Secure Freedom Minute

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Ronald Reagan understood that “Personnel is policy.” This simple phrase captures an eternal truth: The right subordinates usually determine a leader’s success or failure. 

Few administrations have more clearly validated this adage than that of President Trump. For over three years now, he has gotten an amazing amount done for the country, but it has despite having a large number of insubordinates on his staff. Mr. Trump recently charged a trusted aide, John McIntee, with systematically replacing those “Swamp creatures.” 

Such efforts have  been extended to the United Nations, as well. Communist China has managed to put its operatives in charge of an unprecedented four UN agencies. Thank heavens, Trump loyalists led by Trade Czar Peter Navarro have just blocked the world’s worst perpetrator of IP theft from securing control of the World Intellectual Property Organization.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Two tectonic shifts occurred yesterday in the Middle East, one good, one not.

In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu finally appears to have won the victory that had eluded him in two previous parliamentary elections. If so, he may be able to cobble together at last the coherent governing coalition Israel needs now more than ever. 

Turkish dictator Recep Tayyep Erdogan chose this moment to precipitate a new refugee crisis in Europe. He refused to accept a further billion-euro bribe from the European Union aimed at staving off another invasion by perhaps millions more illegal immigrants from Sharia-supremacist nations.

Erdogan may be calculating that this gambit will distract his people’s attention from the bloody setbacks Russia and its Syrian puppet regime have lately dealt Turkey. The episode certainly demonstrates that, unlike Netanyahu’s Israel, under its would-be-Caliph, Turkey’s an ally no more. 

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

If you thought the deadly coronavirus that broke out in Wuhan, China and has afflicted and/or locked down millions of Chinese and increasingly citizens of other countries around the world actually originated in the PRC, think again.

Claudia Rosett warns at PJ Media that the Chinese Communist Party’s vast propaganda machinery is beginning to cite – and, thereby, amplify baseless “speculation” that U.S. military athletes participating in sporting events in Wuhan last October brought the disease with them.

Such blame-shifting must be vigorously countered. A good start was yesterday’s announcement that Chinese propagandists operating under journalistic cover in America will be reduced by about a third, down to an amount closer to the number of actual reporters from the U.S. allowed in China. But we better do more to prove the Chinese Communists’ responsibility both for the virus’ outbreak and its egregious mismanagement.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

On Saturday, President Trump announced an end to the longest war in U.S. history. Unfortunately, the deal just struck with the Taliban risks repeating what happened after Henry Kissinger’s secret bilateral negotiations with North Vietnam. 

The then-Secretary of State promised “peace with honor.” But his deal left in place in South Vietnam large numbers of armed military forces poised to finish conquering our allies there. The North Vietnamese quickly did just that.

The President and our country need an insurance policy lest a similar nightmare unfold shortly at the Talibans’ hands in Afghanistan. Nothing in the deal precludes skilled, volunteer veterans helping the Afghan military and a self-defense and governance organization modeled after the one called CORDS that actually worked in Vietnam. 

Mr. President, give peace – and the Afghan people – a real chance, not another short-lived and fatal “decent interval.”  

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

While Americans are focused on China’s coronavirus and the financial pandemic now afflicting their pension plans, the Chinese Communist Party’s puppet government in Hong Kong is seizing the day. 

Three leaders of massive demonstrations last August have been arrested, a seemingly small addition to the 7,000 protestors Beijing’s proxies are believed to have previously taken into custody. But the prosecution of Jimmy Lai, the founder of Hong Kong’s freest newspaper, Apple Daily, and opposition politicians Lee Cheuk-yan and Yeung Sum, suggests that Chinese dictator Xi Jinping intends to institute a wider crack-down in their city.

The coronavirus is not only distracting us, it is discouraging Hong Kong’s freedom fighters from massing in the streets. It behooves the U.S. government, therefore, to redouble its efforts to protect them and their movement by impressing upon Xi that further oppression will entail real costs.  

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Yesterday, Attorney General William Barr gave the latest in a series of positively Churchillian speeches about the challenges facing our country before the National Religious Broadcasters. Notably, he brilliantly channeled the most insightful chronicler of our country’s formative years, Alexis de Tocqueville. 

General Barr recalled de Tocqueville’s warning that – in the absence of key checks that have protected our nation from the dangers of “totalitarian democracy” – we would inevitably be reduced to the tyrannical rule of an intolerant majority. The two men agreed that the most important of such checks were: a national grounding in faith and morality; limited government in a federalized system where power is entrusted to leaders most accountable to the people; and an independent, free press.

While our Attorney General professed optimism that we will restore these checks, the hour is late to do so.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Philip Haney, one of the nation’s foremost counter-jihadists, was found dead last week with a bullet wound to the chest. The local coroner quickly declared his death a suicide. On Monday, the authorities distanced themselves from that conclusion, saying the investigation was still underway.

Those of us who knew, worked with and loved Phil welcomed the correction.

After all, he was planning to remarry soon, publish a sequel to his masterwork, See Something, Say Nothing, and return in a senior position to the federal Department of Homeland Security where, for fifteen years, he brilliantly ferreted out and help put away jihadist terrorists in America.

Not least, Philip Haney feared he would be murdered and warned that it would be made to look like a suicide.

His passing is a terrible loss, either way. But we need to know the truth. 

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

American investors are among those feeling ill as U.S. capital markets respond to the spreading coronavirus. For example, 401k plans were hard hit yesterday, with the distinct possibility of further losses as disruptions in Chinese supply chains increasingly afflict businesses here. 

Let’s be clear about who’s to blame for this potential financial pandemic. Primarily, it’s the Chinese Communist Party.  Among other things, it failed to act for a month, contributing to the virus’ deadly spread throughout China and beyond.

Then, there are the Wall Street financiers and their enablers at the Securities and Exchange Commission who have exposed millions of U.S. investors’ funds to huge losses in non-transparent, risky and sometimes malevolent Chinese companies’ stocks and bonds. As those bets prove to have been predictably reckless, they must be held accountable along with their friends in the Chinese Communist Party.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute. 

Phil Haney was a “bug guy” and a national treasure – an entomologist who proudly described how his skills in classification and following the focuses of his intensive research to “the nest” helped protect America against Sharia-supremacists, at home and abroad.

Phil was a founding member of the Department of Homeland Security where he performed such work brilliantly for Customs and Border Patrol for fifteen years. During much of that time, he was highly acclaimed by his superiors for ferreting out some 300 terrorists.

But in the Obama administration, his work was unwelcome, harassed and punished. Phil was subjected to nine different investigations, but fully exonerated each time. He retired and courageously blew the whistle on the Islamists and leftists who are still endangering us all.

Phil Haney died of a gunshot wound last week. Freedom is less secure today as a result. 

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Yesterday, I had the privilege of chairing in Texas the fifth in a series of threat briefings the Committee on the Present Danger: China has sponsored in key early voting states. In the course of these programs – and others to be held in coming weeks, the Committee’s briefers powerfully reinforce a warning Secretary of State Mike Pompeo recently gave the nation’s governors.

Mr. Pompeo told them the Chinese Communist Party is targeting our states and their public pension plans as part of a comprehensive assault on our country, its national security, economy, vital interests and people that the People’s Liberation Army calls “unrestricted warfare.” 

Our briefing makes clear that, to the extent that Wall Street financiers are inducing investors – both institutional and individual – to underwrite China’s malevolence, they are enabling such warfare against us. This must end.

This is Frank Gaffney. Get the briefing at PresentDangerChina.org.