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To: Stewie-baby It is just great to see you take the bait -- hook, line, and sinker. For a guy who is so proud of his 'joke net,' it sure is funny to see you lose your cool and come out swinging blindly at the boogey man. Your response to my public spanking of your buddy, Mike, was so full of the same qualities that you attribute to me --arrogance, childish attacks, angry, insulting, ego, extremist, etc. -- that it makes us laugh. After all, I only suggested that Mike -- and you -- read some of the 'mainstream' literature that supports the stuff that I have published over the past several years. Doesn't look as if you guys took the suggestion. Too bad. The friends of your buddies on the cc: list have taken my suggestion. And you know what? I'll bet they found some things of which they might have been unaware. Some things which may have great importance for the future. Some things which connect in some personal way with their own life-experiences. Professional. Cultural. Spiritual. And yes, maybe even attached to the current political environment. It's not too late Stewie-baby. There is still time for you to read, digest, think, and discern original thought from 'propaganda.' Martin Jay, Balint Vazsonyi, Otto J. Scott and Jacques Barzun. All noted historians of the American experience. Mainstream guys. So on that note, let me assure you that you are way off the mark on one major premise and right-on with another. You have missed the boat with the assertion that I "have a chip on my shoulder" and have an "ax to grind" and that I "have an agenda (presumably personal and/or malicious)." You should rest assured that I am completely satisfied with my life, professional accomplishments, and status -- both in the U.S. Navy and in civilian life. You see, I have achieved all of the goals that I set for myself in life. I am satisfied, pleased, and content. My goals may not have been the same as yours or others. But those goals were lofty, required tremendous perseverance, hard work, sacrifice, and focus of attention. Achieving those goals has afforded me the status of being completely independent and immune from personal attack. So, rest assured, all of the invective and purposefully malicious attack on my 'character' in your BLAST has absolutely no affect. It rolls off as water off a duck's back. I am immune, Stewie-baby! I am highly motivated, however, to give back to the Navy, naval aviation in particular, and the American people for all that they have given me -- opportunities to reach the full measure of my personal and professional potential. I can never do enough to compensate for all that has been given in terms of opportunity. But I will try. And in my own way and on my own terms.
So, with that out of the way, you can dispense with the childish name-calling and get on to the point on which you are absolutely right. [Actually, I kind of like the name, Stewie-baby, but if that is not appropriate, just let me know and I can find another.] You state quite accurately that I (and presumably others, including RADM Mark Hill, Jr. USN (Ret.) whom your buddy Mike 'dissed' in his original reply -- did you forget that, or did you agree with Mike on that point) am an "angry old man." Although probably not in the way in which you use the phrase. Let me tell you what makes those old World War II Navy guys angry. Take another look at ADM Thomas H. Moorer's endorsement of my book, "From Trust to Terror: Radical Feminism is Destroying the U.S. Navy." He won't say this publicly but he and his 'boys,' who include most of the flag-rank naval aviators during the Vietnam War, are furious at what has happened to their Navy over the past eight years. And they blame the current crop of active-duty flag-rank naval officers for not standing up to the civilian leadership, drawing a line in the sand, and refusing to allow their Navy to be 'feminized,' 'homosexualized,' and otherwise degraded in morale, readiness, and most importantly, the 'warrior spirit.' ADM Moorer stated this quite clearly in his endorsement,
