05/09/14 – Ray McGovern – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, good.
Our next guest on the show today is the great Ray McGovern, former CIA analyst for 27 years.
He even briefed Vice President George H.W. Bush in the 1980s.
He was the morning briefing guy.
And now he is the co-founder of the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.
He writes at RayMcGovern.com and at ConsortiumNews.com.
And he travels the country giving speeches about peace, and about what's really going on, and why we need peace so bad.
So you might look into hiring him to come and talk to your group, too.
Welcome back to the show, Ray.
How are you?
Thanks, Scott.
Doing okay.
Good, good.
Very happy to have you here.
So this guy, Putin, he's working diligently at re-conquering all of Eastern Europe, and re-hoisting the red flag over the Kremlin.
I know because I read it in the Washington Post.
I want to figure out why he's pulling his troops back from the borders, and why he's urging the pro-Russian dissenters in Eastern Ukraine to postpone their various referenda over secession, or even just federalism.
And I wonder what you think is going on there.
How the hell is he supposed to conquer the world by retreating all the time?
Well, I am prompted to make some fun and say it's all a big trick, Scott.
It's all a terrible trick.
These terrible Russians are very, very clever.
But in reality, it has to do with Putin being an adult, and Putin having the high cards.
He is, in his own measured way, making it clear that whatever intentions that the Victoria Nuland's and the John Kerry's had to pry Ukraine away from Russia and make it part of the EU and, worse still, NATO, are not a founder.
They're not going to be permitted.
High cards?
Yeah.
Yesterday was really interesting.
Yesterday, Putin and his folks made clear that they're going to deliver on this threat about paying normal prices for the gas that they sell to Ukraine.
Moscow announced that after missing its recent payment, Ukraine will have to now pay for national delivery, gas deliveries, in advance.
Okay, now that's a big high card.
That's a very big high card.
Well, and he's got to be laughing his ass off, because that means the American people have to pay it.
That's right.
You and I, your taxpayer dollars at work here.
It's really quite remarkable, because I guess the IMF has already given them $2 billion.
So, really, what we have here is Russia supplies 30% of West Europeans' gas needs, and about half of those go to the Ukraine.
Now, the last two times that Russia cut off this gas, the Ukraine had siphoned off some of the stuff that was destined for Western Europe.
So, you know, it's one of these things where, as I view it, Putin can sit back and say, all right, well, you rich bankers from the IMF and Wall Street, you want to pay for the gas.
That's okay.
But you ain't getting no more gas until we get advance payment.
This is big.
So, that's part of it.
Now, the other part of it is that, you know, Putin talked with Angela Merkel, the German consular, and, you know, they appeared for some talks, some circular talks, talks between the East Ukrainians and the government, to get things going in a different way.
Roundtable meeting is what they call it.
And that's quite remarkable that Merkel and Putin would agree on that.
And yet the quizzling government in Kiev is not about to do that.
As a matter of fact, it announced yesterday that it's going to pursue this armed campaign against you got terrorists out there in Eastern Ukraine with no let up.
So, the thing seems to be spinning out of control.
But the good news is that Lavrov is still talking with Kerry as recently as two days ago by phone.
They're both out of the countries.
But I think that as things progress, the referendums, yeah, they'll probably take place tomorrow.
But I don't think they really, or Sunday, don't think they're going to be worth much.
Most of the Ukrainians, even in the East, don't favor separation from Kiev.
What they favor is separation from the quizzling Kiev government that we put in on the 22nd of February.
That much is understandable.
Now, one of the things that's kind of new, at least it is to me, I hunted down a WikiLeaks cable.
A cable out of Moscow.
I know how they look.
I used to serve there.
And this is as authentic as can be.
It's confidential, but it's out there in WikiLeaks.
And it's a cable from the ambassador in Moscow, our ambassador, William Burns.
And the date is 1 February 2008.
And he's saying, you know, Foreign Minister Lavrov, who, as you know, is still around, he has reiterated strong opposition to Ukraine opting for NATO.
