SOCIALISM vs CAPITALISM: Roosevelt through Obama (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781493751341)

Mel Barney was born into a politically-oriented family in Shreveport, Louisiana, in 1928. His father was in politics and Mel went door to door asking, "Please vote for my dad." When Senator Huey Long was assassinated, he remembers neighbors crying over the loss of a champion of middle class and poor Louisiana citizens. This political background and interest in public issues remains with Mel to this day. While he won his college education on the gridiron, Mel's academic success earned him a coveted job with Sperry Gyroscope in New York City. On completing his MSEE at SMU, he joined Texas Instruments (TI) where he used his expertise in flight controls and radar to build a secret system that automatically flew military aircraft at altitudes as low as 200 feet. The CIA bought one of the TI systems Mel was developing for low altitude penetration of Russian (and Cuban) airspace in the early 1960s. By 1969, Mel was TI's Director of International Marketing. During his 16-year relationship with TI and the CIA, Mel traveled to 54 countries. At the outset of the Brezhnev/Nixon Détente initiative, he was recruited for a secret trip to Moscow. That visit initiated the first exchanges of technology information between Russia and the United States. In 1974, TI asked Mel to manage their activities in Washington, D.C., where he gained an insider view of Washington politics. Subsequently, Mel co-founded Merit Technology, Inc., working hand-in-glove with their primary customer, the National Security Agency (NSA). He retired from Merit in 1990.