Academy Superintendent Made Inappropriate Comments.

http://www.amazon.com/CONDUCT-UNBECOMING-Officer-Lady-Conviction/dp/1460978021




Admiral James Van Sise, Superintendent at the Coast Guard Academy, made inappropriate comments to several people, and he made inappropriate comments about people. Cadet Webster Smith was the man of the hour, and Van Sice is the mother of all liars. Captain Doug Wisniewski is the father.
Van Sice and Wisniewski had a gross disadvantage over Cadet Webster Smith. He was lower than whale feces at the bottom of the ocean. They were sitting on top of Mount Olympus. Being the demi-gods that they aspired to be, they chose to plant their feet on the back of Webster Smith’s neck and grind his face into the mud. Then they drug him through the ringer. They took full advantage of their power and position. They had no qualms about destroying the life of a defenseless young cadet. They were as compassionate as a Bourbon Street hooker.
They were really nice guys. They are the kind of guys that would walk onto the battle field after the battle and shoot all the wounded. Then deny credit for their best work. They hide behind privacy regulations after they beam Webster Smith’s private cadet formal photo around the world with the moniker “sexual predator”. These are the kind of people who were running the Coast Guard Academy.
Information obtained during the investigation of Van Sice related directly to Cadet Webster Smith. Officials declined to comment further, noting that the Smith court-martial is on appeal before the Coast Guard Court of Military Review. Also, a Formal Complaint of Racial Discrimination is being investigated by the Department of Homeland Security and the General Accounting Office (GAO). .
Inquisitive minds want to know what they said. Coast Guard officials will not provide details of the incidents. What did you expect? Well, there are people who are anxious to get this off their chests. Some of the sources of the inside information are still at the Academy, so they will not be quoted.
But, here is a sample. It is a direct quote. There are others, but I want to give the gentlemen a chance to confirm or deny the quoted statement.
On or about January 26th, Captain Douglas Wisniewski, as the direct representative of ADM James Van Sice, stood before the Corps of Cadets in the Cadet Wardroom and addressed them concerning the status of Cadet Webster Smith. Eye witnesses have come forward to confirm his choice of words. There are cadet witnesses and commissioned officers. They spoke on guarantee of anonymity.
CAPT Wisniewski went further to even order cadets to avoid Cadet Webster Smith at all costs. They were ordered to give him the “silent treatment” just like the cadets at West Point did to General Benjamin O. Davis when he was at West Point. "Webster Smith is a criminal and you are to avoid him...you will see him at the mall or the movies but you are reminded to avoid him."




This was clearly unlawful command influence. This was the Coast Guard Academy equivalent of the smoking gun, the DNA match, the damning memo, the latent fingerprint, or the surprise confession. This is hard evidence. The problem is that the Coast Guard appears not to be interested in evidence, hard or soft, when it comes to justice for Webster Smith.
Cadets were shocked. They were intimidated. Captain Wisniewski referred to an innocent man, Webster Smith, as a “criminal” before official charges had been drafted or filed. Witnesses contend that as late as April 2006, Captain Wisniewski continued to use “harsh and surprising language” in reference to Webster Smith.

Rear Adm. Mary Landry, Director of Governmental and Public Affairs said that Vice Adm. Robert J. Papp, the Coast Guard’s Chief of Staff, took administrative corrective measures with respect to Van Sice on Friday, 23 February. Landry said she could not elaborate on these actions because of privacy laws. It was very auspicious that Admiral Van Sice was given what measure of punishment that his friends felt compelled to mete out behind closed doors on the 23rd of February. Divine Providence was speaking from Numbers32:23, "Be sure, your sins will find you out". As Joe Louis told Max Schmelling, "You can run, but you cannot hide".



THE PHOTO SEEN ROUND THE WORLD.
The admirals and captains have privacy rights, but cadets do not. They are fair game. They can be abused without recourse. Van Sice and Wisniewski were the exclusive custodians of the official records and photos of Cadet Webster Smith. Before they charged him, they labeled him as a criminal and a sexual predator. They called a press conference and they released his formal portrait as a mug shot. It was the photo seen around the world. No one knew quite what to make of it. Nothing like it had ever been done before.

We were always taught that senior officers should be held to a higher standard. The Coast Guard seems to have reversed that maxim. Senior officers are being consistently held to the lowest standard, while demanding that cadets and junior officers be held to the highest standards. If they fall short they get a General Court-martial. Van Sice should get no less than what he gave to Cadet Webster Smith; a General Court-martial and jail.

This Admiral’s Mast was just the latest case of a senior officer getting away with only a slap on the wrist. This is coming to be the Coast Guard’s standard operating procedure. They hold secret, behind the door, private, administrative proceedings on Friday at the end of the week. Then they come out of their bunkers and tell the world that we have just saved you from a monster. There is nothing more to fret because we have taken care of everything.
Vice Admiral Charles Wurster held his mast for the CO, XO, and the Ops Officer from the CGC Healy on January 14, the day before the Coast Guard released the Final Report of an investigation into the death of Lt. Jessica Hill, 31, and Boatswain’s Mate 2nd Class Steven Duque.Wurster found the three — the commanding, executive and operations officers — guilty of dereliction of duty. Captain Doug Russell, the CO, was relieved of command shortly after the accident. On January 14, his sentence was to receive a punitive letter of reprimand and a fine equal to one month’s pay.Commander Jeffrey Jackson, the XO, was sentenced to receive a punitive letter of admonition. The Operations Officer Lieutenant Commander. James Dalitsch was sentenced to receive a punitive letter of reprimand and a fine.All fines were suspended.

