Fox News: Giving the Nod to a Wannabe CIA Con Man

Ray takes a lighter – but still instructive – approach to the latest Foxy howler, L’Affaire Wayne Shelby Simmons. Our man Simmons convinced Fox News and defense contractors that he was part of CIA’s “outside paramilitary special operations group,” and had led “Deep Cover Intel Ops.”

Alas, the “credentials” Simmons claimed proved as hard to verify as claims of WMD in Iraq. On Thursday he was accused of making false statements and major fraud against the United States, arrested, and jailed. Ray was in downtown Washington on the 16th, when RT International called for a 5-minute interview. Fun.

Those who click the above link will learn that, by happy coincidence, a day earlier Ray had his own personal encounter with Fox. That experience offered some rich material pointing to how carefully some Fox personalities, like Sean Hannity, vet their guests, while other Foxy folks – well, not so much.

According to the Washington Post (see link below), Senior Fox News War-on-Terrorism promoter/commentator, retired Army Gen. Paul Vallely, has spoken highly of colleague Simmons, describing him as “very knowledgeable,” and “able to talk in depth about CIA operations, covert operations especially.” Vallely added that Simmons “came off to me as a very honest, down-to-the-earth guy.”

As for other endorsements of Simmons, none other than former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld commended him for a spy thriller Simmons wrote: “He doesn’t just write it. He’s lived it, and that’s why he … can tell this spy thriller in such an engrossing way.” Rumsfeld, of course, is second to none in spinning a yarn. Indeed, his fulsome memoir (726 pages) titled “Known and Unknown” belongs in the “fiction” section of bookstores. In fairness here, it is an unknown known how known Simmons actually was to Rumsfeld.

L’Affaire Wayne Shelby Simmons is a helpful reminder of the kind of things CIA con men can get away with (ask Nancy Pelosi or Dianne Feinstein). And this guy was just a wannabe. For further amusement, click below on the link to a report by Matt Zapotosky, that was front-paged in the Washington Post on Oct. 16. His tongue must have been buried deeply in his teeth, but for the most part he succeeds in writing it with a straight face.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/he-claimed-to-be-ex-cia-and-was-quoted-as-an-expert-on-fox-news-prosecutors-say-it-was-a-lie/2015/10/15/eb1b7818-7345-11e5-9cbb-790369643cf9_story.html

Counting Civilian Casualties from Drone Strikes — or Not

The Institute for Public Accuracy has just put Jesselyn Radack and Ray on a press release focusing on today’s revelations by The Intercept re the use of drones, in particular:

Assassination Complex
by Jeremy Scahill, et al.

https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/the-assassination-complex/

The press release cites a piece Ray wrote three years ago:

Silence of the Drones
Ray McGovern, Oct. 1, 2012

Silence of the Drones

Here’s an excerpt from the article, which is interesting in retrospect:

Tight Leash?

Just four months later, a May 29 New York Times article on Obama’s secret “Kill List” revealed how the President rationalized his claim that the number of civilians killed was “not huge.” Far from “a very tight leash,” it was a numbering gimmick.

The Times report quoted several Obama administration officials admitting that all military-age males in a strike zone are counted as combatants, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent. (Yes, you read that right – posthumously.)

Small wonder that counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan could claim in June 2011 that there had been zero civilians killed in Pakistan for almost a year. And small wonder that another senior administration official could tell the Times several months later that the number of civilians killed by drone strikes in Pakistan was in the “single digits.”

In April 2012, Brennan was still at it, describing civilian casualties from drone strikes as “exceedingly rare” – as if saying something often enough can make it true.

One former senior intelligence officer did express serious misgivings. “It bothers me when they say there were seven guys, so they must all be militants,” the former officer told the Times. “They count the corpses and they’re not really sure who they are.”

So much for posthumous exoneration.

For people with a conscience this is a lot to take in; to reflect on; and to take responsibility for as an American citizen. Serious though these issues are, there are times when a satirical touch can cut to the chase – not to trivialize this sadder-than-sad reality, but rather to render it easier to understand and to drive home its full import.

Stephen Colbert performed a useful service with his commentary on the New York Times report on Obama’s “Kill List.”

As for Congressional oversight:

Lest anyone lose sight of how closely Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Dianne Feinstein was riding herd on the use of drones, here’s more:

Intel Chair: Civilian Drone Casualties in Single Digits Year-to-Year

NYT February 7, 2013
by Lee Ferran

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2013/02/intel-chair-civilian-drone-casualties-in-single-digits-year-to-year/

“The chairman of the Senate’s Intelligence Committee said today that the number of civilians killed in America’s drone strikes each year ‘has typically been in the single digits.’

“The chairman, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), made the claim in her opening remarks at the Senate’s confirmation hearing for CIA Director nominee John Brennan. Brennan, currently President Obama’s counter-terrorism advisor, is widely described as the architect of the administration’s counter-terrorism policy, including its increased reliance on targeted drone strikes.

“’I’ve… been attempting to speak publicly about the very low number of civilian casualties that result from such strikes, [but] I’ve been limited in my ability to do so,’ Feinstein said. ‘But for the past several years, this committee has done significant oversight of the government’s conduct of targeted strikes and the figures we have obtained from the executive branch, which we have done our utmost to verify, confirm that the number of civilian casualties that have resulted from such strikes has typically been in the single digits.’

“Feinstein’s assertion appears to challenge data compiled by The Bureau of Investigative Journalism from media [now apparently including The Intercept], human rights and purported eye-witness reports, which say that American drones have killed hundreds of civilians since 2008 from Pakistan to Yemen and Somalia. …

Daniel McAdams of Ron Paul Liberty Report interviews Ray on KH17

Sixteen minutes was enough time to draw parallels, for example, with the Ronald Reagan-neocon-type reaction to the opportunity afforded by the “deliberate” Soviet shoot-down of KAL007 on Sept. 1, 1983. The U.S. lied in saying that the Soviets knew it was a passenger plane — as Alvin A. Snyder, one of the State Dept. types involved, admits in his book “Warriors of Deceit.”

But Snyder had a job to do: producing the video that his superiors wanted. “The perception we wanted to convey was that the Soviet Union had cold-bloodedly carried out a barbaric act,” Snyder wrote.

Only a decade later, when Snyder saw the complete transcripts — including the portions that the Reagan administration had hidden — would he fully realize how many of the central elements of the U.S. presentation at the UN were false. …

It was clear to Snyder that in the pursuit of its Cold War aims, the Reagan administration had presented false accusations to the United Nations, as well as to the people of the United States and the world. To the Reagan administration, the ends of smearing the Soviets had justified the means of falsifying the historical record.

More telling still is the moral Snyder draws:

Acknowledging his role in the deception, he draws an ironic lesson from the incident. This senior official wrote, “The moral of the story is that all governments, including our own, lie when it suits their purposes. The key is to lie first.”

And so it goes.

 

Elizabeth Murray & Ray speak on Intelligence/Policy at Lutherkirche, Cologne

According to the pastor, the only other time he sees so many people in the church is on Christmas Eve. The turnout was a tribute to the many Activisten/Justice & Peace people, who promoted the multi-city tour of Germany by Elizabeth and Ray. Attendance was quite good in all the cities.

The presentation was Elizabeth’s and Ray’s Schwanengesang; the title given for that evening was the “Role of Intelligence in Foreign Policy,” and they took an empirical, case-study-type approach. It seemed to work well.

short version (highlights): 13 minutes

full version: 1 hour 17 minutes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7Lia8caiZM​