Ray McGovern Interviewed by Scott Horton (11/19/2016)

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 Scott Horton. Broadcast date: November 19, 2016. Full transcript of interview.

File link: https://www.libertarianinstitute.org/articles/ray-mcgovern-us-russia-syria-now/

SCOTT HORTON
Alright, introducing our friend Ray McGovern, he is the co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. Because he is a Veteran Intelligence Professional. For twenty seven years, he was a CIA analyst, and was at one time even chief of the...USSR division, back in the days of the Cold War. He now works for Tell The Word, and goes around giving speeches to people, explaining why they should be anti-war. Welcome back to the show, how're you doing, Ray?

RAY MCGOVERN
Thanks Scott. I'm doing well.

HORTON
Good deal, appreciate you coming this morning. Uh...so! Lots going on here, I guess, you know, first and foremost, Donald Trump. Is the president-elect right now. And uh...you know, sorry to ask you to predict the future, but I guess, I wonder what you think the difference is, or what difference it might make, especially in terms of Middle East and Russia policy, as we always focus on the show with you.

MCGOVERN
Well...I've been abroad for almost, well, for more than two weeks. And when I came back, I asked my wife, "Is there anything new here in Washington?" [HORTON laughs] Actually, I can speak from my long sojourn in Germany, almost two weeks there. People are very interested of course, and how to read Trump, and I was there when the election took place. You asked about Russia? Well, you know, it's not too difficult to find a silver lining in Trump. If you segregate out all his domestic issues, his nativism, his racism, and all that terrible stuff, at least in a...with respect to Russia, he has a much more sensible policy. Or at least, professed policy than would have been the case with Hillary Clinton. In other words, I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that the prospect of a hot war with Russia, has declined, now with the decline of Hillary Clinton...good riddance. Now, that's based largely on what Trump has said. And granted, he says one thing one day, and another thing the other day. But it does seem as though he's reaching out to Russia in a way that is not circumscribed by any fear of the mainstream media. I mean, he met the mainstream media [laughs] and he won. He was fearless even during the campaign in saying, "Why not talk with Russia? Why not-" Hillary of course decided to blame Russia for everything. A friend of mine was late for work the other day, he says, "That's alright. I'll just blame it on Russia." [laughs] So, anyhow: what I'm saying here...is that Trump has made it clear that he thinks you can talk to Russia, you can negotiate with Russia. And you can. And the ball, actually, is in his court. And this has been sorta neglected in the reportage. But Putin has said, "Look...hey, first thing we should do, is withdraw those armed forces on the border with Russia...the East European countries, Poland, and Baltic states, and those divisions, or those brigades that we're putting on the border, withdraw them."

Now there's a sensible suggestion. There's no need for them there. The threat from Russia has been magnified beyond all proportion. And so, we'll see. We'll see how Trump reacts. Of course, a lot will depend on whether he picks John Bolton or somebody like that to be one of his advisers, in which case, all bets are off. But long story short, I think Trump is a smart guy, I think he does think he can do deals with the Russians, and I do believe, without being a Putin apologist, that that is not only possible, but desirable, from Putin's point of view. And the place to start, of couse, is Syria. Now, people say, "Oh! Do you think he should blast the hell out of ISIS, get the Russians to join him in it?" Well, no. No no. What he should do first is, say to Putin, "Look. I know that our own air force scuttled the ceasefire worked out painfully by John Kerry and Sergey Lavrov, back in September. That's not going to happen again. When I come in, I'm going to tell the air force, "Look, I'm commander-in-chief. Now. Let's go back to the ceasefire that had begun and that was only five days old when U.S. Air Force took it into its head to bomb fixed Syrian positions on the top of three hills, positions that had been there for months and months and months."" They scuttled that ceasefire. And after that, and this is important, Putin told his Minister of Defense, get your spokesman up, and this is what I want him to say: "We have military capabilities in Syria now, including anti-aircraft systems. Any unidentified object, whether it be an aircraft or a missile or whatever! A kite! We're going to shoot it down. Now, let's not have any surprises, because we can also shoot down _stealth_ aircraft." And the final thing, this Defense Ministry spokesman said is this: "Unfortunately, we are not going to have time to identify the origin of this aircraft. So, be warned, be advised." Now, result there, there is a no fly zone in Syria. And Russia runs it. So, thanks be to the god that Hillary's not gonna challenge that. Will Trump do that? I don't think so- I think Trump will say, "Well, hmmm. Let's talk about this." And I think he'll tell the Air Force, "Hold down for a while, man. Hold down. And see what we can work out." The makings of a ceasefire are there. Next step: next step is clearly to gather the stakeholders around, like we used to do [laughs] in the old days. You get people who are interested in what happens in this area, you get them around a table, you have a ceasefire, and you hash it out. You get the Saudis, and the Turks, and the Qatarese, and you say, "Look: knock it off! Knock off your supply for ISIS." And then you don't have to bomb the hell out of them. You get- You do- You deprive them of supplies, and you have a situation that gravitates slowly to where a resolution with at least, temporarily, Assad still in power.

Now the Israelis don't like that. And I have to- I have to keep telling Americans that you can't possibly understand U.S. policy towards that area, and specifically towards Syria, without understanding the incredibly important role that Israel plays in this calculus. Now we have the bureau chief in the New York Times, three years ago, Jodi Rudoren, she approached Israeli officials, including the former Consul General in New York, Alon Pinkas. ["Israel Backs Limited Strike Against Syria" link: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/06/world/middleeast/israel-backs-limited-strike-against-syria.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 ] And she said, "Now, what's your preferred outcome in Syria?" And Pincus said, "Well, Jodi, this doesn't sound very- doesn't sound very humanitarian, but our preferred outcome is "No outcome."" And Ruderen said, "[inaudible] si vous plais, no outcome?" And he said, "Yeah, as I said, it doesn't sound really good, but it's like it's a playoff game." This is again, Alon Pinkas. "Like a playoff game, we don't want either side to win. But we don't want either side to lose either. As long as the Sunni and Shia are at each other's throats, in Syria, "Israel has nothing to fear, from Syria."" Now, if you don't understand that, if you don't understand how chaos in Syria really helps Israel from it's point of view - it's hard to re-supply Hezbollah, through Syria, from Iran if there's chaos there. So, on the ground, the immediate objective and the more important sense, the Shia and Sunni, let them fight it out. Israel "has nothing to fear from Syria." Why does Assad have to go? Is he- Does he pose a threat to the United States? Give me a break. Now, it's five, six years ago. Why did the president, why did secretary Clinton say he had to go? Well, if you don't understand the Israeli role, and the role of neo-cons like, oh, the bunch of them, that remain over after Hillary left, you don't understand anything about our policy towards Syria.

