Ashton
Carter
Secretary
of Defense Designate
1000
Defense Pentagon
Washington,
D.C. 20301-1000
January
2015
Dear Secretary Carter,
As you know the biggest threat to our national
security today is radical Islamists - not a new enemy as we have been fighting
them for over two hundred years and should engage them in the same way as our
forefathers did against their Barbary Pirates forefathers.
Since you are a native Philadelphian you should be
aware of the historic roles Richard Somers, Stephen Decatur, Charles Stewart
and James Caldwell played in the establishment of the United States Navy and
the defeat of the Barbary Pirates - radical Islamists of the same religious
sect we are fighting today.
When President Washington directed the first flag
officer Captain John Barry to recruit a class of midshipman to train as the
first officers of a new nation’s navy, Barry chose Somers, Decatur, Stewart and
Caldwell, all of whom attended the Philadelphia Free school (now Episcopal
Academy) and went on to distinguish themselves in the Barbary Wars; their names
are inscribed on the Tripoli Monument at Annapolis, which was meant to be their
grave stone, and U.S. Navy warships are named after them.
John Paul Jones is buried in the academy chapel
nearby, having been repatriated after being found entombed in an unmarked crypt
under a Paris street. First Captain John Barry is buried in the cemetery behind
Independence Hall in Philadelphia, where Somers, Decatur, Stewart and Caldwell used
to fistfight after school, experience that came in handy when they fought
hand-to-hand combat with the Tripoli pirates.
Unfortunately Caldwell was killed during an attack
on Tripoli harbor and American prisoners from the captured frigate Philadelphia watched his body mauled by
dogs on the beach. While Decatur won fame for using the captured pirate ship Intrepid to recapture and sink the Philadelphia, in one of the first covert
operations that today would be performed by Navy SEALS, Somers perished in the
explosion of the Intrepid when he
sailed the fireship back into Tripoli harbor.
The bodies of Somers, his first officer Lt. Henry
Wadsworth, second officer Lt. Joseph Israel and ten men were recovered by
American prisoners and buried near the beach where their remains are believed
to be in clearly marked crypts in a small walled cemetery near the harbor.
Just as President Teddy Roosevelt ordered the
recovery and repatriation of the remains of John Paul Jones from Paris,
President Franklin Roosevelt ordered the recovery of the remains of the
officers and men of the Intrepid from
Tripoli, but events intervened.
New research indicates the cemetery was never meant
to be a permanent resting place for anyone, only a temporary one, and more than
half of the remains in the cemetery have been removed, just as the remains of hundreds
of Americans from Wheelus Air Force base were recovered from the Italian
cemetery in Tripoli, the remains of the American Naval heroes should be
recovered and repatriated home as soon as the security situation permits.
We may not be able to persuade radical Islamists to
like Americans, embrace democracy, educate their women and respect the dead,
but we can keep them from desecrating and destroying the remains of American
naval heroes by doing the right thing- repatriate them safely home so, as James
F. Cooper put it, they can be properly buried with full military honors and their
friends, family and shipmates can pay their respects.
Your predecessor Charles Hagel revamped the
POW/MP-JPAC office after it was revealed that they conducted fake repatriation
ceremonies for public relations. Now you don’t have to fake them, you can have
a real one when the remains of the U.S. Navy heroes from Tripoli are brought
home. Hagel said, “I’ve directed the POW/MP/JPAC department to develop
proposals for expanding public-private partnerships in identifying our missing…to
leverage the capabilities and the efforts of organizations outside of
government that do responsible work to account for our missing.”
Well this is one such proposal that should be acted
on as soon as possible and only you have the authority to order the emergency
repatriation of the remains of these men.
When the convicted Lockerbie bomber was released from
a Scottish prison he received a heroes’ welcome and the men of the Intrepid deserve at least as much, and a repatriation ceremony on the deck of the
USS Intrepid in New York could show
the world that we still fight tyranny for the same things these men died
fighting for – liberty, justice, democracy and the veneration of our honored
dead.
Thank you for your time and attention on this
matter,
William
E. Kelly, Jr.
Browns
Mills, New Jersey
Enclosed is a copy of Chris Dickon’s book: The Foreign Burial of American War Dead – A
History (McFarland, 20011), a more detailed background of these people and
events, relevant excerpts are posted here: http://RemembertheIntrepid.blogspot.com
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