The State of the Coast Guard 2007.

Congressman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee has accussed the Coast Guard and the Department of Homeland Security of being two ships of fools.

Aside from the Cadet Webster Smith affair and the Lt. Jessica Hill tragedy, what other problems of their own making can the Coast Guard be struggling with?
General Accounting Office Head asks for more aggressive oversight of the Coast Guard. Coast Guard is Plagued with problems. These problems are like sins. Be sure your sins will find you out. (Num. 32:23)

There is the sin against Lt. Jessica Hill. There is the sin against Cadet Webster Smith. Where is the Webster Smith Civil Rights Complaint?
What is the status of the Court-martial appeal?
( Smith was represented by a Navy attorney, Lt. Stuart Kirkby, and a civilian lawyer, Merle J. Smith. His attorney was not listed with any Bar Association in the United States! He never went to his attorney's office! Was he denied the effective assistance of counsel?)
Where is the Task Force Report on the Culture at the CGA? The Report was due out before the end of January 2007
Many of these problems — decisions regarding Deepwater, a move to court-martial a cadet and failed oversight of the service’s dive program — began before Commandant Thad Allen took over the service in May 2006. But Admiral Allen served as Chief of Staff from 2002 to 2006, and he admitted being aware of major contractual and program decisions and took responsibility for the service’s woes.

I am the commandant of the Coast Guard, I am responsible, I will do this right,” Allen said.
In his State of The Coast guard address on 13 February 2007 he said:
"I want to make the Coast Guard more responsive to the needs of our Nation.
The World is changing and America’s Coast Guard is changing.
We need to become more agile, flexible and responsive. I am talking about thinking, planning and acting with strategic intent. I am talking about setting priorities for the Coast Guard that address the emerging threats and hazards of an expanding global economy and changing world. My task is to explain the way ahead. As we move forward, we remember with great sadness the loss of our shipmates on HEALY last summer and the need to always focus on readiness to execute our missions.
But despite the tremendous work of our Coast Guard units all across the globe, much remains before us.

I can report to you today –
The State of the Coast Guard is strong but we have challenges before us.

We have never been more relevant and we have never been more visible to the Nation we serve.

Since becoming Commandant, I’ve had the opportunity to visit every Coast Guard District and talk with many of you personally. I have held All Hands with nearly 10,000 personnel."
Have you held hands with Cleon Smith, Admiral? Have you shook the hand of Webster Smith?
Webster Smith and the problems at the Coast Guard Academy did not receive any lip service in the speech. At least, Lt Jessica Hill rated one line in the speech.

The Coast Guard has a troubled $24 billion, 25-year fleet-replacement program known as Deepwater.


Contractors built patrol boats with buckling hulls and a large new cutter with structural flaws, but a U.S. Coast Guard review gave their performance high marks last year. They even extended their contract for an additional four years and paid them a multimillion-dollar bonus, government investigators have learned. This next-generation technology is expected to be part of the Coast Guard Homeland Security "virtual fence" at the border, called SBInet. The massive 418-foot Coast Guard ship "Bertholf" was christened on Nov. 11, 2006, hailed as a crucial new weapon in the war on terror. But a report by the Department of Homeland Security's inspector general says the "National Security Cutter" has significant design flaws likely to shorten its useful life, increase maintenance costs, and limit its ability to venture far from U.S. shores. And the cost of building just two of these ships has roughly doubled — to almost $1 billion.
Congressman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) has accused the Coast Guard of abdicating its responsibilities.
"We are relying on contractors in more areas, and we are giving them more discretion. And where there's more discretion, there's more risk," said David M. Walker, head of the Government Accountability Office, Congress's investigative arm. In a hearing Tuesday, 2 February, conducted by the House Appropriations subcommittee on homeland security, he asked for more aggressive oversight.




Using a grading scale from A to F, the Coast Guard is failing. Homeland Security Department Inspector General Richard L. Skinner, OIG, said the Coast Guard, need to get a grip over these contractors. "I mean, that doesn't pass the straight-face test," Skinner said. "We said, 'You've got to fix that, because if you'd included that, they probably would have gotten an F,' " Skinner said. Despite the troubles, the Coast Guard has paid the partnership incentive awards totaling $16 million since 2002.
The OIG also charges that the Coast Guard and its prime contractor for the performance-based Deepwater program, Integrated Coast Guard Systems, stymied the OIG’s investigation by refusing to allow their personnel to conduct private interviews with auditors.
“This is the most troubling IG report I’ve read during my 11 years as a representative in Congress,” House Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation Subcommittee chairman Elijah Cummings, D-Md., said Jan. 30 during an oversight hearing.
The report is another blow to the Coast Guard’s usually impeccable reputation as an organized, “can-do” outfit. The service, which had been riding high following its performance during Hurricane Katrina, has been plagued in the last eight months by what Rep. Rick Larsen, D-Wash., called a “tidal wave of bad news,” including the deaths of two Coast Guard divers last August in the Arctic and a court-martial for sexual assault at the Coast Guard Academy, with a subsequent investigation into possible gender and race discrimination at the school.