HORTON
Alright now, there's one more like that, that just ran recently. It's by Elon Ben-David, who is, I don't know, he's some kind of former, at least, on the officer...currently the senior defense correspondent for Israel's Channel 10. And he wrote a piece for the Jerusalem Post, just in September. On the 27th. "May it Never End: The Uncomfortable Truth About the War in Syria". And, by the way, anyone who wants to find that New York Times article that you mentioned there, Ray, just google "New York Times", Syria, and hemmorage. Because that's the quote. "We want to see both sides continue to hemmorage to death." Because bleed isn't good enough.

MCGOVERN
[laughs] Yeah, I'm sortof a soft spoken, understated kind of guy...[inaudible]

HORTON
Yeah, me and my search terms...[MCGOVERN laughs] So, yeah, a lot to go over there. First of all, I'm with you that Trump, you know, he's an empty vessel on _a lot of things_. But: when it comes to, hey let's stop backing the terrorists in Syria, and let's back off Russia, and start getting along with Russia, I'm totally in agreement with you. Seems like, these are really firm opinions of his, and he's very likely to get his way on this. To degrees, anyway. He still has a whole powerful permanent government to deal with there. And you know, you mentioned this thing about the Air Force strike on the Syrian army force, that ruined the ceasefire, the second ceasefire that Kerry and Lavrov had worked out there, a few weeks back, what six weeks ago or something. And now, it's been speculated by a lot of very credible people, like yourself, other former CIA officers and journalists, that hey, this very well may have been deliberate sabotage, and no mistake. And...you know, I dunno, I kinda want to dwell on that for a minute, and I know it's kinda hard because we really don't have definitive proof, but that would be, Ray, I think, a level of insubordination on the level of, you know, at least the theories about the Gary Powers shootdown. That the CIA got their own pilot shot down in order to prevent Ike Eisenhower from ending the Cold War back in, what, 1960?

MCGOVERN
Sixty one.

HORTON
Sixty one.

MCGOVERN
No, sixty, you're right. Yeah. Well, you know, there's nobody that I know that knows anything about military engagement that can believe that that was a "mistake". But, you know, it doesn't matter what McGovern believes. Or what Horton believes. It matters what Trump believes [sic, he doesn't intend to say Trump here - McGovern, as the next sentence makes clear, has mixed up Trump and who he means to say, Putin]. And he has said, and you know, you don't see these things unless you read them...he has said, virtually, here's a quote, saying, "Look, we conclude these agreements, my Foreign Minister and Secretary of State Kerry, and we approve them, Obama and I, and then the first thing you know, they're undermined and dissipated by forces in Washington that don't want them. So how am I to deal with President Obama in these circumstances?" He said that. And Lavrov has said, "You know, my good friend, John Kerry, works out these things with me, painfully, painstakingly, and then as soon as he goes back to Washington, it falls apart. How am I going to deal with this guy?"

HORTON
Yeah.

MCGOVERN
It was after that, that Putin told his defense ministry, "Get that spokesman up and say, look, this is it."

HORTON
And threaten to shoot down our planes.

MCGOVERN
Yeah. And, you know, you can expect Putin and their military, to do everything possible in these next six, seven, whatever weeks before the 20th of January, to fortify their position in Syria, and along, you know, the Ukraine, and anywhere else-

HORTON
Hey Ray. In your life, has there ever been a president as weak and pathetic as Barack Obama? That he would just let the military do nothing but walk all over him, and the CIA too? For eight years straight like this. It's just incredible. How hard for him would it be to go on TV and say, "Today I've asked for Ashton Carter's resignation because he's a really lousy Defense Secretary. Beat it, chump." He's the president, Ray!

MCGOVERN
Well, you know, you oughta write him a letter and tell him that. Because [laughs] he doesn't seem to be up to it. You know, it is very sad. There was one previous president, and I was alive during his time, his name was Truman, okay? Everybody thought he was a haberdasher from Missouri, for god's sake, he had no guts or anything, but when Douglas MacArthur wanted to go after China in a big way, and nuke 'em...Truman immediately said "Get him outta here." And "You're finished. Get outta here." And he fired him. Everybody was shocked.

HORTON
And MacArthur, he's like David Petraeus times a hundred, right? He was the biggest personality in America at the time.

MCGOVERN
He was. You know, he was the conqueror of Japan, and the rest of Asia, as far as he was concerned. So, yeah. Your point is well taken. Now I've been saying as you know, about Obama, that he's got no guts. My friend Colonel Morris [Colonel Morris Davis], who used to run the prosecution in Guantanamo, I think he put it the best way, he said, "You know, I really had high expectations for Obama and his courage, but somewhere between Capitol Hill and the White House, on inauguration day, his testicles seems to have fallen off." [laughs]

HORTON
Well, he'll take his chance to start a war against Libya, and he'll sign a finding to tell the CIA, yeah, go ahead, back Al-Qaeda in Syria, but he's not man enough to tell them no.

