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 | June 10, 2013 · 7:30 am

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 55-ADVISOR

WHAT DO THEY WANT?

The Advisor had done some research in the history of Russia’s struggle to compete with British seapower and later the United States. The Czars as well as Mr. Putin, who believes he is a Czar, understand the need for the Russian fleet to have a warm water port. Without an all weather port the Russians cannot extend their power much beyond their own borders. The Advisor thought, it is precisely this kind of knowledge the President does not have. Nothing in his background prepared him to understand the real world which is that nations act in their own interest. If you don’t understand this central reality, your foreign policy is composed of reactions to events you really don’t understand. Like or not his mission required him to educate as well as advise President Obama.

The Advisor knew the President seldom took his advice but he was enough of a scholar to listen thoughtfully and enough of an ideologue to follow his collectivist doctrine. The President would be down here within the next hour. I’ll him if he will allow me to present my research. Right on schedule the ancient steel clad door opened and the President strode it. “Good evening Mr. President. The coffee is ready. Take what ever seat you want. I did some research this week and, if you will permit, I will give you the bottom lines.”

“Well, I thought your advice was just the result of your eight decades of life. I’m intrigued that you include research. So go ahead.”

“Thank you. Why are the Russians so hard to work with in the disaster we call Syria? Russia has no common border with Syria. Syria has no supply of oil or minerals. They have no exports Russia wants or needs. Yet Russia is sending game-changing weapons to Syria and, if their past behavior is any guide, they have or will also send technicians and weapons specialists to Syria. Putin knows there is no one to stop him. Certainly not any Arab or Persian State. Israel can’t without our help. The Euro powers are too focused on themselves to risk capital and blood for anyone else. I have no special insight to U.S. Russian policy but I do remember you whispering to President Medvedev before Putin took the presidency again, asking him to tell Putin you would have more flexibility after the election. Putin is a Czar. He only understands strength. Your secret message to Medvedev told Putin you were in a weak position. In Syria he believes you will not oppose Russia’s historical push to have a warm water port.

“Without a warm water port their fleet is frozen in, bottled up in the Black Sea or cruising far beyond their supply base for many months of each year. Again there is no proof I know of but the Soviet push into Afghanistan in the 1980s was another step in their bumbling efforts dating back to the Czars to gain a corridor to warm water. Syria has dangled a warm water port in the Mediterranean called Tartous. The Russians have already done significant development projects in this port. They really don’t much care who rules Syria as long as Tartous is firmly in Russian control. The Russians will do whatever is necessary to ensure they do not lose control of this port. They have never been so close in recent history to the control of a warm water port. A Syrian regime friendly to the United States that would exercise real control over Tartous is not acceptable. Putin, today, has no respect for America. He only understands strength and has no use for words that are mere rhetoric.

“There is more at stake in Syria than the ousting of President Bashar al-Assad from Syria. I don’t think your Administration understands the historical power that motivates Putin to capture an all weather port. That single feat will mark him as the greatest of all Russia’s Czars. A warm water port at no cost in blood or treasure. A remarkable achievement.”

“You’re telling me Russia’s end game in Syria is for a seaport?”

“Yes. Of course, they don’t mind throwing all Western powers out of the Middle East.”

“No one on my team will believe your analysis.”

“Try some military scholars. They will tell you the same thing.” The Advisor said, as the President was getting up to leave, “Mr. President maybe you need some different people on your team.”

By the author of the Jack Brandon Thriller Series www.factsandfictions.com

Pages: 1 2

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Filed under Afghanistan, Conservative views, foreign policy, Intelligence & Politics

by Barry Kelly | June 3, 2013 · 7:30 am

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 54

HOW THINGS WORK

President Obama presents a picture of White House operations that is very hard to believe, especially for those of us who have had the privilege of working in the White House. The mission of the President’s inner circle is to protect him by keeping the president fully informed. There must be no surprises that blind side the president and make him look inept. If he has to get information about the working of his administration from the media, something is seriously wrong. The President’s chief of staff, the deputy assistant for National Security Affairs, Cabinet and agency heads, the President’s legal counsel, and a few others all are duty bound to keep the president informed. I didn’t mention the Vice President because he is often kept out of the serious stuff. (If you’re new to my blog and am wondering how I know this, it is because I worked in the White House for two years as a special adviser to President Reagan.)

