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ray mcgovern
Price for Witnessing Against War
The funeral for anti-war priest Daniel Berrigan was a reminder of humanity’s need to challenge immoral government actions and the price that one pays for doing so
May 08, 2016
Fr. Daniel Berrigan's funeral was being live-streamed Friday, as I started to write this, which seems only fitting. Dan's witness and writing have been a constantly re-chargeable battery for my moral compass.
Live-streaming (arranged by America magazine) was the next-best thing to being at the funeral in person. And it brought back memories of getting shoe-horned into West Baltimore's St. Peter Claver church in early December 2002 for an equally moving celebration of the life of Dan's younger brother, Fr. Phil Berrigan.
Homilist Fr. Steve Kelly, S.J., who has spent more than a decade in this or that prison for non-violent resistance to war began with some Berrigan-style Irish humor: "Let members of the FBI assigned here today validate that it is Daniel Berrigan's funeral Mass of the Resurrection, so they can complete and perhaps close their files. 'Death has no dominion!' to quote Daniel's friend William Stringfellow."
Kelly then minced no words in calling out "appointed pastors who collude with structures of domination, blessing the bombs."
Tears welled as I watched Catholic Worker friends drop a large banner with the words from Isaiah, "They shall beat their swords into plowshares. Nations shall make war no more," a charge lived into by all three brothers Berrigan - Jerry, Dan, and Phil.
And I thought back on what I learned decades ago at retreats led by Dan on the prophets Isaiah and Amos.
During the eulogy, Liz McAlister, Phil's widow, quoted from the "apology" Dan wrote for burning draft cards with home-made napalm in Catonsville, Maryland, in May 1968 at the height of the Vietnam War:
"Our apologies, good friends, for the fracture of good order, the burning of paper instead of children, the angering of the orderlies in the front parlor of the charnel house."
Liz continued to read from the Statement of the Catonsville 9: "The suppression of truth stops here; this war stops here!" (emphasis added by Liz's own prophetic voice.) Not stopping was the loud, un-church-like cheering that rattled the rafters.
So Liz added a vintage Berrigan admonition for those who "seek ways to exempt themselves from responsibility." I had the feeling that the affirming crowd would still be making a din, had not Phil's daughter Frida gently gestured: Please, let my mom finish.
Thanks to the live-streaming, I could discern many of my friends at the still functioning Dorothy Day Catholic Worker houses for men and women in the Bowery. The only folks missing were those doing the daily Martha-work of preparing food for the lunch line. Ringing in my ears was another charge, heard hundreds of times from my Irish grandmother: "Show me your company, and I'll tell you who you are!"
As the daughter of the late Jerry Berrigan, eldest of the three brothers, added her words to the eulogy, I felt proud to be out on bail, awaiting trial with 11 others of the "Jerry Berrigan Memorial Anti-Drone Brigade" for shutting down the main entrance and exit to Hancock Air Force Base Brigade near Syracuse, New York, on the morning of Jan. 28, 2016. Jerry, who lived in Syracuse, was frequently arrested there for similar protests against drone killings.
'Whatever His Views, He's Harmless'
Following people like Dan, Phil, and Jerry can get you beaten up and thrown in jail, but the benefits are out of this world, so to speak. Watching Dan's funeral, I found myself musing over the words chosen by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's confidant Sidney Blumenthal, reassuring Clinton that she had nothing to fear from the likes of me.
On Feb. 15, 2011, at George Washington University, Clinton had, with callous aplomb, completely ignored my getting assaulted by two security personnel as I silently stood directly in front of her with my back turned.
In a Feb. 18, 2011 email, Blumenthal explained: "Ray McGovern, a former CIA officer who gave the daily brief for President George H.W. Bush, is pretty well known in the intelligence community. He's become a Christian antiwar leftist who goes around bearing witness. Whatever his views, he's harmless."
Harmless or not, I can see my grandmother smiling down at the company I now keep, and whispering in her thick Irish brogue, "If you were really harmless, Raymond, they would not be writing them email things about you."
It was not so long ago that I moved in circles where the label "activist" was dismissed as misguided but, well, harmless. How fortunate, then, to learn of the definition given to activism by my co-passenger on the U.S. Boat to Gaza, poet Alice Walker: "Activism is the rent I pay for living on this planet."
I could not be more grateful at having fallen in, better late than never, with such companions. Dan's funeral served as a reminder of how much my journey has changed - having witnessed power from the inside, and the consequences of challenging it from the outside.
On the Inside
During the first Ronald Reagan administration, it was my job to conduct early morning one-on-one briefings of the Secretary of Defense (Caspar Weinberger), Secretary of State (George Shultz), and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (Gen. Jack Vessey) and also, depending on their schedules, Vice President George H. W. Bush, as well as a movable feast of Assistants to the President for National Security Affairs.
Another senior CIA officer and I took turns, each of us briefing every other day six days a week. As professional intelligence analysts, we conducted ourselves in a completely non-partisan way, and our services were appreciated. We relied largely on The President's Daily Brief that we had helped prepare the day before, and we updated and supplemented the material in it, as needed.
Ronald Reagan was given these one-on-one briefings as soon as he became president-elect and put considerable value on them. Once in the White House, however, he ordered that, as a general rule, the early morning briefings be given to his most senior national security advisers whom he would normally ask to brief him directly several hours later.
When I took early retirement at age 50, I was fully aware that few others on "the outside" had the privilege of acquiring a first-hand feel for how intelligence could be used, and power abused.
At the time, however, I had no inkling that the creeping politicization and careerism fostered by senior CIA official Robert Gates on behalf of Reagan's CIA Director William Casey would corrupt managers and analysts alike to the point they would let themselves be suborned into conjuring up the kind of faux intelligence that President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney ordered up to "justify" war on Iraq.
'Quid Est Veritas?'
What brought this to mind earlier this week was the tenth anniversary of an impromptu, four-minute debate that I had with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in Atlanta on May 4, 2006.
It was not hard to prove him an inveterate liar about important matters like the weapons of mass destruction (WMD) he said were in Iraq - but weren't; and the ties that existed between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein - but didn't. But my Rumsfeld anniversary brought a painful reminder that things have hardly improved - and that no one has challenged former Secretary Clinton openly about her lies - about Syria and Libya, for example. [See Consortiumnews.com's "A Need to Clear Up Clinton Questions."]
The opportunities for such challenge have become fewer; the penalties harsher; the Fawning Corporate Media dumber and dumber.
The mini-debate with Rumsfeld in Atlanta depended largely on luck. Not only had I truth as my breastplate, so to speak, but the stars were nicely aligned. People like Rumsfeld, an accomplished Princeton debater (and, for that matter, Wellesley valedictorian Hillary Clinton), are required to keep careful track of their lies. Those not normally burdened with that extra chore - professional intelligence analysts, for example - enjoy a distinct advantage, even in times like these, when all too many Caesars keep asking "Quid est Veritas?" - "what is truth?" - a phrase attributed to Pontius Pilate during the trial of Jesus.
As it turned out, I had some success - momentarily, at least - exposing Rumsfeld, who had played fast and loose with the truth, while enjoying the "matinee-idol" label pinned on him by President George W. Bush during the initial weeks of "shock and awe."
The abundance of evidence notwithstanding, my attempts to expose the lies of Hillary Clinton proved much more difficult (as I was wrestled away by security guards for turning my back on the Secretary of State), and I had zero success exposing Teflon-coated General (and former CIA Director) David Petraeus for the fraud he is (as I was arrested by New York City police at the entrance of a Petraeus speech). Worse still, the violence I encountered escalated with each nonviolent attempt.
With Rumsfeld, none of the media stenographers at Pentagon briefings ever looked up from their pads long enough to ask the Defense Secretary a direct question about his prevarications, so the Pentagon prima donna seemed a bit shocked by a factual question he could not spin.
So, Rumsfeld was not used to fielding "impertinent," un-self-censored questions. Indeed, it may have seemed to some as though I were unfairly blindsiding the poor Secretary of Defense.
An Exchange with Power
The setting for Rumsfeld's talk was a little-known, defense-secretary-friendly-Southern-white-male-upper-crust "think tank." There was no advance notice of Rumsfeld's talk on its website, but some women friends from the World Can't Wait figured out a way to get me a ticket (for $70!).
The impromptu debate went as follows:
RAY McGOVERN: And so, I would like to ask you to be up front with the American people. Why did you lie to get us into a war that was not necessary and that has caused these kinds of casualties? Why?
DONALD RUMSFELD: Well, first of all, I haven't lied. I did not lie then. Colin Powell didn't lie. He spent weeks and weeks with the Central Intelligence Agency people and prepared a presentation that I know he believed was accurate, and he presented that to the United Nations. The President spent weeks and weeks with the Central Intelligence people, and he went to the American people and made a presentation. I'm not in the intelligence business. They gave the world their honest opinion. It appears that there were not weapons of mass destruction there.
RAY McGOVERN: You said you knew where they were?
DONALD RUMSFELD: I did not. I said I knew where suspect sites were, and we were --
RAY McGOVERN: You said you knew where they were, "near Tikrit, near Baghdad, and northeast, south and west of there." Those were your words.
DONALD RUMSFELD: My words -- my words were -- no, no, no, wait a minute! Let him stay one second. Just a second.
RAY McGOVERN: This is America, huh? Go ahead.
DONALD RUMSFELD: You're getting plenty of play, sir.
RAY McGOVERN: I'd just like an honest answer.
DONALD RUMSFELD: I'm giving it to you.
RAY McGOVERN: We're talking about lies and your allegation that there was bulletproof evidence of ties between al-Qaeda and Iraq. Was that a lie or were you misled?
DONALD RUMSFELD: Zarqawi was in Baghdad during the prewar period. That is a fact.
RAY McGOVERN: Zarqawi, he was in the north of Iraq, in a place where Saddam Hussein had no rule. That's where he was.
DONALD RUMSFELD: He was also in Baghdad.
RAY McGOVERN: Yeah, when he needed to go to the hospital. Come on, these people aren't idiots. They know the story.
DONALD RUMSFELD: You are -- let me give you an example. It's easy for you to make a charge, but why do you think that the men and women in uniform every day, when they came out of Kuwait and went into Iraq, put on chemical weapon protective suits? Because they liked the style? They honestly believed that there were chemical weapons. Saddam Hussein had used chemical weapons on his own people previously. He had used them on his neighbor, the Iranians. And they believed he had those weapons. We believed he had those weapons.
RAY McGOVERN: That's what we call a non-sequitur. It doesn't matter what the troops believe. It matters what you believe.
MODERATOR: I think, Mr. Secretary, the debate is over. We have other questions, courtesy to the audience.
'Let Him Stay'
Early in the exchange, the black-hatted point man from Rumsfeld's SWAT Team (clearly seen in the video) put his elbow in my solar plexus as I was speaking and started to pry me from the microphone to which I was adhering like permanent glue.
However, after a glance in the direction of the TV cameras, Rumsfeld waved him off, with a "no, no, no, wait a minute! Let him stay one second. Just a second." It was a snap decision to continue the debate, with Rumsfeld convinced he could put me in my place. After all, I had identified myself as a former CIA analyst, and Rumsfeld had had an easy time intimidating CIA directors George Tenet and Porter Goss, as well as those of my former colleagues badgered into dancing the Cheney/Rumsfeld fraudulent tango on Iraq.
