Ray McGovern Interviewed by Wilton Vought (01/26/2017)

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

"Other Voices, Other Choices Interview" With Ray McGovern by Wilton Vought. Recording date: January 26, 2017.

File links (interview was published in two parts):

http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/90796
http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/90798

PART ONE OF INTERVIEW

WILTON VOUGHT
Ray, you've indicated that you'd like to discuss the strained state of U.S. relations with Russia, and how they got that way, starting from the fall of the Berlin Wall.

RAY MCGOVERN
That would be good, I think, because there's so much misunderstanding with respect to how much of the current tensions is due to Russia and how much due to United States policies. You may know, I focused on Russia for sixty years now, since I majored in Russia undergraduate. And looking at the ins and outs, or what the Russians would call the "zigzagomy", that's Russian instrumental for "zigzag"-

VOUGHT
Go figure.

MCGOVERN
Zigzags of our relationship. Toward the end of my career, I could not have been happier, with the fall of the Berlin Wall, and contrary to the way the Soviets reacted throughout my entire career, they acted responsibly. In other words, even though they could have used their power to subdue the East Europeans as they did in Hungary in '56, as they did in Czechoslovakia, in '68, they didn't do that. So, the question was, what would Gorbchev, the Soviet leader, what would he do? Now, there are people in Washington, that are saying, "Ah, Gorbachev, a more clever commie than all the others, he's still a commie. You can't trust them. Watch. Watch what will happen. The communist party of the Soviet Union will never, ever, ever, ever, ever give up power, without a fight." Right? Now, that was Bill Casey, the head of the CIA, that was Bobby Gates, his little guy who enforced his will with all the analysts. But it wasn't the Russian specialists, including myself, who knew that Gorbachev was the real deal. And it wasn't George Schultz, who is probably the brightest, and certainly most experienced of all of Ronald Reagan's advisors. Thank goodness, George Schultz listened to the more enligtened of us, and he listened to Gorbachev. He talked with his counterpart Eduard Shevardnadze, and you know the rest of the story...they worked out a deal, a respectable relationship, where they concluded strategic arms limitation deals, and, when the Berlin Wall fell, in November, of 1989, they already had a fairly good relationship. Now, what happened?

VOUGHT
Let me just interrupt here, for a second. It was my understanding that the fall of the Berlin Wall took everybody by surprise. Are you saying that some people in the CIA saw it coming?

MCGOVERN
Well, Chris Hedges saw it coming.

VOUGHT
Well, he wrote in _Wages of Rebellion_, that he was in Berlin, speaking with leaders of a local opposition group, who told him, they expected perhaps in a few years they could make significant progress on that issue, and in fact, the wall fell later that day...so, I think it took everybody by surprise.

MCGOVERN
[laughs] Okay, it was a surprise to most of us, the speed with which it happened, and it was just, really unprecedented, in terms of, how it all came to be, overnight, so to speak. Now, the question was, how the Russians would react. And, George H.W. Bush, to his credit, immediately called up Gorbachev, and said, "Mikhail, sorry about your troubles there, but I want you to know one thing, and that is, we're not going to take advantage of your troubles," in Bush's words, and this is the elder Bush, "we're not going to dance on the Berlin Wall." Woah! Then, he said, "This is really big stuff. We're really afriad you're going to use troops and put down this revolt, let's get together. We have a relationship already, let's get together sooner, rather than later, I would suggest, why don't we meet in Malta? In three weeks? Can you do that?" And so, Gorbachev said, "Well yeah, okay, and they did. So, from December 2 to December 3, 1989, Bush and Gorbachev met in Malta, Bush re-assured Gorbachev that we didn't mean to take advantage of Soviet troubles in Eastern Europe, and Bush said, "Look, let's concretize this, I'm going to send my Secretary of State, James Baker, to Moscow, as soon as you're able to receive him. How soon can he come?" Gorbachev says, "Maybe early February, 1990?" And, sure, that's what happened. Okay?

Now...while they were there, James Baker had a really tough proposition for Gorbachev. He said, "Look, not only do we want you to take your troops out of East Germany, but we'd like to have a re-united Germany." Wooooow.

VOUGHT
That's a tough one for Russia to swallow. I mean, they've been invaded through that route for a long time. And they don't want to see a re-united Germany, subsumed into a hostile military alliance.

MCGOVERN
Well, Wilton, don't tell anybody, but [laughs] I didn't want to see a re-united Germany.

VOUGHT
Based on historical precedent, that could be very dangerous.

MCGOVERN
Nobody else in Western Europe did, and certainly the Russians didn't. Now, the whole post-war policy, NATO and everything else, was designed to _prevent_ a re-united Germany, once the Russians had seized East Germany, and so this was a real bitter pill to swallow.

VOUGHT
I mean, they lost twenty seven million people, in World War II.

MCGOVERN
That's exactly right. Man, you anticipated what I was going to say. Most Americans don't know that. You know, they say...I say...at colleges, universities, I say, how many Russians do you think lost in World War II, in the Nazi invasion? They say a million, two million.

VOUGHT
No idea.

MCGOVERN
Would you believe twenty five to twenty seven? So...suffice it to say, that Gorbachev and Shevardnadze, gulped hard, and said, "Woooow. You want a re-united Germany, what's the quo for this quid?" It was then, that James Baker said, "Well, if you allow this, without any war-like actions, we promise not to move NATO one inch further east, further east from East Germany, a re-united Germany."

VOUGHT
And of course, that promise was promptly broken.

MCGOVERN
Yeah...you know, there's a lot of speculation about why that was not committed to paper. And I had a unique opportunity to go up to one of Gorbachev's senior advisors during that period. He was very much advising Gorbachev, now a professor in Moscow. His name is Kuvaldin. And I said to him, this was about four years ago now, why, if this quid pro quo was so transcendently important, why didn't you write it down? And he looked at me and said, "Mr. McGovern, the Warsaw Pact still existed." That's one reason. K, the other reason was, it would be nice to let the Germans in on this, after all, [laughs] and then he looked me in the eye, and said, "But Mr. McGovern, the real reason was...we trusted you." Wooow.

VOUGHT
That seems rather naive in retrospect.

MCGOVERN
Well, there was a time, when they could be [when the US leadership could be trusted to keep such a promise], but starting then, starting with Bill Clinton, actually, he began the expansion of NATO, and in a few years, NATO was twenty four members, rather than the twelve. Now, it's up to twenty eight, twenty nine, something like that. Why? The Warsaw Pact fell apart. What was the threat from Russia? Well, as Senator Bradley said at the time, and I have a really interesting video I could share with people...

VOUGHT
I'll have a link to that video in my blog...

MCGOVERN
This was the dumbest mistake _ever_. And he's looked into this very carefully, he's a Soviet specialist in his own right, he specialized in that at Oxford, when he was a Rhodes scholar there. So, without belaboring that, I think we need to move a little forward here, and talk about what happened in the ensuing years...well, Germany was re-united, and shortly after that, actually, shortly after the Soviet Union kindof imploded, we had a threat from Saddam Hussein, who invaded Kuwait. Now, most people remember "Desert Storm", where we decimated the Iraqi army such as it was, drove them out of Kuwait, and back into the interior of Iraq.

VOUGHT
In 1991, right.

MCGOVERN
That's correct. It was early January, 1991...well, what happened here, was really interesting, because when Paul Wolfowitz, who was a high level defense official, really, at that time, he was, you know, strutting around saying what a wonderful win it was, and General Wesley Clark, who had actually been Commander in Chief of NATO, dropped in on him, and to hear Clark tell it, he said, "Congratulations, Paul, this was really an amazing victory here...what's the main thing we learned from this?" And Wolfowitz said, "Oh, Wes, the main thing we learned from this, is that we can do these things, and 'Russia won't stop us.'" Woooooah.

VOUGHT
Russia had too many problems at home, too, to take an active stance in world affairs...which left a power vacuum that the U.S. moved into, I think, ruthlessly.

MCGOVERN
Well, yeah, matter of fact, we helped the Russians along, by sending our oligarchs and our [inaudible] advisors for their economy, what was left of the Russian economy, and leaving alcoholic Boris Yeltsin in power, actually, giving him a big boost, by get this now: interfering in Russia's elections [laughs] and so, Yeltsin was in power, our oligarchs and our capitalists got a really big share of the Russian resources, and the Russian people...actually, what's it called, the age at which people die, the mortality rate-

VOUGHT
Right.

MCGOVERN
-it went down, from something like sixty years, to fifty three. I don't remember, but it was a disaster.

VOUGHT
The society was falling apart.

MCGOVERN
Yeah, yeah. And there wasn't enough to eat, for many of them. Okay, so. Now, we fast forward to the next big event. And that's March 2003, many people remember that's when we invaded Iraq, on the basis of - not mistaken evidence, mind you, but fraudulent intelligence - Bush, Cheney came to my former colleagues, and said, "We want to attack Iraq, romp up some evidence to justify that," and to my great regret, they complied, so this fraudulent evidence, is used, and here's Russia, watching a new war, not on its doorstep, but pretty close. And again, the Russians can't stop us, and so, we do it.

VOUGHT
Right.

MCGOVERN
Fast forward to 2008, so that's five years later, this is when it gets really interesting. There was a very bright diplomat named Sergei Lavrov...who was appointed Soviet Foreign Minister, and is Soviet Foreign Minister to this day. He called in our ambassador, in Moscow, now, how do I know this? Just so you don't think I have this from the grapevine, or from the New York Times, no, I have it from the Moscow cable, the Moscow cable that ambassador Bill Burns sent to the state department after meeting with Lavrov, on the first of February, 2008.

VOUGHT
Was this a public cable? Or was this something that only intelligence people had access to?

MCGOVERN
Thank you for asking that question, Wilton. We have that cable courtesy of Chelsea Manning, and Wikileaks.

VOUGHT
Okay.