His 'boys' were further enraged when VADM John Ryan, the Superintendent of the Naval Academy, rebuffed ADM Moorer in a letter that stated that the Academy forges midshipmen of better 'ethical character' than was forged in ADM Moorer's day. This came after ADM Moorer gave VADM Ryan a copy of RADM 'Mark' Hill's seminal essay on the new 'ethics' program at the Academy (a copy of which is on my Web Site) and asked for his comment. This is the same VADM Ryan who publicly stated that he has not had a job in the Navy that a woman couldn't do as well or better. Sadly and probably true. A P3 weenie, he has served his entire naval career without ever having shot at or been shot at by a resourceful and determined enemy. We are also quite angry at the Navy's coverup of the cause of LT Kara Hultgreen's fatal accident. We saw VADM Rocky Spane go on Nightline and ADM Mike Boorda go on national television at a press conference and tell America that the cause of the accident was engine failure. They outright lied to the American people about this, as you well know. Those of us who gained access to the MIR (that some courageous person leaked to the Internet) knew what you must have known then, Stewie-baby. It was pilot error -- plain and simple. But the Navy at the highest level had to carry out the fiction that a female simply could not be held up to failure. A rookie mistake that any man could have made but a female must not be allowed to fail -- not in today's feminized Navy. We were also quite angry when ADM Stan Arthur went on 60 Minutes (the same program that LT Pipper Burns was on) and stated that, "We'll probably never know the real cause of that accident." As much as we respect ADM Arthur for his stellar naval career, we knew he had outright lied to the American people. It's in the MIR, Stewie-baby! We were suspicious, based on plain common sense, that something was awry with the official Navy position that, "A simulator experiment with pilots of VF-211 revealed that each aviator (except the skipper) had failed to recover from the situation that Hultgreen had found herself in -- recovering from a stalled port engine with a high AOA and steep angle of bank)." At the time, I wrote extensively on this subject. In fact, I found a very experienced F-14 pilot who told me that he had recovered from a 30-unit AOA situation with a stalled port engine in the simulator using the proper NATOPS BOLD FACED INSTRUCTIONS -- far greater than Hultgreen's 24-unit AOA situation. And do you know that our suspicions turned to anger when we found out that the CO of VF-211 had either purposely lied about the 'rigged' simulator experiment or allowed his experiment to be misinterpreted by those higher in the chain of command who wanted the 'right' answer -- the answer that supported the position that engine failure was the cause of the accident. And do you know what? The CO has since been rewarded with 'fast track' advancement as a result of his support of the Navy's official position at the time. You probably don't know that the person who gave us the information about that 'rigged' simulator experiment (independently corroborated by two other eyewitnesses) was a member of VF-2. His eyewitness account of how that experiment was really run (first they all failed because they were told to hold in Hultgreen's corrective technique -- right stick and little right rudder until alpha fed into beta and it became impossible to control AOA) allowed the truth to get out via the San Diego Union-Tribune. But the active-duty flag-rank Navy leadership at the time did not want us to know the truth about that experiment. What the Navy did not tell the American people was that when these same aviators tried the same simulated emergency but with application of the correct recovery technique (nose over to 14 units AOA, full right rudder to correct yaw, no right stick), every single pilot recovered from Hultgreen's simulated situation.
And we are angry that politicians have used Tailhook '91 to infect the Navy promotion process all the way down to the promotion of LTs to LCDR. Sheila Widnall, the former Secretary of the Air Force, told VADM Jerry Miller at a formal dinner at the White House that the civilian secretariats of the military services were, indeed, screening officer promotions down to that level. This is the 'politicizing' that you should be railing against. It has the flavor of a purge.