The event also took place early enough that afternoon to make the evening news. Better still, the event was aired live on C-Span and CNN. All this together made it very difficult for TV producers, anchors and pundits to brush off my challenges to Rumsfeld as inconsequential. Besides, there was very little happening that was newsworthy on May 4, 2006, which put icing on the cake.
In any case, the tense scene of a citizen challenging the great and powerful Rumsfeld with real questions was so unusual that even the corporate media recognized it as "news" and gave it at least fleeting attention on the evening news shows.
But my unmasking of Rumsfeld's Iraq War lies also created a highly unwelcome precedent that I would be made to pay for by soon being pigeonholed as a disgruntled stalker.
CNN anchor Paula Zahn's first questions that evening were (1) "How long have you harbored this animus against Donald Rumsfeld?" and (2) why was I "following the Secretary of Defense all the way down to Atlanta?"
I explained that, in fact, I had gotten to Atlanta first - to receive, that same evening, the ACLU's National Civil Liberties Award (won the previous year by Coretta Scott King).
I could not remember how long I had had "this animus" toward Rumsfeld. Were I quicker on my feet, I would have said something like -- since his lies got thousands of human beings killed in an unnecessary war. But you don't get a do-over.
After the Zahn interview, CNN's Anderson Cooper's first question, asked of me haltingly as I was exiting the auditorium, was much less hostile but, in its own way, far more revealing: "Weren't you afraid?" he asked. Think about that for a while.
No Such Luck With Hillary
Five years later, with some slight hope for an encore during a possible Q & A - this time with then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton - I wangled a ticket to hear her speak at George Washington University on Feb. 15, 2011. After several minutes of fulsome praise from the university president and prolonged, standing, adulatory applause from the carefully chosen audience, before Clinton even uttered a word, I decided to remain standing in silence with my back to her.
Unlike Rumsfeld in 2006, Secretary of State Clinton was taking no chances. True, her speech focused on the need to respect dissent, but she was talking about the authorities in Iran, not in Washington. She missed not a syllable as she watched me brutalized directly in front of her and then dragged down the main aisle (with Clinton seeing-no-evil and nary a peep from the Hillary-friendly audience of by-standers/by-sitters).
Once outside the auditorium, a Clinton security-woman interrogated me at some length, after two sets of steel handcuffs were put on my wrists. I was then arrested and dumped into jail.
Perhaps Clinton thought her tacit condoning of this pre-emptive strike by her security folks would provide a useful deterrent to others who might choose nonviolent but highly visible ways to express dissent - or, God forbid, ask an impertinent question of the kind asked of Rumsfeld in Atlanta.
Unlike my encounter with Rumsfeld and even though multiple TV cameras caught the brutal way I was seized and thrown out directly in front of Hillary Clinton ("escorted out" is the gentle way Fox News put it), there was almost no further mention in mainstream media.
The Clinton incident happened at the same time of day as my mini-debate with Rumsfeld, so its absence from the evening news had nothing to do with the news cycle. Still, one would have thought the Kafkaesque nature of my brutalization at the very moment Clinton waxed eloquent about respecting dissent - in Iran - might have provided irresistible grist for a news story or commentary.
But in the five years that had passed since the Rumsfeld event in Atlanta, the media had grown five years-worth tamer. And, in contrast to Rumsfeld's quick calculation as he looked at the cameras in the back, Clinton apparently believed she could count on the TV outlets and pundits NOT to give much coverage to the assault. In any case, she calculated correctly.
A number of Washington media stenographers were there, of course, as well as the cameras, but the evening TV producers and anchors chose the safer path. After all, no "sensible" commentator or outlet will gratuitously put out of joint the nose of a probable heiress to the presidency.
Less Tolerance of Dissent
If my understandable chagrin at the way Hillary Clinton ignored the assault right in front of her leaves me open to charges of having an "animus" toward Hillary Clinton, so be it. That is very small potatoes in the grand scheme of things.
My "animus" was substantive - her share of responsibility for all manner of death and destruction because of her vote for the Iraq War and the benighted escalation/surge in Afghanistan, for example. It would be only another couple of months after her GWU speech before she helped create equal tragedies in Libya and Syria.
I suppose I should thank my blessings in having avoided the far more brutal, fatal treatment accorded Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.
Although I had a ticket to hear David Petraeus speak at the 92nd Y in New York City on Oct. 30, 2014, I was barred from even entering, roughly treated, whisked away by NYPD cops already on the scene and jailed overnight in the infamous "The Tombs" beneath the Criminal Court in lower Manhattan.
Although my arrest occurred in the so-called "media capital of the world," the incident was almost completely ignored at least in the mainstream media. [See Consortiumnnews.com's, "When Silencing Dissent Isn't News."]
The trend seems to be more violence from the "organs of state security," as they were known in Soviet parlance, and more silence in the mainstream media.
All the more need to follow the example of the Berrigans.
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Nuclear Annihilation of a Radical Message on Israel: The Case of Concepcion Picciotto
Feb 28, 2016
There were some lovely, moving moments in the memorial service of Concepcion Picciotto at Luther's Place Church on Saturday.
Concepcion is known -- with William Thomas, who died a few years ago -- for leading what is apparently the longest protest in U.S. history: Against nuclear weapons in Lafayette Park, in front of the White House. She died last month.
As WTOP -- the local news station -- noted today: "Picciotto's nuke vigil became a permanent fixture across from the White House for five consecutive presidents, including President Barack Obama, but not one of the presidents ever spoke to her."
Tom Hastings, with trembling hands holding the microphone, sobbed, "I built nuclear weapons for 23 years," and then that Concepcion "was so unselfish" -- as she literally died to the end for peace, with failing health, virtually homeless, continuing the vigil. She was almost like a protester who immolates oneself, but in slow motion.
At the memorial service, the speakers included former CIA man Ray McGovern who noted the Washington Post's apparent proclivity for questioning Concepcion's sanity, and asked who was the mad one here given the Post's apparent view that her desire to prevent nuclear war was at best quaint. Her lawyer, who spoke first and long, did some of the same, but seemed at one point to frame the nuclear threat stemming from the doctrine of MAD, mutually assured destruction, as a simple relic of the Cold War. He almost echoed a patronizing tone that one might hear from the Post, referring to his arguments with her, barely disguising an eyeroll.
There were glimmers of Concepcion's radicalness certainly during the service -- she wasn't outright cooped into a banal liberal symbol as Martin Luther King often has been, but, critically, the word "Israel" was not uttered at the memorial in the church. This was incredible since it was hard to go three minutes talking with Concepcion without her talking about Israel -- either its crimes or the incredible threat posed by its unacknowledged nuclear weapons. Her work stressed things that so few do: Israel is perhaps the greatest threat because it has a massive nuclear arsenal, refuses to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, uses violence with incredible impunity, and it is an expansionist settler colonial state.
And Concepcion was not -- as some, including Caitlin Gibson of the Washington Post, have referred to her as -- an anti-nuclear "proliferation" activist. She was for disarmament. Concepcion was clear: "Live by the bomb, die by the bomb." Her point was the U.S. and other nuclear powers live by the bomb and must stop. She was about disarming the current nuclear weapons states; not simply preventing proliferation of nuclear weapons to more states. After all, it is largely the policy of the U.S. government that current nuclear weapons states should maintain them and others should be denied them. The U.S. government occasionally does wage or threaten wars over this issue.
Concepcion focusing on Israel was at times even jarring even to me -- a Palestinian American -- when I'd talk to her. Don't take my word for it, look up some videos of her. She doesn't go long before mentioning Israel. And if you think it through, for very good reason.
The word "Israel" was finally uttered from the microphone -- after a hundred or so people left the church and went to the site of her long-standing protest in front of the White House and were setup there photo-op style by Medea Benjamin of CodePink, along with what came off like a bizarre gravestone prop.
Perhaps it's thus with all prophets -- the moment they die, many around them push aside their central statements that seem inconvenient but were actually the center-line to their dedication and integrity.
It was left to Simin Royanian, an Iranian-American activist and analyst to utter the word when finally granted the mic. She noted Concepcion's staunch opposition to Israel's Zionism and said she was always supportive of Palestinian and other liberation movements in the Mideast.
Perhaps it's thus with all prophets -- the moment they die, many around them push aside their central statements that seem inconvenient but were actually the center-line to their dedication and integrity.
But, no, Concepcion was largely ignored in life. John Steinbach, longtime antinuclear peace activist and co-coordinator of the Hiroshima/Nagasaki Peace Committee told me: "Concepcion wasn't taken serious by a lot of groups. I can't tell you the number of times I tried to get mainstream peace groups that had protests in Lafayette Square to include or invite or at least acknowledge her vigil which was right there. It never happened." In contrast, Steinbach notes: "The Japanese [nuclear bomb] survivors loved and respected her and always wanted to spend time with her."
The memorial service did feature a Japanese representative reading a statement from the Hiroshima/Nagasaki Peace Committee. Unfortunately, it also offered a fair number of cliches -- "We Shall Overcome" and a lengthy homily presuming to praise the prophetic voice while ignoring much of the substance of it, instead repeatedly invoking the song "Turn, Turn, Turn".
But there was nothing cliche about Concepcion.
She had a pointed, high pitched, Spanish accented voice and would utter totally political incorrect statements. "Don't Be a Lemming -- Save Yourself -- Renounce Genocidal Weapons" read her sign. "Silence is a war crime." She'd be good at staying on message as they say, repeating what her signs would say. "Bush is war criminal" she'd repeat.
And she held signs on Israel up high and unapologetic: "Judaism YES / Zionism NO" and "Disarm IsraHell -- 200 Illegal Nucs -- Save the World -- Save the Children" and "Stop Funding Israeli Terrorism."
Great stuff.
But she did make political statements on Israel that I would never make; and I didn't delved into her personal struggles with other activists, which were apparently contentious at times. One sign she'd hold up was "One Nation Under Israel" (which featured a U.S. flag with a star from the Israeli flag on it) and another: "Terrorists Are Us -- 'Holocaust:' A Word Used by Zionists to perpetrate Crimes Against Humanity" (with a swastika scrawled in) -- which featured the website of Neturei Karta - Orthodox Jews United Against Zionism.
I think the Nazi "Holocaust" isn't just a "word" that's been used for murderous purposes, but also an actual historical fact. But she didn't write that it was "just" that, though many may have read it that way. Nor do I subscribe to the view that the U.S. is "Under Israel". In fact, I don't see nations anymore. I mostly see forces: imperialism, colonialism, corporate capitalism, white supremacy and misogyny asserting their power and how other forces resist and are complicit with them.
But I've not seen any of Concepcion's signs on Israel anymore at the memorial, which is continuing and seems to be sanitizing itself. As I write, the vigil does have one sign about an upcoming protest against AIPAC -- so it's apparently still alright to criticize right-wing Zionist groups -- and perhaps unintentionally pump them up -- but not the more liberal varieties. This type of framing divorces the centrality of Israel's nuclear weapons, which the U.S. government has rendered it forbidden to speak of, from the anti-nuclear work on the vigil.
Really, did you catch that? It's illegal for U.S. officials to talk about Israel's nuclear arsenal. As Grant Smith has found: "Under two known gag orders -- punishable by imprisonment -- U.S. security-cleared government agency employees and contractors may not disclose that Israel has a nuclear weapons program." So perhaps score one for the "One Nation Under Israel" camp.
