A FORMER American Navy Secretary, John Lehman, has accused the Clinton administration of being part of a "relentless lynch mob" that drove Admiral Mike Boorda to suicide last week.

Mr Lehman, who served for six years under President Reagan, said that no one believed that the navy's top officer shot himself because he was worried about a Newsweek inquiry into an alleged embellishment of his Vietnam war record. This was a "trivial issue". The ribbons "may have been the last straw, but they were not the cause".

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Mr Lehman said the "hounding" of the navy dated back to the 1991 Tailhook convention sex-scandal in Las Vegas, where women were assaulted by drunken naval aviators. These "Top Gun" sailors had been given a high profile in the Reagan years and many outsiders resented their bonuses, their glamour and their publicity.

The scandal, which surfaced during the presidential campaign, was set to fade after the election "but for the fact that the new president, who in his younger days said proudly that he loathed the military", brought to Washington an administration staffed by former Vietnam war protesters.

"Thus instead of dying out, the firestorm grew, fanned and encouraged at the highest level. The White House commissars of political correctness began enforcing standards for military promotion. Attendance at Tailhook, regardless of behaviour, became sufficient to deny promotion. The Senate Armed Services Committee and especially its staff, full of navy grudges and personal scores to settle, joined in the persecution."

Mr Lehman said "the more extreme wings of the feminist and gay movements" had also piled in against the navy because it "epitomised to them what they see as the homophobic, macho culture of the military". Another interest group wanting to "pull the navy down" was the National Security News Service, which unearthed the information about Adml Boorda's decorations.

The climate of fear of the media and "the White House commissars" was driving thousands from the service in disgust.

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