Free Republic

Within weeks many of you will be looking across just hundreds of feet of water at some of the most modern technology ever invented in America. Unfortunately, it is on Soviet ships. - Secretary of the Navy John Lehman, May 25, 1983, to graduating class at Annapolis . ... Almost 70 percent of the present Soviet merchant fleet has been built outside the Soviet Union. This has released Soviet shipyards and materials for Soviet naval construction. All diesel engines in Soviet ships use a technology originating outside the Soviet Union. The Soviets provided 80 percent of the supplies for the...

Democrats appeared to have assumed control of the state Senate with results posted early Wednesday showing former Sen. John Lehman (D-Racine) defeating incumbent Van Wanggaard in a tight race. Republicans held on to three other state Senate seats in Tuesday's recall voting. Democratic challengers lost recalls bids against Sens. Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau) and Terry Moulton (R-Chippewa Falls.). Rep. Jerry Petrowski (R-Stettin) was elected to fill the vacancy left by Sen. Pam Galloway (R-Wausau), who resigned earlier this year after opponents gathered enough signatures to initiate a recall election. All eyes Wednesday will be on the 21st District. Results posted early...

Democrats appeared to have assumed control of the state Senate with results posted early Wednesday showing former Sen. John Lehman (D-Racine) in a tight race defeating incumbent Van Wanggard, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is reporting...

Over the last few days, since Romney clinched the GOP nomination for President by going over the 1,144 committed delegates needed with his win in the Texas Primary on Tuesday, May 29, 2012, a number of new endorsements have come in for Romney's bid for the Presidency. These include George Shultz, former Secretary of State; Condoliza Rice, former Secretrary of State and National Security Advisor; Mike Huckabee, former Governor of Arkansas and presidential candidate; and Nancy Reagan, wife of President Ronald Reagan. Here's what each of them had to say on the date they endorsed Romney: NANCY REAGAN endorses Mitt...

The Navy’s former top civilian has rocked the service in a military journal article by accusing officials of sinking the storied naval air branch into a sea of political correctness. Former Navy Secretary John Lehman, himself an ex-carrier-based aviator, wrote that the swagger and daring of yesterday’s culture has given way to a focus on integrating women and, this year, gays. Pilots constantly worry about anonymous complaints about salty language, while squadron commanders are awash in bureaucratic requirements for reports and statistics, he added. “Those attributes of naval aviators — willingness to take intelligent calculated risk, self-confidence, even a certain...

<p>Commission, tells National Review Online that, “frankly, I’m pissed off.”</p> <p>“President Obama just doesn’t get it,” says Lehman. “I don’t think he has a clue. It’s all pure spin. He’s ignoring key issues and taking respectable professionals like John Brennan and turning them into hacks and shills. It’s beyond contempt.”</p>

ALBANY — Gov. Eliot L. Spitzer’s new policy that permits illegal immigrants to obtain New York State driver’s licenses is “an absurd” decision that will provide a new gateway for terrorists, a member of the federal commission that investigated the 2001 World Trade Center attacks warns. “It’s a perfect formula for al-Qaida. They won’t be able to resist it. They will be able to come to New York,” said John Lehman, a former secretary of the Navy who served on the 9/11 Commission that warned of the nation’s vulnerabilities to terrorist strikes. Lehman joins a growing number of critics of...

The independent commission investigating the 9/11 attacks has examined a secret videotape of ex-President Clinton discussing an offer from Sudan to have Osama bin Laden arrested five years before the 9/11 attacks, former Navy Secretary and 9/11 Commissioner John Lehman revealed on Tuesday. Asked if the never-before-seen video confirms that Clinton admitted turning the offer down, Lehman told radio host Sean Hannity, "Well, that is what he said." While the video of Clinton's bombshell remarks, delivered to the Long Island Association in February 2002, had never been released prior to a request from the 9/11 Commission, NewsMax.com's exclusive audiotape shows...

CHOOSE A NAME FOR THIS LATEST CLINTON SCANDAL-- How about "WALLGATE" or "TREASONGATE"?

"...In April, CNSNews.com staff writer Scott Wheeler reported that a senior U.S. government official and three other sources claimed that the 1995 memo written by Jamie Gorelick, who served as the Clinton Justice Department’s deputy attorney general from 1994 to 1997, created "a roadblock" to the investigation of illegal Chinese donations to the Democratic National Committee. But the picture is much bigger than that. The Gorelick memo, which blocked intelligence agents from sharing information that could have halted the September 11 hijacking plot, was only the mortar in a much larger maze of bureaucratic walls whose creation Gorelick personally oversaw..."

