Exactly 4 yrs ago Bob Parry exposed how Russia-gate morphed into FBI-gate:
The evidence was FBI documents, but lickspittle media played it down. 10 days later, Bob had a stroke. The media lickspittle continued to prevail so I wrote:
Karen Kwiatkowski: Discreet Whistleblower, Tried to Head Off Attack on Iraq
By Ray McGovern, Dec. 8, 2021
By publishing https://israelpalestinenews.org/pentagon-officer-described-how-israelists-manufactured-anti-iraq-disinfo-that-led-to-war/, the israel-palestinenews.org (a project of If Americans Knew) has provided a very valuable service. Included are many of the articles that USAF Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski wrote for American Conservative, Salon, and Antiwar.com, in 2003-2004.
While still on active duty, Karen had a catbird seat at the Pentagon watching U.S. and Israeli officials manufacture the fraudulent case for invading and occupying Iraq. That disinformation was fed to the White House, Congress, media, and American public and greased the skids for war on Iraq, the rise of ISIS, and widespread chaos in the Middle East. For her part, Karen took considerable risk in helping Knight Ridder journalists Jonathan Landay and Warren Strobel get this sordid story straight before the attack on Iraq.
This remarkable pre-Iraq-war period is accurately depicted in Rob Reiner’s film, Shock and Awe, in which professional actors, including Reiner, play the roles of Karen, Landay, Strobel, et al.. Since Karen’s friends, including us, her close VIPS colleagues, had no need to know, we did NOT know — until several of us saw a special showing of the film together, and we were shocked and awed, so to speak, by what our VIPS colleague Karen’s had dared to do (including her tradecraft in doing it). Only at the end of the film did she come forward to identify herself. She was nominated and selected for the Sam Adams award for that year (2018).
A Sam Adams Laureate
Exactly three years ago, on December 8, 2018, Karen was formally given the Sam Adams Award for Integrity in Intelligence (samadamsaward.ch). Karen’s award ceremony, at the Festival Center in Washington, DC, was a particularly warm affair. Paul Williams ( paul@shootfirstpictures.com ) did a particularly good job filming it.
For the instructive, often entertaining, video of the ceremony, including Larry Wilkerson’s introductory remarks, please see: https://samadamsaward.ch/karen-kwiatkowski/.
NOTE: Please skip down past the amateur hand-held video bearing the title “17th annual Sam Adams Award”. Rather scroll down to the video under: “RELATED ARTICLES Karen Kwiatkowski Receives 2018 Sam Adams Award” to see the complete professional video by Paul Williams of that uplifting celebration three years ago.
Below is the citation accompanying the Sam Adams award to Karen:
Karen Kwiatkowski
Know all ye by these presents that Karen Kwiatkowski is hereby honored with the traditional Sam Adams Corner-Brightener Candlestick Holder, in symbolic recognition of her courage in shining light into dark places.
“If you see something, say something,” we so often hear. Karen Kwiatkowski took that saying to heart.
She saw her Pentagon superiors acting as eager accomplices to the Cheney/Bush administration’s deceit in launching a war of aggression on Iraq. And she said something — and helped Knight Ridder reporters Warren Strobel and Jonathan Landay see beneath the official lies and get the sordid story right before the war.
Karen’s courage brings to mind the clarion call of Rabbi Abraham Heschel against the perpetrators of an earlier war — Vietnam. “Few are guilty,” he said, “but all are responsible. Indifference to evil is more insidious than evil itself.” Karen would not be indifferent to evil.
Ed Snowden, Sam Adams awardee in 2013, noted that we tend to ignore some degree of evil in our daily life, but, as Ed put it, “We also have a breaking point and when people find that, they act.” As did Karen. As did 16 of Karen’s predecessors honored with this award.
With all the gloom and doom enveloping us, we tend to wonder whether people with the conscience and courage of Ed or Karen still exist in and outside our national security establishment. Our country is in dire need of new patriots of this kind.
Meanwhile, we call to mind the courageous example not only of Karen and Ed, but also of Coleen Rowley and Elizabeth Gun, our first two awardees, who took great risks in trying to head off the attack on Iraq. And we again honor Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange who is now isolated in what the UN has called “arbitrary detention,” for exposing the war crimes resulting from that war.
Karen Kwiatkowski has made her own unique contribution to this company of conscience and courage, and Sam Adams Associates are pleased to honor her.
Presented this 8th day of December 2018 in Washington by admirers of the example set by the late CIA analyst, Sam Adams.
