Marine Col. Jeffery Powers Letter to NFL Commissioner-Authorship Confirmed!

Marine Col. Jeffrey Powers Letter to NFL Commissioner-Authorship Confirmed!

Summary of eRumor:
Retired U.S. Marine Colonel Jeffrey A. Powers wrote a letter the NFL commissioner about players kneeling in protest during the playing of the national anthem.
The Truth:
Major Colonel Jeffrey A. Powers’ wrote an open letter to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell about the NFL’s handling of player protests during the national anthem.
The letter first appeared on discussion forums and veteran email groups. Then, Colonel Jeffrey Powers’ letter to the NFL commissioner started to go viral in September 2016 after Allen B. West, a former congressman and current outspoken conservative, posted it on his website.
The letter opens by Powers recalling how he missed the start of the 1990-1991 football season because he was serving with a battalion of Marines in Operation Desert Storm. Ultimately, 14 of Powers’ fellow Marines “returned home with the American flag draped across their lifeless bodies,” Powers wrote, and the last conversations he had with one of those fallen Marines was about the New York Giants:

Many friends, Marines, and Special Forces Soldiers who worked with or for me through the years returned home with the American Flag draped over their coffins.

Now I watch multi-millionaire athletes who never did anything in their lives but play a game, disrespect what brave Americans fought and died for. They are essentially spitting in the faces and on the graves of real men, men who have actually done something for this country beside playing with a ball and believing they’re something special! They’re not! My Marines and Soldiers were!

Powers goes on to write that the NFL commissioner is complicit in the protests because he’s happy to fine them for “small infractions” but lacks the “moral courage and respect” to put an immediate stop to the player protests:

I observed a player getting a personal foul for twerking in the end zone after scoring. I guess that’s much worse than disrespecting the flag and our National Anthem. Hmmmmm, isn’t it his 1st Amendment right to express himself like an idiot in the end zone?

Why is taunting not allowed yet taunting America is OK? You fine players for wearing 9-11 commemorative shoes yet you allow scum on the sidelines to sit, kneel or pump their pathetic fist in the air. They are so deprived with their multi-million dollar contracts for playing a freaking game! You condone it all by your refusal to act. You’re just as bad and disgusting as they are. I hope Americans boycott any sponsor who supports that rabble you call the NFL. I hope they turn off the TV when any team that allowed this disrespect to occur, without consequence, on the sidelines. I applaud those who have not.

Powers concludes his letter to the NFL commissioner by hoping that the NFL’s “high paid protesting pretty boys and (Goodell) look in the mirror” and see who they really are.
While we weren’t able to track down where the letter was first published, many of the biographical details in Colonel Jeffrey Powers’ biography match up. Powers is a veteran of Operation Desert Storm and commanded a 1,200-man Task Force in Saudi Arabia as part of the lead contingent of Operation Desert Shield, according to his bio at Bloomberg Business:

He was decorated for valor while serving as Operations Officer for the lead Task Force into Kuwait. He retired from the U.S. Marine Corps achieving the rank of Colonel. He held command assignments in Marine reconnaissance, light armor reconnaissance, a Dutch Marine rifle company, a U.S. Army Special Forces (Green Beret) training company, as well as an Officer in charge of Special Operations Training Group for the Marines on the west coast. He served as an Analyst for the U.S. Army’s Future Combat Systems at Boeing. He served as Chief Executive Officer of Domestic Energy Corp. until March 2008. Mr. Powers served as an Executive Officer of Eyemakers, Inc. He has been Chairman and Director of Homeland Security Technology Inc., since October 1, 2004. Colonel Powers is a graduate of Villanova University with a B.A. in Criminal Justice, an M.S. in Urban and Environmental Studies from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and an M.A. in National Security and Strategic Studies, Naval Warfare College, Newport, RI.

Given all that, we’re confirming the authorship of Colonel Jeffrey A. Powers’ letter to the NFL commissioner.