Ray McGovern Interview on Law and Disorder (12/21/2016)

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

"Law and Disorder", broadcast on WBAI, hosted by Michael Steven Smith and Heidi Boghosian, interview with Ray McGovern. Broadcast date: December 21, 2016.

File link: http://lawanddisorder.org/2016/12/law-and-disorder-december-21-2016/

Excerpt runs from 1:08 to 21:28.

MICHAEL STEVEN SMITH
The major media has been filled, daily, with stories about how Russia and its chief of state Vladimir Putin sought to influence the election in favor of Donald Trump. It is alleged by the CIA and other American intelligence agencies, that the Russians hacked into the computer systems of the Democratic National Committee, and of Hillary Rodham Clinton. This conclusion, it is reported, is based on "overwhelming circumstantial evidence". American public opinion is being shaped to support aggression against Russia. Despite a promise, made to Russia, that they would not do it - the promise was broken, and NATO, an American controlled military alliance, now has troops and weapons on the Russian border, where military exercises have been carried out. Tensions have been ratcheted up to an extreme level, not known since the height of the Cold War. We speak today to former CIA analyst Ray McGovern; McGovern was the person who briefed president George [H.W.] Bush daily; he broke with the government under George W. Bush, over the cooked intelligence used to rationalize America's illegal war of aggression against Iraq, and helped form the organization Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.

Last week, his group issued a memorandum to President Obama, which  demonstrated that the Russians did not hack into the computers of the Democratic party, or Hillary Clinton [title: "US Intel Vets Dispute Russia Hacking Claims" link: https://consortiumnews.com/2016/12/12/us-intel-vets-dispute-russia-hacking-claims/ ]. And did not, therefore, influence the American election. They asserted that the information came out about the corruption of Hillary Clinton and the Democratic party, was leaked by an insider, not hacked.

HEIDI BOGHOSIAN
Ray McGovern, welcome back to "Law and Disorder".

RAY MCGOVERN
Thank you very much.

BOGHOSIAN
Ray, according to all the major news media, and I'm gonna quote here, "overwhelming circumstantial evidence leads the CIA to believe that Putin deployed computer hackers with the goal of tipping the election to Donald Trump." ["The CIA Judgement on Russia Built on a Swell of Evidence" link: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/11/us/politics/cia-judgment-intelligence-russia-hacking-evidence.html] Is this statement ...evidence free?

MCGOVERN
[laughs] Well, yes it is. Let me put it in context here. Bill Colby, former Director of Central Intelligence, for whom I worked personally, we worked together. He is quoted as having said, "The CIA owns everyone of any significance, in the major media." Now, there's some dispute as to whether he actually said that, and I wasn't there when he said it, but the Church Committee findings at about that same time, indicated that that was, if not absolutely, very probably true. The other thing I'll cite, is Bill Casey. No devotee of the truth, the covert action expert that ran the CIA, while I was there. And he said, and this was at a cabinet meeting right when he took power, "We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." [whether Casey ever actually said this is in serious dispute; it has been sourced to Mae Brusell and Barbara Honegger, both given to unhinged conspiracy theories] So-

SMITH
Propaganda and all the media is that the Russians hacked into the computer system of Clinton and the Democratic National Committee. But you don't believe that, do you, you think it was a leak by an insider. Why do you believe that?

MCGOVERN
Yeah, it's not a belief. You know, there are two ways to approach this. One is the logic of the situation. The other is the forensics. Now, in our Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, we are privileged to have very very senior officials from the National Security Agency, now retired of course, but two who signed this memo, Bill Binney and Kirk Wiebe, have over seventy five years of professional experience, at a very senior level, they've looked at all this, and they've said, "If it were a hack...NSA would definitely know about it. All evidence points to the fact that it's not a hack, that it's a leak." Now, the difference, maybe your listeners need to know, the difference, let me explain it very briefly. A leak: that's when someone takes data out of an organization, like with a thumb drive or something, and gives it some other person or organization. Now, Snowden, or Chelsea Manning did leaks; that's how Julian Assange and Wikileaks got this information. Now, a hack...a hack is when someone in a remote location, electronically penetrates operating systems, or firewalls, or other cyber protection systems, and then extracts data.

