Ray McGovern on Loud and Clear (09/02/2016)

Supplemental document for: "Theory that Roger Stone's back channel to Wikileaks was Randy Credico", link: https://wakelet.com/wake/2d352ae9-febe-44a1-a7bb-51674a2e4bf5

Ray McGovern on "Loud and Clear". Broadcast date: September 2, 2016.

File link: https://sputniknews.com/radio_loud_and_clear/201609021044870677-clinton-beats-the-drums-of-war-is-this-the-real-hillary/

Excerpt runs from 1:28 to 16:53.

BRIAN BECKER
But first we turn to Hillary Clinton's speech, in Cincinnati, we are talking with Ray McGovern, he is with Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, or VIPS, he also has a website, Ray McGovern dot com, he is a former CIA analyst, and at one time, the presidential briefer for the CIA. Welcome back, Ray McGovern.

RAY MCGOVERN
Thank you, Brian.

BECKER
I mean, Hillary Clinton's speech was, I dunno, bombastic? maybe. A provocation? Maybe. Very hardcore, very hawkish, I mean, she was out-Trumping Trump. She was- She sounded like Ronald Reagan to me, when he almost went to war with the Soviet Union, thirty plus years ago. Talk about that speech.

MCGOVERN
Well, actually, Brian, if I could refer to another speech, by Dick Cheney. [laughs] Exactly fourteen years ago, at a similar venue, this was the Veterans for Foreign Wars, where he created the terms of reference for the fraudulent intelligence, justifying the attack on Iraq. That was not in Cincinnati, that was in Nashville. But it's the 26th of August, 2002, and what Hillary Clinton here, is saying, before the Veterans [of] Foreign Wars, or American Legion, in this case, is very simple, very similar, this time it's Russia that's being bashed, this time it's Russia that's being criticized for everything under the moon.

BECKER
Let me read a little bit of the speech, Ray, that she made in Cincinnati. "Let's modernize our army, our marines, our navy, our air force, our coast guard, we need to respond to evolving threats from states like Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea. From networks, criminal and terrorist, like ISIS. We need a military that's ready and agile so that we can meet the full range of threats," and then she goes on, and says, "Russia has been hacking the United States." She said, "Russia has been hacking into a lot of things. China hacked into a lot of things. Russia even hacked into the Democratic National Committee, maybe even some state election systems, so we've got to step up our game. Make sure that we are well defended and be able to take the fight to those who go after us," and then she went on to say, Ray McGovern, that a cyber attack like the one she's attributing to Russia, which, by the way, the FBI and the Justice Department refuse, and have categorically refused to attribute to Russia, so far, and maybe never will, there's no evidence provided. She said, "that has to be treated in the future as a direct military strike against the United States, and we have to respond in kind, and those who carry out those kinds of attacks will pay the consequences." I mean, it sounded like a war speech.

MCGOVERN
Well, is she tough? Or what? Huh? This reminds me of before Iraq. When she sang the same tune. It's really giving hypocrisy a bad name, in this sense. When she and her Democratic National Committee colleague, were caught redhanded by...not a hack, by a leak. Now, my friends at NSA, alumni, suggest it was a leak from one of their colleagues, that gave it to Wikileaks, Julian Assange. So, it wasn't a hack. It was a leak. What did it show? Well, it showed, in essence, the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton stole the nomination from Bernie Sanders. Clear as can be. Now, what did they decide to do? Well, somebody said, how are we going to explain this?

BECKER
Because that's on the eve of the convention.

MCGOVERN
Yeah! It's just two days before the convention, and somebody said, "Well, I know what we'll do. We'll blame it on Russia." And somebody else said, "It wasn't Russia, really, it was Julian Assange." "Well, let's make Julian Assange a tool- yeah, that's what we'll do, a tool of Russia, and then-" "Yeah, but what would be the motivation?" "Well, we could say that Mr. Putin wants Donald Trump to be president. And therefore, he's criticizing, or he's trying to blacken Hillary Clinton." And you know what, Brian? It worked like a charm. They got the mainstream media's so-called earnest and- And there was not another word about how Hillary stole the election from Bernie San- Stole the nomination from Bernie Sanders. All it was [inaudible] on Mr. Putin, the Russians, the Russians, and, as you say, when the Director of National Intelligence was asked, you know, "What evidence do you have that the Russians did this kind of hacking," or whatever, he said, "Well, you know, this is a lot of hyperventilating." His word.

