Scott Horton interviewed Ray on August 12 regarding the building tension in Ukraine; the strength of the proto-fascist Right Sector and the Wrong Sector (ably represented by Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, one of Dick Cheney’s star pupils).

Ray laments Official Washington’s blasé attitude toward getting into a firefight in Russia’s front yard (or is this perhaps what the neocons have in mind for Ukraine?). He refers to a WikiLeaks-divulged Feb. 1, 2008 cable from the U.S. embassy in Moscow in which Amb. William Burns reports Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s strong warning that “Nyet means Nyet” – Russia’s red line against NATO membership for Ukraine. Two months later, a NATO summit in Bucharest declared that Ukraine and Georgia “will be come members of NATO.” Last year, Putin reiterated what Lavrov said seven years ago, making clear with respect to Ukraine that Moscow will not allow it to become a member of NATO.

25 minutes (can skip commercials from minute 0:00 to 0:30 and from 10:00 to 10:40)

http://scotthorton.org

RT International asked Ray on August 15 to comment on the Kafkaesque denial of the habeas petition of Tariq Ba Odah, a Yemeni hunger-striker being force-fed at Guantanamo. “Is this who we are?” Should we hold a Memorial Service for the Magna Carta?

After 13 years there, Ba Odah, 36, is down to 74 pounds – 56 percent of his ideal body weight – and is said to be close to death. On Aug. 14, the Department of Justice filed an extremely rare secret challenge to his release, even though he had been cleared for release by a six-agency task force in 2009. Ray attributed the bizarre situation to a lack of courage on the part of President Obama, who limits himself to asking plaintively, “Is this who we are?” and then caves before the DoD thugs and DoJ faux-lawyers who theoretically work for him.

​(6 min.)

U.S. Intelligence Veterans Call For Full Disclosure on Shoot-Down Of Airliner Over Ukraine

Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) Appeal to Obama to Release the Intelligence on This Mass Murder, Whether It Supports the Propaganda Campaign Against Russia, Or Not.

Like Ol’ Man River, Obama must know something; but he don’t say nothing; he just keeps rolling out new contests to determine which of his young lieutenants can come up with the nastiest name for Putin. Meanwhile, like Bre’r Fox, those responsible for blowing plane and people (298 of them) out of the sky a year ago lie low. Obama looking forward again, not back

Obama Should Release MH-17 Intel

 

​“Ukrainian Weekly” Highlights Letter Taking Ray to Task

Letters to the Editor: A CIA official’s advice on Ukraine

“By Staff”

Dear Editor:

On June 28, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) wrote an opinion article in The Washington Post in which he comments on his and two other senators’ recent return trip to Ukraine. Sen. McCain argues that “the ceasefire with Russia is fiction, and U.S. assistance is vital to deterring further Russian aggression.” He goes on to state: ”President Obama has wrongly argued that providing Ukraine with the assistance and equipment it needs to defend itself would provoke Russia. Putin needed no provocation to invade Ukraine and annex Crimea.” The senator stresses that “it is the weakness of the collective U.S. and European response that provokes the very aggression we seek to avoid.”

On June 30 the newspaper printed a response by Ray McGovern of Arlington, Va., who claims that Sen. McCain was wrong to say that Vladimir Putin annexed Crimea without provocation. Mr. McGovern describes the events on the Maidan as “the coup in Kiev” [sic], which was “provocation enough.” This nonsense could be dismissed as another pro-Russian troll parroting the Russian line, were it not for the newspaper identifying the writer as “former chief of the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch of the CIA.” On his webpage, Mr. McGovern says that he “served as CIA analyst for 27 years, from the administration of John F. Kennedy to that of George H.W. Bush” and his “duties included chairing National Intelligence Estimates and preparing the President’s Daily Brief.”

On March 3, 2014, Mr. McGovern and Prof. Timothy Snyder of Yale University were interviewed by journalist Amy Goodman on the independent news program “Democracy Now!” in a debate on the topic of “Who is provoking unrest in Ukraine?” Throughout the whole discussion, Mr. McGovern constantly referred to “the Ukraine” and warned the U.S. government that “you go a bridge too far when you threaten a strategic interest the Russians consider so sensitive as the [sic] Ukraine.” When Prof. Snyder reminded him that ”Ukraine is a sovereign country” and that Ukrainians on the Maidan “complained that we [Americans and Europeans] were far too close to the Russians, that in effect we were helping the Russians hurt them,” Mr. McGovern responded: “Russian interests exist, and they have since the ninth century, OK? That’s where Russia began, you know, Kievan Rus’, in Kiev.”

