From: DM

Aloha,
Here is an interesting article linking Hawaii Superferry owner
(and former Secretary of the Navy) John Lehman
to candidate (and former navy captain) John McCain III.
John Lehman is currently serving as National Security
Adviser to McCain's 2008 presidential campaign.
________________________________

NY Times Hypes McCain Credentials
By Jeffrey Klein, AlterNet
Posted on June 19, 2008, http://www.alternet.org/story/88619/

"At a meeting in his Pentagon office in early 1981, Secretary of the
Navy John F. Lehman told Capt. John S. McCain III that he was about to
attain his life ambition: becoming an admiral ... Mr. McCain declined
the prospect of his first admiral's star to make a run for Congress,
saying that he could 'do more good there,' Mr. Lehman recalled." So
claimed the New York Times in a front-page article on May 29 this
year.

This story is highly improbable for several reasons, not least of all
because John McCain himself has always told a very different story
about his stalled naval career. For example, on page 9 of his memoir
Worth The Fighting For, McCain writes:

Several months before my father died, I informed him that I was
leaving the navy. I am sure he had gotten word of my decision from
friends in the Pentagon. I had been summoned to see the CNO, Admiral
Heyward, who told me I was making a mistake ... His attempt to
dissuade me encouraged me to believe that I might have made admiral
had I remained in the navy, a prospect that remained an open question
in my mind ... Some of my navy friends believed I could earn my star;
others doubted it ... When I told my father of my intention, he did
not remonstrate me ... But I knew him well enough to know that he was
disappointed. For when I left him that day, alone in his study, I took
with me his hope that I might someday become the first son and
grandson of four-star admirals to achieve the same distinction. That
aspiration was well beyond my reach by the time I made my decision ...

McCain's father died on March 22, 1981. McCain retired from the Navy
within a week. He wrote about his retirement soon thereafter. McCain
never mentioned the alleged offer of an admiralship by Lehman in any
of his books, nor in the numerous interviews he gave during his first
run for the presidency in 1999-2000.

Furthermore, articles written during the current presidential campaign
quote McCain's closest friends about McCain's failure to be promoted
to admiral before he retired from the Navy. For example, in an April
26, 2008, National Journal cover story, William Cohen (then a senator,
subsequently secretary of defense and the best man at McCain's second
wedding) recounts that McCain "knew his career in the Navy was
limited." Former Sen. Gary Hart, who served as a groomsman at McCain's
1980 wedding, says in the National Journal story that he had been told
"that [McCain] was not going to receive a star and not going to become
an admiral. I think that was the deciding point for him to retire from
the Navy."

John Lehman doesn't figure in any accounts of McCain's naval career,
probably because Lehman was appointed secretary of the Navy less than
two months before McCain retired. The New York Times didn't note this,
or the pertinent fact that John Lehman is currently serving as
National Security Adviser to McCain's 2008 presidential campaign. Two
admirals in the Times story confirmed Lehman's claim, but for unknown
reasons the Times, in violation of its own guidelines, accorded them
off-the-record status that makes it impossible to assess their motives
and credibility.The New York Times' front-page story about McCain
declining promotion to admiral lacks credibility for other reasons as
well. For example, McCain had been promoted to captain on August 1,
1979, so he wouldn't have been due for another promotion by March of
1981.

Retired Adm. Peter Booth, who was promoted to rear admiral in 1981,
flatly disputes Lehman's claim about McCain. "No, John McCain was not
selected for flag rank, for admiral. With all due respect, I think I
was selected that same year, and I have never heard anything even
remotely like that. To begin with, John Lehman did not select Navy
flag officers. That was done with a very august selection board headed
by a four-star admiral. The secretary of the Navy does not appoint. He
is in the approval chain, but he is not on the committee.

"I have never heard a story, even remotely, that John McCain was going
to be a flag officer. I was early selected for captain, in 1976, and I
was regular selected for admiral in 1981. So it's probably five or six
years, I guess. I've never heard of anybody being selected for flag
rank within three or four years of making captain, ever."

Retired Adm. John R. Batzler, former commanding officer of the U.S.S.
Nimitz, also promoted to rear admiral in 1981, agrees with retired
Adm. Booth.

"I made rear admiral in about five years. I wasn't selected early, and
I wasn't selected late. I find it incredible that someone made that
statement that John Lehman told John McCain he was going to be
promoted to admiral two years after he made captain. First of all,
telling him at all is not kosher, but we all know the secretary of the
Navy does what he damn well pleases, in particular John Lehman. This
whole idea that John Lehman told John McCain he was going to be
promoted to flag two years after he made captain sounds preposterous
to me."

All of the evidence, indications and comments that the New York Times
published a flattering lie about McCain's career on its front page are
easy for John McCain to refute. All he needs to do is sign Standard
Form 180, which authorizes the Navy to send an undeleted copy of
McCain's naval file to news organizations. A long paper trail about
McCain's pending promotion to admiral would be prominent in his file.
To date, McCain's advisers have released snippets from his file, but
under constrained viewing circumstances. There's no reason McCain's
full file shouldn't be released immediately. In June 2005, seven
months after he lost his bid for president, Sena. John Kerry signed
the 180 waiver, authorizing the release of his complete military
service record to the Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, and the
Associated Press. ** Unlike Kerry, McCain shouldn't wait until after
the election to do so.