Now, we need the distinction, because NSA has the capability, a proven capability, to identify _all_, it boggles the mind, but it's true, _all_ such hacking. Why? Because the systems that we pay ten billion dollars a year for, are fully capable of tracking each and every email, designating its origin and its destination. So, suffice it to say, that from a technical point of view, and you know, don't believe McGovern on this, believe Bill Binney, who was the technical director of NSA when he retired ten years ago. From a technical point of view, it cannot be Russian hacking, because then, our administration, the New York Times, and others would be able to say, "Well, on such and such a date, we have this hacked message, that indicates that Putin called up so and so, and said, 'Whoop! Let's do this to make sure Hillary doesn't win." The whole thing is a canard.

Last thing I'll say, to put into some perspective. All this happened, when Julian Assange, having collected an immense amount of email traffic, from Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee, websites, or their emails...he sorted them out, put them into searchable order, and released them two days, I repeat, two days, before the Democratic National Convention. Now, what did they indicate? What was the content? This is important. Okay? The content was, that Hillary Clinton and the DNC stole the nomination from Bernie Sanders. Pure and simple. Now, what did Hillary do wrong? What are we going to do about this? I know! We'll blame it on Russians! Well, yeah, but it wasn't the Russians, it was Julian Assange...Oh, that's okay! We'll say Julian Assange is working for the Russians! Oh...okay, but what would be the rationale? Oh, the rationale...the rationale is, the Russians wanted Donald Trump to win! Now, give me a break. I know a little bit about [laughs] how Russian leaders look at U.S. presidents...the last thing, Vladimir Putin would want, is a president who brags about being unpredictable, and who takes immense, has an immense reaction to every slight he receives, whether it's real or imagined. I can't believe that Vladimir Putin had a distinct preference to who would win this election. It was Julian Assange who received a leak. Now, who did the leak? Well, it has to be somebody within the NSA, or the FBI, or the Democratic National Committee, who got sickened by watching Bernie Sanders cheated out of the nomination.

SMITH
Yeah, it's even more concrete than that, isn't it Ray? Craig Murray, the former British ambassador, who works sometimes with Assange, has said that he actually met the leaker. And you know Murray, talk about that please.

MCGOVERN
Yeah. Well, both of them are good friends of mine. Julian and Craig. Now, Craig's word is golden. He lost his job as UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, because he couldn't stomach getting information from torture, which he observed in person. Okay? Now, he's golden. He's also a recipient, as Julian is, of the Sam Adams award for integrity [Award for Integrity In Intelligence]. So, what's he saying...and this is the other track. I started with the technical, this is a little squishier, but it's just as real, because I know Craig Murray, and his reputation for integrity. He says, "Hey guys, listen to me: _I know_ the leaker, I met with _the leaker_, so, please, believe me, it's a leak, and I also know Julian Assange." Now, you can believe him, or not believe him, but you know what's really interesting? That got into the UK Guardian ["CIA concludes Russia interfered to help Trump win election, say reports" link: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/dec/10/cia-concludes-russia-interfered-to-help-trump-win-election-report], the newspaper, but you know what? I talk to Craig. Three days ago. I said, "Craig! Did the New York Times, did the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, did anybody get in touch with you? Follow up?" He says, "Are you kidding me? No!" I said, "Well, how do you figure that?" He said, "Come on, Ray, are you kidding? They don't wanna know the truth." So: that's the other, main reason, why I'm convinced, my NSA colleagues are convinced, at least from a technical point of view...this was a leak, it was leaked by somebody inside, that's the definition of a leak, okay? Who extracted this information manually with a thumb drive or whatever, and gave it to Julian Assange, who, didn't change a word. That's the good thing about Wikileaks. They don't even take off the metadata. Or, somebody criticized them for this, but not even the social security numbers. They keep it pristine pure, so that it is beyond reproach [this claim seems to be loudly false; see "It Looks Like Someone Curated The Wikileaks Emails Before They Were Published", link: https://www.buzzfeed.com/sheerafrenkel/it-looks-like-someone-curated-the-wikileaks-emails-before-th?utm_term=.ts5VzbRpM ], and so that it can be used to get people out of jail, or prevent them from getting into jail. So, the situation we basically face here...the media has gone amuck, and people, even people like, well, conservative folks, are saying, "What is this? The FBI doesn't agree with it, obviously, what is CIA doing?" And that is the real question.

