Exposing War Crimes

By Ray McGovern

In a Jan. 8 opinion piece for The New York Times, former NYT reporter Hedrick Smith included what amounts to a eulogy for his former colleague, the late Neil Sheehan to whom Dan Ellsberg turned to get the Pentagon Papers published. ( See:  https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/08/opinion/neil-sheehan-pentagon-papers-vietnam.html?action=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article ). Hedrick Smith helped assemble and comment on the NYT reporting on what Ellsberg had given to Sheehan — for which they shared a Pulitzer Prize.

They should name The NY Times building after Neil Sheehan, for it was the best of Times, so to speak, for the Gray Lady.

More relevant today is this fact: Neil Sheehan is to Daniel Ellsberg as Julian Assange is to Chelsea Manning.  Ellsberg and Manning each needed some way to reveal U.S. war crimes (See, for example, https://daserste.ndr.de/panorama/archiv/2019/Shooters-walk-free-whistleblower-jailed,panor165.html .)

Here is how Hedrick Smith describes Sheehan’s (and his own) shock at reading what Ellsberg provided:

“But it was also a shock, a palpable body blow to open up documents day after day after day and see how often, how easily, how callously high government officials, civilian as well as military, had lied to or grievously deceived Congress, the media and the American public, and how, even as reporters wary of governmental deception, we had often understated reality. “With a sense of vindication, his sharp brown eyes bursting in anger and amazement, Neil would almost lunge at me as he charged bitterly: “Rick, these bastards in government have been lying to the American people for years and years and years, lying about a war and policies that they knew weren’t working and that they knew the American people would never stomach if they were told the truth. And now we’ve got the goods on them, in their own words, in their own documents. They can’t deny the truth any longer. The American people have a right to know the truth now. They have paid for this truth with blood and treasure, tens of thousands of lives lost and all that the money wasted when it could have been doing good in our own country.” [Emphasis added.]

Smith continues: “It was that powerful passion, that profound moral fervor about the people’s right to know the truth, however ugly, however awful, that marked Neil Sheehan as a unique reporter — and that made him uniquely able and morally empowered to tell the most compelling and important story of the Vietnam era.”

And so it was with Daniel Ellsberg and Neil Sheehan — but not, I am sorry to admit, with me.

In mid-1967, I knew the truth about how Gen. William Westmoreland was lying through his teeth.  My colleague CIA analyst Sam Adams told me that in a cable dated Aug. 20, 1967, Westmoreland’s deputy, Gen. Creighton Abrams, set forth the rationale for the deception. Abrams wrote that the new, higher numbers (reflecting Sam’s count, which was supported by all intelligence agencies except Army intelligence, which reflected the “command position”) “were in sharp contrast to the current overall strength figure of about 299,000 given to the press.”  Sam’s count was double that; he was proven right just five months later when the Viet Cong attacked en masse. Virtually every city, town, and village in South Vietnam (not to mention the U.S. embassy is Saigon, as well).

Abrams emphasized, “We have been projecting an image of success over recent months” and cautioned that if the higher figures became public, “all available caveats and explanations will not prevent the press from drawing an erroneous and gloomy conclusion.” [Emphasis added.]

To read more on this, see my apologia “Truth and Lives vs. Career and Fame at:  https://consortiumnews.com/2017/08/20/truth-and-lives-vs-career-and-fame/

It was Julian Assange who devised a way that fearful analysts like me could get the truth out with verifiable documents — with the push of a computer key — no carbon paper, no mimeograph, no thermofax, no Xerox machine needed. Not to mention the reasonable prospect that a leaker could escape detention, while doing a courageous, patriotic, dangerous act.

Were WikiLeaks available in 1968, I think I might have summoned the courage to take advantage of the immediacy and anonymity it provides.  Easy to say in retrospect, but I believe I would have tried to obtain a copy of that damning cable from Gen. Abrams and given it to WikiLeaks.  The war dragged on for seven more years.

