Ray McGovern on Loud and Clear (03/19/2017)

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 March 19, 2017.

Show title: "Let the Games Begin: Congress Opens Anti-Russia Witch Hunt Hearings"

File link: https://sputniknews.com/radio_loud_and_clear/201703201051734750-let-the-games-begin/

BRIAN BECKER
Today's House Intelligence Committee public hearing is set to take the anti-Russia witch hunt in the United States to new heights. Several government officials agree there isn't any evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government, but will the establishment continue its campaign of demonization nonetheless, and will people buy it? We are joined today for the full hour by Ray McGovern, he is an activist and a former CIA analyst, whose writings can be found on Ray McGovern dot com, and we are joined from Moscow by Mark Sleboda, an international affairs and security analyst. Welcome Ray and Mark.

RAY MCGOVERN
Thank you.

MARK SLEBODA
Hey Brian, thanks for having me, it's always great to be on "Loud and Clear".

BRIAN BECKER
Thank you both for joining. [sic] Mark, let's start with you. What do you expect from the House Intelligence Committee meeting today, even though Republican representatives David Nunes [sic], and the Democrat, Adam Schiff, both the top ranking Republican and Democrat, have different attitudes towards the Trump administration, they seem to share a common hostility towards Russia. What do you expect?

SLEBODA
I expect a lot of smoke to be blown out of the ashes of, you know, this conspiracy theory fear-mongering, that I believe is going nowhere. There's no evidence to present this case, but that's not going to stop Democrats and select members of the Committee from making choice propagandistic statements without any evidence. And that is what will be picked up by the mainstream media, in, you know, selective clips and quotes, to further this along. So I expect lots of smoke, no fire.

BECKER
Well, that's an interesting formulation, Ray McGovern, former acting CIA Director, Michael Morell, who, I would have to say, is no fan of Donald Trump, said of the allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign or the Trump transition team following the election, and Russia: "There is smoke, but there is no fire, at all." Is that exactly how we should refer to the on-going anti-Russia witch hunt? What do you think?

MCGOVERN
Well, you know, I'm reluctant to agree with Mike Morell on anything, but- [SLEBODA laughs] even a clock is right twice a day [sic], and I suppose I'd have to say, well, he's right about this. You know, it's quite extraordinary, there really and truly is no evidence, of Russian collusion, in trying to give the election to Trump, and yet, ninety five percent of the American people believe that this is a kind of accepted wisdom. It's very bizarre. I've been around in Washington over fifty years, and I've seen some bizarre situations, but...I'm convinced that someone put something in the water here, about two months ago, and people have gone beserk. McCain calling-

BECKER
Do you think there should be congressional investigations about what's in the water?

MCGOVERN
Well [laughs], you know, that's a good way to put it.

SLEBODA
Dr. Strangelove! Or...I think we've already got that going. [a reference to the character Jack D. Ripper in the Stanley Kubrick movie, Dr. Strangelove, who is obsessed with bodily fluids, purity of essence, and tainted water]

MCGOVERN
The political dynamic is that nobody who is politically correct, can say, "Oh, we don't need an investigation." Now, I style myself as coming from the Robert Parry school of journalism, which looks at empirical evidence, looks at facts, and call us quaint, or call us obsolete, but if there's no evidence for inquiry, well, let me put it this way: when Parry was asked last week, "Do you favor an inquiry?" And he quite honestly said, "I've been around a while, and I frankly have no confidence in Congress to do anything useful in this. So I wouldn't know how to structure an inquiry." Now people say, "Well, the 9/11 Commission". [laughs] The 9/11 Commission was a cover-up! And the two commissioners admitted that two years later, when they said, we were set up to fail, weren't given enough time, people, enough money, enough access to classified information. The last thing here is, despite- president Obama never listened much to Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, but we did tell him that he did have a chance to dispel all this controversy, before he left, he needed to show the beef. He needed to show the evidence. Why? Because after he left, with Trump in charge, the Republicans in charge, well, nobody's going to believe anything that comes out of a congressional investigation. Obama had the chance to reveal what he knew, and not only did he blow it, but two days before he left office, he said this: "The conclusions of the intelligence community, with respect to the Russian hacking, were not conclusive, with respect to how it got to Wikileaks." Well...HELLO? [laughs] Do the Russians hack? Of course. Everyone hacks. But was the Wikileaks disclosure of these terribly incriminating emails of the DNC and Hillary, was that from Wikileaks? Yeah, it was from Wikileaks. Was it from the Russians? And what the president is saying here, and nobody noticed it, it was at a press conference, okay? He said the evidence of that "inconclusive".