"...So it's my clear belief that the wall itself developed this culture which restrained in a substantial way the exchange of information in the intelligence and law enforcement communities. The Bellows report, which was part of some recommendations following the Wen Ho Lee case, indicated that it was part of the culture at the FBI that if one made a mistake and shared information that was later deemed to be inappropriate, it was called a career- ender, so that the risk of a person sharing information improperly was at least known in the culture of the law enforcement community to...

According to The New York Times (8 July 2003): "the federal commission investigating the Sept. 11 terror attacks said today that its work was being hampered by the failure of executive branch agencies, especially the Pentagon and the Justice Department, to respond quickly to requests for documents and testimony." Several alternative media have joined the bandwagon. George W. Bush is accused of obstructing the investigation...Former Jersey governor Thomas Kean, the commission's chairman is presented as an honest and uncompromising individual, who is courageously confronting the US government: "Without greater cooperation, Kean said, ''we cannot do the job we are supposed...

"...It was a deeply rewarding experience to work with highly capable colleagues and for such distinguished and thoughtful commissioners. Our commission sessions had long and occasionally heated discussion, but it was always productive and the commissioners themselves were devoted to achieving bipartisanship and unanimity. They understood very well that their impact would be greatest if they were unanimous..."

The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (also known as the 9-11 Commission), an independent, bipartisan commission created by congressional legislation...is chartered to prepare a full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, including preparedness for and the immediate response to the attacks...

...The former intelligence official said the first Able Danger report identified all four men as members of a "Brooklyn" cell, and was produced within two months after Mr. Atta arrived in the United States. The former intelligence official said he was among a group that briefed Mr. Zelikow and at least three other members of the Sept. 11 commission staff about Able Danger when they visited the Afghanistan-Pakistan region in October 2003...

In September 2000, one year before the Al Qaeda attacks of 9/11, a U.S. Army military intelligence program, known as “Able Danger,” identified a terrorist cell based in Brooklyn, NY, one of whose members was 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta, and recommended to their military superiors that the FBI be called in to “take out that cell,” according to Rep. Curt Weldon, a longtime Republican congressman from Pennsylvania who is currently vice chairman of both the House Homeland Security and House Armed Services Committees...

...We do know that Able Danger made their report about four of the attackers in 2000. We do know the report was submitted and the request for action was denied. We do know the Gorelick policy ‘wall’ was in effect at the time. We do know Clinton was President and Dick Clark was terrorism guru. We do know 9-11 commission staffers were briefed on these events and 9-11 commissioners were not...

WASHINGTON - The new National Intelligence Director, John Negroponte, is not yet heeding a top recommendation of the Sept. 11 Commission to tear down barriers that divided U.S. spy agencies, one of the panel's Republican commissioners said Monday. As part of a panel discussion about the progress of intelligence changes, former Navy Secretary John Lehman said Negroponte has two other full-time jobs: serving as the president's chief intelligence adviser and managing the 15 U.S. intelligence agencies. "So far, it's still early days, but the job that we on the 9/11 Commission were most concerned about — we really didn't care...

...After intense work, Sens. Joe Lieberman, John McCain and Susan Collins have introduced comprehensive legislation that differs on only a few matters with the Commission recommendations. The Senate leadership has pursued the same bipartisan course that enabled the Commission's five Democrats and five Republicans to achieve unanimity on comprehensive and decisive findings and reform recommendations. The House is following suit with somewhat different legislation and there is no reason now why differences cannot be resolved in a Senate-House Conference and a landmark bill presented to the president before the election recess. This accomplishment, to paraphrase Mark Twain, will gratify our...

CLAREMONT, Calif. - The Pentagon knows exactly where Osama bin Laden is hiding in Pakistan, it just can't get to him, John Lehman, a member of the 9/11 Commission, said Thursday.   Lehman's remarks echoed those made Tuesday by Secretary of State Colin Powell, who said the al-Qaida leader was alive and operating in the western part of Pakistan.   Bin Laden is living in South Waziristan in the Baluchistan Mountains of the Baluchistan region, Lehman told the San Bernardino Sun after delivering a keynote speech on terrorism at Pitzer College in Claremont.   In the interview, Lehman noted, "There...