Scott Horton Interviews Ray McGovern (03/29/2017)

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

Ray McGovern interview by Scott Horton, broadcast date: March 29, 2017.

File link:
https://scotthorton.org/interviews/32917-ray-mcgovern-on-russia-hysteria-media-madness-trump-hatred-and-nsa-spying/

Segment goes from 50:50-1:07:30

SCOTT HORTON
Let me ask you one more thing here...I gotta let you go in five minutes, I haven't asked you about your article yet, about the deep state, the surveillance state, behind Russia-gate, and who it is in America, and this is sortof a nice little segway here, the same people who are fomenting this Cold War, who are behind this whole snow job on Putin, and Trump, and the election of 2016, and all of the rest of this. So, go ahead and tie it all up for us, Ray.

RAY MCGOVERN
Well, you know in all this business about Russia being responsible for everything, including Trump, and that's the key here, one should realize...Hillary Clinton could not possibly have won because she was a deeply flawed candidate. Nahnahnah, it's gotta be something else, and...who could it...ah! the Russians! Okay? That's the first thing. There's blind hatred...blind hatred for Trump. And that's coloring the analysis of many people, who in the past got it right. That's really hard. But it is blind, okay? So, that's the big thing. And the other thing is, Trump wants to deal with the Russians, and we've already talked long enough about how that hurts the blood drench arms traders. So: what do we have here?

We have a new wrinkle into all this...namely, that Trump tweets that he's been wiretapped, by the previous administration. Now, was he wiretapped? No. Wiretapping went out about three decades ago. _Nobody wiretaps anymore_. What'd they do? They have blanket surveillance, electronic surveillance...the NSA knows everything. Intercepts, I know it's mind boggling, but it's true, they intercept everything over the system. Over the network. They know what's going on. So, is it true that Trump was surveilled? Yes. And this is the key: everyone, EVERYONE, all caps, is surveilled. So, is it true, that people in the intelligence community, as a result of this surveillance, were able to get the true names of people working with him, and for him, and under the campaign, and him himself? Yes. That is true. It's...very true. Ask Bill Binney. And so, is it true that they get these names in a minimized, in a masked way, or, as in my day, razored out, of these transcripts? Nooooo. That's not true. The heads of the FBI, the heads of the Defense Intelligence Agency, the heads of the CIA, as well as NSA, get true names before they are encrypted. And so: what's the point of all this?

John Brennan was able to give dirt from these very sensitive intercepts.

HORTON
Wait...you gotta tell them, John Brennan, the most recent head of the CIA. At the end of the Obama administration.

MCGOVERN
That's right, yeah. And so he gave them to the New York Times, the Washington- Matter of fact, the Wall Street Journal was irate! They complained openly and loudly, "Brennan doesn't talk to us! He always just talks to the New York Times!" So, for these three months, October, November, December, Brennan was releasing this information as a way to defame Trump, as a way to say the Russians have him in their- as a way to say, that without the Russians, Trump would never have won, to delegitimize him, and after the electoral college did their deed, despite attempts by the administration to interfere with that, then it was a case of making sure, making sure, that Trump is so hindered, from reaching out for a decent relationship with the Russians, that he can't do it. And that's worked so far.

But I do know, that Trump, behind the scenes, is working with the Russians to prevent what could happen in Syria, for example, as we jointly go against ISIS, and to reduce tensions, to the degree that they can be reduced, until such time as he can get out [from] under this superimposed cloud, and get people to realize there is, I'll say this twice: there is no reason in god's heaven, no reason in god's heaven, where, if he reached out to Vladimir Putin, and said, look, we don't need a lot of these extra troops in the Baltics, or Poland, if we pull them out, will you pull out your troops? And Putin, in my view, would say, "Absolutely! No problem! You put them in first, we're reacting. No problem!" And there would be lots of room for detente, for rapprochement, and for the kind of deals that we talked about before, first and foremost, the anti-ballistic missile treaty.

