LANCASTER COUNTY, PA - Ray McGovern has seen the inner workings of the intelligence world and believes the United States is in desperate need of rediscovering its morality.

Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern speaks at Lancaster Church of the Brethren Sunday. (Intelligencer Journal Photo/Dan Marschka)

The former CIA intelligence officer and Iraq War critic addressed the audience at Lancaster Church of the Brethren Sunday afternoon as the feature speaker at the Lancaster Interchurch Peace Witness Fall Forum.

His speech, "Prospects for a Moral U.S. Policy in the Middle East," focused on the ethical dilemmas facing the American public and lawmakers and ways to use faith to point the country's moral compass back in the right direction.

McGovern's group, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, has spent the last three years lobbying the Bush administration to admit to what it calls the "lies" that led to the Iraq War.

He said the current presidential administration is in need of a "sanity check," a term he said goes back to his days at the CIA, when analysts consulted with each other to find the truth.

"Prevarication, disingenuousness, untruthfulness -- they won't do anymore," McGovern said. "We need to call lies 'lies.'"

McGovern spent 27 years as an analyst in the CIA, preparing the daily security briefs for the Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations in the 1980s.

He said he was drawn to the CIA as a group that gave "straight talk with honest answers" to policy-makers. He said the quote enshrined on the floor of the CIA's entrance, "You shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free," is a motto he tried to live.

But now the intelligence community has taken a "faith-based approach" to data about threats, McGovern said.

He said the two big reasons for going to war with Iraq -- weapons of mass destruction and a link to al-Qaida -- have both been proven false, and it was the CIA, along with members of the Bush administration, that helped lead the country to war.

McGovern cited a July 29, 2001, speech by now Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in which she said Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction. He also spoke about the documented evidence of the Downing Street minutes of 2002, showing prewar intelligence on Iraq was being shaped to fit a policy to go to war.

McGovern also said at the start of the Iraq War 69 percent of Americans believed there was a link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida. He said today 85 percent of American military personnel serving in Iraq believe there was a link, although no proof has been provided.

"That was, in my view, unconscionable preying on the very real trauma we all felt after 9/11 -- deliberately associating Iraq and Saddam Hussein with it when there was no evidence at all," McGovern said.

William Ayres, director of the Center for Global Citizenship and an associate professor of international relations at Elizabethtown College, provided a rebuttal to McGovern's speech and spoke about power in the United States.

Ayres said power has corrupted the leaders of the country, and today most people don't know the difference between an opinion and a claim.

"We've become intellectually corrupted," Ayres said. "And that intellectual corruption has contributed to our moral corruption."

Peter J. Schmiechen, president emeritus of the Lancaster Theological Seminary, said he wanted to give his own impassioned plea for action and for Americans to wake up from their "deep sleep."

Schmiechen said the steps toward a moral policy in the Middle East would begin with an open and honest debate about motives, but he said that hasn't happened in the last six years.

He also said the U.S. needs to talk to its enemies, be aware of the history between Christians and Muslims and remember the Christian perspective, which holds that everyone is a sinner.

"I live in a country where the government claims to make no mistakes, is innocent, is good, and out there there are evil people who we should destroy," Schmiechen said.

McGovern said the cowardice of Congress has brought it to passing the Military Commission Act, describing it as the "enabling act," ending habeas corpus for people deemed "enemy combatants" and permitting the use of torture methods.

He said now is the time to go out of the way to do something to bring back morality and that most Americans have been reluctant to go out and risk something to make a difference.

"If there's nothing for which you'd risk that neck, then it has become your idol," McGovern said. "And necks are not worthy of idol worship."

McGovern said the current presidential administration is in need of a "sanity check."

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