So, what we have here, is a brouhaha that the Democrats are way out on a limb...I had a chance to talk to the ranking Democrat, on the House Intelligence Committee, he gave a little lecture at the Center for American Progress. He gave this whole spiel about how the Russians did it, the Russians- the evidence is clear, no doubt the Russians did it. That is, tried to help, and did help Trump win the election. So, I went up to him afterwards, they wouldn't recognize me when I raised my hand, I went up and luckily I was stil on camera, and still on mike. And I said: "Now...Representative Schiff," Adam Schiff is his name, "hey, you know the president said, that, two days before he left office, that there's no evidence of a link between the Russians and Wikileaks. Now, you say it's absolutely clear. Do you know- do you know more than the president does?" And he looked at me, and he said, "Mr. McGovern, I can't share with you what I know." [this episode can be found here: https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4652403/ray-mcgovern-co-creator-veteran-intelligence-professionals-sanity-asked-representative-adam-schiff transcript is here: https://pastebin.com/3HaMNYMt ] And in that, he was true. Because he can't share zero. They have no evidence. And Nunes- not Nunes, but Schiff, and the rest of them, are all really kind of, frothing at the mouth, to make sure that they, make sure that President Trump is impeded from cultivating decent relationship with Russia. That's the name of the game.

BECKER
Mark Sleboda said you can't share zero. It's also hard to prove a negative. I can remember vividly in 2003, George W. Bush and Condoleezza Rice, and Cheney, and Rumsfeld, and all them, kept insisting that Saddam Hussein wasn't proving that he didn't have weapons, and Saddam Hussein could never prove that he didn't have weapons, because his constant affirmation that he didn't have weapons could never be proved. In other words, it would became [sic] a circular logic whereby they could say, at the end of the day, he's not believable. We have Adam Schiff, who Ray was also just talking about, I heard him on National Public Radio, in an hour long interview, I believe it was hour long, talking about the collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign, or the transition team of Trump, after the election. It was just- There was no query, nobody challenged the collusion, the reporter, the host, the guest. They all said, "collusion," then I went home, and I read the Washington Post from that Sunday, I believe, and at the end of a two thousand word article, two thousand or so word article, about collusion, they quoted James Clapper, the former head of intelligence, saying, "There was no evidence of collusion," while he was in charge of intelligence. And that was up to January 20, 2017, when Trump came into office. So, here we have a situation, where the absence of evidence does not stop the train. The train just keeps going. And the train won't stop going. Well, how will it stop going? Does it stop?

SLEBODA
It will peter out eventually, I think. Eventually this manufacturing of this conspiracy theory and an enemy, which Democrats are using to explain away their loss, and their own primary corruption campaign, during this election, it's meant to distract our attention. But eventually, it will peter out, and hopefully, this criticism that the media is focusing, will be placed on real problems with the Trump administration, such as its neo-liberalism, its policies in the United States, other members of the cabinet, rather than this ridiculous witch hunt and xenophobia against Russians. I'd like to point out first, that there are multiple investigations going forward at this point, in both the House and Senate Intelligence Committees. The one we're talking about today, is an investigation into collusion between the Trump campaign and its associates, and Russia. And there is zero evidence of this. Barack Obama, the former president, has said there's zero evidence of this. Michael Morell, the former Acting Director, of the CIA, under Obama, a man who has been quoted, has said directly to the cameras, on National Public Radio in the United States, that the US needs to start covertly killing Russians, I mean, no friend of Russia here, he said, there's no evidence of it. James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, has said there's no evidence of this. James Brennan, the former director of the CIA, under Obama, has also said there is no evidence, of any collusion. And they will all be speaking at this House Intelligence Committee meeting. Now, there's separate committee hearings going on, about supposed Russian hacking interference of the election, following on this DNI, this much ridiculed DNI report that came out. But these are actually two separate investigations. On this, I'd really like to encourage everyone to read two articles. One is by a prominent Putin critic, in the United States, by the name of Masha Gessen, who is a long-time, vehement Putin critic, who writes for the New Yorker, the New York Review of Books, and others, and she wrote an article called "Russia: The Conspiracy Trap" [link: http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2017/03/06/trump-russia-conspiracy-trap/ ] in The New York Review of Books recently.

And then Glenn Greenwald picked up on this, and amplified it in The Intercept, with an article, about "Leading Putin Critic Warns of Xenophobic Conspiracy Theories Drowning U.S. Discourse And Helping Trump," [link: https://theintercept.com/2017/03/07/leading-putin-critic-warns-of-xenophobic-conspiracy-theories-drowning-u-s-discourse-and-helping-trump/ ] and, if I could, I'd like to just read, some of a paragraph that I think really boils all of this down. He talks about how all this conspiracy theory is distracting from real fighting against Trump, the real issues, and from issues the Democratic party itself needs to address. "But, above all, it's an offensive assault on reason. This kind of deranged discourse is an attack on basic journalistic integrity, on any minimal obligation to ensure that one's claims are based in evidence, rather than desire, fantasy, and herd enforced delusions. And it's emanating from the most established and mainstream precincts of U.S. political and media elites, who have processed the severe disorientation and loss of position they feel from Trump's shock election, not by doing the work to patiently formulate cogent, effective strategies against him, but rather by desperately latching onto on-line dot connecting charlatans, and spewing the most unhinged birther-level conspiracies, that require a complete abandonment of basic principles of rationality and skepticism." And, to me, that just summed up this whole witch hunt very succinctly.