Four of the seven top U.S. Coast Guard officers who retired since 1998 took positions with private firms involved in the Coast Guard's troubled $24 billion fleet replacement program, an effort that government investigators have criticized for putting contractors' interests ahead of taxpayers'.
Deepwater dramatizes a new concern, current and former U.S. officials said: how dwindling competition in the private sector, mushrooming federal defense spending and the government's diminished contract management skills raise the stakes for potential conflicts of interest.

Deepwater also illustrates how federal ethics rules carve out loopholes for senior policymakers to oversee decisions that may benefit former or prospective employers. These include outsourcing strategies under which taxpayers bear most of the risks for failure, analysts said.

There is no sign that any of the retired admirals or former Lockheed officials did anything illegal.

But the connections between the agencies and the contractors have drawn the attention of the DHS inspector general, Richard L. Skinner. "That is on our radar screen," he said. "It's something we are very sensitive to."

Skinner told House members last month that the Coast Guard -- acting "under the dominant influence" of haste and inadequate staffing -- signed a Deepwater contract in June 2002 that improperly turned over key design and oversight decisions to contractors.

The Coast Guard failed to hold them accountable and left its own commanders "reluctant . . . to exercise a sufficient degree of authority to influence the design and production" of its vessels, Skinner said.

"The Treasury is being looted here. The taxpayer is being fleeced," Rep. Stephen F. Lynch (D-Mass.) said in a House hearing into Deepwater earlier this year.

In dealings with former private-sector colleagues, senior U.S. officials may be too willing to yield "the benefit of the doubt, rather than look . . . with skepticism or even with a watchful eye," added Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a watchdog group.

Retired Coast Guard Adm. James M. Loy, who helped formulate Deepwater as the Coast Guard's commandant, said that to his knowledge "that array of players, either in their political positions, or civilian commercial positions, or in retired Coast Guard positions" has never been linked "to undue influence." Loy served two years as DHS deputy secretary, then joined Lockheed's board of directors in August 2005.
Government investigators said Deepwater went too far in empowering the Lockheed-Northrop consortium to award business to subsidiaries, self-certify the planes and ships it produced, and disregard Coast Guard experts.

Rep. Gene Taylor, D-Miss., whose district includes the Northrop Grumman Pascagoula shipyard, says he’s dismayed by the ongoing problems with Coast Guard shipbuilding, among other things.
“I’m disappointed. There is no room for failure,” said Taylor, a former Coast Guard enlisted man.
"Somebody knew that there was a problem, and no one tried to fix it," says Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee. "They went right on through with performing their work, as if everything was fine."
"We had assumed that the Department of Homeland Security was shipshape, but in reality they're just ships of fools," says Thompson.

Have a Pepsi and Pass the Ammunition. Par Deux.

Blogger sentenced to 4 years in jail for insulting Islam.

An Egyptian blogger was convicted Thursday, 22 February 2007, and sentenced to four years in prison for insulting Islam, the Prophet Muhammad and Egypt's president, sending a chill through fellow Internet writers who fear a government crackdown.

Abdel Kareem Nabil, a 22-year-old former student at Egypt's Al-Azhar University, an Islamic institution, was a vocal secularist and sharp critic of conservative Muslims in his blog. He also lashed out often at Al-Azhar - the most prominent religious center in Sunni Islam - calling it "the university of terrorism" and accusing it of encouraging extremism.





His conviction brought a flood of condemnations from Amnesty International and other international and Egyptian rights group and stunned fellow bloggers.

"I am shocked," said Wael Abbas, a blogger who writes frequently about police abuses and other human rights violations in Egypt. "This is a terrible message to anyone who intends to express his opinion and to bloggers in particular."

Judge Ayman al-Akazi issued the verdict in a brief, five-minute session in a court in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria. He sentenced Nabil to three years in prison for insulting Islam and the prophet and inciting sectarian strife and another year for insulting President Hosni Mubarak.

Nabil, wearing a gray T-shirt and sitting in the defendants pen, gave no reaction and his face remained still as the verdict was read. He made no comment to reporters as he was immediate led outside to a prison truck.


Seconds after he was loaded into the truck and the door closed, an Associated Press reporter heard the sound of a slap from inside the vehicle and a shriek of pain from Nabil.

His lawyer, Ahmed Seif el-Islam, said he would appeal the verdict, saying the ruling will "terrify other bloggers and will negative impact on the freedom of expression in Egypt." Nabil had faced a possible maximum sentence of up to nine years in prison.

Egypt arrested a number of bloggers last year, most of them for connections to Egypt's pro-democracy reform movement. Nabil was arrested in November, and while other bloggers were freed, Nabil was put on trial - a sign of the sensitivity of his writings on religion.

