Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin is Executive Vice President at Family Research Council. This article appeared in Washington Times on June 14, 2018.
Recently, President Trump and National Security Adviser John Bolton selected Fred Fleitz to be Mr. Bolton’s deputy at the National Security Council. Fred is the right man for this critical job, especially given the ongoing negotiations with Kim Jong-un of North Korea. Fred is one of the most experienced analysts in the U.S. and a true patriot who understands and supports the president’s agenda.
Mr. Fleitz represents another brilliant, winning personnel choice that will pay dividends for the president and Mr. Bolton. Much of my assessment of Mr. Fleitz rests on my 36 years of service in the U.S. Army, which included six years in the intelligence field with the Department of Defense and the CIA.
Before moving to the National Security Council (NSC), Mr. Fleitz served for 25 years in various jobs associated with U.S. national security. His background and experience in intelligence is impressive. He has worked at the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the State Department, and with House Intelligence Committee staff. His last position was senior vice president for policy and programs at the Center for Security Policy here in the nation’s capital. His commentary in op-eds, radio and TV programs is always enlightening and reflects an incredible grasp of today’s most complex issues, like the North Korean and Iranian nuclear programs. Fred’s experience gives him an advantage over the rest of the field of commentators.
When he speaks, it is abundantly clear that he is reflecting on his years of analysis and the briefing of upper echelon leaders in the U.S. government on issues of national intelligence. It is comforting to me to know that he has helped prepare the president for this trip to Singapore. There are many other important and relevant aspects of Mr. Fleitz’s career, but the factor supporting his appointment is that his experience aligns very closely with the greatest problems facing the United States today.
For example, he has two decades of experience working on and thinking about issues of nuclear weapons proliferation — including its financing across state lines. Of course, two of the greatest crises the world faces presently revolve around keeping the two most dangerous nations in the world, North Korea and Iran, from attaining and/or enhancing their nuclear weapons.
Like Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu, Mr. Trump and Mr. Bolton, Mr. Fleitz has been a vocal critic of the Obama foreign policy that did nothing to stop North Korea from acquiring nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles to use against the United States.
Similarly, Mr. Fleitz has been extremely vocal in his criticism of the Obama administration’s duplicitous foreign policy toward Iran. Largely hidden from the American people, that plan aimed to make Iran, America’s foremost enemy in the world since the Iranian Revolution of 1979, the dominant power in the Middle East. What’s more, this incomprehensible policy foresaw and blessed Iranian mullahs’ possession of nuclear weapons and the operation of a fully functioning ballistic missile program.
Mr. Fleitz opposes all of this, and for that he has earned the bitterest animosity of various leftist foreign policy interest groups who supported this delusional realignment of American foreign policy.
For decades, and on an almost weekly basis, Iran has called for the destruction of Israel and speaks of Jews in the most despicably anti-Semitic ways imaginable. This regime received more than $150 billion from the Obama administration. Iran received the funds while it was supplying the funds and materiel to kill many U.S. service members in Iraq and Afghanistan.
This is not an acceptable policy to decent, patriotic Americans. It is certainly not OK with Fred Fleitz, who is also known to be a great friend of Israel and the Jewish people.
The oldest and most historically significant Jewish organization in our country is the Zionist Organization of America which was founded before 1900 as the calls for a Jewish homeland went out. Its current president is Morton Klein. Mr. Klein noted of Fred Fleitz that he “is a strong supporter of Israel” and is one who “understands the reality and dangers of the Arabic Islamic war against Israel.” Furthermore, Mr. Klein made clear that Mr. Fleitz understands the “danger of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s threats against Israel and the U.S.”
There is much more to be said of Fred Fleitz’s impressive career, character and patriotism. I have known him for many years, and wholeheartedly support his appointment to the National Security Council. America needs fine public servants like Mr. Fleitz in hours of distress.
Thus, President Trump could not have made a finer selection for deputy national security adviser than Fred Fleitz. The Bolton-Fleitz team will undoubtedly serve America well.