MCGOVERN
And if I've seen one Moscow embassy cable, in my career, I've probably seen about seven thousand five hundred...this is genuine, nobody disputes its authenticity.

VOUGHT
And it was supposed to be private, secret, and we weren't supposed to know about it.

MCGOVERN
That's correct. It was secret. So...what was, what happened was, Lavrov invited Bill Burns in. And he said, "Mister Burns, there are rumors going around, that you want to incorporate Ukraine and Georgia into NATO. Do you know what 'nyet' means?" [laughs] Burns says - this is his own account - "Yeah," so Lavrov says, "Nyet means nyet, Mister Burns, and don't laugh, this is nothing to laugh, okay? If you do that, there will be civil war in Ukraine. We will have to wonder and worry about whether we should intervene. Nyet means nyet, this is our redline, please tell your Secretary of State." Now, to his credit, Bill Burns played it very straight. The title of the cable, coming back, says...let's see what it says here, uh, "Nyet Means Nyet: Moscow's Redline on Ukrainian Membership in Nato". Now, that's the first of February, 2008. So. Fast forward just two months now, March, April...April 3, in Bucharest, there's a NATO summit, and the result of that NATO summit, in the declaration, it says, and I quote, "NATO welcomes Ukraine's and Georgia's Euro-Atlantic Aspirations For Membership in NATO...We agreed today that these countries will become members of NATO". Wooooooah.

VOUGHT
Is that still the plan?

MCGOVERN
That's the plan, but...you know, the big difference, Wilton, is...this time, they've stopped us.

VOUGHT
Well, you know, Russia's back on its feet, you know, and that's why I think a lot of the hostility toward Russia, is that they're foiling the empire's plans, and they, you know, the U.S. wants everything its way, and it's not getting that.

MCGOVERN
Well, that's true, you know? When you look at what happens, you know, we had one, let me put it this way, we had one regime change too many. [laughs] Okay? Now, what happened was really interesting, 'cuz, it takes a little background. There was a very close relationship, between Vladimir Putin, and Barack Obama, in October of 2013. Now, why was the case? Actually, it went...it was before that, it was September 2013. You recall that there was a sarin gas attack outside of Damascus, blamed on Bashar Assad's government.

VOUGHT
Right.

MCGOVERN
And the flag went up for war. Obama, by his own admission, was a day away from pushing the button for shock and awe, against Syria, which all the neo-cons and all those people who wanted strong tensions with Russia, were advocating.

VOUGHT
I thought sure it was going to happen.

MCGOVERN
Well, everyone did. I was out in front of the White House, with two hundred people, on Saturday morning, after John Kerry said, no fewer than thirty five times, BasharAssaddidthis, BasharAssaddidthis, Bashar Assad is responsible for violating our red line, which they had Obama do a year previous, saying if chemical weapons were ever used, that was our red line. That would change Obama's calculations about whether to intervene _openly_ militarily in Syria. Long story short, evidence accumulated, and I know the people who did this, and told, look, Mr. Obama, it wasn't Bashar Assad, no matter what John Kerry says, it was the rebels, we know it was the rebels, matter of fact, we know it was the rebels that are helped by CIA, by the Israelis, by the Turks, by the Saudis. So, if you want to launch a war on that basis, well, please be aware, this is going to come out. Now, Obama was betwixt and between, by happy circumstance, he was due in St. Petersburg for a summit. He gets there on the 3rd of September, 2013, and Putin greets him, and says, "Mr. President, I got good news for you. Those chemical weapons in Syria? We're just about to persuade Bashar Assad to get rid of them. Not only is he willing to give them up, he's willing to have them destroyed, on that ship you have, especially outfitted for the destruction of chemical weapons. What do you think?" [laughs] And Obama says, "Really?" And Putin says, "Yeah, don't you remember we talked about that in June? In Northern Ireland, at the other summit? We had this working group...So, you don't have to do what Kerry says, let's just..." And Obama says, "How do I know this for sure?" And Putin says, "Tomorrow, the Syrian Foreign Minister is going to announce it, is that good enough for you?" And Obama says-

VOUGHT
I think all the neo-cons were sorely disappointed to hear that. They wanted their war.

MCGOVERN
Well, Wilton, maybe it's worth a little anecdote. Six days later, I found myself on the top of the CNN building, here in Washington, I was giving an interview to CNN International, in this little remote booth, you know how you do that, and I [had] gotten a little tense doing that-

VOUGHT
Right.

MCGOVERN
-and I opened the door, and I knocked over this little guy, and I looked, and I said, "Oh my god, that's Paul Wolfowitz!" [laughs] And he looked at me, and I said, "I'm sorry," and he said, "Well, you oughta watch what you're doing!" And of course, in the room, there was Joe Lieberman...you know, it had all the atmosphere of a wake, you know? Everybody was on the boob tube, talking about how cowardly Obama was, everybody was shaking their heads, you know...it looked like, they didn't have these fancy ties on, but black ties. [laughs] Like, Wolfotwitz's and Lieberman's mothers had just been run over by a Mack truck. It was that bad.

VOUGHT
Nothing sadder for a neo-con than not to get the war they hoped for.

MCGOVERN
Well, it was sortof this graphic proof of that...which I knew intellectually, [laughs] but you sortof had to be there. So, I said I'm going to wait around and see what happens here. And nobody shooed me away, so...Lieberman and Wolfowitz go to their separate booths, across from the other side of the very ornate, fancy, elevator shaft [sic, I think he means the elevator lobby], looked like something out of Dubai. [laughs] So, I watched them on the tube. And the first thing Lieberman says, "The president is a coward...he knows the president doesn't need congressional authorization to start a war...He knows that...We've been doing that for years and blahblahblah..." So, I said to myself, wow! And I dug out the little copy of the constitution of the United States that I carry with me, and I looked at Article One, Section Eight, of course it says, only Congress can [laughs] authorize a war, so I underline it, and I tore it out, the whole Article One, and I went into the elevator shaft [sic, again, I think he means the elevator lobby], to wait for these two guys [laughs]. You have to know Washington, to understand what happened next. If somebody, dressed up, like I was, and...you think he might be important, or you might have known him, you can't muff the chance, you can't say, "Who are you?" So, I met them halfway, "Paul! Joe! Ray McGovern!" Now-

VOUGHT
And they knew you, right?

MCGOVERN
[laughing] They didn't know me, McGovern. Nonono-

VOUGHT
They didn't know you. You were bluffing your way at that point. Yeah okay.

MCGOVERN
So they sortof haltingly said, "Oh hi, Ray. Good to see you again." I shook both their hands. And I said, "Now, Joe, tell me, how long you been in Congress? Twenty eight years? You don't know that Article One Section Eight only congress can authorize war?" And Wolfowitz is sortof sneaking away, I said, "Paul! Wait a minute! I want to ask you something!" [laughing] So, by then, Lieberman is onto what's going on, "Well-" I said, "Look, here, I don't wanna debate this, just take this, I cut this out of my own constitution for you. Take it home and read it, please. Maybe you can call CNN tomorrow, you know, issue a correction." [laughs]

VOUGHT
I remember back in Vietnam War days, this was actually an issue, and people were making an issue out of the fact that there had never been a declaration of war, for that particular war. But it seems like nobody discusses that anymore, it's become accepted the president can dispense with that part of the constitution.

MCGOVERN
Yeah, it's...it's congress's abnegation of responsibility. Cowardice, pure and simple. Anyway, just to finish this story, it was then, as Wolfowitz is slinking away, and Lieberman is taking the Article One, Section Eight from me, appears this beautiful, beautiful six foot tall redhead woman whose job it is to prevent people like Wolfowitz and Lieberman from being accosted by someone, [of the] likes of me. From the hoi poloi, right? [laughing] So, she started [inaudible] "Oh, gentlemen, I'm so sorry." And I said, "Well, you should be sorry. Why do you have these clowns on who don't even know what's in the U.S. constitution?" And it went down from there. And Wilton, that was the last time I've been on CNN. But it was worth it. It was worth it. It was a funeral, it was so vivid they didn't get their war, and why do I say all of this? Because they got back at Obama for this, and how did they get back? Six months later, they arranged a coup, on Russia's doorstep-

VOUGHT
In the Ukraine, yeah-

MCGOVERN
-in Kiev, okay? To satisfy Ukraine's "aspirations to join the West".

VOUGHT
Yeah. Now, I noticed that my liberal friends complaining about supposed and unproven Russian interference in [the] recent election, had nothing to say about U.S. interference in the Ukraine. And, I mean, you could hear that phone call with Victoria Nuland, it's on youtube, so they can't dispute that the United States was behind that. Seems a bit of a double standard, to say the least.

MCGOVERN
Well, yeah, double standard is one way to phrase it...I had lots of friends who don't know about the coup, in Kiev, 22nd of February, 2014, nor do they know that it was advertised in advance, on February 4, twenty two minus four, what is that, eighteen? Eighteen days before? On youtube?

VOUGHT
Yeah.

MCGOVERN
Listeners, if they don't know the background, it was Victoria Nuland, who was just recently sacked from her job at the State Department...good riddance. She's talking to our ambassador, Geoffrey Pyatt, in Kiev, and what she says is, "Geoffrey, we have a coup, it's all set. Yats is the guy, Yats knows about central banking, he knows about the need for austerity, he worked for the IMF, Yats...you tell Klitschko [Vitaly Klitschko] and the others to wait in the wings, Yats is the guy...and when Pyatt sats 'Yeah, but the Europeans, what's the EU going to say about this?'" She uses an expletive that I won't use on this program ["Fuck the EU"] to say something about what should happen to the EU. Now, how do we know this is an authentic conversation? Well, because the next day, Victoria Nuland said "Oh, I'm really sorry that I used that obscenity, talking to the EU, I really love the EU."

