Author Archives: Barry Kelly

About Barry Kelly

Author of "Justice Beyond Law," "Justice Without Mercy," "Shades of Justice," "Justice Without Mercy," and "Run to Freedom," as well as two ,"nonfiction books ,"INSIGHTS-The Transforming of America," and "INSIGHTS-Stepping Stones to Tyranny. He also is the author of the blog "8 Decades of Insights." Barry Kelly is no stranger to the world of espionage, counter-terrorism, weapons, deep cover, and the inner workings of the governmental security apparatus. His immersion in the Cold War began with enlistment in the U.S. Navy during the Korean War. Following his discharge, he earned a BA from the University of Pittsburgh and a master’s degree from Duke. His career in the CIA included deep cover operations and overseas experience, primarily in South and Southeast Asia. He has been awarded the Certificate of Merit with Distinction, the Intelligence Medal of Merit, the Cross of Gallantry with Silver Star, the Distinguished Intelligence Medal and the Intelligence Officer of the Year Award. After retiring from the CIA, Kelly served as a special assistant to President Reagan. He holds a first dan black belt in hap-ki-do. Visit www.factsandfictions.com or find the author on Facebook.

by Barry Kelly | August 13, 2015 · 7:57 am

INSIGHTS 222 — THE ADVISOR WANTS TO KNOW: WHY IRAN NOW?

“Mr. President, good to see you again so soon. Your visits help me deal with this isolated living.”

“Are you saying you never leave this place for any reason?”

“For a serious, life-threatening health problem that can’t be handled remotely, I’ll be taken to a private hospital facility. Normally people in this place die here. My predecessor died here just after your second-term victory.”

“I’m impressed by the dedication, if not the choice of occupations and working conditions. Do you have another question for me?”

“Yes. I was encouraged by your candor in answering my last question about closing Guantanamo Bay. My question today is why are you so intent on making a deal with Iran?”

“For the record, I didn’t believe that sanctions would stop Iran from building nuclear weapons. Something else had to be done or the Israelis would launch a surprise air attack on Iran’s nuclear industry that could set off a much wider war. In a sense, my deal with Iran pre-empts the Israelis and, therefore, the initiation of a big war that could spread out of the Middle East. My closest advisor in the White House has strong ties to Iran and has convinced me there was and is no other option.”

“Yes, but what about Iran’s poor record of living up to agreements and their sponsorship of terrorist groups in Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq, and Syria?”

“When sovereign nations live up to agreements it is because they have no other choice. Do you want me to recite the times America has failed to abide by agreements that were no longer economically or geo-politically advantageous, such as our treaties with the Indian nations and some third world countries?”

“No. That will not be necessary. There is some truth to your position. Strong nations often ignore treaties or agreements that are no longer of real use. But why do you think Israel will not attack nuclear facilities in Iran? Iran has promised to wipe Israel off the world’s map!”

“Israel knows both China and Russia will back Iran against them. A major portion of the funds being released to Iran and the income they will receive from sales of their oil will go to China and Russia to purchase defensive and offensive weapons. If Israel is going to strike, it must be soon. The window is closing with the import of air and ground defense systems from Russia and China. I have a much better intuitive understanding of the Middle East and the Muslim world than my critics. You see, I do not have the nationalist baggage most Americans carry. I don’t see the great things they believe their power and influence has accomplished on an international basis. From the Crusades to the centuries of Western Imperialism, America has been the enemy of the Muslim world. Iran has been, for much of recorded history, a formidable empire. Why does Iran not have a right to recover their past greatness by having modern weapons and extending their influence over the more primitive Sunni Arab states? At heart, I am a citizen of the world. Part Christian, part Muslim but the strongest part is Islam of the third world, like my father.”

“What do you hope will be accomplished by your agreement with Iran?”

“It will bring about another power center in the world to complete with Western colonialism and capitalism. The same process will also transform the traditional power structure in the Middle East where the Sunnis of the past have been allied too close to the West because of the need to sell their oil to the developed world. If Iran can, by whatever means, take control of the flow of oil from the Middle East and direct it more equitably to other parts of the world. I want to not only transform America, but the Middle East as well. Now I have to go. I hope these talks are helping you to understand my policies.”

“Thank you, Mr. President. Yes, I can see more clearly what you are trying to achieve. May I ask more questions on your next visit?”

