Lebanon Democratic Blog

I suspect most of you have seen Senator Arlen Specter’s television ad “No Show Joe” by now. In case you are like me and do not have a television you can view the video on the web site Senator Specter set up to go with the ad.

There are so many problems with the ad and its web site that I cannot address them all here. For right now I will only address the most scurrilous claim in the ad. I will address some of the other issues in another blog post. They are unrelated to the subject of this post.

At the very beginning of the ad, over a picture of Vice-Admiral Sestak and one of some sailors a voice says, “Joe Sestak relieved of duty in the Navy for creating a poor command environment.” Immediately the voice goes on the claim Representative Sestak missed too many votes.

I watched the video of the ad and started searching diligently on the web site and on Senator Specter’s campaign web site for anything that even said what the statement that Joe Sestak was relieved of duty was talking about. I could not find any information to back up the claim and since I did not know what incident was being talked about I was not sure where to check.

I checked the web site again Friday morning and realized I had failed to check the blog link on the Home Page. Timing becomes critical at this point in my little story.

I printed out the entire blog which talked about both Representative Sestak’s naval career and how many votes he missed in Congress. The printout of the blog has a date and time of 4/23/2010 7:1 AM.

I was writing an email about the ad to someone and went back to the blog to double check something. I was surprised to see the blog had been completely rewritten. I printed out the entire blog again. The date and time of that printout is 4/23/2010 7:30 AM. The most relevant change here is all references to Vice-Admiral Sestak’s naval career had been expunged within 20 minutes.

My first thought was Senator Specter has been getting a lot of negative feed back about this claim and he has instructed his staff to remove it from the web site. I was optimistic enough to think he will simple do another television ad.

I went back to the Home Page of the http://noshowjoe.org web site and checked to see if the video had been removed. The video was still there.

Trying to be fair I thought, OK he is having the web site redesigned and that cannot all be done in 20 minutes even if a large chunk of a blog can be erased that quickly.

Since I was going to be out of town all day I decided I would recheck when I got home. I rechecked Friday evening and the offending video is still prominently displayed. The screen print clearly shows the video link and the date and time of 4/23/2010 8:28 PM.

“What Others Are Saying About Joe Sestak Being “Relieved of Duty” is the title of the blog article. It starts, “As Cong. Joe Sestak tries to re-write history about being relieved of duty in the Navy, here’s what others have to say about Sestak creating a ‘poor command climate’.”  I will not address all of the anonymous statements but the first one is typical.

Navy Times, March 20, 2006:

Mullen relieved Sestak form his position as deputy chief of naval operations for warfare requirements and programs (sic, this is a formal job title and is improperly not capitalized in the blog) and switched him to the office of vice chief [sic]. The Navy does not comment of the movement of flag officers. But a Navy official who declined to be named said Sestak was relieved due to an “extremely bad” command climate, adding that although analysis from Sestak’s shop was highly regarded, “saying it was not a pleasant place to work would be an understatement.” (Bold text is in the original text of the blog.)

First, we have a statement by a Navy official who declined to be named. The whole statement is pure hearsay. The statement could be by a 4-Star Admiral or a junior sailor. Is it from someone who thought his former boss made him work too hard?

Whoever made the statement (and I certainly am not familiar with Navy Times to think they might make up a fabricated story for ratings) though he or she clearly does not like retired Vice-Admiral Sestak he has to praise his work ethic and results. “[A]lthough analysis from Sestak’s shop was highly regarded….”

Joe Sestak retired from the Navy in 2005 to help care for his daughter who had brain cancer. About a year later someone unknown makes a partially derogatory statement for some unknown reason and the Navy Times thinks it will make an exciting story about an officer who has already left the service.

Please think about what was happening in 2005. The United States was deeply involved in two wars in Asia. Every branch of the armed forces was feeling the strain of what was clearly going to be a long term commitment. Admiral Sestak was in command of a key office in conducting warfare.

In 2010, a “current admiral, who ask not to be identified speaking out against a former colleague.” This one says Admiral Sestak’s desire to reduce the size of the fleet was actually widely held of the years.” However, he thought Sestak had a “tyrannical leadership style.” [again bold in the blog article].

Whoever this admiral is he gets totally ridiculous when he said, “In today’s Navy there’s no way a guy like Joe Sestak would be able to have been as quote-unquote successful rising through the ranks.” [Before you ask, no the whole blog article is not in bold face.] I consider an officer who goes from Ensign in 1974 to Vice-Admiral in 2005 to have done quite well in rising through the ranks. Vice-Admiral is the second highest rank in the Navy. Had the Navy really changed so dramatically between 2005 and 2010?

One place Senator Specter claims the Navy Times had reported that Joe Sestak had been fired for a top Navy post two years ago. But it is the Navy Times saying what The Hill has written. The Navy Times is not an official publication of the Department of the Navy. Still, I could believe the Navy Times would be in a much better position to get information from the Navy than a newspaper which reports on Capital Hill.

Finally we come to something a little closer to the time when Admiral Sestak resigned from the Navy. On taking command as Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) Admiral Mike Mellens reassigned Vice-Admiral Sestak. In his second act as CNO, Mullens tranferred him to be special assistant to Vice Chief of Naval Operations—until further notice. According to the Specter blog the Navy Times said Admiral Sestak was considered an intellectual heavyweight in the Navy, “but Mullen reassigned Sestak to points unknown on his opening day of business as the new CNO.”

I do not know about Senator Specter but I certainly do not consider a transfer to the office of the Vice Chief of Naval Operations to be points unknown.

Specter or the Navy Times (I am not always quite sure which I am reading) says, “The official reason for Sestak’s removal: poor “command climate.” Senator Specter please show me an order or a letter of reprimand with the statement “poor ‘command climate.’”

Unless you can provide better proof than anonymous statements by people who both praise and condemn Representative Joe Sestak please pull the ad “No Show Joe” and remove the link to the video from the web site. You owe Representative Joe Sestak an apology unless you can verify your claims.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 24th, 2010 at 2:00 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.