Ray McGovern on Loud and Clear (05/12/2017)

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", hosted by Brian Becker. Broadcast date: May 12, 2017.

Transcript segment runs from 1:10 to 18:22 in file.

File link: https://sputniknews.com/radio_loud_and_clear/201705121053531705-trump-fbi-cia-director-fired/

BRIAN BECKER
We turn to the continued fallout from Donald Trump's firing of FBI Director James Comey. We are joined, from New York, by former CIA analyst and political activist Ray McGovern. You can read his writings at Ray McGovern dot com. Welcome back, Ray.

RAY MCGOVERN
Thanks Brian.

BECKER
Thank you for joining. Of course, no news is bigger than the news that Donald Trump fired the FBI Director, James Comey, and since then, the Democratic party and many of its supporters have been making the argument that the reason that Trump sacked Comey was that Comey was in charge of the investigation into alleged Russian meddling with the U.S. election, and in support of Donald Trump. And of course, in the last week, James Comey has said as much, he also said that he was mildly nauseous over the possible impact that he had when he came out, both in July and October 28th, about Hillary, about FBI's investigation into Hillary Clinton...why do you think Trump fired Comey?

MCGOVERN
Well I think that the President found out that Comey was not to be trusted. Not in the least. That he was part of a cabal. Including John Brennan of the CIA. And the NSA Director, to make it appear to the American people that it was President Trump, I'm sorry, that it was President Putin that gave the election to President Trump. The notion that more investigators were needed...well, in one sense, that's true. What Comey admitted, before the House Intelligence Committee, was that he was unable, as he put it, to get access to the Democratic National Committee computers. Now, that's silly on the face of it. The Director of the FBI can always get direct access. Why did he not seek direct access? Because he knew. He was in with the NSA and the CIA, and he knew that if investigators really went in there, they would find out that it was not the Russians that hacked the Democratic National Committee. It was the CIA.

Let me explain: this has gotten no attention, in the mainstream press. But on the 31st of March, Wikileaks released news that a new program developed by CIA and NSA hides fragments of text and allows the CIA to make believe that another party is blamed for the hack [part of the Vault 7 release]. Russian, Chinese, Farsi, Arabic, and Korean were the languages used...the forensic investigation and the anti-virus companies were completely befuddled by that, why? Because, as the former technical director of the NSA [Bill Binney] has told me, this is a program that took fifteen years to complete. And that there are seven hundred million lines of code in it. Okay? That means that an outfit like CrowdStrike cannot possibly detect who the real hacker was, but rather can only detect the signs, the telltale signs that the real hacker left behind, and those were Cyrillic and the name of the first head of the Russian secret police ["Felix Edmundovich", first name and patronymic of Felix Dzerzhinsky]. They cannot have it both ways. If the Russians did it, they wouldn't [laughs] have left behind telltale signs. We know now that Brennan had this capability. My friends and I concur, and I can say, with their support, that it's just as likely, if not more likely, that it was John Brennan and the CIA that hacked into those DNC computers, with a very specific program, designed to blame someone else, namely, the Russians. Was this program used in 2016? Yes it was. Again, this is based on original CIA documents, revealed by Julian Assange on the 31st of March, no wonder they hate him so much.

BECKER
Okay, Ray, let's go back, for our broader audience, which is probably not following this as closely, certainly as you are, or William Binney, the NSA technical director that you are referring to. We had a situation where the FBI told the Democratic National Committee that their email server had been hacked. That's what the FBI told them. The FBI asked for the Democratic National Committee to give permission to the FBI to come and do a forensic investigation into the DNC hack, and the DNC said no. Now, what you're suggesting, I think, is that certainly the FBI, if it wanted to, could have found a way to force, perhaps through subpoena, the Democratic party to give over its email server so that the FBI could look into it, if indeed a foreign government was trying to influence through illegal interference the outcome of an American election. And that-

MCGOVERN
That's beyond dispute.

BECKER
And that, and that James Comey who was then director of the FBI, did not pursue the investigation, and so CrowdStrike, which was the Democratic National Committee's private, sort of, customer service, for their email protection, their so-called security guarantee, they were the only source of information about the Russian leak. In other words, that's what you're saying. Right?

