Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov Says Schwarzenneger ‘Trust Me’ More Trustworthy than Pompeo’s

Russ ForMin Lavrov spoofs Pompeo claim there is “substantial chance senior Russian officials” behind Navalny illness https://www.state.gov/secretary-michael-r-pompeo-with-ben-shapiro-of-the-ben-shapiro-show-5/

Lavrov: “You’re better off believing ‘trust me’ from Schwarzenegger than from those saying it on world stage.” https://www.mid.ru/ru/foreign_policy/news/-/asset_publisher/cKNonkJE02Bw/content/id/4332611

Remembering the Last Candid NYT Report on Israel — 7 Yrs Ago

By Ray McGovern, Sept. 6, 2020

On September 6, 2013, with President Obama under considerable pressure to launch an open attack on Syria (in ostensible “response” to what turned out to be a false-flag chemical attack), an honest report from Jerusalem slipped by the NYT censors and crept onto the front page.

The headline of the feature article was “Israel Backs Limited Strike Against Syria.”  (See: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/06/world/middleeast/israel-backs-limited-strike-against-syria.html?pagewanted=all ) provoked little more than a yawn.  But those readers who read down the lead column, and were familiar with NYT coverage of Israel, were in for a shock.

That the Times would print a candid account of Israel’s motivation and objectives in Syria was a never-before-and-never-since shocker.  (My guess is that the report would never have seen the light of day, had not the NYT muckety-mucks been lingering in Hamptons recovering from Labor Day martinis.)

Preferred: “No Outcome”

With still more dogs of prolonged war about to let slip out of the kennel, Jodi Rudoren, the NYT Jerusalem Bureau Chief — to her credit — sought informed views on Israel’s objectives for Syria. Rudoren got unusually candid responses from senior Israeli officials, when she asked them about Israel’s preferred outcome in Syria. Rudoren minced few words in reporting Israel’s view that the best outcome for Syria’s civil war was “no outcome”.

She wrote:

“For Jerusalem, the status quo, horrific as it may be from a humanitarian perspective, seems preferable to either a victory by Mr. Assad’s government and his Iranian backers or a strengthening of rebel groups, increasingly dominated by Sunni jihadis.

“‘This is a playoff situation in which you need both teams to lose, but at least you don’t want one to win — we’ll settle for a tie,’ said Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli consul general in New York. ‘Let them both bleed, hemorrhage to death: that’s the strategic thinking here. As long as this lingers, there’s no real threat from Syria.’”

Obama Proud of Resisting “Playbook” Response

Three years later Obama told journalist Jeffrey Goldberg how proud he was at having faced down strong pressure from virtually all his advisors to launch cruise missiles on Syria in Sept. 2013. Obama waxed eloquent that he had for once not adhered to what he derisively called the “Washington Playbook” (in this context, read “U.S.-Israeli Playbook”). Instead, he chose to take advantage of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s offer to get the Syrians to surrender their chemical weapons for destruction, verified by the U.N., aboard a U.S. ship configured for such destruction.

And so it came to pass that the neocons did not get their wider war on Syria.  Actually, I had a brief up-front seat observing their outrage on the evening of Sept. 9, 2013.  ( See: “How War on Syria Lost Its Way, https://consortiumnews.com/2013/09/14/how-war-on-syria-lost-its-way/ ); for my encounter with Paul Wolfowitz and Joe Lieberman, scroll down to subhead: “Morose at CNN”.

The neocons became even more unsettled when the NY Times ran an op-ed by President Putin on Sept. 11, 2013, which Putin ended on a positive note regarding bilateral cooperation. “My working and personal relationship with President Obama is marked by growing trust”, he wrote.  ( See: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/12/opinion/putin-plea-for-caution-from-russia-on-syria.html )

Getting Even

It took the neocons only six months to get even with Putin for pulling Obama’s chestnuts out of the fire on the issue of Syrian chemical weapons. The neocons orchestrated a coup in Ukraine on Feb. 22, 2014, the fallout from which destroyed any prospect for improvement in U.S.- Russian relations and set them on the decline to the nadir at which they now sit.

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. During his 27-year career as a CIA analyst, he led the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch, and prepared the President’s Daily Brief for presidents Nixon, Ford, and Reagan.  He is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

The Sanger and Schiff Who Cried Wolf

“The Russians are coming” again, according to NYT David Sanger:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/30/us/politics/2020-election-security-briefings.html

The Russians are “aggravating tensions in our cities,” according to Adam Schiff:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/adam-schiff-trumps-willfully-fanning-the-flames-of-violence-in-cities

How are we to believe them after they lied about the “Russian hacking” of the DNC emails?
https://raymcgovern.com/2020/08/21/no-forensic-evidence-russia-hacked-dnc-emails/

Tilting With Windmills

A Stillborn Letter to the NYT, from Ray

Since he has been so critical of the NY Times, Ray thought, in all fairness, he would give the Times a chance to fess up on how the Gray Lady has become a woman of easy virtue when it comes to Russia-gate.  Ray took some pain to adhere to the required NYT rubrics and was careful to keep the word count down below the limit; he also tried to be respectful — gentle, even.  But, alas, his letter (text follows) did not appear.  It has now been 110 days since it was revealed that Crowdstrike fessed up in December 2017.

