republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:

Marine Gen. John Kelly is President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to be
the next secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, CBS News
reported Wednesday morning. Kelly is the third general Trump has tapped
for his Cabinet, along with retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn as national
security adviser and retired Gen. James Mattis as defense secretary.
You need generals to clean out ….. the Augean Stables.
The Department of Homeland Security, like the Department of State and
the Department of Justice, require an agency-wide purge. Under Obama,
who stacked them with uber-left ideologues and Muslim Brotherhood
members, these agencies became hostile to the American people.
The Department of Homeland Security targeted tea party members, veterans and patriots. The DHS had a Muslim Brotherhood agent on its advisory board; he leaked intel and shopped classified data to the media (and who knows who else).
Over the past eight years the Department of Homeland Security has turned its guns on …. us:

• DSH Secretary: Right-wingers pose same threat as Islamic jihadists
• Homeland Security-Funded Study on “Tea Party Terrorism”
• Obama’s DHS Warns Right Wing Terror Threat Greater than ISIS, Hamas-CAIR Celebrates
• DHS’ Islamic Advisor: Orlando Jihad Was Not Islamic
• WND Column: The Obama Doctrine – Target the Right
• OBAMA’S REAL TERRORISTS: TARGETING PATRIOTS AND THE RIGHT

Key points on Kelly:

• General found himself at odds — and eventually on the outs — with the Obama White House.
• General Kelly oversaw operations at GITMO. He opposes the Obama’s plan to shut it down. “There are no innocent men down there.”
• The general has a scholar’s appetite for reading and sharp viewpoints on America’s role abroad.
  He has extensive experience in the Middle East, having spent about two
  years leading combat forces against the Islamic State’s Sunni Arab
  forerunners in Iraq’s Anbar province. But perhaps most important to Trump, Kelly is an expert on Latin America
• The general found himself at odds — and eventually on the outs — with the Obama White House. He spoke out forcefully and publicly on a range of issues beyond Guantanamo.
• He lost his son Marine 1st Lt. Robert Kelly in combat, killed six years ago in Afghanistan.
• Trump’s Pick for DHS Secretary Warned About Iranian Infiltration of South America

Donald Trump picks Gen. John Kelly for Department of Homeland Security secretary

CBS News, December 7, 2016:
Donald Trump is tapping Gen. John Kelly to run the Department of Homeland Security, CBS News confirms.
The final request and acceptance, sources told CBS’ Major Garrett,
occurred while Kelly was traveling in Europe. His pick for DHS secretary
will be announced by the transition staff in the coming days.

Kelly is the third general tapped by the president-elect, joining Gen. James Mattis, Mr. Trump’s pick to become the next secretary of Defense, and Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Mr. Trump’s incoming national security advisor.

Like Mattis, Kelly is a Marine with a reputation for bluntness.
Kelly was the commander of U.S. Southern Command until earlier this
year. In that posting, he oversaw American military operations in South
America and Central America.
Before that, he commanded American forces numerous times in Iraq, and
spent a year as the top Marine in that country. He then was an aide to
defense secretaries Leon Panetta and Robert Gates.
Created after the 9/11 attacks, the Department of Homeland Security now
employs nearly 250,000 people. Trump pledged repeatedly to better
secure America’s borders on the campaign trail, and it is likely that
Kelly, should he take the position, will be central to that effort.
Unlike Flynn, Kelly did not endorse Mr. Trump during the campaign and
indicated he would be open to serving in either a Republican or
Democratic administration. He has also referred to domestic politics as a
“cesspool” in an interview over the summer with Foreign Policy
magazine.
Kelly, who served nearly 46 years in the Marine Corps, is the
highest-ranking American military official to lose a child in combat
since 9/11. His son, Marine Lt. Robert Michael Kelly, was killed in
action in Afghanistan in 2010.

Military Times did this in-depth piece on Kelly last month: 

John Kelly shares many Republicans’ position on the U.S.
military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. For three years prior to his
retirement last winter, the Marine Corps general oversaw operations at
the controversial detention facility where, despite President Barack
Obama’s determination to close it, dozens of alleged wartime combatants
and notable terror suspects remain incarcerated.