MCGOVERN
Yeah, and what I'm saying, is that if you look at Comey's testimony before the House Intelligence Committee, he was squirming. He said, and this is a virtual direct quote, "I know, I know far better if you're doing forensics, to get the actual physical access to the computers in question, but we didn't do that. We didn't do that. I know, I know it would have been better to do that, but we had to rely on CrowdStrike." Now. CrowdStrike. What is their capability? Whatever it is, it's not sufficient to uncover a program fifteen years in the making, with seven hundred million lines of code [this is a reference to the Vault 7 hacking tools], each line costing twenty five dollars, as Bill Binney has explained to me. So, this is really really amazing. I think someone finally told Trump, "Look, this Comey, [laughs] this Comey is in with John Brennan," of the CIA, "and with the NSA, they're out to destroy you, they haven't done it yet, but they're still going to work on it, they're gonna put more investigators on it, and you bet your money, they're gonna find collusion between you, or, if not at least you, then some of your folks." And that's why, I think, Trump said, "This is it. You know? I'm not going to tolerate this guy any more." So he fired him.

BECKER
Ray, let me ask you, let me give you a counter scenario, and then I'll let you respond to it, if I could.

MCGOVERN
Sure. Mmmmhmmm.

BECKER
The sort of emerging narrative, that's coming through at least in some of the media here, in Washington D.C., is that Donald Trump had never liked Comey. That he had denounced Comey over and over again, during the 2016 campaign, because Comey was not indicting Hillary Clinton. Instead, simply saying, that she was extremely reckless in allowing her email server, which she had taken home, the State Department server to be put on her personal server [sic]. He was angry at Comey, he wanted to get rid of Comey for a long time. But- That he was getting increasingly agitated because Donald Trump sits and watches cable TV all the time, watching Comey on TV, when he testified, say, at the May 3rd hearings, where Comey said he was mildly nauseous over the fact that he possibly had an impact on the 2016 election, meaning, the defeat of Hillary Clinton, that, you could only take the "mildly nauseous" to mean that, and he also-

MCGOVERN
[interrupts BECKER, and said over previous and subsequent BECKER lines] Nah, I don't [inaudible] that.

BECKER
Let me just finish, and then, have you respond [sic]. And Comey at that hearing also confirmed that he wanted to go public with his concerns that Russia was meddling with the election back in August 2016, but that it was the Obama administration that squashed it, in other words, he wanted to let people know, back then, the Russians were trying to help Donald Trump, and Comey said he believes Russia will try to meddle with the 2018 midterm elections. Now, all of those things, if Donald Trump is sitting there, getting annoyed and angry at the FBI Director, already doesn't like him, and the Democrats were also trashing Comey at the same time, because of his mis-statements at those hearings about Hillary Clinton, in other words, exaggerating the role of Hillary Clinton's emails, and how many she had sent, and how many were classified, etc, that Donald Trump then acted in an imperious, sortof impulsive way, because he's the boss, this is the way he does things, and he expected the Democrats to basically applaud his announcement because they already seemed to have so many grievances against him [Comey]. What do you think about that narrative?

MCGOVERN
Well, I think all the reasons that adduced so far, including the ones you just used, are bogus. It has to do with trust. Now, the Democrats are just as vehement, in opposing Comey, and accusing him of various deeds. What we need is some major event where Trump finally knows that Comey not only was inept as an investigator, but the very fact that he did not require the DNC to surrender their computers so his technicians would look at it, and find out, what, that the Russians hacked? [laughs] Not in your life! He would find that John Brennan and the CIA had this very fancy program, and the only way they could figure out what happened would be to go to NSA and ask them to rat on themselves. That's how I look at it. Now. The whole thing here about the investigation and a special prosecutor and all that, Glenn Greenwald was on this morning, and he made some good sense [I am uncertain which interview this refers to; Greenwald was on "Democracy Now" (a show McGovern has referenced many times before, and watches regularly) two days before speaking on this subject, and yet he says nothing close to this quote. Link: https://www.democracynow.org/2017/5/10/glenn_greenwald_independent_probe_needed_to]. He said, "Look, you compare it to Watergate, it was underlying criminal activity in Watergate. That's why it started getting momentum." There is no evidence of underlying criminal activity with respect to this so-called "hack" by the Russians. And the reason for that is that there is no "hack" by the Russians. The Russians got- were recipients, that is, Wikileaks was recipient of a leak [sic]. And when you put that together, you see that, you know, this rare firing of the FBI Director, well in my view, Trump was well within his authority, he risked something for sure, but he knows that any legitimate investigation will turn up not that the Russians hacked, to help him win, and thereby make him sortof an unauthorized president, but rather that this is a much more complicated business. If he's willing to face that...prospect, even though it would drag out for two years, if there's a good prosecutor, a special prosecutor named, he's gonna get to the bottom of this. And Trump I think is confident that he will be able to prove that Comey was together with John Brennan and with the NSA Director, culpable of first trying to deny him the election, and then later, impugning his authenticity, or his right to be president. They're still at it. And that's what's going on here. Trump had enough, and so he fired Comey.

