WHDT Ray McGovern Interview (12/19/2016)

Supplemental document for: "Theory that Roger Stone's go-between for Wikileaks was Randy Credico", link: https://wakelet.com/wake/2d352ae9-febe-44a1-a7bb-51674a2e4bf5

Full transcript of @WHDT World News hosted by Mark Maxwell, interview with Ray McGovern. Broadcast date: December 19, 2016.

WHDT is an independent television station located in Florida, United States. This information (whatever its value) and more, can be found at a wikipedia article about the station: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WHDT

File link: https://www.mediafire.com/file/9lcbq7d846smx43/NSA+Holds+Key+to+Russian+Hacking+Allegations+-+Ray+McGovern+Interview+Ex-CIA+Analyst+%5BLow%2C+480x360%5D+-+WHDT.mp4

MARK MAXWELL
While anonymous sources at the CIA are not willing to put their names into news reports to back up their allegations they're making agaisnt Vladimir Putin in American news reports, one former CIA analyst is willing to put his name on his statement, and he is refuting some of the evidence. Ray McGovern, joining us now from Washington, D.C., a longtime CIA analyst, retired some years ago, he used to prepare daily briefings for presidents from John F. Kennedy, all the way up to the first president Bush, he now serves on the steering group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)...and I think sanity is much needed, at this time...Ray, it's good to have you with us...first, I want to get into this article that you just published, with some other authors. It says that U.S. Intel vets, so veterans like yourself, are disputing these claims that Russia hacked the American election. Uh, what's the basis for your dispute, of what you've seen so far?

RAY MCGOVERN
Well, we are Veteran Intelligence Professionals for _Sanity_...there isn't enough sanity going around in Washington, D.C. I think there's something in the water. [MAXWELL laughs] We formed ourselves to ride herd on our former colleagues, so they wouldn't dredge up fraudulent intelligence, as they did before the attack on Iraq. Now, don't be deceived, that wasn't mistaken intelligence, that was out and out fraud. When they talked about high confidence, about WMD, Weapons of Mass Destruction, in Iraq, it wasn't a mistake, it was lying. Okay? So-

MAXWELL
And it's interesting to point out that they used that very same word, "confidence", in the first original statement, from Jay Johnson, from James Clapper...when they said "we are _confident_ that these hacks originated from Russia." Or they didn't even call them hacks, they said alleged hacks.

MCGOVERN
Well, you know, what we need to do here, is to distinguish between a hack, and a leak. Now, we are blessed in our movement, with the highest technical expertise from the National Security Agency. They're the ones that do this kind of thing. So we asked Bill Binney, who is the technical director, would he draft this memorandum? And he did. And what he said, was basically this: the difference between a leak and a hack, is a physical difference where you put a thumb drive into a device, that's a leak, you get that thumb drive and you give it to somebody unauthorized. Like Bradley Manning did, or Chelsea Manning, or like, Ed Snowden did. Okay? A hack, is electronically hacked. Okay? So, there's a signature. The NSA has a vast capability of collecting all information on all emails...that sounds ridiculous, but it's true. They can identify the sender, they can identify the recipient. And so what Bill Binney told us, "You know, if this were a hack, the NSA would automatically know who sent it, and how it got to the Russians, or how it got to Wikileaks." They don't have that information. Which means almost certainly it isn't there, and so we have this high confidence assumptions. We have this high confidence assessments, it's all B.S.

MAXWELL
So, there's a few technical questions, though...so, you're saying hackers could not mask their identity from the NSA? The NSA has some additional method of accuracy and identifying who's behind a hack, in every case?

MCGOVERN
The NSA has trace routes, K? There are hundreds of thousands of them. They're built into the network, okay? And it's not possible for a message to be sent through the network, without the NSA knowing, or being able to know, the origin and the destination. Now, that sounds really formidable, but when you sink ten billion dollars into NSA every year...that is their capability, these people are the ones that devised the system, and they're saying, it's not a hack, it's a leak. And so-

MAXWELL
Just to clarify, we reported, some two or three months ago, of a big structure in New York City, [the piece that broke this story: "The NSA’s Spy Hub in New York, Hidden in Plain Sight" link: https://theintercept.com/2016/11/16/the-nsas-spy-hub-in-new-york-hidden-in-plain-sight/ ] a large concrete structure houses fiber networks, you've heard the internet described, as the information highway...well, all of these highways, these routes come through one big patch, it's a fiber network, often referred to as a public switched telephone network, also the world wide web, a lot of these information all coming through, actual physical devices, physical fiber wires, and this is where the NSA gathers their data, so...they have the raw source, the original source from where this information came from, where it was headed, but can a hacker switch an IP address, or use some version of trickery, to deceive the NSA, and throw them off their scent?

MCGOVERN
Well, the answer I get from the experts is, what needs to happen here, is if the U.S. government has information that Russia was involved, and particularly if Putin was involved, they need to show that evidence, because, in a word, they haven't. They haven't shown it, and so, they don't have it. Now, what is it? It's a leak. Now, what's a leak? A leak is what Julian Assange gets from Chelsea Manning, or from Ed Snowden, it's somebody who takes a thumb drive, or something, gets into the network, gets it out, and gives it to somebody else. That is not electronically passed, and so it cannot be captured by NSA.