[break music]

MCGOVERN
Well, anyhow, the whole story was, look, we arranged, and the background I gave you on Russian warnings going back to 2008, about no-no, "nyet means nyet", Ukraine not in NATO, that's good background to this, because the Russians said look, this is not acceptable. And what did they mean by that? Well, you know, if you look at Kiev, in Ukraine, well, Kiev is the center of Slavic civilization, the Russians, the Ukrainians, the White Russians, that's where it all started, in the 9th century. A.D., okay? And Kiev was the center of that. Now, more important, for most Russians, and especially against the background of their losses in World War II, _and_ to Napoleon...that's precisely where the Nazis, where the Bundeswehr [armed forces of Germany], where Napoleon, and before them, where Sweden, where Lithuania, where Poland, where the Hanseatic League, [laughs] all came through and attacked Russia, from the West. Okay?

VOUGHT
Bundeswehr was the name for the German army.

MCGOVERN
Yeah. Actually, they were called something else during World War II, but...yeah, so, that's what Russia was suffering from the West, and this after two centuries, and Americans don't know this either, from 1200 to 1420, all of Russia was under what they called the Tatarskim, which means the "Tatar yoke," meaning Genghis Khan. And his hordes. Swarming over Russia, and ruled Russia for those two centuries, while the West [laughs] the West was coming out of the Dark Ages, entering the Renaissance...so, Russia has always been two centuries behind. And  that speaks volumes about how they've always been trying to catch up, and see their future with the West, and not with the East. Anyhow, people say, maybe the U.S. shouldn't have done that coup, which George Friedman, who's head of Stratfor, one of the more respectable think tanks, he called that the most blatant coup in history. And he's right. Why? [Because] It was advertised two weeks before, on youtube. Now, people say, yeah, well, we probably shouldn't have done a coup in Moscow's backyard. And I say, "Actually, that's not the back yard, that's the front yard!" That's where they all came through, and we shouldn't have done that! But we did. So, what happened-

VOUGHT
It's an extreme provocation.

MCGOVERN
Yeah. Now, I was talking to a person very, very high in the German government, just three months ago. And I raised this, and he has special purview over German reations with Russia. And I mentioned the coup, and he said, "What coup?" And I said, "The coup in Kiev. On the 22nd of February, 2014." Goes, "Oh no, that wasn't a coup." [VOUGHT laughs] That's a German number three, in the German Foreign Ministry, okay? Now. Jill Stein, to whom I was talking to over the weekend, when all those women, those wonderful women, were in Washington. [reference to Women's March] She told me that when she was interviewed by the Washington Post, and Kiev, and Ukraine, and "Russia against Ukraine" came up, she refered to the coup in Kiev, on the 22nd of February, 2014, and the editorial board of the Washington Post said, "What coup?", in Kiev [ Headline: "A transcript of Jill Stein’s meeting with The Washington Post editorial board" link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2016/08/25/a-transcript-of-jill-steins-meeting-with-the-washington-post-editorial-board/ ].

VOUGHT
Do you think they really believe that? Or are they that indoctrinated by their own B.S.?

MCGOVERN
I can't believe that my German interlocutor is so unaware of what actually happened. Who knows about these Washington Post people? Are they just thoroughly dishonest in and out, or do they believe their own stuff? Because for the Washington Post, history begins on the 23rd of February. [laughs] Now, let me give a little example.

VOUGHT
And you mean after the coup took place.

MCGOVERN
The day after the coup.

VOUGHT
Right.

MCGOVERN
And this was graphically illustrated by a video film, that came out on Russian television. K, it has Putin, gathered with his military and top political advisors, on the 23rd, of February, the day after the coup. And they're planning, what are they going to do? And the big question was, what about Crimea? Why Crimea? Because that's where the Russians have their only ice free all year round _naval base_.

VOUGHT
Warm water port, yes.

MCGOVERN
Sevastopol. In Crimea. That goes back to Catherine the Great. Who reigned around the time of our revolution. Remember, that's how important, for the Russian navy that's been. So, that was laying down the gauntlet, for Putin, and so, this film shows Putin trying to figure out what to do, and they're saying, "Well, we can't let Crimea go into NATO." And-

VOUGHT
No way are they going to see NATO take that over. They will not sit still for that.

MCGOVERN
Yeah, and, you know, if Obama's advisors didn't realize that, I mean, something so clear to you, Wilton-

VOUGHT
These people want to believe Russia has no legitimate national interests. I mean, their only warm water port. They're not going to give that up.

MCGOVERN
Yeah. And so, what happened was, what anyone who knows anything about Russian history or Russian national interests, would have predicted. Now, what they actually did, was run a plebiscite here in Crimea.

VOUGHT
That's known as an invasion, here in the West.

MCGOVERN
[laughs] You got it. You got all my good lines here. [VOUGHT laughs] I'll give you another little anecdote which points this up. I'm with a very progressive group of Catholics. And we're having a lecture, by one of the professors at Catholic University, and we're talking about Crimea and other things like that, and the professor says, "You know, I'm so proud of my son, he came back from Sunday School, last week. And he had this placard that he'd made, and it said 'Thou shalt not kill, Mr. Putin! Don't you know about the fifth commandment?'" [laughs]

VOUGHT
[sarcastic] Yeah.

MCGOVERN
[laughing] You know, always the skunk at the picnic, I raised my hand. And I said, "What was that alluding to?" And she looked at me like I was from Mars, and she said, "Oh! Crimea, the invasion of Crimea."

VOUGHT
Right.

MCGOVERN
And I said, "Well, how many people were killed?" [She says:] "Well, hundreds, probably thousands." I looked at all my friends, and her, "Would you believe...zero?" [She says:] "Nononono, where did you get zero?" [MCGOVERN replies to her:] "Well, you can have your own opinions, but not your own facts." There was one shot fired-

VOUGHT
Well put.

MCGOVERN
Nobody got killed. You know? And they- I would have liked to say, they were all chastened, they were all educated - "Thanks Ray, for telling us that" -

VOUGHT
No, they'd just doubt you. Their view of reality is so far divorced from reality, that it's hard to talk to these people and sound like you're making sense.

MCGOVERN
Well, that's right. Even people that know you from age whatever it is, and have previously respected you...you know, when Putin explained how the Crimeans voted to be re-joined to Russia, and when I say "re-joined", probably your listeners would like to know this...Ukraine was, of course, a constitutive part of the Soviet Union, and so there's no question about Crimea, the Ukraine, the Ukraine belonged to the Soviet Union...now, when Stalin died, in 1953, Khrushchev took over the next year, and he needed all the support he could get, against Stalin, a strong guy...so Khrushchev was from the Ukraine, and so he said, "Maybe I'll curry some favor with the Ukrainians, but yeah, that's what I'll do, I'll give Crimea to Ukraine." So, now, how did he do that? Plebiscite? Referendum?

VOUGHT
No, he just did it. The story I heard was that he just got drunk one night and did it.

MCGOVERN
[laughing] Well, I don't know about the drunk, but there's a-, well, a word, _ukase_, it means "order". He took a piece of paper, he signed his name, and all of a sudden, *makes a sweeping wind sound* Crimea became part of the Ukraine. Did it matter? Of course it didn't matter. It didn't matter a whit.

VOUGHT
At that point, no. But after the fall of the Soviet Union, it mattered a lot.

MCGOVERN
Yes, so now it matters, okay? Now, the Russians, as your listeners probably know, were entitled to have thirty thousand troops _in_ Crimea, to protect their naval base, and they have several air bases as well...so, it was those folks that became these "insignia free green men", who went around to the ministries there in Crimea, and said, "You know, we don't really want any trouble. You have no instructions from Kiev, we do, from Moscow, would you please step aside, we're sortof taking over here." And that's how they did it. And you know, it wasn't an invasion, and nobody got killed. And nobody in this country realizes that.

VOUGHT
And ninety plus percent of the people there wanted it that way.

MCGOVERN
Yeah.

VOUGHT
They wanted to re-join Russia. For one thing, the neo-nazis in the Ukraine, were busily outlawing the Russian language, and saying they wanted to kill all Russians. So, people of Russian ethnicity or heritage, in Crimea, very much wanted to run to the safety of Russia.

MCGOVERN
That's exactly right. Now, I was in Crimea, in June, with a delegation of citizens, U.S. citizens, for a visit with Crimeans [Center for Citizen Initiatives, video of the trip, from Russian TV, is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEZAfGpq7Po ]. And we looked far and wide, near and far, [laughing] we looked everywhere, we genuinely wanted to find some Crimean who voted against the referendum. And we did. We made an honest effort, through all our contacts, to do that, we found one person, who is married to a Ukrainian person, and we said, "Did you vote? Did you vote against the referendum?" He said, "No no, I just didn't vote." But that was the most I could muster in terms of opposition. When these internationally supervised referendums take place, they usually get some results, seldom ninety six percent approval, that's what they claim. If it was ninety six, or it was only ninety, I don't care-

VOUGHT
Good enough.

MCGOVERN
-that they wanted to do. Now-

VOUGHT
Let me just switch gears for a minute, and ask you about the Malaysian airliner, which was shot down over Ukraine.