BECKER
Well, if- Certainly the way he fired Comey, and the way this has played out, it appeared that many people in the top parts of his own administration did not know it was going to happen, they were taken off-guard...the Democratic party, the opponents of Trump were able to seize the high ground along with the major media, which has been going at Trump anyway, except when he drops bombs on Syria [MCGOVERN laughs] I mean they grabbed hold of it, they're going out, the Moveon, the fake protest organization that's a front group for the Democratic party, in my opinion, went to, in front of the White House, and held a demonstration for, calling for a Special Prosecutor to look into the Trump-Russia connection. If it was designed in some way to sortof impede that project [investigation into Trump-Russia ties], it certainly had the opposite impact, because it's accelerated it a great deal. I agree with you 100%, the difference between Watergate and this, is that when Nixon fired Archibald Cox, the Special Prosecutor, when he demanded that his Attorney General do it, and then the Attorney General resigned because he wouldn't do it, that's because Archibald Cox had evidence, and Nixon was about to get impeached, or, you know, whatever, because of-

MCGOVERN
Yeah, there was-

BECKER
-there's no evidence here, no evidence whatsoever.

MCGOVERN
That's the key. And the professionals in the FBI know that. They also know something that Sally Yates tried to say two times during her testimony on Monday. And that was, "No, I never, I never asked for any unmasking. Uh- What happens is, some of these intercepted messages they come to me with the American names already unmasked. They come from the intelligence agencies." That's what she said. She was cut off, both times, short. Now what does that mean? That means that when John Brennan and Comey and the NSA people decided they would tell Sally Yates, "Oh, look, we have proof now. We have proof now that Michael Flynn was lying...you better tell, you better tell the President, or you tell the Vice President," well, she was had. She was persuaded that this was her duty to do. Now, did she ask for those names to be unmasked? No, she tried to say twice on Monday, "I never asked, it was given to me unmasked." Who did that? The only people that can, NSA, CIA, and the FBI. And it worked like a charm. Because she trotted off to the White House and said, "Oh! This is terrible!" And the White House said, "Well, you know, what business is it of yours if one part of the administration is not candid with the other part?" And she said, "Well, the blackmail." The blackmail thing is just so stretched, I can't believe that even the Americans impoverished on the diet of information that they get, that Americans believe the business that Michael Flynn would have been open to blackmail by the Russians, because he didn't tell the Vice President the whole truth. That just doesn't wash. The whole thing is a charade, and Trump knows it's a charade, now. He may have Mike Pompeo, the head of the CIA, do some real investigation here, in finding out, whoops! [laughs], John Brennan had this whole directorate, full of computer hacks. They were really good at hacking and disguising the provenance of the hacking, they were not so good at defense, witness the fact that Wikileaks, Julian Assange, has a treasure trove of which they've only released, so far, a minuscule portion and I would say, look for more, but look especially at the number three release, which was released on March 31st, no wonder the New York Times gave it no heed, or any other publication, because it shows, what it shows is that the CIA has the capability to hamper forensic investigations, and to prevent anti-virus companies from attributing hacking attacks to the CIA. Instead, they attribute to ...whom? To the Russians. So, the last thing I'll say here is, this is very dangerous. You know, we have a distraction from what Trump wanted to do, in creating a decent relationship with the Russians. Now it's really hard for them to do that, and what you have now is really sobering, really sombre reminder, that continuity in escalation is happening, with respect to the wars that we're engaged in. And these are wars that Russia could help us to get out of, especially the one in Syria. We had an agreement in September, and who botched that one? Our Defense Department, by bombing fixed Syrian army positions, killing between seventy and a hundred people [inaudible]-

BECKER
[cuts MCGOVERN off] We are...completely out of time. Completely out of time. We've been joined by Ray McGovern, we've been talking about the firing of James Comey, the FBI Director. You are listening to "Loud and Clear". We'll be back.