Randy Credico Interviews Ray McGovern (09/06/2016)

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 "Live on the Fly" hosted by Randy Credico. Broadcast September 6, 2016.

Transcript runs from 2:20 to 33:40 in file.

File link: http://www.mediafire.com/file/76193gah3k5q0sw/wbai_160906_170001behindnewsli+-+McGovern+first+appearance.mp3

RANDY CREDICO
Our first guest will be coming up in a second. Ray McGovern. You all know Ray McGovern, he's been on this show, or this time slot, many times with Robert Knight...one of my closest friends in life, Robert Knight, who, untimely left us ["Robert Knight, WBAI investigative journalist, dies at 64" link: https://current.org/2014/04/robert-knight-wbai-investigative-journalist-dies-at-64/ ]. Two years ago. What a brilliant, underrated journalist. He should've been internationally known. Robert was one of those men of the world. And we are just waiting for the engineer to come in, we're going to talk to Ray McGovern in just a couple of minutes. What else is going on? Well, Julian Assange, I just spoke to one of his associates, he will be on Hannity tonight, at ten o'clock. So, if you want to see Julian Assange respond to some of the complaints about what he is doing, in terms of the U.S. election, you can get an answer there. On Hannity. Tonight, at ten o'clock. He was on this show, just a couple of weeks ago [Transcript of this interview link: https://pastebin.com/uVE51mbK ]. It was a big coup for the station, and for me, and he was great. Showed a very human side of the man. He does have a sense of humor, I mean, he's been locked up, basically for four years, locked up, four years. He's in prison. And it's the same situation as Peter Kropotkin. 1871, I believe. In Peter and Paul prison, in St. Petersberg. And he was part of the court there. Alexander II's court. First court. And he went into the little cell , he walked around, like, ten hours a day to keep his sanity. And finally, Tsar Alexander allowed him to write. Because he was a cartographer, oceanographer, and he wrote for the Russian National Geographic. _And_...in the wintertime, he couldn't get much work done.

So, we're going to come back and talk to the esteemed former CIA agent, Ray McGovern, I'm gonna play a little music here, and we'll be back with him. It's great to be here. I'm with Reggie Johnson, a crack engineer. That's a good word, used in a bad sense. It's good to be here. Here in Brooklyn, Atlantic Avenue. And we'll be right back, with Ray McGovern.

["Mission: Impossible" theme plays]

Alright, you may remember that theme song, from one of the all-time great propaganda shows from the CIA, back in the sixties, called "Mission: Impossible". That, along with "The FBI", Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. Kinda like "Law & Order" today, give a false impression of what these institutions are all about. At any rate, so joining us now, very eager, haven't seen him in two years. I met him at Robert Knight's memorial, up there at, that big church, Riverside Church, I can't think of it- Because I'm nervous today! This is my first day doing this particular program. So, we were there together, we hung out afterwards at Cleopatra's restaurant, and afterwards, he went back to where he grew up in the Bronx. Now, he is a retired CIA officer turned political activist, McGovern was a CIA intelligence estimate [sic] and prepared the Presidential Daily Brief. He received the Intelligence Commendation Medal when he retired, but he threw it back to them in 2006, because of a protest to the CIA's involvement in torture [sic]. McGovern post-retirement work includes commentary on intelligence issues and is the co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, and Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence. Recipients of the Sam Adams Award includes Katherine Gunn, Craig Murray, Ed Snowden, Chelsea Manning, and our old friend, Julian Assange. Welcome to the show, Ray.

RAY MCGOVERN
Thank you, Randy. Glad to be with you.

CREDICO
Great to have you on the show. Have you been back to the Bronx, lately?

MCGOVERN
Uh, yeah, I was there in June. For our 55th College Reunion.

CREDICO
Really. At Ford- You went to Fordham before you went to Harvard, and then you went to Georgetown. Got a great education. So, I guess the Bronx looks a lot different to you today, than it did back when you were growing up there.

