Ray McGovern on Alan Colmes (12/20/2016)

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

Ray McGovern on "The Alan Colmes Show". Broadcast date: Dec 20, 2016.

Transcript of full interview.

File link: https://radio.foxnews.com/2016/12/20/mcgovern-a-disgruntled-bernie-supporter-probably-leaked-dnc-emails/

ALAN COLMES
I'm Alan Colmes, wanna welcome Ray McGovern. Ray McGovern is a former CIA analyst on the steering group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, speaking after, how many years, twenty seven years with the CIA. And I understand, first of all, Ray, welcome to the show. Uh-

RAY MCGOVERN
Thank you, Alan.

COLMES
As I understand it, you don't believe we were hacked, but that we were leaked. Can you please explain?

MCGOVERN
Well, it really doesn't matter what McGovern believes, it matters what the technical experts that have joined our movement, called Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity [sic]. We have among our little crew the former technical director of the National Security Agency. And he has spoken out, and his name is Bill Binney. He doesn't prefer anonymity, as these CIA sources do. And he's spoken out not only out of his experience in having constructed these systems, but also because Ed Snowden has released the vast...information on the vast capabilities of the NSA to collect everything, and I mean everything, it boggles the mind, but he brought out slides that showed exactly how it works. And there are trace devices in these mechanisms which make it possible for NSA to monitor _all email_, and know who sent it and who received it. So, if there's some connection to Julian Assange and the Russians, we would know it, there is none, because there's no evidence.

COLMES
Why do you think Barack Obama, in China, in September, said to Putin, "cut it out", and it was reported on September 30, he picked up the red phone and said the same thing?

MCGOVERN
Yeah. Well Barack Obama does what he's told.

COLMES
By whom?

MCGOVERN
Barack Obama takes instruction from John Brennan-

COLMES
Really?

MCGOVERN
-who run the intell- [suddenly hearing COLMES non-belief] Yeah! Really! Does that surprise you?

COLMES
Yes.

MCGOVERN
Well that explains an awful lot about Barack Obama. I'll tell you, he is- he is hostage to what the intelligence community tells him.

COLMES
Is it every president?

MCGOVERN
Say again?

COLMES
Is every president hostage to the CIA?

MCGOVERN
No no, I've watched- I've served under nine presidents. I've seen a few since. And I've never seen the like of this. You know, this is secondhand [sic] information, but I think it's true. I'm told by a very reliable source, who heard from his source, that after a fundraising dinner among prominent, well heeled Democrats, they were criticizing Obama for not being progressive. And finally he got up, and he said, "Look. Don't you all remember what happened to Dr. King?"

COLMES
So you were- Wait, let me just parse what you're saying. Because we have a Black president, you think the CIA can laud that over him, and threaten him with assassination, if he doesn't follow suit?

MCGOVERN
It doesn't have- It doesn't have much to do with a Black president, it has to do with a president that comes in and has...he's inexperienced, he doesn't know how Washington works, and the CIA takes him under its wing, and John Brennan becomes his very best friend, and look, Obama tried his best to prevent the publication of the Senate Committee report on torture. We have that-

COLMES
He's the one who stopped the torture from the Bush administration.

MCGOVERN
The report done by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, five year report, that Dianne Feinstein, the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, to her credit, insisted on publishing, at the end of 2014, Obama did everything he could to help John Brennan disguise the fact that they had lied about the torture, had lied about the fact that it was not successful, and had deceived, not only the president, but the Congress and everybody else.

COLMES
We know there was torture, right?

MCGOVERN
Say again?

COLMES
We know there was torture.

MCGOVERN
Oh sure there was.

COLMES
And we know that Obama put an end to it when he took office. Right?

MCGOVERN
He issued instructions to- that the- that Guantanamo should be closed. That's still open.

COLMES
No, but he stopped the torture that took place during the Bush administration.

MCGOVERN
He stopped the torture, and he left the torturers in place. That was the first signal. You know, when he said, "Okay, um, you know, you guys tortured people, you kidnapped them, you brought them to secret prisons, but you know, we're going to just look forward, we're not going to look back." Now, that's not enforcing the law, that's not discharging his oath to enforce the law under the constitution-

COLMES
Why would John Brennan be able to laud it over Barack Obama?

MCGOVERN
You know, that's a good question. All I know is that the evidence is very persuasive, that John Brennan, an open advocate of kidnapping, they call it "extraordinary rendition", for torture, was able to prevent Obama from allowing Congress to know about this, and for the American people to know about it, until finally, Dianne Feinstein finished that report with these very very eager young people, and insisted that it be published, before she left the chairmanship of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and the people that are investigating that now, and this hasn't been played out very much in the press, have cited chapter and verse that not only Brennan, but the president himself, resisted till the very last minute, that Dianne Feinstein would put this report out. Why? Well, you explain it. I don't know why. All I know is that John Brennan lied through his teeth, and the president was trying to cover that up.

COLMES
But I don't get why John Brennan is lauding over Obama, rather than the other way around.