BECKER
Ray, go ahead.

MCGOVERN
I agree, Mark. But you need to be careful here: unhinged? That's what Rand Paul called John McCain. With great reason. Why? Because John McCain said Rand Paul the tool of Putin's. So, you're running the risk of being called a tool of Putin, all the more so, since, you're like Ed Snowden, you're right there in Moscow, are you not?

SLEBODA
It wouldn't be the first time [he was called a tool of Putin]. It would be far from the first time.

MCGOVERN
Let me, let me also offer a criticism from my favorite defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld. You know, he went to Princeton, where you learn all kinds of interesting, sophisticated things...and his theorem, which Brian referred to tangentially, was this: the absence of evidence, is not evidence of absence. And so, you know, if you buy that theory, then you get wars like Iraq, and you get this diatribe against Putin, and all the rest of it. And of course, you know, I was listening to NPR the other day, and they were talking about, "Well, President Trump is going to be speaking with Angela Merkel, and discuss Russia's invasion and aggression in Ukraine, and bahbahbah," well, there's a collective insanity out there. There was no Russian invasion of Ukraine. Nor Crimea. And people just don't know that. And that's the basic story here, people in America think they get news from TV, and from newspapers, unlike the Russians back several decades ago, they are unable to read between the lines, and not enough people know where to get the real poop, namely, from alternative means. The last thing I'll say is, you talked about the media elite. Well, my Irish grandmother didn't say "elite", she said "upper crust". She said, "Raymond, do you know what the upper crust is?" And I said, "Sure-" She said, "You don't know! Sit down, and I'll tell ya!" She said, "The upper crust is a bunch of crumbs held together by a lotta dough."

BECKER
We're going to leave it there. We know now how to define the upper crust. That was the voice of Ray McGovern, we're also talking to Mark Sleboda, you are listening to "Loud and Clear", we'll be back.

[intermission music]

BECKER
Today's House Intelligence Committee public hearing is set to take the anti-Russia witch hunt in the United States to new heights. We are joined today for the full hour by Ray McGovern, he is an activist and a former CIA analyst, whose writings can be found on Ray McGovern dot com, and we are joined from Moscow by Mark Sleboda, an international affairs and security analyst. Again...welcome back, Ray and Mark.

MCGOVERN
Thank you.

SLEBODA
Thanks for having us.

BECKER
Mark Sleboda, again, the media has the tools for an allegation against Russia which president Obama, as Ray McGovern pointed out, said there's no evidence of. James Clapper, Mike Morell, who said he would never vote for Donald Trump, which was unusual for a former Acting CIA Director, and he said he had never announced who he was voting for or not, but he said: "Donald Trump is not only unqualified for the job, but he may well pose a threat to our national security." That's Mike Morell, former Acting CIA Director. He says there's no evidence of collusion between Russia and Trump ["Clinton Ally Says Smoke, But No Fire: No Russia-Trump Collusion" link: http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/clinton-ally-says-smoke-no-fire-no-russia-trump-collusion-n734176 ], and yet, Mark, not only is the Committee hearing going forward, but as you said, other investigations...I happened to watch Rachel Maddow's show on MSNBC, the other night, and I have to say-

SLEBODA
Oh god, I'm sorry-

BECKER
I have to say, I don't watch TV very frequently, so I haven't seen her show. And as you mentioned, I'm part of that grouping of Americans who oppose many of the policies of Donald Trump, including his immigration policy, his position on Muslims, his vast cuts in the budget which target poor and working class communities, but: I have to say, those of us who are part of that opposition also completely reject the kind of politics that were repeated ad nauseum for the entire broadcast of Rachel Maddow. Not just that night, but the night before, when she revealed the shocking news that Donald Trump paid thirty eight million dollars in taxes, in 2005. [MCGOVERN laughs] I mean, it was a non-stop witch hunt! And it just made me think, the liberals, who used to challenge a hawkish U.S. foreign policy, have been drawn into the most hawkish U.S. foreign policy against the other country in the world that possesses a large thermonuclear weapons arsenal. I mean, it's the kind of madness where all of the existing world has been turned upside down, reality has become fantasy, and fantasy has become reality. And yet, it is the kind of politics that are the politics of a witch hunt. In other words, it doesn't require evidence.

