Events

CIA Analyst-turned-activist Ray McGovern Visits Berkeley

Gar Smith

Thursday May 05, 2016 - 11:08:00 AM

As usual, the April 29 gathering at Berkeley's historic Fellowship Hall (at Cedar and Bonita) was an energizing experience for the activist community. Dozens of local action groups were represented at the "Active Hope: Going Forward" event but the main draws were Joanna Macy and Ray McGovern.

Among those assembled for an evening of music, potluck dining and discussion were members of Codepink, Berkeley Progressive Alliance, Berkeley Peace and Justice Commission, Sunflower Alliance, No Fracking/No Nukes, Black Lives Matter, Bill of Rights Defense Committee, End Mass Incarceration, Sustainable Berkeley, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Occupy the Farm, Postal Banking, Move to Amend, Divestment from Fossil Fuels, Save the East Bay Forest, and Stop Destruction of Ace Hardware.

Joanna Macy began things by leading a circle of participants in a healing ritual. Mellowness established, the activists got down to business by sharing a flurry of updates about recent and imminent actions.

Cynthia Papermaster introduced her pet pup, Jimminywinks, the anti-nuclear mascot of BARC (Barkers Agitating for Reactor Closures) and gave a shout-out to Berkeley City Councilmember Kriss Worthington who successfully introduced a city resolution calling for the closure of the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant. Worthington raised his hand to show that he was present and was showered with a round of enthusiastic applause. Papermaster noted the resolution passed "almost unanimously." There was only one holdout who voted against it—councilmember Laurie Capitelli. Papermaster made a point of mentioning that Capitelli is "currently a candidate for mayor."

Carl Anthony, co-founder of the Breakthrough Communities Project, spoke about the Resilient Communities Initiative. Just as climate change is driving sea-level rises that are devastating low-lying island nations in the Pacific Ocean, the first effects of climate change in the US will be felt by the poorest Americans living in the urban flatlands of coastal cities. Because low-lying parts of the Bay Area will be the first to experience flooding, Anthony and other activists are helping these communities to take the lead in defending their homes and lives against flooding by addressing climate-change solutions. (Anthony also has a new book coming out. With some gentle prodding about how long it has taken to write it, Anthony replied: "It's been 55 years in the making.")

Media Alliance Executive Director Tracy Rosenberg brought the crowd up to date on the work of the Oakland Privacy Working Group. OPWG played a key role in defeating Oakland's plan to create a Domain Awareness Center. Also known as the "Fusion Center," the DAC would have installed surveillance software all over the city, feeding personal data and TV images of residents into a centralized police database. Rosenburg mentioned that OPWG recently got wind of BART's new plan to install license-plate scanners at the MacArthur Station. OPWG intervened and stopped it. (OWEG meets once a month, generally the first Monday, at 4799 Shattuck Avenue in North Oakland.)

Ray McGovern: From CIA Analyst to Peace Activist

Ray McGovern, a CIA analyst from 1963 to 1990, once chaired the National Intelligence Estimates team and prepared the President's Daily Brief. Today he teaches at an inner city school in Washington DC and frequently gets busted for protesting government policies.

McGovern is a rare bird, a CIA intelligence-analyst-turned-antiwar- activist. On May 4, 2006, McGovern earned "nine minutes of fame" by publicly challenging Donald Rumsfeld over his false claims about Iraq's WMDs. To Rumsfeld's growing discomfort, McGovern read Rumsfeld's own words back to him and called the Defense Secretary a liar. It was a slow news day, so McGovern wound up being interviewed by just about every major news organization. The confrontation can be seen on YouTube.

In a telling moment during an off-air chat with CNN news anchor Anderson Cooper, the reporter (clearly impressed with McGovern's bravado) wanted to know, confidentially, "Weren't you afraid?" McGovern was shocked. His take-away from journalist's question was profoundly disturbing: Anderson Cooper was basically admitting that he—despite being a prominent mainstream journalist—would not have had the cojones to ask such a question of such a man. He would have been too afraid.

"We no longer have a free media," McGovern said. Most of what passes for "news" these days passes through the filter of "media self-censorship." The exceptions are found in the noncommercial realm, where it is still possible to listen to journalists with integrity, people like Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! and Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept.

Recommended Reading

McGovern had a couple of books to recommend. The first was James Douglas' JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters, which exposes the unknown background of the Kennedy assassination—how it was planned and why it was executed. The second book was The Untold History of the United States, a book by Peter Kuznick and Oliver Stone. McGovern said the chapter on Hiroshima is particularly revealing.

According to the authors' research, 80% of the US scientists involved in the secret Manhattan Project to build an A-bomb pleaded with Truman not to use the nuclear weapon against Japanese cities. "But Truman was a racist," McGovern pointed out. "He used the N-word profligately." South Carolina Senator Jimmy Byrnes, Truman's closest foreign policy advisor (and a Southern racist), urged Truman to drop the bomb. McGovern argues that the bombing of civilians in Hiroshima and Nakasaki was just another one of "America's many racist wars," using superior force against a far-off population of other-skinned people.

Jails and Politicians

McGovern recalled a night he spent inside New York's notorious city jail (aka "The Tombs") and ranked it as his worst jail experience to date. It brought to mind Mahatma Gandhi's advice that if you really want to know the nature of a country, check out the condition of its prisons. That will tell you what a nation thinks of liberty and human dignity.