But ignoring Israel's nuclear weapons has the ironic effect of the naive viewer wondering "why pick on Israel?" -- since the Israeli nuclear arsenal -- which was the brainchild of liberal Zionists Ben Gurion and Shimon Peres -- is sidelined instead of being front and center.
Concepcion was certainly difficult, at least for me, to talk with. I tried helping her find housing at one point, which might have lead to connections that might have helped, it was hard to tell at times, but she was undoubtedly a handful -- only housing around the White House would do of course. And I certainly wished that the protest would be more understandable, it certainly came off as eccentric at times. But I think that can be fixed without it being effectively sanitized, which seems where it is headed.
Front and center are now typical banal signs, which were back bench material for Concepcion: "War Is Not the Answer". Really? I've got news for you: War often is the answer. War can be exactly the answer if the question is how to effectively dominate the planet, which it often is to many.
Fast disappearing from the vigil is what was central to Concepcion: by embracing a radical humanity, discerning the taboos of the establishment, she rightly raged against them.
The memorial service put on for Concepcion featured a rendition of "Ain't Gonna Study War No More." I disagree. We actually haven't studied war nearly enough. The "peace movement" needs to get over itself and talk about war: the death, destruction, flying limbs and stench of it in precise terms if it has any interest in actually changing things and not just feeling superior to those dreaded Republicans.
Fast disappearing from the vigil is what was central to Concepcion: by embracing a radical humanity, discerning the taboos of the establishment, she rightly raged against them. At the current rate, I fully expect "Free Tibet" signs to pop up at the vigil.
In my chatting with her occasionally over the years, I think Concepcion pointed to a central truth -- that colonialism and Zionism were central forces threatening the planet. And that central truth is continually obscured by people talking about neo-conservatives or liberal interventionists instead of seeing an entire neo-colonial project at work, or perhaps not so "neo" at times -- just plain colonial. And one should be clear: She didn't really single out Israel as some do -- she'd talk about unmentionable U.S. "terrorism" and "war crimes" as easily as Israeli.
If she seemed to become overly persistent on imperialism and Zionism and Israel's unacknowledged threat to humanity, I think it was a reaction not just to those threats and officialdom and not just to corporate media -- but also "progressive activists" silence on central questions of nuclear armed Zionism.
Unfortunately, her own memorial service became a monument to that silence.
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The Unique Resource Available to All 2016 Candidates: VIPS
Feb 27, 2016
A Memo to: Dr. Ben Carson, Hillary Clinton, Ted Cruz, John Kasich, Marco Rubio, Bernie Sanders, Dr. Jill Stein, and Donald Trump
The media brouhaha over naming your campaign advisers on foreign policy prompts this reminder of a unique resource available, gratis, to all of you. That resource is our nonpartisan group - Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). If we were into self-promotion, we would add to our (virtual) letterhead: "Serving satisfied customers since 2003."
We are about apolitical analysis; we are into spreading unvarnished truth around; we do not shape our analysis toward this or that debating point.
We are about apolitical analysis; we are into spreading unvarnished truth around; we do not shape our analysis toward this or that debating point. Thus, we eschew the moniker "campaign adviser." But that doesn't mean we wouldn't provide apolitical and unvarnished advice to anyone who seeks it.
Unique? We are on the outer edge of atypical in the sense that we are a fiercely nonpartisan, tell-it-like-it-is group of professionals with long experience in intelligence and related fields and with no policy or personal axes to grind. We are Republicans, Democrats and Independents. Abundant proof that party preference plays no role in our analysis can be seen in our enviable record - in the substantive work we have produced over the past 13 years - both before and after the ill-advised attack on Iraq in March 2003.
Also distinguishing us from "campaign advisers," none of us in VIPS lust for a high position in a new administration; none are heavily invested in arms industries; none of us ask for a retainer. In other words, there are no strings attached to the substantive analysis we provide to all our readers and listeners. If objective, disinterested analysis is your cup of tea, we suggest that you check out VIPS's record, to include the multiple warnings we gave President George W. Bush in the months before the attack on Iraq.
In fact, VIPS was founded by a handful of former CIA analysts, including me, for the express purpose of warning President Bush that his small coterie of advisers, led by Vice President Dick Cheney, was adducing fraudulent - not mistaken - "intelligence" in promoting the concept the war on Iraq.
Indeed, in recent years VIPS has been accused of naivete in failing to understand that Bush, to whom we addressed most of our pre-war memos, was fully aware of how Cheney and his cunning co-conspirators and conmen were fabricating the false pretenses for war. We plead guilty to believing that U.S. presidents deserve unspun analysis and to trusting that honest assessments will help presidents act responsibly on behalf of the nation.
Call us old-fashioned, but we just found it hard to believe that any U.S. president would justify war on "evidence" made out of whole cloth. Equally difficult to believe was that our former colleagues would acquiesce in the deception.
So, despite the doubts that Bush really wanted the real story, we rose to the occasion, nonetheless, and issued three corporate VIPS memoranda before the attack on Iraq: (1) "Today's Speech By Secretary Powell At the UN," February 5, 2003; (2) "Cooking Intelligence for War in Iraq," March 12, 2003; and (3) "Forgery, Hyperbole, Half-Truth: A Problem," March 18, 2003.
Our commentary on Secretary of State Colin Powell's UN speech went out on the AFP wire and was widely read - abroad. Foreign media followed up with us; U.S. media - not so much. (This is the primary reason you may be learning all this for the first time).
During that critical pre-war period we took pains to use whatever entree we had to influential people. For example, I personally sought to reach then-Sen. Hillary Clinton via a key person on her staff, who assured me that the senator was being given our op-eds and our analyses to read.
In our memorandum of Feb. 5, 2003, we told President Bush we could give Powell "only a C-minus in providing context and perspective." As for input from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's Pentagon, we told the President: "Your Pentagon advisers draw a connection between war and terrorism, but for the wrong reasons. The connection takes on much more reality in a post-U.S. invasion scenario. [Emphasis in the original]
"Indeed, it is our view that an invasion of Iraq would ensure overflowing recruitment centers for terrorists into the indefinite future. Far from eliminating the threat it would enhance it exponentially."
Though it went unheeded 13 years ago, the final paragraph of VIPS's first Memorandum for the President seems quite relevant to the current discussion regarding "campaign advisers" on foreign policy. In our same-day memo to the President on Powell's UN speech we noted that he had described what he said as "irrefutable and undeniable." Our final paragraph started with an allusion to those words:
"No one has a corner on the truth; nor do we harbor illusions that our analysis is irrefutable or undeniable. But after watching Secretary Powell today, we are convinced that you would be well served if you widened the discussion beyond ... those advisers clearly bent on a war for which we see no compelling reason and from which we believe the unintended consequences are likely to be catastrophic."
Our work reflects the ethos that earlier guided the work of intelligence community analysts at CIA and elsewhere, a commitment to both objectivity and scholarship.
Our VIPS memorandum of Feb. 5, 2003, was sent to the President more than two years before the London Times published the minutes of a July 23, 2002 briefing at 10 Downing Street, during which Richard Dearlove, the head of British intelligence, reported to British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Dearlove's talks three days earlier with his U.S. counterpart, CIA Director George Tenet, at CIA headquarters. According to those undisputed minutes, Dearlove said the following:
"Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." [Emphasis added]
Our warnings to President Bush also came more than five years before the completion of a five-year investigation by the Senate Intelligence Committee on pre-war intelligence, the results of which were approved by a bipartisan majority. On June 5, 2008, the date of its release, committee chair Jay Rockefeller commented on its findings:
"In making the case for war, the administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when in reality it was unsubstantiated, contradicted, or even non-existent. As a result, the American people were led to believe that the threat from Iraq was much greater than actually existed."
Just So You Know
One presidential candidate is said to have "an army of several hundred, perhaps even more than a thousand, foreign policy advisers;" another has been criticized for having no "talent pool" of "trusted experts." Little is known about those advising other candidates or, for example, in which campaign headquarters erstwhile advisers to dropout candidates like Jeb Bush are now hanging their hats.
The purpose of this open letter is merely to ensure that you know that you are welcome to dip into a different and unique "talent pool" - Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). This pool is now several hundred years deep in collective experience and brimming with the kind of knowledge that flows from senior-level work in intelligence and related fields. Our record of memoranda, averaging three per year, speaks for itself.
If nonpartisan, fact-based analysis is your cup of tea, have a look at those memoranda, which we believe are second to none in terms of candor and tell-it-like-it-is analysis. Our work reflects the ethos that earlier guided the work of intelligence community analysts at CIA and elsewhere, a commitment to both objectivity and scholarship.
That was before Director Tenet decided to welcome frequent visits by Vice President Dick Cheney to make sure CIA analysts were finding or fabricating enough "intelligence" to "justify" the launch of an unnecessary war. We take no pleasure in having been correct at the outset, in predicting "the unintended consequences are likely to be catastrophic."
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One Day After Sentencing, CIA Whistleblower Jeffrey Sterling Tells His Side of the Story
"They already had the machine geared up against me. The moment that they felt there was a leak, every finger pointed at Jeffery Sterling."
May 12, 2015
One day after a federal court sentenced the former CIA officer to 42 months in prison for allegedly blowing the whistle on a botched CIA mission, Jeffrey Sterling is sharing his side of the story.
In The Invisible Man: Whistleblower Jeffrey Sterling, a short documentary released Tuesday, Sterling describes how his experience with racial discrimination within the CIA took him from working as an Agency case manager to living out of his car, to years later facing charges under the Espionage Act for supposedly leaking national intelligence secrets to New York Times journalist James Risen.
The film was directed by Judith Erlich, whose past works include the Oscar-nominated The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers.
"They already had the machine geared up against me," Sterling said. "The moment that they felt there was a leak, every finger pointed at Jeffery Sterling."
Sterling, who has maintained his innocence, says he had lawfully approached the Senate Intelligence Committee to express concerns over certain CIA operations and the impact those missions might have on the safety of troops in Iraq.
Prior to reporting those concerns, however, Sterling had filed racial discrimination charges against the CIA, becoming the first CIA case officer ever to do so. That case was eventually dismissed on the grounds that its details might compromise national security and Sterling was eventually fired.
Years later, after meeting his wife and moving on to a job in the healthcare industry, Sterling was told by his attorneys that he was being looked at as a possible leak.
Sterling, who was convicted on January 26, 2015, said, "It was a shock. It's still a shock. He added, "They shut me up with my discrimination case and they closed the door on me with the criminal case."
Throughout the case, Sterling's supporters have denounced the injustice of the charges and sentencing, particularly as it contrasts with the recent plea bargain deal granted to former CIA chief General David Petraeus, who leaked troves of classified material to his mistress and biographer Paula Broadwell.
Norman Solomon, executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy and coordinator of whistleblower advocacy organization ExposeFacts.org, who produced the Sterling documentary, told Democracy Now! on Tuesday that the sentence marks a "continuation of the war on whistleblowing and journalism and a clampdown on the essential flow of information for democracy" under the Obama administration.
"General Petraeus's 'fondle on the wrist' by the government was hovering over the courtroom yesterday," Solomon continued, "showing the absurdity and tyranny of what the administration continues to do."
In a press statement following the sentencing, former CIA analyst Ray McGovern said: "It seems clear that the White House told the Department of Justice to make an example of Jeffrey Sterling--an example of what one can expect if s/he decides to blow the whistle."