They see it as a potential military threat.
And it's clearly, quote, an emotional and neuralgic, end quote, issue for Russia.
Hang on, I've got to Google neuralgic.
Anyhow, Lavrov is giving an end of the year review.
And he's saying, look, if you guys think you can get Ukraine into NATO on false pretenses that it's not a threat to us, well, that just ain't the way we look at this.
This is, he says, a raw nerve in Russia.
Yeah, there you go, neuralgia, the raw nerve pain, that's what it says.
So what happens is here, Bill Burns finishes his cable with a comment.
Russian, it's a confidential comment, by the way, classified confidential.
Russia's opposition to NATO membership for Ukraine is both emotional and based on perceived strategic concerns about the impact of Russia's interests in the region.
Okay, now, what does that mean?
Well, that's the 1st of February 2008.
On the 3rd of April 2008.
Is that a warning?
Is that what he's saying, is that we're pushing it too far here?
Of course it is.
Yeah, he's saying, look, even if we believed that you don't intend us any harm, he says we have to look at the realities.
It's not the intentions, it's the capabilities.
He's just telling them to be careful, he's not telling them to stop.
He's just saying we better tread carefully here because they take this very seriously.
Well, he's telling us, in effect, that it's not going to happen.
He's saying, look, we're strongly opposed to this and we regard it as a potential military threat.
No, no, I meant, I'm sorry, too many he's here.
I meant Burns, the State Department weenie writing home.
Yeah, but he was pretty good as ambassador to Moscow.
He didn't have any influence, but he knew what the score was.
Well, he's the guy who worked out this Iranian nuclear deal in Oman.
Well, he almost did, yeah, until he was undercut by the Israelis.
Anyhow, he finished up by saying, look, this is not only an emotional thing.
There's a perception of strategic concern because Russia's interests in the region won't permit a U.S.-NATO ally right under its soft underbelly.
The reason I mention this is that's exactly two months before the heads of state in NATO met in Bucharest.
And what did they decide?
I shall read from paragraph 23 of their summit declaration dated 3 April 2008, two months after the cable I just read, quote, NATO welcomes Ukraine's and Georgia's Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO.
We agree today that these countries will become members of NATO, period, end quote.
So we agree today that the Ukraine and Georgia would become members of NATO.
Well, that's two months after they were warned by the Russians, look, it's not going to happen.
This is a real strategic threat to us.
No matter how many nice words you use, you're not going to convince us.
Now, that's what, that's six years ago.
Right now, it's coming back to roost.
And now what, what Bill Burns and the others are all saying is, well, you know, back in 2008, it looked like we could push the Russians around.
Ain't no, ain't no longer possible to do that.
We better come to reality here and realize that the Russians are terrifically distrustful of our investing $5 billion in Ukraine's aspirations for association with the West.
In other words, we see what's going on.
We have the high cards here.
It's not going to happen.
We're not going to invade Ukraine.
We can just sit back and fiddle with the gas deliveries and all that kind of thing.
You ought to stop making fools of yourselves.
And that's what Putin is saying.
And Angela Merkel, I dare say, has a very different perspective from President Obama, because they have huge economic stakes, not only because of the gas from Russia, but because of all the bilateral trade agreements and other, other agreements they have with Russia since 2008 and before.
Yeah, all the uncertainty is bad for markets all around, for sure.
All right, I'm sorry, we've got to take this break.
We're talking with Ray McGovern, former CIA analyst, now PeaceNick, writes at ConsortiumNews.com.
When we get back, I'm going to ask him about his colleague Robert Perry's piece today, where he says that Obama and Putin have been talking.
They're going over John Kerry's head and getting this thing worked out.
Hang tight.
We'll be right back after this.
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All right, you guys.
No KPFK show this Sunday because it's fundraising time for them over there, and it's just easier, I guess, if they spend that time begging.
Hey, that's a hell of a great project there, KPFK, Pacifica Radio in Los Angeles.
