Ray McGovern

By Ray McGovern and William Binney, May 18, 2017

(print edition cum comments section, so far)

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bs-ed-trump-russia-phony-20170517-story.html

Signs of the Times?

 

The Comments

 (Ray is glad he was able to bribe his son-in-law Rick into sounding the one discordant note!)

 

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• miller3987 Newcomer

2 hour(s) ago

Let’s see. Do we have two new writers from Breitbart working for the Sun now? Reads like it; taking a bunch of old Repug talking points, persons to blame other than the accused, and other conspiracy theories. Nothing to see here folks, move along. You won’t learn anything here.

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• portlarge Contributor

3 hour(s) ago

Must be very uncomfortable for these 2 to have their heads buried in all that sand.

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• hancock–j Member

11 hour(s) ago

WOW, our gov’t is corrupt? The CIA uses malware? We’re our own worst enemy? And seriously paranoid? Y’don’t say…

How DID Russia do that, elect Trump, I’d really like to know. And how’s Ed Snowden these days? Anyone?

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• skippy2912 Member

11 hour(s) ago

I suppose these 2 individuals also believe that both 9/11 and Oklahoma City were “inside jobs” too. Gee, I hope and pray that these 2 individuals are not representative and/or indicative of employees and their viewpoints at the CIA and NSA. If things were/are so bad at these 2 agencies, then why did they stay so long at their respective agencies? Was it to collect that fat Government pension? Doesn’t sound like either has any loyalty to the agencies that employed them for so long. Or maybe it’s the same “loyalty” that motivated Edward Snowden?

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• Rick be Newcomer

11 hour(s) ago

Mr McGovern certainly tells it like it is. I am grateful that The Sun printed it.

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• violanteem@hotmail.comNewcomer

11 hour(s) ago

There are questions about Trump that are awaiting answers from the newly appointed independent investigator.However,there is media video that shows Trump is anything but honest.His stories continue to change.His attitude towards women is terrible.He has made attempts to create jobs;but,robotics have taken over wherever possible in industry.We best need our government to offer training in new skills for industry.Perhaps,some type of apprentice positions.Learn while you earn do to speak.Republican health care proposals are awful.Most major medical groups have said this.Instead of wasating crucial funding for a border wall and tax exemptions for the wealthy help our middle class who could soon disappear.Remember,most taxes come from these people.When they are gone,their taxes go with them.

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• newmanji1 Newcomer

12 hour(s) ago

Mssrs McGovern Binney: Do you really expect folks to take this article and y’all seriously when your prose is peppered with qualifiers like “Deep State”, the Russian’s “supposedly” interfering in our election, CIA duplicity to bring down our government, et.al. You folks have been out in the sun too long. The fact is that your darling of a leader, Comrade Trump is an incompetent – in both business and government – and that is a fact. Here’s some advice – look around for another “Dear Leader” to bring about the economic and societal conditions that your article suggests, albeit veiled. Putin comes to mind here.

harrybsun Senior Contributor

1 day(s) ago

Summary: ignore those facts, look at what our imaginations were able to imagine

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• hancock–j Member

in reply to

harrybsun

11 hour(s) ago

Summary: ignore those facts, look at what our imaginations were able to imagine

What facts? How trump removes anyone who can’t clear the air? He really should calm down.

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Lisa Simeone Senior Contributor

1 day(s) ago

Wow. I have long admired Ray McGovern, but this op-ed is looney. Trump taking on the Deep State?? Are you kidding?? Trump doesn’t even know what the Deep State is!

Everything Trump does is for Trump, everyone else be damned.

You’re losing it, Ray. It’s sad to see.

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mishpahabina Newcomer

in reply to

Lisa Simeone

13 hour(s) ago

Wow. I have long admired Ray McGovern, but this op-ed is looney. Trump taking on the Deep State?? Are you kidding?? Trump doesn’t even know what the Deep State is!

EverythingTrump does is for Trump, everyone else be damned.

You’re losing it, Ray. It’s sad to see.

“Losing” it? I’ve seen McGovern’s stuff too. When did he ever have it?

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as of 12 PM, May 18, 2017

 

… and so it goes.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bs-ed-trump-russia-phony-20170517-story.html

This op-ed is so out of sinc with the prevailing winds, that the entire text is included below.  The people of Baltimore will be able to read it tomorrow in print, unless …

Baltimore Sun

Trumped-up claims against Trump

By Ray McGovern and William Binney

May 17, 2017

The Washington establishment rejoiced last week over what seemed to be a windfall “gotcha” moment, as President Donald Trump said he had fired FBI Director James Comey over “this Russia thing, with Trump and Russia.” The president labeled it a “made-up story” and, by all appearances, he is mostly correct.