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The video includes Karen’s acceptance speech, but the written text is also available at https://samadamsaward.ch/karen-kwiatkowski/.
Did Biden Thwart Putin’s ‘Plan” to Invade Ukraine with 175,000 Troops?
By Ray McGovern, Dec. 7, 2021
https://original.antiwar.com/mcgovern/2021/12/07/did-biden-thwart-putin-plan-to-invade-ukraine-with-175000-troops/
How easy it has become to see through the transparently thin straw-men U.S. leaders enjoy knocking over, with the full-throated support and applause of what passes for the media. Here, predictably, is The NY Times this morning: “Biden Threatens Putin With Sanctions if Russia Invades Ukraine.”
So, put aside the all-important question: why would Putin, or anyone in their right mind, want to invade Ukraine?
But, you ask, what else would he do with those “175,000 troops” our “intelligence” says are near the border? What else but invade Ukraine?
Can Putin’s plan be thwarted? Of course, and Joe Biden is just the man to face down Putin AND every last one of his 175,000 troops; there are just too many of them to escape detection by satellite imagery by hiding in Potemkin villages. No, Putin, you better not invade, or else!
It was not hard to see this coming.
Dec. 2:
Dec. 3:
Dec. 7:
Flat Fact Fred
Fred Hiatt to the Columbia Journalism Review 02/2004: “In editorials, we state as flat fact that [Saddam] has WMD. If that’s not true, it would have been better not to say it.” Robert Parry: “Yes, if something isn’t real, we’re not supposed to say it is.”
https://consortiumnews.com/2013/03/19/why-wposts-hiatt-should-be-fired/
Ukraine For Dummies. Again.
Why in the hell, pray tell, would Russia “invade” Ukraine once a “bread basket”, now a basket case? There will be no Russian invasion. But if Mad Hatter/comedian President Zelensky takes military action against E. Ukraine, Moscow WILL respond in kind. See:
US-Russia: New-born Trust Quickly Smothered
Interview of Ray McGovern on Russian TV
Back Story/Comments (by Ray McGovern)
Most Americans have no idea that in September 2013, Presidents Putin and Obama (the latter without his Russophobic advisers) trusted each other enough to head off a major war in Syria. Moscow persuaded Syria to agree to have its chemical weapons destroyed under UN supervision, removing the ostensible casus belli. In an op-ed in The NY Times on Sept. 11, 2013 Putin wrote, “My working and personal relationship with President Obama is marked by growing trust.” Neither Putin nor Obama wanted wider war in Syria. The deal was very much in Obama’a interest, taking the wind out of the sails of most of Obama’s advisers, including then-Secretary of State John Kerry, who did nothing to disguise their lust for an open U.S. attack on Syria. **More about Kerry below.
Trust
Just before he died at age 100, former Secretary of State George Shultz, the most sophisticated and savvy statesman I was privileged to brief for four years with The President’s Daily Brief, had this to say about trust (See: https://www.afsa.org/on-trust ):
Trust is a complex factor in life between communities and nations, but it is critical in determining whether cooperation or conflict—or even war or peace—will dominate the relationship.
Trust between Washington and Moscow, however, was the last thing that senior advisers to Presidents Obama — and, later, advisers to Trump or Biden wanted/want. Trust was smothered in the cradle – first and foremost — by what has been appropriately called “the most blatant coup in history” — the U.S. orchestrated coup in Kiev on February 22, 2014 on Moscow’s doorstep (which had been advertised on YouTube three weeks before it was carried out.
What most Americans think they know about all this is that Russia “invaded” Ukraine and Crimea. The Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think-Tank complex (MICIMATT) is what accounts for this widespread misunderstanding, with the corporate media playing a pivotal role. There is no way the corporate media will allow the likes of me on air or in print to spread a little truth around.
Why Are You Not Dead or in Prison?
Thus, there was considerable irony in an unusual, unsolicited question I received last summer from someone whose identity I did not — and still do not — know, asking me why I have not been put in jail for candidly addressing controversial issues — like which country sabotaged any chance for still more growth in the “growing trust” between Moscow and Washington. Here’s a gist of his/her message:
I am a Russian who emigrated to the West a couple of decades ago. I just saw this video of a program that ran on one of Russia’s main channels, ‘Rossiya 24’, in late July 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJubAhRiMvY
I was very surprised by how frank you are in addressing Russia-USA relations. My question is this. How can it be that you are still alive and not in prison? Does the American government allow such candor? I do not really expect a reply from you, but I really would like to have one.
