Secure Freedom Minute

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

How much would it be worth to Saddam Hussein’s nuclear bomb-maker to be able to control a major U.S. port through which he could secretly bring lethal weapons – or just about anything else – into this country? It turns out the answer is $589 million.

That’s how much a company co-owned by Dr. Jafar Dhia Jafar’s family and a sheikh from the United Arab Emirates has agreed to pay to build and operate for the next fifty years a new shipping container facility in Wilmington, Delaware. Officials there are expected to approve this ominous arrangement tomorrow.

Twelve years ago, the idea of having a company from the UAE run American ports was wisely rejected. If anything, this one – known as Gulftainer – is even more worrisome.

Tell the Port of Wilmington: No deal for Gulftainer. Call Secretary Robert Coupe at 302-744-2680.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

President Trump just showed us who’s boss. While the Swamp can impede the funding and construction required to build “the Wall,” it is within the power of the Commander-in-Chief to deploy troops to secure our southern border.

To be sure, it’s far preferable to achieve this objective with effective, permanent barriers to illegal aliens, drug- and human-traffickers, terrorists and their enabling “coyotes.” But, in the absence of the requisite, bipartisan support in Congress, Mr. Trump has rightly decided to do what he can unilaterally to protect our country and its people.

Our already overtaxed armed forces can perform this important mission far more efficiently, however, if they can take advantage of an array of military-grade cameras already in place along the Texas stretch of the border with Mexico.

Mr. President, get that BlueServo system turned back on while you get the Wall built.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Borders are important symbols of national sovereignty. They are also essential to national security. Look at Europe, where millions of migrants have taken advantage of a lack of such frontiers to inundate, and fundamentally transform, country after country.

Then there’s Israel’s border with the Gaza Strip. The terrorist group that has run Gaza into the ground is now putting thousands of civilians in harm’s way for the purpose of stigmatizing – and ultimately assaulting – Israel and her security fences, over and under which Hamas has repeatedly attacked the Jewish State.

Meanwhile, a “caravan” of illegal immigrants has been heading through Mexico to breach its porous border with the United States. President Trump has rightly warned the Mexican government not to be party to such an assault on our sovereignty. If these don’t make it though, others will.

Wouldn’t you like to have a Wall now?

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Suddenly, there’s a lot of buzz about America’s Achilles’ Heel – the vulnerability of our electric grid to attack or even naturally occurring solar storms that could take down our country. In recent days, the Congressional Research Service, National Academy of Sciences and North American Electric Reliability Corporation, better known as NERC, have issued warnings.

Such insights are not exactly new. There have been at least _eleven_ previous studies that all reached the same, dire conclusion: If the grid is subjected to physical sabotage, cyber warfare or electromagnetic pulses from enemies or the sun, it will likely be devastated and many millions of us will perish.

Unfortunately, until now, the electric utilities have largely been in denial about this prospect. Belatedly, even NERC – which amounts to their trade association – is raising an alarm.

Enough studying. It’s time to _act_. Find out how at SecuretheGrid.com.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

In June 2016, Omar Mateen murdered 49 people in an Orlando gay bar. It seems that the FBI was investigating him for terrorist proclivities fully ten years before. At that time, though, Mateen’s father induced the agent conducting the inquiry to conclude his son was not a threat.

We just learned that the elder Mateen was a confidential informant for the FBI and that the agent in question was the senior Mateen’s handler. The obvious conflicts of inherent in this arrangement raise serious questions about the Bureau’s competence and warrant further investigation.

While they’re at it, investigators should look into the FBI’s practice begun during these years under then-Director Robert Mueller known as the “Great Purge.” It eliminated agent training in techniques that could help identify jihadists – and deal effectively with, rather than be duped by, them.

We must reverse the Purge.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

For years, we have been told that the United States is the world’s only superpower. Evidently, the dictators of Russia and China didn’t get the memo.

Increasingly, these hostile nations are fielding nuclear arsenals that grievously threaten our country and its people. Of particular concern is the progress the Russians and Chinese have made in hypersonic and maneuvering weapons designed to defeat our fairly rudimentary anti-missile systems.

Incredibly, the Obama-Clinton administration actually facilitated the transfer of such technologies to Russia, while China may have stolen them. U.S. Strategic Command’s General John Hyten says we currently have “_no defense_” against these threats.

But we could quickly deploy one, thanks to a breakthrough _predictive algorithm_, capable of making even modest anti-missile missiles effective against hypersonic and maneuvering ones – thus helping to deter and, if necessary, defeat a Russian or Chinese attack.

Will we do so?

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

On August 15, 2016, Donald Trump laid out the most accurate assessment of the threat posed by what he called “radical Islamic terrorism” of anyone in public life. He also presented a robust plan for contending with the danger posed by those who adhere to the totalitarian ideology they call Sharia.

He is president of the United States today in no small measure due to his clarity on these subjects – and the yearning of Americans for the truth about jihad and competent responses to it.

Today, two men President Trump has asked to help implement his policies, National Security Advisor-designate John Bolton and Secretary of State-designate Mike Pompeo, are under vicious assault for being aligned with the Commander-in-Chief regarding Sharia-supremacism and those of us who support him.

Mr. Trump needs such capable men at his side. And so does our Republic.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Yesterday, the United States joined the United Kingdom and twenty other allied nations in expelling purported “Russian diplomats.” This action has been been portrayed as a demonstration of solidarity with Britain after Vladimir Putin’s regime used military nerve agent to try to kill a turncoat and his daughter there.

Actually, it’s a long-overdue counter-intelligence measure, made necessary by Russia’s espionage operations in this country said to be even more aggressive than during the height of the Cold War.

The question is: How many _more_ Russian spies remain? Of particular concern are so-called “illegals,” like those who had penetrated the political machines of Hillary Clinton and Sen. Chuck Schumer and were sent packing in 2010 – _before they could be properly interrogated_.

As a career spy himself, you can bet Putin will keep his comrades at it in this country. Roll them up.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Donald Trump provided fresh evidence of his assertive Presidency 2.0 with a memorandum Friday that effectively affirmed an earlier, contested directive by precluding those with “gender dysphoria” from serving in the U.S. military.

If that term is unfamiliar, it’s because lately we have been insistently told that self-described “transgender” individuals do not have such a clinical condition – never mind that it is utterly incompatible with the health, readiness and deployability standards our troops must meet.

The President’s new memorandum on transgenders-in-the-military will not only spare the armed forces the nightmare of integrating people with gender dysphoria into their showers, bunkrooms and units. It also is a clear repudiation of some senior Trump subordinates who worked to subvert his direction on this topic. Ditto several federal judges who have unconstitutionally asserted the right to countermand direct orders issued by the Commander-in-Chief.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Let’s call it Trump Presidency 2.0. The replacement of H.R. McMaster as National Security Advisor with Amb. John Bolton is not merely a changing of the guard. It is a sea-change, one that holds promise of allowing Mr. Trump to accomplish his national security and foreign policy objectives, rather than endlessly contend with them being sabotaged by his own insubordinate subordinates.

This transformation is powerfully reinforced by a similar swap-out at the State Department. The disloyal Rex Tillerson is out and a skilled, principled team-player named Mike Pompeo has been nominated to replace him.

For over a year, McMaster and Tillerson have been among those who have fancied themselves the “adults” in the administration, determined to stop the President from doing what they oppose. Now the President will have actual adults who actually want to help him succeed. Hallelujah.

This is Frank Gaffney.