THE MYSTERY surrounding the suicide last week of Admiral Jeremy Boorda, the navy's highest ranking officer, deepened as the Secretary of the Navy, Mr John Dalton, defended his right, to wear combat decorations.
The admiral shot himself at his home in Washington last week shortly before he was to be interviewed by two Newsweek reporters about whether he was entitled to wear two small V shaped pins denoting combat service in Vietnam.
President Clinton, who spent an hour and a half grieving and praying with the Boorda family on Saturday, will today deliver a eulogy at a memorial service in the National Cathedral. Admiral Boorda was buried privately in Arlington National Cemetery on Sunday.
It has emerged that the principal Newsweek reporter conducting the inquiry into the decorations issue had "mused" while working on the story that if it were known that Boorda had improperly worn them, "he might just put a gun to his head", the magazine reported. The remark was made by a contributing editor on defence matters, retired army Colonel David Hackworth.
But Col Hackworth's view that "wearing an undeserved combat valour pin was a grave matter of honour in the military, the worst thing you can do," has been challenged by a number of senior retired naval officers.
Mr Dalton said in a TV interview that the citations accompanying Admiral Boorda's two decorations for service off the coast of Vietnam refer to "combat operations, combat service". The naval commander in Vietnam at the time, Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, "put the word out" that ships' personnel in the combat zone were entitled to "wear the combat V", Mr Dalton said.
He added that Admiral Boorda "had every right to believe that was appropriate". Any misunderstanding about it was "unfortunate", Mr Dalton said.
Retired Rear Admiral Eugene Carroll said following the suicide that "you have in the military a cult of purist, punctilious bastards who are so perfect that if anybody slips an inch, it's a federal case. He had been awarded a Bronze Star with a combat V for landing marines in Vietnam "but to this day I haven't got the foggiest idea whether I was shot at," he said.
The small Washington news agency which supplied information to the media on the controversial decorations, the National Security News Service, has been described as "an off shoot of the anti nuclear weapons and nuclear freeze movements of the 1970s and 1980s". The Washington Times reported that the agency is funded by several "liberal" organisations.
Newsweek defended its investigation into the combat medals in terms of "strict journalistic ethics". It pointed out that "the suicide took place not only before any article appeared, but two full days before the reporting was complete."