Retirement of Joint Chiefs’ Chairman Vessey Expected

President Reagan will announce today the early retirement of Gen. John W. Vessey Jr. as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and will nominate Adm. William J. Crowe Jr. to replace him, congressional and Pentagon sources said Tuesday.

Announcement of the switch at the uppermost level of the nation’s military command, which is scheduled to take place in the fall, ends several months of uncertainty over who would become the President’s senior military adviser during the remainder of his second term. Not since Adm. Thomas H. Moorer retired in 1970 have the Joint Chiefs been headed by a Navy representative.

Like Vessey, Crowe is highly regarded in the military and in Congress. His experience includes joint-services commands in both the Atlantic and Pacific regions. He served as commander-in-chief of allied forces in Europe from 1981 until 1983, when he became commander of all U.S. forces in the Pacific.

Choice of Weinberger

Crowe, who was the choice of Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger, is likely to draw on that experience in commanding Army and Air Force as well as Navy units, to ease traditional interservice rivalries, a knowledgeable military source said. Competition among the services has often reached all the way to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and has been blamed for limiting the effectiveness of U.S. fighting forces.

“Crowe has quite a reputation in the services both as a thinker and a doer,” the source said. “It’s good news for people who want to see more cooperation between the services instead of rivalry. He’s got a history of being someone who got along with the other services.”

A graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, the tall, balding admiral holds a master of arts degree from Stanford University and a doctorate from Princeton University. He was known in the spit-shine world of Annapolis as the one midshipman who--in the words of an officer who worked for him--”always looked like an unmade bed.” The officer also described Crowe as a master of “an absolutely delightful, self-effacing sense of humor.”

Rep. Jim Courter (R-N.J.), a member of the House Armed Services Committee, praised Crowe as a man of “integrity” who was “very candid, honest and outspoken” in recent responses to a congressional inquiry about problems within the U.S. military command.

Among those who had also been rumored to be a candidate was Adm. James D. Watkins, the chief of naval operations, who will now serve under Crowe, his former subordinate.

Vessey, a combat veteran who has served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs since 1982, is currently in the midst of his second two-year term.