I don't mind giving up three weeks out of every quarter worth of shows because, hey, they let me be on the most powerful FM signal west of the Mississippi River the rest of the time, so I'll take it.
Good deal.
Antiwar Radio, Sunday mornings on KPFK 90.7 FM in L.A.
Back in a couple of weeks.
Okay, good.
Okay, we're talking with Ray McGovern.
And Ray McGovern, he's a former CIA analyst, and he's now a peacenik and a veteran intelligence professional for Sanity.
And they recently wrote a memo directly to the press in the United States saying, hey, here's how you need to start shaping up and flying right and stop screwing this thing up here.
And now Robert Perry has written this article, yesterday's, the byline on it, Putin's subtle message to Obama.
And he says in here, and I'm sorry, Ray, I didn't, well, anyway, I'll paraphrase it.
He's saying Obama is talking to Putin and that he says he has sources in D.C. who are telling him this.
Do you know about that?
Can you confirm that?
Does that sound right to you?
Anything along those lines?
I can confirm it by the logic of the situation, by what's been going on, and by my implicit trust in Bob Perry, who is one of the few investigative reporters around that's really worth his salt these days.
What's really interesting here from a sort of ground perspective, Scott, is that the memo that we veteran intelligence professionals for sanity put out on the 4th of May got us all over the Russian press.
I myself was interviewed either by Skype or in studio by six major Russian TV channels, and some of my colleagues had cumulatively as many appearances.
Now, that contrasts with the play that this memo got in the mainstream U.S. press, which is nothing, unless you count one paragraph in the Huffington Post article.
So whether or not our message got to the president, and they usually do through normal channels, it certainly did.
Well, we publish it at antiwar.com slash blog, so you know he's reading that.
Right, you know that.
But as my friends who worked in the old foreign broadcast information service, they translate these Russian TV programs and articles.
I was featured on page one of the Moscow Evening News, an interview that I gave.
So it all gets back to the White House.
Now, whether he's informed by our advice or not, he seems to be following it, given what Bob Perry has been hearing from his own sources and the fact that things are beginning to happen.
When I heard that Putin told them to knock off the referendum and that he had some kind words for the election coming up on the 25th, I was surprised.
I was happily surprised, but these were clearly conciliatory gestures.
When I heard that Putin and Angela Merkel got together and said, you know, let's have a roundtable here.
We need to tamp down this crisis.
I was also surprised because Angela Merkel had just talked with our president.
So Obama, I think, is trying to get things on track so he can avoid further embarrassment.
He's looking a little bit like, you know, like the clown that Kerry is, but thankfully he has precedent.
He has precedent back in September when Vladimir Putin pulled Obama's chestnuts out of the fire on Syria.
Obama agreed not to make war on Syria, a war that Secretary Kerry said would be a, quote, unbelievably small war, end quote.
And we know nothing like that was planned.
It was shotgun law.
It was B-52s.
It was stealth bombers the whole nine yards.
Anyhow, Obama reversed Kerry on the 31st of August.
And in return, the apparent cussus belly here, the chemical weapons in Syria's arsenal, behind the scenes, Putin and Secretary or Foreign Minister Lavrov were able to work with the Syrians.
And what Putin told Obama was, look, this is going to be all right.
We have this worked out.
Just don't tell Kerry about it until we get it near completion.
And that's what happened.
Kerry was mousetrapped into thinking that it was impossible.
He said so on the 9th of September.
And on the afternoon of that same day, Lavrov got up and he said, do we think the Syrians will agree with this?
And two hours later, the Syrian Foreign Minister got up and said, yep, we're all set to destroy all our chemical weapons.
Now, what's the point of my saying all that?
Well, that deprived the neocons of their war.
They wanted this war on Syria.
Why did they want the war on Syria?
Because the government was beginning to win, and the people that are the rebels and all those kinds of people were beginning to lose.
And what the Israelis and others felt, other neocons, was you get the U.S. in, and that ensures to keep the pot boiling forever.