“Yes, but now I must go. I find talking to you helps me to better understand what I must do in my remaining time. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight, Mr. President.”

The above is a fictional account of a meeting that never took place, but it could have.

The author’s latest Jack Brandon novel, ISIS Quiet Justice, is available at your local book store and in ebook format from Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble. Follow the author on Twitter at @factsfictions80.

INSIGHTS 223 — THE DONALD AND THE GOP

***A brief timeout from the Advisor series to write about the Republican Party elite and the primary process.***

The Republican establishment made up of self-appointed pundits and Republican professional politicians are the elite of the Republican Party. They believe it is their right to nominate and support only candidates they find acceptable.

That is not their right.

It is the people’s right to select the nominee in the primary process. Normally called voting.

The elite on the right is just as dangerous to individual freedom as is the elite on the left, generally called the Progressive wing of the Democratic party. Neither elite recognizes how far out of step they are with the people they claim to represent.

I don’t agree with Mr. Trump’s refusal to rule out running as the candidate of a third-party. But it is his choice. His refusal is because he feels he needs leverage to get a fair break. And he is probably right. In retrospect, my disappointment with the Republican debate among very qualified candidates is that none of them stepped up and said, “If Mr. Trump wins the nomination, I will support him.” A principled statement and a winning political position.

The silence from the stage was greatly magnified when the Republican elite in Georgia withdrew their invitation to Mr. Trump to participate in the conservative function they were sponsoring. How bad is that? They are preventing a candidate for the Republican nominee for president from speaking in a national forum with other candidates. Who gave them that right? Not the people. The sponsors and organizers of this Georgian conservative forum are acting like an elite group that is afraid of letting the people judge.

We the people have let the Republican self-appointed establishment select the last two national candidates. What did that get us? Primary voters determine who wins and who loses, not an elite group of professional politicians and talking heads. Mr. Trump is not my candidate of choice. But if he wins the primary national vote, I will support him. His entry into the race has been good for the Republican Party. A party now led by by frightened career politicians who suffer from a near terminal stage of political correctness. It would have been good to see all the Republicans seeking the nomination refusing to attend a conference that excluded a candidate.

“ISIS Quiet Justice,” a new Jack Brandon novel dealing with ISIS in America, is now available from your local bookstore and Amazon and Barnes and Noble in nook and kindle formats. Sign up for a serialized version of “Run to Freedom” at www.factsandfictions80.wordpress.com.

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by Barry Kelly | August 7, 2015 · 10:59 pm

INSIGHTS 221 — THE ADVISOR ASKS WHAT MADE YOU DO IT.

The Advisor thought finally the President and I are getting comfortable talking about real issues. He has loosened up in the last few sessions. He knows I’m no threat and I won’t betray his candid responses to my questions. Hope he is in a talkative mood tonight. He should be here in another few minutes. I think he makes a real effort to be more or less on time and I appreciated it. He glanced up at the passageway monitor and saw the President and Chris approaching his door. Funny he has never commented on the wording on the old brass plaque. Even I don’t know its background. Maybe it is contained somewhere in the early journals. The only was to search them is to go thru them one by one. I just don’t have the time for that.

“Welcome Mr. President. Have you had a good day?”

“Can’t remember when. Everyday I get several problems that should never reach the Oval Office. I don’t know if some of my staff are afraid or just too limited to handle the problems on their own. The problems, or rather issues, that I handle always get some bad press. Fortunately I have very few consistent critics in the media. Some of them have gone out of their way to be supportive. Okay, you have some questions for me?”

“Yes I do Mr. President. Some of them are not important in the writing of history but I want to ask you why you did certain things that even your supporters do not seem to understand. My first questions is, why have you spent so much energy and time on closing Guantanamo Bay?”

“Well, the first thing is that I made a campaign promise to close this sore spot on our international record as a freedom loving nation. Gitmo is a prison and a place of torture. Students of international law believe it is a place that has no place in the twenty-first century. We can detain criminals in prisons in the Continental United States where my Attorney-General can protect their rights, examine the evidence, and bring them to trial under the American system of justice.”

“But, surely, there are cases when it would be appropriate to detain and try terrorist prisoners captured on the field of battle?”

