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.

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.

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."

"[9] 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.

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

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.

"[10][11] On July 16, 2012, Family Research Council president Tony Perkins announced that Boykin had been named the group's Executive Vice-President.

Among several quotes, the article revealed Boykin giving a speech about hunting down Osman Atto in Mogadishu: "He went on CNN and he laughed at us, and he said, 'They'll never get me because Allah will protect me.

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner (R-VA) and Democrat Carl Levin both urged Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to launch an investigation.

Among the parts removed was Boykin's assertion that "the sensitivities of my job today dictate that further church speeches are inappropriate", and "As a Christian, I believe that there is a spiritual war that is continuous as articulated in the Bible.

"[31] According to an opinion piece in the Washington Post, "Government terrorism experts call the views expressed in the center's book inaccurate and counterproductive.

[34] In January 2013, the retired general received a letter of reprimand from then-Vice Chief of Staff of the United States Army Lloyd Austin for disclosing classified information in his book Never Surrender: A Soldier's Journey to the Crossroads of Faith and Freedom.

[40] Boykin has endorsed the conspiracy theory that the 2020 presidential election was rigged to favor Joe Biden and claims that the United States "has taken a hard left turn toward Socialism and a Marxist form of tyrannical government.

"[41][42][43][44] The New York Times reported on March 18, 2006, that, when asked by Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen Cambone to "get to the bottom" of abuses committed by an elite counterinsurgency task force, Boykin found no pattern to them, despite ample evidence to the contrary.

[45] A December 9, 2003, item in The Guardian connected Boykin with secret Israeli counterinsurgency assistance in Iraq, allegedly including assassination squads.

[46] In another Guardian article, Sidney Blumenthal, President Bill Clinton's former senior adviser and current Washington bureau chief for Salon.com, claimed that towards the end of 2003, it was Boykin who, under Donald Rumsfeld's orders, advised then Camp X-Ray head Major General Geoffrey Miller in Guantanamo to transfer the same Camp X-Ray methods to Abu Ghraib and the Iraqi prison system.

[47] In 2003, Seymour Hersh claimed in the New Yorker that Boykin was a key planner, along with Stephen Cambone, behind Rumsfeld's Special Forces approach to fighting the War on Terror.

"[48][49] In 2005, Hersh claimed that the U.S. had begun to undertake secret, off-the-books, covert missions in Iran to identify key targets for possible strikes in destabilizing its nuclear facilities, and against the larger War on Terror, with the chain of command for the commando operations falling to Rumsfeld, Cambone, and Boykin.