William G. Boykin

William Gerald "Jerry" Boykin (born April 19, 1948) is a retired American lieutenant general who was the United States Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence under President George W. Bush from 2002 to 2007.

William Gerald "Jerry" Boykin was born on April 19, 1948, in Wilson, North Carolina.

He attended New Bern high school and was the captain of the football team.

He graduated from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) with a bachelor's degree in English in 1971.

In 1978, at age 29, Boykin volunteered for and completed a specialized selection course for assignment to the 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment – Delta, or Delta Force.

Lieutenant Colonel Lewis H. "Bucky" Burruss, who helped with Delta Force selection in early 1978, recalled that Boykin "had a bad knee and I thought he would never make it....I thought, I hate to see this guy busting his [butt], I don't see how he can make it on this bad road wheel, but he surprised us."

Burruss wrote at the time that "Jerry Boykin is a Christian gentleman of the highest order."

Boykin believed God had a hand in things: "God led me into the Delta Force....And He said to me, 'This is where you ought to be.'"

During his 36-year career in the military he spent 13 years in the Delta Force and was involved in numerous high-profile missions, including the 1980 Iran hostage rescue attempt, the 1992 hunt for Pablo Escobar in Colombia, and the Black Hawk Down incident in Mogadishu, Somalia.

He is an author and visiting professor at Hampden–Sydney College, Virginia.

He is currently executive vice president at the Family Research Council.

In 1980, he was the Delta Force operations officer on the April 24–25 Iranian hostage rescue attempt.

Boykin called it "the greatest disappointment of my professional career because we didn't bring home 53 Americans."

Despite this, his "faith was strengthened" believing he had witnessed "a miracle": "Not one man who stood with us in the desert and pleaded for God to go with us was killed or even injured that night."

In October 1983, Boykin took part in Operation Urgent Fury, the invasion of the Caribbean island of Grenada.

He was wounded by anti-aircraft fire during the Delta helicopter assault on Richmond Hill Prison.

In 1989, Boykin participated in the U.S. invasion of Panama as part of the mission to apprehend Manuel Noriega and participated in Operation Acid Gambit.

From 1990 to 1991, Boykin attended the Army War College.

He would hold numerous leadership positions in the elite unit, including operations officer, troop commander, squadron commander, deputy commander and finally unit commander from July 1992 to July 1994.

In 1992 and early 1993, as a colonel, Boykin was in Colombia leading a mission to hunt for drug lord Pablo Escobar.

Seymour Hersh later claimed in The New Yorker that there were suspicions within the Pentagon that Boykin's team was going to help assassinate Escobar with the support of U.S. Embassy officials in Colombia.

Hersh refers to Mark Bowden's book Killing Pablo, which alleged that the Pentagon believed Boykin intended to break the law and exceed his authority in the operation.

Bowden wrote that "within the special ops community...Pablo's death was regarded as a successful mission for Delta, and legend has it that its operators were in on the kill."

Hersh quotes an anonymous retired army general as saying, "That's what those guys did. I've seen pictures of Escobar's body that you don't get from a long-range telescope lens. They were taken by guys on the assault team."

In April 1993, Boykin helped advise Attorney General Janet Reno regarding the stand-off at Waco, Texas, between the federal government and the Branch Davidians.

In October 1993, Boykin fought in the Battle of Mogadishu (1993), also referred to as "Black Hawk Down".

Some time afterwards, Boykin served at the Central Intelligence Agency as deputy director of Special Activities, and was promoted to brigadier general.

He was made deputy director for Operations, Readiness, and Mobilization when assigned to the Army Staff.

From 1998 to 2000, he served as the commanding general, 1st Special Forces Command (Airborne) at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

From 2000 to 2003, he was the commanding general, United States Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center, Fort Bragg, N.C. In June 2003, he was appointed Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence under Dr. Stephen Cambone, Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence.

In an October 2003 speech to a community church in Oregon, Boykin was recorded stating that Islamic extremists hate the United States "because we're a Christian nation, because our foundation and our roots are Judeo-Christians. ... And the enemy is a guy named Satan."

William Arkin, military analyst for NBC News, was the source of the video and audiotapes of Boykin.

The following day the Los Angeles Times ran a piece on Boykin.

Boykin retired on August 1, 2007, and began teaching at Hampden–Sydney College.

As a young officer, he served in the 2nd Armored Division at Fort Hood, Texas; with the 101st Airborne Division in Vietnam, and as a company commander in the 24th Infantry Division (Mechanized) at Fort Stewart, Georgia.

On July 16, 2012, Family Research Council president Tony Perkins announced that Boykin had been named the group's Executive Vice-president.

Boykin attended Armed Forces Staff College, Army War College, and Shippensburg University (where he received a master's degree).

Boykin, a born-again Christian with conservative political views, has gained attention for his use of religious imagery to comment on political and social issues over the years; some of his public remarks, which cast the War on Terror in religious terms, generated considerable controversy.

In May 2016, he wrote on Facebook, "I have been terminated from teaching at Hampden-Sydney College after nine years there," though he and the college later reached agreement on another one-year contract.

The college denied it had conducted a campaign to fire Boykin following his recent comments about transgender people using bathrooms, including, "The first man who goes in the restroom with my daughter will not have to worry about surgery."