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2005-07-01 Fifth Column
Questionable "Intelligence"
By Jacob Laksin
There are some criticisms of the Bush administration even Howard Dean declines to endorse. A rare example of the form was uttered on June 16 by Ray McGovern, an ex-CIA analyst who since his 1990 retirement from the agency has served as a full-time foot soldier in the army of antiwar left. The occasion was a mock hearing of the Judiciary Committee. Set up by one of the Iraq war’s most strident detractors, Rep. John Conyers Jr., D-MI, as a publicity-grabbing protest against the war, the stunt quickly backfired when McGovern, in his own distinctive fashion, laid out his objections to Operation Iraqi Freedom. In McGovern’s view, the sinister motivations for the war could be explained by the axiom O.I.L.: “O for Oil, I for Israel, and L for leveraging our land bases.”

Israel in particular concentrated his interest. Intolerant of the notion that Israel could be seen as America’s ally, McGovern contended that by toppling Saddam Hussein, the Bush administration was merely doing the dirty work of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. As evidence, McGovern was not above retailing anti-Israel conspiracy theories. Hence he claimed, inter alia, that an Israeli company had advanced warning of the 9/11 attacks—an accusation echoed in literature passed out by Democratic activists at the hearing. No immediate objections were raised, but McGovern’s conspiratorial musing did earn him the praise of at least one attendee, the notoriously anti-Semitic Rep. James P. Moran Jr., D-VA, who praised the former CIA man for his “candid” remarks. McGovern, for his part, sought to cast himself as a lone voice for sanity in an American political culture blind to the evils of the Middle East’s lone democratic country. “Israel is not allowed to be brought up in polite conversation,” he complained.



Continued from Page 2

A similar attitude animates the group that McGovern founded in the lead-up to the Iraq war, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). Its comically exaggerated claims to the status of a “movement” quite apart, VIPS is a marginal antiwar group of 35 retired and resigned intelligence has-beens. Between 2003 and 2005, VIPS fired off some eleven open letters—presumptuously addressed to President Bush and other administration higher-ups—assailing, with varying degrees of sobriety, the administration’s case for war.



There was one recurring theme: the allegedly manipulative influence of Israel on American foreign policy. Thus, in a February 2003 letter, published on the left-wing website Common Dreams, VIPS made the case that the issues surrounding the war “are far more far-reaching-and complicated-than ‘UN v. Saddam Hussein.’” The more “complicated” explanation favored by VIPS was that all the turmoil of the Middle East—from terrorism generally to the intransigence of Saddam Hussein specifically—could be pinned squarely on Israel. Affecting to speak to President Bush, the VIPS letter stated:

It is widely known that you have a uniquely close relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. This presents a strong disincentive to those who might otherwise warn you that Israel's continuing encroachment on Arab territories, its oppression of the Palestinian people, and its pre-emptive attack on Iraq in 1981 are among the root causes not only of terrorism, but of Saddam Hussein's felt need to develop the means to deter further Israeli attacks.

This line of argument resounded with several VIPS members, among them the husband and wife team of Kathleen and William Christison. Former CIA analysts, the Christinson’s (who’ve since parted ways with VIPS) unsuccessfully attempted to travel to Iraq prior to the war to voice their opposition to “a new colonialism in the [Middle East], dominated by…the U.S. and Israel.”



But the most enthusiastic advocate of anti-Israel conspiracies was Ray McGovern. In a letter to the Christian Science Monitor just days after the 9-11 attacks, McGovern berated Americans for failing to “understand why so many of [the Middle East’s] people are willing to commit terrorist acts against the US,” and called for a “US approach that is less biased toward our Israeli friends.” And he was just getting started. “The war on Iraq was just as much prompted by the strategic objectives of the state of Israel as it was the strategic objectives of the United States,” he explained in an interview with the left-wing Sojourners magazine, ominously expressing his amazement at the “confluence of objectives” between American and Israeli policy makers. Writing in January 2003 in the Miami Herald, McGovern claimed that Israeli officials were “egging Bush on” to levy war against Iraq—all part of their master plan to strengthen their “ability to work their will in the lands seized from the Arabs in 1967 and 1973.” On yet another occasion, McGovern wondered: “Why is it that the state of Israel has such pervasive influence over our body politic?”

That Israel pulls the strings of American foreign policy is not the only conspiracy theory propounded by McGovern. While maintaining that the Bush administration manipulated intelligence information to justify the war against Iraq, McGovern has allowed for the possibility that WMD may be found in Iraq. But he hastens to add that any weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq will likely have been “planted” by American forces. “Some of my colleagues are virtually certain that there will be some weapons of mass destruction found, even though they might have to be planted,” he told Agence French Presse in April of 2003, darkly insisting that “that would justify the charge of a threat against the U.S. or anyone else.” McGovern dusted off the same claim for a June 2003 interview with the left-wing site Truthout.org. Granting the implausibility of that his assertion “that the US wants to be able to plant weapons of mass destruction in Iraq,” he nonetheless proceeded to justify it in the following manner:


Now, most people will say, ‘Come on, McGovern. How are you going to get a SCUD in there without everyone seeing it?’ It doesn’t have to be a SCUD. It can be the kind of little vile vial that Colin Powell held up on the 5th of February. You put a couple of those in a GI’s pocket, and you swear him to secrecy, and you have him go bury them out in the desert. You discover it ten days later, and President Bush, with more credibility than he could with those trailers will say, ‘Ha! We’ve found the weapons of mass destruction.’ I think that’s a possibility, a real possibility.