MCGOVERN
Different, but just as lively. And just as pleasant, actually. It looks a little bit more like San Juan, Puerto Rico, than it does Dublin, Ireland, but that's okay, you know, that's New York for you. And the neighborhood is holding, and I can still walk to Fordham from the house I used to-

CREDICO
Wow. Wow. Amazing. Well, it's great to have you here. And I hope you can come back soon, so we can sit down and have coffee. Can you- Let's begin by talking about the Sam Adams award. And the- Who was Sam Adams?

MCGOVERN
Well, Sam Adams was a analyst that came into the CIA the same day I did. Under President Kennedy. And he was among the brightest. And so they put him on the account...counting up communists, under arms, in Vietnam. South Vietnam, of course. He came up with twice the number the commanding general, General Westmoreland was claiming. And so, he was totally mystified, so he went out there, and found out Westmoreland was falsifying figures, and that, actually the cable came in, saying "We can't admit to have the right figures, because we have been "projecting" an image of success in this war, and there's no way, despite all the caveats we could adduce, to disguise the fact that the press will have a field day on this, and they'll draw a false and mischievous conclusion." So, the game was right there, right in the cable, Sam Adams struggled, he died at a relatively early age of 54, but the thing he didn't do was go public, and that's what we do, the Sam Adams associates, when we have people like Assange, like Colleen Rowley, and Katherine Gunn, and Ed Snowden. This is a cast of characters that won't quit.

CREDICO
It's an impressive list. How do you determine the recipient [of the Sam Adams award]? Each year?

MCGOVERN
Well, we vote. There's a kind of a floating crap game, among Sam Adams associates. We're about twenty five of us who are active now. And we vote, and someone nominates. There are a couple people, and it was really quite amazing, 2013, we were just about to vote when Ed Snowden did his thing out in Hong Kong, and [laughs] never before was it so quick. So unanimous. This is a nice little story. Some of us were speaking at a whistleblower/hacker conference in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and long story short, when I told them we were going to give Ed Snowden this award, and that our tradition was to give this in person, but we didn't know how we could possibly get the money to get to Moscow, they passed the hat around. There were four thousand of them, some of them now working for government, some of them pretty well heeled. They had collected enough money to get all four of us over there and back, staying in much nicer hotels than I usually stay in. And- [inaudible] That was just an incredible contribution, on their part, but when we told Ed, he said, "Yeah, that's the way my friends are. They really feel very very strongly."

CREDICO
You mean- We're talking with the great Ray McGovern, former CIA analyst, started with the Kennedy administration, up until 1990, may have run across you. Possibly saw me in a photo. I spent four, five years of the nineties- eighties, in Nicaragua, a comedian down there, actually brought comedians, we used to do our act in front of the U.S. embassy, on Thursday [MCGOVERN laughs], and it was a great crowd. I was doing such off-beat, inside voices, only the people down there would understand. I do impressions. I was doing people like General [John] Singlaub [MCGOVERN laughs], [does Reagan voice] and I was doing Reagan, back then, so I guess, you were around when Reagan was the- yes, the president, [switches from Reagan to H.W. Bush] and then you had, George Bush there, too, I guess you prepared that daily brief for him. And I remember him talking about it, [switches to Clinton] but you got out of it before Clinton-Gore.

MCGOVERN
That's not bad, that's not bad.

CREDICO
That's what I do. I did "The Tonight Show".

MCGOVERN
Have you done it on-stage?