MCGOVERN
No, that's it. You know, he wants a comfortable retirement, and he wants high paid speeches, and he wants to be a respected person, and he can do that, because of the state of the corporate media. They will applaud him, they will say, "Oh, he did as good a job as he could," and the military industrial pres media deep state complex will thrive. So: he knows which side his bread is buttered on, and he's not going to do anything between now and then to screw himself with the powers that be, and reluctantly, if I am, to admit this, the powers that be are the Pentagon. And the CIA. And Obama's afraid of them.

HORTON
Alright, so, now let me ask you this, Mr. Kremlinologist, uh, Washington Post said, about two days, maybe three days before the election ["Obama directs Pentagon to target al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, one of the most formidable forces fighting Assad", published on November 10, 2016 link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/obama-directs-pentagon-to-target-al-qaeda-affiliate-in-syria-one-of-the-most-formidable-forces-fighting-assad/2016/11/10/cf69839a-a51b-11e6-8042-f4d111c862d1_story.html?utm_term=.7ca1c550ac5e ], they said, "Hey, guess what! Barack Obama has decided now there's a counter-terrorism mission in Syria that far outweighs any plan for regime change," and it didn't really address whether he's ordering the CIA to abandon the mythical moderates, which we all know is just a stand-in for Al-Qaeda, the arms and money procurement branch of Al-Qaeda in Syria there. But it did say that he's ordered the military, the Joint Special Operations Command [JSOC], top tier special forces, to go ahead and start targeting the Al-Nusra front and killing them. And it even says in there, in the Post article, that the administration refuses to, uh, to accept any, you know, mythology about them changing their name and breaking from Al-Qaeda. They're just as much Al-Qaeda as they ever were, which is actually correct. They never denounced Zawahiri [Ayman al-Zawahiri, co-founder of Al-Qaeda], or Al-Qaeda at all, in their big name change announcement. Um, but so, you know, Gareth [Gareth Porter, journalist and frequent guest on Horton's show] and I were talking, about, well, was this a move by Obama to try to thwart Hillary Clinton and her evil plans? Or was this Obama gave this order after the election [sic], wiping sweat from his brow, and saying, phew, okay, now we're going to go ahead and do basically what we already pretty much agreed with, which is more the Trump policy, which is go ahead, and you know backstab Bay of Pigs style, our contra fighters here [reference to the anti-government rebels in Nicaragua, funded by the U.S.], and uh, tilt back toward the dictator here. Uh, but I just wondered what you think about all that, and whether the CIA had a say in that, and we've had CIA backed groups and JSOC backed groups on the ground, killing each other, in Syria, [MCGOVERN laughs] I wonder whether the war's going to get worse, are we going to have actual SEAL versus CIA paramilitaries in pitched battles? That's what I want to see, I know I'm repeating myself, audience.

MCGOVERN
Nothing's going to happen in the next seven, eight weeks, whatever it is, before the inauguration. Now, those "moderate rebels", in quotes, which Bashar Assad has called as difficult to find as a unicorn. I think he's right about that. Kerry bragged, that's Secretary of State Kerry, bragged about having refined technical ways to separate them from Al-Nusra, and the bad terrorists, [laughs] the immoderate terrorists. Okay?

HORTON
Is that like the Bugs Bunny hook? [MCGOVERN laughs] It just comes and pulls them off stage?

MCGOVERN
Now he couldn't do it. Whether he was told he couldn't do it or not, he couldn't do it. And that's one of the main reasons why the ceasefire broke down, and the fact that no one could supply those poor souls in east Aleppo. It has to do with these moderate so-called rebels, and the way they were shelling western Aleppo, and the way they're preventing the delivery of relief supplies. That was all part of the ceasefire. And it fell apart. So, nothing's going to happen between now and then, and even then, you're going to have the CIA [laughs] now under Pompeo, jousting with Carter or whoever's named to be defense chief, to see whose moderates or whose sponsored elements, this moderate opposition, oughta be supported, if any. And I suspect, that you're right, no matter how hard the CIA will fight keeping their hand in this business, that just like the Kurds, just like the pawns of history they have always been, the folks that we've supported in Syria will have to kinda fold themselves into the woodwork...that's really bad, for the CIA, because that loses a lot of face, and a lot of power, and next time they try to do a little war like this, that's on the record, people can't trust the CIA, to [laughs] stay in the battle even when it's not totally the CIA's fault, it's the feckless nature of the "moderate opposition".

HORTON
Yeah, so, here's the thing: if Trump really goes ahead...and I guess we're going to have to talk about the contradictions of him and all of his top men and the degree to which they hate Iran, and how that puts a big wrinkle in all of this. But, on the face of it, they're going to basically the jihadis and go ahead and tilt back to Assad. You know, Seymour Hersh reported a couple of years ago, that the military had been passing info to Assad all along, through the Germans [most likely a reference to "Military to Military" published January 7, 2016 link: https://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n01/seymour-m-hersh/military-to-military ]. That they've been insubordinate in a good way, actually. Well, relatively good way. You know, compared to backing Al-Qaeda. But, so, here's the thing of it, we've got a few tens of thousands of these guys, if you count Al-Nusra and Islamic State and their allied militias, and now, if USA tilts right back toward Assad, and his, you know, Iranian Quds force, and Hezbollah, and Russian allies, to beat these jihadis, then what kind of reaction is that going to provoke? Not just from all the terrorists that the USA has just built up here, but from all of their sponsors? All of America's allies in the Persian Gulf? We tilt this as far toward to the Shia - that's what created Al-Qaeda in Iraq in the first place - and, you know, Bush, and then Obama both have this Sunni turn to try to make up for Iraq War II and empowering the Shia and the Iranians there. Now we're going to tilt back toward the Shia and the Iranians again, which I guess we're already doing in Iraq, we're helping the Shi'ites fight for Mosul right now, but...in other words, we can just see already the next steps, the next steps, and the next generation of blowback of consequences, flowing from this policy. It just keeps going back and forth, back and forth. Seems like if you take their caliphate away, what you really do is prove Osama bin Laden and al-Zawahiri right...that you gotta get rid of the Americans first. The far enemy and only then will you be able to create your caliphate, just turn all these guys toward us even more than before.