And so it is with those who could have blown the whistle on U.S. government ineptitude before the attacks of 9/11.  (See the LA Times:  WikiLeaks and 9/11: What if?  http://articles.latimes.com/2010/oct/15/opinion/la-oe-rowley-wikileaks-20101015 .)

So they come after Julian Assange, as they tried to prosecute Dan Ellsberg, charging them under a century-old, probably unconstitutional “Espionage Act”.  Enough said.

Bomb Iran? What’s to Lose?

When Trump moves out of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave on or before the 20th, he’ll want to go somewhere safe. If I were he, I’d head for Israel where he might be able to escape justice and Interpol. Netanyahu is likely to exact a price, however, as in, “If you attack Iran, you are welcome forever – your family too…”

Beware of a false flag casus belli to justify such an attack, as I warned in
https://consortiumnews.com/2019/05/15/pretexts-for-an-attack-on-iran/

Today’s Inauspicious Anniversary

Today marks the 8 month anniversary of the New York Times hiding the proof that Russians didn’t “hack” the DNC emails:
https://intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/sh21.pdf

Representative Schiff proves even better at hide-and-go-seek. He sat on CrowdStrike’s December 5, 2017 testimony until forced to publish on May 7, 2020. 
https://consortiumnews.com/2020/05/09/ray-mcgovern-new-house-documents-sow-further-doubt-that-russia-hacked-the-dnc/

Sanger Typical of Pundits Singing From Gov’t Songsheet

On the radio today (audio below), I critiqued NYT journalist/mercenary David Sanger for (a) his flagrant flat-facting of WMD into Iraq (2002-2005) and (b) his drivel on Russia “hacking” (2016-____). At the end, I included a comment from a despairing reader suggesting that, “God, too, is in on the Russia-gate scam.”

Jan 5, 2021

Julian Assange Will Walk Wednesday We Hope

Max Blumenthal, Eric Sirotkin, and I dissect Queen of Hearts Judge Baraitser’s surprise ruling.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HGsIumntfs&feature=youtu.be

13 min was just enough time to flesh out my earlier tweet on why US gave Baraitser new instructions.

NYT Still Stoking Alarm At “Russian Hacking”

By Ray McGovern

Forget what Vice President Pence has suggested he might do this week regarding counting the votes for president and forget President Trump’s ominous military buildup near Iran, the Sunday NY Times two-column, above-the-fold lede tells us what we should really be worried about: “Scope of Russian Hacking Far Exceeds Initial Fears”.  The on-line title was “As Understanding of Russian Hacking Grows, So Does Alarm”.  (See: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/02/us/politics/russian-hacking-government.html?campaign_id=2&emc=edit_th_20210103&instance_id=25598&nl=todaysheadlines&regi_id=69540701&segment_id=48247&user_id=e69a6cb2bbba5cd47ffe27ec9fb45fbe .)

Forget, too, that this latest NYT indictment of Russia, does not substantially advance the story beyond the information available two weeks ago, when “neither the actor, nor the motive, nor the damage done [was] known for certain in this latest scare story”.  (See:  https://consortiumnews.com/2020/12/19/a-pandemic-of-russian-hacking/ .)

Although no evidence is adduced to show that Russia is behind this latest flurry of hacking, Russia no doubt sits toward the top of a long list of suspects.  The Times ominously quotes Suzanne Spaulding, a senior cyber official during the Obama administration, saying, in effect, Russia is the foregone conclusion:

“We still don’t know what Russia’s strategic objectives were,” she said, ”but we should be concerned that part of this may go beyond reconnaissance. Their goal may be to put themselves in a position to have leverage over the new administration, like holding a gun to our head to deter us from acting to counter Putin.”

The Sanger Sewing Machine

NYT Chief Washington Correspondent David Sanger is listed first on the byline for Sunday’s story together with Nicole Perlroth and Julian Barnes. That should give us a clue, given Sanger’s record of sewing things out of whole cloth. In a word, Sanger enjoys an unenviably checkered record for reliability. Until we are shown more in the way of evidence attributing the recently discovered hacking to the Russians, we would do well to review his record.

