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News Release Archive | Ray McGovern | Accuracy.Org

Iran: A Repeat Ten Years After “Fixing” Intel on Iraq

July 24, 2012

RAY McGOVERN, rrmcgovern at gmail.com, raymondmcgovern.com
ANNIE MACHON, annie@anniemachon.ch, skype: annie.machon, www.anniemachon.ch
Machon is a former intelligence officer in the UK’s MI5 Security Service (the U.S. counterpart is the FBI), McGovern is a former U.S. Army Intelligence officer and CIA analyst. They just wrote a piece titled “Will Downing St. Memo Recur on Iran?”

They said today: “This week marks the tenth anniversary of a key meeting in the corruption of U.S. and British intelligence to ‘justify’ war on Iraq. Eight months before the ‘shock and awe,’ bombing campaign, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his top advisers met to discuss how they might best support George Bush’s decision to achieve ‘regime change’ in Baghdad. The minutes of that briefing were leaked to London’s Sunday Times on May 1, 2005, but mainstream media, the vast majority of which had been cheerleading for the war, did not print them. The Washington Post waited a month and a half to allude to them, and then dismissed them as nothing new.

“The now infamous ‘Downing Street Minutes’ record the July 23, 2002 briefing by the head of British intelligence at 10 Downing Street three days after his trip to Washington to get the word on Iraq from one of Bush’s closest advisers, CIA chief George Tenet. Here is what the head of British Intelligence said:

“‘Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.’

“A decade after the ‘fixed’ intelligence for invading Iraq, there are signs that more fixing is been done, this time to make the case — whatever the facts — for a new war with Iran. The serving head of British Intelligence is exaggerating the ‘threat’ from Iran, which he says is just two years away from getting a nuclear weapon. And Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is echoing the Downing Street Minutes’ theme that war is ‘justified-by-the-conjunction-of-terrorism-and-WMD.’

“Blaming Iranian-backed Hezbollah for the terrorist attack in Bulgaria, Netanyahu asked viewers of Face the Nation and Fox News Sunday to imagine what would happen if the world’s most dangerous regime got the world’s most dangerous weapons. Asked how he knew who was behind the bombing in Bulgaria, Netanyahu said, in effect, Trust me. Sadly, but not surprisingly, most U.S. media are doing just that even though Bulgarian authorities and even the White House are urging caution until a full investigation has been completed.”

Machon and McGovern just appeared on The Real News: “10 Years Since Downing St. Memo: Is It Happening Again?”

Tagged With: Annie Machon, Fixed Intel Iran, Hezbollah Attack Bulgaria, Iran, Iran War, Middle East, Ray McGovern,

Assange’s Asylum

June 20, 2012

Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers (top-secret government documents that showed a pattern of governmental deceit about the Vietnam War), today signed a petition calling on Ecuador to grant political asylum to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Ellsberg stated: “Political asylum was made for cases like this. Freedom for Julian in Ecuador would serve the cause of freedom of speech and of the press worldwide. It would be good for us all; and it would be cause to honor, respect and thank Ecuador.”

COLEEN ROWLEY, rowleyclan at earthlink.net
Rowley, a former FBI Special Agent and Division Counsel whose May 2002 memo described some of the FBI’s pre-9/11 failures, was named one of Time Magazine’s “Persons of the Year” in 2002. She said today: “An unbelievably cruel irony exists in witnessing powerful western political figures threaten Julian Assange, someone with a unique track record of supporting whistleblowers without any viable outlet for disclosing their superiors’ illegal orders and activities. WikiLeaks’ efforts combating undue secrecy, exposing illegal cover-ups and championing transparency in government has already benefited the world. And I’m convinced, more than ever, that if that type of anti-secrecy publication had existed and enabled the proper information sharing in early 2001, it could have not only prevented the 9/11 attacks but it could have exposed the fabricating of intelligence and deceptive propaganda which enabled the Bush Administration to unjustifiably launch war on Iraq.”

RAY McGOVERN, rrmcgovern at gmail.com
McGovern, who was a U.S. army officer and CIA analyst for 30 years, now works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. He just wrote the piece “Julian Assange’s Artful Dodge,” which states: “Not only is Julian Assange within his rights to seek asylum, he is also in his right mind. Consider this: he was about to be sent to faux-neutral Sweden, which has a recent history of bowing to U.S. demands in dealing with those that Washington says are some kind of threat to U.S. security. Glenn Greenwald on Tuesday provided an example:

“‘In December 2001, Sweden handed over two asylum seekers to the CIA, which then rendered them to be tortured in Egypt. A ruling from the U.N. Human Rights Committee found Sweden in violation of the global ban on torture for its role in that rendition (the two individuals later received a substantial settlement from the Swedish government).’

“For those of you thinking, Oh, but that was under the Bush administration and that kind of thing is over, think again. In 2010 and 2011, the hysteria surrounding WikiLeaks’ disclosures of U.S. misconduct and crimes around the world brought cries from prominent American political figures seeking Assange’s designation as a terrorist, his prosecution as a spy and even his assassination.

“Rep. Peter King, R-New York, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, has called for WikiLeaks to be declared a terrorist organization and Assange to be prosecuted under the Espionage Act of 1917, a position shared by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed:

“‘The release of these documents damages our national interests and puts innocent lives at risk. He should be vigorously prosecuted for espionage.’