I responded to the writer (let’s call her/him “X”), saying that I thought there was little chance that I be put in prison since very few Americans understand Russian and fewer still tune into Russian TV. I explained that I have given many a similar talk — and written many an article — on why U.S.-Russia relations went sharply down hill after the high-water mark of September 2013, when Putin applauded the “growing trust’ between Obama and himself. (As alluded to above, they had just solved a very thorny problem about Syria without the kind of armed attack that virtually all of Obama’s advisers AND key Congressional leaders were lusting for. The problem was/is that the media component of the MICIMATT has been able to suppress my views — or, if they happen to slip out into the open, accuse me of being in “Putin’s pocket”.
As for my interview on ‘Rossiya 24’ two and a half years ago, we deliberated on whether it might be worth trying to make it possible for English-speakers to watch my little rundown of how the sprout of trust eight years ago was nipped in the bud. I did seem worth a try. X told me he was capable, even though an amateur, of inserting English subtitles into the video. X’s English is quite good, so we agreed. I was given the opportunity to review the English subtitles for accuracy. It was intense work. I believe it came out well, all things considered.
Why Post Video/Interview With Subtitles Now?
In this one discrete interview, which I gave shortly after we slithered out of the Washington Swamp and moved auf das Land, as the Germans would put it (or into a ‘dacha’ in the hinterland as Russians might say), I found myself with interviewers who gave me enough time to address serious issues on which I had been specializing for several decades. Most important, I can readily document my observations and conclusions with facts. And what could be more important than understanding how it came to be that the “growing trust” Putin mentioned hit a brick wall? And why.
One key lesson Putin learned was that the American president does not call the shots. Needless to say, this has immense significance. I had documented that key point a few years earlier in a chronological listing of relevant events: See, for example; U.S.-RUSSIAN RELATIONS – 1989 TO 2016: KEY JUNCTURES (A DRAFT “TIMELINE” REQUESTED BY GERMAN BUNDESTAG MEMBERS) https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Jzz-yabLl-F36aMqdmbNhOF0ACCeSGkcFmaoSR7UXBo/edit
Excerpts:
-Oct 1, 2015 to Sept 9, 2016: Kerry and Lavrov labor hard to introduce ceasefire in Syria and some kind of political settlement. Finally, a limited ceasefire is signed Sept 9, 2016.
++++++++++++++++++
-Sept 12, 2016: The limited ceasefire goes into effect; provisions include SEPARATING THE SO-CALLED “MODERATE” REBELS FROM THE, WELL, “IMMODERATE ONES.” Kerry had earlier claimed that he had “refined” ways to accomplish the separation, but it did not happen…
++++++++++++++++++
-Sept 17, 2016: U.S. Air Force aircraft bomb long established Syrian Army positions killing between 64 and 84 Syrian army troops; about 100 others wounded — evidence enough to convince the Russians that the Pentagon was intent on scuttling meaningful cooperation with Russia AND FELT FREE TO DO SO AND THEN MERELY SAY OOPS, WITH NO ONE BEING HELD ACCOUNTABLE!
++++++++++++++++++
-Sept 26, 2016: Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov on Russian TV:
“My good friend John Kerry … is under fierce criticism from the US military machine. Despite the fact that, as always, [they] made assurances that the US Commander in Chief, President Barack Obama, supported him in his contacts with Russia (he confirmed that during his meeting with President Vladimir Putin), apparently the military does not really listen to the Commander in Chief.” Lavrov specifically criticized JCS Chairman Joseph Dunford for telling Congress that he opposed sharing intelligence with Russia, “after the agreements concluded on direct orders of Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Barack Obama stipulated that they would share intelligence. … It is difficult to work with such partners. …”
++++++++++++++++++
-Oct 27, 2016: Putin speaks at the Valdai International Discussion Club
(See my Baltimore Sun Op-Ed of October 30, 2016 for more detail): http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bs-ed-putin-obama-20161030-story.html
[So how did the “growing trust” that Russian President Vladimir Putin once claimed (in the Sept. 11, 2013 NY Times op-ed) marked his “working and personal relationship with President Obama” change into today’s deep distrust and saber-rattling? See the following remarks of Putin:]
Putin: “My personal agreements with the President of the United States have not produced results.” Putin complained about “people in Washington ready to do everything possible to prevent these agreements from being implemented in practice” and, referring to Syria, decried the lack of a “common front against terrorism after such lengthy negotiations, enormous effort, and difficult compromises.”