Sanger’s reporting on Iraq before the war was as wrong as it was consequential.  Those who were alert at the time may remember that Sanger was second only to Judith Miller in spreading the party line on the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. 

Seldom do historians obtain documentary evidence of plans for a war of aggression, but on May 1, 2005 the London Times published a leaked paper (now known as the “Downing Street Minutes”) that recorded what Sir Richard Dearlove, head of MI6 (the UK counterpart to the CIA), relayed to Prime Minister Tony Blair on July 23, 2002 about what he was told by George Tenet at CIA headquarters on July 20, 2002. (No one has challenged the authenticity of the minutes.)

“C (Dearlove) reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. … There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.” [Emphasis added.]

With David Sanger and his colleague Judith Miller having cried wolf on WMD so many times over the prior two years, the Times decided it would be best to suppress the embarrassing revelation that the “intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy”. So the Times ignored it for more than six weeks; then Sanger wrote an article to put the whole thing in perspective, so to speak.

The title of Sanger’s June 13, 2005 article was “Postwar British Memo Says War Decision Wasn’t Made” [Emphasis added.].  Those looking for a measure of Sanger’s credibility could do no better than read this masterpiece of deceptive circumlocution. (See:  https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/13/politics/prewar-british-memo-says-war-decision-wasnt-made.html ) Here’s the lead paragraph:

WASHINGTON, June 12 – A memorandum written by Prime Minister Tony Blair’s cabinet office in late July 2002 explicitly states that the Bush administration had made “no political decisions” to invade Iraq, but that American military planning for the possibility was advanced. …”

And those asking how Sanger could write that with a straight face need only to read the Downing Street Minutes, which are quite succinct and embarrassingly clear: ( See: https://www.timothyhorrigan.com/documents/downingstreetmemotext.html )

One could almost sympathize with Sanger, who had co-authoried a piece with Thom Shanker on July 29, 2002 in which WMD were flat-facted into Iraq no fewer than seven times. See: “U.S. Exploring Baghdad Strike As Iraq Option of July 29, 2002” ( https://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/29/world/us-exploring-baghdad-strike-as-iraq-option.html .) That was about a week after CIA Director Tenet had briefed Dearlove on the fixing of the intelligence and the facts. It is a safe bet that Sanger’s sources in the intelligence community briefed him on what line to take on those (non-existent) WMD.

Years Later Still Drinking at the Government Trough

On July 26, 2016, Candidate Clinton reportedly approved a “blame-Russia” plan. According to a letter from Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe to Sen. Lindsey Graham on Sept. 29, 2020, CIA Director John Brennan briefed President Obama on “Russian intelligence analysis” regarding “alleged approval by Hillary Clinton of a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisors to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services”.  (See:  (https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/09-29-20_Letter%20to%20Sen.%20Graham_Declassification%20of%20FBI’s%20Crossfire%20Hurricane%20Investigations_20-00912_U_SIGNED-FINAL.pdf .)

The Russian intelligence analysis report was deemed important enough that on Sept. 7, 2016, U.S. intelligence officials forwarded an “investigative referral” to FBI Director James Comey and Deputy Assistant Director of Counterintelligence Peter Strzok regarding it. (Such a referral usually indicates that a leak has occurred about a particularly sensitive issue or program. Thus, it is possible that the putative leaker wished to get the information out into the open.)

But it is one thing to leak, quite another to get an Establishment journalist to write about it without checking beforehand with the intelligence community for a nihil obstat. There has been no additional reporting about the “investigative referral”.  But if it was about a leak, the information never saw the light of day at the time.

July 26, 2016: The exact date timing may be coincidence, but on the same day Mrs. Clinton was alleged to have given the go-ahead for Russia-gate, Sanger co-authored an article with Eric Schmitt titled: “Spy Agency Consensus Grows That Russia Hacked D.N.C.” (See:  https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/27/us/politics/spy-agency-consensus-grows-that-russia-hacked-dnc.html .):

“WASHINGTON American intelligence agencies have told the White House they now have ‘high confidence’ that the Russian government was behind the theft of emails and documents from the Democratic National Committee, according to federal officials who have been briefed on the evidence.”