“Others have gone even further, demanding that Assange be put to death, either by judicial or extrajudicial means. …

“Four weeks before Assange sought asylum, he interviewed Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa for Episode 6 of The World Tomorrow (Assange’s program Tuesdays on RT [formerly Russia Today]). Assange asked Correa why he has advocated that WikiLeaks release all its cables. Correa responded:

“‘First, you don’t owe anything, have nothing to fear. We have nothing to hide. Your WikiLeaks have made us stronger’ with the damaging revelations showing the attitude of the U.S. embassy toward the sovereignty of the Ecuadorian government.’

“Correa continued: ‘On the other hand, WikiLeaks wrote a lot about the goals that the national media pursue, about the power groups who seek help and report to foreign embassies. … Let them publish everything they have about the Ecuadorian government. You will see how many things about those who oppose the civil revolution in Ecuador will come to light. Things to do with opportunism, betrayal, and being self serving.’

“Correa made the point that when WikiLeaks cables became available to the national media in Ecuador, they chose not to publish them — partly because the documents aired so much ‘dirty linen’ about the media themselves. He added that when he took office in January 2007, five out of seven privately owned TV channels in Ecuador were run by bankers. The bankers were using the guise of journalism to interfere in politics and to destabilize governments, for fear of losing power.”

See the Assange-Correa interview.

Tagged With: civil liberties, Coleen Rowley, Julian Assange, Ray McGovern, WikiLeaks,

Assange and the “War on Whistleblowers”

May 30, 2012

COLEEN ROWLEY, rowleyclan at earthlink.net
Rowley, a former FBI Special Agent and Division Counsel whose May 2002 memo described some of the FBI’s pre-9/11 failures, was named one of Time Magazine’s “Persons of the Year” in 2002. She was featured on an IPA news release yesterday titled “Obama’s Priestly Assassinations” about the administration’s “secret kill list.” She said today: “The war on whistleblowers (which Obama has likened to traitors and espionage), is connected to yesterday’s New York Times story about the ‘secret kill list’ since it is secrecy that is being protected and which fuels and empowers the entire illegal, immoral wrongdoing by a ‘l’etat c’est moi’ ['I am the state'] war presidency setting itself up as investigator, judge, jury and executioner. The only thing that will prevent a return to the dark ages is light.”

DAVID MacMICHAEL, dmacmi at centurylink.net
MacMichael is a former CIA analyst. He said today: “There is a strong possibility that if Assange is extradited to Sweden that the U.S. will have him extradited here. It’s widely thought that there is already a U.S. government secret indictment against Assange in the Alexandria, Virginia, federal court. This would be part of a pattern of the Obama administration’s unprecedented attacks on whistleblowers, using the 1917 Espionage Act to pursue them. So are we going to see an extraordinary prosecution of Assange from this? This is a strong possibility, I believe.

“The U.S. government, like any other, seeks to avoid transparency in the conduct of its foreign policy. The Obama administration is no different in this than its predecessors. Yesterday the New York Times published a piece on the way Obama personally approves the so-called ‘kill lists.’ of individuals being targeted in the Middle East and elsewhere. During the Vietnam war, it was widely accepted: ‘If he’s dead, he must be Viet Cong,’ hence the notorious body counts of that conflict — and that’s essentially what the Obama administration is doing: If a foreign male who is of broadly-considered military age is killed as a result of U.S. operations — drone strikes, helicopter strafings, etc., he must have been a ‘militant’ (interesting definition, that) and not a civilian. Because, of course, we (our military and intelligence forces) don’t kill civilians. That would be wrong.”

GLENN GREENWALD, ggreenwald at salon.com, @ggreenwald
Available for limited number of interviews, Greenwald’s latest book is With Liberty and Justice for Some. He has written extensively about WikiLeaks and said today: “Remember, Julian Assange is one of the most hated people by Western governments because of the transparency that he brought. … Typically, and unfortunately, judicial branches in the United States and in the United Kingdom do the opposite of what they’re intending to do, which is protecting the institutional power, and help to punish and deprive those who are most scorned. So I would have been shocked had the court ruled in favor of Assange, even though, as the two opposing judges on the high court pointed out, the argument for Sweden and those who argued extradition is directly antithetical to what the statute said. No one thinks that a prosecutor is a judicial authority. He hasn’t been charged with a crime, and therefore, there is no courtroom judge seeking his extradition. … But the law in these cases is not what typically governs. What governs is political consideration and views of the party. …

“[Sweden has] a very oppressive, I would even say borderline barbaric, system of pretrial detention.” Greenwald noted that Assange, since he is not a Swedish citizen, will be “automatically consigned to prison, and not released on bail. … The pre-trial hearings in Sweden are private. … And given how sensitive this case is, the idea that judicial decision in Sweden will be made privately and secretly is very alarming. …The concern is that Sweden will hand him over [to the U.S] without much of a fight and that he will face life imprisonment under espionage statute when he is doing nothing more than what newspapers do everyday.”

RAY McGOVERN, rrmcgovern at gmail.com
McGovern, who was a U.S. army officer and CIA analyst for 30 years, now works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. He was also featured on the “Obama’s Priestly Assassinations” news release and has closely followed WikiLeaks.

Tagged With: civil liberties, Coleen Rowley, David MacMichael, Glenn Greenwald, Julian Assange, Ray McGovern, WikiLeaks,