MCGOVERN
Yeah...Scott, I think a whole lot is going to depend on the signals that Trump puts out even before he's inaugurated. The thing is a viper's nest, and people are beginning to realize that our so-called moderate opposition is a really weak reed to lean on. And so, there is the makings of a deal, but the big deal has to be bracing the Saudis, telling the Turks, going to Qatar, and saying "Look. You guys, knock it off!" Now, the big reason we haven't done that with the Saudis which are the main supporter [sic] of all this, and which the likes of Joe Biden has inadvertently admitted is, well, you know, is the arms trade. Now, I don't agree with everything the pope says - right? - but when Francis came here in September of last year, and stood before Congress and he said, "the main problem is the blood soaked arms traders." Wooooah! [laughs] My god, these congressmen all applauded, and then they looked in their back pocket, to make sure that the cash that they just got from Lockheed and Raytheon is right still there. So: what it is, is reluctance to fool around with the Saudis, to whom, get this, $115 billion, with a b, as in boy, in arms sales had been approved since Obama became president. One hundred and fifteen billion, okay? Now, people say, "Ray, for god's sakes, don't exaggerate, only fifty billion has been put in train." And I say to them, "You know, I don't know if only is an adjective or an adverb there, but [laughs] I don't think it has any place for fifty billion dollars." That's the number, you know. These people are making hand over fist. Money money money. And the people who are running our policy have been subservient to them, creatures of them, and what really remains to be seen is whether Trump will be his own man, and whether his inclinations after talking with Putin is "Hey, let's rein these crazy people in" or not. And again, check back in three months. And we'll see. See how that looks.

HORTON
Yeah. Alright, now, so, back to Eastern Europe for a minute. You mentioned the divisons, I think it's like seven hundred troops in Lithuania, something like this. Just enough to pick a fight, but not enough to protect the Lithuanians if they actually pick a fight, right? What are they even doing there?

MCGOVERN
Well, you know, I was talking to [Andrew] Bacevich about this, he's of Lithuanian stock. And he was recently there, and he says, "You know, they're really afraid, they're really afraid, and they're really afraid," and I'm like, look, you know, what are they afraid of? [Bacevich:] "Aw, well, you know, there're a lot of Russians there, and you know what the Russians did in Crimea and Ukraine and..." Look, the history of Central Europe begins not on the 23rd of February, 2014, but on the 22nd. 22nd was the coup. What George Friedman called the most blatant coup in the history of mankind [laughs]. Advertised two weeks ahead, on youtube! For god's sake. The coup in Kiev. Now people say, "Oh yeah, right, Kiev is- Ukraine is Russia's backyard." Well, it's not Russia's backyard. It's Russia's front yard! That's where the Nazis, that's where Napoleon, for god's sake, that's where the Poles, the Lithuanians, the Hanseatic League, that's where they all went into Russia. So. If anyone in Washington thought that they could do a coup in Kiev, and have the first guy Yats [Arseniy Yatseniuk] say, "Hey, I think maybe we oughta join NATO," and not have Putin react in a very forceful way, then they're crazy. You know what would happen if they did that in Canada or Mexico, what the Russians did...and so, when people start this, actually our ambassador to NATO, he actually said, that the modern history of Europe begins on the 23rd of [laughs] February. He must have gotten that from the Washington Post or the New York Times. That's where they all start. What they forget, and what most Americans don't even know, is that we, western intelligence services, mounted a coup in Kiev, despite Russian warnings for eight years before not to do that. "Nyet means nyet" is what Lavrov told our ambassador.

HORTON
Hey, you know what, as long as we're at it, Ray, we're recording slow on a Saturday morning here, let's go ahead back in time to 2004. It's the same president that they overthrew, with the Orange Revolution there, and there's a whole intermediate period too, with the gas princess [Yulia Tymoshenko], changing sides, back and forth to prison, we don't have to tell that whole story, but...it seems important that the guy that they prevented from his due election in '04, is the same guy that they overthrew when he eventually did become the president in 2010. Then they overthrew him in 2014. And in the meantime, he had even passed a bill, well there was the whole thing with the EU and the trade deal and all that, that precipitated the coup. But he had also signed the thing saying "We forswear any previous intention to join NATO." That must have really been the final straw there, before the EU all-or-nothing trade deal.

MCGOVERN
Well, that's true. You have Victoria Nuland, the Assistant Secretary of State, brag, publicly, in December, in 2013, that we, the United States, has invested five billion, again billion with a b, dollars, to satisfy Ukrainian, Ukraine's aspirations to join the West. Well, where'd that money go? It wasn't all spent in 2013. No, there were sixty five - six five - projects of the National Endowment for Democracy in Ukraine when the coup took place. What're they doing there? Well, as most people know, the National Endowment for Democracy used to be called the CIA Covert Action Staff, for god's sake, they're the experts on regime change, and overthrowing governments, okay? So, it was no secret to the Russians what might have been prepared, but they warned us, explicitly, and you know, one of the best Wikileaks revelations came in an embassy cable from Moscow, dated the 1st of February 2008. Now, it's worth going back there. Now, if I've seen one embassy Moscow cable, I've seen about 3000, right? Okay, this is genuine, it hasn't been touched, Assange never messes with the content of this stuff, and what it said was this: uuuuh, the Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, new in the job, called Bill Burns, our ambassador in. To talk about rumors that Ukraine and Georgia were slated to join NATO at the next summit in Bucharest, in early April. First of February. What does he say, he says "Mister Burns, do you know what "nyet" means?" [laughs] And Burns says, "Oh yeah," [Lavrov:] "Well, nyet means nyet. These rumors, that you're willing to have a Ukraine and Georgia in NATO, that's not going to happen. That's "nyet", okay? Because if it does happen, we will have a civil war and then we will have to choose how deeply to be involved, because we're going to not let Ukraine become part of NATO. Tell your Secretary of State that, will you please?" Now, the cable...Bill Burns played it straight. The title of the cable is "Nyet means nyet: Russia's red line on Ukrainian joining- Ukraine joining NATO".