Surprisingly, McGovern faulted Bernie Sanders for granting Hillary Clinton a pass during an early presidential debate when he declared: "The American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails." As an intelligence officer, McGovern remains deeply concerned about the information that might have been at risk. It still strikes him as suspicious that the Benghazi Consulate was chosen for an attack. It almost seemed as though someone had inside information that the facility was poorly defended—and that kind of information could have been gleaned by someone reading Clinton's emails.

McGovern cited another case of a US State Department official whose private communications were compromised. In 2014, the Russian government (it is presumed) released a recording of secret conversations between State Department Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland and other members of the team that orchestrated the US-backed coup in Ukraine. The audiotape, which is now posted on YouTube, captured Nuland announcing who had been chosen by the US to become the new leader in Kiev.

"I think Yats is the guy," Nuland states (referring to Arseniy "Yats" Yatseniuk). Nuland declared that Yat's was the best choice to become Washington's prefered Prime Minister because he was the guy with "the economic experience, the governing experience." (Nuland's assessment was flawed. On April 10, 2016, Yats was forced to resign in the face of growing political chaos and economic problems.)

When a colleague referenced the EU's attempts to woo the Ukraine away from its Russian past, Nuland mocked the EU's "slow" approach. Her exact response (also available on YouTube) was brusque and memorable: "Fuck the EU," she barked. Regime change was so much more expedient.

Beaten Bloody for Disrepecting Hillary Clinton

McGovern recalled a rather famous moment when he rose to his feet to challenge Hillary Clinton at a public event. This time, however, McGovern didn't raise his voice to ask a question. He simply turned his back. For this active display of disrespect, McGovern was manhandled, roughed up, beaten, arrested, jailed and placed on a government watch-list.

McGovern confided that he had learned a valuable lesson from the experience—not about the limits of proper political behavior, but something useful to the future of political protest. "People don't like seeing old people get beat up," McGovern discovered. It's not so much a problem seeing young folks being blocked by cops, but the public really doesn't like watching people with gray hair getting clobbered. The lesson was clear: "We older people have an advantage as activists. So use it!"

McGovern quoted Berkeley food activist and restaurant pioneer Alice Waters who once shared space with him aboard a "peace flotilla" ship that attempted to break Israel's blockade of Gaza. Waters' quote has stayed with him. "Activism is the rent I pay for living on this planet," she said.

In June, McGovern is planning a trip to Germany to present a petition protesting the presence of the US military base at Ramstein. He will then travel to Russia on a citizen-to-citizen mission to collaborate with Russian peace groups.

In response to an audience question about the work of the CIA, McGovern replied: "There are two CIA's." The agency created by Harry Truman to produce intelligence has become debased by political influence. Instead of producing independent assessments, the Agency has all too often produced politically usable (read: "intentionally fraudulent") findings that have been "fixed around policy." The good news is that there is a "second CIA." "There are still some good people left inside," McGovern said, and he gave a case-in-point. The Agency is charged with developing National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs) to inform White House decision-making. But, under the George W. Bush White House, the CIA knew that Iran has stopped working on the pursuit of a nuclear bomb in 2003. In George W. Bush's autobiography, Decision Points, Bush actually admits reading the CIA National Intelligence Estimate informing him that Iran had abandoned its nuclear program. Bush called the NIE "an eye-popper"—but he kept his mouth shut. Since the truth wasn't convenient for "W" and the political cabal set on demonizing Tehran, that NIE was replaced by a paper that concluded Iran did pose an imminent nuclear threat.

McGovern also pointed out that since the controversial shoot-down of the MH17 passenger jet over Ukraine in 2014, the US government has still not issued an NIE to establish definitively who was responsible for the tragic loss of lives. Instead, the government came up with "a new genre" of Intel called a "Government Intelligence Estimate." Secretary of State John Kerry then proclaimed that the evidence in the GIE showed Russian-backed Ukrainian rebels were responsible. But there was no such conclusive evidence. Instead, McGovern said: "Kerry lied." (McGovern believes the best evidence points to Kiev-backed Ukrainian forces.)

McGovern revealed that, in the run-up to the US attack on Baghdad, both he and United Nations weapons inspector Scott Ritter personally attempted to inform then-Senator Hillary Clinton that there was no evidence of "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq. Their council was rejected and Clinton knowingly proceeded to vote for a US attack on Iraq, complete with a "shock and awe" attack on the capital and the overthrow of the elected government.

As the evening ended, Ray McGovern made it quite clear that he will not be voting for another Clinton White House.

Postscript: Several times during the evening, McGovern paused to mention his "good friend" Daniel Berrigan, a Catholic priest, poet, pacifist and anti-war protester who faced arrest, served time and went underground for a spell for his anti-war actions.

McGovern finished his comments by reciting a special poem, written by Berrigan.

Unknown to McGovern and his audience that night, Rev. Daniel Berrigan's death, at the age of 94, would be announced the next day.

Here, then, is the poem than Berrigan and McGovern chose to share with us:

Some

(to the Plowshares 8, with love)

by Daniel Berrigan

Some stood up once, and sat down.

Some walked a mile, and walked away.

Some stood up twice, then sat down.

"It's too much," they cried.

Some walked two miles, then walked away.

"I've had it," they cried,