We are angry that TRUST has broken down in the Navy officer corps. Young naval aviators have told us that they now FEAR their superiors. "Can't trust anyone above the rank of CDR" was the complaint heard by many of those who left in disgust. That fear reached all the way down to the advanced training command when a Flight Instructor (the anonymous subject of my book) was threatened with an IG investigation simply because he (and many others) would not relent in their judgment of unsatisfactory performance of a flawed female Student Pilot. The Wing Commander had urged that she be given her 'wings of gold' without completing the ACM part of the training syllabus. His intimidation of his Flight Instructors was so direct and threatening that the they were forced to seek outside legal counsel. At least one was sufficiently fearful of the Wing Commander that he went to a civilian reporter with their story. It was corroborated by 12 other flight instructors. This fear was real enough that he chose to communicate via an outside pay phone to find protection from the tyrannical actions of the Wing Commander, who, in the end, became a victim of his own tyranny. This story is told in its entirety in my book, "From Trust to Terror." And we are angry that the Navy chose to elevate a retired flag-rank naval officer to hold the first Distinguished Chair for Leadership at the Naval Academy after widely held knowledge that he had covered up the cause of the explosion on the USS Iowa during his tenure as Vice Chief of Naval Operations. See "A Glimpse of Hell," by Charles Thompson for the details. We are angry that the Superintendent of the Naval Academy, under strong political pressure from above, gave civilian radical feminists complete rein to design and implement a New Age 'ethics' program there. These 'change agents' were and are from the same cultural Marxist (look it up) background and philosophy as those who have infected our nation's premier universities. See Alan C. Kors book, "The Shadow University." We are angry that TRUST in the Navy has deteriorated to the point that flag-rank naval aviators, those in whom we had implicit admiration and TRUST (and still do), one who refused President Johnson's and Robert McNamara's order to bomb an empty 50-gal drum POL storage area in North Vietnam (one that this fine officer and leader knew to be empty -- you lost pilots up the gazoo in Alpha strikes then) participated in exposing the Hultgreen affair behind the scenes but was scared (and still is today) to go public with his information for FEAR (yes, fear, Stewie-baby) that any such action would result in retribution on his son who is one of you. We did not know such fear in our day. We TRUSTED that our Navy would not carry out retribution on us for anything our fathers might say or do in the land of free speech. You see, every man has his price. And any man of character would do what he could to protect his son from the wrath of the radical feminists and their sympathizers -- in and out of uniform -- in today's Navy. It makes us very angry that the Navy has digressed to the point that these brave and courageous leaders of the past FEAR today's high-level Navy leadership -- military and civilian -- to the extent that they hesitate to speak the truth for fear of ending their son's career. Another responded to CAPT Clemente's defense of the new 'ethics' program at the Naval Academy in the USNI 'Proceedings' with a very well-balanced, informative, reasoned and mild rebuttal. This retired flag-rank naval aviator had in the past refused to implement all of ADM Zumwalt's famous Z-grams for those under his deployed command. This was tantamount to disobeying a direct order but he followed his own principles and survived. His career, however, was essentially terminated at three-stars. He was and is today held in very high regard by all naval officers. But his 'ethics' rebuttal was not published in the 'Proceedings.' Know why not? After eight months of being schmoozed by the USNA leadership and the Editorial Board and rewrite after rewrite by the 'Proceedings' editors, he finally gave up and retracted his rebuttal. Again, I believe the bottom line was FEAR. Fear of reprisal on a member of his own family. You see, his son had just entered the Naval Academy as a Midshipman. And deep down, in the back of his mind, I believe that he FEARED reprisal if he went ahead with publishing his rebuttal. Yes, in today's 'politically correct' Navy, such FEAR exists. And it directly conveys a lack of TRUST, the one essential thread of character that any fighting organization must have to win America's future wars.
But the real bottom line in this 'anger' stuff is the following. While we were deployed abroad winning the Cold War ('battles' of which included the Korean War and the Vietnam War -- not the 'hundred-hour war' and other 'contingencies' of the 1980s), we belatedly found that we have been losing, if we have not already lost, the culture war to the 'cultural Marxists' at home. And when some of us began researching the what, who, and why of this situation, it suddenly became quite clear from whence this threat came. It is all there in mainstream books, available at any local book store. And even then we didn't believe such a preposterous explanation until the details of what these people had written about their plans and strategy met us head-on in our own lives. I have written of many of those experiences in books, reports, newspaper articles, and other commentary over the past several years. This stuff is available on my Web Site for FREE. We would expect you and most others who first learn of this situation to have the same misgivings that we had at first. Your comments in your BLAST confirm this truth. But if you keep an open mind and look at the evidence, you may become convinced (as we are) that there is something to this 'cultural Marxism' explanation. All we ask is that you at least look at the explanations, ponder their credibility, and make up your own mind. My only original contribution to this unfolding story is the tie I make to chaos theory for an explanation. If you read my stuff, Stewie-baby, even you might come to understand that the science of 'unintended consequences,' i.e. the science of complexity and surprise is a very powerful metaphor for explaining what is going on today in our American culture -- of which the ills of naval aviation are only a small but important part. So, Stewie-baby, it isn't so much "off the deep end" as you and others seem to think. It is actually quite mainstream and up-to-date with emerging science and technology. Stay tuned!
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