Author Archives: Barry Kelly

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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 | October 17, 2012 · 3:47 pm

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS #24

OBAMA’S WALL

President Barack Obama and Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney exchange views during the second presidential debate at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y. They interrupt each other, bicker and ignore the moderator. Romney poses his own questions and demands answers. “That’s not true,” Obama huffs over and over. This is presidential conduct? It was squirm-inducing for some viewers. But the candidates have little to lose by cranking up the heat in a tight face, where the focus is on persuading the undecided and firing up their fans.

Throughout history, totalitarian regimes have erected brick and mortar walls as well as more subtle barriers to the flow of information. Often the walls and barriers are to prevent those outside the walls from seeing what the regime does not have, more than to protect what they have, from prying eyes. The Soviet Union was certainly ultra-sensitive to protecting their shortcomings when they built walls to hide behind. Outside their missile program and other militarized areas, the Soviet Union was a wet paper tiger. What they did not have in the 1970s was truly astounding. I spent two years in the Soviet Union from 1973 to 1975. I left being convinced they were a dangerous enemy, not because of their strength, but because of their weakness. Fear of the growing power of the West might have influenced them to strike before the gap widened further.

President Obama, with his totalitarian approach to governing and arrogance that only he and his Chicago mafia know what is right for America, have erected walls to hide mistakes and weakness as well as denying anyone outside the walls to see what has not been done. The president’s fiscal policy is non-existent. His military strategy for an increasingly dangerous world is not even a work in progress. His plan for job creation, beyond hiring 100,000 more teachers, infrastructure improvements, and green energy jobs, has never been seen. Unemployment numbers are seriously flawed. His energy policy is beyond understanding. He is not a brilliant or even a bright man and must hide his deficiencies, at least those David Axelrod cannot fix. Now there is a brilliant political strategist struggling with a hard-to-manage pupil. I cannot believe Axelrod told the president to cover up the Benghazi fiasco. In my opinion, Obama doesn’t even realize the importance Americans place on the protection of its fellow citizens, especially those sent in harm’s way without the tools to work and survive.

The presidential debates are beginning to tear down the walls erected to hide the failed promises, fantastic accumulation of debt, inept foreign policy, ignorance of economic development, amateurish military strategy, and the extreme left-wing objectives. You see a debater who is far better at displaying arrogance, anger, petulance, denial, and how-dare-you question me than he is at presenting a rational defense of his record or a cogent plan for the next four years. Don’t expect things to improve, no matter where your political allegiance resides. What you see is what you have. If you are a voter, push past the words and carefully consider if you and the nation can stand another four years of government behind the walls. Pull the walls down. Let the daylight in.

www/factsandfictions.com                                The author of the Jack Brandon Thriller Series.

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by | October 10, 2012 · 7:14 pm

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS #23

FINALLY TRANSPARENCY

In the fourth year of the Obama administration, the president has delivered on his promise to have the most transparent presidency ever.  Just look at the president’s actions, the rulings of his czar-led cabinet, speeches by the president and his surrogates, the fumbling statements of his press secretary, the infamous five Sunday talk shows by Secretary to the United Nations Susan Rice to blame the murders in Benghazi on a despicable anti-Islam film, the vicious campaign ads blaming the president’s inept performance on the debate stage in Denver by stating governor Romney lied. Are these actions hard to see through?

What you saw on the stage in Denver’s presidential debate is the true Obama  A man uncomfortable with a level playing field where petulant arrogance is no defense against a well prepared articulate opponent.  President Obama showed clearly that he is not presidential. He desperately needs his teleprompter and cannot think on his feet. When the same old cliches no longer work in the presence of an opponent who has better answers and no fear, Obama is lost in confusion and shows us who he really is, a man so far out of his depth that he cannot provide the leadership we need to restore economic prosperity and equal opportunity. His policies of class warfare, divide and conquer, breaking rules, regulations and even laws by ignoring Congress are compounded by cover ups and delaying tactics to prevent citizens from learning the truth.

What we have is straightforward politics from the depths of Chicago.  The president’s advisers come from the Chicago political school where the truth is whatever works the best for them. Their guru Saul Alinsky has written brilliantly about the process of the “end justifying the means.” Anything that might diminish the Obama administration has to be spun, delayed by investigations or covered up. The attorney general is a master of protecting the administration above everything else, including the dictates of the rule of law. Example: fast and furious where he took the fall  when he was found to be guilty of contempt of Congress, the first time in our history for an attorney general.

Other areas of increasing transparency are: downplaying the war on terror, lawlessness on our borders, failed policies in Afghanistan and Iraq  damaging our relationship with Israel,  growing the size and scope of the federal government at the expense of the states and the Constitution, controlling the means of production (socialism on the march) destroying capitalism and the free market, seeking a behind-the-scenes arrangement with Putin.

Transparency in the Obama administration  is increasingly easy to see. Just focus on the growing cracks and peer inside. You won’t like what you see.

http://www.factsandfictions.com                                              Author of The Jack Brandon Thriller Series.