HORTON
And even better than that, right, this is the thing that just...I don't get it, this is the one place where Trump's, at least, instincts, I don't know if you can characterize them as thoughts, really, you know, his leanings are toward hey, let's work something out...but now he's in this political jam, where he's being accused of all of this b.s. and he keeps trying to tweet out, "Hey Americans! Don't believe it! It's all a lie!" And he's right, but he's up against the entire media consensus, and the military industrial complex, and the liberal democrat, Hillary Clinton sore losers, and everybody else, and I think they're winning on the narrative, and yet, he's the president of the United States, why doesn't he just invite Putin to dinner? "Come on, man, come to D.C., I'll take you to the opera, we'll go and do the thing, whatever! We'll go and, you can have the penthouse suite at the Trump Tower! And we'll do a giant arms reduction pact! And we'll stick it in the face of all the haters! Right? Oh, you think I'm a traitor, huh? Watch this, I'm gonna reduce our nuclear arsenal by...seventy percent." Or, why not, I mean, it's still more than enough nukes to kill us all, left over. He could do that, and it would be, you know, good politics. Use judo on them [the anti-Trump opposition], kick their ass, outflank the left from the left. Be more anti-nuclear weapons than any liberal in politics in America. And watch them choke on that. Right? Do something smart, and instead, what's he doing? He's just sitting there. Taking it.

MCGOVERN
Well, he's not, actually. And he has a big ally in the head of the House Intelligence Committee [Devin Nunes, of California]. Now, this is the story, and I would really ...be unashamed to recommend to read what Bill Binney and I wrote yesterday, and published on Consortium News dot com ["The Surveillance State Behind Russia-gate" link: https://consortiumnews.com/2017/03/28/the-surveillance-state-behind-russia-gate/ ], it's also on my Ray McGovern dot com-

HORTON
And Anti War dot com-

MCGOVERN
Yeah. Right. So, what you really have here is an honest Republican politician. Now...these things happen! Maybe they happen by chance, but I happen to know Congressman Nunes. Because in 2009, he did an incredibly gutsy thing that puts him apart from all of the other legislators, then and now, he gave an award to a young sailor, huh, no longer young...Terry Halbardier, a Texan, who slid out onto the napalm strewn deck of the USS Liberty, on June 8, 1967, connected a coaxial cable, with an SOS capable antennae, got an SOS out, to the Sixth Fleet, and the Israelis, who were attacking the USS Liberty with torpedo boats and with aircraft, broke off the attack, as soon as they realized that the commander of the Sixth Fleet had been informed, that they were attacking one of his ships. Now: did Halbardier ever get any recognition for that? No. Everyone covered that up, because it was the Israelis that killed 34 sailors, wounded 107 others, of a crew of less than 300. What happened? Everything was surpressed, until 2009,  was a constituent of Devin Nunes, in the central valley of California, and Devin, when he learned about this, he was, "Yeah, you know, this is awful, I'm going to see what I can do." He a got a silver cross awarded to Terry Halbardier, many years after the event...I was there, I was incredibly impressed by this congressman's courage [video of Halbardier, Nunes, and McGovern at the event can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPUujDW7oGI]. In stepping out- In stepping out from the U.S. Navy, for god's sake, and giving this guy who was responsible for the Israelis, from preventing sinking the ship, and leaving those survivors, which was clearly what they intended, we know that from the intercepts, and giving him this award.

So, I have a little history with Devin Nunes. I know that he did this, I know that he had courage to do it, and I know it was the right thing to do. And that helps me understand why he's doing this now, because he's been given, [laughs], and it's not the White House that's given him this stuff...my guess, is that it was somebody within the intelligence community, that said, hey, you know, all this hate Trump stuff is really really bad, and when Trump says he's wiretapped, literally speaking, the pettyfoggering lawyers are all "No!No!No!", but is he surveilled? Of course he is. Here's the proof, I'm gonna tell an honest guy, I'm gonna tell Devin Nunes, and the way I'm gonna tell him, is the secret way, and if he wants to tell the Democrats on his committee, who are going to sabotage everything he does, he can. In any event, Nunes went and saw this information, and said, "My god, Trump needs to know this right away," and he went to Trump. I do not fault him for that in the least. What really counts here, and Michael Isikoff with Amy Goodman this morning wouldn't address [ "Democracy Now!" (March 29, 2017) show link: https://www.democracynow.org/2017/3/29/house_probe_into_trump_campaign_ties ], [laughs] is what was in that information. What is that information? That's going to come out now. It's going to come out gradually, but we'll see. We'll see, and my bet is, Nunes, rather than being some sort of co-opted White House person, is a person, he was discharging his oath under the constitution of the United States, the same oath we all take, to defend and protect the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

HORTON
Alright. Well, I'm glad to hear you say that, I certainly was for what he had done, but I never knew anything about him, the fact that he was willing to stick his neck out on the case of the USS Liberty, there must have been incredible pressure against him doing that, and then he did it anyway, so...you met the guy, and in that context, I'll take your word for it, that at least he's something a little bit more than the average congressman, and you know what? I mean, no one should care whether he warned Trump, even if it was for the most crass, self-interested political reasons, you know, ambition must be made to check ambition. And this is the only hope we have. For any check against the power of permanent deep state, is congressmen, saying "You can't arrest me, I'm leaking this truth!"