The Navy may claim that it already released McCain's record to the
Associated Press on May 7, 2008, in response to the AP's Freedom of
Information Act request. But the McCain file the Navy released
contained 19 pages -- a two-page overview and 17 pages detailing
Awards and Decorations. Each of these 17 pages is stamped with a
number. These numbers range from 0069 to 0636. When arranged in
ascending order, they precisely track the chronology of McCain's
career. It seems reasonable to ask the Navy whether there are at least
636 pages in McCain's file, of which 617 weren't released to the
Associated Press.

Some of the unreleased pages in McCain's Navy file may not reflect
well upon his qualifications for the presidency. From day one in the
Navy, McCain screwed up again and again, only to be forgiven because
his father and grandfather were four-star admirals. McCain's sense of
entitlement to privileged treatment bears an eerie resemblance to
George W. Bush's.

Despite graduating in the bottom 1 percent of his Annapolis class,
McCain was offered the most sought-after Navy assignment -- to become
an aircraft carrier pilot. According to military historian John
Karaagac, "'the Airdales,' the air wing of the Navy, acted and still
do, as if unrivaled atop the naval pyramid. They acted as if they
owned, not only the Navy, but the entire swath of blue water on the
earth's surface." The most accomplished midshipmen compete furiously
for the few carrier pilot openings. After four abysmal academic years
at Annapolis distinguished only by his misdeeds and malfeasance, no
one with a record resembling McCain's would have been offered such a
prized career path. The justification for this and subsequent plum
assignments should be documented in McCain's naval file.

McCain's file should also include records and analytic reviews of
McCain's subsequent subpar performances. Here are a few cited in two
highly favorable biographies, both titled John McCain, one by Robert
Timberg and the other by John Karaagac.

Timberg:

"[A]fter a European fling with the tobacco heiress, John McCain
reported to flight school at Pensacola in August 1958 ... [H]is
performance was below par, at best good enough to get by. He liked
flying, but didn't love it. What he loved was the kick-the-tire,
start-the-fire, scarf-in-the-wind life of a naval aviator. ... One
Saturday morning, as McCain was practicing landings, his engine quit
and his plane plunged into Corpus Christi. Knocked unconscious by the
impact, he came to as the plane settled to the bottom ... McCain was
an adequate pilot, but he had no patience for studying dry aviation
manuals ... His professional growth, though reasonably steady, had its
troubled moments. Flying too low over the Iberian Peninsula, he took
out some power lines, which led to a spate of newspaper stories in
which he was predictably identified as the son of an admiral ... [In
1965] he flew a trainer solo to Philadelphia for the Army-Navy game.
Flying by way of Norfolk, he had just begun his descent over
unpopulated tidal terrain when the engine died. 'I've got a flameout,'
he radioed. He went through the standard relight procedures three
times. At 1,000 feet he ejected, landing on the deserted beach moments
before the plane slammed into a clump of trees."

Adds Karaagac:

"In his memoir, everything becomes a kind of game of adolescent
brinksmanship, how much can one press the limits of the acceptable and
elude the powers that be ... The [fighter jocks'] ethos of
exaggerated, almost aggressive sociability becomes an end in itself
and an excuse for license. There is a tendency for people, not simply
to believe their own mythology but, indeed, to exaggerate it ...
Fighter jocks, like politicians around their campaign contributions,
often press the limits of the acceptable. It is a type of mild
corruption that takes place in a highly privileged atmosphere, where
restraints are loosened and excuses made ... McCain gives some hint in
his memoirs about where he stood in the hierarchy among carrier
flyers. Instead of the sleek and newer Phantoms and Crusaders, McCain
flew the dependable Douglas A-4 Skyhawk in an attack, not a fighter
squadron. He was thus on the lower end of the flying totem pole."

The genius of McCain's mythmaking is his perceived humility amid
perpetual defiance. Having been a rebel without cause, and often a
rebel without consequences, McCain apparently was not surprised when
his Vietnamese captors went relatively easy on him compared to his
fellow POWs. The Vietnamese military secretly and frequently filmed
the American POWs to learn their propensities. Col. Pham Van Hoa of
the Vietnamese People's Army Film Department was in charge of the
filming. Asked recently for his dominant impression of McCain, the
now-retired Van Hoa said that McCain "seemed superior to other
prisoners." How so? "Superior in attitude towards them."

But when Mark Salter, McCain's closest aide and co-author, was asked
by the Arizona New Times about the first McCain memoir, Faith of My
Fathers, that he was then working on, Salter said "the book will
showcase a humble McCain. When I worked on this book with him, he just
kept saying, 'Other guys had it a lot worse. I think they took it
easier on me because of who my dad was ... When they tied me in ropes,
they'd roll my sleeve up to give it a little padding between the rope
and my bicep, you know, little things I noticed. The only really hard
time I had was when I didn't go home, and then it only lasted a week,
and sometimes I felt braver, I felt I could get away with more.'"

Is McCain now getting away with more by hiding his official history
and by having his national security adviser inflate McCain's resume
with a bogus promotion to admiral humbly declined? If so, McCain may
be attempting to hide why the Navy was in fact slow to promote him
upwards despite his suffering as a POW and his distinguished naval
heritage.

One possible reason: After McCain had returned from Vietnam as a war
hero and was physically rehabilitated, he was urged by his medical
caretakers and military colleagues never to fly again. But McCain
insisted on going up. As Carl Bernstein reported in Vanity Fair, he
piloted an ultralight single-propeller plane -- and crashed another
time. His fifth loss of a plane has vanished from public records, but
should be a subject of discussion in his Navy file. It wouldn't be
surprising if his naval superiors worried that McCain was just too
defiant, too reckless and too crash prone.

Regardless, McCain owes it to the country to release his complete
naval records so that American voters can see his documented history
and make an informed decision.

(c) 2008 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/88619/