Ray with Judge Napolitano, April 10, 2023 (23 min.)
Interviewed by the Judge, Ray drew an analogy from Vietnam to the situation in Ukraine. In late 1967 Gen. Westmoreland cited “progress” in the war by falsifying the count of armed insurgents in South Vietnam. He counted 299,000; the CIA and other intelligence agencies counted 500,000 to 600,000. The White House and CIA Director Richard Helms caved, and went with Westmoreland’s numbers.
Then, during Tet in late Jan./early Feb. 1968 armed insurgents attacked every hamlet, town, city, province in South Vietnam – with between 500,000 and 600,000 men. Despite that, even after Tet, Westmoreland was pressing President Lyndon Johnson to send 206,000 more troops to Vietnam to broaden the war to Cambodia, Laos, and North Vietnam.
Two leaks to the New York Times – one (March 10, 1968) about the Westmoreland request for 206,000 more troops, and the other (March 19) disclosing Westmoreland’s deceit on the numbers thwarted Westmoreland’s plans. On March 25, LBJ complained privately: “The leaks to the NY Times hurt us … I would have given Westy the 206,000. Now we have no support for the war.”
Did the most recent leaker have something like this in mind? Was s/he trying to prevent wider war in Ukraine?
In addition to dubbing my UNSC talk into German, Actvism Munich has done a transcript in English. We offer it for those who prefer to read rather than to watch. No longer need one wait, in hopeful expectation, for the NY Times to cover it. (Note: Ray misspoke twice, saying the periphery of the U.S. but meaning the periphery of Russia; that is corrected in the transcript below.)
Transcript
Darren Camilleri (Malta) Security Council President for February 2023:
I now give the floor to Mr. Ray McGovern.
Ray McGovern:
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, I would associate myself completely with Professor Jeffrey Sachs’s comments just now. I do not have a prepared text. I was asked to do this less than a day ago. No one suggested what I might say and of course, no one even asked me what I would say. So these are my personal remarks based on my experience for 27 years as an intelligence analyst and as an observer. And I notice that I am also called a political activist. Well, this is my way of paying back for the education I got as an intelligence analyst in the US intelligence community.
Now, I would say that on my way here in two airports this morning I noticed a bunch of children, little children and school-age children. And it made me think back to my days as a school-age child. I was one of those who hid under my desk because of the threat of the Russian atom bomb – as though that would protect me! Fast forward to when I became a professional analyst and Chief of the Soviet foreign policy branch at CIA. I was able to tell the president and Henry Kissinger that the Russians were really interested in putting a cap on the arms race. Suffice it to say, I was instrumental in the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty signed in May of 1972. And I was there in Moscow for the signing.
Thirty years of strategic stability. 30. Count them, three decades. When Mr. Bush Jr decided he would leave the ABM Treaty without any real explanation and then Mr. Trump left the INF treaty, which I thought could never be concluded because it involved the destruction, the destruction of a whole class of nuclear tipped intermediate range ballistic missiles in Europe and in Siberia.
Then we had the Open Skies Treaty which the US also left. And now we are warned that New Start is also in danger. I must say that after the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty was signed, I was feeling euphoric. I need not worry about whether they’re building this or that building just to be demolished by the next nuclear weapon.
And it’s very sad for me to watch what’s going on now where people can’t get together and deal. “Verhandeln”. That’s the German word for negotiate, deal. If you look at it, it comes from the word “Hand”. “Die Hand”, you reach out “die Hand” and you get to know and you get to understand what is bothering the other party.
Now, I don’t want to get ahead of myself here. I do want to talk about Seymour Hersh’s article. And I have to say upfront – full disclosure – that I am a friend of Seymour Hersh, and so I will not opine myself. I will cite a very distinguished former US ambassador and also Assistant Secretary of Defense. These are the words he said about Seymour Hersh: “Hersh attracts whistleblowers because he has a perfect record of protecting their identities and accurately publishing what they reveal after due diligence, despite the government denials and slanderous attacks that invariably follow. His reputation is such that people of conscience seek him out”. People of conscience.
As a US Army officer and as a CIA employee I took an oath, one oath. It was to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Some of us took that oath seriously. And when we see this kind of thing going on, we go to somebody who might be able to protect us and might be able to get the word out. Now, that was two weeks ago. Has The New York Times mentioned Sy Hersh’s article? Or has it even reported the denials? No. Not yet. This is quite… The Germans would say “merkwürdig”. This is very, very remarkable.
Now, let me go on here and talk about, well, how do we evaluate those who are smearing Seymour Hersh? Well, as Jeffrey Sachs has already said, the CIA spokesperson said Hersh’s claim is “completely and utterly false” quote unquote. Oh! Now, I have to confess, being an alumnus of the CIA that our PR people, our public relations people do not have a very good record.
No one wants to go back 20 years to Colin Powell’s speech before this Security Council. We all know about that. What I would like to do is simply say what happened before that speech. Before that speech, some conscientious whistleblower gave the text of a UN. debriefing of Hussein Kamel, one of Saddam Hussein’s sons in law. And who was he? He was supervisor over the radiological, biological, chemical, and the nuclear program, such as it was, in Baghdad. And he said to his interviewers, UN interviewers, US interviewers, U.K. interviewers, he said the following: “All nuclear, chemical, biological and missile programs have been destroyed”.