HORTON
How do you like that, Burns doing his duty for once, hey, I think this is important enough, I better tell the boss exactly what happened just now.

MCGOVERN
[laughs] Yeah, well, yeah, he's no dope. So, that's the 1st of February, 2008. On the 3rd of April, in Bucharest, at a summit, NATO summit, the declaration said, and I quote: "The Ukraine and Georgia will become members of NATO." Now, what we have here, Scott, is the oldthink, that people like Wolfowitz and others all saying, "Aha! You know we can do what we want, "the Russians can't stop us."" Wolfowitz told General Wesley Clark right after the first Gulf War, the main lesson was, we can do these things, and "the Russians won't stop us." Okay? Now we know that from Wesley Clark. So: what I'm saying here is that '91, 2003, when we invaded Iraq, the Russians wouldn't stop us. In Ukraine, on the 23rd, of February 2014, right after the coup, the Russians decided to stop us. It was in their backyard, their front yard really, and they did stop us. Now, take Syria. The Russians can stop us, they have stopped us, and the question is, whether Trump will be realistic enough to say, "Hey, this is their sphere of influence, everyone has their own national interests, why don't we back off and co-operate?" And that is my fervent hope, that he will be smart enough to say, "Look, if we cool down things with Russia, and we tell NATO, "Look, pony up with more money, or then- or if you aren't willing to do that, then take a look at how much a threat you really think the Russians are. Okay? I mean, are they really a big threat, or do you just want to build the common European battle tank, or sell more planes and stuff."" So, the prospect for real movement in Central Europe and in NATO is real. And it will largely depend on whether Trump is the clever businessman and the negotiator that he styles himself to be...because I think he'll find a willing partner in Vladimir Putin, who has been, you know, demonized here in the West, but he does not really deserve that demonization, in my view.

[ad break]

HORTON
Alright now, major problem: these people are all a bunch of kooks. And most of them seem pretty damn ignorant too. I mean, this guy Steven Miller, that works for Sessions, he seems to be pretty sharp and kinda of a right wing anti-war guy in a way, I don't know exactly how much influence he has, but it's nice to know that he has a voice there. I've seen him soundly defeat Mark Thiessen on TV, on youtube, fighting over NATO and Eastern Europe, and "You really want to have a war with Russia, over Ukraine, yeah, I didn't think so, pal." And that kindda thing, really smacked him down, and attitude follows behavior, so, the more he fights evil neo-cons on this issue, the better he gets, kinda thing, so there's that...but, um, the rest of these guys, I mean, Mike Flynn, when there's an ISIS attack somewhere, Mike Flynn, there was- I think there was one in San Diego, or maybe it was Orlando, or one of these, where he demanded that Iran..."I demand that Iran denouce ISIS! I defy you, Ayatollah, to denounce the Islamic State." When, this is McChrystal's right hand man in JSOC. He's- How can this man not know that he was fighting for the Safavids [ruling dynasty of Iran] against the Al-Qaeda guys, the whole damn time he was in Iraq? And what the hell is he talking about?

MCGOVERN
Well, I know Flynn, and he's not the sharpest knife in the drawer, okay? He's also a panderer, his attitude toward Iran is just despicable. He's testified in June of last year, before House committees, and he's said, "Iran is irrevocably bent, determined, to get a nuclear weapon." Now, so, that's 2015, right? Now, does Flynn, can Flynn possibly have forgotten that eight years earlier, the National Intelligence Estimate issued with full approval by all sixteen intelligence agencies and the judgement cast with full confidence that Iran had stopped working on a nuclear weapon, at the end of 2003, I'll say that again: that Iran had stopped working on a nuclear weapon at the end of 2003, and every year since, even James Clapper, who doesn't always tell the truth, re-affirmed, re-asserted the judgement that Iran was not working on a nuclear weapon. So, here comes Flynn. He says, "Aaaaah! They're hellbent determined to get a nuclear weapon." Then later in the speech he says, "Well, when they decide to get a weapon-" The guy is, well, you know...as I say, he's not the sharpest blade in the drawer. Now-

HORTON
But wait a minute. When the National Intelligence Council meets, that includes the DIA [Defense Intelligence Agency], one of the seventeen intelligence agencies, that we know about, that meets there, at the National Intelligence Council, he was the leader of it. Starting in July of 2012. Well- So I don't know if they put- If they actually agreed...on his watch, but they certainly agreed only months before he took power, at the end of 2011, beginning of 2012, they put out basically an update, saying we stand by our previous conclusion here.

MCGOVERN
That's right. So what I'm saying is, he's a charlatan. And the noxious part of all this, is that his extreme anti-Iranian behavior, dovetails with many of the others you see nominated now. And, uh, Trump has been more careful than these crazies, he's not said he'll immediately revoke the painstakingly worked out agreement with Iran on the nuclear capability, but again, it'll depend on whether he's his own man, or whether he bows to all these people who are largely, largely conditioned and influenced by the Israeli lobby, to hit out against Iran, and that would be disastrous. Hopefully...well I know Admiral Mullen, Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff, rejoiced when the intelligence community came out telling the truth about Iran not working on a nuclear weapon. General Dunford, Dumford, whatever his name [Joseph Dunford], he's not the smartest guy in the world either. But hopefully, if he cares about his troops, if he cares about getting involved in yet another, another quagmire, in a very very large state, three times the size of Iraq, with an army and an air force [laughs] and...my god, it's crazy. So, you know, I'm hoping that the professional military, even just for their own narrow interests, will put the brakes on these neo-cons like Flynn. Who really have it out for Iran.