A few days before his firing, Mr. Comey reportedly had asked for still more resources to hunt the Russian bear. Pundit piranhas swarmed to charge Mr. Trump with trying to thwart the investigation into how the Russians supposedly “interfered” to help him win the election.

But can that commentary bear close scrutiny, or is it the “phony narrative” Senate Republican Whip John Cornyn of Texas claims it to be? Mr. Cornyn has quipped that, if impeding the investigation was Mr. Trump’s aim, “This strikes me as a lousy way to do it. All it does is heighten the attention given to the issue.”

Truth is, President Trump had ample reason to be fed up with Mr. Comey, in part for his lack of enthusiasm to investigate actual, provable crimes related to “Russia-gate” — like leaking information from highly sensitive intercepted communications to precipitate the demise of Trump aide Michael Flynn. Mr. Flynn was caught “red-handed,” so to speak, talking with Russia’s ambassador last December. (In our experience, finding the culprit for that leak should not be very difficult; we suspect Mr. Comey already knows who was responsible.)

In contrast, Mr. Comey evinced strong determination to chase after ties between Russia and the Trump campaign until the cows came home. In the meantime, the investigation (already underway for 10 months) would itself cast doubt on the legitimacy of Mr. Trump’s presidency and put the kibosh on plans to forge a more workable relationship with Russia — a win-win for the establishment and the FBI/CIA/NSA “Deep State”; a lose-lose for the president.

So far, it has been all smoke and mirrors with no chargeable offenses and not a scintilla of convincing evidence of Russian “meddling” in the election. The oft-cited, but evidence-free, CIA/FBI/NSA report of Jan. 6, crafted by “hand-picked” analysts, according to then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, is of a piece with the “high-confidence,” but fraudulent, National Intelligence Estimate 15 years ago about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

But what about “Russia hacking,” the centerpiece of accusations of Kremlin “interference” to help Mr.Trump?

On March 31, 2017, WikiLeaks released original CIA documents — ignored by mainstream media — showing that the agency had created a program allowing it to break into computers and servers and make it look like others did it by leaving telltale signs like Cyrillic markings, for example. The capabilities shown in what WikiLeaks calls the “Vault 7” trove of CIA documents required the creation of hundreds of millions of lines of source code. At $25 per line of code, that amounts to about $2.5 billion for each 100 million code lines. But the Deep State has that kind of money and would probably consider the expenditure a good return on investment for “proving” the Russians hacked.

It is altogether possible that the hacking attributed to Russia was actually one of several “active measures” undertaken by a cabal consisting of the CIA, FBI, NSA and Mr. Clapper — the same agencies responsible for the lame, evidence-free memorandum of Jan. 6.

Mr. Comey displayed considerable discomfort on March 20, explaining to the House Intelligence Committee why the FBI did not insist on getting physical access to the Democratic National Committee computers in order to do its own proper forensics, but chose to rely on the those done by DNC contractor Crowdstrike. Could this be explained by Mr. Comey’s fear that FBI technicians not fully briefed on CIA/NSA/FBI Deep State programs might uncover a lot more than he wanted? Did this play a role in Mr. Trump’s firing of Mr. Comey?

President Trump has entered into a high-stakes gamble in confronting the Deep State and its media allies over the evidence-free accusations of his colluding with Russia. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat, publicly warned him of the risk earlier this year. “You take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you,” Mr. Schumer told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow on Jan. 3.

If Mr. Trump continues to “take on” the Deep State, he will be fighting uphill, whether he’s in the right or not. It is far from certain he will prevail.

Ray McGovern (rrmcgovern@gmail.com) was a CIA analyst for 27 years; he briefed the president’s daily brief one-on-one to President Reagan’s most senior national security officials from 1981-85. William Binney (williambinney0802@comcast.net) worked for NSA for 36 years, retiring in 2001 as the technical director of world military and geopolitical analysis and reporting; he created many of the collection systems still used by NSA.

https://www.rt.com/news/388595-cia-assange-incompetent-spy/

May 16, 2017 (six minutes)

 

The evidence, though circumstantial, seems far more persuasive than the string of “we assess,” “we assess,” and “we assess some more” pronouncements from precincts of the CIA and sister agencies.

 

For his part, Julian Assange was not pleased when CIA spokesperson Heather Fritz Horniak emailed: “Dictators and terrorists have no better friend in the world than Julian Assange.”  Assange responded, saying, “The CIA is the world’s most dangerously incompetent spy agency.”