Alaa Abdel-Fattah, a pro-reform blogger who was detained for six weeks last year, said the conviction for insulting Mubarak will "have a chilling effect on the rest of the bloggers."




"We (the Egyptian people) are enduring oppression, poverty and torture, so the least we can do is insult the president," he said.

Amnesty International, the New York-based Human Rights Watch and the France-based press rights group Reporters Without Borders - along with a string of Egyptian rights group - warned that the ruling would hurt freedom of expression in Egypt, a top U.S. ally in the Mideast. Amnesty said it considered Nabil a "prisoner of conscience."

Nabil, who used the blogger name Kareem Amer, was an unusually scathing critic of conservative Muslims - and his frequent attacks on Al-Azhar, where he was a law student, led to the university expelling him in March. Al-Azhar then pushed for prosecutors to bring him to trial. His writings also appeared on a Arabic Web magazine called "Modern Discussion."

The judge said Nabil insulted Islam's Prophet Muhammad with a piece he wrote in late 2005 after riots in which angry Muslim worshippers attacked a Coptic Christian church over a play put on by Christians deemed offensive to Islam.





"Muslims revealed their true ugly face and appeared to all the world that they are full of brutality, barbarism and inhumanity," Nabil said of the riots. He called Muhammad and his 7th century followers, the Sahaba, "spillers of blood" for their teachings on warfare - a comment cited by the judge.

In a later essay, not cited by the court, Nabil clarified his comments, saying Muhammad was "great" but that his teachings on warfare and other issues should be viewed as a product of their times.

He blasted Al-Azhar, calling it the "other face of the coin of al-Qaida" and called for the university to be dissolved or turned into a secular institution. He said it "stuffs its students' brains and turns them into human beasts ... teaching them that there is no place for differences in this life" and criticized its policy of segregating male and female students.

In other posts, Nabil criticized Mubarak, writing at the time of presidential elections in 2005, "Let's pledge allegiance to God's representative and caliph in Egypt ... the symbol of tyranny, Hosni Mubarak ... Say goodbye to democracy for me."

The Bush administration has not commented on Nabil's trial, despite its past criticism of the arrests of Egyptian rights activists.

March 27, 2007 CAIRO, Egypt — A state-appointed human rights body accused Egypt's government of fraud on 26 March, charging that public sector-workers were forced to vote in a referendum on constitutional reform.
Justice Minister Mamdouh Marei told a news conference that the 'yes' vote in Monday's referendum on 34 constitutional amendments was 76 percent. Officials said only 27 percent of the 36 million voters had bothered to cast their ballots.

Opposition groups had urged voters to boycott the referendum, arguing the amendments were a setback to democracy as they increased the president's security powers and the chances of fraud in elections — a long term problem in Egypt.

President Hosni Mubarak greeted the results announced Tuesday as a victory for the people and promised further unspecified political reform. He did not mention the low turnout.

But the National Council for Human Rights, a state-appointed body headed by former U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros Ghali, reported numerous flaws.

"Voter lists were inaccurate, some civil society monitors were prevented from observing some polling stations, local authorities in some provinces organized mass voting, and some electoral officials intervened in the voting process and sometimes filled in ballots," the council said in a statement. "Mass voting" is Egyptian parlance for busing state workers to the polling station.

"The most important and dangerous aspect of the referendum was the low turnout despite a big media campaign in the three preceding days," the council said. The official turnout was 2 percent higher than in the contested 2005 legislative elections.

"In Egypt nobody believes the official figures, only if he is insane," said Abdel-Halim Qandil.

The U.S. government expressed skepticism about the referendum, saying the vast majority of Egyptians did not choose to participate.

"Many voices in Egypt have criticized the abbreviated process, which led up to this referendum, and have criticized the amendments themselves as a missed opportunity to advance reform and a step backwards," White House deputy press secretary Dana Perino said.

She said the Bush administration will continue to raise the issue of democratic reform with senior Egyptian officials.

The referendum on the 34 amendments was held only seven days after the parliament approved them, leaving many voters uninformed. One voter, house painter Hassan Abdel Salaam, told The Associated Press on Monday: "I swear to God, I don't know what I'm voting for."
The amendments abolish emergency laws, allow election supervision by an independent commission and ban political parties based on religion. Mubarak said Sunday the changes would "give a new push to political party activity" and "stop the exploitation of religion and illegal political behavior."

But the opposition said the amendments would reduce the judicial checks on election fraud — a long time problem in Egypt — and strengthen the president's security powers at the expense of civil rights. The biggest opposition bloc, the Muslim Brotherhood, bitterly resented the ban on religion-based parties, an amendment that was clearly aimed at the group.

Justice Minister Marei said 9,701,833 people voted, or about 27 percent of the country's 35,865,660 eligible voters. The 'yes' vote was 76 percent and the 'no' vote 24 percent.

The Hisham Mubarak Law Center issued a statement saying electoral officials created "an illusionary high turnout through stuffing the ballot boxes after voting closed." The Egyptian Organization for Human Rights accused the government of "mass voting" — forcing public-sector workers to go to polling stations.