As the head of U.S. Southern Command, Kelly’s first and only
four-star assignment, he was prepared to carry out a directive to shut
down the prison complex. At the same time, the general made no secret of
the fact that he believed the president’s goal was misguided. “They’re
detainees, not prisoners,” Kelly told Military Times back in January,
during one of multiple interviews and less formal on-the-record
exchanges as his 45-year career came to a close. “The lifestyle they
live in Guantanamo is — they can’t simply be put in a prison in the
United States.
“Every one,” he added, “has real, no-kidding intelligence on them
that brought them there. They were doing something negative, something
bad, something violent, and they were taken from the battlefield. There
are a lot of people that will dispute that, but I have dossiers on all
of them, built and maintained by the intelligence community, both
military and civilian.
“There are no innocent men down there.”
Gen. John Kelly, photographed in January 2015 at the Pentagon. Photo Credit: Mike Morones
Kelly, 66, is one of at least four candidates under serious consideration
to become President-elect Donald Trump’s Homeland Security secretary,
though Reince Priebus, whom Trump appointed as White House chief of
staff, indicated on “Meet the Press” last week
that Kelly also is being eyed to lead the State Department. Either role
would afford him considerable influence as Trump begins to shape
policies on national security, foreign policy and immigration, including
his controversial calls to erect a 2,000-mile barrier along the
U.S.-Mexico border and deport millions of people who’ve come to the
United States illegally.
Kelly has declined to comment about his prospective role in the Trump administration.
He is one of several former senior military officers in whom Trump
has taken an interest as he seeks to fulfill his campaign promise to
“drain the swamp” of establishment insiders filling key posts within the
executive branch. The general has a scholar’s appetite for reading and
sharp viewpoints on America’s role abroad. He has extensive experience
in the Middle East, having spent about two years leading combat forces
against the Islamic State’s Sunni Arab forerunners in Iraq’s Anbar
province. But perhaps most important to Trump, Kelly is an expert on
Latin America — and he is decidedly not one of Obama’s guys.
Head of SOUTHCOM says partnership and cooperation are vital in the Americas
The general found himself at odds — and eventually on the outs — with the Obama White House.
He spoke out forcefully and publicly on a range of issues beyond
Guantanamo. Having lost a son in combat, Marine 1st Lt. Robert Kelly was killed six years ago in Afghanistan,
the general delivered several pointed, passionate speeches about the
sacrifice being made by American families as the country’s war with
violent extremists seemed only to be worsening. And he spoke to Congress
in very stark terms about the perceived vulnerability of America’s
borders.
The question now is whether Trump, as president, would tolerate a
Cabinet secretary with an unapologetic record for, as the general puts
it, telling “truth to power.” During the campaign Trump declared that he
knows more than America’s generals and admirals do, but he also
lamented that they’ve been “reduced to rubble” under Obama. So perhaps
the more important questions are: How would Kelly’s experience come to
bear on whichever agency he may be asked to run, how do his views
dovetail with the president-elect’s and, ultimately, would Trump even
heed this general’s best advice?
James Mattis, another retired Marine general whose tenure in uniform
and on the battlefield often intersected with Kelly’s, is said to be
Trump’s leading candidate to run the Defense Department. A source
familiar with Trump’s discussions said Mattis told the president-elect
that Kelly also would make a solid defense secretary. Kelly reportedly
said the same about Mattis. The source spoke to Military Times on the
condition of anonymity, citing the sensitivity surrounding internal
deliberations.
Like Kelly, Mattis clashed with the Obama White House. He was most
vocal about the president’s stance toward Iran, with which the
administration negotiated a nuclear proliferation accord that’s been
endlessly criticized among those on the political right. It’s believed
by many observers that both generals’ military careers ended prematurely
because they refused to publicly support Obama’s agenda while
holding convictions to the contrary.
“When I first came to know General Kelly, he was just a war fighter.
But as time wore on in this administration, Kelly transformed,” said
Rep. Duncan Hunter, a Marine Corps veteran who served under Kelly during
the Iraq war. Hunter, a California Republican and member of the House
Armed Services Committee, said that he and Kelly remain close.