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by | October 4, 2012 · 2:38 pm

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS #22

SURPRISED?

Unless you have been hardwired to TV channels like MSNBC, you should not be surprised by President Obama’s poor performance last night. He now has a record to defend. No more soaring rhetoric, promising hope and change. Hope is a wonderful state of being. We all love it. So, no wonder a majority bought into the hope and change thing in 2008.  It helped that his opposition failed to inspire even the Republican base and ran an inept campaign. Who wouldn’t be wishing Obama’s rhetoric would be matched with equally inspiring deeds? Could a people often accused of racism possibly vote for a black man? Even those of us who worried about his lack of experience and his history of associations wished him well. We were proud of our nation for electing a black man.

The years past and the deeds did not match the words. Unemployment remained, maybe even got worse. The deficit  got much worse. The plans for recovery never came.  The man who promised to bring us together proved, in deed and word, instead  to practice divide and conquer. His foreign policy speeches, especially abroad, sound more like pleas to forgive our past mistakes and please like us. We will change under my leadership. Allies and foes alike where confused. The worst thing a President can do as Commander-in-Chief is to create uncertainty in US policy. President Carter, who demonstrated  the same lack of leadership and resolve, failed to act in Iran after the fall of the Shah, and led the Soviets to believe he wouldn’t take action if they filled a centuries long goal by invading Afghanistan on their first step to a warm water port. President Carter wanted the American people to put aside their pride and innovative spirit and put on his doom and gloom hair shirt. Our President must have studied Carterism  at Columbia or Harvard. President Reagan corrected the damage his predecessor  caused in our foreign policy, in the economy, the morale of the people and the readiness of our armed forces. Another four years of Carter who have left irreparable damage.  See a similar danger here?

What does President Obama bring to the table? Given a teleprompter and a prepared speech he will deliver a magnificent  piece of oratory. A performance that few in our history could match. But what else? He may project likeability but he is not. He is quick to anger. Carries grudges even those of his family. His treatment of the Supreme Court Judges in one of his State of  The Union speeches was unprecedented. Remember his treatment of Representative Ryan. Not the work of a kind or gentle man. He cannot think on his feet. You have seen how he does without the prepared speech on a teleprompter. He is very thin skinned and cannot take criticism. He would prefer to do nothing if he can’t have his way. He does not even meet with his
Cabinet, Jobs Council, or Democratic leaders and certainly not Republican leaders. If he ever reaches across the aisle, the opposition better duck.
On top of all that, he doesn’t like hard work. His preparation for the debate shows that. I believe he is causing David Axelrod, the brains behind Obama, and a man who can think on this feet, to lose his hair. His ward is neither bright nor willing to work hard. Just examine his schedule. Almost never working in the White House. Unlike his mentors Presidents Carter and Clinton who both worked hard at the job.

I can’t stand to close this piece without debunking President Obama’s bragging rights. I know something about preparing operations for Presidential approval. I did that for President Reagan for the last two years of his administration.  Take drones. They were developed and flying operations long before Obama’s tenure. All he did was approve the increase in their use. I agree with their use for it saves lives of our men and women in uniform. The only hard part for the President to decide is what is the political and foreign affairs fallout. The same is true of the Usama bin Laden affair. There is political risk in both approving or disapproving the staff recommendation to go. If it fails, ala Carter’s attempt to rescue hostages in Teheran, there will be negative fallout from the opposition. If the staff recommendation to go is disapproved there will be, sometime later, attacks from the opposition. Being President is a very hard role to fill. Sitting around the Situation Room with anxious looks for photo ops is not necessary. The credit goes solely to those who execute and face the real risks. Nor is leaking classified intelligence successes necessary to campaigning for re-election. Last night you saw the real President Obama who is not used to people talking back. Most supreme leaders and emperors are like that. Last night was no surprise.
http://www.factsandfictions.com                               The author of the Jack Brandon thriller series.

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by | September 28, 2012 · 2:06 pm

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 21

Meeting with President Reagan, Vice President Bush, Deputy National Security Adviser Frank Carlucci and General Colin Powell in the Oval Office.

MY PERSONAL VIEW OF PRESIDENT REAGAN

In December of 1986, Frank Carlucci pulled me aside in the coffee hour following a worship service and told me President Reagan had asked him to be his National Security Adviser. He was putting together an entirely new Security Council Staff and wanted me to do all the intelligence, covert action, counter terrorism and counter narcotics staff work on his staff. I greatly admired Frank Carlucci and would have followed him anywhere. I reported for duty just after the first of the year. What follows is my personal view of President Reagan whom I would soon meet for the first time.

My motivation for writing this after decades of silence is the similarity between where President Carter and President Obama have led this nation. Neither one of them could ever have led us out of where we were then and now. But I have nothing but praise for President Reagan. I have several unflattering comments I could make about people in his Cabinet but silence is the better choice. I will say that Cabinet government cannot work without a strong, committed presidential staff. In my time, that was the National Security Council Staff. Cabinet members are soon captured by the organization they lead and soon are presenting the organizational viewpoint rather than that of the president. Please don’t believe I was an important person in the White House or that I was close to the president. In this case, admiration flowed one way. I was in his presence several times in the Situation Room and the Oval Office, but less so in the latter. My role was to provide the staff preparation for National Security Council meetings that fell within my area of responsibility. Okay, enough of the establishing of credentials.