CREDICO
Well, I was at Riverside Church for Robert, I also was on "The Tonight Show". In 1984, now dig this, my uncle is an ex-CIA guy who had State Department cover, in Argentina, in Buenos Aires, lived there, after Florence to study [sic], his brother was a mobster, a real mobster. So, my uncle, had no kids, and he bankrolled a very bad year that I had, and it ended up helping me get on "The Tonight Show". So, he had no idea what my act was going to be like, I got up there, I was doing really well, [Reagan voice] I was doing Reagan, [switches to Jack Nicholson] I was doing Jack Nicholson, [switches to Hubert Humphrey] Hubert H. Humphrey, these voices, [switches to Ted Kennedy] I did Ted Kennedy, [over to Jackson] Jesse Jackson, [switches out] I went to a line about Jeanne Kirkpatrick. I said, if you look at Jeanne Kirkpatrick, and analyze some of the things she's said, you have to ask yourself seriously, did Eva Braun die in that bunker in 1945? [MCGOVERN laughs] So, that- The hook. I got the hook. I did not get back on that show. I did Charlie Rose's show later, and I did a lot of other comedy shows. I did Larry King twice. And I made fun of General Schwarzkopf, and they didn't like that...so, about him blowing out of proportion what was going on in Iraq. [goes to H.W. Bush] I did George Bush, I said, "We are not at war with the people of Iraq, we are at war with Iraqi people!" [switches out] So, I wasn't planning to talk about that, but I'm a little looser now, thank you for your kind indulgence here. This is a conversational show. Ray...do you have any regrets, leaving the CIA? Or did you just- Were you- Did you forcibly have to leave? You didn't? You just left?

MCGOVERN
Well...I had served enough time overseas to qualify for retirement at age fifty.

CREDICO
WOAH.

MCGOVERN
Now, you get an immediate annuity, but it's greatly reduced, but...and I had done what I wanted to do. I had spent four years briefing down at the White House, Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense. Doesn't get any better than that. And I wanted to work down at the inner city. Which I've been doing ever since. And so, it seemed to be the proper time to leave, the Berlin Wall had just fallen, so I clapped myself on the back, and said, "Good work, Ray, the Russians have been defeated, the Soviet Union is nixed," and left in good conscience. What I didn't expect, what I was outraged about, was ten years later, when I saw that my previous profession, intelligence analysis, was being...what's the word, prostituted, on the altar of bowing to George [W.] Bush and Dick Cheney. Not to conjure up mistaken intelligence, but to conjure up fraud. Out and out fraud. Why? To deceive our elected representatives of their constitutional prerogatives to declare war. That's as bad as it gets. And that's when we set up Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. There are a bunch of us alumni that felt really strongly about the prostitution, or the corruption of our profession. [inaudible] It's the only alumni association out of the intelligence community that was formed for any other purpose than drinking, or listening to lectures. We were formed to hold our former colleagues accountable. And we did so. And we did so, before the war, and nobody listened. Nobody even, even gave us the time of day, in the media, even though this was something unprecedented, an alumni association trying to keep their colleagues from starting a war, for helping John Bush [sic] and Cheney start a war.

CREDICO
Wow. [does W. Bush] You know George Bush, fighting cicadas. We're going there, to fight cicadas. America is at- We're at war. This America, we gotta protect the freedom, hide your freedom. Statem Hassem, can't say his name, he's a bad guy. [shifts out] But so, uh, [back to Bush] Cicadas. You like cicadas. [back out, thank god] So let me ask you a question, are you- do you get heat from these former colleagues of yours? Are they mad at you? Or do they try to undermine your life? At all?

MCGOVERN
You know, uh, the answer is no. The sad part is, that none of my former colleagues call me up, or write to me, or email me. They're afraid. I have to run into them in the men's room in some concert, or at a funeral. Which I'm visiting more regularly now.

CREDICO
We all are.

MCGOVERN
[inaudible] -talk to me, it's "Oh yeah, well Ray, way to go, keep going." And some of them, of course, the higher ranking ones, well, one of them came up to me after a wake, okay? And he says, "Well, Ray, good to see you again, but now I have to report to security." I said, "What?" He said, "Well, you're considered a journalist now, Ray, so I have to report to security I talked to you, and take notes about what we said, but we didn't say much, did we?" Yeah, I couldn't believe it. That's how restrictive it is now. How they're looking, looking over each other's shoulders and nothing good can come of that, for sure.

CREDICO
Well, I wanted to ask you, actually, at the very outset here, about the Sam Adams award. We're talking about that. That Craig Murray, who is a diplomat, former diplomat, in Britain, was supposed to be here next month, co-chair the Sam Adams Award ceremony, and it seems as if he's not going to be able to come. What happened?