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A Pointed Letter to Gen. Petraeus
As retired Gen. and ex-CIA Director David Petraeus was about to speak in New York City last Oct. 30, someone decided to spare the “great man” from impertinent questions, so ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern was barred, arrested and brought to trial, prompting McGovern to ask some questions now in an open letter.
Feb 03, 2015
Dear Gen. David Petraeus,
As I prepare to appear in New York City Criminal Court on Wednesday facing charges of "criminal trespass" and "resisting arrest," it struck me that we have something in common besides being former Army officers - and the fact that the charges against me resulted from my trying to attend a speech that you were giving, from which I was barred. As I understand it, you, too, may have to defend yourself in Court someday in the future.
You might call me a dreamer, but I'm not the only one who believes there may be some substance to reports last month that Justice Department prosecutors are pressing to indict you for mishandling classified information by giving it to Paula Broadwell, your mistress/biographer.
No doubt, whatever indiscretions were involved there seemed minor at the time, but unauthorized leaks of this sort -- to casual acquaintances -- were strongly discouraged in the Army in which I served five decades ago. Remember the old saying: "Loose lips sink ships." There were also rules in the Universal Code of Military Justice for punishing a married soldier who took up with a mistress, an offense for which many a trooper spent time in the brig.
Yet, I don't imagine there is much sweat on your brow regarding legal consequences for either offense. And you may be correct in assuming that, just as the Army looked the other way about the mistress indiscretion, our timorous Attorney General Eric Holder or his successor will likely do the same on any disclosure of classified information. Some influential members of Congress and various Washington talking heads have already opined that you have suffered enough.
Still, I find myself wondering if it does not bother you to be assigned to the comfortable, "don't-look-back" compartment for excusing one class of violators, including CIA torturers and reckless investment bankers who were "too big (or well-connected) to jail." I still want to hold out hope for even-handed, blind justice rather than give up completely on the system of justice in our country.
You may not be surprised to know that, try as I might to feel some empathy for you, Schadenfreude at your misfortune is winning out, since I am convinced that you had a lot to do with other far-more-serious offenses, including aiding and abetting illegal "aggressive war." And, I suspect you also many have aided and abetted the circumstances that gave rise to the bizarre charges against me.
I refer, of course, to my violent arrest, causing pain of my fractured shoulder, and my jailing in The Tombs, simply because I wanted to hear you speak last fall at New York's 92nd Street Y and possibly pose a question from the audience.
Why the Police Alert?
No doubt, your acolytes/adjutants have told you how, despite my ticket for admittance, I was denied entry, brutally arrested by the NYPD, handcuffed behind my back, jailed overnight and arraigned the following day. I'm still trying to figure it all out - including the enigma as to how it became known that I was coming.
"You're not welcome here, Ray," was the greeting I got from Y security as I came in the outer door. The NYPD was prepositioned and ready to pounce.
Were you, your entourage and the Y authorities afraid that during the Q & A I might ask an "impertinent" question of the kind I posed to your patron, promoter and protector, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, during a Q & A after he spoke in Atlanta six-plus years ago?
Speaking of Rumsfeld, you and I know him as your partner in some very serious crimes, relating to the illegal invasion of Iraq and the horrific violence that followed as well as the slaughter of so many innocent people in Afghanistan. For over a decade, I have closely observed your behavior and consider it nothing short of a media miracle that most Americans believe your worst sin to be that of adultery.
Since denial can be a very strong motivation, let me refresh your memory and remind you of the bad companions you fell in with. I am reminded of the egregious ways in which you did Rumsfeld's bidding - winning promotions and richly undeserved fame by condoning the unspeakable - torture, for example.
Your third star came when you were dispatched to Iraq in June 2004, committed to carrying out Rumsfeld's instructions to encourage Shia-on-Sunni torture and other human rights crimes. The all-too-predictable chickens are now coming home to roost from that unconscionably stupid attempt to defeat Sunni opponents of the U.S. occupation through such ignoble means - those chickens being what we now call ISIL or ISIS or simply the Islamic State.
What amazes me is that the Teflon is still clinging to you and Rumsfeld, given the bedlam in that entire area today. You're not even held to account for the performance of the tens of thousands of the Iraqi troops that you crowed about having trained and equipped so well. They dropped their weapons and ran away early last year when the ragtag militants of ISIL attacked.
Back in April 2004 when the graphic photos of torture at Abu Ghraib in Iraq were revealed, Rumsfeld claimed he was shocked, even though the International Red Cross had been complaining about abuses there for more than a year before the revelations.
The Senate Armed Services Committee eventually concluded without dissent, in a major investigative report on Dec. 11, 2008, that Rumsfeld bore direct responsibility for the abuses committed by interrogators at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and other military prisons.
The Committee added that the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib "was not simply the result of a few soldiers acting on their own" but grew out of interrogation policies approved by Mr. Rumsfeld and other top officials, who "conveyed the message that physical pressures and degradation were appropriate treatment for detainees."
Four years before the Senate report, in May 2004, Gen. Antonio Taguba came close to revealing precisely that, when he led the Pentagon's first (and only honest) investigation of the abuses at Abu Ghraib. Rumsfeld promptly fired him. Yet, throughout all this scandal and mayhem, you were maneuvering your way up the high-command ladder without any indication that you were objecting to any of this.
Dangerous Orders
Mid-2004 was a significant watershed for torture in another way. Official messages given to WikiLeaks by Pvt. Chelsea (Bradley) Manning show that FRAGO (Fragmentary Order) 242 of June 2004 went into effect the month you arrived in Iraq to oversee its implementation.
The WikiLeaks documents indicate that you followed Rumsfeld's order to encourage Shiite and Kurdish commandos to torture suspected Sunni militants. Examining those documents as well as your actions at the time, investigative reporter Gareth Porter saw that as the deeper significance of FRAGO 242 - significance somehow missed by your ardent admirers in the "mainstream media."
Porter, too, believes it was part of the larger Rumsfeld/Petraeus strategy to exploit Shia sectarian hatred of Sunnis in order to suppress the Sunni attacks on U.S. forces. But that strategy had some very negative long-term consequences that we are still encountering.
It inflamed Sunni opposition to the U.S. and its puppet government in Baghdad, and gave rise to the massive sectarian warfare of 2006 in which tens of thousands of civilians - mainly Sunnis but many Shiites as well - were killed. The violence was so widespread that U.S. field generals, such as Generals John Abizaid and George Casey, and sensible experts on the region, such as former Secretary of State James Baker, urged a new strategy late that year, essentially minimizing the American footprint in Iraq.
Instead, President George W. Bush enlisted your help in doubling down on the U.S. military presence in 2007 with the so-called "surge," lest he be forced to concede defeat in Iraq before leaving office. You agreed and sacrificed the lives of almost 1,000 more American troops to secure what one might call an "indecent interval" that let Bush get out of Dodge without an outright loss hung around his neck.
As the growth of ISIL/ISIS and the chaos in the area today have made clear, your famous "surge" did little more than achieve a temporary lull (after a lot more killing). It failed to achieve its most significant stated purpose - to create space for a political resolution of the Sunni-Shiite civil conflict. It did, however, have one very important benefit. The "surge" got you your fourth star.
On the issue of torture, it seems clear that the straight-arrow Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine General Peter Pace, did not get the memo for how to rationalize away these disgraceful crimes. For 18 months, he was apparently unaware of FRAGO 242, which became obvious when Pace and Rumsfeld gave widely different answers to a question at a Pentagon press conference on Nov. 29, 2005.
Gen. Peter Pace: It is absolutely the responsibility of every U.S. service member, if they see inhumane treatment being conducted, to intervene, to stop it.
Rumsfeld: But I don't think you mean they have an obligation to physically stop it; it's to report it.
Pace: If they are physically present when inhumane treatment is taking place, Sir, they have an obligation to try to stop it.
Needless to say, Pace did not get the usual second term as JCS Chairman.
Selective Prosecution
These grave crimes are the ones for which you should stand trial. Personally, I might even be inclined to give you a pass on your marital infidelity and possibly even on sharing classified information with your mistress, if so many true patriots weren't being prosecuted and imprisoned for sharing evidence of U.S. government misconduct with the American people.
And there is one other sore point regarding your esteemed career. According to a Washington Post report by Joshua Partlow, datelined Kabul, Feb. 11, 2011, you shocked aides to then Afghan President Hamid Karzai when you suggested that Afghan parents had deliberately burned their own children in order to exaggerate claims of civilian casualties from U.S. military action in Konar Province.
Partlow quoted two of Karzai's aides who met with you in a closed-door session at the presidential palace and found your remarks "deeply offensive." They said you had dismissed allegations by Karzai's office and the provincial governor that many civilians had been killed and that you claimed that residents of Konar had invented stories, or even injured their children, to pin the blame on U.S. forces as a ruse to end the operation.
"I was dizzy. My head was spinning," said one participant, referring to Petraeus's remarks. "This was shocking. Would any father do this to his children? This is really absurd."
You declined comment at the time. So I will add my own assessment, borrowing a famous line from another dark chapter of American history: "Have you no sense of decency sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?
Yours truly,
Ray McGovern
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Clashing Face-to-Face on Torture
It’s rare on TV when you see two former senior U.S. officials clashing angrily over something as significant as torture. Usually decorum prevails. But ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern wasn’t going to let the ex-House intelligence oversight chief get away with a bland defense of torture.
Dec 15, 2014
When you get an opportunity like this, don't fall back - I heard my Irish grandmother telling me last Thursday as I took my place at the table to discuss torture with a former congressional committee chairman whose job it was to prevent such abuse.
Almost rubbing shoulders with me on my right was former House Intelligence Committee chair (2004-2007) Pete Hoekstra, a Republican from Michigan. Central China TV had asked both of us to address the findings of the Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture. I said yes, of course, since I was highly interested in how Hoekstra, with his front seat for the saga of "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques," would try to 'splain it all.
Here was a unique chance to publicly confront a malleable, moral dwarf who had been in a uniquely powerful position to end the torture. The moment was also an odd one, for Hoekstra - not the brightest star in the constellation - seemed oblivious to his gross misfeasance and dereliction of duty. Or how his behavior might look to non-torture aficionados.
Hoekstra took over the House intelligence "oversight" committee in 2004 when former chair, Porter Goss, a Republican from Florida, was picked as the perfect - as in fully-briefed-and-complicit - functionary to become director of the CIA, replacing "slam-dunk" George Tenet. Tenet left in disgrace in July 2004, still seeking those notional Iraqi "weapons of mass destruction" in vain.
Last week, amid the unfolding torture scandal, Hoekstra went on CCTV America's daily talk show, "The Heat," to offer a heated defense of what he insisted on still calling "enhanced interrogation techniques." My opportunity for a blunt exchange with him over exactly what the House Intelligence Committee knew came near the end of the show.
I had already been trying hard to decode for the TV audience the bull-excrement coming from Hoekstra and others quoted on the program. At one point, as luck would have it, the moderator asked me about the CIA's fear-driven argument that the "urgency" of preventing additional terrorist attacks justified short-cuts like torture.
A hat tip here to my VIPS colleague Larry Johnson, who had called my attention earlier that day to the actual time sequence involving the capture and interrogation of detainee Abu Zubaydah, noting that if that scenario reflected "time-urgency," we are all in serious trouble.
