UN Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer, and I discussed Julian yesterday – his trials and who he is. Initial reaction was “Good God, I didn’t know that!” We made big dent in the lies and smears of Julian.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWhGfQq_wTQ&feature=youtu.be
Ray was interviewed today on how CIA director-designate William Burns is likely to get along (or not) with torture-apologist-lawyer Avril Haines and Russophobe Victoria Nuland, if they are confirmed — Haines as Director of National Intelligence and Nuland as Under Secretary of State. Also discussed is the unique role Burns will be in position to play, should Biden have the courage to re-enter the Iran nuclear deal that Trump opted out of.
In short interview yesterday, Ray gave succinct answers to questions on the pros and cons of Biden’s nominations of Bill Burns to become CIA Director and Avril Haines to become Director of National Intelligence. Toward the end of the interview, Ray was also asked for his take on what happened at the Capitol on Jan. 6.
By Ray McGovern, Jan. 12, 2021
https://consortiumnews.com/2021/01/12/ray-mcgovern-can-burns-change-the-cia/
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.
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 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/
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.”
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.
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®i_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.