There is much more that can be said about Sanger’s reporting on very consequential issues.  On Iran, for example, taking Sanger’s reporting at face value, one would think he never read the National Intelligence Estimate that helped prevent the war on Iran planned by Cheney/Bush for 2008.  I refer to the November 2007 NIE the unanimous, “high-confidence” key judgment of which was that Iran had stopped working on a nuclear weapon at the end of 2003 and had not resumed such work.  That key judgment stands, but you would never know that from Sanger’s reporting.

Caveat emptor.  Let buyers and readers beware of chief Washington correspondents pushing deceptive, consequential drivel from anonymous “intelligence officials”. Perform due diligence; take time to look at the record of the sellers.

What I Learned Last Year

By Ray McGovern

— That Bill Casey, Reagan’s CIA Director, has largely succeeded in the objective he set forth at a cabinet meeting in Feb. 1981:
“We’ll know when our disinformation program is complete, when everything the American public believes is false.”

— The media is the cornerstone of the MICIMATT (Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-MEDIA-Academia-Think-Tank) complex. Wall Street and Silicon Valley, of course, fit under that rubric — as does what has become of the Democratic (as well as the Republican) Party.

— “Trump Derangement Syndrome” also plays a significant role. The understanding accorded a broken clock — which is correct two times a day — is withheld from anything liar-in-chief Trump says. Accordingly, if he is correct in saying that he was spied upon, and that Russia-gate was a fraud (as Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity has proved), well, the very suggestion that Trump might be telling the truth — if only twice a day — is anathema. (Many are astute enough to realize that this has to do with politics, not truth.)

— The most “progressive” of analysts/editors can feign an inability to understand how the deep expertise of former NSA Technical Directors and other senior NSA analysts, the revelations of Edward Snowden, and the application of the very principles of physics allowed VIPS to prove, as with a theorem, that the DNC emails were leaked, not hacked — QED. That was more than four years ago: (See: https://consortiumnews.com/2016/12/12/us-intel-vets-dispute-russia-hacking-claims/ .)

— Nevertheless, Adam Schiff, Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, was able to hide the fact that there was no, repeat no, technical evidence that the Russians — or anyone else — hacked those DNC emails that were so embarrassing to the Clinton campaign. The head of CrowdStrike, Shawn Henry, testified to that under oath on Dec. 5, 2017; Schiff did not release his testimony until May 7, 2020, when he was forced to by the Director of National Intelligence. The NY Times has suppressed Henry’s testimony since May 7. What does that tell you? (See: https://consortiumnews.com/2020/05/09/ray-mcgovern-new-house-documents-sow-further-doubt-that-russia-hacked-the-dnc/ .)

— Simply stated: Russia-gate is too big to fail. The media, the sine qua non for the MICIMATT to succeed, rule the roost. To suggest that Establishment media and politicians are being flat-out dishonest on the “threat” and the frequent “attacks” from Russia is to put yourself, ipso facto, in “Putin’s pocket”. This is dangerous.

— The possible extradition of Julian Assange poses an extremely serious threat to the freedom of the press enshrined in the first amendment, but the corporate media do not give a rat’s patootie. As long as today’s journalists/stenographers keep feeding from the trough of the Security State, and criticize those who don’t as “conspiracy theorists”, they will continue to live high on the hog.

These thoughts, including Casey’s braggadocio, were brought into bas relief yesterday, as I read “Letters from an American”, the blog of Professor Heather Cox Richardson (See:
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/december-30-2020/comments#comment-957134 ). I wrote the following”

Professor Richardson writes:
“… Trump was eager enough to make sure a Democrat didn’t win that, according to American intelligence services, he was willing to accept the help of Russian operatives. They, in turn, influenced the election through the manipulation of new social media, amplified by what had become by then a Republican echo chamber in which Democrats were dangerous socialists and the Democratic candidate, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, was a criminal….”

