With only lukewarm support from Secretary Weinberger, who believed that the zeroballistic-missile (ZBM) proposal would not be pursued, Crowe initiated discussion of the subject in a meeting of the National Security Planning Group (NSPG). He informed the President that the Joint Chiefs believed that it would be ill-advised to proceed with the ZBM proposal. The concept was, in fact, not pursued, and Admiral Crowe believed that his speaking out at the meeting bolstered his relationship with the other members of the NSPG.

During Crowe's tenure as Chairman there was heightened tension in the Persian Gulf region as a result of the Iran-Iraq War. In

1987 he was actively involved in the planning for Operation EARNEST WILL, the US reflagging and convoying of Kuwaiti tankers in the Persian Gulf to protect them from Iranian attack. Using the increased authority that Goldwater-Nichols gave the Chairman and the CINCs to design command and control arrangements, Crowe guided the creation of a joint task force to conduct the operation. In July 1988, when the USS Vincennes mistakenly shot down an Iranian civilian airliner, Crowe, supported by Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci, urged immediate public disclosure of the shootdown. When the Secretary of State and the President

agreed, Crowe was given the responsibility of making the announcement.

With the lessening of tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union in 1987, Admiral Crowe initiated a historic dialogue with his Soviet counterpart. When Chief of the Soviet General Staff Marshal Sergei Akhromeyev was in Washington in December 1987 for the signing of the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, Crowe invited him to the Pentagon, where Akhromeyev met with the Chairman and the other JCS members in "The Tank." A private Crowe-Akhromeyev meeting led to an agreement designed to prevent accidental armed conflict between US and Soviet armed forces and to a formal program of military-tomilitary dialogue between the services of the

two countries. In the summer of 1988 Akhromeyev and the Soviet Service Vice Chiefs visited the United States at Crowe's invitation. When Crowe and the US Service Vice Chiefs returned the visit in June 1989, he and Akhromeyev's successor, General Mikhail Moiseyev, signed the Agreement on the Prevention of Dangerous Military Activities and a military-to-military contacts agreement. Crowe's initiatives did much to hasten the thaw in the Cold War.

After his retirement on 30 September 1989, Admiral Crowe became a counselor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC, and University Professor of Geopolitics at the University of Oklahoma. He wrote his memoir, The Line of Fire; served on a number of corporate boards;