Ray McGovern: 27-Year CIA Analyst
Exposes Major Press Cover-up Around War on Terror
Dear friends,
Ray McGovern, a 27-year CIA analyst who briefed
George H.W. Bush when he was Vice President, has written an article boldly
exposing what so many carefully avoid. He shows how the press
has failed to voice what is know only too well in powerful circles—that "Muslims
do not hate our freedom, but rather, they hate our policies."
It is the US government's lopsided support of Israel and other Middle
Eastern regimes considered to be tyrannical which has created much of
the animosity in the Arab world towards the US.
McGovern gives specific examples of how major
media like the New York Times have avoided or played down this
vital information. The deep roots of the war on terror have yet to be
discussed in open public forums. There are many wonderful, good-hearted
people in the countries of Israel and the Middle East, just as there are in
the US and every country in the world. Let us not neglect, however, to work
towards changing the policies of any country which serves the interests of
the elite at the expense of everyone else. Thanks for caring and you have a
great day!
With best wishes,
Fred Burks for the WantToKnow.info
team
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/120604X.shtml
All Mosquitos, No Swamp; No Elephants Either
By Ray
McGovern
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Ray
McGovern's duties during his 27-year career as an analyst at the CIA included
daily briefings of then-Vice President Bush and the most senior national
security advisers to President Ronald Reagan. McGovern is on the Steering
Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
Sunday
05 December 2004
Last
Thursday's conference on "Al Qaeda 2.0: Transnational Terrorism After
9/11," sponsored by the New America Foundation and the New York
University Center on Law & Security, was a valuable gift to those wanting
an update on informed opinion on the subject. The event proved to be as
highly instructive for what was not addressed, though, as for the issues that
were. The elephants known to be present remained largely
unacknowledged.
The
cavernous Caucus Room of the Russell Senate Office Building was full to the
gunnels. Panel after panel of distinguished presenters from near and
far, from right and left - including authors Peter Bergen, Michael Scheuer,
Jessica Stern and Col. Pat Lang - exuded and freely shared their expertise.
But there was myopia as well.
The
mosquitos of terrorism were dissected and examined as carefully as biology
students once did drosophila, but typing the generic DNA of terrorism proved
more elusive. Worse, no attention was given to the swamp in which terrorists breed.
Were it not for a few impertinent questions from the audience evoking a
pungent smell, the swamps might have eluded attention altogether.
The
first panel featured two experts from RAND, both of whom touched only in
passing - and quite gingerly - on the need to drain the swamp. The first
closed his remarks with a 30-second peroration in which he observed that less
attention might be given to kill/capture metrics in favor of addressing the
causes of terrorism and breaking the cycle of terrorist recruitment.
The
second speaker from RAND, referring to that organization's numerous studies
on influencing public opinion, closed his remarks with this: "When the
message coheres with the context in which the message is transmitted, it
works." Sending out the right message during the Cold War was easier, he
said, because the context (the United States being the only alternative to
the USSR) was very clear. On terrorism, he added, we need to ponder "the
mismatch between context and message."
What About The Elephants?
Then
came a rude question from the audience: Is it not striking that even in an
academic-type setting like this, elephants must remain invisible? Is it not
ironic, that a panel of the U.S. Defense Science Board, in an unclassified
study on "Strategic Communication," completed on September 23 but
kept under wraps until after the November 2 election, let the pachyderms out
of the bag? Directly contradicting the president, the DSB panel gave
voice to what virtually all who were sitting in that ornate Senate Caucus
Room knew, but were afraid to say. It named the elephants.
"Muslims
do not ‘hate our freedom,' but rather, they hate our policies. The
overwhelming majority voice their objections to what they see as one-sided
support in favor of Israel and against Palestinian rights, and the
longstanding, even increasing support for what Muslims collectively see as
tyrannies, most notably Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan, and the Gulf
States. Thus, when American public diplomacy talks about bringing democracy
to Islamic societies, this is seen as no more than self-serving
hypocrisy."
"...Nor
can the most carefully crafted messages, themes, and words persuade when the
messenger lacks credibility."
U.S.