 

*The full episode of “Going Underground” in which Ray is interviewed will be aired on May 17 at 1 PM EDT.

 

https://www.spreaker.com/user/radiosputnik/anonymous-sources-control-us-narrative-o

May 16, 2017 (Ray’s remarks come between minutes 09:45 & 19:00; and then from 19:48 to 39:00)

 

The Deep State knows “where the bodies are buried,” to use a familiar Washington Establishment and Runyonesque expression.  Will those loyal to Trump be able to find out what has been going on in the CIA/NSA/FBI cabal?  This remains to be seen.  Does CIA Director Pompeo see loyalty to Trump as primary; that is, does it trump (no pun intended) his loyalty to, and fear of, the Deep State?  If so, can Pompeo himself be sabotaged by the cabal?

 

Ray speculates that the current no-holds-barred campaign to blacken Trump as Putin’s puppet may be, in some degree, a pre-emptive move by the Deep State-cum-media to damage the President beyond repair – to deprive him of all credibility, on the chance he learns some of the gory details (on the leaks, for example) and decides to tell the American people what he is up against.  Would the media report it – or spin it?

May 13, 2017

The ‘Soft Coup’ of Russia-gate

In a radio interview, Ray raised this question and adduced evidence – including a remark by President Trump yesterday – that leads Ray to believe that this may actually be the case.

http://www.spreaker.com/user/radiosputnik/trump-fbi-cia-whos-running-the-show-afte

May 11, 2017 (16 minutes; Ray’s segment starts at minute 1:10.)

 

So Why Did President Trump Fire FBI Director Comey?  Ray suggests that someone showed Trump convincing evidence that Comey was part of a “Deep-State” CIA-NSA-FBI cabal responsible for concocting red-herring “proof” that “Russian interference” gave the presidency to Donald Trump.  The media and politicians now speak of “Russian hacking” as though it were flat fact, but no credible evidence has been adduced.

 

Ray draws on documentary evidence – suppressed in the corporate media – suggesting that the most likely “Russian hacker” was John Brennan, together with his cyber warriors, who are distinguished on offense – on defense against folks like Julian Assange, not so much.

 

It is an acute embarrassment to the CIA-NSA-FBI cyber folks that WikiLeaks obtained and published a treasure trove of original CIA documents depicting in detail CIA’s highly sophisticated cyber capabilities.  These enable hacking into computers like – oh, say, those at the DNC.  And the capabilities include technology that makes it virtually impossible to detect the real culprit (“obfuscate” is the term of art used in the documents).  And the computer geeks can insert “telltale signs” in languages like – oh, I don’t know — like, say, Cyrillic.

 

The mainstream media have generally succeeded in keeping Americans in the dark in these delicate matters.  But occasionally they include a clue that can give the game away to the careful reader.

 

For example, on page 1 of today’s (Friday) New York Times Michael S. Schmidt lifts the veil an inch – but only to the intrepid reader with the stomach to: (1) read through the turgid prose of an article titled “In a Private Dinner, Trump Demanded Loyalty. Comey Demurred;” and (2) notice the following short paragraph (the 24^th of 24) buried on an inside page.  There, some spoilsport appended a quote from Trump Thursday, that gives support to Ray’s take on the real reason Trump dumped Comey.  Here is Michael S. Schmidt’s last paragraph:

 

“’In fact, when I decided to just do it [fire Comey], I said to myself, I said, you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story,’ Mr. Trump said.”

 

Look for more “made-up stories” to “corroborate” that Trump is in Putin’s pocket.

May 8, 2017 (11 minutes; Ray’s segment begins at 3:30)

Evincing the worst of McCarthy-ite tactics, the subcommittee heard from no one in Flynn’s defense, although he has long since agreed to testify about his dealings with Russian officials.  Monday’s hearing made graphically clear why Flynn’s lawyer has insisted that Flynn request immunity, as is normal amid such politically driven hysteria.  On occasion, the witnesses themselves – former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates and former National Intelligence Director James Clapper – seemed a bit nonplussed watching the witch-hunt from their front-row seats.

The prize for the best Joe McCarthy impersonation goes to Sen. Al Franken, who seemed to have a flashback to Saturday Night Live, where he knew what he was doing – and was funny.  This act was not funny.  Worse still, this kangaroo court lacked anyone like U.S. Army Chief Counsel Joseph Welch, who had enough courage to confront Sen. McCarthy with the memorable words: “At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”  The whole hearing was shameful.

