Ray McGovern on Loud and Clear (01/04/2017)

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

"Loud and Clear" with guest Ray McGovern. Broadcast date: January 4, 2017.

Excerpt runs from 35:00 to 53:50 in file.

Link: https://sputniknews.com/radio_loud_and_clear/201701041049239559-syria-ceasefire-hangs-in-balance-turkeys-role-examined/

BRIAN BECKER
After the U.S. expulsion of thirty five Russian diplomatic personnel and their families, and the closing of two diplomatic retreat compounds in Maryland and New York, President Putin surprised all of the pundits when he did not retaliate, indicating Russia's desire for a reset in U.S.-Russia relations after Donald Trump becomes president on January 20th. We are joined by former CIA analyst turned activist and writer, Ray McGovern, whose commentary can be found at Ray McGovern dot com. Welcome back, Ray.

RAY MCGOVERN
Thanks.

BECKER
Ray, thanks for joining. Happy new year. I guess it's happy. After President Obama announced that the diplomatic personnel from Russia were being expelled, from the United States, everyone was waiting to see what the response from Russia would be, but Vladimir Putin chose not to escalate the situation, instead saying, "We will not create problems for American diplomats. We will not expel anyone. Furthermore, I invite all children of U.S. diplomats accredited in Russia to the Christmas and New Year tree in the Kremlin. Talk about why Putin played it that way.

MCGOVERN
Well, I have to agree with the president-elect, Trump, and admit President Putin is a "very smart man." He drew a marked contrast between what appears to be the petulance of an outgoing administration, that didn't get its way, and that, as the Foreign Ministry spokesman in Moscow said, "really, unintentionally showed that the United States of America is not the sole indispensable country in the world. Matter of fact, it's not a very exceptional country." I think she was right about that, I think this is the last, hopefully the last, of several sortof sophomoric, not sophomoric, I would say freshman type, petulant moves, because Obama has been circumnavigated, so to speak, by Donald Trump. You know, when [Maria] Zakharova, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, talked about what, the blow, as she put it, to American prestige was, they talked about, Barack Obama and his semi-literate foreign policy team. Well, you know, I hate to agree with the spokesman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, but I think she got that right too.

BECKER
Ray...it seemed to me to be unprecedented, that the outgoing administration would take this action, expelling thirty five Russian diplomats, just weeks before Obama leaves office, and it was obvious to the world, and obvious to Putin, in fact, that it was an effort to sabotage the announced plans by Trump, the incoming president of the United States, like him or loathe him, the next president coming into the White House, just weeks away, and obviously trying to create a situation whereby it would be hard or maybe not even possible for Trump to do what he said he wants to do, which is to press the reset button and have better relations with Russia. I mean, do you remember anything like this happening in the last days or weeks before an outgoing president hands over the power? And if you do, what is it?

MCGOVERN
No, I do not. And I go back to Eisenhower. Alright? This is, and I suppose, in this respect, you could say, the U.S. is the sole exceptional country in the world, I've never seen the like of it. Now, it has obvious explanations. There's still shock here in Washington. With respect to Trump's victory. Nobody expected it, there's still reeling from it, and there needs to be some kind of explanation, and, of course, you know, who better to blame than the evil, so to speak, Russians? That's one thing. The other thing, of course, is, as you point out, that to the degree that you can foul the well, to the degree that you can make Putin even madder and get him to react...the better. Now, Putin is smarter by half. He didn't react. He's gained plaudits throughout the world. For his sang froid. And I have to say, that his restraint, for the last couple of years, has been truly remarkable, and shows him to be a statesman. And I think that all comparisons are invidious, but the one with our president, is particularly invidious in this respect.

BECKER
It seemed like the Obama administration perhaps got angrier still at Russia for not expelling American diplomats because the expected reciprocity would in fact lead to a new kind of showdown with Russia. I heard, from sources who I talked to just today, that the announced expulsion of the diplomats and their families, mostly people, by the way, who are newcomers, that's what I understand, to the Russian embassy and to the Russian diplomatic posting here, in other words, people who probably could not have been involved in spying, but, of course, as we know, there's spying from all countries, but these were thirty five people, including thirty five diplomats plus their families. They were given seventy two hours to leave. Now, that meant they had to leave on Sunday. There was a scheduled commercial flight to Moscow, a direct flight on Monday, they asked for permission from the U.S. State Department to extend the expulsion order by one day, so that they could get a commercial flight, to which the Obama administration said, "No." And then, of course, Russia had to then send a plane to pick up the families and the diplomatic personnel. I mean, it seems on one level, just petty, provocative, angry, in other words, not a thought through foreign policy. Is it partisan politics, is it the Democrats, Obama and Clinton still unable to take responsibility for Clinton's failure, or is it something bigger, do you think?