“It killed him to not be able to talk about what he saw happening,”
the congressman said. “He gives honest, unadulterated advice. It was
interesting to see the change from ‘everything’s fine, we’re not going
to say anything, we’re going to go execute our duties,’ to ‘this is
wrong and I’ve got to talk about it.’ And in the end that’s probably
what did John Kelly in.”
THREATS ALONG THE SOUTHERN BORDER
Trump and Kelly met in New Jersey on Nov. 20. They discussed the
general’s diplomatic background and a host of global security concerns.
The meeting included Priebus, who also chairs the Republican National
Committee, and Steve Bannon, the Breitbart News executive whom Trump
made his chief strategist. The discussion largely focused on the
general’s experience at Southern Command, one the military’s nine
unified combatant commands. SOUTHCOM, as it’s known, gave Kelly purview
not only of Guantanamo Bay but also the massive criminal network that
has metastasized from the trafficking of drugs, weapons and people
throughout South America, Central America and the Caribbean.
President-elect Donald Trump talks to media as he stands with retired
Marine Gen. John Kelly, right, at the Trump National Golf Club
Bedminster clubhouse Sunday, Nov. 20, 2016, in Bedminster, N.J. Photo
Credit: Carolyn Kaster/APIn that role, Kelly worked closely with several
federal and nongovernmental agencies. Many of the larger ones,
including Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs
Enforcement, the U.S. Coast Guard, operate under the aegis of the Department of Homeland Security.
And if not Kelly, whoever heads up Homeland Security or State may be
hard-pressed to match the general’s wealth of contacts in this part of
the world, and his depth of understanding about the socioeconomic and
geopolitical dynamics there. The source close to Kelly said the general
has “better relationships in Latin American than the State Department
does.”
That source highlighted the Alliance for Prosperity,
which Kelly played a lead role brokering during late-2014 and
early-2015. It resulted in an initial U.S. investment of nearly $1
billion for Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, which has experienced  more murder per capita than any other nation
in the last two decades, according to the World Bank. The initiative
aims to spur economic development, promote education, and curtail
criminal activity and human trafficking.
In Washington, it was an important win for the general. He felt the
administration had largely ignored many of his assessments about threats
facing the U.S. that emanate from Latin America. Just days after the
White House announced its support for the alliance, in mid-March 2015,
Kelly appeared on Capitol Hill to offer his annual overview of Southern
Command’s budgetary needs. With his tenure about to expire, he used the
opportunity — “my third and likely final year in command,” he told
lawmakers — to highlight in stark terms what he considered the American
government’s dangerous underestimation of the threat posed by what he
branded “transnational organized crime.”
“Unless confronted by an immediate, visible, or uncomfortable crisis
our nation’s tendency is to take the security of the Western Hemisphere
for granted,” the general wrote in prepared remarks for the Senate Armed
Services Committee. “I believe this is a mistake.”
The smuggling routes used by drug cartels and other criminal elements
active in Latin America are ripe targets for international terror
groups — specifically the Islamic State, Kelly warned Congress, citing
online message traffic calling for ISIS adherents to seek entry into the
U.S. via its southern border. “Southern Command has accepted risk for
so long in this region that we now face a near-total lack of awareness
of threats and the readiness to respond, should those threats reach
crisis levels.”
He’d issued a similar warning to Congress the year prior.
A WALL ALONE WON’T SOLVE THE PROBLEM
Beyond his call to build a wall, Trump has promised to impose an
aggressive crackdown on illegal immigration. When asked about those
plans earlier this year, Kelly told Military Times that while he
supports enhanced border security, that alone won’t address the
underlying reasons people flee Latin America en masse.
“I think you have to have — we have a right to protect our borders,
whether they’re seaward, coastlines, or land borders,” Kelly said. “We
have a right to do that. Every country has a right to do that.
Obviously, some form of control whether it’s a wall or a fence. But if
the countries where these migrants come from have reasonable levels of
violence and reasonable levels of economic opportunity, then the people
won’t leave to come here.”
Military Times
‘Hypocrisy’ of legalizing pot undermines America’s war on hard-core drugs, general says
In his final statement to Congress as the head of Southern Command,
Kelly addressed the role of human-rights education and training, calling
it essential to U.S. objectives not only in Latin America but wherever
America seeks to gain influence. Governments should be accountable to
their citizens, he said.
