Ray McGovern

February 20, 2018  (35 minutes)

Binney, former Technical Director at NSA, is at his relaxed best providing hard-to-believe-but-all-too-real facts about our lawless Deep State, including drawing from his own personal experience.

At minute 12:00 Bill explains that a single warrant — on Carter Page, for example — enables intrusive surveillance of everyone Carter Page in in touch with, and everyone they, in turn, are in touch with.

So was Trump himself “wiretapped,” as he claimed?  No. Technology has rendered that term “quaint” or “obsolete,” to use adjectives favored by Bush Jr.’s lawyer Alberto Gonzales (to characterize those annoying Geneva protections for POWs).

Was Trump surveilled?  What do you think?

(Man tut, was man kann.)

On Watching the Hawks, Ray addresses “Espionage and the Leak Culture”

February 27, 2018 (12 minutes)

By Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), February 26, 2018
https://consortiumnews.com/2018/02/26/growing-risk-of-u-s-iran-hostilities-based-on-false-pretexts-intel-vets-warn/

Copied in below is the Introduction to VIPS’ latest Memorandum (link above).  The 21 VIPS signers are second to none in relevant, agenda-free expertise.

February 26, 2018

MEMORANDUM FOR:  The President

FROM:  Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)

SUBJECT:  War With Iran

INTRODUCTION

In our December 21st Memorandum to you,
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/12/21/intel-vets-tell-trump-iran-is-not-top-terror-sponsor/  we cautioned that the claim that Iran is currently the world’s top sponsor of terrorism is unsupported by hard evidence. Meanwhile, other false accusations against Iran have intensified. Thus, we feel obliged to alert you to the virtually inevitable consequences of war with Iran, just as we warned President George W. Bush six weeks before the U.S. attack on Iraq 15 years ago.

In our first Memorandum in this genre,
https://consortiumnews.com/2003/02/05/powells-un-speech-and-the-case-for-war/
we told then-President Bush that we saw “no compelling reason” to attack Iraq, and warned “the unintended consequences are likely to be catastrophic.” The consequences will be far worse, should the U.S. become drawn into war with Iran. We fear that you are not getting the straight story on this from your intelligence and national security officials.

After choosing “War With Iran” for the subject-line of this Memo, we were reminded that we had used it before, namely, for a Memorandum to President Obama on August 3, 2010
https://consortiumnews.com/2010/080310c.html
in similar circumstances. You may wish to ask your staff to give you that one to read and ponder. It included a startling quote from then-Chairman of President Bush Jr.’s Intelligence Advisory Board (and former national security adviser to Bush Sr.) Gen. Brent Scowcroft, who told the Financial Times on October 14, 2004 that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had George W. Bush “mesmerized;” that “Sharon just has him wrapped around his little finger.”  We wanted to remind you of that history, as you prepare to host Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu next week.

By Ray McGovern, February 22, 2018
https://consortiumnews.com/2018/02/22/my-first-day-as-cia-director/

By Jim Jatras, February 21, 2018
http://russiafeed.com/washington-deep-state-mueller-russia-indictment/

Mueller’ indictment of the Russians (as easy as indicting the proverbial “ham sandwich”) is seen as an effort to distract Americans from genuine collusion rotting the core of our public life.

House Intelligence Committee Chair Takes on the Deep State
By Ray McGovern, Feb. 19, 2018
https://consortiumnews.com/2018/02/19/nunes-fbi-and-doj-perps-could-be-put-on-trial/

Millions of Americans Demand $130,000 for Not Having Sex With Trump
By Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker
18 February 18

Millions of Americans on Wednesday demanded that Donald J. Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, issue them checks in the amount of $130,000 for not having sex with Trump.

After Cohen revealed that he had issued such a check to Stormy Daniels, a porn star who he claims never had intimate relations with his client, there was widespread outrage among other Americans who had also not had sex with Trump but had not been paid for not doing so.

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy for Stormy Daniels,” Tracy Klugian, a florist in Santa Rosa, California, said. “I just want my check, too.”

Harland Dorrinson, a bank teller in Akron, Ohio, said that he had already e-mailed Cohen to demand payment. “I have never come close to having sex with Trump, and that should be worth something,” he said. “Specifically, $130,000.”

But, even as millions of Americans clamored to be compensated for abstaining from sex with Cohen’s client, others, like Carol Foyler, of Tallahassee, Florida, took a different view. “Never having sex with Donald Trump should be a reward in itself,” she said.

This is from Reader Supported News, which, since it stopped re-posting articles by the late Robert Parry a year or two ago, has been serving thin gruel from writers drinking Kool Aid at the DNC/DOJ/FBI/CIA trough.  But, this time satirist Borowitz, we think, hits the mark.  Enjoy.

By Mike Whitney, February 18, 2018
http://www.unz.com/mwhitney/goofy-indictments-divert-attention-from-criminal-abuses-at-the-fbi-and-doj/

Robert Mueller does prove one thing; i. e., that 70 should be the age of statutory senility.

By Ray McGovern and William Binney, February 16, 2018

Russians Spooked by Nukes-Against-Cyber-Attack Policy