Ray McGovern

Is it because John Yoo, the former Justice Department’s hired hand, is such an easy target? Is it because of the cheeky, in-your-face way in which Yoo argues that the president has the authority to have your eyes poked out and your sons’ testicles crushed, because we are "at war" and he is commander-in-chief? Or … Continue reading “Yoo’s on First?”

Events of the last week offer a metaphorical glimpse at the delusion pervading President George W. Bush’s White House and other enclaves of Iraq supporters in Washington. Bush and the First Lady spent last Monday clowning with the Easter Bunny (White House counsel Fred Fielding having donned the costume). At the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), … Continue reading “Delusional Bush Dances Toward War”

Frontline‘s "Bush’s War" on PBS Monday and Tuesday evening was a nicely put-together rehash of the top players’ trickery that led to the attack on Iraq, together with the power-grabbing, back-stabbing, and limitless incompetence of the occupation. Except for an inside-the-Beltway tidbit here and there – for example, about how the pitiable former Secretary of … Continue reading “Frontline: Too Timid, Too Little, Too Late”

After one spends 45 years in Washington, high farce does not normally throw one off balance. I found the past few days, however, an acid test of my equilibrium. I missed the National Prayer Breakfast – for the 45th time in a row. But as I drove to work I listened with rapt attention as … Continue reading “Waterboarding for God, With Decency and Compassion”

Yesterday was a difficult day for Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. It was hard to celebrate the fifth anniversary of our first corporate memorandum, a same-day critique of Colin Powell’s Feb. 5, 2002 UN address, when we could not escape the reality that this speech greased the skids for death and destruction in Iraq and … Continue reading “Powell’s UN Fiasco: Fresh and Festering”

When the Tonkin Gulf incident took place in early August 1964, I was a journeyman CIA analyst in what Condoleezza Rice refers to as “the bowels of the agency.” As a current intelligence analyst responsible for Russian policy toward Southeast Asia and China, I worked very closely with those responsible for analysis of Vietnam and … Continue reading “Gulf of Tonkin Will Be
Tough to Repeat”

"There are few things as odd as the calm, superior indifference with which I and those like me watched the beginnings of the Nazi revolution in Germany, as if from a box at the theater…Perhaps the only comparably odd thing is the way that now, years later…." These are the words of Sebastian Haffner (pen … Continue reading “Creeping Fascism: Lessons From the Past”

A boyish, inquisitive face with an innocent look peered out from the Washington Post’s lead story yesterday on torture. It was well groomed, pink-shirted John Kiriakou, a CIA interrogator who could just as easily pass for the local youth minister. The report by the Post’s Joby Warrick and Dan Eggen, which describes Kiriakou’s experience in … Continue reading “Are Americans Really ‘Better Than That’?”

Those who know about the centrifuges used to refine uranium tell me they must spin at an almost unrivaled velocity – almost unrivaled, because Bush administration statements are being spun at equivalent speed by White House and corporate media spiders. Without weaver-in-chief Karl Rove and former presidential spokesman Tony Snow, it is amateur hour at … Continue reading “Bush Spins Iran’s Centrifuges”

For those who have doubts about miracles, a double one occurred today. An honest National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran’s nuclear program has been issued, and its “Key Judgments” were made public. With redraft after redraft, it was what the Germans call eine schwere Geburt – a difficult birth, 10 months in gestation. I do … Continue reading “A Miracle: Honest Intel
on Iran Nukes”