THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, November 2, 1996 TAG: 9611020260
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A4 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DALE EISMAN, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: 94 lines
Investigators talked to his co-workers and his doctors, reviewed his medical records and reconstructed the final hours of his life, but the Navy's five-month probe into the death of Adm. Mike Boorda leaves the most perplexing question - why Boorda killed himself - unanswered.
An official report on Boorda's death, released Friday, buttresses earlier accounts suggesting that the chief of naval operations gave associates no warning that he was contemplating suicide before he shot himself in the chest on the afternoon of May 16.
``I did not detect anything about Adm. Boorda's manner or speech which would have led me to believe he was under any unusual pressure or stress,'' one person who attended a meeting with Boorda that morning told the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.
``I recall the CNO listened intently, was focused and that he seemed in good spirits,'' said the witness, whose name was deleted from copies of the report given to reporters.
Others who had contact with the 56-year-old admiral that morning gave similar accounts. The only suggestion that Boorda might have had suicide on his mind was one witness' recollection that the meetings that morning included a brief discussion of the October 1995 suicide of a sailor who was stationed aboard the attack submarine Los Angeles.
Boorda had been contacted by the sailor's family and was pursuing questions about the Navy's investigation of the case.
Rear Adm. Kendell Pease, the service's senior spokesman, was among the last people to speak with Boorda that day. He told investigators that the admiral ``appeared concerned'' over a scheduled afternoon interview with reporters for Newsweek magazine but was not ``distraught or overly upset.''
The journalists were pursuing a story on Boorda's former wearing of two ``combat V's,'' military decorations awarded for valor in combat. Boorda had stopped wearing the awards about a year earlier, after another journalist raised questions about whether he was entitled to them.
Briefed by Pease on the Newsweek inquiry, Boorda said, ``We'll tell them the truth,'' and then announced he was going home for lunch. He left his Pentagon office around 12:30, driving himself to his quarters at the Washington Navy Yard.
Once there, the report suggests, Boorda went to his study and typed out a pair of suicide notes, one addressed to his wife, Bettie, and the other to Pease. Then he took out a gun borrowed months earlier from a Navy policeman, walked out into his yard and shot himself in the chest.
The report indicated that Navy and Marine personnel in the area were at Boorda's side within seconds of the shooting, administering CPR and attempting to stop his bleeding. He never recovered consciousness, however.
The contents of both suicide notes were excised from copies of the report released Friday; the Navy said their release is not required by the federal Freedom of Information Act. Sources have suggested that the note to Pease indicated that Boorda was concerned that Newsweek's inquiry would embarrass the Navy.
The report confirmed that that note included a section addressed ``to the sailors.'' Pease declined Friday to discuss any part of the note, but sources familiar with it have said that the ``to the sailors'' section closely resembles a message Bettie Boorda sent to the fleet shortly after her husband's death.
``Take care of each other,'' that message read. ``Be honorable. Do what is right. Forgive when it makes sense, punish when you must, but always work to make the latter unnecessary by working to help people be all they really can be and should be. One-on-one leadership really will work if you let it and honestly apply it. Our great Navy people will live on. I am proud of you. I am proud to have led you if for only a short time. God bless each and every one of you.''
In the matter-of-fact style of police accounts, the report recounts a series of events in Boorda's final minutes which, had they played out just slightly differently, might have allowed someone to save him.
His driver, expecting Boorda to eat lunch at the office, left the Pentagon that morning to go over the route he planned to use later in the day to drive Boorda to a ceremony at the White House. He returned the admiral's Lincoln to its space in a Pentagon lot around 12:30 and apparently was headed upstairs to the office as Boorda and another aide were coming downstairs to leave.
Finding his car in the lot, Boorda insisted on driving himself home, waving off the aide's offer to drive or ride along. Because he knew Boorda enjoyed driving, the aide thought nothing was amiss.
By now back in the admiral's office, Boorda's driver quickly caught a ride to the Navy Yard, figuring to drive the boss back to work after lunch. He found the car parked in the driveway and, assuming Boorda was inside eating, turned it around to face the gate and make it easy for them to pull away.
The driver was in the car, talking to Boorda's office on a cellular phone, when he looked in the rearview mirror and noticed the admiral heading into the yard. The mirror allowed him to see Boorda only from the waist down; had he not turned the car around he would have gotten a fuller view and might have seen that Boorda had a gun. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Adm. Mike Boorda gave no sign of planning his own death.
KEYWORDS: ADMIRAL MIKE BOORDA SUICIDE INVESTIGATION by CNB