BOGHOSIAN
Ray, why do you think the media is so gung ho about the hacking idea when there is no basis in fact for it?

MCGOVERN
Yeah, there are basically two reasons, since one is that the Democrats and the major media are the ones described by Colby and Casey as being very gullible. And haven't been able to wrap their minds around the fact that Hillary lost. But the second, and more compelling reason, is that if you look at the six major firms, major mega corporations that own the mainstream media, so to speak, their major business areas are in making and selling, and giving sophisticated weaponry...now, why do I say that? Well, because as we all know, peace is very bad for that kind of business, war, huh, tension? Oh, man. Look at what's happened since 9/11. So: twin reasons here, the most operative one is the same old one, these people profiteer off of war and tension, they like to stoke up tensions with Russia, and they're deadly afraid, I mean, what happens if Trump goes forward with his promise to talk to the Russians? Work things out with the Russians? Easily done with Ukraine, the Baltics...what is the Russian threat? Well, in my view, the Russian threat to these countries is _nil_. But the Russian threat to the neo-cons is: that they will make a deal with Trump, very easily done, as I said before, and have a detente, a real detente. In Europe. And the Middle East. And that's what they're afraid of. Trump has made it clear he'd like to do that, there's no reason why it cannot be done, except for the opposition, of people who profiteer on this kind of tension.

BOGHOSIAN
Ray, are you concerned at all that this media coverage ratchets up tensions with Russia in the direction of conflict?

MCGOVERN
My immediate concern is that it seems to be directed at trying to get as many members of the electoral college to change their minds. That's very serious. That's in the nature of a- what I call a pre-emptive coup. I mean, it can't be described as a coup, because Trump isn't president yet, [but] if you can get enough people to change their minds in the electoral college, then we have a real, real problem. A crisis in this country. So, that's what I see as the immediate thing, the business about stoking up tensions with Russia, so I think there is a dynamic there, which has been in effect ever since, well, ever since we sponsored the coup in Kiev. [laughs] And that's never in the major media, is it? To the major media, modern Central European history begins on the 23rd of February of 2014. And no one mentions what happened the day before: the U.S. orchestrated coup in Kiev, on Russia's doorstep, which George Friedman, of Stratfor, called "the most blatant coup in history."

SMITH
It bears repeating that it was Hillary Clinton and her underling, Victoria Nuland, who engineered that. Nuland bragged about having spent five billion dollars to accomplish that...you now have, in the Ukraine, fascists in the government, for the first time since World War II. That's the kind of thing we would have gotten if Clinton was the president.

MCGOVERN
They're friendly fascists. They're in our camp. They don't like Russia either. So they're- I'm being facetious, but you're right, Michael.

SMITH
With respect to understanding the relationship of United States and Russia, that was an area of your expertise. And I would like to ask you about that.

MCGOVERN
My advanced degrees are in Russian history, and I used to teach Russian. And I ran the Soviet foreign policy branch, in the CIA Analysis Department, for years. So, I briefed presidents on Russian relations and what the Russians were doing. During Reagan's administration, it was one on one. So. You know, after I retired, I thought I could "go peacefully into the night." But when I saw my friends and my former colleagues deliberately distorting information to justify a war, that was completely unnecessary, the one on Iraq, well, not only I, but others, who feel the way I do about integrity in intelligence came out of the work, and we've been publishing now for, well, ever since Colin Powell's speech, which we point out, was specious. Forty five memoranda, now, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, we're proud of what we did...our latest one is the one that we're quoting from, which says, that the claims of Russian hacking are baseless, and we stand by that judgement.