This is the prevailing narrative but it is seriously mistaken. The trust placed in “American intelligence services” by Establishment media and academe is stunningly misplaced. It seems nothing was learned from their noxious collaboration in adducing pre-Iraq-war “intelligence” that was “uncorroborated, contradicted, or even nonexistent” (Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Jay Rockefeller, describing the bipartisan results of a five-year investigation). And, speaking of “non-existent”, the evidence for what Richardson writes about Russia-gate is equally “uncorroborated, contradicted, or even nonexistent”. It is, to put it politely, male bovine excrement consumed by the likes of NYT’s David Sanger (of WMD fame) and spit onto the pages of a paper that once bragged about publishing all the news that’s fit to print.

Here’s a small case study:

We no longer have to rely on what David Sanger is fed by “the American intelligence services” to figure out how blaming Russia got its big push. To experienced observers, what was happening was clear enough way back on the first day of the Democratic Party convention and the day that followed.

— July 25, 2016: writer/journalist Patrick Lawrence wrote this:
“How the DNC fabricated a Russian hacker conspiracy to deflect blame for its email scandal,” https://www.salon.com/2016/07/25/shades_of_the_cold_war_how_the_dnc_fabricated_a_russian_hacker_conspiracy_to_deflect_blame_for_its_email_scandal/ (For more on this, see: https://raymcgovern.com/2020/09/30/uh-oh-was-hrc-behind-the-russian-dnc-hack-canard/ )

— July 26, 2016: This day saw the “alleged approval by Hillary Clinton of a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisors to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services”, according to a letter from Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe to Sen. Lindsey Graham on Sept. 29, 2020. (https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/09-29-20_Letter%20to%20Sen.%20Graham_Declassification%20of%20FBI’s%20Crossfire%20Hurricane%20Investigations_20-00912_U_SIGNED-FINAL.pdf .)


In his letter Radcliffe indicates that, according to then-CIA Director John Brennan’s handwritten notes, Brennan briefed President Obama and other senior officials on this information, which came from “Russian intelligence analysis”. The Russian analysis was deemed serious enough that on Sept. 7, 2016, U.S. intelligence officials forwarded an investigative referral to FBI Director James Comey and Deputy Assistant Director of Counterintelligence Peter Strzok regarding “U.S. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s approval of a plan concerning U.S. Presidential candidate Donald Trump and Russian hackers hampering U.S. elections as a means of distracting the public from her use of a private mail server.” James Comey testified on Oct. 30, 2020 that this does not “ring a bell”.
(https://consortiumnews.com/2020/10/05/ray-mcgovern-comeys-amnesia-
makes-senate-session-an-unforgettable-hop-skip-jump-to-fraud/ )

— July 26, 2016: David Sanger, the NYT’s Chief Washington Correspondent, shows that he “got the Memo”. Sanger co-authors an article with Eric Schmitt titled: “Spy Agency Consensus Grows That Russia Hacked D.N.C.”
(See: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/27/us/politics/spy-agency-consensus-grows-that-russia-hacked-dnc.html .)
“WASHINGTON — American intelligence agencies have told the White House they now have ‘high confidence’ that the Russian government was behind the theft of emails and documents from the Democratic National Committee, according to federal officials who have been briefed on the evidence.”

About Sanger: those who were alert before the Iraq war may remember that David Sanger was second only to Judith Miller in spreading the party line on the existence of WMD in Iraq.  For example, Sanger apparently “got the Memo” from his intelligence leakers shortly after July 20, 2002, when then-CIA Director George Tenet told his British counterpart that “Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. …” (https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-secret-downing-street-memo-xh9h29xhqzr )

Lapping up “intelligence” from sources in the intelligence community nine days later, Sanger’s sewing machine went into full swing weaving WMD out of whole cloth.  With co-author Thom Shanker, Sanger flat-facted WMD into Iraq no fewer than seven times in “U.S. Exploring Baghdad Strike As Iraq Option on July 29, 2002”, of July 29, 2020 (http://nytimes.com/2002/07/29/world/us-exploring-baghdad-strike-as-iraq-option.html ).