THE RIGHT STUFF OR CREAM PUFF?

http://www.military.com/news/article/exastronaut-lisa-nowak-forced-out-of-navy.html?ESRC=eb.nl

(29 July 2011)
A former astronaut banished from NASA after she confronted a romantic rival in a bizarre episode is being kicked out of the Navy, officials said Thursday.

Capt. Lisa Nowak will retire with an "other than honorable" discharge and her pay grade will be knocked down one rank, Assistant Secretary of Navy Juan Garcia said in a statement.

Nowak's conduct "fell well short" of what is expected of Navy officers and she "demonstrated a complete disregard for the well-being of a fellow service member," Garcia said.
Nowak was accused of confronting Colleen Shipman in the parking lot of the Orlando International Airport in February 2007 after driving from Houston.

Nowak had diapers in the car, but Nowak disputed she wore the diapers. Shipman, an Air Force captain, had begun dating Nowak's love interest, former space shuttle pilot Bill Oefelein.

Police say Nowak sprayed pepper spray into Shipman's car. Nowak's attorney says the pepper spray never reached Shipman.

Nowak was sentenced in 2009 to a year of probation in the altercation after pleading guilty to burglary charges.

Since her dismissal from the astronaut corps, Nowak has been working at the Chief of Naval Air Training station in Corpus Christi, Texas. She will be demoted to commander when her retirement takes effect Sept. 1.

The "other than honorable" discharge may affect veterans' benefits for Nowak, who has been in the Navy for 20 years. A call to her cell phone was not returned.

The decision by the Navy came after a board of inquiry heard testimony last year.





ASTRONAUT LOVE TRIANGLE LEADS TO SECURITY PRECAUTIONS FOR SPACE STATION.
Following the arrest of a senior female astronaut in Orlando, Fla., involved in a bizarre love triangle with two other astronauts, NASA has revealed that it has drawn up contingency plans for dealing with a psychotic astronaut in outer space.
Captain Lisa Nowak, a 43-year-old Navy captain (0-6)who flew last summer on the space shuttle Discovery, was arrested early Monday February 5, 2007 on suspicion of attempted kidnapping, attempted burglary on a vehicle and assault.
The contingency plans call for forceful restraint without lethal force. Crewmates are instructed to subdue and bind the psychotic astronaut's wrists and ankles with duct tape, and a bungee cord. Tranquilizers are to be injected if necessary. There are no written guidelines beyond that.
NASA spokesman James Hartsfield said that the comander in space would decide whether to send the unhinged astronaut back to earth after consulting with a flight surgeon on the ground. There are no weapons on the International Space Station. A bullet from a gun fired at the station would kill everyone. The Emergency Restraint procedures at the International Space are identical to those that NASA has for the shuttle.
The existence of these plans came to light after Lisa Marie Nowak was arrested on charges that she tried to kidnap and kill Colleen Shipman, her rival, for the affections of William Oefelein. Captain Lisa Nowak is a former test pilot. She was arrested at Orlando International Airport after driving nearly 1,000 miles from her home in Houston, where she lives with her husband and three children. She wanted to confront Captain Colleen Shipman, an Air Force captain (0-3) stationed at Patrick Air Force Base south of Kennedy Space Center, Orlando police said.
Captain Nowak drove almost 1,000 miles wearing astronaut pampers as underwear so that she would not have to stop and use the toilette. She was in a hurry, and time was of the essence.
According to police, Captain Nowak, wearing a wig, followed Captain Shipman, 30, to her car, and then doused her with pepper spray. Nowak was unable to get into the car and Shipman drove off and reported the crime at a toll booth to the airline terminal parking lot.
Nowak told police she did not intend to harm Shipman. She only wanted to frighten her into talking about their mutual relationship with Navy Cmmander William Oefelein (0-5), a 41-year-old astronaut who piloted Discovery on its December mission to the space station.




Nowak denied a romantic involvement with Oefelein, but characterized their relations as warmer than a working relationship.
Police said they found a love letter to Oefelein and e-mails to and from Oefelein and Shipman in Nowak's car.
Captain Nowak had not only worn a disguise but also parked her car miles from the airport. In a black duffel bag, she carried a 4-inch knife, a steel mallet, pepper spray, rubber tubing and garbage bags, along with a BB gun.
Florida police filed attempted first degree murder charges against the shuttle astronaut, Captain Lisa Nowak , saying she intended to kidnap and kill her rival, Captain Colleen Shipman, in a love triangle involving Commander William Oefelein, another astronaut.
A new charge was filed after a morning bail hearing in which Orange County Judge Mike Murphy allowed her to post bail on charges that she assaulted and attempted to kidnap Air Force Capt. Colleen Shipman. Nowak was re-arrested after posting the $15,500 bond.




