgment. This is not a Senator holding a hearing, beating people up for headlines. There's none of that. There's none of that here. Okay? This is a matter of a difference of opinion.

Q: Now Jay Johnson's about to go up on the Hill tomorrow. Let's have an assessment of where we are now. What's he have to deal with, Admiral? What's the primary challenge facing him?

KELSO: He just has to stand up and tell the Navy where he wants it to go, and it'll go. Jay Johnson, in my judgment, is a fine leader. He's a fine young man. The Navy does not change overnight.

The Navy is run by seamen, third class petty officers, first class petty officers, chiefs, young officers, all those kind. When you get there as a young officer, you've got a job to do. You're a division officer on a ship. And it doesn't make much difference who's the CNO, what your job is every day. And your captain has got a job to meet a deployment schedule and take care of his people. There may be one CNO he likes better than another one, with a lot of charisma. Or you're a squadron commander, and you've got a bunch of young aviators to teach how to fly. And those are demanding jobs as you come along and do that.

So now the CNO has got to convince the people inside the Beltway that they're doing it well out there. He's got to be able to make them understand what the Navy needs, in the way of finances, to carry on his job. And he's got to be able to reach the constituency of the media, as well as the political media, and as well as the Joint Chiefs and that. The Navy will run. It'll keep going. Jay Johnson will be a very charismatic guy who will be able to make them all feel like I got a great CNO up there, and they'll charge on after him.

They'll look at, when he goes up to testify as to what did he ask for the Navy. I don't remember, from the time I was an ensign to way up in the world, that I can't worry too much about what was going on. I wanted the stuff to run my ship well. The only ambition I had was to be captain of a ship, and the rest of it didn't bother me much. And to get on with my job. Most of the people in the Navy are in that ilk. They're of that persuasion. Now, he's got to convince his leadership, his admirals, that whatever program he wants to put in is the right program. I think he's totally capable of doing that.

Q: You look back on it. And on balance, despite the unpleasantness at the end, how was it for you, sir? The career.

KELSO: The career? Oh, I wouldn't change it. I wished I could have done some things a little better. But no, it was a wonderful career. I had a lot of friends, met a lot of wonderful people. I was able to see a little bit of the world, and I hope, left our Navy a little bit better when I came in.

Q: Do you wish you hadn't gone to Tailhook that time, that convention?

KELSO: What difference would it have made whether I went or didn't go? I still was responsible for what happened in the Navy. I didn't do anything at Tailhook that I'm ashamed of, anyway. A lot of people tried to speculate that I did. But I don't think it would have made much difference, as far as I was concerned. I had a reason to go to Tailhook, that were important in my judgment. We needed the aviation community's support about what we wanted to do with aviation assets. And I think I needed to show the young aviators that I supported what they did. Not at Tailhook but in flying and in those sort of things. It was natural for a leader of the Navy to go to speak at their dinner one night, do those sort of things. I've never even considered whether I'd have been happier if I had or hadn't. It doesn't make much difference. I went.

Q: So what did you in? I had the feeling that it was because you were there. They said, "Well, he should have known there was leg shaving and"-- So what did you in?

KELSO: Some people did say that. But that's baloney. I can't answer that question for you. In reality, it didn't do me in. I stayed most of my tour. And toward the end, it became, in my judgment, time to leave. I probably would have had to leave anyway, but it was time for me to leave, in my judgment anyway.

Q: Sexual harassment...sum up what's happened in that area...the changes that have been made....

KELSO: We changed the rules in the Navy, that if you were found to be harassing, that you would be voided out. In other words, you'd get out. You got out of the Navy. In any case where harassment came up, where a person was guilty, then he had to go through a board and a decision was made as to whether he harassed or didn't harass. And if he was found to be a harasser, he left. So that was a change in the Navy, as to how it would be treated in a pretty severe way.

The other thing we tried to do was to try to come up with a system that you could treat sexual harassment on a day-to-day basis, realistically. And we thought that the most important thing was to have a system where you treat at the lowest level possible. Let's not make every case one that goes to the captain or goes to the admiral or goes to the CNO or wherever, but let's deal with it, because I said, you're not going to change everybody overnight. And truthfully, this is not an issue that everybody understands very well. You're asking people to change the way they've acted in the past. And some people don't know how to change.

So we came up with a system. It was a stop light system: red, green, and yellow. And if both people involved in an encounter felt it was green on this issue, then nobody said anything and you went on. But let's just say you did something like tell an off-color joke. The young woman felt that was harassing, but it was not something that she wanted to do, but try to get you to understand that she wasn't going to put up with that. So she said, "Stop." That's a yellow situation. You all discuss the yellow situation. But accepted the idea that, "Okay, I didn't understand. I offended you. I won't do that again." And they walked away and the issue was gone. All right? Now, if you did something that was really offensive, that was a red situation. And the red situation generally had to be carried to another level in the chain of command, to come to a solution to it. And I think you'd be surprised today how often that system is effective, because the best way to solve this is to get people to understand what it really is in other people's minds, and to react themselves to knock it off.

I guess the best analogy I can give you is people. In racial issues, people had to learn to use new language. The language they might have grown up with was no longer acceptable. So you had to change how you said things, in order to not offend people. Well, this is the same kind of issue. This stop light system was devised in order to try to deal with it in a rational way, without having it always be a something that went to the highest level. And I think it's working pretty well.