SLEBODA
I think we really are seeing a resurgence of McCarthyism. This is the new McCarthyism. Only it's not projected by the Republican party, this time, it's projected by the Democratic party. And it all goes in line with this narrative that Putin, personally, from as far as I can tell, hacked the 2016 election, and rigged it. And how did he rig it? He rigged it by exposing how the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign, colluded to rig the election by rigging their own Democratic primary. Because that's exactly what was in these emails-

BECKER
To stop Bernie Sanders.

SLEBODA
Yeah. To stop Bernie Sanders. That Wikileaks exposed him, that there's various attempts to try to link to Russia, through this. I'm just not sure that's the narrative that they really want to go with. Putin rigged the election by exposing Democratic rigging of their primary? Yeah, I'm not sure that that [BECKER laughs] really plays well in Peoria. But, there is a larger picture here, there's larger damage that is being done, and I think that it's very deliberate. I think a large part of what these hearings and this media furor is about, is not just about going after Trump, and his associates, one by one, and we've already seen Trump give up the scalp of Michael Flynn, for doing absolutely nothing illegal, or illicit, simply doing his job, as the incoming National Security Advisor. And I think that was a huge mistake. By Trump. Because Flynn was the one person who might have been able to reform and purge deep state intelligence apparatus. Because he was Obama's Defense Intelligence Agency Director. He had the institutional impetus to get something done there. But he's gone now. But this is all directed, primarily, at Trump's foreign policy platform, with regards, specifically, to Russia. That he wants detente. That he thinks Russia and the United States have common interests on terrorism, and on a whole lot of other issues. That they should be co-operating on. And coupled with that, is objection to Donald Trump's expressed opinion that all of these regime changes, foreign interferences, the euphemism of democracy promotion - are wrong. They're not wrong for many other reasons, he simply feels that they are counterproductive. They have actually hurt U.S. foreign policy.

There's so much evidence of that, from Iraq to Libya, and so on. But this is the deep state. And when we're talking the deep state, we're talking about the unelected bureaucrats, particularly in the intelligence agencies, and the State Department, "the blob" [for an explanation of this term, see "The Aspiring Novelist Who Became Obama’s Foreign-Policy Guru" link: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/magazine/the-aspiring-novelist-who-became-obamas-foreign-policy-guru.html ], that are not removed from office, they're not elected, they continue to serve on, they have their own values and interests, and ideology. And one of them, is that Russia is the enemy, it is the number one existential enemy of the United States, and they refuse to let the U.S. foreign policy position be changed away from that. And they are acting through the media, using this army of anonymous and former current officials, leaking information into the press, and most of this information is just innuendo and insinuation. But I'd like to point out this is the real- this is where the real investigation is needed, because what these people are doing _is_ actually illegal, is a serious felony, and there really needs to be an investigation there, because the Trump administration is leaking like the colander that I use to make my pasta. And they can't continue on like this. And I don't see that they have the ability to correct it at this point. But this is sabotage. This is guerilla warfare, first and foremost, to prevent any foreign policy shift toward Russia. And not only is it preventing any detente, but it's making relations worse. It's creating new generations of Americans that see Russia and Russians as the enemy, and it is eventually leading to conflicts in situations with Russia, if not under Trump himself, then certainly with whoever follows him. Whether if that's after a full four years, or not. And that is extremely dangerous, because Russia is a serious, I would say a great power. They're not a superpower anymore, certainly their geopolitical horizons are much less than that, but the U.S. doesn't need that kind of confrontation with Russia. And Trump has the brilliance foreign policy-wise, with the policy of realism, a much needed policy of realism, re-injected into U.S. foreign policy, to see that. Even if he doesn't have the brilliance to see anything of similar brilliance domestic-wise, unfortunately.

BECKER
Ray, let's talk about Wikileaks for a moment. Because the whole assertion from the beginning, because it was Wikileaks that was revealing the documents from Podesta's emails, and from the DNC, that showed that, as Mark Sleboda said, that the DNC was breaking its own rules, in trying to tilt the election for Hillary Clinton against the other Democratic candidate in the primary, Bernie Sanders. Deborah Wasserman Schultz had to step down, she was temporarily replaced by Donna Brazile, Donna Brazile had to then step down because the Wikileaks revelations-

SLEBODA
She was just as involved in it!

BECKER
-that, and she was telling people, Donna Brazile was telling people, "Don't read those emails because they came from Russia! Don't read them!" And then when people did read them, it turned out the emails also revealed that Donna Brazile was also giving Hillary Clinton's camp the questions before debates. She was getting the questions because she was a CNN analyst, and forking them over.

SLEBODA
But Brian! Putin made her do that!