While at Southern Command, Kelly also leveraged America’s military,
diplomatic and intelligence assets to encourage impoverished or
otherwise unstable nations in the region to provide better security and
opportunity for their populaces. A big focus has been on teaching
foreign militaries and law enforcement how to counter the powerful,
wealthy drug cartels that perpetuate violence and drive people from
their communities.
For that reason Kelly is fiercely opposed to illegal and recreational
use of drugs, though he makes some exception where there is emerging
evidence to suggest medical benefits may exist. Notably, marijuana has
shown some promise in mitigating the anxiety some military personnel
face as a result of post traumatic stress. Kelly is OK with that. But he
opposes widespread legalization of pot, saying it undermines efforts to
curtail the distribution of hardcore drugs like heroin, methamphetamine
and cocaine.
Video by Daniel Woolfolk/Staff
“The solution there,” Kelly said, “is for Americans to stop using
drugs. Now, you’re never going to go to zero, but we’ve got great
programs to convince Americans not to do things — or to do things. We’ve
got great anti-smoking programs. I think when I was a kid a pack of
cigarettes was 25 or 30 cents, and 70 percent of Americans smoked. Now I
think it’s 23 percent and, of course, it costs you a million dollars to
buy cigarettes. Years ago, people didn’t wear seatbelts. Now most
people wouldn’t get in a car without putting a seatbelt on.
“We know how to influence people. I just don’t think we have any kind
of a drug-cessation program to speak of. Consequently, the drugs are
imported and consumed. I think if Americans understood that doing a
little blow on the weekend — on a college campus or here on Capitol Hill
— isn’t harmless, if they understood what it’s doing to Honduras or El
Salvador, or what it was doing to Colombia, I think they’d responsibly
realize that this is not a good thing.”
‘TRUTH TO POWER’
Kelly is a Boston native who speaks with a thick, tough-guy New
England accent. He’s a very close friend of Marine Corps Gen. Joseph
Dunford, whom Obama made chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 2015.
Kelly is well regarded throughout the military’s officer and enlisted
ranks, where he spent two years in the early 1970s before leaving as a
sergeant to attend college and earn a commission.
Coincidentally, his first military deployment was to Guantanamo Bay.
He was a 20-year-old enlisted infantryman in 1971. And then, as now, all
new personnel arriving on the island are given a briefing about the
wildlife there, he recalled. Notably, everyone is told “don’t screw with
the iguanas,” the general said, grinning as he thought back to another
Marine in his unit, a rough-hewn corporal from West Virginia who
captured one of the the reptiles anyway — and then proceeded to butcher
and cook it.
During his final trip to Cuba, in 2015, Kelly shared Thanksgiving
dinner with the troops who manage Guantanamo’s day-to-day operations,
personnel under endless scrutiny from human-rights advocates and other
watchdogs who oppose the facility’s existence and remain skeptical of
the detainees’ treatment there after revelations that many were
subjected to vicious interrogation methods
both at Guantanamo and at CIA-run “black sites” overseas. In his
discussions with Military Times, Kelly touted those troops’
professionalism, saying everyone held at the prison is well cared for
and treated “humanely.”
The source close to Kelly said he built “extraordinary relationships”
with the human rights groups who monitor the prison, that this was such
an intense focus of the general’s that he brought all of his
subordinates at Southern Command to the Holocaust Memorial Museum in
Washington. “And he told them ‘this is what happens when you abuse your
power,’” the source said.
Today, 60 suspects remain at Guantanamo Bay, and Trump has indicated
he may look to expand the facility. Hunter, the congressman, said that
Kelly understands “the value of Guantanamo,” and that because of him,
Congress successfully blocked Obama’s efforts to close it.
“We’re in Iraq and Syria and Afghanistan. We’re not bringing anybody
home to Guantanamo, right? We don’t have prisons anymore where we can
interrogate people. What are we doing with the people that we’re
capturing now?” Hunter said “… These guys are making IEDs. They’re
killing Americans. They’re killing our allies. Yet there’s nothing we
can do with them. Guantanamo was the perfect place for that. Kelly
understands that Guantanamo is a necessary thing for the type of war
that we’re fighting right now. And he talked about it.”