Take the current IRS scandal. We’ve learned the President’s chief of staff, high level Treasury officials, most likely including the Secretary of the Treasury, the IRS commissioner, the President’s legal counselor, the IRS’s Inspector General and I believe the Attorney General, had to also know. It is inconceivable that not one of these loyal-to-the-President officials did not give the President a heads up. He deserved to know.

Let’s look at the leak scandal next. We know the President was aware of the leaks of national security information from his administration. From a pure national security perspective, the massive leak regarding cyber attacks against Iran’s nuclear weapons program was the most extensive and threatening to our security. No reported immediate investigation here and no culprit named. Certainly the New York Times wasn’t to blame. Leakers of this magnitude are not hard to find unless you do not want them found. Leaks of sensitive elements of the Bin Laden killing had a similar result. No investigation and no leakers named. Don’t ask the question if you do not want the answer. These leaks made the President look good. Therefore, no investigation.

The scandal of the phone records of AP reporters and Rosen of Fox News are different. These do not appear to be calculated White House leaks for political advantage. Again, no real effort to find the leakers. The investigation targeted reporters who were doing their job. Now we are to believe that our top cop, the Attorney General, didn’t know anything about the attack on reporters even though his signature was on the document authorizing the seizure of Rosen’s phone records? Besides the obvious close official connection of the AG to the President, Obama and Holder are reported to be close friends. Now why would a conscientious AG and friend of the President not help the President to get out in front of this scandal? The AG is far too wise to believe the attack on journalists by the FBI could be kept away from media coverage. The right answer is that the President was informed but like the IRS scandal, the investigation of reporters had to be held until after the election.

The last in this trilogy of scandals is the debacle in Ben Ghazi. There is a lot we don’t know but will find out. We do know that the President and his inner circle knew the truth would hurt his chances for re-election. Al Qaeda was a thing of the past. The President’s Middle East policy was a success. Libya was “saved” by the President. All was under control. The administration, meaning Secretary Clinton, President Obama, certain national security officials, a number of officers in the military command structure, counter-terrorist officers, and security officials in the State Department, all knew our Ambassador to Libya had asked for additional security and warned of impending attacks. These requests were turned down. Remember, if you will, that ambassadors serve as the representative of the President in whichever nation they serve. So the refusal of an ambassador’s pleas for security help is a big deal. On these kind of subjects the White House communications system gets it all and it is distributed to named officials in the National Security Staff and the White House.

There is absolutely no way the President, the National Security Advisor, and the Chief of Staff are not going to be informed. They would have to hide to prevent being told. As soon as the attack started emergency high precedent cables would have begun flowing out of Ben Ghazi. This cable traffic would have alerted the State Department, The White House, the CIA, NSA — all relevent military commands. Contingency plans would be pulled up and action plans formulated. At the White House, the staff of the Situation Room would be on full alert and probably augmented, where possible collection systems would focus on Ben Ghazi. A high level meeting of the appropriate players of the National Security Council would be called. The relevant officers of the National Security Staff would be called in, including the Senior Director of the Middle East and the Senior Director of Counter-Terrorism (whatever his current title), would assume the National Security Staff’s point position. Reports and recommendations would soon be on their way to the National Security Adviser. Inter-agency representatives would be on a secure TV conference exchanging information and analysis. In all of this the President would be expected to be front and center and in close touch with key players of the National Security Council who would be offering reaction plans and options. When Usama bin Laden was killed in a special operation President Obama was seen in the Situation Room. When Americans were killed, he was absent. Normally with Americans in harm’s way, doing nothing would not be an option. President Obama made doing nothing the option. As a result the Ambassador and three other Americans were abandoned and left to die. This will forever be a low point for the Obama Administration and the entire Defense Department. One short meeting with his Defense Officials and then off to a fundraiser the next morning in Las Vegas doesn’t seem to fit the role of a competent Commander-in-Chief.

The big truth in all these scandals is that they would have made President Obama’s re-election much harder and maybe even doubtful. So maybe the best defense is the oldest,”I don’t know. I wasn’t informed. I learned about it from the news reporting.” Successful. I guess. Who is sitting in the White House? The man who believes the issue is never the issue. President Obama cannot fix these problems. He is the problem.