On April 22 of this year, the online English-language version of Moscow’s Pravda printed an article headlined “Ex-CIA officer Ray McGovern: V-E Day celebration spoiled by Washington’s support for Ukrainian revolution.” The headline speaks for itself. In the article, Mr. McGovern writes about “the U.S.-arranged coup d’état of Feb. 22, 2014 in Kiev.”

One can only shudder at the thought of what kind of advice this high-ranking CIA official provided to various presidential administrations concerning Ukraine.

Leo Iwaskiw
Philadelphia

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Here’s Ray’s letter to which Mr. Iwaskiw took offense:

Letters to the Editor, Washington Post, July 1, 2015

McCain, Ukraine and Mr. Putin

In his June 28 Sunday Opinion essay, “The Ukraine cease-fire fiction,” Sen. John McCain was wrong to write that Russian President Vladimir Putin annexed Crimea without provocation.

What about the coup in Kiev on Feb. 22, 2014, that replaced President Viktor Yanukovych with pro-Western leaders favoring membership in NATO? Was that not provocation enough?

This glaring omission is common in The Post. The March 10 World Digest item “Putin had early plan to annex Crimea” described a “secret meeting” Mr. Putin held on Feb. 23, 2014, during which “Russia decided it would take the Crimean Peninsula.” No mention was made of the coup the previous day.

I have searched in vain for credible evidence that, before the coup, Mr. Putin had any intention to annex Crimea. George Friedman, the widely respected president of the think tank Stratfor, has described the putsch on Feb. 22, 2014, as “the most blatant coup in history.”

Ray McGovern, Arlington
The writer is former chief of the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch of the CIA.

Regarding Malaysia Airlines flight MH17

WASHINGTON, July 15. /TASS/. The West has ignored the need for an unbiased investigation into the downing of a Malaysia airliner over eastern Ukraine last year and embarked on a path of sweeping accusations against the people’s militias in the Donbass region, an ex-CIA official told TASS on Wednesday.

Ray McGovern, a retired Central Intelligence Agency analyst, was commenting on the controversy surrounding the idea of creating an international tribunal to prosecute those suspected of having shot down Malaysia Airlines flight MH17.

“A truly independent investigation is what the world and a decent respect for the opinions of mankind and honoring those killed requires,” McGovern said. “Finding and bringing to Justice those responsible for downing MH17 should be given absolutely top priority. But, sadly, absolute priority was given from the start — without persuasive evidence — to blaming ‘pro-Russian separatists’.”

McGovern, who for 27 years served seven U.S. presidents and regularly prepared daily security briefings for former presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, pointed to the fact that ahead of the first anniversary of the disaster on July 17, it was certain “the U.S. (and Russia) know more now than a year ago”.

“Surely, in the year that has passed, better intelligence has been gathered than that which was available when [U.S. Secretary of State John] Kerry made his accusations. It strains credulity beyond the breaking point to suggest that more precise and persuasive intelligence has not been gathered over a whole year,” he said, noting however that “when asked, U.S. intelligence spokespersons contend that there is no additional evidence since Kerry’s rush to judgment on July 20, 2014.”

“One would surmise that if the U.S. had any persuasive evidence to support Kerry’s charges, Kerry or someone else would be shouting it from the rooftops as part of Washington’s current anti-Russia propaganda campaign,” McGovern said. “I can only conclude that the U.S. – now, as when Kerry leveled the charges — either has no persuasive evidence to support its charges, or has collected intelligence that does not fit with Kerry’s charges and thus is being suppressed.

Russian version (with different lead-in):

http://tass.ru/mezhdunarodnaya-panorama/2121195

Международная панорама

15 июля

Экс-сотрудник ЦРУ: Запад сделал ставку на обвинение ополченцев в уничтожении Boeing

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Если бы американским властям удалось подкрепить теорию о том, что лайнер был сбит ополченцами, то “госсекретарь США Джон Керри или кто-либо еще кричали бы об этом с крыш”, считает бывший разведчик

[If American leaders could substantiate their theory that the airliner was destroyed by the people’s militias …, they would be shouting it from the rooftops, says the former intelligence officer.]

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ВАШИНГТОН, 15 июля. /Корр.ТАСС Дмитрий Кирсанов/.

После катастрофы Boeing-777 “Малайзийских авиалиний” на Украине 17 июля 2014 года Запад пошел по пути огульных обвинений в случившемся ополченцев Донбасса и игнорирования необходимости проведения объективного разбирательства обстоятельств трагедии. Такое мнение высказал корр.ТАСС ветеран американской разведки Реймонд Макговерн, комментируя противоречия вокруг идеи создания международного трибунала для привлечения к ответственности виновных в уничтожении авиалайнера.