MCGOVERN
Well, I think it's partly both. You have the Democrats sortof in a meltdown. Witness the fact that while the cat was away, that is, Obama, in Hawaii, the mices, the mice played bigtime. You had John Brennan, CIA, whispering to the New York Times, the Washington Post, how Putin stole the election, we know, without any evidence. We have the FBI now saying that's a crock. And then the FBI [was] told, hey, get with the program. Get with the program. Agree with Brennan. And so they agree with Brennan. Homeland Security, for some reason, gets into the act. And they come out with what was supposed to be the proof, of Russian hacking, and instead it's a manual for how to protect your own systems, your own network, from hacking. And this is the same, same outfit, that gave misleading guidance to everybody and his brother, including the Vermont place, where we now know, according to the news as I came in here this morning, not all that that technical evidence provided was sound advice. And it led to misinterpretations.

BECKER
Well, let's help the audience understand, for those who might not be acquainted with it. What actually was said. The Washington Post had a major story, at the same time that this is all happening with the expulsion of the Russian diplomats from the United States, purportedly because they hacked the election and tried to hack the Democratic party, emails, and Podesta emails, etc. But the Washington Post ran a story, "Russia Hacked Vermont's Electric Grid System" and they used the same malware that was used in the Democratic National Committee hack, and people went nuts. Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy issued a statement, warning "This is beyond hackers having electronic joyrides. This is now about trying to access utilities, to potentially manipulate the electric grid and shut it down in the middle of winter. This is a direct threat to Vermont. And we do not take it lightly." In other words, that Washington Post story went viral. It was, Ray McGovern, fake news, though. It was untrue.

MCGOVERN
That's correct. But, of course the Post immediately snapped to, with a correction, [laughs] read that correction, we were talking about that before. Do you have that before you [there]?

BECKER
Yeah, it's after- After it got- It turned out to be a complete lie. That Russia had not hacked Vermont's electric grid. It wasn't trying to bring down and make the people of Vermont cold in the middle of winter. Afterwards, the Washington Post wrote this editorial correction, and I think this takes the cake. This has to be the most understated correction in the history of journalism. Certainly in the history of the Washington Post. "Editor's note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly said that Russian hackers had penetrated the U.S. electric grid. Authorities say there is no indication of that. So far, the computer at Burlington Electric that was hacked, was not attached to the grid." Okay. Meaning, hey, here's editorial correction - our story was a lie. But of course the story was such a big story, that it went everywhere. And the editors sortof disqualification, editorial correction, is such a, I don't know, just so ridiculous.

MCGOVERN
Well, Brian, does that tell you something about the validity of these charges that Russia and, particularly, Putin, hacked into our election process? I think it does. And I just happened to catch a clip of Christiane Amanpour this morning. Just a couple days ago, in which she's just grilling a Russian spokesman, and she's saying, "Look, you say there's zero evidence that Russia hacked into our election system." And, by the way, that is correct. "You say there's zero evidence. Then why? How can you explain? That the president of the United States has accused Russia and Putin- How can you explain that?" Well...HELLO? [laughs] You know, fast backward [sic] to 2002, 2003. The same pundits were saying, "You say there's zero evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Well then, how could president Bush be attacking Iraq if there's no evidence?" [laughs] Well, it's this kind of logic, which is laughable, if it weren't so serious. Luckily, we only have three weeks left of this. Luckily, Putin is showing himself to be a statesman, with sang froid, that won't quit. And, you know, in three weeks, we'll have a more sensible, I hope, approach, at least, to Russia; that's big.

BECKER
Ray, this week, the Republican party, John McCain, Lindsay Graham, and others, are convening hearings where they're going to investigate the issue of Russian hacking of the U.S. election. In other words, they are partners with the outgoing Obama administration, but they've been the partners of the Obama administration on a number of issues as it has to do with Russia. I can remember Victoria Nuland, the Undersecretary of State, who had been earlier, Hillary Clinton's spokesperson, who was, by the way, Dick Cheney's national security adviser, in other words, a neo-con. She and John McCain were in Maidan, in Ukraine, in 2013, in 2014, egging on the protest. Of course, the end, the putsch, the coup d'etat led by fascists, overthrew the corrupt but democratically elected government of Ukraine and now we have, and the people of Ukraine have had all of this human suffering imposed on them. And of course the destabilization of U.S.-Russia relations. I mean, now it's going to be a bipartisan effort to go at Russia by those elements in the Republican party, who are disagreeing with Trump that there should be a reset button. Who do they represent, why are they taking this position? That too is a bit unusual for the incoming Republican president.

