by Matthew Phelan, August 18, 2014
When you’re not part of the Fawning Corporate Media, you can do a creditable job assessing what VIPS is, and what we’ve been trying hard to do since Jan. 2003.
http://blackbag.gawker.com/u-s-intelligence-vets-criticize-obama-for-peddling-wea-1615618579
Were it not for the bravery and ingenuity of young seaman Terry Halbardier, Israel would have achieved its mission to sink the Liberty and kill all 294 crew.
The East Germans started building the wall on August 13, 1961. It fell 28 years later. But like Humpty Dumpty, lasting peace in Europe could not be put together again. Here Ray (and Bill Bradley) discuss why. Don’t miss the embedded 6-minute video showing Bradley’s frustration.
Comment, including Ray’s, posted by the COURAGE FOUNDATION
“The world needs truth tellers; they need COURAGE.”
https://couragefound.org/2014/08/obama-if-you-blow-the-whistle-you-should-be-thanked/
Posted on August 13, 2014
“If you blow the whistle, you should be thanked. You should be protected for doing the right thing. You shouldn’t be ignored and you certainly shouldn’t be punished.”
These were the surprising words of President Obama on 7 August 2014, as he signed a $16 billion bill to improve veterans’ access to medical care. The bill followed a report from the Department for Veterans’ Affairs, which confirmed many of the complaints whistleblowers had been making – waiting lists were indeed being manipulated to hide how long veterans were having to wait for medical appointments.
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest claims that the Administration has “made important progress” in “protecting whistleblowers” and “disclosing previously classified information.” Earnest cites the 2012 Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act as evidence that the Administration has “fought for and won better protections for whistleblowers.”
But the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act that the White House claims offers better protections for whistleblowers is limited. …Blowing the whistle within official channels does not guarantee public disclosure of the information and does little to facilitate what Yochai Benkler has called “accountability leaks… that challenge systemic practices.”
At any rate, it is not the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act for which this Presidency is likely to be remembered but the intelligence whistleblowers who have faced severe reprisals on its watch. The Obama Administration, famously, has initiated eight prosecutions under the Espionage Act – more uses of the 1917 Act than all previous US presidents combined.
Ray McGovern, a former CIA senior analyst, founder of whistleblower group Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence and co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), responded to Obama’s comments saying, “President Obama is giving hypocrisy a bad name.”
McGovern, who is also a member of Courage’s advisory board, said: Obama’s record speaks for itself; he has prosecuted more than twice as many whistleblowers – for espionage, no less – than all former presidents combined. As for those whose crimes have been whistle-blown upon, like those who did the torture, Obama continues to call them ‘patriots.’ Former CIA operative John Kiriakou, who opposed torture, sits in a Pennsylvania prison allegedly because he revealed the name of one of the torturers.
Too bad Kafka is dead.
Ray shares more of the points he made in his talk before the White House. (6 min.)
The disgraced former four-star head of both NSA and the Pentagon’s Cyber Command must have something very special to offer as a cyber security consultant to Wall Street’s “Securities Industry & Financial Markets Association.” No doubt he will be spending long hours in the lab, applying his innovative technical skills to the task.
“Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?”
Ray comments for RT, July 31, 2014 (3 min.)
Here is a statement Ray just gave for a press release on John Brennan’s little peccadillos (!) like lying to Senate regarding CIA snooping on them and their staffers – and why he would do such an unusual (!) thing.
Statement of highly decorated veteran (27-year) CIA analyst, Ray McGovern. (On retirement Ray was awarded CIA’s Intelligence Commendation Award, and received a letter of commendation from then-President George H. W. Bush, whom McGovern briefed every other morning with the President’s Daily Brief.)
“It is inconceivable that the spying on the Senate committee happened without authorization by Director Brennan, so the question is why he did so. Easy answer: it has been established that Brennan had, at the very least, guilty knowledge of the torture, so the stakes for him personally could not be higher. He simply had to find out how damning the Senate report is about his own role. Brennan’s nominal boss, National Intelligence Director James Clapper is still in place after confessing to giving the same committee on March 12, 2013 sworn testimony (about NSA collection programs) that was in Clapper’s words, “clearly erroneous.” If President Obama does not fire Brennan, this will demonstrate that the President himself is afraid of our intelligence services – what blackmail material they may have on him and even whether they will target him, as they did John Kennedy.”