Now, they asked him, the interrogators did. Well, how do you know? And Kamel said, well, I was in charge of them. I mean, I don’t know how it works in your country, but when I order something destroyed, it gets destroyed.
Yeah. But how do you know? Did you check? they asked him. Well, yes, I checked a couple… Are you trying to get me to say they were not destroyed? This is 1995.
Now someone leaked… Someone leaked that transcript to Newsweek. Newsweek, on the 24th, almost exactly 20 years ago, Newsweek published this report saying “Hussein Kamel, the highest ranking Iraqi official ever to defect from Saddam Hussein’s inner circle told the CIA and British Intelligence officers and UN inspectors in the summer of 1995 that after the Gulf War, Iraq destroyed all its chemical and biological weapons and the missiles to deliver them.” Kamel had direct knowledge of what he claimed. For ten years he ran Iraq’s nuclear, chemical, biological and missile programs.
And in a classic understatement the author, John Barry in Newsweek, says “the defector’s tale raises questions about whether the WMD stockpiles attributed to Iraq still exist.”
Well, I guess it did!!!
What happened? Newsweek published this in a little blurb. First on their site, their website. Then the members of the media went to a fellow named Bill Harlow, who was CIA PR person, CIA spokesperson for the agency and he said, look, these.. This report is “incorrect, it’s bogus, it’s wrong, and it’s untrue”. Well, incorrect, bogus, wrong and untrue. And what do the members of the press do? They breathed a sigh of relief and said, “Whew! I’m so glad you told us that, because we were going to publish it. It looked pretty documentary, it looked pretty authoritative.” It was indeed documentary, authoritative. It was the official transcript of Hussein Kamel’s debriefing.
So, just a word about those who are smearing Sy Hersh. They don’t have a really good record for credibility.
Let me move on here. I’d like to talk a little bit about “unprovoked”. Now we have heard more than a 100 times that the Russian Invasion of Ukraine was “unprovoked”. This goes back to the widening of NATO despite the promise not to. And I had a personal experience with one of Gorbachev’s chief advisers. His name is Kuvaldin, Viktor Borisovich.
And about eight years ago I saw him in Moscow and I said: “Mr. Kuvaldin, why is it that this agreement was not written down?” And he said: “Mr. McGovern, I’ll tell you the usual reasons. The Germans hadn’t bought into it yet, and the Warsaw Pact still existed. But really and truly, Mr. McGovern, here’s what it was. We trusted you.”
Now we all know the history of how NATO more than doubled in size. With all countries to the east, more than one inch to the east. I want to not belabor that point. It’s simply that, you know, it’s more than just NATO enlargement. When Crimea was annexed by Russia, Mr. Putin stood up a month later and said, we had to annex Crimea because of the coup in Kiev in February of 2014. Putin added: “Even more important” than NATO membership for Ukraine was the prospect that medium range ballistic missiles would be put on the periphery of Russia. Which indeed the U.S. is capable of doing, because there already are capsules, holes in Romania and Poland that accommodate Tomahawk missiles, cruise missiles, and will eventually accommodate hypersonic missiles.
This is very, very serious. Mr. Putin made this point in December of last year. Not last year, but the year before in talking to his chief military.
Now, how do I end this? I would like to do a little human business here. “Verstehen”. Let me just point out that when I was in Germany last, there was a button that one put on the lapel and it said “Putinversteher”, okay? Now, those of you who know German know that means someone who understands Putin. And I thought to myself, Wow! Somebody is interested in understanding Mr. Putin. And my friend said: “No, no, no! For God’s sake, don’t wear that button. That’s pejorative. That means you’re in Putin’s pocket!”
“Verstehen” comes from the word “stehen”, to stand. Okay. If you can understand where people stand, you can understand what bothers them and what bothers Mr. Putin, as well as membership in NATO for Ukraine, is the emplacement of these holes already operational in Romania and Poland, right on the periphery of Russia. They are disguised as ABM systems, but they can easily accommodate cruise missiles and, as I say, hypersonic missiles.
There was a motto in the recent German demonstrations, it said “verhandeln statt schießen”. Again, “verhandeln” is the word for negotiate, to talk. “Hand”. You reach out the hand to the other person, you try to understand them. “Verhandeln Statt Schießen”, “schießen” is to shoot. Okay? Now, that motto makes good sense.
But I have to tell you, that is not welcome in Germany. A good friend of mine, Heinrich Bücker has been convicted for saying we ought to put ourselves in the shoes of Mr. Putin and we ought to realize the far-right influence in the government of Kiev. He was convicted in a German court. He’s appealing, but he’s not going to pay the €2,000 fine. So it’s likely he will end up in jail for several months.
Now, that’s freedom of speech? We enjoy that here in the United States. I am really concerned about what will happen to my friend. In closing here, just suffice it to say that this “verhandeln”, you know, “verhandeln”, reach your hand. Let’s be human here. Let’s not dismiss each other. Let’s extend our hands “Verhandeln Statt Schießen”.
