John Lehman

John F. Lehman as Minister of the Navy in 1982

John F. Lehman, Jr. (born September 14, 1942 in Philadelphia , Pennsylvania ) is an American investment banker and author. Between 1981 and 1987 he was US Secretary of the Navy . From 2002 he was a member of the commission of inquiry into the 9/11 attacks .

Life

education

Born in Philadelphia, Lehman attended La Salle College High School in nearby Wyndmoor . He then studied international relations at Saint Joseph's University in Philadelphia and graduated in 1964 with a Bachelor of Science . He received his Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts from Gonville and Caius College at the University of Cambridge , and in 1974 he received his Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania .

Military career

In Cambridge, Lehman enrolled with the Air Force Reserve Command for three years . In 1968 he left the USAF and joined the United States Navy . There he was promoted to the rank of commander . As early as 1969 he was appointed by Henry Kissinger to his staff at the National Security Council, where he worked until 1974. In the meantime, Lehman worked at UBS and, from 1977 to 1981, served as President of Abington Corporation . In 1981 he was appointed by Ronald Reagan to the Navy Department, which he headed until 1987.

Together with the Navy of 600 ships, he developed an important pillar of armament for the Navy. The "Lehman Doctrine" devised by him stated that an attack by the Soviet Union on Western Europe must be followed by an attack on Soviet territory in the Far East. The US should cut ties with the Trans-Siberian Railway and fight its way west to Moscow.

In 1982, Lehman was actively involved in the forced withdrawal of Admiral Hyman Rickover . After the Electric Boat shipyard had great difficulties manufacturing the Los Angeles-class submarines , the Navy had to make high back payments because it was also the insurer of the business. Rickover attacked this part of the contract made by Lehman. After it became known that Rickover had accepted gifts from Electric Boat's mother, General Electric , a minor incident involving the USS La Jolla (SSN-701) submarine (the boat lost its controllability) that Rickover had direct control of , and the fact that he was already 82 years old, Lehman, with the backing of Reagan, forced the retirement of the "father of the nuclear navy".

Later career

Lehman is chairman of the private equity -Gesellschaft JF Lehman & Company , also a member of several conservative think tanks in the United States, including such influential as the Heritage Foundation and the Project for the New American Century . In 2002 he was appointed to the 9/11 Commission of Inquiry. His most famous quote according to the Notable Names Database is: "Power corrupts. Absolute power is kind of neat."

author

Lehman has authored several books on the US armed forces , including On Seas of Glory , a treatise on the history of the US Navy, America the Vulnerable: Our Military Problems and How to Fix Them, and his biography, Command of the Seas .

Web links

• Official Homepage of the Writers' Representatives .
• Short biography on 9-11commission.gov .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ John F. Lehman. Retrieved September 14, 2018 .