Now, these are the experts saying this, now, what's really missing here, is something else. We did a technical analysis, we thought that would be good enough. And then, ambassador Craig Murray, from the United Kingdom, said that he knows it's a leak, because he met with the leaker. Woah! So I asked - he's a good friend of mine, he is one of the recipients of the Sam Adams Award For Integrity In Intelligence - I asked Craig, "Craig, after you made this revelation, did The New York Times or the Washington Post get in touch with you?" He said, "No," I said, "Well, that's strange," and then he made a new revelation yesterday, in the daily-what is it-

MAXWELL
The Daily Mail.

MCGOVERN
Yeah, Daily Mail. And I said to him last night, "How about now?" He said, "No media from the United States has oontacted me," Now, can I corroborate what ambassador Murray says? I can.

MAXWELL
Are you saying you know the person who leaked?

MCGOVERN
No...I'm saying that I can vouch for the fact that he [Craig Murray] was in Washington, at the end of September, to help me emcee an awards ceremony for John Kiriakou, who got the Sam Adams Award For Integrity In Intelligence this year. Now, the curious thing about this...is that Craig did his job, and Craig is, you know, he never passes up an opportunity to go out eating and drinking. And all of a sudden, I watch Craig walk backwards, and sortof disappear behind a hillock. Near American University...and I said, "You know, that's strange..." Maybe he's got some other friends to meet. But it's very strange that he didn't say anything about it. We never saw him again, during his visit. Now I happen...he says, publicly, that he met with his source, and that it had to do with passing this leaked information, and he said, "It came from people who were distraught." Having read the stuff, indicating that Hillary Clinton stole the nomination from Bernie Sanders, and that Hillary Clinton was deeply involved in all kinds of corruption, having to do with the Clinton Foundation. So, there's the motive, and all I can say is, that I know Craig Murray very well, he had the integrity to quit from being ambassador in Uzbekistan, when he protested, when he protested getting intelligence reports out of torture techniques, by U.S. supervised Uzbeks- He protested to the Foreign Office, and they said "Well, are British people doing it?" And he said, "No, just Americans."

MAXWELL
So, you've got a British ambassador...just to boil this down, you've got a British ambassador, who's known, and even rewarded for his integrity, on the record, saying he knows the source of the leak, not a hack. And he says this information was passed to Wikileaks, and there is no connection....that person, Craig Murray, says there's no connection to a Russian agenda, or to the Russian government, and so now we have...it's interesting, earlier in the week, NBC News said, they reported, an anonymous source at the CIA...or this is the Washington Post, excuse me, the Washington Post put out the first secret CIA report...some anonymous source at the CIA said we now have evidence Russia did this, with the intention to help Donald Trump win. Very next day, Reuters News Service, one of the most respected news gathering services that exists, three officials who are cleared to speak on behalf of the Agency, and the intelligence community, say, "No no no, we can't possibly reach that assessment. We could never know that." So, they distance themselves from that. Less than twenty four hours later, NBC News says "Hang on, we have a foreign spy...working for a foreign government," [this is Christopher Steele, and the Steele dossier] one of our allies, they said...wouldn't name them, wouldn't name the country they worked for, but said that person gathered new intelligence that links this directly to...that links this disputed finding directly to Vladimir Putin. So, we already have a weak story to begin with...and now, some are calling on electors that meet next Monday, to certify the final vote for president-elect Trump's victory...some people are saying, you should look at this _foreign spy_, take their word from this anonymous person from a foreign country, and use that information to help make a determination about the American election. How would that be any different than Russia or hackers trying to tilt the election, by taking the word of some anonymous foreign spy?

MCGOVERN
Well, we don't like anonymity. We stand by what we say. You know my name, I've told Bill Binney's name...and his chief lieutenant is Kirk Wiebe. These people, Bill and Kirk, have a combination of seventy four years of work at the National Security Agency...they know what they're talking about, they have no axe to grind. When they say, it's a leak...and then when ambassador Murray says "I met with the leaker, " [laughs] and I know he was there at the time he said he was, and I know he disappeared walking backwards, you know, it's not really hard not to put two and two together, and say, the United States government, at the highest levels, is speaking what the British call "rubbish", what we in the Bronx say, "it's a crock."

MAXWELL
Very interesting. To ascribe motive would be hard to do, it would be speculation, but certainly some in the CIA, are perhaps threatened, the power they've held onto for so long, might be slipping away from them, under a Trump administration, where perhaps he would not approve some of the missions that are, or some of the objectives that are being pursued now. Most specifically, regime change. He has said that is a bad idea, the CIA has been the body of government that carries out that plan to institute regime change around the world, it has for decades.