MCGOVERN
We've done a lot of research on that. [two samples - article headline: "Facts Needed on Malaysian Plane Shoot-Down", posted July 2014 link: https://www.commondreams.org/views/2014/07/19/facts-needed-malaysian-plane-shoot-down article headline: "Propaganda, Intelligence and MH17", posted August 2015 link: https://consortiumnews.com/2015/08/17/propaganda-intelligence-and-mh-17/ ] This happened on July 20, 2014 [sic, no it happened on July 17, 2014; source: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-28357880 ] In other words, just a couple months after the coup, and there was great consternation, we wanted to "retaliate", for the seizure of Crimea, by putting economic sanctions on Western Europe...they wouldn't budge. They realized that this would hurt them, as well as the Russians, it wouldn't hurt us a whit. And so, they wouldn't go along. All of a sudden, somebody shoots down this aircraft, with two hundred and ninety eight people on it, all killed, Malaysian aircraft, MH18 [sic, MH17]. Now, that was July 20, 2014 [sic]...now, Secretary Kerry, I'm sorry, it was July 17, it was July 20, three days later, Kerry told NBC's David Gregory, "we picked up the imagery of this launch, we know the trajectory, we know where it came from, we know the timing, and we spotted it exactly at the time when this aircraft disappeared from the radar." Woooooah. I said, wow, that's pretty conclusive evidence. Can I believe that they have that kind of evidence? I surely can. I know the capability of what we call National Technical Means, you know, satellites and everything else. We know exactly what happened there. But why don't we release this information? This is not sensitive sources and methods, this is radar and other technical means, everybody knows about it. Long story short: we used that to get the Europeans...within two weeks [of wanting them] to institute sanctions against Russia, less than two weeks later, the sanctions were put in. And now, there've been all these investigations about who actually shot down that plane. Kerry has never come forward, no one has ever come forward, even to the official Dutch investigatory unit that's pursuing this, with the evidence. He [Kerry] claims that, he says "the social media are an extraordinarily useful source," well, he's got that right. But source for truth, or source for untruth? That's what we have here. So, ah, I don't know who shot down that plane. But I strongly suspect that if Kerry was telling the truth, about having all that information, and he's talking imagery, he's talking trajectory information, timing...all this. If he had that information, he would release it, at least to the investigative people who were doing this, he has not done so, and so, my...you don't have to be a crackerjack analyst to suspect that Kerry is talking to his hat. Just as he did in blaming Bashar Assad for the sarin attacks in August, of 2013. The year, or year before.

That's how he gets to the tense, or very tense relationship, that exists now between Russia and the United States...the Syrian co-operation, you know, on the 28th of September, 2015, at the UN, Putin told Obama, "Look, Mr. Obama, we just want to let you know, um, we're not really impressed with how well your air force is doing against ISIS. Uh, we've got some skin in the game in Syria, ah, you probably know there are about two thousand Russian 'insurgents' from Central Asia, from southern parts of Russia, they're getting really good training, really good money, really good equipment, they come back to Russia, it's going to be a real problem for us, not for you, because you got an ocean between you and them, so, you're aware we've been putting really advanced aircraft and anti-aircraft missiles and all that kindof stuff in Syria for the last month, please be aware that the day after tomorrow, we're going to start using them." So, the day after tomorrow was the 30th of September, 2015. Now what happened? He said, "Mr. Obama, we'd very much like for you to co-operate with us, and what I'd like to do, is instruct Sergey Lavrov to meet with your Secretary of State, John Kerry, and work these things out, at least initially, so that aircraft don't run into each other. That would be a good idea, right?" And Obama to his credit, said, "Yeah, that's a good idea." Why don't the two of them work out a ceasefire? Now, that's October 1, 2015. All that fall, and all this spring, and early summer, Lavrov and Kerry worked real hard on a ceasefire. And they concluded one on the 9th of July. Last year, 2016. On the 12th of July, it went into effect. It was to allow people to leave Aleppo, who wanted to leave Aleppo. It was to disassociate the "moderate" rebels from the bad guys, and it was all laid out. K? We were going to exchange intelligence information with the Russians. That was the 9th of July. On the 12th of July, it went into effect, on the 17th of July, our air force, the U.S. air force, attacked known Syrian army positions, killing about a hundred people, wounding several hundred more, on positions the Syrian army had occupied for months before. The evidence, as we look at it, in retrospect, is convincing, that this was a deliberate attack. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said, after the agreement was reached, the ceasefire agreement, the agreement not only between Lavrov and Kerry, but blessed by their presidents, Putin and Obama, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said, General [Joseph] Dunford, said "You know, I don't think it's a good idea to exchange intelligence information with Russia, I don't think we're going to do that." Now, the Russians reacted in a reasonable way. They said, "Look, we can't trust the president, when he promises us something, because he goes, and people in Washington subvert what he wants to do."

VOUGHT
Right, it was the Pentagon sabotaging the State Department.

MCGOVERN
Yeah, and to his credit, I suppose, he has belatedly admitted that. In an interview with the Boston Globe, a month ago, he said, you know, we had so much resistance, in Washington to what Lebrov and I had worked out, and he said, you know, we had so much resistance in Washington, to what Lebrov and I had worked out, and what Putin and I had worked out, that it was just not possible, to make the ceasefire stick. So, what happened was, the Russians said, look, we're not going to play games anymore...if anyone flies any aircraft, or anything in the sky over Syria, we are in a position now where if it's unidentified, we're going to shoot it down. Okay?

VOUGHT
And that can include U.S. planes.

MCGOVERN
Yeah, well-

VOUGHT
-because they have no time to identify them, it'll happen too quick.

MCGOVERN
Exactly. That's what the Defense Ministry spokesman said. You think maybe these stealth aircraft might get by, well, let's not have any surprises. We can shoot down stealth aircraft as well. Now, to their credit, I guess Obama was able to prevail on Ash Carter and the Defense Department, look, this is kindof dangerous now, please cease and desist, you're sabotaging the ceasefire, don't cause any more problems. Long story short: what has happened here, is that the Russians and the Syrian army, have done with lots of carnage, with lots of killing on both sides, the rebels and the Syrian army, they've liberated, or at least chased the rebels out of eastern Aleppo, and as I say, it's a terrible thing that had to happen, it need not have happened, if our air force, from the direction of Ash Carter, had not sabotaged a ceasefire which expressly provided for the safe evacuation of people from Aleppo. So, that happened, okay? And now, what are the Russians doing? Well, they've persuaded the Turks that it's not really a good idea to keep insisting that Bashar Assad be deposed. You know, what's going to come after him? ISIS, for god's sakes, you know? So, the Turks are on board with the Russians now, and so, of course, are the Iranians, who have a long-standing alliance, not talking a military alliance - okay? - with Syria. So, the Russians, the Turks, the Iranians, and others - Hezbollah, for example - are united now, in trying to tamp down the violence there, and they have a reasonably certain prospect of being more effective than co-operating with the likes of John Kerry, who could not force his will in Washington. Is it going to be easy? No way. The Russians convened a meeting of all the rebel groups, just this past week, in Kazakhstan, the only thing good to come out of it would be that the Turks, and the Iranians, and the Russians, we're taking this on, these guys are really unruly, we can't tell them what to do, but at least we got them all together this time, and hopefully we can work something out in a more peaceful way. So, that's where Syria stands. And I hope, that the Trump people are smart enough to realize that this was a fool's errand. This was the U.S. involving, trying to take advantage of what started out as a genuine, Syrian spring, a Syrian Arab spring, and the U.S. has put in billions of dollars there to support "moderate" rebels...a very courageous congresswoman, from Hawaii, her name is Tulsi Gabbard, she just visited Syria, and she came back and said, "Everybody, on all sides of the Syrian dilemma, tell me that there is no such thing as a 'moderate' rebel." And indeed, as you may remember Wilton, the president himself, when asked three full years ago, on a live TV interview with Tom Friedman. Friedman asked him about these moderate rebels. And the president said, "Moderate rebels? That's a fantasy." His words. So, for some reason, these fantastic moderate rebels emerged, like Lazarus from the tomb, to do John Brennan and the CIA's bidding, last year, they've fallen flat on their face now...I hope they're able to escape and get out of town, before they get creamed, by what's left of the Syrian army.

VOUGHT
Yeah, let's talk about media coverage of Aleppo for just a second here. I saw a lot of friends on Facebook who were very upset, thinking that there was some kind of a huge massacre of civilians going on in Aleppo. And...that whole thing was manufactured by Western media, wouldn't you agree?

MCGOVERN
Mostly. Yes. Now, there's no gainsaying the fact that there was an awful lot of unnecessary carnage, on both sides. But what we got was a very one sided view of Russians attacking hospitals deliberately, never proven. And nobody ever mentioned what the "modeate" rebels were doing with their immoderate border shells, and their rockets, and everything else. So, it was a both ends situation, and you didn't get that from the Western media, surprise surprise.

VOUGHT
Right. And I think some of that stuff about the hospitals was acutally not only not proven, it was disproven. There were pictures that were shown later on, of the hospitals that had supposedly been destroyed, and they were still standing.

MCGOVERN
Yeah, yeah. Even had the State Department spokesperson, you know, claiming these things. That they had sources that said these hospitals had been destroyed. Well, I remember one particular afterrnoon, when the RT, that's the Russia Today correspondent, who's accredited and goes to these briefings, asked what his sources were. And he attacked her, personally.

VOUGHT
For asking what his sources were?

MCGOVERN
Yeah. "You're RT, you're government agency, I'm not going to ask- [sic] You're not like the rest of these people, you're government sponsored agency." Woooow. It was really incredible. And, of course, the real reason was he didn't have any sources, that were reputable, that were provable, that you could trace back and say, well, yeah, these people were in a position to know. There were no- well, there were one or two Western correspondents, in that part of Aleppo, everything else was hearsay, everything was embroidered, and tailored to make, what Socrates was accused of, to make the worst cause appear the better.

VOUGHT
Yeah, I've noticed over the years that when people go for the ad hominem attack, the hit below the belt, it's usually because they don't have a logical argument to back them up. And I think that's what we're dealing with here.

MCGOVERN
You know, if you want to just fast forward to today, and this big campaign to blame Russia for Hillary losing the election...well, [laughs] you know, people need to realize that when Wikileaks, and I emphasize it was Wikileaks, that released this information two days before the Democratic National Convention, the content of those emails...showed without any doubt, that the Democratic National Committee, with Wasserman-Schultz in charge, and Hillary pretty much running things, they deliberately cheated Bernie Sanders out of the nomination. So, what do they do? Well, first thing happened, Schultz, Wasserman-Schultz quit, and then the next top four people quit, what does that tell you about the Democratic National Committee? And then, they sat around and said, now, how can we handle this [is] awful, two days before [sic]...and somebody says, "I know what we'll do! We'll blame Russia!" And somebody said, "Yeah, but it wasn't Russia, it was Wikileaks..." "That's alright! We'll say Julian Assange is working for...Russia!" "Oh, that's fine, but what's the rationale?" "Oh, c'mon, we'll say...that Russia wants Trump to win!" Now, [laughs] I question that premise, but that worked like a charm.

