Ray on Eric Holder and Snowden
Ray was asked by RT about former Attorney General Eric Holder’s Eureka moment when he said that Ed Snowden “actually performed a public service.” Too bad Holder didn’t remember that his own public service, as the country’s highest law enforcement official, was to honor his oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic. Instead, he and his boss, President Barack Obama, were serial violators of that supreme oath – and, in Ray’s view, a disgrace to the legal profession.
Ray cites the groveling letter Holder sent to the Russian Minister of Justice, just a month after Secretary Kerry had revoked Snowden’s passport, pleading with him to give up Snowden to the tender mercies of the U.S. Espionage Act. Ray comments that Holder’s cross-my-heart-hope-to-die promise that the Obama government would not kill Snowden – or even torture him – stands as a bizarre manifestation of how deep the law profession has sunk in the U.S.
(7 minutes)
Hillary Clinton’s Email Albatross: New Interview
“Why The Clinton Email Scandal Is Not Just a Right Wing Creation”
Rising-Up Host, Sonali Kolhatkar, May 27 interview of Ray (video and podcast)
http://www.risingupwithsonali.
Aired on May 31, this interview follows:
(1) May 23 VIPS Memorandum for the President urging him to encourage quick completion of the FBI investigation https://consortiumnews.com/
“ … order Attorney General Loretta Lynch to instruct the FBI to stop slow-walking the email investigation and release its findings promptly. …”
(2) May 25 release of the State Department Inspector General report
(Despite the most practiced spinners, it could not be spun.)
https://oig.state.gov/reports/
(3) Hillary Clinton’s Imperious Brush-Off of Security Regulations
Ray McGovern, May 25, 2016, commentary on State IG report
https://consortiumnews.com/
(4) May 26 by Washington Post Editorial Board: “Clinton’s inexcusable, willful disregard for the rules”
“She repeatedly ignored warnings not to use private email during her tenure as secretary of state … We urge the FBI to finish its own investigation soon, so all information about this troubling episode will be before the voters.”
It would be good if the people of California knew about all this.
Commonweal magazine has published an interview with Ray, covering the Middle East – particularly Syria – and the roles of Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey in that major mess.
Also discussed: the reasons for and results of Russia’s major intervention in Syria last fall. Nicholas Haggerty conducted the interview.
https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/blog/interview-former-cia-analyst-ray-mcgovern
The Morning After: On Good Morning Joe, Mika leads critique of Secretary Clinton’s repeated claim that her use of a private server for her official emails was “allowed.”
Major findings of the State Department IG report that was revealed on May 25 are discussed.
(11 minutes)
An Uncommon Outbreak of Integrity
Ray talks to RT about an uncommon outbreak of integrity at the Pentagon IG (of all places). Not only whistleblowing, but also the integrity that undergirds it is, thankfully, contagious. Ray focuses in on two friends – Tom Drake, straight-shooter par excellence; and Ed Snowden, whose only problem, in Ray’s view, is that he is too good to be true – literally. (It’s just awfully hard for those Americans malnourished on the thin gruel of the mainstream media to wrap their heads around that kind of integrity.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3bFWQBLzlQ
(7 minutes)
Ray on “Loud and Clear” re Hillary’s emails
Brian Becker of Sputnik’s Loud and Clear interviewed Ray on May 25, just after U.S. media started reporting on a State Department IG report critical of the hacker-friendly email arrangement that former Secretary Hillary Clinton employed to conduct official State Department business and her disdain for the security regulations that are applied to mere mortals.
Ray reads a brief email exchange between Clinton and one of her top aides, in which she instructs him to strip a document of its proper classification and send it to her en clair – a genuine “smoking gun.” Also discussed is the May 23 VIPS Memorandum for the President, “Intel Vets Urge Fast Report on Clinton Emails.”
http://sputniknews.com/world/20160526/1040260965/cliton-emails-breaks-oig-rules.html
(18 minutes)
The Origins of the Iraq War with Ray McGovern
Part 2 – Includes discussion of what the 2007 “surge” was really all about.
Show notes page: http://www.wakeupcallpodcast.
Intel Vets Urge Fast Report on Clinton’s Emails
VIPS to Obama: End the Tortoise Pace of the FBI Investigation “Thoroughness” is not a credible excuse, when NSA already has chapter and verse on exactly what happened.
https://consortiumnews.com/2016/05/23/intel-vets-urge-fast-report-on-clintons-emails/