A group of retired military, CIA and Defense Department officials hopes to advise presidential candidates on national security, the group's chairman, Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely, tells
Newsmax TV.
The Legacy National Security Advisory Group is making itself available to candidates "because they're very lacking in depth on national security issues," Vallely told "Newsmax Prime" host J.D. Hayworth on Wednesday.
"This traces back to when I tried to help the Romney campaign after the first debate and we told him, make sure you take on Benghazi and national security, and they wouldn't listen. And you saw what happened there," Vallely said.
"So, 12 of us retired CIA operators, senior military, we've got some senior Defense Department officials, and we're on standby to bring in the best team ever, hasn't been done before, to help all of these presidential candidates to be ready to take on these national security issues."
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Vallely also talked about reports that Islamic State (ISIS) second-in-command
Abu Alaa al-Afari has been killed in a coalition airstrike.
Neither U.S. Central Command nor the Defense Department has confirmed the reports from Iraqi sources, but Vallely said it is no secret that al-Qaida and ISIS leaders are targets of U.S. drone attacks.
Vallely was more confident of reports that ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has been incapacitated by a spinal cord injury in an earlier strike.
"If you … followed a lot of the reports that have come out of al-Qaida and the other groups, al-Nusra and ISIS, a lot of their information on the social network and websites has been pretty accurate and pretty right on," he said. Still, without human intelligence on the ground, anything is difficult to verify, he said.
On reports that Iran will not allow
inspection of a ship said to be carrying humanitarian supplies to Yemen, Vallely said Iran would continue to push the envelope as far as it can.
"Now, whether we'll have the courage from the White House to board or stop one of those ships is another question," he said. "I would think that the Iranian leadership knows that, so they're going to push this envelope as far as they can.
"They may back off when they see our carrier task force groups out there and the power we can deliver, but this is something to be seen here in the future of what they'll actually do if a confrontation occurs."
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