After FBI interrogators, using the traditional rapport-building approach to Abu Zubaydah, extracted a good deal of useful information from him in April 2002, Washington (for reasons not yet fully clear) ordered the FBI to give him over to CIA officials. They kept him in solitary confinement, asking him no questions, from mid-June 2002 until Aug. 4, giving time for torture-friendly lawyers in Washington to come up with some tortured legal justifications to "authorize" waterboarding and other abusive techniques. Zubaydah was then waterboarded 83 times, yielding no useful intelligence.
Clashing with Hoekstra
As the program neared its end, the host turned back to me and asked me to respond to former Vice President Dick Cheney's ardent defense of the torture program. I focused my criticism on Cheney as the "eminence grise" behind the Bush administration plunge into the "dark side."
But I also saw an opportunity to press Hoekstra on his knowledge and complicity, though I framed my question to give him an out on direct knowledge about the grisly torture techniques, from waterboarding and hanging people from ceilings to forced nudity and "rectal rehydration."
"I don't know if he [Cheney] checked with you, Congressman Hoekstra, he really should have, but I'm amazed if you were either unaware of these things or whether you condoned them," I said, addressing Hoekstra only inches away.
"I think I've been very open," Hoekstra responded, indicating that he did know and did approve.
McGovern: "You condoned them. My God!"
Hoekstra: "I explained this to you. Members of Congress, Republicans and Democrats, leadership on both sides, Gang of Eight ...".
McGovern: "Thought that torture was okay?"
Hoekstra: "Thought that the enhanced interrogation techniques ...
McGovern: "That's torture."
Hoekstra: "... were appropriate."
McGovern: "Let's not use these sobriquets. This was torture."
Hoekstra: "No, the Justice Department ... characterized them as legal. To say that you were aghast that we heard, no."
McGovern: "I'm aghast that you were briefed on it. You're supposed to be overseeing these things, you should stop these things. ... You were co-opted."
Hoekstra: "No, we weren't. Republicans and Democrats were fully briefed on these programs and we agreed with them."
I still thought I'd give the former congressman a path out of the pro-torture corner that he was painting himself into, by suggesting that he might be simply embarrassed that he had been misled by the CIA and the Bush administration, that he had been kept in the dark about the darkest of the dark side, but Hoekstra just kept painting.
McGovern: "You were lied to and you're ashamed to admit that you were lied to."
Hoekstra: "I'm not ashamed that I was lied to. I'm admitting that these programs were briefed to us. I've talked to my staff going back and said after this 'revelation' came out ...how much of what is in this Dianne Feinstein report, this partisan report, this Democrat report, how much did we know? Ninety to 95 percent."
McGovern: "Oh, my God! What a terrible admission! Aren't you ashamed?"
Hoekstra: "No, I'm not ashamed."
McGovern: "My God!"
Then, Hoekstra tried to suggest that I was being disloyal to my former colleagues at the CIA as if the few senior officials who pushed for the torture and the few - mostly contractors - who carried it out were representative of most CIA personnel among whom I had served for 27 years. Hoekstra was waving a red flag, so I played the bull, forsaking the usually obligatory deference and politeness. I let him have it. (Sometimes it doesn't help to be Irish.)
Hoekstra: "I reached a different conclusion as did many of your colleagues at the CIA ..."
McGovern: "These are not my colleagues! These are thugs hired by Dick Cheney!"
Hoekstra: "These are people you walked away from. These are heroes for America..."
McGovern: "These are thugs headed by Dick Cheney!"
Hoekstra: "...who are protecting America."
That was when the host politely brought the program to a conclusion. [For this exchange, see minutes 8:23 to 10:41 of Part Three, though I think the entire program is worth watching. Part One, Part Two and Part Three.]
Limited US Viewing
Few Americans are likely to be among those who saw "The Heat" on Dec. 11 or will see it on YouTube. But there is some consolation in the claim that, according to CCTV, a billion Chinese-speakers normally watch the dubbed-into-Mandarin version of this program, and not only in China. Even if the actual number is only half that, well, that will amount to about 500,000 viewers more than the audience in the United States. Some solace.
Since Dec. 9, when the Senate report was released, I also have been interviewed on Canadian TV, Aljazeera, Russian TV, Sky News (UK), two taped Russian prime-time Sunday evening TV programs, Radio Scotland (BBC), Radio New Zealand, and three Radio Pacifica programs. Some of the above hosted me as many as four times, and I have had to turn down, or refer to others, additional invitations (yes, all of these from abroad, as well).
For some reason, despite a prompt press release issued on Tuesday morning, U.S. media remain uninterested in my blunt commentary on the subject of torture. As the CCTV interview indicated, I cannot be counted on to be pleasant when discussing torture, particularly with those who could have, and should have, prevented it.
Which reminds me that after my four-minute impromptu debate with Donald Rumsfeld in Atlanta on May 4, 2006, I was asked by CNN's Paula Zahn, "How long have you had this personal animus toward the Secretary of Defense? And why did you follow him all the way down to Atlanta?"
No personal animus, I could honestly explain to Paula; I just have this thing about folks who start wars of aggression and enable torture (the sobriquet "enhanced interrogation techniques" was not put into the public lexicon until four months later).
As for following Rumsfeld "all the way down to Atlanta," I explained that I had gotten to Atlanta the day before - very pleased to have been honored with the ACLU's National Civil Liberties Award (won the previous year by Coretta Scott King). The chance to attend Rumsfeld's speech was just a bonus.
But I must confess. I do have a personal beef with Hoekstra, who, in 2006, pulled one of the dirtiest tricks I ever encountered personally. Without telling other members of the House Intelligence Committee, he added to the draft Intelligence Authorization Act for FY'07 (HR5020) a provision enabling the government to strip intelligence veterans of their government pensions. HR5020 passed the full House, but Congress opted instead for a continuing resolution.
So maybe it is more a case of Hoekstra having some animus toward my veteran intelligence colleagues and me, who had been exposing the torture overlooked (if not blessed) by his committee. His attempt to make revoking our pensions legal came shortly after March 2, 2006, when - as a matter of conscience in protest against torture - I went to his House office and returned the Intelligence Commendation Medallion given me at retirement for "especially meritorious service," explaining "I do not want to be associated, however remotely, with an agency engaged in torture."
On Dec. 11, after time ran out for "The Heat," I took the opportunity to let Hoekstra know very directly that we were very much aware of his low-life move against us.
Earlier, when the CCTV moderator, in introducing me, had noted that I had returned my Intelligence Commendation Medallion over the issue of CIA torture, I was sorely tempted to ask Hoekstra why he sent me neither acknowledgment nor reply to my letter. But I quickly decided that it would likely be easier - and far more important - to call him to task on his unconscionable misfeasance in condoning torture itself, than on the dirty trick he almost succeeded in pulling on my former intelligence officers and me.
So I waited until we ran out of time to tell him we are aware of what he had tried to do and what we thought of it, and suggested that the sooner he went back to Michigan the better it would be for honest people in Washington.
Below is the letter I gave Hoekstra in April 2006. Actually, I had to give it to his aides; there were indications that he was hiding in his inner office, but they said he was not. Perhaps he was at CIA being briefed on "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques."
March 2, 2006
Dear Congressman Hoekstra:
As a matter of conscience I am returning the Intelligence Commendation Award medallion given me for "especially commendable service" during my 27-year career in CIA. The issue is torture, which inhabits the same category as rape and slavery -- intrinsically evil. I do not wish to be associated, however remotely, with an agency engaged in torture.
Reports in recent years that CIA personnel were torturing detainees were highly disturbing. Confirmation of a sort came last fall, when CIA Director Porter Goss and Dick Cheney--dubbed by the Washington Post "Vice President for Torture"--descended on Sen. John McCain to demand that the CIA be exempted from his amendment's ban on torture. Subsequent reports implicated agency personnel in several cases of prisoner abuse in Iraq, including a few in which detainees died during interrogation.
The obeisance of CIA directors George Tenet and Porter Goss in heeding illegal White House directives has done irreparable harm to the CIA and the country--not to mention those tortured and killed. That you, as Chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, show more deference to the White House than dedication to your oversight responsibilities under the Constitution is another profound disappointment. How can you and your counterpart, Sen. Pat Roberts, turn a blind eye to torture--letting some people get away, literally, with murder--and square that with your conscience?
If German officials who were ordered to do such things in the 1930s had spoken out early and loudly enough, the German people might have been alerted to the atrocities being perpetrated in their name and tried harder to stop them. When my grandchildren ask, "What did you do, Grandpa, to stop the torture," I want to be able to tell them that I tried to honor my oath, taken both as an Army officer and an intelligence officer, to defend the Constitution of the United States--and that I not only spoke out strongly against the torture, but also sought a symbolic way to dissociate myself from it.
We Americans have become accustomed to letting our institutions do our sinning for us. I abhor the corruption of the CIA in the past several years, believe it to be beyond repair, and do not want my name on any medallion associated with it. Please destroy this one.
Yours truly, Ray McGovern
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The Mystery of Ray McGovern's Arrest
On Oct. 30, ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern was arrested for trying to attend a public speech by retired Gen. David Petraeus. McGovern had hoped to ask Petraeus a critical question during Q-and-A but was instead trundled off to jail, another sign of a growing hostility toward dissent, McGovern says.
Nov 09, 2014
Why, I asked myself, would the New York City police arrest me and put me in The Tombs overnight, simply because a security officer at the 92nd Street Y told them I was "not welcome" and should be denied entry to a talk by retired General David Petraeus? In my hand was a ticket for which I had reluctantly shelled out $50.
I had hoped to hear the photogenic but inept Petraeus explain why the Iraqi troops, which he claimed to have trained so well, had fled northern Iraq leaving their weapons behind at the first whiff of Islamic State militants earlier this year. I even harbored some slight hope that the advertised Q & A might afford hoi polloi like me the chance to ask him a real question.
However rare the opportunity to ask real questions has become, it can happen. Witness my extended (four-minute) questioning of then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in Atlanta on May 4, 2006. The exchange wasn't exactly the oh-so-polite give-and-take of the Sunday talk shows but it represented what Americans should expect of democracy, a chance to confront senior government officials when they engage in deception or demonstrate incompetence - especially on issues of war or peace.
It seems a safe guess that somebody wanted to protect Petraeus from even the possibility of such accountability on Oct. 30. Also, let me make clear that I had no intention of embarrassing the retired four-star general and ex-CIA director with a question about his extramarital affair with his admiring biographer Paula Broadwell, which precipitated his CIA resignation in November 2012.
Many an aging male ego has been massaged by the attentions of someone like Broadwell, and she seemed happy to do the massaging to expedite the research on All In, her biography of the fabled general. I had decided to resist the temptation to refer to the Biblical admonition against entrusting large matters to those who cannot be faithful in small things.
The affair may not have been a small thing to Mrs. Petraeus, but it pales in significance when compared to the death and destruction resulting from Petraeus's self-aggrandizing disingenuousness and dissembling about prospects for eventual success in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Petraeus Agonistes
Assuming that Petraeus's expertise in counterinsurgency warfare was more than mere pretense, he knew both expeditions were doomed to failure. And he certainly now knows the inevitable answer to the question he famously posed to journalist Rick Atkinson in 2003 as U.S. forces troops began to get mired down in the sand of Iraq - "Tell Me How This Ends."