By the time Kelly retired, his relationship with the administration
had become so strained that in the weeks before the general signed off
at Southern Command, multiple White House officials accused him and
other military leaders of actively undermining efforts to close Guantanamo.
Kelly disputed those claims while the White House, at least publicly,
sought to distance itself from them. But those closest to him see the
episode as evidence that the president neither valued nor benefited from
such unvarnished advice.
Gen. John F. Kelly and Defense Secretary Ash Carter listen to remarks
during the U.S. Southern Command change of command ceremony at SOUTHCOM
headquarters in Doral, Fla., Jan. 14, 2016. Photo Credit: EJ Hersom/DoD
Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, for whom Kelly worked as a senior
military adviser in 2011, told Military Times that the general’s
candidness was an asset at the Pentagon. The pair worked together for
about four months, from the first days after Kelly’s son was killed,
through the Navy SEAL raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan and
early implementation of several budgetary moves designed to rein in
wartime spending.
In recalling the bin Laden operation, Gates said that Kelly, then a
three-star general, played a subtle but key role arranging an important
11th-hour meeting between the secretary and Mike Vickers and Michèle
Flournoy, then the department’s top executives for intelligence and
policy. That was “an otherwise very busy day,” said Gates, who’d had
reservations about sending the SEALs into the compound in Pakistan where
bin Laden was hiding.
He worried there would be grave consequences if the mission failed,
and preferred instead to let an airstrike do the job. Vickers and
Flournoy made “one last effort to persuade me to support the raid, and
they were successful,” he said. “I called the national security adviser
[Tom Donilon] and told him to tell the president that I was completely
on board. John [Kelly] played a key role in making sure those folks got
into my office at that time to make their case.”
Kelly, Gates recalled, always tried to be constructive, never
hesitating to offer his opinion if he felt people were not leaning
forward. “Or, in the event of a military operation or initiative, if he
thought the constraints were too great or that it was ill conceived,” he
said. “He wasn’t afraid to speak his mind to civilian superiors. Always
respectfully. And always prepared to move on whatever the decision.”
Obama chose Kelly for the Southern Command job in 2012. It was a
prestigious assignment, and a good fit. As a one- and two-star combat
commander in Iraq, Kelly was integral to what became known as the Anbar
Awakening. The movement succeeded, for a time, in curtailing the
sectarian bloodshed that had gripped the country since Saddam Hussein’s
fall in 2003, bringing with it the tenuous prospect of stability as
Sunni militias fought alongside forces fielded by the Shiite-led
government to flush al-Qaida from key cities such as Ramadi and
Fallujah.
In many ways, it was the success of Kelly and others in managing that
fragile alliance which enabled Obama to make good on his campaign
pledge to end the U.S. occupation of Iraq.
U.S. Marine Maj. Gen John Kelly, the top U.S. commander in Anbar
Province, left, and Anbar Governor Maamoun Sami Rashid, center, sign
papers during a handover ceremony at the government headquarters in
Ramadi, capital of Anbar province, in Iraq on Monday, Sept. 1, 2008.
Photo Credit: Wathiq Khuzaie/AP
As a three-star general, Kelly led the Marine Corps Reserve while
simultaneously overseeing the service’s element within U.S. Northern
Command, which coordinates with other federal agencies to monitor
potential threats against the homeland. NORTHCOM also tracks criminal
activity in Mexico, whose military, with U.S. advisement, continues to
fight the powerful drug cartels responsible for fueling violence
throughout the region. He also served as the senior military adviser to
Gates’ successor as defense secretary, Leon Panetta. And with multiple
prior assignments that brought him through Washington, dating back to
the 1980s, Kelly had developed a keen understanding of Congress and the
dynamics (and theatrics) that define political life inside the Beltway, a
skill that complemented his demonstrated strategic abilities.
Once at SOUTHCOM, it wasn’t long before Kelly took aim at the
national security issues central to that part of the world. His tenure
there coincided with steep federal spending cuts that threatened to
hinder his command’s focus on drug interdiction and specialized military
training for indigenous security forces battling the drug trade in
places such as Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. The immigration
crisis that peaked in 2014, when tens of thousands of women and children
streamed to the U.S.-Mexico border, was the direct result of the surge
in drug-related violence gripping Central America, Kelly told Congress
at the time. And Americans’ demand for those drugs was to blame, he
said.
