Vice admiral among first sailors to serve aboard nuclear sub

Edward “Al” Burkhalter Jr., a retired Navy vice admiral who served on nuclear submarines early in his career and later held highranking intelligence positions, including as an adviser to the CIA, died Wednesday at a hospital in Annapolis, Md. He was 91.

The cause was a heart attack, said a son-in-law, J.D. Baldwin.

Adm. Burkhalter entered the Navy’s submarine corps soon after his graduation from the U.S. Naval Academy and was among the first generation of sailors in the nation’s nuclear-powered submarine fleet in the late 1950s.

As navigator of the USS Seadragon, he had a major role in planning the submarine’s route as it made its way past Greenland, then through the Northwest Passage in the Arctic Ocean. The nuclear-powered Seadragon made international news in 1960 when it became the Navy’s third submarine to reach the North Pole and the second, after the USS Skate, to ascend to the surface at the top of the world.

Adm. Burkhalter later served aboard other submarines, including a tour in the late 1960s as commander of the Skate. He had a planning role in a top-secret program in the early 1970s, Operation Ivy Bells, in which U.S. military and intelligence units attached listening devices to undersea

Soviet communication cables. From 1974 to 1976, Adm. Burkhalter was commander of a submarine squadron at a now-defunct U.S. naval base on the Italian island of Sardinia.

He spent the rest of his military career at the Pentagon as an intelligence officer, including as deputy director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. From 1981 to 1986, he was the chief military liaison to CIA Director William J. Casey, who was a close friend.

Adm. Burkhalter had a key role in preparing intelligence agency budgets before retiring from the Navy as a three-star admiral in 1986. His decorations included the Defense Distinguished Service Medal and the Legion of Merit.