BOGHOSIAN
Ray, I'm curious, what do you think of Donald Trump's comment that he does not need to receive the presidential intelligence briefing every day?

MCGOVERN
Well, you know, [laughs] my first reaction was "WOOOOOAH!" How could anybody say that, you know? Having labored in that vineyard, under, not only Reagan, but under Nixon and Ford, I mean, it's a really important document. But: look at how the CIA has changed. Look at the guy running the CIA, who hacked into congressional computers. Who thought that kidnapping was a great idea, to have people tortured, in Central Europe. John Brennan is a menace. And so, if I were Donald Trump, [laughs] I would probably have a reaction somewhat similar. Right? So, Mike Pence is going to get the stuff. Maybe he can sift out the real stuff from the other stuff. And...do I wanna hear from the CIA? What they're prevaricating, about how the Russians hacking into our thing [sic]? I don't know. I think I'd like to prefer to rely on my own experts, and let Mike Pence tell me the CIA is saying [sic]. That's really sorrowful. It's sorrowful for this reason: there used to be two CIAs. One devoted, and committed to telling the truth without fear or favor. We had career protection for doing that. And the other CIA, the operational side, trafficked in lies, and deception, all the time. Now it's one. Brennan has made it just one CIA, and you imagine what kind of reception an analyst would get- [saying] "I looked at all the evidence, I don't see any persuasive evidence the Russians hacked into-" Would he be promoted? Naaaaaaaaaah, I don't think so. It's that bad.

SMITH
One last question, Ray McGovern, because we're running out of our allotted time. But, what do you think of people like me and you and Heidi, what should people be doing about this stuff now?

MCGOVERN
Well, Michael, and Heidi, it's a very challenging environment. Stephen Cohen, was on Amy Goodman [the show she hosts, "Democracy Now!"], and he had all he could do to fend off, you know, a wonderful person who's terribly naive [show title: "Slaughter or Liberation?: A Debate on Russia's Role in the Syrian War & the Fall of Aleppo", link: https://www.democracynow.org/2016/12/14/slaughter_or_liberation_a_debate_on ]. The head of the Human Rights Watch [Kenneth Roth]. Who bought the story about the sarin attacks being part of Assad's offensive, and who's now defending what's going on in Syria, from an administration point of view. So, all I'm saying is this: our- the memorandum has not seen the light of day in this country, other than on websites. One would think, that the former director of NSA, had enough gravitas and panache, that somebody would take cognizance of that. Similarly, with Craig Murray, ambassador to Uzbekistan for the UK, he knows what he's talking about. So, there's gotta be a way. There's gotta be a way to force this into major media. And the people who used to be able to listen to these things, you have the Keith Olbermanns of the world, [laughs] they've turned into the worst. The worst fanners of these flames against Russia. So, it's a task that we have to do, and, in my view, the premium is on the next five days, before these electors convene in the state capitals, to elect Trump. Or: to fool around, in an unprecedented way, with our electoral process.

SMITH
Yeah, I think everybody should read that memo. How do people get a hold of it?

MCGOVERN
Well, it's on my website, Ray McGovern dot com, it's on Consortium News dot com, it's on Anti War dot com, it's on all the websites that we have the choir reading, the usual suspects. What we need to do, is to get it out, in print. And that's a monumental task, because the Times, obviously, the Post, the Wall Street Journal, have a vested interest in not telling the truth on this one.

BOGHOSIAN
Ray McGovern, as always, it is a pleasure and an honor to speak with you. We look forward to staying in touch over the next few months as things develop further.

SMITH
And we'll see you at the demonstration in Washington.

MCGOVERN
Yeah, well, if I disappear from sight, would you look into it?

BOGHOSIAN
We will Ray! [they all laugh]

MCGOVERN
Thank you.

SMITH
Thanks Ray. You take it easy.

BOGHOSIAN
Be safe.