BECKER
Yeah. And Putin- yeah, that was the little chip he put in her brain undoubtedly. But-

SLEBODA
if I ever figure out how Putin managed to convince the DNC to rig their own primary and write those emails...the man is a demi-god.

BECKER
Yeah. [said like this: "K, you're trying too hard, shut up, and let me continue."] We have...here we have Wikileaks back in the news, and this is what the revelations of the CIA documents, what Wikileaks calls Vault 7 revelations. And I want to have you, Ray McGovern, tell us if you would, how they relate to this anti-Russia witch hunt, which, I'm agreeing with that language, and I think both of you are...Salon reported, "One of the most interesting disclosures concerning how the CIA can cover its tracks-", this is again about Vault 7 Wikileaks documents, "can cover its tracks by leaving electronic trails suggesting the hacking is being done in different places. Notably, in Russia." In fact, according to Wikileaks, there's an entire department, this is within the CIA, dedicated to this. Its job is to "misdirect attribution" by leaving false fingerprints. Well, that would make a lot of sense. If you're going to hack, if you're going to go in and steal documents, you might not want it to be done through your own server. You might want to find a way to misdirect attribution, so you think somebody else can do it [sic]. Now, if the CIA has developed an entire department just for this purpose, so that when, say, they carry out cyberwar against North Korea, which they did, or cyberwar against Iran, which they did, very aggressive, offensive cyberwar, attacks against those countries, they don't want to have it be directly attributed back to them. And it also suggests that to the degree that anyone pointing to Russian evidence, evidence of Russia's hacking patterns, as the circumstantial evidence, the overwhelming circumstantial evidence, which is what I think President Obama cited, that too might not be that overwhelming if the CIA can do that dirty trick.

MCGOVERN
[laughing] Well, Brian, you put your finger on it. These tools, these cybertools, that were revealed just ten days ago now, Wikileaks' incredible exposure...apparently, these cyberspecialists in this, now we don't want to exaggerate this, not a whole department at the CIA, it's just a division, okay? [laughs] I don't know how many hundred [sic] of people in the division, but they're real good at these tools to attack people, but you know what? As far as defensive measures, as far as protecting their treasure trove of secreets? They're a bunch of hacks! [laughs] I mean, if Wikileaks can delve into these supersecret secrets, that means these hacks, are not really good at defensive measures. What we have here, you cite one thing, let me cite another thing first. These tools include a way to take over the computer system of an automobile, and make it go 110 miles an hour. Rather than 55 miles an hour.

BECKER
Sounds dangerous.

MCGOVERN
It does. And if one thinks back to how Michael Hastings was killed-

SLEBODA
Yes.

MCGOVERN
-in Los Angeles, as he was finishing an article for Rolling Stone on John Brennan, the head of the CIA, which never did get published. Well, you know, there's no real- what do you call it? They didn't examine the body or anything else. So, you know, at least, it's suspicious that they're really neat tools.

BECKER
And they said, the police there said that Hastings died at four in the morning as he was finishing the article, I think it was over a hundred miles an hour.

MCGOVERN
Yeah. Yeah, so, so there's that. Now, the one you pointed out, this really cool tool, you talked about how it can misdirect attention, away from the real hacker, well, you know you can't have it both ways, Brian, and people have been pointing this out for months now. If you suggest, or you stipulate, that this had to be a state sponsored, or very sophisticated hacking operation, then you have to explain why "oops!" they left Cyrillic writing as traces, "oops!" they left the name of "Felix Edmundovich", which is the first name and patronymic of Dzerzhinsky, the head of the Cheka, the predecessor of the KGB, so, you know, you can't have the most professional outfit and these "telltale signs", that it was the Russians, it was the Russians. In my view, the evidence is almost compelling that it was not Vladimir Putin who was doing this ostensible hacking, it was John Brennan. Now, we have the tools now, tools normally associated with the NSA, and one has to question, did the NSA know about this stuff? Did the president of the United States know about it? Did the heads of these intelligence committees know about it? I suggest, likely as not, they did not.

BECKER
Mark Sleboda, what do you think about that?

SLEBODA
Yeah, the problem with all of this is state attribution, for cyberwarfare acts, this is extremely difficult. And I'd encourage anyone who's interested in this, to read James Carr [sic, he means Jeffrey Carr] , James Carr is the CEO of Taia Global, an internet security company, and he is considered one of the U.S. foremost cyber warfare gurus. He's lectured and given advice to the Pentagon, to the NSA...all over the place. And even specifically, on Russian and Chinese hacking. He is quite the expert. And basically, he says, you know, if you're trying to attribute this to the FSB, or the Russian military intelligence, GRU, and it looks like they did it, then I can assure you that they did not do it. ["An Attribution Skeptic’s FAQ" link: https://medium.com/@jeffreycarr/an-attribution-skeptics-faq-42805f0ee6b3 ] Because they're professional. He's not the only one. The U.S. and the cyberwarfare community of experts was not convinced by this evidence that was presented, they think it's extremely coincidental, and politicized. So, I'd advise you, James Carr [sic], he's on twitter, he's got his own blog, he's written extensively on this, and he's certainly one willing to believe that the Russians might have done it. Or that they could have done it. But simply, that the evidence isn't there that they did do it. He talks specifically about the dangers of misplaced state attribution, especially how that has politicized, how the Obama administration blamed North Korea for the Sony hacks, not long ago, and you notice how that whole thing quietly went away, and Obama all but had egg on his face for making that attribution.