August 16, 2020
To the Editor:
Re “Ex-F.B.I. Lawyer Expected to Plead Guilty in Review of Russia Inquiry” (Aug 15, p. A16)
(https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/14/us/politics/kevin-clinesmith-durham-investigation.html)

Reporting on the false data given the surveillance court, Adam Goldman notes that US Attorney John Durham “has also been examining the intelligence community’s most explosive conclusion … that President Vladimir V. Putin intervened to benefit Mr. Trump.”

That “most explosive conclusion” is a dud. Its propellant was an “assessment”, sans evidence, that Russia hacked the DNC emails. That was defused by horse’s-mouth-type congressional testimony by Shawn Henry, president of the cyber firm CrowdStrike. Asked by Rep. Adam Schiff on Dec. 5, 2017 for “the date on which the Russians exfiltrated the data”, Mr. Henry admitted, “We just don’t have the evidence that says it actually left.”

The FBI let CrowdStrike do the forensics on what was being called an “act of war”. Ex-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper was still claiming in Nov. 2018, “The forensic evidence was overwhelming about what the Russians had done.”

Mr. Schiff kept Mr. Henry’s testimony secret until May 7, 2020 — 100 days ago.

Ray McGovern
Raleigh, NC
Chief, CIA’s Soviet Analysis Branch (1970s)
Morning briefer of the President’s Daily Brief (1981-1985)

What Cardinal Dolan Should Say at the RNC

By Ray McGovern

What Dolan chooses to focus on will be quite telling.  I am hoping that at least some of what he says reflects some of the cardinal tenets of Catholic social teaching.

As a Cardinal, that is, a “Prince of the Church” I am the first to acknowledge that I lack the ascetic appearance of a prophet.  Nor do I claim to be one. I do wish, though, to leave a prophetic message with you this evening, so I will quote freely from other prophets — ancient, and those of our own time.  I am inspired, most of all, by Proverbs 31:8-9: “Speak out for those who cannot speak … defend the rights of the poor and needy.” So, here goes.

First, a clear message from Deuteronomy 27:19: “Cursed is anyone who withholds justice from the foreigner, the orphan, or the widow.”

Four years ago, Pope Francis pointed out that “the sin that Jesus condemns most” is hypocrisy.  “It is hypocritical to call oneself a Christian and send away a refugee.” Francis condemned what he termed the “contradiction in those who want to defend Christianity in the West and … are against other religions and against refugees.”

Last September, the Pope called attention to Jesus’s parable of the rich man and Lazarus, calling to mind some of the colorful, instructive details. Francis warned:

“In the end, we too risk becoming like that rich man in the Gospel who is unconcerned for the poor man Lazarus, covered with sores, who would gladly have eaten his fill of the scraps that fell from the rich man’s table. Too intent on buying elegant clothes and organizing lavish banquets, the rich man in the parable is blind to Lazarus’s suffering. Overly concerned with preserving our own well-being, we too risk being blind to our brothers and sisters in difficulty.”

With all the current talk about the economy, I wish also to bring to mind a basic tenet of Catholic social teaching: the preferential option for the poor.  (Some wags have called Catholic social teaching the best kept secret of the Church.  The more reason to remind.)

In 1986, the U.S. Catholic bishops issued a formal statement on the economy, calling on us to make a fundamental “option for the poor.” I shall quote just one sentence: “The more fortunate should renounce some of their rights so as to place their goods more generously at the service of others.”

Yes, Catholic bishops issuing a solemn call for the redistribution of wealth.  A radical idea, indeed, in the original sense of radical — rooted in the core of our Abrahamic faith. Another way to say that is that no one is entitled to accumulate still more of what they don’t need, while others are deprived of the necessities of live.  This is our common Judeo-Christian-Muslim tradition and challenge.  Is our country going in this direction?

I regret that this does not go over well with many of you, but ringing in my ears are the words of a more recent profit, Archbishop Oscar Romero, who fell to an assassin’s bullet 40 years ago:

“A gospel that doesn’t unsettle, a word of God that doesn’t get under anyone’s skin, a word of God that doesn’t touch the real sin of the society … what kind of gospel is that?”

We all know what happened to Romero — and to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  But as Dr. King put it:  

“A time comes when silence is betrayal.”

This is one of those times.

May God bless all people, including those in the United States of America.