Ray McGovern

Talk about chutzpah! I was suffering a bit from outrage fatigue yesterday but was shaken out of it as soon as I downloaded an unusually slick paper, “Recognizing Iran as a Strategic Threat: An Intelligence Challenge for the United States,” released this week by House intelligence committee chair, Pete Hoekstra. No, not “Hoaxer.” This is … Continue reading “Hoekstra’s Hoax: Hyping Up the Iran ‘Threat’”

Who can forget the chutzpah of President George W. Bush as he bragged to Bob Woodward, “I’m commander in chief…. That’s the interesting thing about being president … I don’t feel like I owe anybody an explanation.” Wrong, Mr. President. You and Vice President Cheney seem to have missed “Constitution 101.” And you seem to … Continue reading “The Constitution: Checking a Would-Be King”

But the world desperately needs an “E” for EXIT from the march of folly toward a wider Middle East war that is increasingly likely to result from plural U.S. foreign policy fiascos – in Iraq, Israel, and Lebanon, for starters; in Syria and Iran for the next stage. Fortunately, Webster’s does allow the insertion of … Continue reading “Sadly, the Plural of ‘Fiasco’ Requires No ‘E’”

The truth will out. If you fabricate, or acquiesce in the fabrication of, evidence used to "justify" launching a war of choice, you will have to live with that for the rest of your life. Call me quaint, but having spent 27 years in intelligence on both the analysis and operations ends of the business, … Continue reading “Intelligence Officers, Learn From History”

This may seem a bit quaint, perhaps even obsolete, but it used to be standard procedure to require intelligence before deciding to make war. Unless you have been asleep these past several months, you know that this sequence was reversed in 2002 when the White House ordered intelligence “fixed” to justify a prior decision for … Continue reading “Next Victim: Iran
or North Korea?”

Hope is here. The cold light of truth is piercing the cloud of lies conjured by Donald Rumsfeld and others about the war in Iraq – even in the defense secretary’s own bailiwick. A Matter of Conscience… Several months ago, U.S. Army 1st Lt. Ehren Watada decided that U.S. involvement in Iraq is illegal and … Continue reading “The Courage to Face the Consequences”

Is the National Security Agency being “turned against the people,” as the Congressional committee led by Sen. Frank Church warned might happen? We the people cannot know; it’s classified. Thursday’s slick but evasive testimony by Gen. Mike Hayden, the president’s nominee to head the Central Intelligence Agency, put the spotlight on Hayden’s personal role in … Continue reading “Eavesdropping, Gagging, and the Constitution”

“Court-martialed,” says one highly-respected former DIRNSA (which, for the uninitiated, stands for “director, National Security Agency”). The comment came amid a private burst of indignation at the news that Gen. Mike Hayden had bowed to administration pressure to skirt the law and violate what until then was the NSA’s “First Commandment” – Thou Shalt Not … Continue reading “Should Gen. Hayden Be Confirmed – or Court-Martialed?”

Is Congress aiding and abetting the creation of a police state? Recently, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., helped to give the CIA and NSA unprecedented police powers. By inserting a provision in the FY07 Intelligence Authorization Act, Hoekstra has undermined the existing statutory limits on involvement in domestic law enforcement. … Continue reading “Bowing to the Police State”

"Hold ’em, Yale" is one of the best short stories of Guys and Dolls creator Damon Runyon, who depicted the New York City underworld in the 1920s. The story deals with an undercover operation to scalp ducats before the annual Yale-Harvard football game. It begins: "What I am doing in New Haven on the day … Continue reading “My Meeting With Rumsfeld”