At about this time, Judy Reuter, a New York Times reporter in Jerusalem, asked several senior Israeli officials, what's your preferred outcome, Syria?
And all of them said, oh, that's easy.
No outcome.
And she said, I beg your pardon?
And they said, no outcome.
As long as the Shia and Sunni are killing each other off, they're not going to turn their weapons on us.
This is, you know, we just keep the pot boiling.
I'm sorry to interrupt, but I have to, just to confirm you, because I was just talking with the good people on the show earlier today about this article in McClatchy newspapers, where they're talking about, it's Mitchell Prothero saying, yes, they're going to try again to build up this so-called moderate opposition force.
And the quote from the anonymous official at the end is, because the objective of the policy is not to assure an opposition military victory.
It's just to make sure an opposition exists.
In other words, what you just said.
Keep the war going as long as possible.
While they cry crocodile tears for all the dead kids and all of the refugees and all of the crisis in the society.
That's the U.S. government's plan.
Yeah, well, that's the Israeli plan.
And the U.S. government is tied like a, you know, Siamese twin to it.
You know, I just have to say how unconscionable I find that.
That's just as bad as Madeleine Albright saying that the death of 500,000 Iraqi children under the age of five, 500,000, that that was worth it under the sanctions.
Worth it.
These people have no experience of war.
They have no experience of innocent suffering.
And they just are deranged and diverted from any sense of proportionality here.
To keep that Syrian thing boiling in a cauldron is irresponsible.
We could get together with the Russians and others and put an end to it.
But the interests there are to keep it going.
Well, and back to Ukraine, because that's the problem here, too, is, of course, the right sector would prefer civil war because that's in their interest as their own little Nazi group.
It's obviously not in the interests of the citizens, the people of Ukraine in general.
But certainly there are interest groups who would benefit from that.
And it seems like that's the point of burning a bunch of people alive and that kind of thing is to provoke a reaction.
That's what terrorism is about, is provoking a reaction.
So whether or not America and or Russia are willing to intervene directly in Ukraine to this or that degree, although they say CIA and FBI and others are there, probably some Russian intelligence are there.
But do you think that they would even be able to stop a civil war at the point we're at now?
Or how bad is this looking to you?
One thing we talked about before, Ray, and I'm sorry I'll be quiet because we're almost out of time.
One thing we talked about before was you're not quite as worried as you might be because the new coup junta in Kiev is so weak and its military force and even its neo-Nazi brown shirt force is so weak that they can't really exercise state power over the east.
They can't take back those buildings and hold them and that kind of thing.
And so in that sense, they don't really have the ability to escalate it to the kind of nightmare proportions that we might worry about.
But where are we now?
And you have about a minute or so to answer.
Well, I think I take some solace in the fact that a lot of this has been artificially stoked.
Most Ukrainians, including east Ukrainians, want to see a unified country.
All they don't want to see is a junta, is a putsch, which happened in Kiev.
What they want to see is a decent respect given to their own regional interests.
And I think that since all the things you just mentioned, particularly the government is so weak, once there's an election, once they have to cope with the price of natural gas and paying their bills, and once all these things kind of settle down, which I think they will eventually, then I think the adults can take over and make sure that the Yeltsin yokes of this world are gone, and that the neo-Nazis and the fascists and all those people are put in their place.
This is possible.
It just takes a little statesmanship.
I like what I hear Bob Perry saying about Obama and Putin doing this behind the scenes.
There could be worse presidents, I have to admit.
Although, Perry lets him totally off the hook for the whole crisis, which I can't abide that either.
But anyway, we're out of time.
I'm sorry.
Thanks so much for your time, Ray.
You're great.
Ray McGovern, everybody.
Oh, John Kerry's Mideast peace talks have gone nowhere.
Hey, I'm Scott Horton here for the Council for the National Interest at councilforthenationalinterest.org.
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Without our unlimited support, they would have much more incentive to reach a lasting peace with their neighbors.
It's past time for us to make our government stop making matters worse.
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