Herman

Gregory D. Lee

- Opinion/Right
Gregory D. Lee is a retired Supervisory Special Agent with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), and has over 30 years of law enforcement experience. He resides in Pebble Beach on Central California’s beautiful Monterey Peninsula.

Greg lived and worked in volatile Pakistan between 1994 and 1998 and experienced terrorism first-hand. While on a DEA diplomatic assignment to the U.S. embassy in Islamabad, he directly participated in the arrest of Ramzi Yousef, the Al Qaeda mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. He collected critical evidence in the case and later testified at his trial. He later became the Resident Agent in Charge of DEA’s Karachi Office where he was involved in the initial investigation of the terrorist murder of four U.S. citizen employees of the United Texas Petroleum Company, and their Pakistani driver. He appeared on the Discovery Channel’s documentary show, The FBI Files, concerning his contributions in the arrest of Mir Aimal Kanzi, the terrorist who murdered two CIA employees outside their headquarters in 1993.

He was an instructor at DEA’s Office of Training at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia where he trained many domestic and foreign law enforcement officials there and around the world. Throughout his law enforcement career he wrote numerous articles for professional law enforcement publications and since his retirement he has written three Criminal Justice textbooks. Global Drug Enforcement: Practical Investigative Techniques, is published by CRC Press (2004). Prentice Hall is the publisher of Conspiracy Investigations: Terrorism, Drugs and Gangs (2005), and Practical Criminal Evidence (2006). At the invitation of the U.S. Military Academy’s Center for Combating Terrorism, he authored “The Global Drug Trade and its Nexus to Terrorism,” which is Chapter 11 of Volume II, Part II, of Countering Terrorism and Insurgency in the 21st Century: International Perspectives, Praeger Security International/Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. (2007).

Greg is an active Reserve Chief Warrant Officer 5/CID Special Agent with the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command, better known as CID. After being called to active duty as a result of September 11, he was a staff officer at the Pentagon for the Army Operations Center’s Anti-Terrorism Operations Intelligence Cell. He has a combination of over 36 years of active duty and reserve military service and is a Subject Matter Expert on Terrorism and Counter-Drug Operations for the U.S. Army Military Police School. He has been a frequent guest speaker on terrorism issues for the Defense Intelligence Agency’s Joint Military Intelligence Training Center in Washington, DC, and has spoken at the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, NY and the Department of Defense National Security Studies Program managed by the George Washington University, Washington, DC.

In 2005, Mr. Lee was the Lead Instructor/Manager for a 9-week U.S. State Department sponsored anti-terrorism school held in Islamabad, Pakistan. He also conducted training in Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province in 2007.

You can contact Mr. Lee or learn more information about him through his website: www.gregorydlee.com.

Gun Rights Upheld: Can You Hear Liberals Squealing?

The Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision upholding the right of the people to keep and bear arms, even in the District of Columbia, has made liberals across the country squeal even louder than they did when the Soviet Union collapsed.

The case originated with a “Special Police Officer” named Dick Heller, who carries a handgun as part of his duties, when he requested a permit to store his firearm in his Washington D.C. residence for self-protection. The city denied Heller the permit. He sued, and the District Court ruled against him. But his appeal was granted by the D.C. Court of Appeals based on the Second Amendment. Both the District of Columbia and Heller asked the Supreme Court to review the matter and it agreed. To the chagrin of liberals everywhere, the high court upheld the appellate court’s decision and ruled against the city.

Prior to the ruling, in the highly unlikely event Heller had received a permit to store his handgun at home, a condition of the permit was that the handgun must be unloaded, disassembled or a trigger-locking device be placed on it. So, in the mind of anti-gun liberals, in the highly likely event you need to protect yourself while residing in the District, and someone breaks into your residence while you’re in bed, you would have to reassemble the parts to the handgun, load it or fumble for a key in the dark to remove the trigger lock while hoping the intruder doesn’t shoot you first with his fully assembled and loaded handgun.

If you were a burglar and knew that residents in Washington D.C. did not have firearms that could be used against you, wouldn’t that be your city of choice to commit burglaries? You wouldn’t consider burglarizing homes across the Potomac River in nearby Northern Virginia where the average homeowner most likely has at least one gun to use in self-defense.

For years, liberals have ignored constitutional rights they don’t believe you should have, and created other rights that do not exist. The right to privacy and the right to abortion on demand come to mind. Neither is mentioned in the Constitution.

Liberals believe the people cannot function without government intervention and regulation. People cannot be trusted to make the right decisions. Even an off-duty police officer like Heller was not trusted to safely store and use a handgun in his home for self-defense. If Jesus Christ was a resident of the District, he couldn’t get a permit to store a gun, either.

In his majority opinion, Justice Anthony Scalia made it clear that “. . . what is not debatable is that it is not the role of this Court to pronounce the Second Amendment extinct.” Amen, brother.

Now liberal politicians are squealing from coast to coast after learning that the justices actually read and comprehended the Constitution. Justice Scalia wrote that the justices were . . . “guided by the principle that the Constitution was written to be understood by the voters . . .” Despite this, the four hardcore liberals on the bench didn’t understand what “the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed” meant. If switch hitter Justice Kennedy hadn’t sided with the four strict constructionists this time, the Second Amendment of the original Bill of Rights would have been essentially declared unconstitutional by the liberal wing of the Supreme Court.

Now Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley and other likeminded do-gooders vow to fight the decision and keep handguns out of the hands of their constituents. Exactly how they intend to do that is a mystery in light of the fresh Supreme Court ruling.

National Rifle Association President Wayne LaPierre said, “I consider this the opening salvo in a step-by-step process of providing relief for law-abiding Americans everywhere that have been deprived of this freedom.” The NRA will try to make up for decades of lost time.

No matter where you stand on this case, the fact that the Supreme Court ruled according to the literal words in the Constitution is a refreshing precedent that should be followed by the lower courts.

Barack Obama claims he favors the ruling, despite being on record in favor of a total ban on the manufacture and sales of firearms. He doesn’t trust the people. You know – the people who cling to their guns and religion during hard times. A President Obama will nominate liberal judges who don’t understand plain English, either.

Gregory D. Lee is a retired DEA Supervisory Special Agent and the author of three criminal justice textbooks. He can be reached through his website: www.gregorydlee.com.