BY THE AUTHOR OF THE JACK BRANDON THRILLER SERIES

http://www.amazon.com/Justice-Beyond-Law-ebook/dp/B005BCOFN0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1370183202&sr=8-1&keywords=justice+beyond+law

Transparency isn’t coming easily to Obama White House (latimes.com)
DOJ probed and grilled NYT government sources (rinf.com)
Next Against the Wall: White House Counsel Kathryn Ruemmler? (nationalreview.com

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Filed under Conservative views, Eight Decades of Insights, foreign policy, Intelligence & Politics, Obama, Politics

by Barry Kelly | May 29, 2013 · 7:30 am

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 53

WHAT???

The readership of my blogs is small but growing and you have sent me some great comments. Listening to the news about Ben Ghazi, the IRS‘s political transgressions, and the attack on James Rosen of Fox and the AP reporters, I thought some of my new readers might enjoy a look at some archived blogs or combined pieces of those blogs. So bear with me. I don’t want to bore any of you and if there is a past blog you would like to see re-published, please tell me. Don’t be reticent about passing all or parts of any EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS blog along in an email or a posting to friends and family. One of my goals is to stimulate conversation on items and events that are critical to our individual freedoms.

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Logo of the Internal Revenue Service (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Was the pushing of an unpopular, poorly crafted health care bill through Congress politically wise? Or was it only for the goal of centralizing seven percent of the economy? Thousands of new IRS officers will be policing the system. What better way to control people and their destiny? Is making the IRS even stronger and more pervasive an attractive political goal? Now we know the IRS is Obama’s tip of the spear in transforming America.

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Every civilization is built on a foundation of words. Words are (or were) the measure of a person. As I was growing up in small mill town in Western Pennsylvania, I learned that you judged people by how good their “word” was. Wealth, talent, strength, the car you drove, and the girls you dated were important, but nothing was as valuable as the reliability of your word. Your reputation in all fields depended upon the integrity of your word. Once that was gone, it was nearly impossible to get it back. I submit that it is the same with nations, political parties, politicians, and leaders. Can you believe what you are hearing from IRS officials, the Attorney General, the Press Secretary and even the President?

Seal of the United States Internal Revenue Service. The design is the same as the Treasury seal with an IRS inscription. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

They must know that much of what they are saying to us is untrue. I just don’t believe they value the integrity of the words they speak and print. This is dangerous. Without truth and honesty, our freedom is at risk. The end does not justify the means. The truth does not matter to them. They believe it is okay to distort the truth as long as the lies promote the end. The end in their political terms is the destruction of the opposition and replacing our system with their version of a just and fair society where the rulers know what the people need and use whatever means are necessary to achieve and protect their utopia.

History has seen many examples of a few believing, they – not the people – know best. How did that work for the Nazis, the various communist regimes, experiments in socialism and Islam, and for several other ancient empires? They did not leave much behind, except fading memories of ugly repression. None of them could stand the truth. They all used words to further their causes and beliefs. The theory that “the end justifies the means” reigned supreme. Freedom is the final casualty when words are only a means to an end.

A nation built on lies cannot endure.

By the author of the Jack Brandon Thriller Series. http://www.factsandfictions.com

IRS, AP and James Rosen Scandals Strike at the First Amendment (usnews.com)
Truth, Justice: the American Way? – ABC News (blog) (abcnews.go.com)

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 52

American flag (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

IT MATTERS

The Benghazi cover up matters. The lying regarding the “Talking Points” matters. The failure to provide adequate security to the Americans serving in Benghazi matters. The decision not to attempt a rescue matters. The president’s role during and after the attack matters. The triumph of re-election politics over protecting Americans serving in dangerous locations matters. The IRS‘s broad discrimination against conservative groups matters. The lack of leadership and accountability in the Obama Administration matters. The Justice Department‘s, including the FBI‘s, monitoring of phone calls made to AP reporters matters.

These wide-ranging activities matter because they all diminish our freedom.

Freedom is not a constant state of being. It needs to be protected and nourished. All of us who have served our nation took an oath to protect the nation from all enemies, foreign and domestic.