MCGOVERN
Yeah, well, just to be really clear here...my guess, and it's based on all kinds of circumstantial evidence, is that Nunes learned, and wanted to tell Trump immediately, look, Comey, this admiral, whatshisname, Rogers, from NSA, they're playing with words. They're doing semantics. They're saying "Aaaaaah! We know he wasn't wiretapped! He wasn't wiretapped!" But Mr. President, here's the proof, here's the proof that we [Nunes and his sources] have, that you were surveilled up the, you were surveilled, blanket surveillance, like all Americans are surveilled, and that John Brennan, took these true names, gave them to the New York Times, Washington Post, in the hope of sabotaging your election, sabotaging your election by the electoral college, and then, now, sabotaging your credibility as freely elected president, you're not that, of course, you're a Russian stooge, and not incidentally, preventing you from creating a more peaceful relationship with the Russians. So, here's the proof Mr. President, I have it in black and white. We need to incorporate this in a way that the Democrats don't sabotage, and I'm gonna cancel the rest of the meetings this week [public testimony by Sally Yates, James Comey, and others], and I'm going to talk to James Comey, and I'm gonna say, "Comey, were you playing with this word wiretap? Yeah, you're right, Trump shouldn't have said wiretap, he should have said surveillance. Was that going on, Comey? You tell me now. Was that going on? Are you...are you playing with these words, in other words, to fit in with the indigenous here, to fit in with the prevailing wisdom, such as it is [sic - is Comey making denials that fit within the narrow, commonplace definition of 'wiretap', rather than under the definition of 'surveillance']?" So, I think Nunes will be vindicated here, I think it's going to be really tough for him, but I have, as I say, this experience of him having courage in the past, and some integrity. So, I thought Bill [Binney] and I should get this thing out yesterday, and we were hoping that people like Amy Goodman [host of "Democracy Now!"] would go to us, but of course she went to an established guy like Mike Isikoff, who writes books, really good books...but he's not real good on things like weapons of mass destruction [Isikoff was the author, alongside David Corn, of the essential book _Hubris_, devoted to the deceptions involving WMDs and the lead-up to the Iraq war in 2003] or on journalistic issues, like this one.

HORTON
Yeah, I don't know what's up with her [Goodman]. I mean, I think, well, I don't know, I never really watched her show religiously, or anything, but it used to be pretty good from time to time, there'd be breaking news and really good analysis on there, and some of my same favorite guests, like yourself, and that kind of thing...but I think it probably started back when she sided with Juan Cole on attacking Libya in 2011. That was when I started hearing more and more people saying "Did you see Amy Goodman lately?" So, I don't know, business is business, I guess.

MCGOVERN
Yeah, in her defense, I would say she is excellent, unparalleled, on things like Standing Rock. On things like, the problems people of color are having in our country. I think she's excellent. I watched her, I do watch her, every morning that I can. On foreign affairs, she's in over her head. She doesn't have really good people advising her. And she is, I would suggest, blinded by hatred for Trump, and willing to buy into- big supporter of Hillary, that came out in her reporting before the election...so, this is really hard to...even for a professional, even for a very admired, in my perspective, professional like Amy Goodman, you're all susceptible to this kind of sickness, of not being able to see there could be some good in these hated characters [Trump and Nunes], and it's a very unfortunate thing. Who's left? Well, I think, _we_, intelligence analysts, I was saying, just the other day, I prepared the president's daily brief[ing], not only for Reagan, but for Nixon. And for Ford. Now: maybe you have an idea of the mental gymnastics that my colleagues and I had to go through, to make sure that we weren't prejudiced by what Nixon was doing...this is during Watergate, that we were serving up pure, unadulterated, factual evidence, that we could support, irrespective of how much we hated what he was doing, [laughs] okay? So: I have a lot of experience in this, maybe that really helps us to be, kindof divorce ourselves from how much Trump is rightly criticized in other areas, and say, well, in this one, could he be right? Even a broken clock is right twice a day.