Posted on: Friday, June 28, 2002
White House rejects Kimmel vindication
By James R. Carroll
The (Louisville) Courier-Journal
WASHINGTON — The Bush administration will not agree to a congressional request to clear the name of Husband Edward Kimmel, the admiral in charge of the U.S. naval fleet at Pearl Harbor when it was attacked by Japan in 1941.
Andrew Card Jr., chief of staff to President Bush, has written to lawmakers that "there is no new or extraordinary evidence available" to restore Kimmel and his Army counterpart at Pearl Harbor, Maj. Gen. Walter Short, to their highest World War II ranks.
There the matter rests for now, to the great disappointment of Ned Kimmel, 80, of Wilmington, Del., the admiral's last surviving son.
"I'm sort of at the end of my rope on this," Kimmel said. "The truth is, you're dealing with the best-known naval disaster in U.S. history and these guys (at the Pentagon) are scared to death of it — even now."
He and other family members, along with allies including the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association, the Veterans of Foreign Wars and dozens of Navy admirals, have fought for years for vindication of the two commanders.
Kimmel and Short were the only U.S. officers denied the privilege of retiring at the highest rank held during the war. The pair had been found by military officials to be derelict in their duties for failing to prepare for the attack that surprised the nation and the world on Dec. 7, 1941.
Subsequent inquiries over the years and numerous military officials softened that verdict. In 1995, a Pentagon probe said the responsibility "should not fall solely on the shoulders of Adm. Kimmel and Gen. Short; it should be broadly shared." But that's as far as the military went.
Some critics argue that the two officers were too lax in preparations to defend against an attack and inattentive to warnings.
But other historians with access to previously declassified documents contend that the two officers were scapegoats for U.S. intelligence errors and miscalculations in Washington.
