NOVANEWS
By Victor Thorn
Created over a century ago and boasting more than 140,000 members, the prestigious U.S. Naval Institute (USNI) describes itself as a non-profit professional military association, “with no government support, that does not lobby for special interests.” Located on the grounds of the Naval Academy just outside of Annapolis, Md., the organization has been in operation since 1873 when it was first established by a group of naval officers who sought to further a legacy of “the knowledge of sea power, and to preserve our naval and maritime heritage.”
In its mission statement, the organization’s goals are “to provide an independent forum to those who dare read, think, speak and write in order to advance the professional, literary and scientific understanding of sea power and other issues critical to national defense.”
On the surface, such sentiments sound noble. But recently when the USNI was approached by Bart Van Ness, a lifetime member of AFP’s READERSHIP COUNCIL, to review the book What I Saw That Day: Israel’s June 8 1967 Holocaust of U.S. Servicemen Aboard the USS Liberty and Its Aftermath, the organization’s true allegiances were revealed.
What I Saw That Day by Phil Tourney is the provocative, no-holds-barred book that tells the truth about Israel’s bloody attack on the USS Liberty.
Once one begins examining USNI’s board of directors, an unsettling picture emerges. For instance, the honorary chairman of the board is none other than John Lehman, an infamous Project for the New American Century (PNAC) signatory and member of the trumped-up 9-11 Commission.
Lehman cut his teeth during the Nixon administration as a National Security Council senior staff aide to none other than Henry Kissinger. He also formed ties with another shady operator—Richard Perle—during his stint in the Navy. Lehman has also owned a company named Abington Corporation, and his partner was the so-called “Prince of Darkness” himself, Perle.
Dr. Michael Saba, an international relations consultant, wrote of this partnership in the Arab News on June 26, 2004. “In 1983, a mysterious package of materials in an unmarked envelope was allegedly delivered to New York Times investigative reporter Jeff Garth. The materials led to a major Times story about then-U.S. Secretary of the Navy John Lehman. The materials pointed out that Lehman had supposedly taken payments from an Israeli arms company while he was secretary of the Navy.”
Saba continued, “Perle, who was also a U.S. government official during this period in 1983, had also allegedly received money from the same Israeli arms company.”
British journalist Claudia Wright reiterated these charges. “Well known in Israeli military circles, [Lehman] sat on the board of a Philadelphia think tank run by American supporters of Israel, and operated a highly profitable defense consulting company with business ties to the Israeli arms industry,” wrote Mrs. Wright.
Lehman’s ties to Israel become even more sinister when we consider the infamous case of Jonathan Pollard, a civilian analyst who betrayed our country by stealing secrets and passing them along to our supposed ally. In his article, “9-11 and the Neo-Cons,” independent journalist Tom Wilson wrote: “When Pollard’s espionage was exposed, the following individuals were suspected by then-Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger’s office of being Pollard’s co-conspirators: Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith and John Lehman.”
None of these revelations should surprise anyone because Lehman and his neocon colleagues have had a long history of traitorous behavior against the U.S. in favor of Israel. They have also been doing the Zionists’ dirty work for decades by pushing a pro-military agenda in the Middle East that advances war against Israel’s enemies.
Lehman has been in the thick of this since the early 1970s, yet somehow he was considered “independent” enough to be on the 9-11 Commission.
In the early 1990s Lehman joined the Committee on U.S. Interests in the Middle East. This organization’s purpose was to lobby for U.S. tax dollars for the nation of Israel. Its organizers were notorious pro-Israeli U.S. officials Perle, Douglas Feith and Elliott Abrams.
Lehman was also deputy director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, where he was closely associated with Paul Wolfowitz and Perle. He was also a member of PNAC, which has been described as the most influential warmongering group since the Committee on the Present Danger, another Lehman group.
PNAC, of course, achieved infamy by producing two particularly notorious letters: One was sent to President Bill Clinton, while the other went to President George W. Bush, 11 days after the 9-11 terror attacks. In each of these letters, the signatories—including Dick Cheney, Lewis Libby, Abrams, Donald Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz—urged the then-presidents to engage in one specific act—an acceleration of America’s plans to invade Iraq.
As we all know by now, the Bush neocon administration immediately embarked on these plans only hours after the 9-11 attacks.