“I just don’t trust the military to run trials of our enemies. Their rules of evidence, procedure, and concern for the rights of the accused do not meet my standards. I want America to look toward my leadership in prosecuting criminals, not the Pentagon.”

“We have both studied the law, both constitutional and international. Don’t you see the impossibility of collecting evidence, taking statements from witnesses and yet following the strict rules required by our courts regarding the chain of accountability and custody of evidence from the crime scene to the court room?”

“If we can’t get a conviction on the main charges, we’ll have to settle for prosecuting them for lesser crimes. If the military can’t or won’t meet the standards of American justice, they shouldn’t be conducting trials or detaining prisoners for years without charging and trying them.”

“Mr. President, there must be more than that.”

“Yes, in this room there is one more big one. Gitmo is a wonderful issue for me to use campaigning to attack conservatives. My base loves this issue. Elections are not won on facts. They are won by picking good issues and building them into major points. The time the conservatives spend defending Gitmo means they are playing by my rules and they can’t win. Take the Bergdorf guy who deserted his post and was held by the Taliban for years. He wasn’t important to anything, but he gave me a perfect opportunity to get five more top terrorists out of Gitmo. There was no other way I could justify their release. Who could argue sending those five criminals to one of the Gulf States for safe keeping. Who cares where they end up? Sorry I can’t continue but I must go. Thank you for the coffee and conversation. They were both good.”

As the steel door closed, the Advisor thought if you don’t want the answer, don’t ask the question. This may have been one of those times. Absolutely scary. No one would believe what I just heard. Especially since his words had the ring of truth. Get ready for an Executive Order to give Guantanamo Bay to the Castro’s.

The above is a fictional account of a meeting that never took place, but it could have.

INSIGHTS 220 The Advisor and the President discuss the civil service

The President was back just two days after he had to leave in the middle of The Advisor’s question about the politicization of the Civil Service. The President lit his secret cigarette and said, “This is the only place in the White House I can smoke without getting hard looks or worse. And this is so far underground I’m not sure I’m still in the White House. Okay, you were asking me about my use of the Civil Service. Right?”

“Yes. I was wondering if you see how much you have politicized the Civil Service?”

“Of course. It is my Civil Service. Why should they not do what I want them to do? Notice I said want them to do, not what I tell them to do. That is the difference.”

“You make it sound as if by some magic all members of the service know what you would like them to do and they do it.”

“No magic involved. All Civil Service members take direction from appointed officials. I appoint them and I only appoint those who I know will follow my progressive ideology. Most Civil Service employees like their jobs and want to keep them. They also work hard to get good evaluations, earn promotions and bonuses, and to justify the size and scope of their unit. Their loyalty is to their units and to the Civil Service Union. No one has to tell them to follow the president’s lead. They have always acted the same way. I just have been more careful to make sure the leaders I appointed are doing their jobs.”

“You sound as if you have studied organizational structure and the behavior of workers in large organizations.”

“What’s to study? That’s the way I think. For example, I don’t have to tell civil employees to grow their organizations or to expand. The government doesn’t grow because some president wants it to. It grows unless some president works hard to control or stop the growth. In my case, I want the government to continue to grow. I need it to really transform the country.”

“Why then are you cutting the size of our military forces?”

“Even as the commander-in-chief, I don’t have the same power over the military as I do over the civilian workforce. I cannot put my people all through the uniformed military. Also their command structure is very tight. I have strategic influence but people loyal to me and my transformation goals are not in the day-to-day operational decision making. The military forces are not supporting my progressive goals. I am growing the power of the Civil Service for they are a willing ally in transforming America. I am cutting the size and power of the military because they are and have been an evil force used to project American power into less fortunate and smaller nations. To bring the military under control, I must reduce their size.”

“Then you say you are not breaking any laws by the way the IRS, the EPA, Justice, HHS, Veterans Affairs or Homeland Security have conducted their activities?”

“Right. There is no evidence of any wrongdoing; therefore, no crime.”

“What about the failure or unwillingness of the FBI to investigate the wrongdoing of the IRS and the failure of the Immigration Service to enforce the law?”

“You don’t seem to understand. The FBI has no charter or legal standing to investigate when there is no evidence a crime has been committed. Under my Justice Department, the FBI is not going out looking for things to investigate. They do work for the attorney general, and she works for the president.”

“What about the precedent of the Watergate affair and the erased tapes in the Nixon administration that led to his resignation?”