Fast forward to 2016: In my view, Trump won in 2016 mostly because too many Americans saw Mrs. Clinton as a deeply flawed candidate.  Perhaps enough voters saw through the “Russia-hacked” diversion and actually read some of the DNC emails showing how Bernie was cheated out of the nomination — maybe enough disenchanted Bernie supporters to make a difference and give clown Trump the edge in key states.  Attentive voters (who read more than the Establishment media) could also see that Clinton was let off the hook by the same Security State seniors who did their best to sabotage Trump as candidate (and then succeeded in emasculating him as president).  But you will not read about this in what has become of the New York Times regurgitating leaks from “American intelligence services”.

Empathy

I’m trying to understand.  I am from New York City, was educated there, and I remember how much trust most of us put in the NY Times several decades ago. Most of my well educated friends still believe it publishes all the news that’s fit to print — and that if it’s not in the Times it didn’t happen and cannot be true.  And Trump Derangement Syndrome makes it virtually impossible for them to believe that anything Trump has claimed — like Russia-gate being a hoax — could possibly be true.

In addition, I am aware that my intelligence veteran friends and I enjoy the freedom of not having to teach, administer and mark exams, and navigate university bureaucracies.  I appreciate that, truly, just as I did during the many years I spent as a CIA analyst.

But still.  Well, let me put it this way: What are we Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity and the work we have painstakingly put forward on these neuralgic issues? Chopped liver?

I close with Voltaire and John Adams:

“If you want to know who controls you, look at who you are not allowed to criticize.”  Voltaire

“Be not intimidated… nor suffer yourselves to be wheedled out of your liberties by any pretense of politeness, delicacy, or decency. These, as they are often used, are but three different names for hypocrisy, chicanery and cowardice.” John Adams

Why Russia Must Be Demonized

By Ray McGovern

Yesterday I had a chance to devote the first 7 minutes of an interview to explaining why the MICIMATT (including Wall St., Silicon Valley, & the Democratic Party) have all joined together to portray Russia (and now also China) as the enemies it desperately needs in order to “justify” spending more than half of the discretionary budget on “defense”. It is necessary, of course, to be able to “explain” — defense against what?

Ray on Critical Hour 12/29/2020

Is there any hope that Biden will extend an olive branch to President Putin? He could, but — unlike Trump — he knows quite well that the war machine would eat him alive.  Should a U.S. president wish to reduce tensions and make war less likely, that president must be able to move adroitly, step-by-step, sometimes in secret — as President Kennedy demonstrated. And look what happened to him.

I believe all successor presidents are quite aware of what happened to JFK, and why.  (The best book on this is James Douglass’s “JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters”.)

The Security State (SS), with the FBI, CIA, & NSA in the lead, has just won big, even as the danger of exposure seemed to loom large.  ( See: https://original.antiwar.com/mcgovern/2020/12/04/barr-kicks-durham-can-down-the-street/  and https://www.opednews.com/articles/1/FBI-Another-Fraud-on-the-by-Ray-McGovern-Assange_Fraud_Media_Russia-201230-938.html .)

The SS functions as enforcer for the MICIMATT (Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think-Tank) complex.  Improved ties with Russia are to be thwarted at all, repeat all, costs.

If extending genuine olive branches is out of the question, will Biden, during his proverbial “honeymoon period”, at least be able to extend the New START treaty limiting strategic arms?  Will even this small step be thwarted, lest it lead to a step-by-step relaxation in U.S.-Russia tensions?  The treaty expires on Feb. 5, 2021, so we’re likely to know soon enough.

In the full (13 min) interview I gave yesterday, I had time to do a short tutorial, citing a number of not well known “flat facts” — very unlike those to be found on the pages of the the Washington Post.