Support For Israel "Immutable"
Another
questioner pressed RAND's expert on mismatch-context-message, asking,
"What can we do to change the context?" In answer the
expert acknowledged that the United States has a "bad reputation"
but insisted that this is "unavoidable" because, for example, U.S.
support for Israel is "immutable." The United
States is also connected to what many Muslims consider "apostate"
regimes, but it is difficult to escape what binds us, because the U.S. needs
their "tactical support." (Read: oil; military bases;
intelligence.)
There
was some wincing and squirming in the audience, but in the end it was left to
aptly named Marc Sageman, a forensic psychiatrist, former CIA case officer,
and author of the book Understanding Terror Networks (published earlier this
year), to state the obvious on Israel and Iraq. Putting it even more bluntly
that the Defense Science Board panel, he asserted:
"We
are seen as a hypocritical bully in the Middle East and we have to
stop!"
Now
why should that be so hard to say, I asked myself. And I was reminded of a
frequent, unnerving experience I had while on the lecture circuit in recent
months. Almost invariably, someone in the audience would approach me after
the talk and ensuing discussion, and congratulate me on my
"courage" in naming Israel as a factor in discussing the war in
Iraq and the struggle against terrorism.
I
don't get it. Since when did it take uncommon courage to state simply,
without fear or favor, the conclusions that fall out of one's analysis? Since
when did it become an exceptional thing to tell it like it is?
Taking The Heat On Israel
I
thought of the debate I had on Iraq with arch-neoconservative and former CIA
Director James Woolsey on PBS' Charlie Rose Show on August 20, when I broke
the taboo on mentioning Israel and was immediately branded
"anti-Semitic" by Woolsey. Reflecting later on his accusation, it
seemed almost OK since it was so blatantly ad hominem. And his attack was all
the more transparent, coming from the self-described "anchor of the Presbyterian
wing of JINSA" - the Jewish Institute of National Security Affairs, a
strong advocate of war to eliminate all perceived enemies of Israel - like
Iraq. In the ensuing days, a flood of e-mail reached me from all over the
country - some of it repeating Woolsey's charge, but most of it warmly
congratulating me on my "courage."
I
still don't fully understand. And that was my candid answer to the question I
dreaded - the one that so often came up during the Q and A sessions following
my presentations: Why is it that the state of Israel has such
pervasive influence over our body politic? No one denied that it
does; most seemed genuinely puzzled as to why. My embarrassment at my
inability to answer the question is attenuated by the solace I take in the
thought that I am in good company.
Gen.
Brent Scowcroft, National Security Adviser to President George H. W. Bush and
now chair of his son's President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, has
been known to speak out on key issues when his patience is exhausted.
Remember how, for example, before the attack on Iraq, he described the
evidence of ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda as "scant" when Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was calling it "bulletproof?" Well, it
sounds like he has again run out of patience. Scowcroft recently told the
Financial Times that George W. Bush is "mesmerized" by Israeli
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. "Sharon just has him wrapped around his
little finger," Scowcroft is quoted as saying.
Scowcroft
and I apparently have less at risk than those working for RAND...or for the
New York Times, which gives off the aroma of being similarly mesmerized and
intimidated. This shows through with amazing regularity; I'll adduce but two
recent examples:
Times Timing...
To
its credit, the New York Times on November 24 published a story by Times
reporter Thom Shanker on the findings of the Defense Science Board panel
report given to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld on September 23. But why
was the story two months late? And the urban legend that it was the Times
that broke the story is not true, even though the Washington Post's
somnolent ombudsman, Michael Getler "confirms that legend in his column
this morning. (Noting that the story "didn't appear in the Post,"
Getler implies that it should have, because "it goes to the heart of
both the war on terrorism and the war in Iraq and it raises many crucial
issues that don't get probed deeply enough by news organizations, in my
opinion.")
It
was not the Times on November 24, but rather Reasononline's Matt
Welch, who broke the story. On November 15 Welch wrote an account of the
panel's report in which he referred to its recommendations as having already
been "made public." Were reporters from the mainstream press again
asleep? Do they feed only on the thin gruel of approved Pentagon handouts? It
is easy to understand that the Defense Department had no incentive to
advertise the DSB panel's embarrassing and potentially explosive findings.
(How often have we seen a Pentagon-sponsored report contradicting a sitting
president on a matter of such significance - and before a crucial election?)
It is not so easy to grasp why the media missed or ignored the story. Or
perhaps it is.