Well, it was very, very bleak in our country during the suppression of blacks. And I had the privilege of working with Vincent Harding, Dr. Harding, who was the author of Martin Luther King’s Speech on Vietnam. He had a favorite song. And the song was: “We gonna keep on moving forward, never turning back”. Well, what I would suggest is that we need to, we need to keep on moving forward. And I would recommend the second stanza of this to you all. And if you would listen, I would really appreciate it:
“We’re gonna keep on moving forward. We’re gonna keep on loving our enemies. We’re gonna keep on loving our enemies. Gonna keep on loving our enemies, never turning back. Never turning back”.
In closing, I would just refer to those children that I noticed more than I usually notice children in the airports today. And I ask you all, because you have the power to do so, given to you after the last major World War. I ask you to do what’s necessary so that no one kills the children anymore. Thank you very much.
As this year’s Masters Tournament comes to an end, I am reminded that 40 years ago I was in Augusta, Georgia, during Masters week, because Secretary of State George Shultz, a golf enthusiast was there.
Shultz was one of a handful of cabinet-level officials President Ronald Reagan wanted experienced CIA analysts to brief one-on-one with The President’s Daily Brief – updated as necessary. (Back in Washington, an agency colleague substituted for me in briefing Vice President George H. W. Bush and Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger – two others normally on my daily rounds.)
It was hard to be in Augusta and not try to obtain one of those spiffy green blazers and sneak into the tournament, but I managed to resist the temptation. Instead, I went for a long run along the Savannah River; then packed up and returned to Washington.
Briefing Shultz, a Real Pro
Comparisons can be invidious. Thus, I will avoid mentioning the clowns who succeeded Shultz as secretary of state. He died two years ago at age 100, and I can only hope that, from his new perch, he is somehow insulated from seeing the damage wreaked by his successors. I am thinking, for example, of Albright, Rice, Clinton, Kerry, Tillerson, Pompeo, Blinken.
From 1982 to 1985, I briefed Shultz every other morning (three out of six days a week) with the PDB and whatever supplementary material I chose (usually from data received overnight). He was not a ‘hail-fellow-well-met’ person. You had to earn his respect.
Shultz was a no-nonsense, consummate professional with a resume that would not quit. What made it particularly interesting for me was the fact that he was at serious loggerheads with my two CIA bosses, Bobby Gates and Bill Casey.
There were a number of ways Secretary Shultz showed me that he respected my apolitical professionalism – first and foremost, my analysis (and that of the Soviet specialists I knew to be trustworthy) that Gorbachev was the real deal. It was a time when Bobby and Bill – and Weinberger – were telling Reagan that Gorbachev was just a clever Commie, and that the Communist Party of the Soviet Union would never reform, much less concede power.
When I went on to another job (Deputy Chief of Analysis in the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (part of the CIA, but not directly under Gates), Shultz asked me to stay in touch and come to see him whenever I had something to say that I thought he needed to hear. I did not abuse the privilege; sent him analytic pieces every couple of months; and arranged to see him only two or three times during those two years. The last time I saw Shultz, before I left FBIS, he asked me to consider coming over to State and working for him. But Bobby Gates, who ultimately controlled my career, quickly put the kibosh on that. In the end it worked out just fine for me, making my early retirement from the agency far less complicated.
Trust
During my briefings of Shultz, I was able to draw on several decades-worth of analytic experience with Russia, plus the work of those CIA analysts I trusted. Only later did I realize that for Shultz we embodied the reality that not all CIA analysts thought, well, that Gorbachev was simply a clever Commie. Shultz ultimately prevailed in the struggle with troglodytes like Weinberger, Casey, and Gates, ushering in a period of détente, arms control agreements, and mutual respect.
Regrettably, today détente is a thing of the past, the U.S. has abrogated the ABM and the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty – to name just two. The kind of trust-but-verify respect that George Shultz – and ultimately Ronald Reagan – worked to build between the U.S. and Russia is no more.
Shortly before he died, Shultz published an article in The Foreign Service Journal titled “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. Would you trust Mike Pompeo? Antony Blinken?
Is Pentagon falsifying kill-ratio to gild Easter lilies in Kyiv? Recent leak https://nytimes.com/2023/04/06/us/politics/ukraine-war-plan-russia.html of an apparently official NATO document shows 71,500 Ukrainians KIA and only 16,000 to 17,500 Russians, a far cry from earlier Pentagon ‘estimates’. All sounds so Vietnam-déjà vu!
Former CIA Ray McGovern sits down with Stephen Gardner to talk about the Russia Ukraine War. Why Putin is gearing up for a long war. Why Biden and Scholz are in trouble for sabotaging the Nord Stream pipeline and why they are covering it up with silly stories. Plus, McGovern reveals China is much more involved in the Russia-Ukraine war that anyone is admitting.
0:05 Ray McGovern former CIA and Security advisor to Ronald Reagan
6:25 How NATO provoked Ukraine Russia war for over a decade with 2022 being the final straw