BECKER
That was the voice of Mark Sleboda. Ray McGovern, I know you want to jump in, but we're going to go first to a break. You are listening to "Loud and Clear". We'll be back.

[intermission music]

BECKER
You are listening to "Loud and Clear", I'm Brian Becker. I'm joined by Ray McGovern, former CIA analyst and journalist, his writings can be found on Ray McGovern dot com. We're also joined from Moscow by Mark Sleboda, he's an international affairs and security analyst. We're talking about the House Intelligence Committee that begins today, the public hearing to take on possible Russian collusion with the Trump campaign, even though, as we've discussed, in the earlier segments, there is, according to all the intelligence chiefs, no evidence of collusion, nonetheless, the witch hunt goes forward. Ray McGovern, before we- before we went to break, you wanted to jump in, to respond to Mark. Go ahead.

MCGOVERN
Yeah, I'd just like to point out that the media's totally corrupt here. Eisenhower, of course, talked about the military-industrial complex...now it's the military-industrial-congressional-media-deep state complex. So, we oughta make sure we know about that. Now, what do I mean here? Well, hacking; the Russians, hack? Of course, they hack. The Chinese hack. They got millions of documents from the Personal Management Office. Everyone hacks. The U.S. hacks. The question is: whether Russian hacking had anything to do with the Wikileaks disclosures. I've already said that the president himself has admitted there's no evidence, the evidence is, in his words, "inconclusive", that there was any link between these Russian hacking [sic] and Wikileaks. So, what do we have here? Well, we have in Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, an array of specialists who won't quit. We have the former technical director of the National Security Agency, the NSA. We have the guy, Bill Binney is his name, who devised these systems. Well, here's the fellow who quit when he saw that they were being abused to monitor Americans. Now, what does he say? He looked at all the evidence, and three or four months ago, he concluded that this was an inside job. Why? Because a hack would have to go over the network, NSA has blanket capabilities to monitor what's over the network, they have cast iron coverage of Julian Assange and [laughs] everybody associated with him...it could not have been a hack. What was it? It was a leak! Now, I don't know this, except from circumstantial evidence, but I am persuaded by it, it was a leak by a disgruntled Democratic National Committee worker. Now, why would they be disgruntled? Well, if they had access to the email system, in the DNC, they knew that Bernie Sanders was cheated out of the nomination by the DNC, by Hillary Clinton, and the other folks that wanted Hillary to be the nominee. K? Now, what is a young guy from Nebraska, who's bright eyed and bushy tailed and he wants to work for democracy, he sees this kind of outrage, what does he do? Well, after a while, he sees that Donna Braziles and the other people who are real political hacks, cheating, a guy who would surely have won the election, out of the nomination, and he says, "You know, this is too much. I have to get this word out, and how am I going to do that? I'm going to give it to Wikileaks. They're reliable, they'll put it out, documentary-wise, they won't fool around with it, they won't interpret it, that's what I'll do." So what does he do? He puts a thumb drive [laughs] or some other mechanism, to download what he knows, and he gives it to Wikileaks. That's why there's no trace on the network. That's why Wikileaks was able to do this. Now: what's my proof? Well, it's not proof-

BECKER
You have overwhelming circumstantial evidence, though.

MCGOVERN
Yeah.

BECKER
Which is, apparently, enough.

MCGOVERN
There is a fellow named- [laughs]

SLEBODA
[inaudible] that's what Wikileaks says actually happened.