BECKER
That's amazing. Ray McGovern, yesterday, the front page of the New York Times has this great big article, entitled, "How Russia Often Benefits When Julian Assange Reveals The West's Secrets", with a big picture of Assange looking out the window from the Ecuadorian embassy. But then the first sentence says, "American officials say Mr. Assange and Wikileaks probably have no direct ties to Russian intelligence services." But the headline, which is what the people see, completely goes against the first sentence, and makes it seem as an accomplished , understood, and accepted fact, that Wikileaks is in fact a proxy for Russian intelligence.

MCGOVERN
Well, that's right, Brian. If this weren't so serious, it would be the butt of late night comedy. You read one sentence, "American officials say Mr. Assange and Wikileaks probably have no direct ties to Russian intelligence services, but-", next sentence says, "but the agendas of Wikileaks and the Kremlin, often have dovetailed." Well, that's true. That's true. And why is it true? Because what Wikileaks has exposed has been documentary evidence, mostly, of U.S. policy. For example, one of my favorite examples, is the cable that was written from Moscow, on the first of February 2008. Now, if I've seen one cable from [an] embassy in Moscow, I've seen about five thousand, okay? This is genuine. And what it reports is that the Russian Foreign Minister called our ambassador, "That there are rumors, they're going to try to get Georgia and Ukraine into NATO. Do you know what 'nyet' means, Mr. Ambassador?" [laughs] Ambassador [Bill] Burns said, "Yeah, I think I know." And so, [Sergey] Lavrov says, "Nyet means nyet. Because if you try that, for example, in the Ukraine, this could be a civil war. And we'll have to decide whether we have to intervene. So, please: report back to Washington, nyet means nyet." And indeed, ambassador Burns made it straight. The title of the cable was "Nyet means nyet: Russia's red line on Ukraine and NATO". And what happened next? That was the first of February 2008. Two months later, Bucharest, 3rd of April, 2008, NATO decided at a summit, Ukraine and Georgia would become members of NATO. K? Now, what does that show? That shows that we're acting out of this hubris, where we could do whatever we wanted. And sure enough, early in 2014, we mounted a coup, in Kiev, on Russia's doorstep, and if American policymakers did not know what to expect, in terms of Russia defending its national interest, it was sorely, sorely mistaken. And we saw what happened, and now it's being used as a cudgel, as though U.S.- as though Russia was responsible.

BECKER
Ray McGovern, let me ask you though, will it get worse, will it get worse if Hillary Clinton becomes president? And I want to actually get your views of it, because you've been paying careful attention not only to big geopolitics, geostrategic politics, the politics of diplomacy and war, but also to these personalities, and even though we're dealing with systems and patterns and institutions of power, personalities can make a difference. And I want to ask you, really, about who Hillary Clinton really is? Because obviously she's flipflopped on some positions, but who is she really? When I was talking to some poeple in media the other day, they said she's just doing this, just talking like this, so war-like against Russia, as part of the campaign to paint Trump as Putin's Manchurian candidate. Or is this something greater, what will it be like if she were to become president? Now, she probably will be the president, she has the support of almost all the neo-conservatives. Robert Kagan, who is the theoretical anchor, if one can call it that, for neo-conservatism, and who's married to Victoria Nuland. Hillary Clinton, as one of her first acts as Secretary of State, appointed Victoria Nuland as her spokesperson, and she had been, Victoria, been Dick Cheney's spokesperson, during the George W. Bush administration. She's got the support of 150 Republican elite foreign policy experts, and she's talking like this, and, of course, there's Libya, and there's the no fly zone that she wants in Syria. Who is Hillary Clinton, and how dangerous is it?