The twin conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq "ended" - if that's the right word for these late-stage fiascos - with two additional stars pinned to Petraeus's uniform and with some 6,700 gold stars sent to the wives, husbands, or parents of U.S. troops killed, plus tens of thousands of purple hearts for those badly injured in both body and mind. A bad bargain for the American people and especially the dead and maimed U.S. troops - not to mention the hundreds of thousands of dead and maimed Afghans and Iraqis - but a pretty successful career move for Petraeus, if not for his fateful extramarital affair.
Surely, in the grim light of all the bloodshed, L'Affaire Broadwell can be seen as a minor peccadillo, the least of Petraeus's sins. But many of his ardent admirers view the sexual indiscretion as the only blot on his otherwise spotless dress uniform festooned with row after row of medals and ribbons.
It was my intent to put the spotlight, via a question or two, on Petraeus's far more consequentially dishonest behavior. And this seemed particularly important at this point in time, as his starry-eyed emulator generals seem no less willing than Petraeus to throw a new wave of youth from a poverty draft into a fool's-errand sequel in Iraq and Syria.
In any event, it seems reasonably clear why they did not let me enter the 92nd Street Y on Oct. 30. Someone thought that the thin-skinned ex-general might be discomforted by a less-than-admiring question. His speech was to be another moment for Petraeus to bathe in public adulation, not confront a citizen or two who might pose critical queies. [For more on Petraeus and his acolytes, see Consortiumnews.com's "Petraeus Spared Ray McGovern's Question."]
Lingering Mystery
But one mystery lingers. The "organs of state security" (the moniker that we in the CIA used to apply to the Soviet intelligence/security services) were lying in wait for me when I walked into the Y? Why? How on earth did they know I was coming?
My initial reaction was that the culprit could be a lingering BOLO, the "Be on the Look-Out" warning that the State Department had issued against me earlier for my non-violent anti-war stances. In September, thanks to a civil rights lawsuit filed on my behalf by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF), the State Department rescinded that BOLO alert for me, under which State Department agents had been ordered to stop and question me on sight.
State Department documents acquired under the Freedom of Information Act showed that the damning evidence behind that draconian (and patently unconstitutional) order was "political activism, primarily anti-war."
The proximate cause was my standing silently with my back to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Feb. 15, 2011, to protest the unconscionably violent policies she had promoted, including her vote for the Bush-Cheney war of aggression against Iraq (which she thought politically smart at the time) and her infamous suggestion during her political campaign that we could "obliterate" Iran.
In response to my silent protest, I was roughed up, cuffed, arrested, and jailed as Clinton delivered a major speech at George Washington University admonishing foreign governments not to stifle dissent. Heedless of the irony, Clinton did not miss a syllable, much less a word, as she watched me snatched directly in front of her and brutally removed. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Standing Up to War and Hillary Clinton."]
The charges were immediately dropped, since there were simply too many cameras recording what actually did happen to me. A State Department investigation into my background came up dry; but the words "political activism, primarily anti-war" were enough to get me BOLOed.
The State Department assured my pro bono lawyers at the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund that State not only had rescinded the BOLO but also had notified other law enforcement agencies that the BOLO was "non-operational." But I remained suspicious that, while the State Department's assurance may have been made in good faith, God only knows (and then only if God has the proper clearances) what other organs of state security had entered the "derogatory" information about the danger of my "political activism" into their data bases.
Had my "derog" been shared, perhaps, with the ever-proliferating number of "fusion centers" that were so effective in sharing information to track and thwart the activists of Occupy - including subversives like Quakers and Catholic Workers? However, as I reflected on the circumstances of my arrest on Oct. 30, I came to discount the possible role of the BOLO.
Taken by Surprise
As I walked up the steps to the 92nd Street Y on Oct. 30, I had no idea there would be a reprise of the treatment accorded me three-and-a-half years ago at Hillary Clinton's speech.
My friend and associate in Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) Bill Binney, a former Technical Director at the National Security Agency before he left in protest against NSA's unconstitutional eavesdropping on Americans, long since advised me to assume that I am one of several thousands subjected to post-Fourth-Amendment surveillance.
So I had taken the precaution of asking a friend, who was in no way linked to me via email or phone records, to order the ticket for me, just on the off-chance the organs of state security might learn I intended to hear Petraeus speak at the 92nd Street Y and might do something to prevent my attending.
Actually, it was pure coincidence that I happened to be in New York on the day of the Petraeus event. Months before, I had committed to teaching classes at Manhattan and Fordham universities on Oct. 30. I learned of the Petraeus event much later.
At that point, I chose what I thought would be a safe way to purchase a ticket. But I apparently failed to practice the kind of "tradecraft" in terms of limiting associations that is needed to function in today's democratic society.
How did the organs of state security learn I was coming? It is more likely to have been guilt by association than the residue from a BOLO. In short, when I travel to New York to teach, I normally email my friend Martha at Maryhouse in the Bowery - the Catholic Worker house founded by her grandmother, Dorothy Day.
If there is a free bed, I gratefully receive Catholic Worker hospitality and have a chance to enjoy the company of those who have been placed at the margins of society, as well to witness the selfless kindness of those forming authentic relationships with them.
Here's the catch. Catholic Workers are involved not only in extending hospitality but also in activism, trying, as Dorothy Day did, to make the world a less violent, more caring place. It is primarily the activism, of course, that brings scrutiny from the organs of security, but you might call it "political activism, primarily anti-war," as the State Department did.
Moreover, the Catholic Worker Movement is an international organization widely looked upon as subversive of the Establishment, and this adds to the suspicion. In recent years, many of my Catholic Worker friends have been arrested for protesting the use of drones to kill foreigners dubbed "militants," most of whom don't look like most of us.
But the targets can now include American citizens, as President Barack Obama turns the Constitution upside down and takes it upon himself to act as judge, jury and executioner. Yes, the Fifth Amendment has gone the way of the Fourth, and the First has become an endangered species. Worth protesting before it too is extinct, would you not agree?
At The Tombs
In a kind of poetic justice, it turns out my friend Martha has the same court date as I have - the morning of Dec. 8 at the New York City Criminal Court building (aka "The Tombs") at 100 Centre Street in New York, where I spent the night/morning of Oct. 30/31. She was arrested with about 100 others at a Sept. 22 action dubbed "Flood Wall Street," protesting the important role of the financial industry in facilitating air pollution and global warming.
In an aside, Martha told me that the police had as much trouble getting handcuffs on the "polar bear" sitting next to her that day as they did on Oct. 30 trying to bend my injured left shoulder back far enough to get the cuffs on me. I look forward to standing at the same dock where Martha will be defending her action which was very much in the tradition of "Grannie."
My Catholic Worker friends comfort the afflicted, while in no way shying away from afflicting the comfortable, as the saying goes. And for that, they often pay a price, including being snooped upon, in violation of the Fourth Amendment, for exercising their rights under the First.
I am not making this up: In the fall of 2010, Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine criticized the FBI for conducting "anti-terrorism" spy operations against the Catholic Worker Movement and even the Thomas Merton Center in Pittsburgh. According to Fine, spies were sent into the Merton Center to "look for international terrorists." One of the informers photographed a woman he thought was of "Middle Eastern descent" to have her checked out by "terrorism analysts."
So my possible tradecraft lapse may have been contacting my Catholic Worker friends. On Oct. 26, I sent Martha an email with the innocuous title, "Room in the Inn?" It contained the usual request for simple lodging at the Catholic Worker together with details regarding my classes at Fordham and Manhattan and the Petraeus event.
While the title and other metadata accompanying that message might seem singularly unsuspicious, eavesdroppers covering Martha's or my email addresses (or both) would have had no trouble ferreting out an email exchange following an earlier attempt to attend an event at the 92nd Street Y, three years ago.
On Sept. 8, 2011, a group of Catholic Workers, together with others - all of us with valid tickets - were summarily expelled, most of us 10 minutes before an event sponsored by the Jewish Policy Center. That event bore the title "9/11 a Decade Later: Lessons Learned and Future Challenges" and featured former Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, ex-Attorney General Michael Mukasey, and George W. Bush's press spokesman Ari Fleisher. It was moderated by neoconservative talk show host Michael Medved.
Since I was not among those subjected to Y security's preventive strike before the performance, I sat quietly for Medved's opening rant about radical, fundamentalist Muslim terrorists, but then stood up in silent witness against the right-wing invective. I was unceremoniously, violently thrown out after a mere two minutes.
More relevant here: I still have in my email inbox a message of encouragement dated Sept. 12, 2011, in which Martha reminded me that every action, "successful" or not, is important; adding, "We of the Catholic Worker are 'fools for Christ,' as the saying goes."
Only Metadata
You are perhaps thinking that the National Security Agency stores only metadata; and, if so, you would be wrong. Content is saved. So if the government wants to access the content of emails from the past, no problem.
As Bill Binney reminded me, former FBI director Robert Mueller let that particular cat out of the bag three-and-a-half years ago. In his testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee on March 30, 2011, Mueller bragged about having access to "past emails and future ones as they come in."
Binney explains that the metadata is used to access the content. And, thanks to the documents provided by Edward Snowden, we know that under NSA's PRISM operation, data is routinely collected directly from Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple (and God knows where else, again assuming God is cleared).
So my best guess is that I can blame the "subversive" activities of the Catholic Workers and the monitoring of them by the organs of state security, for my recent arrest and overnight accommodations in The Tombs.
The people at the World Can't Wait in New York, who were also aware of my plan to take in the Petraeus performance, are known to have been targets of eavesdropping, too. With the surfeit of people sorting through emails from suspicious folks, it may be that both the Catholic Workers and the World Can't Wait were both monitored - all to keep us safe, of course.
It seems the height of irony that it may have been NSA's eavesdropping that enabled the White House to get rid of Petraeus, when he was getting too big for his britches (and I allude here not only to his dalliance with Broadwell). To Bill Binney, it is clear as day that the President was ready to move against Petraeus right after Obama's re-election in November 2012.
A Final, Sad Irony
A couple of days after my arrest and jailing, I received a sympathetic email from "George" in Germany, who described himself as a national security whistleblower in his own right. George strongly suggested I ditch my Gmail account.
"Before Edward Snowden's revelations last spring," he said, "I too was using Gmail as my primary address. I was dismayed to learn that Google was an NSA PRISM partner." George strongly suggested that I switch to a more trustworthy email provider outside the U.S. and actually suggested one in particular.
Why ironic? In the years after my birth in 1939, Germany was widely considered the cutting edge on matters of eavesdropping and enhanced interrogation techniques. and most Germans didn't challenge these forms of oppression even when it touched them personally. Perhaps saddest of all, those with some pretense to moral leadership - first and foremost the Catholic and Lutheran Churches - could not find their voice. Is that history repeating itself in the U.S.?
In Defying Hitler, Sebastian Haffner's journal of his life as a lawyer in training to become a judge in Berlin in the early 1930s, the author (whose real name was Raimund Pretzel) provides an eerily reminiscent account of what ensued after Berlin's equivalent of the attacks of 9/11 - the burning of the Reichstag.
"I do not see that one can blame the majority of Germans who, in 1933, believed that the Reichstag fire was the work of the Communists. What one can blame them for, and what shows their terrible collective weakness of character ... is that this settled the matter.
"With sheepish submissiveness, the German people accepted that, as a result of the fire, each one of them lost what little personal freedom and dignity was guaranteed by the constitution, as though it followed as a necessary consequence. If the Communists had burned down the Reichstag, it was perfectly in order that the government took 'decisive measures.' ... from now on, one's telephone would be tapped, one's letters opened, and one's desk might be broken into." (pp. 121-122).