MCGOVERN
You know, people disparage what Julian Assange says, because, actually he has not been wrong [laughs] Just because, alright? So, what happened? A fellow named Seth Rich, a young fellow from Nebraska, I think he's twenty eight or twenty nine years old, okay? He's murdered. On the streets of Washington, I think it was July 10, of last year. Now, he worked for the DNC. Why do I point that out? Well, the robbers, so to speak, forgot to take his wallet, or anything else from him. They just shot him. Okay? Shot him dead. And one week later, Julian Assange in an unprecedented remark told a Dutch TV program, "Seth Rich's death shows the risk that whistleblowers run, when they try to get information out to the public. And, we, Wikileaks, offer a $20,000 reward for information leading to the killers of Seth Rich." Now, I was agape when I heard that. Julian never ever said a word about his sources, and I figured, well, Seth is dead, right? So, maybe this is an exception. Well, there's one other thing I know about all this, and that is the role of former UK ambassador Craig Murray. Also a winner of the Sam Adams Award for Integrity in Intelligence, who is a close friend of Julian Assange. Now, we have an annual awards ceremony for those awarded the Sam Adams Award for Integrity. And John Kiriakou won it this year. And we asked Craig Murray, the ambassador, of the UK, who won it in 2007, to come and emcee the ceremony. And he did, it was the end of September, he did a great job as emcee, as usual, he's a terrific guy, and as we're meeting outside the ceremony, Key Chapel at American University, we said, "Hey, Craig, c'mon, we're going for a drink now, we'll have some dinner at the Tavern Inn," he said, "Well- well- You know- I-," and he backs up, and he disappears over a little hillock. Behind Key Chapel. At American University. And I say to myself, "_This is weird_. Craig Murray has never ever, in his whole life, passed up a free drink! Much less a good meal!" And he never showed up. He never showed up. I learned, several weeks later, that he was meeting somebody connected with the leaks. Not the hacks, okay? And Craig has owned up to that. I don't know anything more than that. But it seems to me, that since Craig Murray also attests to the fact that he knows it was a leak, not a hack, by the Russians or anybody else, and that Julian Assange has a pretty good record for credibility in my book, and he doesn't fool around with the documentary evidence he puts out, that it was, indeed, a leak, not a hack. And that Bill Binney knows that from the technical end, I know that from the kindof analysis we do in the intelligence community, in the detective community, this is good evidence, and that's what it was.

BECKER
That's Ray McGovern, he's a former CIA analyst, he was the president's briefer for- I believe, George H. W. Bush?

MCGOVERN
That's well- Yeah, and under President Reagan.

BECKER
We're also talking with Mark Sleboda. Mark, you made the point earlier, I think, this is, even though it isn't aincient history, we have to keep going back to it, because people's memories are short, because of the 24-7 news cycle that occupies people's brains. But the Democrats, while Hillary Clinton won the national popular vote, but she lost Ohio, she lost Wisconsin, she lost Michigan, she lost Pennsylvania, that's why Donald Trump is president. There's no question, in my mind, that if Donald Trump had been running against Bernie Sanders, in those states, Bernie Sanders would have won in those states, or several of them at least. In other words, that's the real reason Donald Trump is president, the Democrats were arrogant, they thought Trump was such an extremist, they would encourage him to run, they were hoping all of the Republicans would stay in, so they would weaken their position...they ran an arrogant, arrogant campaign. And Hillary Clinton never even went to Wisconsin once. She visited Michigan once. Her position talking about the basket of deplorables, meaning, you know, the rabble, who were the people in those areas and other areas who might be voting for Trump, further alienated her. The Democratic party has found this new sortof banner to hang, we lost because of Russia, and now Russia has taken over America, and we have to keep going, keep fighting - it seems to me, that ultimately, the American people don't give a damn about this. I mean, people who are watching Rachel Maddow every night, who like that stuff, they're actually talking to their spouse constantly about Russia and their spouse undoubtedly wants to kill themself [sic], but most of the people in the country don't care about this, because they know it's not real, it's not what's actually impacting their lives. You said you think it'll run out of steam, eventually, because there's nothing there. Now the Democrats, are sortof preparing the population or themselves for the possibility that there will be no silver bullet. BuzzFeed reported this ["Inside The Investigation To Get To The Bottom Of Russia’s Role In The Election" link: https://www.buzzfeed.com/alimwatkins/the-people-investigating-russias-role-in-the-election-worry?utm_term=.wmRAdepYW#.jcZ6MEDmq ]: "Now several Committee sources grudgingly say," - this is the House Intelligence Committee - "grudgingly say, it feels as though the investigation will be seen as a sham if the Senate doesn't find a silver bullet connecting Trump and Russian intelligence operatives. 'I don't think the conclusions are going to meet people's  expectations,' a second official said." And then there's a New York Times article, headlined, from March 11, "If Russia Inquiry is not 'Legitimate', Democrats May Abandon It" [link: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/11/us/politics/house-intelligence-commitee-russia-investigation.html ]. I mean, perhaps they know now, that there is no evidence, that they're going to take this for a little longer to beat this dead horse, but ultimately they can say, "Well, because we didn't find any evidence, it showed that the hearings weren't legitimate, that there were obstructionists," etc etc. Do you think that's what's coming?