MCGOVERN
Yes, the real challenge will be to the intelligence community to come up with, "evidence". If there is none, if Trump is right, in saying they're lying to him, they're lying to all of us, then heads will roll. That's partly what John Brennan, his CIA upper management, are afraid of. Now, I don't think there is any evidence. Whether they can fabricate evidence, as they did with respect to weapons of mass destruction, forgeries, for example, on yellowcake uranium from Africa. Whether they can do that in three weeks, they're probably already working on it. But Trump, I think, is smart enough, and so are his national security advisors, including General Flynn, to recognize forgeries when they see them. If there is no evidence of this, heads are going to roll. And Lindsay Graham and Senator McCain, well, if they have any, any consciences at all, they should be embarrassed to be drumming again for war, when they saw the consequences with respect to Iraq, where they were all saying, "there is no doubt that there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq." And there was zero evidence.

BECKER
"Americans should listen to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange's denials that Russia was the source of hacked Democratic emails released by his group over the summer," said Kellyanne Conway, a Trump senior political advisor, she said that on national TV, on CNBC. Julian Assange is saying that the material they released, about the Democratic party, did not come from Russia. They're saying it categorically. That, I think, is a divergence from Wikileaks' usual protocol, where they don't say anything about who the leaked sources came from [sic], who the sources were.

MCGOVERN
Well, that's right. And, you know, there's even more interesting commentary from Julian. On July 10, a young staffer, of the DNC, was murdered. On the streets of Washington. Very early in the morning. It was a robbery, but the robber forgot to take anything from the victim. Now, Julian Assange, very soon, went on Dutch TV, and said, "You know, this shows the risks that a whistleblower runs." And he offered a $20,000 reward, from Wikileaks for information leading up to the killer. Wooooah. Now, I had never seen Julian say anything like that before. But you don't have to be a crackerjack analyst to say, "Hmmmm...maybe that was the guy, or maybe he had some friends, who were so, so appalled when they read those emails from the DNC," which show, by the way, that Hillary Clinton stole the nomination from Bernie Sanders. And that's part of this operation, to divert attention from that. That they were so outraged, they said, "You know, in a democracy, we shouldn't have people interfering with the electoral process. It's Hillary Clinton! [laughs] That's interfered with this electoral process. We're going to put in a little thumb drive here, and take this, and get it to Julian Assange." My guess, is that's what happened with the DNC hack. What happened with the Podesta one...probably something similar, but there are a lot of very very disgruntled young people who'd thrown their hearts into this campaign, and to see it stolen from their chosen nominee, was a little too much to bear, and that's what I think happened.

BECKER
And the funny thing, too, of course, not that funny, is that if Bernie Sanders had been the candidate against Donald Trump, he certainly would have won, in Michigan, in Wisconsin, in those battleground industrial states. We have one minute left, I want to ask you real quick. Is it partisan politics, is it individual personalities, or is there an element of the U.S. military industrial complex that actually fears an outbreak of peace with Russia, in other words, there's been such an incentivizing of military production as relations have soured between the U.S. and Russia...what's your view, of course, you have sixty seconds, so you can't give me your real view. But what's your take?

MCGOVERN
I'd give most weight to the latter. As you pointed out, peace is very bad for business, Brian. Very very bad indeed. Since 9/11, the Lockheeds, the Raytheons, the defense contractors have been making piles of dough. Now, if Trump is serious, and he talks to the Russians, there's no reason in god's world, why there couldn't be a mutual pullback from the border between Poland and Russia, for example, why there couldn't be a deal where the Baltic republics are reassured Russia's not going to attack them...they're not going to attack them anyway. And there could be a deal on Syria. This would very, very- This would be very, very bad for the military industrial complex. I'd like to add one more thing; and there is someone who knows who the source was, of these so-called hacks, which are really leaks, and that's ambassador Craig Murray, he's a friend of mine, and a friend of Julian Assange. His integrity won't quit. I asked him, right after this, "You went public, you said you knew who the source was, has the New York Times or the Washington Post been in touch with you?" [Murray:] "No," two days later, "Still no?" [Murray:] "No, they don't want to know." K? So doesn't that tell you a lot?

BECKER
Editorial correction: our earlier story was untrue. [MCGOVERN laughs] That's the new M.O. for the Washington Post, and really, for the New York Times. Well, the New York Times doesn't want to make a correction, so they don't ask somebody who says, "Hey, your story is untrue," even though he's a former diplomat, an esteemed person. We've been talking to Ray McGovern, we've been talking with him, about the expulsion of Russia's thirty five diplomats, and their families, the refusal of the Russian government to retaliate, and where things are going with U.S.-Russia relations, as Donald Trump ascends to the White House, in just three weeks.