MCGOVERN
Well, we got word yesterday, this is amazing. There's a British ambassador, ambassador to Uzbekistan, thirty years as a diplomat, he's being- well, he's retired now. But he's being refused entry for reasons unknown. We have-

CREDICO
For reasons unknown.

MCGOVERN
-[inaudible] put a travel not authorized, okay? Now he's been here several times. The only other country that ever turned him back-

CREDICO
Uzbekistan. [laughs]

MCGOVERN
Uzbekistan, [laughs] where dictators wouldn't quit. [Islam] Karimov, who just died last week, we're in the same category as this dictatorship-

CREDICO
Category five. Right?

MCGOVERN
It's amazing that they're not letting Mr. Murray in. And he seems to not think that he's going to be able to get the visa to prove prior to the October award ceremony, and that's a real drag. He's proceeding through all the acknowledged channels, but once they put you on some sort of list, you're kindof stuck on there.

CREDICO
So, he's on the no-fly list, to the States basically, from the EU. Is that it? He can't come on?

MCGOVERN
No, he's- It's not really clear. Because no one gave him an explanation, but all we know is that he was refused the normal visa that you need to get into this country, if you're a British citizen. And having made twenty trips to the United States in his career, now he's being refused permission to visit as a tourist.

CREDICO
He says that he- I'm sorry.

MCGOVERN
They hate him pretty bad, you know?

CREDICO
Well, he-

MCGOVERN
He was the one who exposed torture out there in Uzbekistan. Exposed the fact that the British were feeding off reports that were gained from torturing people, that the CIA and others fingered. Suspected, _suspected_ terrorists. It was so bad, Randy...tell you one little vignette that sticks in my craw. Craig Murray, to his great credit, went to a couple of these trials, and would see how they were treating these people, and all that needed to happen was somebody fingered somebody, tortured, they fingered other people, and the intelligence so to speak getting out of these things was nothing. It was just worthless, as you imagine. So, it became known that the British ambassador was attending these things, and before you knew it, somebody threw over the transom, so to speak, in his office, photos. Photos of a man, boiled in oil.

CREDICO
Oh my goodness.

MCGOVERN
Now...how'd they come? They came from his mother. They did this in the afternoon, they had nowhere to put him, [inaudible] stuff him in the living room of the home there, two bedroom house, and then tell his mother, "Don't say a word. Don't come down to look at it." And so they did. Well, she snuck down with a camera, okay? Photographed the body. And put him over the transom to Craig Murray, ambassador from the U.K., who in turn gave them to the chief medical examiner in Scotland. And said, "What do you think the cause of death here?" Without, you know, tipping his hand. The medical examiner said, "That man is boiled in oil. What's going on- Where'd you get that?" So-

CREDICO
That sounds like something out of "The X-Files", you know?

MCGOVERN
Craig felt sortof strongly about that. But his colleagues in the Foreign Ministry, didn't feel very strongly about it at all. He became a real pain to them, and so, long story short, he quit-

CREDICO
So they're doing this at the behest of the British government? The intelligence service.

MCGOVERN
The U.S. is trying to get "confess" to terrorism, right? So they serve them up to the Uzbeks, the Uzbeks put out a report, they give it to the CIA, the CIA gives it to the ambassador from the U.K., France, and all that stuff, and this is supposed to be valuable intelligence. It isn't. We know it isn't. It can't be. Okay? Now, what Craig Murray is saying, is look: number one, this is worthless stuff. Number two, you know, call me a queasy guy, I really don't like torture, and number three, I would die, before I would see someone tortured, to give me a little incremental more, safety. And, so they threw him out.

CREDICO
I see, you know, I see where he has been critical of Russia, he's been critical about Russia in the Ukraine, critical about Russia and other places, but Russia still lets him go there. Right? He can still get a visa to Russia, and he's been critical! Uh, so, I hope he gets in, and I would love to go to that awards show. One of your past recipients, 2010, was Julian Assange, who was on this show, last week. And he was in pretty good spirits, I must say. In spite of the fact that he has lived under the most oppressive circumstances. In a small room, two little rooms, I suppose. He's being surrounded, you got a guy coming up the other day, like a spiderman guy, trying to climb up to the embassy wall. So, you know, what's...in your opinion, what's in store for him? What do you think is going to happen down the road? How long do you think it's going to take to resolve itself?