SLEBODA
Yeah, eventually. There's no telling how long they'll draw this out for. They'll milk it for as much as it's worth. Pundits will continue to opine in favor of it, long after, you know, the nation's intelligence officers, you know, themselves, get up and say, you know, there's no evidence here. Because they want to believe it. And they will continue on, so, I mean, this will last for another year or two, before they focus on something else to go after Trump on. But then again, as I've said, their primary goal, of impeding any U.S-Russian detente that Trump might have proposed, may very well be accomplished. Trump will find it very, very hard under this scrutiny of public attention, to make any, you know, compromises, with Russia that would be necessary for any detente, or to even appear in the same room as Putin, so, you know, this may continue, for quite some time. Towards the real cause for the electin loss to Trump [sic], I mean, Clinton had to be a pretty terrible candidate to lose to Donald Trump, and then, I don't think Putin could have realistically helped her in any event. We don't know whether Bernie Sanders would have won the Democratic primary, we'll never know, because it was an unfair process. It was a rigged primary. You know, there's no question about that. No one has called into question the authenticity of these leaks. And part of it is because the Democratic party, especially the Clintonite wing of it, going all the way back to the 1990s, has abandoned the U.S. working class. They've [inaudible] long since abandoned. Their embrace of neo-liberal global free trade policies has been a big part of it, the voters in these Rust Belt and mid-Atlantic states, I'm from Pennsylvania myself, and I was shocked to see Donald Trump win it, you know, they realized that, and Trump right away has moved against these free trade policies by shooting down Obama's signature TPP, Trans Pacific Partnership, free trade agreement, that would've had worse effects on U.S. workers. And if the U.S working class is denied any voice on the left that represents their interests, sure they might turn to a populist, nominally right candidate, although the Republicans want nothing to do with him either, like Trump. So, that's where the real fault lies. The Democrats are doing themselves no favors by continuing to look for scapegoats for their inadequacies, their own candidate. I thought that the highlight closing...another revelation of these latest Wikileaks Vault 7 releases, about the CIA's Vault 7, cyberwarfare tools, is the incredible power grab that the CIA has managed during the Obama administration. They created a whole network, a whole department to deal with assassinations, for conducting drone assassinations, an assassination czar, kill lists, moving candidates up a list towards the kill list, the disposition matrix. This is positively Orwellian stuff. You know, Obama has assassinated thousands around the world, extra-territorially, extra-judicially, just on the basis of the CIA's suggestions. And the president's whim. This is an incredible power grab, and now we know about a power grab in the cyberwarfare domain, where the CIA has basically re-created the NSA under its own control.

BECKER
Let's bring in Ray McGovern, we have just about two minutes left, Ray. CIA power grab, now Donald Trump has given the CIA permission to carry out its own drone strikes, of course, those will be in the dark, the Pentagon at least had to make some nominal reports for the thousands who were struck down, as Mark Sleboda said. Is that what we're witnessing, and go ahead with your final comments. You get to wrap it up.

MCGOVERN
Well, I'm very suspicious of the Wall Street Journal, and the Hill reporting that the CIA has been given expanded authority over drones. I think State Defense Secretary James Mattis is going to spike that before it becomes alive. I think perhaps it's a false flag kind of report. Put up the flag, Mattis goes to the president, says, "What is this business about giving CIA more authority?" I think he has the power to spike that. The more interesting question is the deep state. Now, John Brennan is gone, but before he left, he created this cyber tools department, created all kinds of things, to blacken Trump, to make sure that Trump was thoroughly discredited, how does that all parse out? Well, I think he had a certain influence over President Obama, that no other CIA Director ever has had. And if you go back to 2008, when Obama was running, May [2008], he says, "We're going to hold those telecomps, those giant telecomps who violated the Fourth Amendment, we're going to hold them accountable." Brennan joins his campaign in June of 2008, Obama says, "Aaaaah...I think we oughta hold them harmless, instead of accountable." That's where it started, those were the key indications, we know about the drones, and the key role Brennan played in killing people, including Americans. So, this cyber thing, which was revealed by Wikileaks just ten days ago, that is shocking. And the big question should be asked, "Does the NSA know about that? Did the president know about it? Did the heads of the intelligence committes or the congress know about it?" Or did Brennan, with a wink and a nod, perhaps from Obama, often do these things himself? Cyber is a whole new sphere of warfare, and we started it, together with the Israelis, with the Stuxnet, which fouled up, and physically destroyed centrifuges in Iran. So, this is really serious stuff. Unfortunately, I have no expectation, or virtually nil expectation that any of these investigations will get at that key deep state concept.

BECKER
Okay, we're going to thank you for that, Ray McGovern. We've also been talking to Mark Sleboda. Mark and Ray have been talking for the full hour, about the House Intelligence Committee hearings that begin today on the so-called Russian interference in the U.S. election. We're out of time, we'll be back tomorrow...