Yet another tack taken by McGovern and VIPS in their campaign to discredit the Iraq war was exhorting intelligence personnel to leak classified information. This was the subject of a March 2003 VIPS memorandum, which urged CIA employees to break the law by releasing any information that might lend authority to antiwar activists’ assertions that the administration was doctoring intelligence to justify the war against Iraq. In defense of this position, McGovern insisted that it was necessary to counterbalance the administration’s “cooked” intelligence—a matter on which, as a CIA spokesman pointed out, the retired McGovern, whose 27-years in the CIA were spent studying Soviet foreign policy, was hardly an expert. (Against this, McGovern has taken to offering a less than persuasive rebuttal. With the internet at his disposal, McGovern explained to Mother Jones in March of 2004, he is as informed as any intelligence operative poring over secret transcripts: “With the incredible amount of information available on the Internet, I can by ten o'clock in the morning, be morally certain that I have 80 to 90 percent of the information that's available on a given subject.”)



McGovern was still making overtures to would-be whistleblowers in September of 2004, now as a member of the “Truth-Telling Coalition Appeal,” a new antiwar group that included Daniel Ellsberg, the Rand analyst who leaked the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam War. An open letter issued by the group, and signed by McGovern, demanded that CIA analysts leak communications intelligence and nuclear data, and, perhaps more actionably, urged them to disclose the identity of US intelligence operatives. While acknowledging that it was calling on them to commit a crime, the letter explained that nothing short of outright lawbreaking was adequate to counter an “administration [that] has stretched existing criminal laws to cover other disclosures in ways never contemplated by Congress.”



Pronouncements such as these have made McGovern a darling of the antiwar media and a reliable ally of antiwar politicians. It hasn’t diminished McGovern’s appeal to the antiwar left that he enjoys a reputation as a disaffected political conservative—a reputation assiduously cultivated by McGovern himself. Now a regular on the lecture circuit, McGovern seldom neglects to flash his credentials as a former CIA briefer of the first President Bush. He has even suggested, implausibly, that he has the former president’s ear. For instance, during a September 2003 appearance on far-left radio program Democracy Now, McGovern insinuated that the former president referred to the architects of the second Iraq war as “the crazies.” Pressed by host Amy Goodman whether these were really the former president’s views, McGovern beat a hasty retreat, sputtering about a “certain delicacy” that he suddenly felt compelled to respect.



Nor have his supposedly conservative inclinations prevented McGovern from peddling his flagrantly conspiratorial views and inciting intelligence analysts to criminality for the benefit of college audiences. Far from atypical was a September 2004 appearance at the University of South Florida, whereat he speculated that the Bush administration might engineer a pre-election terrorist attack on American soil so as not to cede power: “There might be a real or staged terrorist attack in order to postpone the elections,” McGovern said. McGovern did not fail to invoke his favorite acronym: “O is for oil, I is for Israel and L is for logistics, as in when we have Iraq we have a foothold and a number of bases strategically placed in the Middle East so we can be in control over there and also to protect Israel.”



It is precisely those views that antiwar Democrats from Howard Dean to John Conyers rushed to condemn in the aftermath of last week’s faux hearing. Conyers professed to be especially outraged: “I do not agree with, support, or condone any comments asserting Israeli control over U.S. policy, and I find any allegation that Israel is trying to dominate the world or had anything to do with the September 11 tragedy disgusting and offensive,” he wrote in a fuming letter to the Washington Post. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Conyers did not address the more relevant question: Why, given McGovern’s grotesque rhetorical record, had Democrats invited him in the first place?
Posted by anonymous5089 2005-07-01 08:14|| || Front Page|| [11131 views since 2007-05-07]  Top

#1 Of particular note is the "questionable intelligence" of the lying asshole McGovern (instant flashback attached), those who squeal with glee when it speaks, and those who report it as fact.

Whither Sedition?
Posted by .com 2005-07-01 12:43||   2005-07-01 12:43|| Front Page Top

#2 Lucky for them the UN made it illegal to import those hanging trees.
Posted by 2b 2005-07-01 12:44||   2005-07-01 12:44|| Front Page Top

#3 Alltogether now. Wiggle your fingers..roll your eyes and in your best condescending tone repeat, Go tell the families of both the 911 victims and soldiers killed in combat about your unpatiotic anti-semitic conspiracy theories.
Everyone knows to critcize any past or present policy decisions as a possible motivation simply reassigns the blame on us. Get it straight...It doesnt matter what we do the "Evil-Doers" hate our freedom.
Dont hate us because were beautiful.
Posted by DepotGuy 2005-07-01 12:45||   2005-07-01 12:45|| Front Page Top

#4 LOL!
Posted by Shipman 2005-07-01 15:49||   2005-07-01 15:49|| Front Page Top

#5 Sounds like McGovern was in the (very) Counter Intelligence arena.
Posted by Xbalanke 2005-07-01 16:30||   2005-07-01 16:30|| Front Page Top

#6 Xbalanke - Yeah, the only function this mope could perform in an intelligence organization would be as a negative example.
Posted by Darth VAda 2005-07-01 20:30||   2005-07-01 20:30|| Front Page Top

03:23 Besoeker
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