Maybe
the clue is in the timing. I gave a long interview on US intelligence matters
to another Times reporter a few weeks before the election and at the
conclusion of the interview I commented that I certainly hoped his story
would appear before November 2. This reporter turned out to be as candid as
he was embarrassed. No, he confessed, his superiors at the Times
had made it clear that there was an embargo on criticism of the
administration of the kind I had offered until after the election. I
expressed amazement that the New York Times - once courageous
publisher of the Pentagon Papers that helped bring an end to our last
ill-conceived war - would allow itself to be so intimidated. He replied, with
undisguised embarrassment, that this is simply the way it is today.
Again,
I find myself wondering how long the Times sat on the material
reported by Shanker. Did it have the story before November 2? What does it
mean that the Times published Shanker's report only after a decent
post-election interval? Also interesting is the date ultimately chosen to run
it - the day before Thanksgiving, a very poor time to attract the attention
such a story might otherwise evoke. Yet another sign of wimpish desire to
pander to administration preferences?
...and
Times Surgery
Of
equal interest is how the Times abridged the story itself. Shanker
did quote from the key paragraph beginning with "Muslims do not ‘hate
our freedom'" (quoted in full above). But he or his editors
deliberately cut out the next sentence about what Muslims do object to; i.e.,
U.S. "one-sided support in favor of Israel and against Palestinian
rights," and support for tyrannical regimes. The Times
did include the sentence that immediately followed the omitted one. In other
words, the offending middle sentence was surgically removed from the
paragraph like a malignant tumor.
Editing
Bin Laden, As Well
Similarly
creative editing showed through the Times' reporting on Osama Bin
Laden's videotaped speech in late October. Several paragraphs of the story
made it onto page one, but the Times
saw to it that the key point Bin Laden made toward the beginning of his
remarks was relegated to paragraphs 23 to 25 at the very bottom of page nine.
Buried there, dwarfed by a large ad for Bloomingdales, was Bin Laden's
revealing claim that the idea for 9/11 first germinated after "we
witnessed the oppression and tyranny of the American-Israeli coalition
against our people in Palestine and Lebanon."
If,
as suggested earlier, one were to look for "context," precious
little is provided by the Times. A "newspaper of record"
might have noted that even the risk-averse 9/11 commissioners pointed out on
page 147 of the Commission Report that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed,
mastermind and executioner of the 9/11 attacks, was motivated by "his
violent disagreement with U.S. foreign policy favoring Israel."
Was that not news fit to print?
Four More Years
With
the mainstream media co-opted, and four-year older but familiar national
security faces in place for the president's second term, it is a safe bet we
are in for the same inept, misguided policies - only more so. Sadly,
Secretary of State Colin Powell's relatively moderate views had little
visible impact on policy decisions. Still, when he is gone the president's
circle of advisers will have an even shorter diameter. And it is highly
unlikely that Powell's designated successor, Dr. Condoleezza Rice, will be
any more astute than in the past in seeking counsel from experienced
statesmen like her former patron, Gen. Scowcroft.
Foreign
leaders are aghast...and have been for years. In August 2002, British senior
Labor backbencher Gerald Kaufman, a former shadow foreign secretary, warned
that the "hawks" in the U.S. administration were giving the
president poor advice:
"Bush,
himself the most intellectually backward American president in my lifetime,
is surrounded by advisers whose bellicosity is exceeded only by their
political, military and diplomatic illiteracy. Pity the man who relies on
Rumsfeld, Cheney and Rice for counsel."
Shrinking Circle
On
the afternoon of February 5, 2003, after Secretary of State Colin Powell made
his embarrassingly memorable speech at the UN, my colleagues and I of Veteran
Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) drafted and sent a short
memorandum to the president, which concluded with this observation:
"After
watching Secretary Powell today, we are convinced that you would be well
served if you widened the discussion beyond... the circle of those advisers
clearly bent on a war for which we see no compelling reason and from which we
believe the unintended consequences are likely to be catastrophic."
Instead,
the circle has been squeezed still tighter - as with wagons. And those widely
known in Washington as "the crazies" when they were middle-level
officials and the president's father was in the White House are now even more
firmly ensconced. They remain in charge of things like war - the very same
folks who brought us the "cakewalk" that became war in Iraq.
Hold
onto your hats!
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