Media Reaction

As usual, Robert Parry of Consortiumnews.com was first off the blocks Monday with a commentary putting things in perspective: “Turning Gen. Flynn Into Road Kill,”

Turning Gen. Flynn into Road Kill

By accident, Ray watched a replay of Monday’s PBS News Hour with former Assistant Attorney General John Carlin and other pundits ponderously pondering the profundity of it all.  Readers with the stomach for it can find that link for themselves.

Et Tu, Amy?

What is the difference between PBS’s Judy Woodruff and Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman?  On the Russian Scare, very little.  Sadly, as this morning’s program reaffirms, they have both been infected with the HWHW (Hillary Would Have Won) virus, buying into Mrs. Clinton’s excuse for losing – Russian interference in the election – without a shred of plausible proof.

With Amy and Juan Gonzales so excellent on domestic affairs (Standing Rock, for example), Ray still recommends to students that they tune in to Democracy Now!  But he now appends the caveat that DM has drunk the Kool Aid on foreign policy – whether fostering the HWHW/Russia Scare or parroting transparently dishonest reports regarding Syria and what is really going on there.  It is very sad to see.

Goodman is on a Democracy Now! 2017 Speaking Tour, “Covering the Movements Changing America.”  Someone should ask her to expound on why she has joined the media movement dumbing down Americans on foreign policy.

Here’s Stephen Colbert’s take on this macabre set of circumstances:

https://news.grabien.com/story-colbert-we-now-live-world-where-laughing-jeff-sessions-feder

May 5, 2017 (two minutes)

 

Would you have been able to suppress a laugh, when Session’s colleague, Sen. Richard Shelby (R, Alabama) intoned: “Jeff Sessions extensive record of treating all Americans as equal under the law is clear and documented?”  Fairooz said, “I just couldn’t hold it in: it was spontaneous. It was an immediate rejection of what I considered an outright lie or pure ignorance.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/03/us/code-pink-sessions-laughter-trial.html?_r=0

 

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Meanwhile, back in Syracuse, NY, Ray must appear in court with 11 others of the “Jerry Berrigan Brigade” this Wednesday.  There is more on the “Jerry Berrigan Brigade” on http://upstatedroneaction.org/.  Look for the thin wood larger-than-life-size cutouts behind which they stood to block entry to the killing studios.

 

The people of the State of New York have charged them with “obstructing the administration of government, trespass, and disorderly conduct” for their witness at Hancock drone base on January 28, 2016.

 

Hopefully, no one in court will say anything to provoke reflex laughing from any of the above “perps.”

 

As for the Good Friday witness last month, the people of the State of New York have not yet formally charged Ray and eight colleagues who were arrested at Hancock on April 14.  But these perps have been summoned to appear in court this Tuesday and Wednesday to answer for “trespass and disorderly conduct” for their non-violent action on Good Friday.

 

Here is a link to an edited (8-minute) video of the Good Friday witness against drone killing:

 

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The actions of the Upstate Coalition and other witnesses against killing by drone have recently generated some instructive publicity.  Below, courtesy of Judith Bello of Upstate Drone Action, are links to two articles that highlight what is happening in Upstate New York; what town leaders, eager to host their bases, do and why; and the national import of those bases and the resistance work to expose the illegal killing.

 

Author/activist Norman Solomon recently interviewed anti-drone-killing activists in Syracuse and spent some time near Hancock drone base.  He wrote: Finding New Homes for Lethal Drones.  Sam Husseini of the Institute for Public Accuracy has spread the word nationally describing the witness actions in Syracuse and elsewhere. Intrigued by the fact that – for many of those who witness – such actions, in their inspiration and presentation, spring from deeply Christian roots, Sam wrote: Beyond Being Drones.

 

https://soundcloud.com/user-918579032/escalation-of-tensions-in-syria-one-month-after-the-chemical-attack-in-khan-sheikhoun

April 28, 2017; Ray’s segment goes from minute 6:40 to 29:25

 

While Winnipeg radio is not quite U.S. “mainstream media,” Ray was happy to have the chance to try to put it all together on air.

April 28, 27 minutes

 

Sam Husseini of ExposeFacts (a project of the Institute for Public Accuracy) moderated the press conference, which was followed by a march in support of Julian Assange.  Loud and clear messages wafted up to the windows behind which Attorney General Jeff Sessions has been planning and enforcing his peculiar brand of “justice.”

 

Yesterday’s press advisory for the event was posted below at:

http://raymcgovern.com/2017/04/27/tomorrow-news-conference-at-department-of-justice-on-threats-to-wikileaks-julian-assange-by-attorney-general-jeff-sessions/

It turned out Jesselyn Raddack was unable to attend.