[break music]

PART TWO OF INTERVIEW

VOUGHT
We start part two by continuing our conversation about John Podesta's emails. Podesta was the chairman of the 2016 Hillary Clinton presidential campaign.

MCGOVERN
This is what Obama said at his very last press conference. Okay? "The conclusions of the intelligence community with respect to Russian hacking, were not conclusive, regarding Wikileaks." Woooooah! Oh, so we have _not conclusive_ conclusions. What does that mean? Well, that means, is there's a huge gap that Obama is admitting to, in saying, "Russians were hacking! Russians were hacking!" but how did that stuff get to Wikileaks? And I can tell you, because I know, it wasn't a hack...it was a leak. A leak is when you put a little thumb drive into your computer, right? Somebody at the Democratic National Committee did that, and leaked it to- I mean, I don't know that 100%.

VOUGHT
And what was their motivation? I've heard that it was frustration, because they were disillusioned with Hillary cheating Bernie Sanders out of the nomination.

MCGOVERN
Well, that's- I don't know for sure, but that's the most reasonable explanation that I can conceive of. That was the DNC hacks. Now, with respect to the Podesta hacks, he [John Podesta] was an agent of the Saudi government, I mean he was lobbying for them, and ipso facto NSA would have all of his correspondence between himself and the Saudis. So, somebody, apparently looked at that, at the NSA, and said, you know, this is really really bad, not only are they making sure that Bernie can't win, but this is awful, this stuff, and it was awful, the content, if you look at it, and so somebody there...put in a little thumb drive or whatever they do, and got it somehow from Wikileaks. The Russians, do they hack? [laughing] Of course they hack! Everybody hacks! What Americans don't realize is that there is no...well, take Obama - "no conclusive proof that the Russians gave anything to Julian Assange" When people say, Julian Assange, how can you belive him? Well, I believe him! He's a friend of mine!

VOUGHT
I don't think he's ever been caught fabricating any evidence or deliberately lying.

MCGOVERN
Yeah. If you see some evidence of that, I'd like to see it, because I don't know- And what he releases, he doesn't mess around with it. He's even been- He's been criticized by people like Ed Snowden who say, "You know, Julian, you really ought to take off the Social Security numbers and the, you know, Mastercard numbers-" and Julian says, and I think he's right, "Look once you alter any of these documents, in any way at all, even the metadata on top, it's no longer pristine, pure." And Julian can brag, of having such a record of pristine purity with these emails, that they are used in courts of law to get people out of jail, or prevent them from getting into jail. He doesn't want to sacrifice that, even it means social security numbers are divulged to other people. So, yeah, if you want to laugh at Julian Assange, well, you know, compare him to James Clapper, who lied under oath, _four years ago_. Okay? Senate Intelligence Committee [laughs] and up until last week he was still Director of National Intelligence. You tell me what that means.

VOUGHT
It means that if you are on the right side of the politics, you can get away with anything, and not suffer any punishment whatsoever.

MCGOVERN
Well, it also means that what Schumer- Chuck Schumer said in an inadvertent outburst of candor. He said, "You know, every president elect Trump, he's doing something very foolish, in crossing the CIA. Now, this is a direct quote, Wilson. CIA has six ways to Sunday to retaliate for that kind of thing, so this is very foolish, and I would have thought that a smart businessman would avoid antagonism, an element such as the CIA [sic]." Chuck Schumer. Minority Leader in the U.S. Senate, is telling the president elect, he really oughta afraid of the CIA, because they have six ways to Sunday to get even with him. Well, that speaks volumes.

VOUGHT
Well, I noticed Trump has retained his own security.

MCGOVERN
Yeah, well-

VOUGHT
Maybe he listened to Schumer.

MCGOVERN
Well, I've never seen it so outwardly stated before. But when you look at what happened to John Kennedy, when he wanted to deal with the Russians-

VOUGHT
Exactly.

MCGOVERN
-that's a bad precedent.

VOUGHT
And speaking of Trump, I'm by no stretch of the imagination a fan of Trump. But, he must have some redeeming qualities if the deep state hates him so much, you know, he must be thwarting their plans in some way, and I think, you know, maybe in saying that he wants better relations with Russia, that could have a lot to do with it, although I will temper that by saying that I don't necessarily believe anything that Trump says. I'd rather look at what he does than what he says, because he can contradict himself in the space of thirty seconds.

MCGOVERN
Well, that's correct. And I always preface my remarks about Trump with precisely those words. But, you know, if he talks to the Russians, I mean the worst thing that could happen to the military industrial congressional deep state outfit here [chuckles] is peace breaking out. I mean, if peace breaks out, that is very bad for business.

VOUGHT
Right, war industries can't make any money on peace.

MCGOVERN
And, if...what you said about NATO for this last while...well, is NATO obsolete? Well, yes it is obsolete! It's been obsolete since the Warsaw Pact dissolved. And that was way back, right after the Berlin Wall fell. So, what about NATO?

VOUGHT
I think it still serves a political purpose, which is that, I think, geopolitically, Western Europe and Russia should be natural allies. So, the United States wants to have this hostility between the two of them, by keeping Europe in NATO, it keeps the two from getting together.

MCGOVERN
Well, that's true, yeah.

VOUGHT
-and it isolates Russia.

MCGOVERN
I agree to that, but I think the Western Europeans are getting a little smarter now, the British are out, and without the British in there, our twins who will salute whenever we say whatever...Western Europe's going to have to grow up. When I'm in Germany, despite the best advice of my German friends, I ask them, "Hey, you know, it's time that you started acting like adults. It's seventy two years now, since the end of the war, we can understand you acting like children or adolescents for the first couple of decades, but seven decades? _Come on_." Look at your own interests there. Sanctions [against Russia]? What are they producing? They're giving you all kinds of problems. Not only to Russia, but to your own people.

VOUGHT
Right, they're producing unemployment in Europe.

MCGOVERN
Yeah, and so, I think gradually, far more gradual than I would have expected from very enlightened people, but gradually, if...who knows, if Trump says, "I'm going to talk with Vladimir Putin, and I'm gonna say to him, your spokesman said, two months ago, that we pull back those troops...," right on the Polish border, with Russia, "we're going to do that. Will you withdraw your troops? And Putin told me, 'Yeah.'" Okay! Well, there's a first step! Now, how about the other things that we can do to reduce tensions? Does anyone really think Russians want to attack the Baltic states? Maybe there's some people in Baltic states that do, of course, they have a very sad history with Russia. But I don't think any rational person will see any reason why Russia would want to invade the Baltic states, so...

VOUGHT
Now, Russia's military posture is overwhelmingly defensive.

MCGOVERN
Well, yeah, and for good reason. And, you know, one little anecdote: I think that when you talk about Vladimir Putin, when you think about him, you think about not only about a marvelous chess player, but a person who has acted in a very restrained way, with remarkable sang froid, during this whole crisis over Ukraine and everything else. As a matter of fact, he has even kept a sense of humor, because, after the plebiscite in Crimea, he was explaining at one of these long press conferences that he has, he explained, our problem is this: "NATO and Crimea, we didn't want to be in the situation, where we would have to apply to NATO to have our sailors visit the NATO ports in Crimea. We're sure that the NATO guys are just wonderful fellows, but we'd really like to have it the same way that it is now, where, we're happy to welcome them, into our ports and visits [sic], in Sevastopol and Crimea, thank you very much." [sic - it's not much of a joke, and it's not well told] Well, you know, [laughs].

VOUGHT
Yeah, quite a sense of humor and sarcasm there.

MCGOVERN
And, of course, what bothers him most is the anti-ballistic missile emplacements, all around Russia's periphery, in Romania, in Poland, the Black Sea, the Baltic [sic]. What's that all about? And the Russians have ample reason to be suspicious of that, because we know that when Medvedev, Dimitri Medvedev, was president, back in 2012, he graced the president with a suggestion there...they were at a summit, one of those large summits, in Seoul, South Korea. And Medvedev said, and how do we know this, well, this isn't Wikileaks, this is the ABC microphone that was left on. [laughs]

VOUGHT
I hadn't heard about that.

MCGOVERN
Oh yeah, it's amazing. You can hear Medvedev say, "Now look, we are really concerned about this anti-ballistic missile stuff. Okay? And Vladimir has told me, Putin, to ask you about that. When are we going to start talking about that, because we don't see, we really don't think it's designed to protect nuclear missiles from Iran. Especially now that there's no prospect that Iran will get any such thing in ten years. And so let's talk about that." And Obama says, "Oh yeah, sure, we'll do that. First, look, let me get re-elected, okay? And then we'll talk about that. Okay?" And that's picked up by a microphone. Now...did Obama live up to that promise? There's no indication at all. Why? Because the anti-ballistic missile system production is, well, I would call it the most lucrative corporate welfare plan in the history of mankind. Billions and billions of dollars allocated to this every single year, for a system that most engineers and scientists assure me will never work, or can easily be defeated by any number of very simple decoys. And yet they keep doing it.

VOUGHT
There's too much money in it to quit. And the risk it poses is to the human race, human civilization is seen by them as an externality.