Prosecutor Amanda Cowan argued in a second hearing later in the day that Nowak should be denied bail on the new charge. The judge rejected that argument, deciding to raise Nowak's bond to $25,500. He also ordered that she be fitted with a GPS monitoring device that will warn Shipman if she enters the state of Florida.
James Hartsfield, a NASA spokesman at Johnson Space Center in Houston, said that this was the first case he was aware of in which an active-duty astronaut had been charged with a felony.
You don’t normally expect a National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) astronaut, captain in the United States Navy, college graduate, and Roman Catholic to fall so hard, so fast. But then again, you also would never suspect an American President to have sex with an intern, a National Basketball Association star to rape a mistress, or a Hall of Fame football player to commit a double murder. Or perhaps, because of the way American society has developed over the last few generations, these types of events are no surprise anymore.
What happened to this senior female officer, a Navy Captain? . She wanted to kill the woman who her quasi-boyfriend was possibly cheating with. She is (or was) a brilliant woman. Her academic history, her experience with the Navy, and her time with NASA show that she was no less than a true success story. She was well liked amongst her friends, colleagues, church members, and industry peers. Yes, she was divorced, but she had been happily (or seemingly happily) married for nearly twenty years and she and her former husband had three beautiful children together.
For Captain Nowak to consider murdering a relationship rival seems inconceivable. Or does it? Fame and fortune have brought many people to their knees. Whether it’s the power these fallen stars felt entitled, or it was merely their giant egos, we do not know. But we see it over and over again from the rich and famous; drug use, weapon charges, suspected murders, sexual affairs, public fights, drunk driving, and much more. You name the crime or criminal behavior, and there is no doubt that one of America’s icons, and lately senior military officers, has been involved in the misdeed. Nowak is simply the latest case of someone falling from the pedestal that we place them on.
Ever since space travel has begun, we have treated America’s astronauts like heroes. Perhaps the star treatment, enormous expectations, and constant scrutiny, was more than she could handle. Although nobody knows exactly what prompted Captain Nowak to drive 1,000 miles wearing diapers (so she wouldn’t have to use the toilette) stalking a potential victim, many experts say the same traits that make astronauts such high achievers can combine to aggravate emotional problems and strained relationships.


"I really believe that NASA goes overboard in promoting how heroic and super all these people are. They themselves have forgotten these are ordinary people and in that kind of celebrity culture, there's a sense of entitlement." said Dr. Patricia Santy, a former NASA psychiatrist and author of the book “Choosing the Right Stuff”.

Lisa Nowak had been scheduled to be a Mission Control communicator who talks with the six crew members of space shuttle Atlantis during their journey to the international space station. I'm quite confident there will be no impact to our mission," commander Rick Sturckow said at a news conference in Houston. "We've just been focused on our training, which is pretty intensive at this point."

NASA relieved her of all mission duties after she was arrested last week in Orlando on charges that she tried to harm Colleen Shipman, a Navy captain and the woman she viewed as a rival for the affections of astronaut Bill Oefelein.
Shipman withdrew a request for a restraining order against Nowak on Thursday because the astronaut must wear an ankle monitor and is prohibited from making contact with Shipman under the terms of her release. The Navy also has issued an order prohibiting her from having contact with Shipman.
The Atlantis crew has been training with another communicator. They are scheduled to launch March 15 on a mission to continue construction on the international space station.
Captain Lisa Nowak was fired from NASA on Wednesday, 7 March, a month after she was charged with trying to kidnap the woman she regarded as her romantic rival for the affections of a space shuttle pilot.
Nowak's dismissal did not reflect the space agency's belief in her guilt or innocence, NASA officials said. The agency said it lacked an administrative system to handle the allegations because Nowak is a senior naval officer on assignment to NASA, rather than a NASA civil servant.
If Captain Nowak were a civil servant, NASA would have the choice of placing her on administrative leave, leave without pay or indefinite suspension until the charges are resolved, said NASA spokesman James Hartsfield in Houston. But because she is an officer, those options are not available.
Nowak, a Navy captain, instead will return to the military. She received a commission from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1985 and joined the astronaut corps in 1996. She flew on her first and only space shuttle mission last July during Discovery's 13-day trip to the international space station.
She will be assigned to the staff at the Chief of Naval Air Training in Corpus Christi, Texas, starting in two weeks, Navy Cmdr. Lydia Robertson said. Robertson said she didn't know what specific job Nowak would be doing.
The space shuttle pilot who was the object of Nowak's affections, Navy Cmdr. Bill Oefelein, remains on active duty while working for NASA. Robertson said she could not speculate whether his status is under review.
Chief astronaut Steve Lindsey notified Nowak late last month that she was to be fired from the astronaut corps. After her arrest, NASA placed Nowak on a 30-day leave, which was to end Thursday.
It was the first time NASA has publicly fired an astronaut, according to space historian Roger Launius of the Smithsonian Institution. She is also the first active astronaut to be charged with a felony, he said.