MCGOVERN
Well, let me just say a word about now. I visited there, I've had dinner with him. He lives right next to Harrod's, he has some pretty good dinners to bring to him, and we've had a wonderful time. He's riding high. I mean, look: the man is making an incredible contribution to what's going on in the world.

CREDICO
He's a hero.

MCGOVERN
That trade deal with Europe. Maybe the one in the Far East, [is] not going to go through. Why? Because somehow or other, through some magic, Julian Assange and Wikileaks got ahold of all this incredible- Why do they hate him? That's why they hate him.

CREDICO
Well...yes. You know, I would like to know what's in the TPP. No one knows what's in that huge, you know, nine thousand word document. And I think the public should know what's in there. He was able to find what's in there. That is a huge contribution to the American public. We should be grateful to Julian Assange.

MCGOVERN
Sure. And you know, this whole business about _the leak_. Now, mind you, I'm not saying _hack_. This was not a hack. This was a leak. And my colleagues that used to work for NSA suspect this is a new Ed Snowden. In NSA.

CREDICO
Who? Guccifer [sic]?

MCGOVERN
Who is giving this information to Julian Assange, leaking it, and then Julian putting it out into the ether. Now, what does it mean? Clearly, it means that Hillary Clinton stole the nomination from Bernie Sanders. [laughs] It's right there in black and white. And they released it, just two days before the election [sic, he means the Democratic convention], hoping that people would take notice. But what happens? The major media, so-called, and the DNC, and the Hillary people, said "Russia did it!" Well, who cares who did it? [laughs]

CREDICO
We don't know who did it. We don't know-

MCGOVERN
She stole the nomination from Bernie Sanders, that's what it says! So this whole business about Russian hacking, and all that kind of stuff, I mean, Assange is amused by all this. How the major media can mount this major campaign, first and foremost in New York Times, which is no longer a reputable newspaper, and, you know, blame him [Assange], and saying he's working for the Russians, and perhaps the most ludicrous perhaps is that the Russians want, that-

CREDICO
Donald Trump to win.

MCGOVERN
-that idiot, Donald Trump, to be having his finger on the nuclear button. Give me a break! That's the last thing they would want! I mean, Trump makes a virtue, I mean brags about, being unpredictable. Alright. So, you're Vladimir Putin, right? You want somebody on the other end of that button, who's unpredictable? Now, I'm not saying Hillary is any saint, but at least you can predict that she'll be for every war that comes along, but I don't think she'd be as likely to push the button. So...

CREDICO
But he might be. He is a little crazy. He is a little crazy.

MCGOVERN
-the Russians prefer Trump, is a leap of imagination.

CREDICO
I was startled by the recent New York Times article, basically, it was a McCarthy like, you know, article about Russia, it's a new, neo-McCarthyism. It took three reporters to put that together [no idea what article is being referenced here]. Three reporters. Three journalists putting that together. That means you already had an end in sight, there's something that you designed, and you wanted to get it out there, so you got three reporters to do it, instead of just _one_. So they said, alright, this is what we want, you three people put it together. That's what it looks like to me.

MCGOVERN
Well, it's clearly that. You know, if I were teaching a journalism course, I'd use that as Exhibit A of freshman derogation of duties of doing real journalism-

CREDICO
It wasn't like, _War and Peace_, it was just like a three thousand word article. Three- It wasn't- You need three people to write that?

MCGOVERN
-what they said was, what Julian Assange publishes, dovetails with Russia's interests. Now, that's true. Now, why is it true? [laughs] Well, he publishes documentary evidence. Truthful, on its face, that happens to show up what U.S. policy has been over the past ten, fifteen years. Now, to the degree that it redounds by...osmosis, to Russia's benefit, well, okay, that's because it happens to be the truth. And he doesn't fiddle around with it. He-

CREDICO
Why doesn't the media, why doesn't the media just treat it like a news story? Why don't they just, you know, dispense it like a news story, rather than finding a way to discredit him? I mean, if they really are a legitimate news source-

MCGOVERN
-look at who controls the media. Okay? The corporations, six corporations, and most of their business has to do with making and selling _arms_. So, what you have is the military industrial media security services complex. It's big...war, tension, very good for business.