MCGOVERN
Well yeah, that's right. Because if you look, now...I was running the Soviet Foreign Policy branch, back in the seventies. Nixon and Kissinger said, "You know, I think we can play this china card, in such an adroit way that we get some strategic arms talks, and maybe conclusions with the Russians." And we said, "Yeah, we think that could work." And sure enough, in May, 1972, and I was there in Moscow when Nixon came, and signed the Anti Ballistic Missile treaty. Now, that was an incredible factor for balance, and for mutual understanding, that neither side could attempt a first strike with nuclear weapons, without fully expecting a retaliatory blow, ipso facto. Okay? That's what it did. It limited each side to two anti ballistic missle systems, installations, which, of course, would never be enough to cover a whole country...in a couple of months they reduced it to one, and you know, the thing was a factor for stability, up until 2001, when George W. Bush, came into office, and got out of the Anti Ballistic Missile system- treaty. Revoked it. Said, we're out of here. Okay? Now, that situation is an incredible factor for instability. And so, when Putin, again, when he explained the annexation, I think that's the proper word, actually, annexation of Crimea, he said, "You know, NATO...the prospect that Ukraine could come into NATO is one factor...but far more important, was the Anti Ballistic Missile system factor...we didn't want Anti Ballistic Missile installations in Sevastopol, in Crimea, in anywhere else in the Black Sea, we can't prevent it on naval craft, but we are determined to prevent it in Crimea." Now, Putin said that. And so, why are we building this?

Now, this is sortof interesting, because it's very very unusual. We had an ambassador in Moscow, his name was Jack Matlock, he's a good friend of mine, matter of fact he was responsible for me being there in Moscow for the signing of the ABM treaty, my branch had worked very hard to make that possible, and to reassure Nixon - this was before Reagan - to reassure Nixon, that if he trusted, we could verify. And we could. And we did. So, anyhow: Jack Matlock is at Valdai, one of thse big conferences with high Russian officials, high press, high academics and all, this is two years ago ["Meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club" link to transcript of conference: http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/50548	]. And the subject of the ABM treaty comes up, and Jack Matlock's on the panel, the dais there, and so is Vladimir Putin. Putin says, now, Mr. Matlock, um, what about Bush getting out of the ABM treaty? And Matlock's all, I was against that, that was a very foolish move. And Putin says, "But why?" And Matlock's very defensive, well, it's not, it was not against you- exactly, it was actually a jobs program. [laughs] Putin looks at him, "Mr. Matlock! A jobs program! Has the United States of America no other uses for the billions of dollars that could be put into infra- [sic - infrastructure] A jobs program!" You know, I'm sure poor Jack, regrets saying that.

VOUGHT
Totally ridiculous on the face of it, to say something like that.

MCGOVERN
So...if you put that together, with the fact that, you know, the scientists and engineers, I'm sure, are correct...that you can always defeat these systems very quickly. But you put yourself in Putin's place, right? You're sitting around the table there in the Kremlin, and you got your generals, and you got everybody there. And you're gonna say, look, you know, they're building these systems in Romania, Poland, the Black Sea, in Asia now, but don't worry about it...don't worry about it, guys. That'll never grow up.

VOUGHT
Well, the United States said that these were actually to protect against Iranian missiles. [MCGOVERN laughing] Which, again, was another bald faced lie. I mean, you can't, it's just totally unbelievable.

MCGOVERN
Yeah, the point is on this little scenario, where he's [Putin] sitting around the table with the generals...and he says, "Don't worry! Don't worry!" He can't do that. He can't say that. The generals come back and say, "Look, we're not responsible for assessing American intentions. We're responsible for assessing American capabilities. This is what military intelligence is all about. And what worries us, is that if the Pentagon ever gets it through its head that by installing these ABM things which can actually hit some of their ICBM sites in Russia...if they think that they can do a first strike without suffering a retaliatory blow, well that's very very dangerous...so, don't tell us, Mr. Putin, not to worry." [laughs] You know?

VOUGHT
Well, the U.S. has been actively working toward a first strike capability for a long time. And that is extremely destabilizing.

MCGOVERN
Yes.

VOUGHT
Can you imagine, in a crisis, I mean, each side would have such a temptation to be the first to push the button.

MCGOVERN
Sure. And that's what the ABM treaty was all about. Limited people to two sites, than one. In each country. And so, when we talk about this, this is really a factor for instabiity. I know personally, that in 1983, it was just, I don't know- providence, god's grace, whatever you say, that prevented a nuclear exchange with Russia...why, because our Pentagon, feeling its oats, mounted an exercise that was so similar to what would happen in a real nuclear exchange, that if it weren't for some colleagues of mine at the CIA who descended on Ronald Reagan and said, look, you need to call this off, you need to stop this, the Russians are really thinking this is for real, okay? Unless they had done that [sic - if they hadn't done that], and intervened, there could have been, at the end of 1983, this exchange [sic - "exchange", the apocalypse]. So, that's how- if you have a situation where you're not sure where you're going to be when you retaliate, then you go back to what used to be called, the term of art is, "instant retaliation" or "launch on warning", is what we used to call it. And that means, once you see a flock of geese flying over the north pole, and it looks like an ICBM, you know, there'll be people that will be trigger happy and would like to launch on warning before we lose our retaliatory capability, that's what we-

Now when you mentioned "the fiction", that the ABM systems going into Poland and Romania were designed to protect against Iranian missiles, I've never seen Vladimir Putin dismiss the Western press in so harsh a way, as when he raised that. And he said, now you're saying that it's- you're still saying that Iran, when we have this treaty, that prevents Iran from getting this, you know, these are his words, "I don't know what to do with you. I don't know- I don't know how you- I just- I've had it with you guys." [laughs] He says that.

VOUGHT
Right. And he was talking to Western media, Western journalists.

MCGOVERN
Yeah, so, well some people say, maybe it's to protect against- oh yeah, that's it, missiles from North Korea. Well, to those people I suggest they buy a little globe...[laughs] and see which is the shortest way from North Korea to attack on the United States [sic]. It's so transparently, what's the word, disingenuous, that I'm amazed that the Russians are as judicious and as restrained as they are, in pointing out that a lot of this stuff just doesn't hold water.

VOUGHT
And you know what, I think it's only because U.S. has a deeply indoctrinated and thoroughly ignorant general population that the United States government can get away with these policies. Because if there was any pushback at home, it wouldn't happen. But people are so indoctrinated.

MCGOVERN
You know, I'm glad you mentioned that, because I always try to include saying this: that I've been here in Washington for over fifty years, I've been analyzing Russia for over sixty years...now, here in Washington, you see a lot of change in fifty years, but there's one change that dwarfs all the other changes in importance, in significance. And that is, we no longer have a free media in any real sense. And that is big. That could not be bigger. You know, the fourth estate is dead. You know, people need to know what the fourth estate means. that was Edmund Burke. The late 18th century statesperson, statesman, in Britain. At that time, there were three estates, in Parliament, two in [the House of] Commons, one in [House of] Lords, and he looked up one day, and he said, "I'm very proud to be one of the three estates here, but there's a fourth estate. And that is the gentleman here. In the balcony. Members of the press. The newspaper writers. Because that fourth estate is more important than all three of us put together, because they hold us responsible, they keep us honest, they report to the British people, what we are doing." That's the fourth estate. That estate is dead. The good news is, is [there's] a fifth estate. And it's just catching on now. People my age, they need a little instruction, their grandchildren to take them through the internet. But it's real real easy. And that will be our salvation. People can find out what's going on, if they know where to look.

VOUGHT
Well, I read a quote from Zbigniew Brzezinski, and he was, more or less complaining, or bemoaning the fact, that people are waking up, and he thinks that's a bad thing. And he blames it, to a significant degree, on the internet.

MCGOVERN
Yeah, well, you know, it's a very big danger for them. I remember that Bill Casey, shortly after he came in as the head of the CIA under Ronald Reagan, he was at an early morning meeting. And a friend of mine was there, okay? So this is firsthand information. Well, what Casey said was this: when we've persuaded and deceived the American people into believing what we want them to believe, then we will have achieved our mission. He speaks [sic - expresses] an attitude here - this is really important - the establishment, the smart people, the Ivy Leaguers like McGeorge Bundy in Vietnam, like all these people that congregated around Obama, see they know what's best. They know what's best for the country. So, if that's the case, then they can use the other establishment figures, like the New York Times hierarchy, because they know what's best for the country, too. So, for example, when George W. Bush was running for a second term, James Risen, crackerjack investigative reporter, for the New York Times, uncovered the fact that the National Security Agency was grossly violating all our rights under the Fourth Amendment, to be protected from illegal searches and seizures, okay? Risen had the story in July, 2004. He's the best there is. He goes to his bosses at the New York Times, and he goes, "Man, this is a really good story, we have to get this out, nothing has been so flagrant since the CIA was doing all those untoward things in the fifties [sic]," okay? And his masters said, "Well, we have an election coming up, in just four months. I don't think we should...we know what's best for the American people, we'll probably- why don't you hold on to that?" Now, fast forward- that's July, 2004, December 2005, James Risen goes to his betters - his betters, loosely used - at the New York Times, and he says, "This is a little embarassing, my book now is in galley, it's about to come out in two weeks-"

VOUGHT
What book was that?

MCGOVERN
The book called _State of War_, which had a big chapter, which told this whole story about NSA invading our emails, our telephones, by violating not only the Fourth Amendment, but the FISA law and other things, which were introduced precisely to protect us against this. So, he's got this chapter in this book, which has other good chapters, and, he says, you know, it's coming out, so it's going to be a little bit embarassing, because you guys are paying me big bucks, you know, [laughs] to be an investigative reporter, and there's nothing in your newspaper about this. Now, bear in mind, this is December 2005, what, fifteen, sixteen months after Risen had the story, okay? Now, what happens? Sulzberger and the Washington bureau chief of the New York Times, go to the Oval Office, and explain their dilemma to George W. Bush. "It's going to be really embarrassing," they say, and Bush says, "I don't agree. It's state secrets, you can't do this." And they said, "Come on, Mr. President, we held off because it wouldn't interfere with the election- Sorry we're going to have to-" "Well, I don't agree-" They leave, and they publish it. And what happens, of course, is, all hell breaks loose, except: New York Times escapes any opprobrium because they knew what had to be done, because they know, "what's best for the American people."

