Ray McGovern on Loud and Clear (09/29/2016)

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 "Loud and Clear", hosted by Brian Becker, broadcast by Radio Sputnik on September 29, 2016.

File link: https://sputniknews.com/radio_loud_and_clear/201609291045816830-was-evidence-faked-to-blame-russia-for-downing-mh17/

Segment goes from 1:32 to 16:45 in the file.

BRIAN BECKER
But first we turn to the MH17 investigation. We are joined to analyze this report, and its implications by Ray McGovern, a former CIA analyst, and now political activist and journalist, welcome back Ray.

RAY MCGOVERN
Thanks. Thanks Brian.

BECKER
Let's start with your reactions to the report that was released yesterday...were the conclusions a surprise? And do they have validity or are there too many questions about this investigative process?

MCGOVERN
There remain many many questions. One of the prime suspects, is running the investigation, that happens to be the country called Ukraine. This is a partisan investigation...how can you have one of the prime suspects, not only running the investigation, but hosting the various investigators from other countries...who, when they go home, go, oh, you know, those Ukrainians were so helpful in providing this, that, and the other thing, we didn't have much work at all. We're just treated royally when we come to Kiev. The whole thing is a farce. You know, the real questions...remain to be answered. For example, three days after the shootdown...the shootdown was July 17, 2015 [sic], three days later, talk about rush to judgement, John Kerry got up on all these Sunday talk shows, and said it was the Russians, it was the Russians, it was the pro-separatist Russians, blamed the whole thing on the Russians. Now, he said, on NBC, "Face the Nation", "We have the imagery. We picked up that imagery, and we know the trajectory. And we know where it came from. We know the timing." And later, he said, "We know that the aircraft went down as soon as the trajectory targeting hit the aircraft." Well, that's really nice. Where's the beef? Where's that evidence? Last I heard, that evidence was not given to anyone. Not even the Dutch Safety Board, and not even to the father of one of the passengers, who happened to be an American.

So, the question really remains, if there is this evidence, imagery, trajectory, all kinds of technical evidence, which, I would parenthetically add, there must be, given the saturation coverage, U.S. satellites and that, in the area...why doesn't John Kerry produce that evidence? Why doesn't he show that he wasn't stretching the truth - we don't say lying in Washington - he wasn't prevaricating, he really has that evidence. He needs to show that. Otherwise, people say, "Well, gosh..."

BECKER
Let me ask you, that is very important, the point that you're making, because this was, as you said, right after the shootdown on July 17, 2014, two hundred and ninety eight people were killed. You know, a real, a real disaster for all those people, all their families. It was over the eastern part of Ukraine, the context was, that there was a civil war going on, the civil war was by the new government in Ukraine that took power following a...a fascist led, or neo-fascist, semi-fascist led coup d'etat, on February 22, 2014. A civil war had started, and thousands of people died eventually, but the Ukrainian government was actually bombing people, its own people in the eastern region. People who are described in the western media as pro-Russian or separatist, so, I hear you, John Kerry rushed to judgement, went right on TV. Let's look at what countries are represented on the joint investigative team, because the media now is treating this, two years later, as the definitive word. The countries are the Netherlands, Belgium, Australia, Malaysia, and Ukraine. One, you made the point that Ukraine is a suspect, so why are they involved? But what about Russia's involvement? They were denied.

MCGOVERN
Yeah, their evidence hasn't been included. They're complaining loudly about that. And they're complaining loudly about that. One also curious aspect [sic] of John Kerry's presentation there three days after the shootdown, was his pointing out that "social media" are "an extraordinarily useful tool."

BECKER
That's amazing.

MCGOVERN
[laughs] Anybody that knows about social media, the question is...a tool for what? And the fellows there, the Bellingcat guys and the Higgins [Bellingcat was heavily involved in investigative work that put forth strong proof that Russia was behind the downing of MH17, and Eliot Higgins heads up the site; their report, "MH17: The Open Source Investigation Two Years Later", can be found here: https://www.bellingcat.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/mh17-two-years-later.pdf ], and all those other folks, they've shown to be, to be, completely off-base about what they're reconstructed. My colleague, Robert Parry, has gone through some of the details of their so-called videos, and shown them to be, at best, completely inconclusive, so if that is all that John Kerry and the Dutch, who I would add, are the most subservient of all of our allies in Europe, and that's really saying something, and the Ukrainians are pretty much the center of the investigation, you know, how can anyone take this very seriously?

BECKER
Russia says, it has radar evidence that shows that the plane was shot down from a village held by Ukrainian military forces, meaning governmental forces, not rebel forces. But the joint investigative team says that it has audio of rebels that proved otherwise. Can we expect that this video will be released?

MCGOVERN
Well...you know, I should expect that it would be, but so far they haven't. It's what, two years plus? Since the shootdown, nothing gives me to believe that Kerry's supposed evidence or this, will be released. Instead we have _social media_, it's really...really sad, because we're talking about 280 people killed because of this. Now, how does this play into the larger picture? Well, more than three decades ago, when I was on active duty as a CIA analyst, something very very similar happened on September 1, 1983. KAL 007, Korean airliner, was shot down over Sakhalin, in the Soviet Union. Now, it had been proceeded by a U.S. spy plane, and it's very clear, that the Russian air controllers thought, oops, here's another spy plane, the more so because it didn't respond to warning shots, or waving the wings, or anything else. Well, the order was given to shoot it down. Now, it turned out to be a passenger plane. We knew, from intercepted communications, that the pilot thought, and ground control thought, they were shooting down a spy plane. They didn't know, in other words, that KAL 007, which was completely off radio, and off everything, was a passenger plane. Now, what do we do? Well, the state department- Now, this, mind you, September 1, 1983, the whole game in town there, was to impress Ronald Reagan about how evil the Soviet empire was. And so, what happened to the fifty minute audio tape, that we had from ground control to pilot, and so forth, it was trimmed down to eight minutes, all signs and indications that it was a mistake, that it was not intentional, were removed, and we got at the UN a doctored transcript, eight and a half minutes, prepared to show that, as the word went, the Soviets did this deliberately, Time magazine's cover, "Murder in the Sky", a barbaric, _barbaric_, action. Now, barbaric, now that's the word that Samantha Powers used at the UN earlier this- or just last week. Now, what's the point here?