MCGOVERN
That's right, and there's a lot of money in that, and what about those thousands of "moderate rebels" who are trapped now in Syria, are we just going to cut them off? This would be a bad thing for the CIA, bad for its record. The main thing is, that Trump has said he wants to talk to the Russians. He thinks he can deal with the Russians, WOAH, what might happen? Well, the American people and people in Europe might learn that the Russian threat is synthetic. It's contrived, it's not even there. The Russian reaction to the coup that we orchestrated in Ukraine, explains all the hostility that has happened since then. And once Trump, and Putin, get down and talk basics, and say, "Look, this is really silly, we can co-operate on Syria," and we can pull back our troops from the borderland in Central Europe, we can do that. We don't believe you're going to attack Latvia, what would the Russians do, attacking Latvia? So, the threat for my formal colleagues in the CIA, is that the threat from the Russians might dissolve, and if that happens, the budget gets trimmed, and-

MAXWELL
Sure, it's a very profitable narrative, a lot of American defense contractors are able to use the negotiating point when selling to their customers, when they hear that the U.S. and Russia are on the brink of nuclear war, things are going to get bad, you need to stock up now and buy these weapons, it's a selling point. And we know that, not through speculation, but because the executives are Northrop-Grummond, at Boeing, at many of these companies, go to their investors, and say, right there in public, this is the reason why we are expecting big profits this quarter. Get ready, we are going to do well. [despite these statements, in the wake of Trump's election, the stocks of nearly every defense company would surge, in the expectation of Trump making large increases in military spending, and in his first budget, Trump would fulfill these expectations, drastically cut back in social programs while increasing military outlays] This is their words on the record, this is not some blind guess.

Before we let you go, there's been a lot of conversation about "fake news", in the news recently. I just want to examine some of the information you've revealed to us here, right now. And just go back over some of this.  We have the CIA, whose job it is, to plant misinformation in other foreign governments...we saw that with the Iran nuclear negotiations, CIA agents planted misinformation in the Iranian government, they're very effective at doing this. This agency is telling the Washington Post, off the record...actually, I should correct that. They're telling a senator, off the record, someone at the Senate is telling the Washington Post, they heard through the grapevine, that Vladimir Putin was doing this, specifically to help Trump win, now we have-

MCGOVERN
-the anonymous grapevine...

MAXWELL
Yeah, and let me just finish this...the anonymous grapevine, and then NBC News coming out two days later, and they're telling their viewers, that they have a _foreign spy_...who is corroborating that report, and this _foreign spy_, supposedly an ally of the U.S., though we do not know their country of origin [it's Christopher Steele, formerly of MI-5], that foreign spy is saying they can link it directly to Putin...the NSA has been strangely silent, you're saying the NSA could corroborate or come out with evidence, _and_ between all this time, your friend Craig Murray has come forward on the record, and said he knows who this is, and NBC hasn't reached out to him?

MCGOVERN
No. Neither has The New York Times, who wrote that monumental essay yesterday. Or the Washington Post, so, you know, there's something really fishy here...if a fellow says "I met the source, I met the leaker, I know his motivation, he was just distraught, watching the way the nomination was stolen from Bernie Sanders." You remember that Wikileaks released that information two days before the Democratic National Convention...well, this was tumult in the Clinton campaign. How were they going to deal with this? Because it showed this stealing of the nomination. Well, they said, "I got an idea, we'll blame it on the Russians."

MAXWELL
Well, certainly-

MCGOVERN
-Wikileaks is working with the Russians. And why? Because they want Trump to win. Now, if I were- I know something about Russian leaders, having followed them for fifty years professionally...if there's anything that a Russian leader does not wish, it's someone who brags about being unpredictable, and takes immense offense at the slightest, real or imagined slight. Now, you want somebody like that with his finger on the nuclear button? I don't think so. I don't think Putin had any preference. I think he looked at it, like some German friends, it was a choice between "peste und cholera", which means, plague or cholera.

MAXWELL
Very interesting breakdown that you're giving us, former CIA analyst, someone who worked at Langeley, Ray McGovern, retired sometime ago from the CIA, again, strongly refuting the claims that we've seen now...with some of the most clarity that anyone has been able to do. NBC News with all the resources, all the corporate advertising that they have, the journalists...I mean, we were able to find you, and we're a very small, independent station. I'm sure if they could dig up a _foreign spy_, from a _foreign country_ to corroborate the report they picked, certainly they could find, or see, you or Craig Murray, or anybody else, and they still have yet to do that.

MCGOVERN
You need to mention who owns NBC. If I'm not mistaken, General Electric still has a forty nine percent share in NBC, and they make their money from selling jet fighters and jet engines. Their news department is not going to say things that will bring...less tension. Tension is good for business, so is war...peace, not so much.

MAXWELL
From 2009 and 2013, NBC was acquired in part by Comcast, but again, General Electric still does hold, not a majority share, but a rather significant share, of that company, and it sounds like you're connecting the dots, that there's a financial motive in keeping this part of the narrative out of the news. Very interesting analysis, from an analyst, who used to work for the CIA, Ray McGovern. Thanks so much.

MCGOVERN
Most welcome, Mark.