HORTON
Well, you know...forget any kind of non-interventionism, is it really too much to ask to just have sortof coherence here. Either we're fighting Al-Qaeda's and Saudis' side, in their eternal war against the Shia, Bush gave the Shia Baghdad, so that's what they're going to fight to reverse for the rest of our lifetimes, or we're on the Shi'ite Russian side, and we're going to go ahead and help them crush these Al-Qaeda terrorists because after all those sworn loyal to Ayman al-Zawahiri are the ones that knocked our towers down, so at least that would sorta make sense on the face of it, but it sound like- No, what we're going to get, we're going to keep fighting on both sides of this war for the next eight years.

MCGOVERN
Well, you know, you have to ask cui bono. Why is it that people like Marine General John Allen, who marched into the Democratic National Convention, in cadence [laughs] with a bunch of veterans, some of them old as I was, you know, [laughs] with canes and stuff. Why is it? That he speaks in a sort of a matter of passing, he says, you know, it looks like we'll have a Thirty Years War. Petraeus has said the same, "Yeah, a Thirty-" Have they no sense, have they no feeling for history? [laughs] There was a Thirty Years War, right? Protestants and Catholics killing each other off, and finally they said it was failure-

HORTON
Yeah, the victors lost. That's what happened.

MCGOVERN
Maybe there's a better way to handle these things. So, who benefits from this? Well, the people like Allen and Flynn get a star, the people who manufacture the weapons and sell them to others, get more money and, you know, congressmen get part of the proceeds. It's totally corrupt, Scott. And the question is whether Trump will be inclined to address that, or whether, like everybody else, he'll be too afraid to do that.

HORTON
Well, and this is the old saying, and I'd really like to hear your insight on this, because unfortunately my best insight on this is reading a bunch of horrifying Bob Woodward books. I mean, a lot of other books too. But Woodward's books are always the gossip between the principals, the deputies, the chiefs, and how they all talk about each other behind their backs and that kind of thing. So...which is kind of fun to see what children they all are, first of all, and how much policy is made based on - well, I don't like the Deputy National Security Adviser anymore, so now I'm going to be mean to him and nice to the other guy who favors the other policy that's going to get ten thousand people killed. Right? But it's all over an insult over what color shirt he's wearing, or whatever.

MCGOVERN
Yeah. Well, you know, Scott-

HORTON
But uh- Yeah, no, go ahead.

MCGOVERN
But before I forget, you know, Bob Woodward is the personification of what has happened to our media in the last few decades.

HORTON
Oh no, let's not go down that whole tangent. We all know how, what a horrible reporter he is and everything. But-

MCGOVERN
Yeah, but he measured up, together with Bernstein, on uh Watergate, what I'm saying here, is that, you know, aside from these little, these little things that people share with him so they can get back at other people, I have in mind, specifically, Condoleezza Rice, telling Bob Woodward "Hey! Hey Bob! Guess what! There are no weapons of mass destruction, but you know what that guy Tenet did? And his deputy, the fawning guy, John McLaughlin? You know, they briefed the [inaudible] I was there! December 16, 2002. And the briefing was pathetic! McLaughlin gave it! And so, my boss President Bush said, "Is that all ya got? My god! That's not going to persuade anybody!" And Tenet got off the couch and he yelled, "It's a slam dunk, Mr. President! It's a slam dunk!"" [laughs] That was Condoleezza Rice getting back at Tenet, or blaming Tenet for all the things- You know, it was she that advertised the mushroom cloud [laughs], if we didn't attack Iraq, right?

HORTON
Yeah, she's the National Security Advisor. She's the one to tell the president what's right and wrong at the end of the chain.

MCGOVERN
I take your take. I agree with your take on Bob Woodward, but I do see-

HORTON
All I'm saying, yeah yeah yeah, and I don't trust any of his facts, and I don't trust any of his gossip necessarily, but it's the overall picture of what kind of people run the national security state and the balance of power between the National Security Council and the Joint Chiefs, Secretaries, and this and that, that part is sortof, it's like reading a novel about it, basically. Just kinda getting a picture of how those different forces interact and then leading to the point that we're stuck with a bunch of Republicans. And, you know, I've actually been trying, a little bit, and I know some people have been trying real hard to push some really good guys from Cato, who count as right-wing and anti-war, that maybe they could be up there, maybe somebody like Doug Bandow [Senior Fellow at Cato Institute] could be in there to give some good advice. But we're going to be, I mean, if we're just flipping coins here, throwing darts, chances are we're stuck with a bunch of Mike Flynns, who are going to be giving Trump nothing but bad advice.

MCGOVERN
Mmmmhmmm. Yeah.

HORTON
[inaudible] policy or not. I mean, you used to brief Vice President George H.W. Bush, so you spent time in the White House, and know about all those things, uh to what, I mean, especially when you're dealing with a guy like Trump who really is out of his element here when it comes to even knowing the shape of the map, probably, much less who's who and whose side they're on, I dunno. How powerful is the Deputy National Security Advisor position in a government like this?

MCGOVERN
Very. Very very very very.

HORTON
See, that's I want Bandow in there, but I don't know how the hell to make it happen, because I don't know black magic or white magic or anything.

MCGOVERN
Yeah. Well, uh, you know, all- when all is said and done, the first reaction I had, when I heard Flynn was in, like, in like Flynn, is that it could've been a lot worse. I mean, Flynn has been around for a while. He does know the military side of things. Even though he's kindof an ideologue, and an anti-Iranian fanatic, he could've been worse. He could've been...god, there are a whole bunch in line for that kind of position and it could've been worse. Let's see what Trump does with the Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State...I had chills going up my back when I heard Petraeus is back [laughs] in the running, MY GOD, have Petraeus as Secretary of State? You know, it's possible. Trump probably doesn't know any better. So, let's keep our loins girded, so to speak.