Substitute Americans for Germans, terrorists for Communists, September 11, 2001, for 1933, and give some thought to where we seem to be headed. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. warned that "there is such a thing as being too late," a quotation that, ironically, President Obama is fond of citing. It would be a good thing if we Americans woke from our lethargy before it is too late.
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Petraeus Spared Ray McGovern's Question
Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, who was arrested by New York City police on Thursday night to prevent him from attending a speech by retired Gen. and ex-CIA Director David Petraeus, told me the day before that he was planning to ask a question during the Q-and-A.
McGovern, who writes regularly for Consortiumnews.com, compared his goal in New York to his famous questioning of then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in Atlanta in 2006 when McGovern pressed Rumsfeld on false statements he had made about Iraq's WMD and ties to al-Qaeda.
Nov 01, 2014
Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, who was arrested by New York City police on Thursday night to prevent him from attending a speech by retired Gen. and ex-CIA Director David Petraeus, told me the day before that he was planning to ask a question during the Q-and-A.
McGovern, who writes regularly for Consortiumnews.com, compared his goal in New York to his famous questioning of then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in Atlanta in 2006 when McGovern pressed Rumsfeld on false statements he had made about Iraq's WMD and ties to al-Qaeda.
Screenshot of New York City police arresting ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern outside a speech by retired Gen. and ex-CIA Director David Petraeus. (Via RT.com)
Screenshot of New York City police arresting ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern outside a speech by retired Gen. and ex-CIA Director David Petraeus. (Via RT.com)
But the 75-year-old McGovern was blocked from entering the event at the 92nd Street Y, was roughly put under arrest, and was held overnight in jail. He described his ordeal in an interview with RT, saying "I was warned as soon as I got to the ticket-taker, 'Ray, you're not welcome here.'"
McGovern, who was suffering from a shoulder injury, said he was caused sharp pain by being forcefully handcuffed. "If you've seen the footage, you can see me screaming in pain as they try to pin my left wrist around behind my back," McGovern told RT.
He was hauled off to a local precinct and charged with resisting arrest, criminal trespass and disorderly conduct. He said he spent the night on a stainless steel cot.
In our conversation a day earlier, on Wednesday, McGovern said he was calling from the bus traveling between Washington and New York en route to speak at his alma mater, Fordham University. But he said he also planned to attend the Thursday speech by Petraeus, who was one of President George W. Bush's favorite generals during the Iraq War. McGovern noted that prominent neocon theorist Max Boot was moderating the Petraeus talk.
During the Iraq War under President Bush and the Afghan War under President Barack Obama, Petraeus collaborated closely with leading neoconservatives as they pushed for escalations of the two conflicts. In 2009, Petraeus was part of a successful behind-the-scenes effort by Bush holdovers to trap Obama into a "surge" of 30,000 troops into Afghanistan.
"Before Obama's decision to dispatch 30,000 troops, the Bush holdovers ... sought to hem in the President's choices by working with allies in the Washington news media and in think tanks," I wrote in 2010. "For instance, early in 2009, Petraeus personally arranged for Max Boot [a neocon on the Council on Foreign Relations], Frederick Kagan and Kimberly Kagan [two other leading neocons] to get extraordinary access during a trip to Afghanistan. ...
"Their access paid dividends for Petraeus when they penned a glowing report in the Weekly Standard about the prospects for success in Afghanistan - if only President Obama sent more troops and committed the United States to stay in the war for the long haul."
Upon their return, the three wrote: "Fears of impending disaster are hard to sustain, ... if you actually spend some time in Afghanistan, as we did recently at the invitation of General David Petraeus, chief of U.S. Central Command. ...
"Using helicopters, fixed-wing aircraft, and bone-jarring armored vehicles, we spent eight days traveling from the snow-capped peaks of Kunar province near the border with Pakistan in the east to the wind-blown deserts of Farah province in the west near the border with Iran. Along the way we talked with countless coalition soldiers, ranging from privates to a four-star general," the trio said.
A Manipulated Obama
How Obama was manipulated into the Afghan "surge" by Bush's holdovers - with the help of the neocons - was chronicled, too, in Bob Woodward's 2010 book, Obama's Wars, which revealed that Bush's old team made sure Obama was given no option other than to escalate troop levels in Afghanistan. The Bush holdovers also lobbied inside neocon-friendly media for the troop increase behind Obama's back.
Woodward's book notes that "in September 2009, Petraeus called a Washington Post columnist to say that the war would be unsuccessful if the president held back on troops. Later that month, [Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman, Adm. Mike] Mullen repeated much the same sentiment in Senate testimony, and in October, [Gen. Stanley] McChrystal asserted in a speech in London that a scaled-back effort against Afghan terrorists would not work."
This back-door campaign infuriated Obama's aides, including White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, Woodward reported. "Filling his rant with expletives, Emanuel said, 'Between the chairman [Mullen] and Petraeus, everyone's come out and publicly endorsed the notion of more troops. The president hasn't even had a chance!'" Woodward reported.
Mouse-trapped by this clever maneuvering, Obama acquiesced to the 30,000-troop "surge" although he reportedly regretted his decision almost immediately. In the end the "surge" and Petraeus's counterinsurgency strategy that went with it had little impact on the Afghan War beyond extending the carnage and adding another 1,000 or so U.S. troops to the rolls of "the fallen."
Petraeus's cozy relationship with Boot was also underscored in 2010 when the four-star general accidentally found himself in a public-relations kerfuffle because some of his prepared testimony to Congress had contained a mild criticism of Israel.
Concerned that his standing in Official Washington might be jeopardized if he were deemed "anti-Israel," Petraeus begged Boot to help him head off the controversy. The e-mails from Petraeus to Boot revealed Petraeus renouncing his own testimony in March 2010 because it included the observation that "the enduring hostilities between Israel and some of its neighbors present distinct challenges to our ability to advance our interests" in the Mideast.
Petraeus's testimony had continued, "Israeli-Palestinian tensions often flare into violence and large-scale armed confrontations. The conflict foments anti-American sentiment, due to a perception of U.S. favoritism for Israel. ... Meanwhile, al-Qaeda and other militant groups exploit that anger to mobilize support."
Running Scared
Though the testimony was obviously true, many neocons regard any suggestion that Israeli intransigence on Palestinian peace talks contributed to the dangers faced by American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan - or by the U.S. public from acts of terrorism at home - as a "blood libel" against Israel.
So, when Petraeus's testimony began getting traction on the Internet, the general turned to Boot at the high-powered Council on Foreign Relations, and began backtracking on the testimony. "As you know, I didn't say that," Petraeus said, according to one e-mail to Boot timed off at 2:27 p.m., March 18, 2010. "It's in a written submission for the record."
In other words, Petraeus was saying the comments were only in his formal testimony submitted to the Senate Armed Services Committee and were not repeated by him in his brief oral opening statement. However, written testimony is treated as part of the official record at congressional hearings with no meaningful distinction from oral testimony.
In another e-mail, as Petraeus solicited Boot's help in tamping down any controversy over the Israeli remarks, the general ended the message with a military "Roger" and a sideways happy face, made from a colon, a dash and a closed parenthesis, ":-)".
The e-mails were made public by James Morris, who runs a Web site called "Neocon Zionist Threat to America." He said he apparently got them by accident when he sent a March 19 e-mail congratulating Petraeus for his testimony and Petraeus responded by forwarding one of Boot's blog posts that knocked down the story of the general's implicit criticism of Israel.
Petraeus forwarded Boot's blog item, entitled "A Lie: David Petraeus, Anti-Israel," which had been posted at the Commentary magazine site at 3:11 p.m. on March 18. However, Petraeus apparently forgot to delete some of the other exchanges between him and Boot at the bottom of the e-mail.
McGovern was aware of this history and told me that he thought an opportunity to question Petraeus in such a setting with Boot might prove illuminating. After his arrest and release, McGovern told RT that he had planned to ask Petraeus, who was responsible for training the Iraqi army, about his failure to train those forces sufficiently to stand up to a recent offensive by the Islamic State.
"Will you come out of retirement and try to do it better this time to train the Iraqi forces?" McGovern said, describing his intended question.
Petraeus retired from the U.S. Army in 2011 to become the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, which he left in disgrace in November 2012 after revelations that he had an extramarital affair with an admiring female biographer.
"This is no saint. This is actually no great strategist," McGovern said of Petraeus. "He's an embarrassment to the U.S. Army in which I used to be proud to have served."
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Former CIA Analyst Ray McGovern Arrested While Trying to Attend David Petraeus Event in New York
Former CIA analyst and activist Ray McGovern was arrested as he attempted to attend an event in New York City featuring former CIA director and retired military general, David Petraeus. He was charged with resisting arrest, criminal trespass and disorderly conduct.
At 92nd Street Y, which describes itself as a "world-class cultural and community center," Petraeus was to appear with John Nagl, who recently wrote a book, Knife Fights about being an army tank commander in the Gulf War of 1991. Neoconservative commentator Max Boot was to join them as well.
Oct 31, 2014
Former CIA analyst and activist Ray McGovern was arrested as he attempted to attend an event in New York City featuring former CIA director and retired military general, David Petraeus. He was charged with resisting arrest, criminal trespass and disorderly conduct.
At 92nd Street Y, which describes itself as a "world-class cultural and community center," Petraeus was to appear with John Nagl, who recently wrote a book, Knife Fights about being an army tank commander in the Gulf War of 1991. Neoconservative commentator Max Boot was to join them as well.
Activists from World Can't Wait, the Granny Peace Brigade, Brooklyn for Peace and a chapter of Veterans for Peace called on people to protest. Some tickets, which cost $45 each, were bought so people could attend the event and potentially participate in a question and answer portion of the event.
World Can't Wait activist Stephanie Rugoff said a guard stopped McGovern. "Ray, you're not going in," the guard said.
McGovern, who is 74 years-old, told the guards something to the effect that the Bill of Rights gave him the right to go into the event. McGovern had a ticket too. But the guards would not let him pass and soon New York police officers surrounded him.
Richard Marini, also an activist with World Can't Wait, approached the entrance to the 92nd Street Y Center and saw McGovern, who is 74-years-old, being apprehended.
According to Marini, his arms were twisted tightly behind his back and he was in immense pain while they were dragging him to the police car. He was squeezed into the back of a patrol car and taken to the 67th Street station.
Rugoff heard him screaming. He was shouting about how they were hurting his shoulder. He asked the officers to stop twisting it so they did not aggravate his shoulder and possibly re-injure it.
"I had a ticket as well," Marini explained. "They recognized me as well and called me by my name, my first name. They seemed to know who people were."
All of this happened just before 7:30 pm, when the event had been scheduled to start. Although Marini had stood up in a previous event and interrupted conversation, he said he planned to wait until the question and answer session to engage in any kind of protest. That was McGovern's plan too.
Marini recalled a previous occasion at the 92nd Street Y Center where security came and ejected everyone before the event started. So, authorities have managed to figure out who is coming to protest.
The world-class community center has had multiple events featuring Petraeus. It brings in security and the NYPD to effectively protect him from dissent.
After McGovern was arrested, Rugoff explained that people did not think the center would let anyone in. They also wanted to go to the precinct and check on McGovern instead of staying for the event.