“Wouldn’t have happened under me. Nixon failed to understand how to use the law without being directly involved and the media did the investigating, not the FBI. Nixon and most Republicans have never understood how to use the media.”

Mr. President, I’m afraid I have exceeded my time.”

“No problem. I’m enjoying these sessions and I really think you are trying to understand me. Also, I want my record in your journal to be clear. See you next week but I don’t know when.”

With that, the President left with Chris who was patiently waiting in the dim passageway, and they retraced his steps to the above ground White House.

The Advisor opened his journal and began to record the last session. As he was writing in his journal, he thought, this man is delusional but very clever and dangerous.

The above is a fictional account of a meeting that never took place, but it could have.

INSIGHTS 219 — The Advisor and the President debate the rule of law

The Advisor was pacing in his underground suite, waiting for the President. He knew these sessions were becoming more critical. He simply had to get the President to tell future readers of the Advisor journals not so much what he did, but why. History was nearly always based on what was done. Seldom did any writer of history really know why and how the whats of history were accomplished. He wasn’t exactly setting a trap for the President but, rather, giving him an opportunity to explain himself.

The fragrance of the dark roast Sumatra coffee filled the room. He and the President were both addicted to the flavor of strong coffee. Both took it black. The Advisor never objected to the President lighting up during his meetings. He had once been an addicted smoker himself and still enjoyed the smell of good tobacco with his coffee or single malt scotch. He was alone, and lonely too much, to have the temptation of a bottle or two within reach.

The phone buzzed. It was Chris, the President’s Secret Service escort alerting him President was on his way down. The room was perfectly arranged the President liked, as the Advisor had gotten into the habit of leaving it in the hopes the President would visit. The Advisor poured two cups of coffee and walked to the door to greet the President.

As he walked down the dimly lit short underground passageway to the steel vault door with 150 years of a dark green patina surrounding the even older brass plaque on the door inscribed with the words, “EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS,” the President thought, I must be almost as nutty as that old black man inside. When I miss a couple of weeks, I miss the conversation. It is damned near like being on a couch with some learned nerd telling me what is wrong with me. Hell, I know what’s wrong with me. I’m a president trying to take a nation where it doesn’t want to go. I don’t have time to convince or educate them. I just have to drag them kicking and screaming into the world of the future where there is no inequality in nations or among nations. Call it socialism or communism or progressivism. I just don’t care. It is where we are going. Talking with this old man, who is smart as hell, helps me stay on course. I do wonder how he managed to fit this old steel door with the modern sensors that read my palm print on the brass plaque.

The Advisor greeted the President and led him over to the conference table. Once seated and the settled in with coffee and the President’s cigarette, the Advisor said, “Is it still my turn?”

“It’s a go. This maybe a short meeting. I may get called out.”

“You are trained in the law, but seemed not to have a reverence for the rule of law. It is more like you approach each problem in a very pragmatic way. Whatever works to help you get your way goes. You seem to have a distinct aversion to both the judicial and legislative branches. Is that right?”

“Close. I don’t follow the law. I use the law.”

“Mr. President, no offense, but do you realize some of your predecessors were impeached or threatened with impeachment? For example, the use of the IRS to discriminate against conservative groups applying for a tax-free status during an election period.”

“For a crime, especially an impeachable one, you must have evidence that can be presented in a court of law,” the President said, blowing out a puff of smoke. “No evidence, no crime, no attempts at impeachment. I don’t write things down or talk in front of my staff, except for a very few loyal and trusted ones, about what I want done if it is at all questionable in the law. If the Congressional Republicans can’t collect evidence, there is no crime. I don’t help or hinder their efforts to get emails or other information for their own political objectives. I can’t help what department heads do. The Civil Service is required to support the president. After all, they serve as my staff. I don’t need to tell them what to do, they know or they would not be employed.”

“What you are describing is unique in American history and ….” the Advisor started.

The phone buzzed and Chris said, “Mr. President, you are needed upstairs.” The President said, “This was getting interesting. Let’s continue the next time.” He smiled, pushed his cup away and put out his cigarette before walking to the door. Over his shoulder, he said, “How do you stand it down here? You must have committed some awful crime.”

The Advisor thought, sometimes I wonder.

The above is a fictional account of a meeting that never took place, but it could have.