CREDICO
Yes.

MCGOVERN
Peace, not so good.

CREDICO
Not so good. You, uh, recently were in Russia, I believe, I read an article talking about the Ukraine. About the situation in the Ukraine. Can you kind encapsulate what that was all about? What's really going in the Ukraine, because it's really fuzzy to a lot of people. I mean, I know, but if you could just lay it out [in] four or five minutes for us.

MCGOVERN
Sure. Well, the Ukraine is the cradle of Slavic civilization. Okay? Most people don't know that that's where it all started, for the Slavs. Not only the Russians, but the Ukrainians, the Byelorussians in Byelorussia now...uh, Kiev, on the Dniepper river, was a big trading center. Guess who used it? The people up there, the Norwegians, and the Scandinavians came and traded with Byzantium and the people in that little part of the river got kinda rich, they converted to Christianity by ordering all the people down into the river to get baptised, and then they decided well, okay, we're going to try to lean toward the west...but they had no written language. Now, we're talking 9th century A.D., okay? The Christian era. No written language. Two Greek priests went up there, gave them an alphabet, and all of a sudden, you had these incredibly moving and beautiful epic poetry songs, that the Slavs knew by heart, written down. You had the liturgy written down. The Russians became literate. The reason I mention this, is because there were centuries _after_ most of Western civilization, playing catch-up ball ever since. Now, jumping forward here, several centuries, to Kiev, and the Crimea below it, on the Black Sea, were key to Russia's consolidation and expansion, and under Catherine the Great, at the same time as our revolution was going on here, she consolidated Russia's rule, into that area, and established Russia's first all year long naval base. Okay? No ice there. They can get in and out, all year long. Crimea. That's what it's all about. Now, Crimea was always part of Russia. It was part of the Ukrainian part of Russia. But when Russia fell apart, the Ukraine fell apart, and Crimea was attached to Ukraine. Well. What the east EU, and what the U.S. wanted, wanted to wean Ukraine away from Russian influence. And so, they did a coup. My old friends. And people in Europe. They did a coup, in Kiev. On the 22nd of February, 2014. Now, how do I know that? Well, this was the most extraordinary coup that we have ever witnessed. Why? Because it was advertised. Two and a half weeks before, on youtube!

CREDICO
Wow. I have things on youtube. I didn't have anything to do with that, though.

MCGOVERN
-did not. Yeah, what happened was, our Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs, Victoria Nuland, was talking to our ambassador, Geoffrey Pyatt. This was at the very end of January, late 2014. And she named the people that would be taking office. So she said Yats [Arseniy Yatseniuk] is our guy, and we've got this thing glued, and- It was very, very clear. It was just four minutes, but it could not be clearer. George Friedman, at Stratfor called this "the most blatant coup in history".

CREDICO
Wow.

MCGOVERN
And it is. So, on the 22nd, the coup happened, Yats, the fellow who was mentioned by Victoria Nuland, all of a sudden becomes prime minister, the U.S. recognizes the government immediately, new government says, "Hey, let's join NATO and let's ban Russian as an official language"-

CREDICO
Hey, alright, now listen to this. I gotta have you, I got another guest coming on in two minutes. Can I get you back, part two, to talk about Ukraine, from that point, where we are now?

MCGOVERN
Sure.

CREDICO
Next week?

MCGOVERN
Suffice it to say, that that's where it started, on the 22nd of [inaudible]-

CREDICO
Okay, we're going to leave it there, we're going to leave it there, and continue the discussion next week, and, about the Ukraine. [MCGOVERN inaudible] If you don't mind. Alright. That is, the one and only, my hero. One of my heroes, Ray McGovern, thank you Ray McGovern, and I hope that Craig Murray lands safely at JFK or Ronald Reagan airport.