MCGOVERN
Well Brian, I think the most telling thing I've seen in the last few days is Paul Wolfowitz has endorsed heavily Hillary Clinton, he, of course, one of the main authors of the escapade in attacking Iraq, and dismembering and destroying that country. Obama himself, when asked by CNN, you know, if you had a do-over, if they gave you a mulligan, is there anything you would do differently? And he said, "Well yeah, Libya. You know, nobody planned for day two in Libya." And, of course, as you and I know, Brian, Libya is a disaster area now. Well, who was supposed to plan day two? It was Hillary Clinton. It was the Secretary of State. And she was the power behind this whole move against the will of the Secretary of Defense, and most of the people in Obama's entourage. So, this is a measure of how she proceeds without listening to her Secretary of Defense, it's sortof in the model of Madeleine Albright, famously asked Chief of Staff Colin Powell one time,
"What do you have that fabulous military for, if you're not going to use it?" You know? So, this is really tough guy, tough gal-ism. And when she says, as she did, that she's going to invite Benjamin Netanyahu into the White House on her first or second day, that bothers me greatly. Because if you look at Syria, for example, the only way you can explain what the U.S. has been doing in Syria for five years is because Israel wants Syria to be a basket case and indeed, U.S. policy has achieved that aim.

BECKER
We're talking with Ray McGovern, he is a former CIA analyst, a presidential briefer, he has also got a website, Ray McGovern dot com. Ray, one of the things that was noteworthy about this extreme militaristic speech by Hillary Clinton, was the return to the language of American exceptionalism. The indispensable nation. Of course, all around the world, when people hear the term "American exceptionalism", they say that means you're special, you're better, we're less, we're not special. In other words, it's interpreted by leaders, people and leaders, all around the world, as being arrogant and chauvinistic. But that was, again, her theme, along with all of this, let's go to war against Russia, China, North Korea, blahblahblah.

MCGOVERN
Well, Brian, this bothers me greatly. Now, it's bad enough to talk about being the exceptional nation, but the indispensable nation? I mean, what's the antonym, what's the opposite of indispensable? Well, I think it's dispensable. And so, by definition, all other countries are dispensable.

BECKER
Excellent point.

MCGOVERN
Yeah. And it means, sortof, that we don't really have to obey laws, international laws. As one of the neo-cons said, "Well, sometimes you have to act against the law to protect your interests." That was Richard Perle, after Iraq. And, you're the example we give? Who knows that ten days ago, Turkey invaded Syria? Now, that used to be against international law, people used to frown on people invading other countries. But now: not anymore. Now, what Hillary is doing here in the speech, is trying to blacken, blacken Donald Trump. You know why? Because she says, "You know, he criticized American exceptionalism. He said, and I quote, "There in Russia, they don't want to hear that America's exceptional." Well, maybe they don't want to hear it, but that doesn't mean it ain't true, it isn't true." Well, you know, what I'm recalling here is, is something I just researched. Three years ago, exactly three years ago, Vladimir Putin pulled Obama's chestnuts out of the fire, he had backed himself into a corner...

BECKER
You're talking about Syria.

MCGOVERN
I'm talking about Syria, and the red line that Hillary Clinton mousetrapped him into setting, on the 10th of August, 2012. And exactly a year later, there's this chemical incident outside of Damascus, the use of sarin, and they blamed it immediately on "the regime" of Bashar Assad. It wasn't Assad. They were mousetrapping the president. What happened? Well, lots of things happened, but the most important thing in this context, is that Vladimir Putin went to our president and said, "Look, we can get those chemical weapons in Syria destroyed. I've talked to Bashar Assad, he's willing to do it." Obama said, "Please do it, because this is very embarrassing, I don't want to do this war, and- Let's do it." Now, a week after that went down - K? - on September 11, curiously enough, September 11, 2003 [sic, he means 2013], Vladimir Putin wrote an op-ed. In the New York Times. And what'd he say? He said, "You know, my working relationship with President Obama is marked by growing trust, but I have to disagree with him about giving people the notion that they are exceptional. This is very dangerous. Policy's different. Rich and poor, small and big countries, but when we ask for the Lord's blessing, we must not forget that God created us equal." Where'd he learn that, maybe the Declaration of Independence? In any case, this is exceptionalism at its worst, and no wonder the Russians and the others resent it.

BECKER
Okay, that's the voice of Ray McGovern, former CIA analyst. He's with VIPS, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. A good name. Ray McGovern, we hope you'll come back.