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December 11th, 2024 | 5:43 AM ET

The Underlying Message from Putin and Xi: War is Coming

Countries Flag 3D Rendering on Economic, Cooperation
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Posted: April 4th, 2023

By Mark Kelton

Kelton retired from CIA as a senior executive with 34 years of experience in intelligence operations. He is a partner at the FiveEyes Group; a member of the Board of Trustees of Valley Forge Military Academy and College; member of the National Security Advisory Board of the MITRE Corp.; member of the Day & Zimmermann Government Services Advisory Board; member of the Siemens Government Technologies Federal Advisory Board; and a member of the Board of BigMediaTV.

EXPERT PERSPECTIVE — Some thirty years ago, when I was a CIA Chief of Station in the war-torn Balkans, a US Special Operations soldier with whom I was working gave me a unique gift in honor of our time together. 

He was an elite soldier from a family of elite soldiers.  His stepfather served as a Green Beret in Vietnam while his father was one of the German GSG-9 commandos who freed an airliner from terrorists at Mogadishu airport in 1977.  The gift – a bolt from a World War Two German MG-34 machine gun – came from the weapon his grandfather carried as a Fallschirmjaeger (‘paratrooper’) during Operation Eiche (‘Oak’), the 1943 raid that freed Benito Mussolini from his mountaintop prison. 

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