Gen. Kelly Says Farewell With a Salute to a Free Press

Thomas W. Kelly, the gruff, ruddy-faced general who became known to millions of Americans through televised Gulf War press conferences, bade farewell Monday with a salute to Pentagon reporters and the First Amendment.

With that, the lieutenant general announced his own retirement.

Kelly served as head of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Gulf War, and he was the main military spokesman in afternoon sessions with reporters that often turned contentious.

Kelly, 58, told reporters at the end of Monday’s briefing that it would be his last such session and that his last day at the Pentagon will be Friday. As he left the briefing room, reporters applauded.

The 34-year Army veteran said he had gotten a lot of mail from television viewers who suggested the news media were being impertinent by pressing so hard for wartime information.

“People . . . really don’t understand the hurly-burly and give-and-take of a press briefing,” he said, still on camera. “At no time were you ever impolite to me, and at no time did I ever become offended.”

Kelly praised the role of the press in a free society and said, “Deep down you’re a good bunch of guys.”

“I’ve enjoyed this little interlude,” he said.

He said a free press has served the United States well for 215 years and contrasted it to the government-controlled press of Iraq.

“Look at the country that didn’t have a free press and see what happened there,” he said.

Kelly did not say what his plans are. He has been approached about speaking engagements and likely will accept some of them, a Pentagon source said.

Kelly was born in Philadelphia. He served in Vietnam in 1967 and 1968 and with an armored cavalry unit of the VII Corps in Europe. The corps was sent to the Persian Gulf, where it became the spearhead of a wide flanking march into Iraq that broke the back of Saddam Hussein’s army.

He has been director for operations at the Joint Chiefs of Staff since 1988.