In my first meeting with President Reagan in the Oval Office, he immediately made me feel at home and that he wanted to hear what I had to say. After his opening humorous story or joke, he said, “Frank, unless you tell me what is happening, I have no way of finding out.” He wanted us to know we could say what we thought without holding back. Bad news as well as good news is all relevant to the president. He was always gracious and sincerely interested in the well-being of his staff. I never saw him treat anyone with anger or sarcasm. He was extremely loyal to Cabinet members and Pentagon officials even when they deserved being sent to the wood shed. Keeping government organizations on the course the president wants, not what they want, is more than a full-time job.

Foreign officials couldn’t understand that the Reagan Revolution was first and foremost for Americans. His vision of the ‘Shining City on a Hill’ was not for nice-sounding rhetoric read from a teleprompter. It was call to all of us to throw off the cloak of doom and gloom and to remember our heritage, remembering also that government growth diminishes individual freedom. This is the president who destroyed Communism, rebuilt our military power, restored faith in capitalism and the free market, spoke truthfully, practiced transparency, and was respected by both parties. The most powerful man in the world never thought of himself in those terms. He understood those of us from blue collar backgrounds. The last quote I remember from him was, “Barry, I want Americans to be able to walk down any street in the world and be safe.” He cared about all of us. I’m glad he is not here to see Americans slaughtered in Libya while Carter, sorry, I mean Obama, dithers.

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

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by | September 18, 2012 · 3:43 pm

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 20

POINT OF NO RETURN

When your candidate loses the election, there is a period when you hope the guy you didn’t vote for surprises you and is successful. Each of us has our own POINT OF NO RETURN when you realize this isn’t going to work and you try to get the ship of state turned around or at least reduce the speed. I had several indicators the voyage was not going well. They were more than bumps in the road. OBAMACARE was the first. It wasn’t the attempt to fix health care. I realized the system was broken and needed fixed but not the way it ended up being done. No debate, discussion, openness to amendments, and total obscurity when we were promised transparency. The third person in the succession list for the Presidency said, “You have to pass it to see what’s in it.”  That was the beginning.

Then we had the world apology tour to put our past uniqueness and power for the good into perspective for the world. Followed by the unwarranted snubbing of old allies like the United Kingdom and Israel and new ones like Poland. What kind of a President would make it one of his first acts in office to send back the bust of Churchill, a revered hero of the West?

The foreign tour was followed by the unprecedented growth and use of the power of the Executive Office, the attempt to close Gitmo, put previously cleared CIA officers under investigation for the use of torture, i.e. water boarding and other harsh interrogation techniques that saved hundreds maybe thousands of American lives. With the worst Attorney General in my lifetime turned loose to impose his unique style of law and order we had Fast and Furious, the de facto granting of citizenship rights to the underpants bomber, the push to try the moslem thugs responsible for 9/11 in New York City. Finally THE ATTORNEY GENERAL was held IN CONTEMPT OF CONGRESS for the first time in our history. THE ATTACK ON CAPITALISM AND THE FREE MARKET SYSTEM were followed with the loading of the previously non-partisan National Labor Relations Board with Union supporters that tried to stop Boeing  from building planes in Charleston, South Carolina, because the state was a Right to Work state.

This  President does not like meetings where records are kept and many people witness the proceedings. As a senator, he was the chairman of the Afghanistan Committee that never held a meeting. To get around his own Cabinet he appointed thirty plus czars who do not need Senate confirmation and cannot be summoned to Congress to reply to questions or give testimony. They also do not meet as group. Written records of the President’s inter action with his secret “cabinet” will not be available to historians. Perhaps the most notorious of the czars was Van Jones, the Green Czar and a self-avowed Communist and a signer of the Truther Petition (a document that claims the U.S. Government was involved in a 9/11 cover-up and complicit in the attack in order to establish an excuse for the Iraq and Afghan wars). Valerie Jarrett was probably responsible for putting Jones in the President’s inner circle. After quietly leaving the White House, Van Jones showed up as one of the leaders of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

There were other strong indicators such as: Failure to get even one Democrat to vote for his budget submissions; announcement for troop withdrawal dates in Iraq and Afghanistan; the total lack of a plan to reduce the deficit; and the new mission for NASA (help Muslim states to feel proud of their contributions to science and math). But the big one for me was the President’s open mike mistake when he was talking in low confidential tones to Dmitry Medvedev. President Obama asked Medvedev to tell Putin that he (Obama) would have more flexibility after his re-election. Medvedev answered he would pass on the message. That an American President would pass such a message to a man that is no friend of the United States is the worst transgression I have ever personally  heard of in my life in government. That was my Point of No Return.  Do you have one?

http://www.factsandfictions.com                                                                                                                          author of the Jack Brandon thriller novels

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