Pentagon

Rebuilding The Navy: Former Sec. John Lehman

Bill Thompson
John F. Lehman Jr., Secretary of the Navy

After Ronald Reagan was sworn in as president in 1981, one of his eary appointments was to name a new Secretary of the Navy, who was tasked with rebuilding a demoralized and under-equipped Navy.

He chose a 38-year-old Naval Reserve aviator named John Lehman. No stranger to Washington, Lehman had served on the National Security Council staff under Henry Kissinger during the Nixon administration.

Lehman served as Secretary until his resignation in spring 1987. And the following year he wrote a book called Command of the Seas.

Get your copy of John Lehman’s book

And on top of all of his public service , Lehman is also a first cousin once removed of Princess Grace of Monaco.

I spoke with him when his book was published in the early weeks of 1989.

So here now, from 1989, John Lehman.

John Lehman is 82 now. He’s chairman of the Princess Grace Foundation USA. He lives in Pennsylvania and New York.

Dean Murphy

Bill Thompson
Robert J. Fisch

The September 11, 2001 attacks in New York and Washington were to this generation what Pearl Harbor was to our parents and grandparents.

And as the histories of those events are written, it is essential to have contemporary eyewitness accounts.

But in the immediate aftermath of the September 11th attack a New York Times reporter wanted to go beyond just simple eyewitness accounts and assemble an entire oral history of that day.

So in the months that followed, Dean Murphy painstakingly assembled an oral history which was published one year after the attack. His book was called September 11: An Oral History.

Now, while the descriptions in this interview are not in and of themselves graphic, the overall subject matter may be disturbing to some.

So here now, from September 2002, Dean Murphy.

Dean Murphy is now Associate Managing Editor at The New York Times.

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