Moreover, the general had warned, the network those individuals
leveraged to pay their way north presented a legitimate national
security threat. He was asked about this during his annual testimony
before the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Kelly gave a
straightforward response. It made headlines. And the administration
wasn’t happy about it.
“We had defined the fact that hundreds of tons of cocaine make it
across the southwest border,” Kelly said in recalling the hearing. “And
then another line of questioning. All of the heroin consumed in the
United States makes it across the southwest border. The methamphetamine
produced in Mexico makes its way across the southwest border. There were
70,000 unaccompanied children who’d come across the border in the
previous several months. You get the point. And Senator Lindsey Graham
said to me, once we’d established all of the facts, ‘would you say that
the southwest border is secure?’ You know, what are you going to say? I
said no, I don’t believe it is secure. And anything that wants to get in
can get it. They just have to pay the fare. Well, that didn’t go over
well.”
But Kelly proved to be on point. He told the armed services committee
that a small but growing number of radicalized Muslims from countries
in the the Caribbean and South America had gone to wage jihad in the
Middle East alongside the Islamic State group. And when they return, the
general warned, there’s little that would stop them from coming north
to kill Americans.
“Boy,” Kelly said, “Washington didn’t like that one either. But it’s
funny, a year later, everyone acknowledges that there is an ISIS,
radical Muslim threat in the Caribbean.”
It’s a sensitive issue with Obama. Republican lawmakers and
presidential hopefuls have assailed the president for initially
downplaying the threat posed by ISIS while being slow to articulate how
he intends to stop the spread of the group’s ideology. Indeed, it was
only after last November’s terror attack in Paris that the
administration began to ramp up the military component of its
counter-ISIS strategy, which coincided with a robust marketing campaign
aimed at reassuring the American public that federal, state and local
authorities were working nonstop to prevent a Paris-style attack inside
the United States.
Heading into the 2015 Thanksgiving weekend, as Kelly flew to
Guantanamo Bay one final time, Obama, flanked by members of his national
security team, gave a six-minute televised address to the nation. He
highlighted the 8,000-plus airstrikes that U.S. warplanes had conducted
to that point on ISIS positions inside Iraq and Syria, alluding to
concurrent efforts targeting the group’s finances and recruiting
efforts, and plans to intensify the air campaign.
“Right now,” the president said, “we know of no specific and credible
intelligence indicating a plot on the homeland.” Exactly one week
later, Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik killed 14 people in San
Bernardino, California. The married couple had sworn allegiance to the
Islamic State, but authorities concluded they had acted as lone wolves,
saying there was no intelligence that would’ve tipped them to the
attack. It rattled a nation already on edge, and eroded many Americans’
confidence in what their leaders were telling them.
Today, although ISIS has been significantly degraded in Iraq and
Syria, the group remains a serious threat as its ethos spreads to other
parts of the world.
Kelly acknowledged that his final years in uniform were the most
difficult to navigate. As he sees it, providing honest advice to those
who run the government is a fundamental responsibility of someone in his
position. While rising through the ranks, “the one thing I was always
told is you absolutely have to tell truth to power,” the general said.
“Whether you’re a second lieutenant working with a captain and a
lieutenant colonel, or a four-star general working with the Office
Secretary of Defense and the White House, the decision makers have got
to have ground truth. Otherwise, the decisions they make could be flawed
— and that can be dangerous.
“I’ve learned that, in many cases, people say ‘I want ground truth’
and they don’t really mean it. There are warts all over this
organization, as there are in many organizations, but you just have to
tell truth to power and let the chips fall where they may. I know a lot
of people may read that, if you put it in your story, and say ‘easy for
him; he’s a four-star.’ But I would say some of the most challenging
periods in my life, as a Marine officer, have been fairly recently,
where you get into that civilian-military thing and the truth is not
always welcome. It can cause some heartburn when you get a call from
certain people in Washington who say ‘it’s probably not a good idea to
go down that road anymore.’ But I say ‘hey, that’s the truth. I’m at a
congressional hearing, and they asked me a question. What am I going to
do, lie?’”