HORTON
My god, I hadn't even heard that. I don't know why I hadn't anticipated that already. But he'd be easy to rehabilitate. He was Jesus before he got into a little bit of trouble for leaking to his girlfriend which is no big deal. It doesn't matter that he lost two wars, right?

MCGOVERN
No.

HORTON
So, he can be forgiven, no problem. Put right back in place.

MCGOVERN
And it doesn't matter that he brought out instructions from Rumsfeld, that torture could continue in Iraq, just so long as we didn't do it. You recall that order, 242, that he went out to Iraq with. Rumsfeld gave him that order, and the Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff, Peter Pace, General- Marine General, was completely unaware of it. So much so, that about twelve months later, at a Washington press conference, with Rumsfeld and Pace, a woman asked a question, she said, "Look, we're hearing these reports about torture in Iraqi jails, what are your orders to your troops in that case?" And Pace says, "Our orders are to stop torture on the spot. Our troops must do everything possible to stop it on the spot." Rumsfeld: "Well, General, I don't think that's really the case, I think they need to report it, they just need to report it." Pace: "No sir, my orders are we need to stop terrorist torture, on the spot, whether it's Iraqi or whatever." Now-

HORTON
[inaudible] say "That's the law!"

MCGOVERN
I had never seen a Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff-

HORTON
I remember watching that live when it happened.

MCGOVERN
Yeah!

HORTON
It was really something.

MCGOVERN
So what's the lesson there? The lesson was Rumsfeld gave these orders to Petraeus when he went out twelve months earlier, and nobody told Peter Pace. Okay? And Pace presumably objected to that, and he didn't get renewed. He was cashiered after his first term. So that's how bad Petraeus is. I mean, he goes around behind everybody's back.

HORTON
You know what too, Ray, when you talk about this. Torture is a euphemism for what the Badr brigade was doing to the Sunnis in their custody. Murdering them with power drills to the skull, through the eyeball, and this kind of thing. And you know, they even made a Clint Eastwood movie about it, where it's the bad guys who use the power drills, and the Americans are the heroes saving the people who are the victims of the power drills, but that's not the history of Iraq War II.

MCGOVERN
Yep. You got it. Yeah, it's a sad situation. Of course now we have a torturer aficionado coming in as head of the CIA. Pompeo! From Kansas!

HORTON
Tell us all about him, I admit, I'd never even heard of the man before they announced he was going to be the Director of Central Intelligence. Oh, which- That's a separate question, there's even rumors they're going to abolish the National Intelligence Director position, and put it back to the old way with the DCI. But anyway.

MCGOVERN
Yeah. I saw that, but that's not possible. You know, that's legislation, they'll have to change the law, and that'll be a long slog. But this guy Pompeo, you know, if there was any doubt that Trump was going to follow through with this, you know, "waterboarding and much worse", well, those doubts have been forgotten because Pompeo is the guy, he's the enforcer to come in there. Now, I say in this article I just- I'm publishing today ["Installing a Torture Fan at CIA" link: https://consortiumnews.com/2016/11/19/installing-a-torture-fan-at-cia/ ], I say that, you know, Pompeo is the object example of how you can get all As, and you can graduate first in your class from West Point, and still flunk the Constitution. [laughs] He just se- He got out of the Army as soon as he could, right? Four years.

HORTON
Do they even teach the Constitution at all, Ray?

MCGOVERN
What's that?

HORTON
Do they even teach the Constitution at all, or do they just assume you heard it- You know, you memorized the pre-amble in fifth grade, and that's good enough?

MCGOVERN
Well, I was at the Naval Academy, teaching a class, actually, only chance I ever got, about ten years ago. And there were constitutional issues. That I raised at the second year people there, at Annapolis, didn't know the answer to. You know, so your question is well stated. The idea though, that Pompeo would come in here and say, "You know, I think that those CIA torturers got a bum rap. They're heroes. They're not- They shouldn't be prevented from doing what they need to do." I mean, it's incredible. My vision was, yesterday, of champagne corks being popped throughout the seven floors of the CIA headquarters building at Langley, everybody saying, "Wow! Alright!" Now we were lucky with Obama, who didn't have the guts to look back as forward, now we have Pompeo, get those torturers in line again, let them go to the cafeteria like everyone else, we're going to be back in business! This is awful. Couldn't be worse. So, the irony was that earlier this week, the International Criminal Court, one of the spokespersons there said, "You know, we're thinking about going after the torture that was done by U.S. troops and CIA members in Afghanistan. Very early on, in all these troubles. We're thinking about doing that." And now, it was just sortof a hint, but you could see the beads of sweat [laughs] beginning on the cheek, or on the brow of George Tenet, who openly advocated this extraordinary rendition which, of course, is kidnapping people for torture. And who was on the routing for the torture memos, as I say in my piece, you don't get on the routing for sensitive issues like this, unless you have "need to know". So everyone from Tenet, who's now the CIA Director, not Tenet, but Brennan, all the way down to the folks that got under the protection system there. [laughs] Witness protection system. So that they don't spill the beans to whoever might be interested, they're all breathing big sighs of relief. I think the champagne is still flowing out there in Langley.

HORTON
Yeah. Well, it's really too bad. I don't know if you saw this, they have one in McClatchy today ["The inside story on how Kansas Rep. Mike Pompeo got picked for top job at the CIA" link: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/article115758048.html ], that has his position on...NSA spying, on torture, on all kinds of things, it's just an absolute nightmare. To think that this is going to be the new head of the CIA, and although- there's one thing, well, two things, to add to this too, one is that there's a youtube of him in September of 2013 trying to push Obama, agreeing with the Israel lobby, trying to push Obama into Syria [transcriber has been unable to find this video]. And complaining to, I guess, Tucker Carlson, yeah, that- Yeah, and then they say "We just want to do a shot across the bow in a pinprick strike, and what the hell kind of a war is that, we really got to go in there and bomb them!" Right? But then Glenn Miller at the Washington Post published a piece, that said that on the House Intelligence Committee - it was very vague, it didn't go into any detail, really - but it said he's been a real critic of the CIA program to back the moderates on the ground in Syria. I tried to ask Miller on twitter, uh, so which is it, or did he change his mind, or uh, he always was for bombing them, but not for backing the terrorists on the ground, or can you please, you know, elaborate, and he never answered me, but, uh- But anyway, I wondered what you think about that, the possibility that that's how he got the job, was that Trump said to him, "Look man, I'm not for backing a bunch Qaeda in Syria," and that he had said, "Yeah, no me either."