+++++++++++++++++
Those interested in additional information on this key period and the (often treacherous) key players, some of whom I had a chance to observe up close and personal, may find the following of interest:
How War on Syria Lost Its Way
(When Putin Made Obama an Offer He Could Not Turn Down)
US-Russia Ties: From Heyday to MayDay
**Kerry’s Poor Record for Veracity
**In my view, John Kerry merits special (dis)honorable mention. On August 30, 2013 he falsely accused the Syrian government of launching sarin chemical attacks outside Damascus. And during that crucial first week of early Sept. he was still agitating for open war on Syria days after Obama and Putin were successful in working out a plan to head it off. Below is an excerpt of something I wrote earlier about the truly extraordinary sequence of events involving Obama and Kerry during early September 2013:
Kerry: Giving It the College Try
When an attack on Syria was under active consideration, Kerry gave a bravura performance in his Sept. 3, 2013 testimony to a Senate Foreign Affairs Committee whose leaders showed by their own remarks the degree to which they, too, were lusting for an attack on Syria. Kerry’s testimony on Syria included a transparent attempt to play down the effectiveness of al-Qaeda affiliates in gaining control of the armed opposition to Assad. [The U.S. did not want to admit that many of the “moderate” Syrian rebels it supported were affiliated with al-Qaeda.]
Kerry’s testimony drew highly unusual personal criticism from Russian President Vladimir Putin. In a televised meeting of the Russian Presidential Human Rights Council on Sept. 4, Putin said, “He [Kerry] is lying, and he knows he is lying. It is sad.” [Putin made that remark on the day before Obama arrived for a summit in St. Petersburg, without Kerry. Obama later told Jeffrey Goldberg that this was one occasion on which he refused to adhere to the “Washington Playbook” (virtually all his advisers having urged open war on Syria).
But Kerry continued to press for war on Syria. He was asked at the end of a Sept. 9 press conference in London whether there was anything Assad could do to prevent a U.S. attack. Kerry answered (quite dismissively — and embarrassingly in view of subsequent events) that Assad could give up every one of his chemical weapons, but “he isn’t about to do that; it can’t be done.” [Apparently, Obama had kept Kerry in the dark about the seriousness of the deal the president had already worked out with Putin.]
Self-anointed Captain of American “Exceptionalists”
It is worth noting that right after Putin’s remark about “growing trust” in his Sept. 2013 NY Times oped, Putin added specific criticism of what he called “American exceptionalism, [which supposedly] makes America different — exceptional.” (I have been informed by a trusted source that President Putin himself penned the words on “growing trust” and the warning of the pitfalls that can stem from the concept of “exceptionalism” — aka hubris.)
Here’s how Putin ended that (final) paragraph: “It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation. There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy. Their policies differ, too. We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal.” (See: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/12/opinion/putin-plea-for-caution-from-russia-on-syria.html )
Turning again to Syria and the aborted ceasefire mentioned above, that had been approved by both Obama and Putin, it seems highly instructive that Kerry expressed (rather naive) dismay and deep disappointment that, not only the U.S. Air Force, but many other factors in play made it difficult for even the exceptional United States to “align forces”. Here is Kerry lamenting that the Syrian situation was so complicated as to not be susceptible of U.S. “alignment”; the words are drawn from an interview on Sept. 29, 2016 with Steve Clemons of the Atlantic:
SECRETARY KERRY: — but Syria is as complicated as anything I’ve ever seen in public life, in the sense that there are probably about six wars or so going on at the same time – Kurd against Kurd, Kurd against Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Sunni, Shia, everybody against ISIL, people against Assad, Nusrah. This is as mixed-up sectarian and civil war and strategic and proxies, so it’s very, very difficult to be able to align forces. So it’s —
MR CLEMONS: So in the middle of that, why did you think you could get a ceasefire?
KERRY: (no answer)
Interview With Covert Action Magazine
https://covertactionmagazine.com/2021/11/05/ray-mcgovern-the-man-who-got-russiagate-right-and-tried-to-warn-the-public-to-no-avail/
I was interviewed by James Bradley and Jeremy Kuzmarov shortly before my open-heart surgery. Bill Binney is more deserving, of course. I urge all to watch “A Good American” widely available BUT NOT in any theater near you. See, for example:
https://www.amazon.com/Good-American-William-Binney/dp/B071DJXF7L
Healing well now; thanks for the thoughts and prayers.
Interruption Explanation
Sorry for the interruption in postings, but I had major open heart surgery on October 15th. It went quite well, and I am recovering at home. I expect to be back up and running in several weeks.