Perhaps the biggest concern is that if these things don’t matter, what is to prevent the same progressive group from building on this foundation of deceit and political spin? Once the system of “checks and balances” is ignored and government corruption is accepted as just partisan politics and the critical press is silenced, freedom of the individual will be a vanishing concept instead of the very anchor of our democracy. For without individual freedom there is no freedom at all.

The stakes are very high. Already we have re-elected a president who probably would not have won if his inner circle hadn’t been successful in delaying the disclosure of Benghazi, the IRS, or the Justice’s abuse of the privacy of AP reporters. These abuses of power do not stem from a vacuum. They are part of the teachings of Saul Alinsky, i.e., “the issue is never the issue.” The translation is to use all issues to destroy all opposition and seize political power. The issues themselves are not important. Do you think President Obama would be in the Oval Office if the Benghazi murders, the IRS’s attack on conservative groups and the AP phone tap debacle had come out a few months before the election?

I don’t think so. There are wise people in our history, who believed that when more people want government assistance and value security over freedom, American democracy is in its last stages. I hope they are wrong. We shall soon see.

By the author of the Jack Brandon Thriller Series. www.factsandfictions.com

Eight Decades of Insights 44 (factsandfictions.com)
Eight Decades of Insights 51 (factsandfictions.com)
A National Reboot! a Failed Leader, Exposed! (uslawblog.wordpress.com)
Obama’s Federal Gestapo Is Going Down (logancountryokla.wordpress.com)
A President’s Enemies List? (frontpagemag.com)

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Filed under Alinsky, Conservative views, Eight Decades of Insights, Intelligence & Politics, Obama, Politics, Progressives

by Barry Kelly | May 17, 2013 · 10:25 pm

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 51

King George III, by Sir William Beechey (died 1839). See source website for additional information. This set of images was gathered by User:Dcoetzee from the National Portrait Gallery, London website using a special tool. All images in this batch have been confirmed as author died before 1939 according to the official death date listed by the NPG. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

FREEDOM

Stop where you are and look around. If you are anywhere in America, everyone you see who has grown up here has never known anything except freedom. Even those who have had the misfortune to be temporarily in prison know what freedom is and believe it is the natural state of being. It isn’t.

Freedom as we know it is an anomaly in the course of history. Where, except here in America, has it ever been the normal condition? Where else do people grow up with individual freedom, which is the only freedom? If individuals are not free to act out their lives, including making mistakes and bad choices, there is no freedom.

Why have we been so blessed? We are a nation of immigrants who all had first-hand experience with tyranny, either from governments, religious organizations, or from their employers or owners. Only black Americans who spent decades as slaves, and a few others, did not escape tyranny by living in America. And, they too, knew what freedom was. They also knew they didn’t have it. Our founders also knew that they did not have the freedom they believed should be theirs as long as King George III made the laws that governed in America.

They knew only under a limited government elected by the people was freedom possible. A reading of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, The Federalist Papers, and the Articles of Confederation clearly shows a strong push to limit the powers of government. They knew intuitively that government could not grant freedom but it could diminish or abolish freedom. The stronger and larger the government becomes the greater danger it becomes to curtailing individual freedom.

Big government, bigger than it could be and still provide necessary services, is the only threat to freedom in America. Governments are not inherently evil. They, if allowed, just slowly and inexorably absorb functions and rights reserved to the states and individuals in the name of dealing with some issue. There is no other threat to our freedom, beyond foreign military invasions. We must keep government to its necessary functions and size commensurate with its responsibilities.

The dual process of centralization and distribution of wealth, under the well meaning intentions of elitist political groups, to make a better life for allis always a threat to freedom. The current mayor of New York and the nanny state he wants is a perfect example of well meaning intentions limiting individual freedoms. Give a government of progressives ten or fifteen years of uninterrupted growth in size and power and the freedom so many of us have fought for will be gone.

Freedom is won quickly and slowly lost. Freedom demands eternal vigilance for it is vulnerable to citizen demands for goods and services and the human drive to continue the growth and centralizing of government.The dual watchdogs of the free press and dedicated citizens are needed to keep us free from the abuses of Government.