How Truth Can Save Lives (re Bradley Manning’s Uncommon Courage)

Originally published on Aug. 15, 2010, reposted Aug. 22, 2013 with the following note from Consortiumnews.com Editor Robert Parry:

“From the Archive: A vengeful U.S. military has sentenced Pvt. Bradley Manning to 35 years in prison for disclosing unpleasant truths about the Afghan and Iraq wars and other government deceits. Manning’s bravery inspired ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern in 2010 to reflect on an earlier dilemma between secrecy and truth.”

How Truth Can Save Lives

 

SYRIA – Provenance of reports of chemical attacks not clear; UN Secretary General Doing right thing in sending top envoy

BBC World interview of Ray

With 100,000 already dead, Russia & the West need to get all parties to Geneva to end the killing and reach compromise solution. Those who won’t come, should not get so much as a pistol, much less a grenade launcher, in the future.

(Eight and a half minutes; Ray interviewed from 5:34 to 8:29)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IwM__q8jYM

 

Ray’s initial comment on 35-yr sentence for Bradley Manning

London Telegraph interview, Skyped/taped right after the sentence was announced, and then “sanitized” to cut out unwelcome material. (A reminder of why live interviews are always better, 6 minutes)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/10258142/Video-debate-Was-Bradley-Mannings-sentence-too-lenient.html

Ray thought the Telegraph might try to set him up: Here’s how the interview started:

“As Bradley Manning is jailed for 35 years for the biggest leak of classified documents in American intelligence history, the Telegraph’s Tim Stanley debates with a Manning supporter about whether the sentence is too lenient.”

Ray answered: “I suppose it might seem to you lenient, if you are comparing Bradley Manning with, say, David Kelly, who also spoke truth about Iraq and was ‘terminated with extreme prejudice.’” (That is the sobriquet used by CIA white-collar thugs and counterparts in Britain’s MI5 and MI6.)

“Oh, you mean the British intelligence scientist on Iraq who committed suicide,” says Stanley.

“Who ALLEGEDLY committed suicide,” says Ray (with emphasis equivalent to all caps).

Well, surprise, surprise. While that was the exchange that actually launched the “debate,” it somehow fell on the cutting room floor. As did my words addressing the sad coincidence that the Manning sentence comes exactly 46 years since the day I could have done on Vietnam what Bradley Manning did on Iraq.

Why did you not? asked the interviewer. Because I did not have the courage of Bradley Manning, who was six years younger than I was at the time.

This is probably worth a few more sentences. In 1967 the Washington Establishment and the Army command in Saigon, led by Gen. William Westmoreland and Gen. Creighton Abrams, were lying through their teeth in claiming “progress” in the Vietnam War. One key lie involved the number of armed Vietnamese Communists facing our own troops in South Vietnam.

A belated, reluctant, but growing consensus among intelligence analysts in Washington held that our troops were facing 500,000 to 600,000 Vietnamese Communist under arms. But Westmoreland and Abrams put an artificial limit on how many enemy there could be (!); no more than 299, 000. (Please don’t laugh; this is not some sort of sick joke.)

In 1967, my CIA analyst colleagues focusing on this problem were preparing a National Intelligence Estimate and decided to tell the President and his chief advisers about the actual enemy strength, taking direct issue with Westmoreland and the other generals in Saigon. Intelligence analysts in Washington, led by the CIA’s Sam Adams, were able to make a convincing case, based on a wealth of evidence dug up, collated, and analyzed during the immediately preceding years. Still, they lacked a smoking gun.

The smoking gun that revealed the rank deceit by Westmoreland, Abrams, and those under their control, came in the form of a August 20, 1967 SECRET EYES ONLY cable from Gen. Abrams, who was in charge in Saigon, Westmoreland being temporarily out of Saigon. Abrams put it in black and white. The U.S. Command in Saigon, he said, would never accept the higher figures for enemy strength (500,000 to 600,000), because, in Abrams’s words, they:

“… were in sharp contrast to the current overall strength figures of about 299,000 given to the press. … We have been projecting an image of success over recent months and all available caveats and explanations will not prevent the press from drawing an erroneous and gloomy conclusion.”

I told the Telegraph interviewer that I have had to live for more than four decades with the reality that I was too timid to do what Bradley Manning had the courage to do with respect to Iraq. It is not as though I didn’t even think of going downtown to the Washington Bureau of the NY Times with a copy of the Abrams cable. I did think of it but – have I already said this??? – I lacked the guts.

On Wednesday, I needed to educate the young interviewer to the reality that in 1967 the NY Times was an independent newspaper, and would – likely as not – frontpage reports based on documents like the Abrams cable. (Alas, the Times’s modus operandi now, of course, is to go first to the government for permission.)

Forty-six years ago, however, it would not have been considered delusional to believe that the Times would have been eager to run this key inside information, giving the lie to the generals; and that, in turn, this might have put the pervasive deceit on Vietnam in bas relief and perhaps even contribute to ending that March of Folly years earlier than it finally did – with untold lives and bodies saved, both American and Vietnamese.

The Moral Imperative of Activism

Ray keynote at Kateri Peace Conference, Fonda, NY, Aug. 17, runs 44:30 minutes, Ray responds during Q & A at 45 to 54 min.

Video by Paki Wieland, (co-passenger, U.S. Boat to Gaza, 2011)