Fallen senior officers like Captain Nowak are becoming more and more common in America. Maybe it’s the media, maybe it’s the culture, maybe it’s the family, and maybe it’s the genes. But whatever the reason, criminal behavior from America’s pop cultural icon and senior military officers is a major problem. Infamous crime is more problematic than general crime, because it garners so much attention. Much of this attention comes in the form of flattery and support, which can be misconstrued as a positive response to an atrocious action. Moreover, whether they get Non-judicial punishment at an Admiral's mast, suspension of a token fined, or a Punitive Letter of Reprimand, the punishment for these senior officers rarely fits the crime.
This again brings to mind the cases of the deaths of Lt. Jessica Hill and BM2 Steve Dudue and the three senior officers who literally got away with murder. Is Vice Admiral Charles Wurster, Pacific Area Commander correct when he says that the three senior officers assigned to the Coast Guard icebreaker CGC Healy during the fatal diving incident in the Arctic last year that resulted in the deaths of Lt. Jessica Hill and BM2 Steve Duque deserved nonjudicial punishment rather than facing criminal charges at a court-martial?
Admiral Wurster said that he took action to hold CGC HEALY's Commanding Officer, Executive Officer and Operations Officer accountable for failing to meet their personal responsibilities surrounding that mishap. He held a mast for the CO, XO, and the Ops Officer from the CGC Healy on January 14, the day before the Coast Guard released the Final Report of an investigation into the death of Lt. Hill, 31, and Boatswain’s Mate 2nd Class Duque. He found the three — the commanding, executive and operations officers — guilty of dereliction of duty.
Captain Doug Russell, the CO, was relieved of command shortly after the accident. On January 14, his sentence was to receive a punitive letter of reprimand and a fine equal to one month’s pay.Commander Jeffrey Jackson, the XO, was sentenced to receive a punitive letter of admonition. The Operations Officer Lt. Cmmander. James Dalitsch was sentenced to receive a punitive letter of reprimand and a fine.All fines were suspended. The Admiral went through the motions, then he nullified it all. It was bad enough that he chose the lowest criminal forum available to punish these officers for their parts in the deaths of Lt. Hill and BM2 Duque, but he had the bad judgement to take back the token punishment.
“I believe that NJP was adequate,” Wurster said. “They took full responsibility.” This Admiral's Mast conducted behind closed doors the day before a report of the facts was released to the public is an outrage.
Cadets and junior officers are subjected to one standard of justice; and, senior officers and celebrities are subjected to another.




The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Peter Pace has a difference of opinion from senior Coast Guard leadership. The Department of Defense interprets the Uniform Code of Military Justice more strictly than does their cousins in the Department of Homeland Security. And, they appear to apply it more uniformly up and down the chain of command.
General Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a native of New York City, and a 1967 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, said in an interview that his views on homosexuals in the military and the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" Policy are based on his upbringing.
"As an individual, I would not want (acceptance of homosexual behavior) to be our policy, just like I would not want it to be our policy that if we were to find out that so-and-so was sleeping with somebody else's wife, that we would just look the other way, which we do not. We prosecute that kind of immoral behavior," he said, according to the audio and a transcript released by his staff.

Cooperation Without Compromise.

COOPERATION WITHOUT COMPROMISE

The Chief of Champlains for the United States Navy wears two stars on his shoulder and keeps the Sabbath.

Depending on the traffic, the drive from southern Baltimore, Maryland, to the Navy Annex in Arlington, Virginia, takes about an hour, more or less. But for Rear Admiral Barry C. Black, his journey from being a child in subsidized public housing to the U.S. Navy’s chief of chaplains has spanned several decades; covered hundreds of thousands of miles by land, air, and sea; and led him to assume a variety of roles: student, missionary, district pastor, evangelist, counselor, husband, and father.

Seated in his office on the main floor of the Navy Annex, Chaplain Black reflects almost casually, “God has been preparing this all along.”

Indeed, after spending the better part of a morning tracing the significant events of Black’s personal and professional careers, it’s easy to recognize the accuracy of his statement: “There was one series of miracles after another that brought this about.”

Surrounded by Witnesses
Barry Black was born in the Cherry Hill neighborhood of southern Baltimore on November 1, 1948, the fourth of eight children. Oddly, it was because of some of the social programs of the time that were designed to alleviate poverty that Black and his siblings were raised mostly in a single-parent home. Although his father was often present, “the regulations at that time mandated that there be no adult male present in the home,” he observes. “I remember social workers coming by and looking in the closets to ensure that there was not.” Beyond that, Black’s mother was limited by the policies of the day in terms of how much she could earn as a “domestic.”

When Black’s mother was pregnant with Barry, she noticed an evangelistic handbill advertising meetings at the Berea Temple Seventh-day Adventist Church in Baltimore. Mrs. Black (who passed away in 1987) liked to recall that as she was being baptized, she prayed that the Holy Spirit would do something special for her first son.



“My earliest memories are those of being picked up and kissed and held in the air like a trophy,” Black says. “It was a tremendous blessing for me, because a lot of psychologists believe that how your self-esteem reservoir is filled, particularly in the early years, is critical to your ability to handle vicissitudes and setbacks and challenges. My reservoir was overflowing.”




In addition to the familial attention Black received as the first male child of the family, he was also mentored and encouraged by the members of the Berea Temple. “We attended church for early [Sabbath] morning prayer service, and we stayed for the entire day,” he says.