Now, this is a syndrome here. And my colleague, Robert Parry, who heads up Consortium News dot com, something that's been in existence now, longer than any investigative website...he tells a story about having won all manner of prizes for uncovering the Iran-Contra affair, okay? He becomes quite a, quite a celebrity, and he leaves AP to work with Newsweek. And he's invited as a young, advancing reporter, to go to one of these soirees, where corporate comes down from New York, and you know, they meet and- And this was a small group of thirteen people, and they had a young congressman there from Wyoming, that name was [sic] Richard Cheney, and they had Scowcroft, who'd just left his job from his job as National Security Advisor, and as Bob explains it, and this really is a telling story, he's sitting there next to the head of Newsweek, for whom he's working, okay? And Scowcroft apropos of nothing in particular, says, "Well, my successor, Admiral Poindexter, he's going before Congress on Tuesday, and I would advise him to tell Congress that we never told the President anything, about this Iran-Contra thing." [laughs] And Bob Parry, being new to these circles, drops his fork, right, into his shrimp cocktail, makes a little clatter, and not thinking, says, "General Scowcroft, did I hear you say, you'd advise your successor to perjure himself? Before Congress?" Now, [laughs] Bob says the silence seemed like it lasted three minutes, but probably only half a minute. And then the head of Newsweek, put his arm around me, and said, "Now, Bob-"

VOUGHT
And he said, "Now, where are you working next week?"

MCGOVERN
No, he said, "Now, Bob, sometimes you have to do what's best for the country," and then everybody went, [imitation of crowd laughing noise]. [VOUGHT laughs] Gentlemen laughing, there wasn't a woman at the thing. "Sometimes, you have to do what's best for the country."

[break music]

MCGOVERN
K, so that's the attitude. They know what's best for the country. So, unless we find some constructive, inventive, imaginative ways to counter that...and to dislodge all my former colleagues from university in New York [sic], from the notion that if they read the New York Times, they know what's going on, because so many still believe that, well, unless we can dislodge them from that, and get them accustomed to looking at the correct places for real news, on the internet, on the web, unless we can do that, I fear, I actually do fear now, with this new administration, that we'll be going the way of Germany in the 1930s.

VOUGHT
Yeah, you know, I have several friends who are still into that, the New York Times, is objective and tells the truth kind of thing, and if I ever say, well, I saw this or that on RT, or an alternative site, they'll say, "Oh yeah, you can't believe what thay say because they're state media," or they're connected with this other group, or something, yeah, but they believe the New York Times, and because of the state corporate nexus, all corporate media in this country, are actually organs of the state, to a large degree. And aside from that, they've all been bought out by the CIA long ago. So, I don't know how you get through to people who want to believe that, for example, the New York Times is telling them the truth. And unless we do get over that, we won't get anywhere.

MCGOVERN
Well, that's true. And, you know, being a New Yorker, it's no less than profoundly sad, what's happened to the New York Times. My parents were first generation Irish immigrants. But they never would go to bed at night, without having finished reading the New York Times. Now, I mean this: I mean, if they get too tired, if they were watching TV or something, or just couldn't stay awake. They had a special place to put that day's Times in, for the next morning, and they wouldn't dare touch today's Times until they finished yesterday's Times. That's how sacrosanct it was. Now: when I go up to- my university was Fordham, and many of my friends are still alive, you know, we meet every five years. And I was up there for our fiftieth, a couple of years ago, and we were treated to a lecture, by a four star general who was in, celebrating his forty fifth. His name was Jack, and I'll remember his last name in a second [it must be General Jack Keane], but he was the general behind the surge, in Iraq. Okay? And he was telling us all manner of things, he made a little lecture after the picnic. Now, I'm proud of having done one very self-sacrificial thing, and that is, I didn't have a beer at the picnic, because I wanted to be completely sober, when Jack was giving his little presentation. And sure enough, what he said was, he was all dresed up in these fancy shirts that have these colors, they have one color for the collar, and they have stripes, I have to get me one of them...he was all dressed up. "I'm going out to JFK right now, and I'm going off to Europe and tell them, that they're really being very very capricious, in not realizing the danger of Iran getting a nuclear weapon. Because they're right on the verge of it, and if we don't wake up these Europeans, we'll...terrible things are going to happen." So, I raise my hand, you know. And all my colleagues are there. He wouldn't rec- And then finally he recognized me. "I'm Ray McGovern, I worked for the CIA. General...can you be unaware of the fact that the intelligence community, three years ago, in 2007, came to a unanimous conclusion, all sixteen agencies, expressed with high confidence, that Iran stopped working on a nuclear weapon, at the end of 2003? And has not resumed work on a weapon, and that judgement has been re-asserted every year, since?" Can you be unaware of that?" And he says, "Mr. McGovern, I have my own sources." And Wilton, I lost it at that. I asked [sic], "That's a lie." Okay? Woooah! The dean was not pleased. Jack is now on the board of overseers. And my friends, they didn't know what to believe. This is the hard part, you know? They thought- well, McGovern, he did graudate summa cum laude, he's always been a pretty bright guy, but how can he say this? To Jack? General Jack! And how - we don't see this in the New York Times, I mean, hello, McGovern's asking us to believe McGovern? When it's not in the New York Times, and Jack is saying this? So, I kid you not, I lost some friends that way.

VOUGHT
So they prefer to believe that general over the findings of sixteen intelligence agencies?

MCGOVERN
Yeah...and it's just because-

VOUGHT
It's because they live in a non-fact based universe at this point.

MCGOVERN
That's one way of putting it, yeah. More specifically...it's the New York Times that has had this wonderful reputation over the years, as newspaper of record...you know, it's kindof a privilege sort of thing...if you have a tie and a collar, better still, a shirt with two colors two it, and you read the New York Times every day, you are ipso facto, in the cognoscenti, there in New York, and surroundings...that's kinda too bad, because our country needs educated people to be truly educated, and if they're malnourished on information of great consequence, as has been the case for these last couple of decades, that, well, you know, what Jefferson said, when he was asked...he was asked, you know, Mr. President, Mr. Thomas Jefferson, "If you had to choose between a government and a free press, what would your choice be?" And without thinking, "Of course a free press." Because without a free press, a government, ipso facto, becomes a dictatorship. That is the case, and we're close to that now.

VOUGHT
Well, I think it's necessary for the corporations to have an ignorant population because otherwise we'd rise up. So, they want us to be smart enough to run the machines, but not to question why the machines...why are we doing this policy? They want us to be able to serve their needs, but no more than that.

MCGOVERN
Yeah, and, you know, the correspondents, the journalists, take a young person coming out of Columbia journalism school, school of journalism. He wants to get a job. He wants to have a decent living. He's gotta conform.

VOUGHT
He's got a debt to pay.

MCGOVERN
Yeah.

VOUGHT
Student loans.

MCGOVERN
This system, whether it's intentionally rigged this way, you know, sometimes these things happen through a whole bunch of coincidences, or other things, but the reality is, that if you want to be a journalist in this day and age, you've gotta be really exceptional and put up with not making a lot of money. Because even- I have nothing but the highest respect for Bill Moyers, okay? Take Bill Moyers. He drank the Kool-Aid, on Russian hacking, to undermine Hillary Clinton. He- [feed breaks up]

VOUGHT
Yeah, I haven't kept up with him but I'm sorry to hear that, because I do have enormous respect for him myself.

MCGOVERN
But, you know, who has the time to pursue alternative sources, when the New York Times- This is an interesting thing, here. There's a fellow named David Sanger. And he writes for the New York Times. And he was pretty much a partner of Judy Miller, before the war in Iraq, and, as you know, they were printing all manner of flat fact statements about the existence of weapons of mass destruction, in Iraq. And I had a chance to come up to Fordham Law School, to listen to David Sanger, on a panel, talking about various and sundry [malware] especially Stuxnet, which he knows a lot about, and there was a film that was shown, "Zero Something" [_Zero Days_, by Alex Gibney, video of this event can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fd8I6bIXelk ]. Quite an interesting film. So-

VOUGHT
That was the virus that infected the Iranian centrifuges [referring to Stuxnet].

MCGOVERN
That's right. That was the virus developed by the Israelis and us, to actually destroy, not infect, but destroy, centrifuges, in the Iranian nuclear, uh, development program. Even though there was no proof they were heading for a nuclear weapon. So-

VOUGHT
Just as an aside, I understand that that virus is now commercially available. If you have enough money to pay for it.

MCGOVERN
Well, suffice it to say, that I did a little homework on Sanger, because I remembered vaguely what a role he played before Iraq, with Judy Miller, and I uncovered an article he had done, on the 29th of July, in which he asserted, no fewer than six times, that it was flat fact, there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So, we're talking 2002, the preparation for the war, and the date is July 29 [ link: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/29/world/us-exploring-baghdad-strike-as-iraq-option.html ]. Now, people should know, that nine days earlier, our Director of Central Intelligence, at the time, George Tenet, told his British counterpart, Sir Richard Dearlove, who came to Langeley, CIA headquarters, to get the real message, and Tenet told him, "Hah, weapons of mass destruction, that's a crock," as we say in Queens, or the Bronx, "there aren't any. We're just making believe there are, and we are 'fixing the intelligence around the policy.'" Now, how do I know that? Well, number one, I had some friends there. They were privy to this very private conversation. Number two, Dearlove goes back, to brief Tony Blair, on the 23rd July 2002, and he spills the beans in his most important statement was, "George [W.] Bush has decided to attack Iraq for regime change, the attack will be justified by the conjunction of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction." Translation from the British, we will say he has all manner of weapons of mass destruction, and that he is about to give them to terrorists, okay, and then the crowning sentence: "...but the intelligence and facts are being fixed around the policy."