MCGOVERN
Well, I don't get it either. But if you look at the evidence, we intelligence analysts go on emperical evidence, we don't do faith based intelligence, and when we look at how Obama came in, left the torturers in place, promoted John Brennan, an open advocate of kidnapping and torture, to become not only his terrorism czar, but then the head of the CIA, well, you tell me why Obama did that.

COLMES
I don't know. I'd like to get an answer to that question if it's true. But you've also got not just the- you've also got seventeen different agencies pretty much concurring that Russia tried to interfere with our election. You don't buy it?

MCGOVERN
That's a crock. You come from the New York area, you know what a crock is.

COLMES
Yeah [fake laughs]. I thought that was a dish you made with like peas-

MCGOVERN
Brennan wants to do this, right? And so he says, "Hey, the preside- hey, Mister- hey, Obama, um, Comey and these- they're dragging their feet. Would you tell them to get on board?" Obama calls Comey and says, "Look, you have doubts about this stuff? This is the line, get on board," and Comey salutes smartly, gets on board. That's what happened here.

COLMES
Wasn't Comey responsible to some extent for swaying the election away from Hillary Clinton?

MCGOVERN
Well, you know, that's beyond my purview. Uh, I'm an intelligence officer, it, uh, you know, if that's what Comey did, I don't understand any better-

COLMES
And by the way, the FBI now agrees with the CIA on the assessment about the Russians.

MCGOVERN
I just explained how that happened.

COLMES
Yeah. Okay. [previous said in a tone of non-belief] You said that the CIA, um, you know, does not, they do not reveal who they are, they don't give names, like the person you mentioned [the thirdhand story of Barack Obama talking about being assassinated], but that never happens for their own protection. You wrote a piece where you said there's no danger to sources and methods, but when does the CIA give sources and methods, publicly?

MCGOVERN
Well look, the trace devices, that I mentioned, that Ed Snowden gave chapter and verse on, you can buy those in Staples. In other words, this shibboleth, about sources and methods, does not obtain in this situation. If NSA had the goods on this, they would simply, uh, tell the president, tell everybody. And they wouldn't have to hide- They wouldn't have to put the CIA up to be anonymous, and tell people that the Russians-

COLMES
Isn't the CIA always anonymous?

MCGOVERN
Say again?

COLMES
Isn't the CIA _always_ anonymous?

MCGOVERN
No! No! Not at all!

COLMES
You don't reveal CIA agents. Remember the whole Valerie Plame episode? You keep- Agents are normally anonymous.

MCGOVERN
Yeah, agents. [you really hear MCGOVERN's temper rise up in those last two words] Come on, Alan. We're talking about CIA spokesmen. You get up before the press, and say this is our evidence, we know that the Russians hacked, we have this message that shows that Julian Assange got this email from a Russian- We know from a Russian government source. And you tell them your name. You're not a secret agent, for god's sake. You're an official, a high official at the CIA. They've been unwilling to do that, and in this case it's a cowardly sort of thing, they hide behind anonymity.

COLMES
Who do you think leaked?

MCGOVERN
Uuuuh, well, um, my best guess, is that the leak came from within the Democratic National Committee because there were all kinds of people that had access to these emails, and when they saw the content of these emails, which indicated, and this has been pretty much submerged in the press, indicated that Hillary Clinton _stole_ the nomination from Bernie Sanders, you know, if I were an American citizen, I'd think, my god, now, yeaaaaah, there's been interference in this election, but [laughs] it's not from the Russians!

COLMES
How did she steal the election? Many people don't like the superdelegates, but those are the rules going in.

MCGOVERN
It had nothing to do with superdelegates. Have you read the content of the emails that were released two days before the Democratic National Convention?

COLMES
Some of them, not all of them.

MCGOVERN
Don't they indicate that Bernie Sanders was put at a major disadvantage by the DNC? And by Hillary Clinton?

COLMES
He doesn't believe it was hacked, he said it was fair.

MCGOVERN
[taken off guard] He said what?!

COLMES
He believes it was a fair victory for Hillary Clinton.

MCGOVERN
A fair- Oh yeah. Right. Well- Uh- Look, Bernie gave up earlier than I thought he would, but what you have here, is really a situation where Hillary Clinton was faced with a really troublesome situation. Two days before the convention, it's revealed that all this stuff went down. Not only by the DNC, but by her own email server. What happened? Top five people for the Democratic National Committee quit. On the spot. Does that tell you anything? And the diversion, it was a magnificent diversion, of attention from the content of these emails, into who did it. It was the dirty Russians, it was the Russians, somebody said, "It wasn't the Russians, it was Julian Assange." "That's okay! Julian's working for the Russians," and why did the Russians do it? Here- here's the...denouement, here, because they want Trump to win. It was a canard.

COLMES
You don't think Russians wanted Trump to win?

MCGOVERN
[pause] You know...I've studied Russian leaders for fifty years. The notion that Vladimir Putin would be rooting for someone who brags about being unpredictable, who takes action at the appearance of a slight, however real or imagined, in an impulsive way, that Putin would prefer to have this fellow with his finger on the nuclear button, is a stretch for me.

COLMES
Okay.