Through the generosity of members of the Berea Temple, Black and his siblings were able to attend Pine Forge Academy. And it was at Pine Forge that he was exposed to some of the premier practitioners of Adventist preaching. “Elder Luther Palmer, who is a pastor in the Washington, D.C., area, was principal of the school then. He did some special mentoring of teenagers who indicated an interest in the ministry,” Black recalls. “When people like Calvin Rock, or [Charles] Brooks, or [Charles] Bradford would come to the campus, he would invite us to his home, and there these giants of the church would talk to us about preaching. I first learned a very simple topical approach to preaching from Calvin Rock.”

Throughout his formative years the conviction that God was calling him to the pastoral ministry nagged Black, a conviction that he resisted until his sophomore year at Oakwood College. That was when Black was chosen to be Oakwood’s first student missionary.

Black’s assignment was to travel to the Unini Mission Station in the forests of Peru, to work with Siegfried and Evelyn Neuendorff. “While I was there I had a lot of baggage,” Black confesses. “I was a disciple of Malcolm X, and I really had a chip on my shoulder. [But] in spite of my often bellicose and vitriolic rhetoric, they [the Neuendorffs] loved me into the arena of racial reconciliation.” Black’s experience in Peru included evangelistic and Bible work, construction, even pulling teeth.

When he returned to Oakwood College, Black was ready to make some life choices. “Francis Thomp-son’s ‘Hound of Heaven’ caught up with me,” admits Black, “and I finally, in my junior year, threw up my hands and said, ‘I yield.’ And it was the best decision I could have possibly made.” It was at Oakwood that Black met Brenda Pearsall, whom he would eventually marry.

For God and Country
Chaplain Black’s entry into the world of military chaplaincy came about, in part, because of five Adventist sailors who were stationed in Norfolk, Virginia. When Black was pastoring the Raleigh, Durham, and Rocky Mount churches in North Carolina, these five sailors would drive five hours (one way) to listen to Black preach at the Durham church. When he asked them why they didn’t attend services at the base chapel, they replied, “We’ve never seen an African-American chaplain.”

About that time Black received a letter from the National Service Organization (NSO) of the General Conference, encouraging Adventist pastors to consider careers as military chaplains. Black’s burden for ministering to young adults, combined with his interest in travel, led him to enlist in the Navy. He began chaplains’ school in Newport, Rhode Island, in the summer of 1976.

“When I went to chaplains’ school I was exhilarated by the pluralistic context of the training and the ministry,” he says. “I had never had an opportunity to interact with a rabbi. I had never met a Roman Catholic priest. I had never associated with pastors from the various Protestant traditions. I found that exciting: iron sharpening iron; sharing ideas, demythologizing some of the notions they had about what we believe. They called the rabbis and me the four rabbis because we always had special dietary considerations.”

Three years into his military ministry Black was assigned to the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, the second person of color to serve in that capacity, the first Seventh-day Adventist. “Imagine 2,500 midshipmen packing a chapel Sunday after Sunday and you having the opportunity to speak to these very bright young people about the gospel of Jesus Christ,” he enthuses.

Throughout his career as a chaplain Black has used his pulpit skills to provide a springboard for questions, spiritual discussions, and Bible studies with the military men and women with whom he served. “During one [shipboard] deployment we had a Bible study every day when we were under way. I simply used Bible Readings for the Home. I would publicize the title, and the men would say, ‘How do you have the time to come up with all these different titles and all of these studies?’ (I never told them my secret, of course.)




“When I got to the more testing truths (they already knew I was a Seventh-day Adventist) I would say, ‘You all are not ready for this; you can’t handle it.’

“By the time they were threatening to throw me overboard if I didn’t tell them, I would basically get into the more distinctive truths [of the Bible]. At the end of one six-month deployment we baptized 40 members of our Bible study group who had basically, for six months, been exposed to the doctrines of the church.”

Chaplain to the Chaplains
Admiral Black lives with his wife, Brenda, and their three sons at the historic Washington Navy Yard in southeast Washington, D.C., at the confluence of the Potomac and Anacostia rivers. In addition to his passion for running, Black enjoys reading (he describes himself as a “lifelong learner”) and writing. He has earned three master’s degrees and two doctorates.

Black lists among his hobbies preaching and worship. “I know it’s not supposed to be a hobby, but worship is a hobby for me,” he says. “I find places, many times non-Adventist worship experiences. If there’s a revival in town, I’ll sneak in and listen to the evangelist and enter into the praise of the Lord wherever I find the opportunity to do that.

“When you develop a love for the Word of God, you live in another world. There’s a cloud of witnesses who inform you and guide you,” Black says about the heroes of the Bible: David, Solomon, Moses, Paul. Then he talks about the many who have served as mentors and role models over the years. He remembers his first year in the Navy Chaplain Corps, when he worked with Admiral John O’Connor (later John Cardinal O’Connor of the New York Archdiocese). “I’m thinking to myself, What is God up to?”

Pointing to a photograph on his desk, Black says, “In this picture I’m still in my 20s, and here I am chatting with the chief of naval operations, the highest ranking person [in the Navy]. So I was in many ways like David, playing a harp in the palace. Though I grew up in the meadow, taking care of sheep, God exposed me very early to the palace, to the protocol of the palace, to the vocabulary of the palace, in order to prepare me for this day.”

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Stephen Chavez is an assistant editor of the Adventist Review.