By Bryant Jordan March 15, 2006 Air Force Times staff writer

The former Air Force Academy cadet and Reagan White House counsel suing to end all proselytizing and evangelizing by Air Force members while on duty has established a foundation to help keep church and state separate within the armed forces.

Michael “Mikey” Weinstein, president and founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, said in a press release that he “created [the organization] so that others could join in the fight to assure that our armed forces preserve the Constitutional guarantee of the separation of church and state and ensure that junior officers and enlisted personnel are protected from coercive proselytizing and evangelizing by their superiors.”

Among those named to the group’s advisory board is the Rev. MeLinda Morton, a former Air Force chaplain and captain who resigned in June 2005 in protest over the service’s handling of the religious respect issue. Morton’s resignation came after she voiced her concerns publicly and the Air Force reassigned her away from the academy.

Other board members include:
• retired Air Force Col. Richard L. Klass, a former White House fellow, Rhodes Scholar from the Air Force Academy and decorated combat veteran;
• retired Air Force Gen. Robert T. Herres, former vice-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the first commander of U.S. Space Command;
• retired Air Force Brig. Gen. Robert S. Dotson, former White House and Congressional national security expert;
• Richard T. Schlosberg III, an Air Force Academy graduate and former CEO and publisher of the Los Angeles Times and the Denver Post;
• Smita Singh, special advisor for Global Affairs and director, Global Development Program for the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation;
• retired Air Force Col. David F. Antoon, an academy graduate and decorated combat veteran;
• Kristen Leslie, an assistant professor of Pastoral Care and Counseling at Yale Divinity School and a minister in the United Methodist Church;
• attorney Eugene R. Fidell, head of the Military Practice Group at Feldesman Tucker Leifer Fidell LLP, Washington, D.C.;
• retired Navy Vice Adm. Bernard Marvin Kauderer, an Annapolis graduate and former commander of U.S. Naval submarines in the Pacific, Atlantic and NATO fleets;
• John J. Michels Jr., an Air Force Academy graduate and former Air Force judge advocate, now an attorney and partner with international law firm of McGuireWoods, based in Chicago;
• Mala Htun, assistant professor of political science, New School for Social Research in New York;
• Howard Bragman, founder of the strategic media and public relations agency, Fifteen Minutes;
• attorney Pedro L. Irigonegaray, a specialist in public interest law;
• Reza Aslan, a scholar, media consultant and expert on issues of the Islamic religion and related political matters;
• and Douglas Turner, founder and president of DW Turner, Inc., a strategic communications company and political consultant for a number of current and former American politicians.