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[i]I went up to pay courtesy calls to the navy after we got back, and John Warner was then Secretary of the Navy, and we made a courtesy call to him. He was all enthusiastic. He says, "You Navy guys need to come back, and we'll give you any job you want. You pick it. Whatever you'd like. You want a squadron? You want to do this? Just tell me. It's yours." Boy, my eyes lit up, and I thought, "Wow." One of my escort officers was a captain in the Pentagon. He went back and told his boss, who was the Chief of Naval Aviation, what Warner had said, and very quickly I had an introduction to the Chief of Naval Aviation, who made sure that I understood that despite what the Secretary had said, in the environment we were in, I was not going to come in and take over his squadron. He'd find a place for me, he'd give me a useful job, but don't think that with the Vietnam War going on and people earning their positions the hard way, that I was going to walk in there and do that. He says, "The Secretary means well, but we run the show." [Laughs] So armed with that piece of information that if I went back on real Navy duty, at that point I was probably not going to find a particularly rewarding job, and I thought the opportunity to get in on the Shuttle at the beginning and go use some of the experience we gained would be useful, so I told my sponsor I'd do whatever the Navy preferred I do. After all, they gave me my education and everything else that mattered. "So you tell me, but if I had a vote, I would say why don't I stay because the Shuttle Program's only going to take four years." That's what we were advertising. [Laughs] You know, four years, that's not all that long. So after a significant amount of discussion within the Navy side of the Pentagon, they said, "Okay. Well, we agree. You probably can contribute more if you stay there." Years later when I did go back on real Navy, one of the flag officers took me in and says, "There's a file you ought to see," and there was a letter in there from the officer who was in charge of monitoring the Navy astronauts, to the Chief of Naval Operations. It was a little two-thirds-of-a-page letter, and I don't remember the beginning two paragraphs, but the ending paragraphs says, "In summary, after laboring mightily, the elephants have created a mouse." These guys are not coming back. [Laughter] That memo didn't get published in too-wide circles.[/i]
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