MCGOVERN
I think that would be pollyannish...given his record.

HORTON
I mean, I do have him on video before the war in 2013, that you and I were trying so hard to stop at the time, Ray, there's that.

MCGOVERN
Yeah, I guess that in my view that's a weak reed to lean on. His...you know, talk about the Fourth Amendment. My god, he's approved and blessed everything that NSA has ever done. And talk about torture, the same thing. So, this guy is a Tea Party functionary who looks at the world in a way very different from the way I do, and the fact that Trump picked him is very very disturbing to me. And should be disturbing to everyone who's against torture. I mean, I thought we had sortof exposed the fact that torture doesn't work, but as you and I know, the vast majority of Americans do believe that torture works. Because Jack Bauer makes it work. And because our media, Hollywood as well as the corporate media gives that impression. And so, we're back to the times when maybe Trump was serious, when he said, "You know, we're going to do waterboarding," and "much worse." And hopefully you and I will not be the objects, at least not right away, Scott.

HORTON
Yeah. I hereby offer a million dollar reward for one of these mainstream liberal Obama loving reporters to ask him, to his face, on camera, with microphones, "Isn't it- Isn't the coming Trump torture regime _all your fault_?" For ordering your Justice Department to not prosecute George W. Bush and his torture cabinet, their deputies, their lawyers, who we all know, are _guilty_ of torture, and conspiracy to torture, which are all felonies.

MCGOVERN
You know, yeah, I'd second you on that, but I'd go back a few more years. As I see it, when the Democrats finally won majorities in Congress - okay? - and Nancy Pelosi was in a position of telling John Conyers to have the Judiciary Committee, "Okay, John, you did it for Nixon, you gotta do it now. If anyone should be impeached it should be George W. Bush and Dick Cheney for starting what Nuremberg called a "war of aggression", so go to it, John. This is the only way we can clean house here, and regain our reputation." Now, that's not what happened, is it? Cindy Sheehan and I saw Conyers personally during this period, and we thought we might be able to persuade him to impeach Bush and Cheney, and so we said that. And he had these three or four lawyers in his- you know, up in his room there, and he looks at me and says, "Well, look look Mister CIA, there's nothing in the Constitution that says John Conyers has to impeach George Bush." And so I said, "Well, Congressman Conyers, you're not heading the Judiciary Committee?" [Conyers:] "Yes." [McGovern:] "Well, isn't that where impeachment starts?" [Conyers:] "Yes, but Nancy Pelosi has decided that if we appear to be divisive, we won't win as big" - in the next election - "So, impeachment is off the table." I couldn't believe it. That's what he said. Cindy can corroborate that. Here's a guy who had some guts, under Nixon, who approved the three articles of impeachment against Nixon, one of which was the same Bush had been guilty of. The illegal eavesdropping. And no, they're not going to do that, why? Because Nancy says "we won't win big enough in the next election." And to hell with the Constitution, to hell with the fact that our founders were prescient enough to realize, as they put it, that every generation or so, you're gonna get- the president starts to act like a king, and you gotta impeach him. So, in my view, that's the golden opportunity that a constitutional government like ours _missed_. Because of crass, crass political preferences and cowardice.

HORTON
And what year was that, too?

MCGOVERN
What's that?

HORTON
What year was that?

MCGOVERN
That was in 2007. When they went...right after the surge, and all that kind of stuff, when Rumsfeld himself was going wobbly on the war, in Iraq. So, yeah, it was right after the Democrats came in, and they had this charade, you know, they would try to vote against funding the war, knowing they were going to lose, and then they had these big assemblies outside on the grass there, outside the Senate. I remember being there when Nancy Pelosi and...the speaker, the guy in the Senate there, from Nevada...

HORTON
Reid.

MCGOVERN
Yeah. So they come and make these nice little speeches, and I'm yelling [laughs], it was really amazing, I'm yelling, "Impeach! Impeach!" And it was very disruptive. I had a few colleagues there from Code Pink, yelling "Imp-" And guess what? Progressives came down, from some of the- I won't mention the organizations, "Ray! Ray! Please! We wanna listen to Nancy Pelosi and-"

HORTON
Oh, they didn't just start chanting "USA! USA!" in your face?

MCGOVERN
So, you know, there was even with a "MoveOn" guys, the MoveOn guys came down, I knew some of them, and they said, "Ray! Ray! Come on, these are Democrats! Don't- [laughs] Get out of his office!" It was so awful. I had flashbacks at night, I couldn't go back to sleep.

HORTON
Well, I'm sure you must have thought of that too at the Democratic Convention, when John Allen was giving his crazed warmonger speech, and the anti-war forces just started chanting "No more war!" and all the Hillary Clinton-ites and the whole Democratic party shouted them down, with chants of "USA!" like it was a Sarah Palin rally.

MCGOVERN
Or Nuremberg rally. Ah well. It's going to get better, I hope, but maybe not right away.

HORTON
Yeah, well, we'll see how it goes. I'm glad I got you to come and call the score on the thing.

MCGOVERN
Well...it's always good talking to you, Scott. And look for my article, it's going to be on Consortium News later today, and on my website Ray McGovern dot com ["Installing a Torture Fan at CIA" link: https://consortiumnews.com/2016/11/19/installing-a-torture-fan-at-cia/ ].

HORTON
Alright. Thanks again, Ray. I appreciate it.

MCGOVERN
Most welcome.