"We got to the police station, and they were still dragging Ray around. His watch strap was broken and there was some blood on his wrist," Rugoff stated.
McGovern was transferred to the 100 Centre Street police station and put in central booking. He is expected to be arraigned in the late morning or early afternoon.
Previously, McGovern was placed on the State Department's Diplomatic Security "Be On the Look Out" (BOLO) list. He turned his back on Hillary Clinton at event at George Washington University in 2011.
"University cops grabbed McGovern in a headlock and by his arms and dragged him out of the auditorium by force, their actions directed from the side by a man whose name is redacted from public records," according to Peter Van Buren. "Photos of the then-71 year old McGovern taken at the time of his arrest show the multiple bruises and contusions he suffered while being arrested. He was secured to a metal chair with two sets of handcuffs. McGovern was at first refused medical care for the bleeding caused by the handcuffs."
The disorderly conduct charges he faced were eventually dropped, as it was found he committed no crime. McGovern obtained documents through the Freedom of Information Act that showed he had been investigated by the State Department, which was interested in his "political beliefs, activities, statements and associations." He sued the State Department for violating his First Amendment rights and won an injunction against the State Department in September to halt the "Be On the Look Out" alerts for McGovern.
How security or the NYPD knew McGovern and the other activists by name and that they would be at the event is unknown at the moment. Whether an alert system like the alerts used by the State Department was involved to tip off security to their presence is also unknown as well.
What matters is individuals bought $45 tickets to an event and were effectively denied entry to protect Petraeus and Nagl from having to face possible questions that might challenge their military backgrounds and defense or involvement in war crimes previously committed by US military forces.
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Who Violated Ukraine's Sovereignty?
Actions in Ukraine Erode Guarantees of 1994 Budapest Agreement
Jun 29, 2014
Did Russia's annexation of Crimea on March violate the 1994 Budapest agreement among Ukraine, Russia, Great Britain and the U.S.? Specifically, in Paragraph One, Ukraine agreed to remove all nuclear weapons from its territory in return for a commitment by Russia, Britain and the U.S. "to respect the independence and sovereignty and existing borders of Ukraine?"
I'm no lawyer, but I can read the words. And, taken literally, the answer seems to be Yes - despite a host of extenuating circumstances that can be adduced to explain why Crimea rejoined Russia, including the alarm among Crimean leaders over the unconstitutional ouster of Ukraine's elected president and the Russian government's fear about the possible berthing of NATO's nuclear-missile warships at the naval base at Sebastopol.
But there's also the item in Paragraph Three in which Russia, the UK, and the U.S. also commit "to refrain from economic coercion designed to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by the Ukraine of the rights inherent in its sovereignty."
Might the EU's take-it-or-leave-it proposal last fall offering Ukraine "associate" status in return for draconian economic austerity imposed on the Ukrainian people come under the rubric of the "economic coercion" prohibited at Budapest? An arguable Yes, it seems to me.
Some will try to dismiss President Viktor Yanukovych's ill-fated rejection of these International Monetary Fund demands to make the hard lives of average Ukrainians even harder as "history," now that the EU and Ukraine's replacement President Petro Poroshenko signed on June 27 that "associate" status agreement - the same agreement that Yanukovich rejected in favor of what appeared to be a better deal from Russia.
Was Yanukovich also under pressure from Moscow to maintain Ukraine's historic, cultural and economic ties to Russia? Of course. Putin reportedly weighed in heavily with Yanukovich last October and early November when U.S. and EU diplomats were pressuring the Ukrainian president as well.
But did Yanukovich expect to be overthrown if he opted for Moscow's offer? If he did not, he sorely underestimated what $5 billion in U.S. "democracy promotion" can buy. After Yanukovych's decision, American neoconservatives - the likes of National Endowment for Democracy President Carl Gershman and Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland - pulled out all the stops to enable Ukraine to fulfill what Nuland called its "European aspirations."
The central problem confronting Ukraine, however, was not whether it leaned toward Europe or toward Russia. It was that after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, some ruthless businessmen used their insider connections to snap up (or "privatize") the natural and industrial resources of the country. These handful of "oligarchs" then corrupted the political process, buying off politicians from both pro-EU and pro-Moscow perspectives.
Last fall, Yanukovych, who was elected from a political base in the more industrial Russian-ethnic east, was looking for how to bail Ukraine out of the financial and economic crisis that it was facing amid widespread unemployment and the hangover from the Great Recession.
In a layman's way of understanding what happened in Ukraine, Yanukovych issued what in the consulting world is called a Request for Proposal (RFP), i.e., a feeler to see who could offer the most promising plan for helping Ukraine escape insolvency. After initially tilting toward the EU proposal (before he learned of its draconian IMF small print), he later shifted to the less onerous offer from Russia.
In the world of contractors and RFPs, there are orderly procedures for firms whose bids are turned down to contest the selection of the eventual winner. But I know of no case where one of the losing firms turned around and violently removed the leadership of the RFP-issuing institution, installed new leadership and got the contract.
Abortive Feb. 21 Agreement
And, in assessing which side - the U.S./EU or Russia - is in the wrong on Ukraine, there was also the agreement, facilitated on Feb. 21 by the foreign ministers of Poland, Germany and France, in which then-President Yanukovich acceded to demands from the opposition by accepting limits on his powers and agreeing to early elections to vote him out of office.
Yanukovych also fatefully agreed to pull back the police, opening the way for right-wing militias, including neo-Nazis, to seize government buildings and force Yanukovych and his government officials to flee for their lives. With these paramilitary forces patrolling government offices, what was left of the Parliament voted to replace Yanukovych and install a new regime, giving four ministries to the far right and the neo-Nazis in recognition of their crucial role.
As the U.S. and the EU hailed the "legitimacy" of this new regime -- with Nuland's hand-picked leader Arseniy Yatsenyuk appointed as the new prime minister - the Western "mainstream media" quickly forgot the Feb. 21 agreement (surprise, surprise!). But Russian President Vladimir Putin had a personal representative there, Russian Human Rights Commissioner Vladimir Lukin.
Yet, because the MSM was already parading Putin (and Yanukovych) around the op-ed pages and talks shows as the black-hatted villains of the Ukraine saga, few Americans got to hear Putin's perception of what happened, as he explained at a Moscow press conference ten days after Yanukovich was overthrown:
"First of all, my assessment of what happened in Kiev and in Ukraine in general. ... This was an unconstitutional takeover, an armed seizure of power. Does anyone question this? Nobody does. ... The question is why this was done? ...
"President Yanukovich, through the mediation of the foreign ministers of three European countries - Poland, Germany and France - and in the presence of my representative signed an agreement with the opposition on Feb. 21. I would like to stress that under that agreement (I am not saying this was good or bad, just stating the fact) Mr. Yanukovich actually handed over power. He agreed to all the opposition's demands: he agreed to early parliamentary elections, to early presidential elections, and to return to the 2004 Constitution, as demanded by the opposition.
"He gave a positive response to our request, the request of western countries and, first of all, of the opposition not to use force. ... he issued orders to withdraw all police forces from the capital, and they complied. He went to Kharkov to attend an event, and as soon as he left, instead of releasing the occupied administrative buildings, they [the opposition] immediately occupied the President's residence and the Government building - all that instead of acting on the agreement.
"I ask myself, what was the purpose of all this? ... He had in fact given up his power already; and as I believe, as I told him, he had no chance of being re-elected. ... What was the purpose of all those illegal, unconstitutional actions, why did they have to create this chaos in the country? Armed and masked militants are still roaming the streets of Kiev. ...
"If you want, I can tell you even more. He [Yanukovich] called me on the phone and I told him not to do it. I said, 'You will have anarchy, you will have chaos in the capital. Think about the people.' But he did it anyway. And as soon as he did it, his office was seized, and that of the government, and the chaos I had warned him about and which continues to this day, erupted."
If Putin's account of how the Feb. 21 agreement was violated the very next day is accurate, and by almost all indications it is, then we have the anatomy of an undisguised putsch - an unconstitutional overthrow of a duly elected president of a sovereign state. The apparent aim, to install a government friendlier to the EU, is relevant but not essential here. The fact of the coup is essential.
Guaranteeing Ukraine's Sovereignty
Friday's lead editorial in the neocon flagship Washington Post, "Potemkin drawdown: The West must hold Russia to a real withdrawal from Ukraine," charged that "the rebellion in the east is manufactured by Russia to undermine Ukraine's sovereignty. The United States and Britain guaranteed support for that sovereignty in 1994 when Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons."
That claim brought my thoughts back to a conference of distinguished scholars at the U.S.-Russia Forum in the Hart Senate office building on June 16. With Professors Stephen Cohen and Robert Legvold presenting, it was the most sensible discussion of the Ukraine imbroglio that I have witnessed to date.
The point was made that Russia had violated the Budapest agreement in annexing Ukraine. But were the Russians the only culprits? What about the rest of the story? Russia, the UK and the U.S. all pledged "to respect the independence and sovereignty and existing borders of Ukraine?" Okay. Gotcha on Putin considering the "existing borders."
But what about the political destabilization supported by the U.S. government, including the $5 billion that Assistant Secretary of State Nuland publicly announced had been invested in Ukraine's "European aspirations" - or the scores of projects financed by the U.S.-funded National Endowment for Democracy, training activists, supporting "journalists" and organizing business and political groups.
During the crisis, U.S. officials even showed up in Kiev's Maidan square to urge on the protesters seeking to overthrow Yanukovych. Sen. John McCain gave a speech on a platform of the right-wing Svoboda party under a banner hailing the late Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera. Nuland went so far as to pass out cookies to the demonstrators and discuss with the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine who should be take over after Yanukovych was ousted.
How does this overt and covert interference square with the Budapest pledge "to respect the independence and sovereignty ... of Ukraine?" And how do the strong-arm tactics of the EU square with the commitment "to refrain from economic coercion designed to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by the Ukraine of the rights inherent in its sovereignty?"
Luckily, at the U.S.-Russia Forum, I was able to go first during the Q and A.
I said: "I have a brief question having to do with the Budapest agreement and also in the perspective of Vladimir Putin being more in a reactive mode than anything else. He's been accused, of course, of violating that agreement because of the Crimea [annexation].
"I'm wondering, if you look at the putsch, if you look at the coup d'etat of Feb. 22nd, supported to the tune of $5 billion by outside forces over the course of several years, of course, could that not also be regarded as a violation of the Budapest memorandum?"
Columbia University Professor Legvold's answer was, I think, instructive - instinctive, perhaps. His first thought was to associate my point with an argument the Russians have made. For many listeners, that might put me in the category of some kind of apologist for Putin. I know Legvold well enough to doubt this was his intent. But still: Is Putin's account of the Feb. 21-22 events to be dismissed out of hand simply because it is from Putin?
The main takeaway for me from the forum was the Cohen-Legvold common assertion that we have already entered a New Cold War. Cohen was very direct in exposing the extraordinary abuse regularly accorded to scholars and specialists who try to discern and explain honestly Moscow's point of view.
Legvold suggested it would be "naive" not to recognize that the new Cold War is already upon us, that it will be "immensely expensive and immensely dangerous," and that all of us need to do whatever we can to make it "short and shallow."
That endeavor of averting the costs and the risks of Cold War II might well start with a truthful narrative of what happened, not the one-sided account that the American people have been seeing and hearing in the U.S. media.
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