MCGOVERN
I think Putin looked at this like my German friends. They have an expression there, "eine valde schwissen peste und cholera", a choice between plague and cholera. And that's how I looked at it. That's why I voted for Jill Stein.

COLMES
Why would the DNC be party to a leak, that actually hurt its candidate?

MCGOVERN
I'm not saying the DNC was a party to it, I'm saying somebody within the DNC...now there is one young fellow, his first name is Seth. He was from Nebraska. And he was the victim of a very strange robbery, in the middle of the morning, like around three o'clock, in Washington. He worked for the Democratic National Committee, and he was killed in a robbery, shot in the back, but the robbers forgot to take anything out of his wallet, or out of his pocket. Now, the reason that I mention that-

COLMES
Seth Rich.

MCGOVERN
Yeah, right. Now he wrote- He worked for the DNC and Julian Assange, the head of Wikileaks, did a very strange thing. He commented on a Dutch radio program, he said, "You know, this shows the risks you run when you're a whistleblower." And then he said, "We offer, Wikileaks, we offer $20,000 dollar reward for the- for information for whoever killed Seth Rich." Now, you know, he didn't say he was our source and maybe he wasn't, it was a mistaken sort of thing, but I think, you asked me for my guess, my best guess is, that as far as the DNC hack was concerned, it was somebody within the Democratic National Committee, that was outraged at what he or she saw, and the Podesta hack? You know, Podesta was a foreign lobbyist for Saudi Arabia. His emails were ipso facto-

COLMES
Alright Mr. McGovern, I've gotta move on, but look, I appreciate your point of view. It's certainly fascinating.

MCGOVERN
Oh. Okay, you want me not to talk about it?

COLMES
No no, I'm just- We have to go to a break...

MCGOVERN
Ah. Okay. Are we coming back?

COLMES
No, I think- Do you have more to say?

MCGOVERN
Yeah. Lots more to say.

COLMES
Alright, we'll come back, with Ray McGovern. Former CIA analyst, on the steering group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals. He's got more to say, we're here to hear it.

[break]

COLMES
Alright, we're talking with former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, we only have about four minutes left here, Ray. Does it disturb you that Donald Trump doesn't care about his Daily Presidential Briefings? Seems to put down the intelligence community, does that disturb you?

MCGOVERN
Well, Alan, let me tell you my reaction to that. Um, I poured my life's blood into one and one briefings under the Reagan administration for his first four years...

COLMES
I know you did.

MCGOVERN
And also did that for Nixon and Ford. So, initially, I was outraged. And then I got to thinking about it. Now, John Brennan is the guy who controls the briefers. Um, Trump is right in saying he's a pretty smart guy [this is Trump speaking about Trump]. Are you gonna want to listen to a bunch of people working for John Brennan, who is precisely the guy who is trying to make you illegitimate? Trying to impugn your election, saying Putin put you in place? Saying that you want to sell out to the Russians? I don't think so.

COLMES
You don't think there's evidence of that, the people that he's nominating, the potential Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, business interests in Russia, Trump business interests in Russia. There's evidence that he has an agenda, a pro-Russia agenda.

MCGOVERN
There is evidence that he has an agenda, and it cuts across the wishes of the Washington establishment in foreign policy. He wants to talk to the Russians. This is very very dangerous. He might work out a deal with the Russians, on Syria, on Ukraine, on the Baltic states, there's no reason in god's heaven why our troops have to be facing each other on the Polish-Russian border. Trump, when he talks to Putin, he just might engineer, or bring in, a thaw, a rapprochement. Now this is very bad for business, Alan. Let's face it: tension, war, I mean, Pope Francis himself, when he came to Congress, he talked about the main problem being what he called the blood drenched arms traders. Well, those are the people who are really worried about the possibility of a thaw in relations with Russia, and if Trump goes ahead and does that, well, a lot of people stand to lose a lot of money. So, this is a little bit oversimplified, but not much. And you have the establishment represented by both Democrats and Republicans here. I say, give Trump a chance. See what he can do.

COLMES
Are you happy with Michael Flynn as potential NSA head [sic, Flynn was National Security Advisor, head of the National Security Council]?

MCGOVERN
You know, uh...am I happy? I know something about Michael Flynn that nobody else knows. And that is: when the administration, and we're talking about the Obama administration-

COLMES
I got about sixty seconds, Ray, just so you know.

MCGOVERN
Okay.

COLMES
Okay.

MCGOVERN
Thanks. When they wanted to blame Bashar Al-Assad for those sarin poison gas attacks outside Damascus, in August of 2013, Flynn, to his great credit, stood up and said, "Now, my guys know that this was sarin precursors smuggled in through Turkey, and it was the rebels that did it." Now that happens to be the truth.

COLMES
Alright, well look-

MCGOVERN
He lost his job because of that.

COLMES
I certainly appre- I thought he lost his job for incompetence and ill treatment of employees, at least that's what was reported.

MCGOVERN
Yeah, that's the story, but I know that to be a fact.

COLMES
I appreciate your time tonight, sir.

MCGOVERN
Thank you, Alan.

COLMES
Thank you for your time, Ray McGovern, former CIA analyst, on the steering group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.