VOUGHT
Wouldn't be the first time.

MCGOVERN
So, what am I saying here? Well, that's the 20th, when Tenet met with Dearlove, K? The 29th, David Sanger is talking about "weapons of mass destruction", as though it is flat fact. So, I had a chance- I like to ask questions from the audience. I had a chance to ask Sanger, "David Sanger, we know that George Tenet was talking to the press...how do you square your conscience with the fact that he told his British counterpart that there weren't any weapons of mass destruction on the 20th of July, 2002. And then he told you, or your colleagues, and you put it in your article for everybody to read, that there were weapons of mass destruction. You know, now you're doing the same thing. You're doing exactly the same thing. All this stuff about Russia hacking. Are you getting your information from John Brennan? Whose patron was George Tenet...John Brennan, the outgoing CIA director. So, why do you keep doing this? [laughs] Now, everybody there at Fordham Law School was believing what the New York Times says. And there was a lot of [crowd rumbling noise] and I turned around and said, "Look, I forgive you guys. You read the New York Times, like I did when I used to live up here. And you believe it. No harsh feelings. I understand why this is news to you. [laughs] But this guy has a record and you should expose it." [link to transcript of McGovern at this event: https://pastebin.com/xRMABcUq ] So, it's so transparent what's going on here, the people like Sanger are making big bucks for doing what the government dictates and it's a sad, sad outcome for what used to be a pretty good newspaper.

VOUGHT
Right, they're people of what I would call "low integrity." Speaking of the Russian hacking, and you know, I went to the women's march on Washington, on the 21st of January, and amazingly huge crowds, and it was really uplifting to see people coming out like that. But: I saw a lotta signs about Trump is working for Putin, or the Russian hacking, and all the supposed scandals, and that kind of thing. And it seems to me, people are out there demonstrating against Trump, but they don't really understand what's going on. They are buying the lies about the Russian hacking, et cetera. And I just think we got a long way, a lotta work to do, to get to where people believe the truth of the matter.

MCGOVERN
Yeah, they're not so automatically exposed to it. Sanger, as I said, one of the lead authors, as I said, promoting this notion that number one, the Russians hacked, and shared that information with Wikileaks, in a deliberate attempt, approved by President Putin, no less, [laughs] to undermine Hillary Clinton, so that Donald Trump would win the election. Now, there are so many things wrong with that...first and foremost, as I think I've said, I've been watching Russian leaders for sixty years, that's six zero now. I think I know a little about how they look at the world. And if I'm Putin, and I'm sitting in the Kremlin, and I'm watching Hillary Clinton, and I'm watching Donald Trump...Donald Trump is actually bragging about how unpredictable he is, okay? He's taking all kinds of accolades for being unpredictable, and he shows himself to be very short tempered. He'll lash out at the least real or imagined slight. Now, I'm Vladimir Putin...is this the [laughs] kind of guy I want with his finger on the nuclear codes, and the nuclear button, whatever it is?

VOUGHT
Absolutely. This reminds me of the Nixon madman theory. Are you familiar with that?

MCGOVERN
I am!

VOUGHT
Yeah, he purposely wanted to come across as hot tempered and impulsive, as a deliberate policy to scare the Russians.

MCGOVERN
But, you know, on this notion, here, I am, you know, morally certain, that Vladimir Putin has no special in with the almighty, or with the holy spirit, that would have told him, "Hey! Vlad! Trump's going to win! [laughs] You can help Trump win!" I think Putin, like everybody else on this planet, that [laughs] read the polls, and analyzed this thing, thought that Hillary's going to win. So: one conclusion I draw from that is, if that's your conclusion, that's your assumption, what percentage is there [laughs] in hacking into Hillary Clinton's emails, Democratic National Committee, and all that kind of stuff, when you're pretty sure she's going to win. Now, that's not a conclusive sort of thing, but when you look at how it went down, and how Putin and the others...look at the- you know, I still follow the Russian media. Their TV is much more tightly controlled than their radio, or their other media, newspapers. But their TV was just, you know, ninety percent sure that Hillary Clinton was going to win...and so, what am I saying? I'm saying I believe that Putin sat back and he had the same attitude as...I was in Germany when the election took place, my German friends would say, it's "eine valde schwissen peste und cholera", which means it's a choice between plague and cholera. [laughs] In other words, as we put it in this country, there's no lesser evil. And that's exactly why I was so happy to be able to vote for somebody I really admire, and that's Jill Stein.

VOUGHT
Yeah, I'm right there with you. I did that too.

MCGOVERN
She asked me to endorse her, before the election, and I said, "I'm happy to, Jill," and what I put up was this, I said, look, I have nine grandchildren...for me, this is a choice between slow death for my grandchildren, and I say this with profound sorrow, because when they're my age, chances are very good that they're not going to have clean water to drink, or clean air to breathe, okay? That's one choice, Trump. Or: the possibity of perhaps not so slow a death, but a destructive death, by pushing the Russians too far, under Hillary Clinton. And that's how I saw it. That's no lesser evil there. And what we've seen the last couple of weeks, my god, it looks like this guy wasn't just saying these things, he's gonna follow through on everything, including torture and other stuff. So, yeah, that's why Jill I thought was a terrific- The enivronment is the issue, if you care at all about what comes after us. I don't see how anybody in Congress, who has grandchildren, can be against looking into global warming.

VOUGHT
I think they just have to be psychopaths. How can they ignore the warning signs?

MCGOVERN
I guess you can always believe what you wanna believe, and-

VOUGHT
-if you're paid enough to believe it.

MCGOVERN
[laughs] Yeah, if you haven't had a good science course since 1913, you know, [laughs] and you wanna believe the few dishonest ones that are left, you're right. If you wanna believe them, you can.

VOUGHT
I think we should probably wrap up pretty soon. Is there anything that you wanna say in summary?

MCGOVERN
Yes, you know, I'm asked often why I keep doing what I'm doing, you know? I'm 77. I really would like to spend more time with my grandchildren. But I feel, by virtue of my twenty seven years at the CIA, two years with the military, and lots of stuff in-between, that I have a certain obligation to try and spread some truth around. So, I'm going to keep doing that, whether here or in Europe, or wherever. As long as I'm physically fit to do that. Now, people say, "Yeah, but you're not getting any results, McGovern. You know, you get these delusions of grandeur. Nobody's listening to you." You know? Well, I think of my old friend Dan Berrigan. Now, I wasn't a very close friend of his, but I took two retreats under him, and he knew who I was, and we met a couple of times, right before I died, I met him. And, what he said, after he did that major action in that little place in Maryland there, 1968, Cadensville-

VOUGHT
You're talking about breaking into the draft board and burning the records?

MCGOVERN
Yeah, they got the draft cards and they burnt them with the homemade napalm...

VOUGHT
Yeah, there's video of that on youtube.

MCGOVERN
Yeah, they waited around for the cops to come...so Dan explains, he's in- they took him to the only federal building in Cadensville, Maryland, which happens to be the post office, right, and they're sitting around there, and there are about nine of them, and they're- And Dan says, "I'm reflecting here. And I'm saying, this was a big thing, this was a big act that we just did. Now...was it worth it? I mean, people are going to call me a commie, call me foolish, crazy. Was it worth doing?" And Dan says, "I came to the realization, that _yes_, it was worth doing...the good is worth doing because it's good." Now, results, they're not unimportant. But they're secondary. They're secondary to the goodness of the act. And he said, "You know, I had a great feeling of relief there. Because success, yeah, it's not unimportant. But it's secondary. And I breathe a sigh of relief." And then, as only Dan could - he's writing this in his diary, his book, which is really great, anyhow, he's writing this, "...and just then, in comes a paradigm of an FBI inspector. Throws open the door, and looks around, and my brother Phil is still in his cleric's [outfit]," - Phil was a priest too - "and he looks at Phil, and he says, 'YOU AGAIN! I'm changing my religion!'" [both laugh - the story is well told] And Dan writes, "No higher compliment could come to my brother Phil!" [laughs] So, two lessons from this. Results: not unimportant, but secondary. The witness is what speaks to people. And secondly, for god's sakes, keep your sense of humor. [laughs] Without a sense of humor, you're not going to be long for this journey, and Dan Berrigan, was the paragon of that for me, and taught me, you keep plugging, and success is not always in their hands. You try to do good, and then you leave it to successors, or to god, to figure out what's best for the world.

Last thing I'll say is, another prophet, Cesar Chavez, put this into real words for me. You know, he used to say, "Look, thanks a lot for that article! And the speeches! But: nothing's going to happen without action." Okay? Now: you say, there aren't enough of us. Well, there are enough of us. But nothing's going to happen without action. And so, he's right. And that's why I think we're at the point where we need to put our bodies into it. Now, if you're as old as I am, and you have the color hair that I do, which is pretty gray by now, I would re-assure people that that's an advantage. Now, how does that work? Well, I've been beaten up a couple of times. Once, by Hillary Clinton's goons, and I got pretty badly beat up. And guess what? The State Department was flooded with thousands of calls, emails, and everything. Why? Because Americans don't like old people get beat up, okay? [laughs] Now, young people, ah, they got it coming to them. Ah, what are you doing? But old people- So: if you're an old people [sic], if you're like me, you have a big advantage. They're not going to kill you. They may mess you up a little bit, but they're not going to break your leg, if you're lucky. Show these young people how important all this stuff is. Have we forgotten about Vietnam? Have we forgotten about how we had to do this in the past? Show'em. You have this advantage, put it into play, and you'll see, that young people will take notice, and say, "Woah! Well, let's look into this." Maybe these old guys know something, we don't know.

VOUGHT
Okay, and with that, we'll wrap it up. Thanks so much for being on my show, Ray, and I really enjoyed the conversation.

MCGOVERN
Me too, Wilton.