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"The command says you don't exist," Kroft told Barry.
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"That's excellent," replied Barry.
"Great.
Exactly."
"How do we know you're not the only ... people in this organization?"
"You don't," said Barry, who was accompanied by a similarly disguised associate editor of his publication.
"We won't comment on numbers, names or affiliated individuals.
That's a breach of security."
For many in the Army's elite Special Forces, this last comment was laughable.
Barry had just violated a cardinal rule taught at the Special Warfare Center.
Appearing on the nation's most widely watched news program, Barry had revealed what was supposed to be a closely held secret - the existence of his "underground" magazine and the organization that he said supported it, the Special Forces Underground (SFU).
But Barry has turned out to be no laughing matter.
Today, he is out of the Army, and he openly distributes his racist and anti-Semitic periodical.
He is drawing increasingly near to men like William Pierce, the author of The Turner Diaries and perhaps this country's most infamous neo-Nazi, even as he appears at more mainstream gatherings like those of the Council of Conservative Citizens, a racist group that has nonetheless attracted the support of numerous southern politicians.
More and more, Barry has grown into a key figure at the crossroads of right-wing extremism and the paramilitary underground - a man who also has received some of the best insurgency warfare training in the world, courtesy of the U.S. Army.
Leaks, Congress and Soldier of Fortune
The saga of Steven Barry raises many questions.
How was a right-wing extremist, at the center of a small group of elite, active-duty soldiers, allowed to operate within the Army as long as Barry did?
What damage did Barry's SFU do and how were its activities finally dealt with?
Where outside the Army did Barry find support?
Here is the untold story of Steven Barry, drawn from this author's role in an Army investigation and from numerous other sources.
It shows that confidential Army information has been published in The Resister, a periodical once read by Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh; that Barry received a career-ending reprimand as a result of his activities and, at one point, was a target of both federal and military criminal investigations; and that The Resister boasted of Special Forces members illegally defying orders in Haiti by helping to arm anti-democratic forces.
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It describes how U.S. military officials sidelined Congress and allowed Barry to remain in the military despite clear evidence of his extremism.
And it explains how The Resister, which today has a circulation of almost 2,500, was helped immeasurably by its intimate relationship with Soldier of Fortune, a magazine aimed at mercenaries and military men that enjoys a circulation of 100,000.
With the airing of the "60 Minutes" piece, the hunt for the SFU and the staff of The Resister was on.
But the story of Barry and the military began long before.
Early Failures and 'Contract Work'
As a young man, Barry entered West Point in 1973 with high hopes of becoming a commissioned officer.
Early on, classmates say, he attended a class on unconventional warfare and became entranced with military science, often to the exclusion of other coursework.
This may have cost him.
In 1976, Barry was discharged as a result of poor grades - a failure he later tried to portray as the work of classroom instructors who disagreed with him politically.
Barry also suffered another stinging defeat.
While attending the super-elite Ranger school as a West Point cadet, he was "peered out" - removed after his classmates suggested he did not have the qualities needed to become a Ranger officer.
In June 1976, Barry joined the Army in Cleveland as an enlisted man.
There, by his own account, he went to Airborne School and the Special Warfare Training Group.
The following year, he qualified for the Special Forces and trained in weapons, intelligence and sniping.
In the early 1980s, he was an instructor at the Special Warfare Center.
Barry left the Army in 1985.
According to an article earlier this year in Soldier of Fortune by its national affairs editor, James L. Pate - a man who has been close to Barry for years - Barry later took on "some contract work" in the Philippines.
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Pate pointed out that Barry's 1988 stay coincided with a period of highly active police death squads that targeted communist rebels.
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In 1989, after returning to the United States, Barry began editing Asia Hand, a right-wing weekly in California.
The purpose, Barry told Pate, was "torquing out the Vietnamese communists in Orange County."
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Chuckling and at one point breaking into laughter, Barry denied involvement in the arsons.
"It was fun," Barry said of this period.
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Outraged at these actions and by the speech of his battalion commander lamenting the deaths of four agents in Waco, Barry writes that at this point he became a "defector in place."
Had he been in the Waco compound during the raid, he later said, "I would have counterattacked at the moment the [federal raid] stalled and killed them all."
For Barry - like Resister reader and Oklahoma bomber Timothy McVeigh - Waco would become a personal war cry.
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In the winter of 1993, Barry contacted Pate, who would thereafter provide numerous services to The Resister.
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After journalists and others learned that a young man close to Barry had set up a Resister post office box in 1994 (immediately compromising the box because it was listed as commercial, meaning its ownership records were public), Pate opened another one on behalf of Barry.
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After journalists and others learned that a young man close to Barry had set up a Resister post office box in 1994 (immediately compromising the box because it was listed as commercial, meaning its ownership records were public), Pate opened another one on behalf of Barry.
...
But Pate's connection to Barry went much deeper.
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