William Crowe, Joint Chiefs chairman who sailed his own course, dies at 82

WASHINGTON — William Crowe, the Navy admiral who held the nation's top military job as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as the Cold War neared its end and who in retirement publicly criticized military and presidential decisions, died of cardiac arrest Thursday at Bethesda Naval Medical Center. He was 82.

Adm. Crowe led U.S. troops through crises ranging from the 1986 air raid on Libya to the showdown with Iran over control of the Persian Gulf. He also shortened the military chain of command, broke down interservice rivalries and developed an unprecedented relationship with the head of the Soviet military that helped prevent armed confrontations between the superpowers.

Adm. Crowe also quickly defused a brink-of-war situation with an immediate apology in 1988 after a U.S. warship in the Persian Gulf mistook a civilian jetliner for an Iranian F-14 attack fighter and blew it out of the sky, killing 290 civilians.

Those performances and others led The New York Times to call him "the most powerful peacetime military officer in American history."

Adm. Crowe was appointed Joint Chiefs chairman by President Reagan in 1985. He declined a request from President George H.W. Bush to serve a second four-year term. Yet Adm. Crowe made his retirement years strikingly public.

He condemned the military's anti-gay bias and the "don't ask, don't tell" policy, the first officer of his stature to do so. He criticized the buildup to the first Gulf War, endorsed Bill Clinton for president when others questioned his lack of military credentials, served as chairman of two boards charged with investigating the bombings of the embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, then warned about insecure U.S. embassies a year after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Three years ago, he was among 27 retired diplomats and military commanders who publicly said the Bush administration did not understand the world and was unable to handle "in either style or substance" the responsibilities of global leadership.

A disheveled intellectual — his surname rhymes with "brow" — Adm. Crowe long had sailed an independent course. Unlike most four-star admirals, he had not served at sea often.

Adm. Crowe said the most crucial event of his chairmanship was when he told Reagan that military leaders strongly opposed a proposal Reagan had made to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to eliminate all ballistic missiles in 10 years. Those missiles were the backbone of the U.S. submarine- and land-based missile deterrent.

"If he had heard my remarks, it was not obvious to me," Adm. Crowe wrote in "The Line of Fire" (1993). But Reagan's proposal disappeared without a trace. From that point on, he was fully accepted by others on the National Security Council.

In a 47-year military career, Adm. Crowe commanded U.S. forces in the Middle East, was commander in chief of NATO forces in southern Europe and led the U.S. Pacific Command. He also was chairman of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board under Clinton.

Born in LaGrange, Ky., and reared in Oklahoma, he chose an unorthodox career path. After a year at the University of Oklahoma, he headed to the U.S. Naval Academy, graduating in 1946.

His first military assignment was on a destroyer-minesweeper; he then joined the submarine service.

After a master's degree in personnel management from Stanford in 1956, Adm. Crowe received his first command in 1960, on a diesel sub, the Trout.

He then added a master's and a doctorate in political science from Princeton University.

Later, in Vietnam, he was refused command of a surface ship, so the not-yet-admiral became an adviser to the Vietnamese river force, known as the "brown-water Navy" that plied the Mekong Delta. That work paid off, and he was promoted to rear admiral. He became deputy director of Navy planning and went on to the Pentagon's "Little State Department," the International Security Affairs Office, specializing in East Asia and the Pacific.

His talents were quickly and more widely appreciated among Air Force and Army generals than among his Navy colleagues.

In 1980, when the Navy planned to send Adm. Crowe to London and force him into retirement, his friends in the other services began a widespread and highly unusual campaign to save his job. Naval officials, outraged at the interference, fought back but lost. Crowe was named commander of NATO's southern flank.

In 1983, due to his shortage of sea commands, he lost a chance to be commander-in-chief of the Atlantic fleet. But he was sent to the equivalent post in the Pacific. That's where he impressed Reagan and Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger in 1984 with a brilliant, unscripted presentation. He was made chairman of the Joint Chiefs the next year, but not without opposition from the Navy.

Clinton appointed him ambassador to the United Kingdom in 1994, a job he held for three years.

After returning to the United States, Adm. Crowe divided his time between teaching at the University of Oklahoma and studying military issues at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He also ran the nation's only licensed manufacturer of anthrax and rabies vaccine, BioPort.

Since 1999, he had taught a class in security decision-making at Annapolis.

He was a four-time recipient of the Defense Distinguished Service Medal, and his military awards also include the Legion of Merit, the Bronze Star and an Air Medal. Clinton gave him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2000.

Survivors include his wife of 53 years, Shirley Grennell Crowe of Mitchellville, Md.; three children, Marine Col. W. Blake Crowe of Washington, J. Brent Crowe and Bambi Coval, both of Alexandria, Va.; and four grandchildren.