The point here, is to blacken the Russians, and it was used masterfully. Now, if it's just propaganda, it doesn't matter, okay? There were serious consequences to this. Not only was the propaganda war started on the Soviet Union under Reagan, but there were all kinds of war exercises planned and conducted. I refer specifically to "Abel Archer", which was the first week in November, 1983. Now, why do I mention that? Well, because that was a ten day NATO exercise that simulated a conflict escalation, unique format, coded communications, radio silences, it was so realistic, that the Russians thought it was for real. Okay? Now, we know that the Russians thought it was for real, by the way they reacted, and only my colleagues, Mel Goodman and others, were able to go to Casey, Bill Casey, and persuade him, the first and only time we got him to change his mind, go down to the White House and say, "Look, the Soviets are really worried, it looks like we might have a nuclear exchange, if you don't call off this exercise." Reagan understood that, and called it off. What am I saying here? I'm saying that we're in a similar period, of heightened propaganda, which has no rhyme or reason, from the Russians' point of view, after a period in which they tried to co-operate with us, in Syria, and what did they get? Well, [Sergey] Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Minister, just two days ago, said, "You know, I don't know if we can trust anyone, I really don't trust Kerry anymore. He told my boss, he told Putin that President Obama was behind the deal we worked out," but as Lavrov said, "Apparently, the Department of Defense does not obey the Commander in Chief." Wow. Well, that's exactly what happened. As we all know, it's very very clear, that that ceasefire, or limited ceasefire was scuttled by the attack on Syrian government troops-

BECKER
So, Ray, let me jump in here. We only have five minutes left. I mean, I think your history here is extremely important...with what happened with the KAL 007, the shootdown of a civilian airliner September 1, 1983. I remember it vividly, the headlines of the main New York newspapers, at least the tabloids, was "Don't Let The Soviet- Don't Let [Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei] Gromyko Land At Kennedy Airport," come to the United Nations. In other words, it was a full court press on the Soviet Union, and it led to immense tensions, it led, as you said, to near war, and, of course, with the placement of nuclear weapons in Europe, with six minute flight time to Soviet targets, the possibility of nuclear war was real. It can't be underestimated. The Russians now are no longer believing that they can trust United States. Now, there was a Major General Igor Konashenkov, he said two days ago, he was adamant about the fact that no Buk system [Buk missiles shot down MH17] was delivered from Russia into Ukraine. Two days ago, he said - they're going on the record here - "No Russian systems, including Buk, ever crossed the Russian-Ukrainian border." Now, that's after the Russian foreign ministry also decried the fact, and the foreign ministry's spokesperson, [said] "To this date, the investigators continue to ignore the overwhelming evidence provided by the Russian side, despite the fact that Russia is the only side that submits accurate information and constantly discloses new data." I mean, what's the politics here? Why drive this into the point of complete estrangement, confrontation, tension. What's the endgame?

MCGOVERN
I wish I knew. I wish I knew. Brian, it doesn't make any sense. You know, unless you go back to the old saw, which is true enough, that peace is very bad for business. And war and tension is very good for the arms trade, which the pope called "the blood soaked arms traders." But unless you go way back to that, who profits from an almost nuclear exchange with Russia? No one does. And so, why our mass media, all in step, now, just as they did, back in 1983, as we just discussed. Ted Koppel, here's Ted Koppel on "Nightline": "This is one of those occasions where there's no difference between what's churned out by the U.S. government and the commercial broadcasting networks." Well, that's right. [laughs] That's exactly right. They're stenographers, that's what they do. Now, one last thing on this. There was a high level state department official, wrote a book, K? And he was the one that doctored, or was given the doctored transcripts, down from fifty minutes, down to eight minutes, to show that the Soviets, the Soviets in those days deliberately, in an outrageous and barbaric thing shot down and killed two hundred and ninety eight passengers. What he says was this: he wrote a book. In the book called, oh, I have it somewhere in my mind...but what he said was, you know, he drew an ironic lesson from his involvement in all of this, and rather than being contrite, he said, he wrote this, this is the senior State Department official, "The moral of the story, is that all governments, including our own, lie, when it suits their purposes, the key is, to lie first." Well, I have to tell you, that Kerry, whether it's about sarin attacks in Syria, whether it's about moderates winning in Syria, or whether it's about a whole bunch of things, he has been shown to not be telling the truth. So much so, that President Putin, as Obama arrived in Moscow for a summit, on September 6, 2013, he allowed himself to say in public, "[Russian phrase]", [McGovern's translation] "He lies, he knows he's lying, and this is really sad." Now Obama could not counter that, because he knew that happened to be true. Kerry had lied about the moderate strength in Syria, and he had also lied about the sarin gas.

BECKER
That's the voice of Ray McGovern. Those who lie first win, I guess that's the idea, Ray. In other words, you capture the media, you capture the headlines, you capture the narrative. We're completely out of time, we've been talking to Ray McGovern, about the Dutch report on the shootdown of Malaysian airliner, civilian airliner, flight 17. You are listening to Loud & Clear, we'll be back.