All right, Shell, welcome back to the show.
It is anti-war radio.
And now we are joined on the phone by our friend Ray McGovern from a veteran intelligence professionals for sanity.
Also a consortium news.com.
And then, Oh no, I'm going to have to Google it.
Cause I don't have it in front of me, but I think it's RRMcGovern.com or something like that.
Welcome back, Ray.
How's it going?
Yeah, that's really easy.
Just Ray McGovern.com.
Oh, okay.
I thought there was something funny about it, but I guess not Ray McGovern.com.
There we go.
Uh, yes.
Very good.
Um, all right.
So welcome to the show.
Uh, the most important issue in the whole wide world is America's relationship with Russia still, uh, 20 years after the end of the cold war.
They got thousands of nukes.
We got thousands of nukes.
That's enough to kill all humanity forever.
And so, um, this is the thing that's the most important, the outstanding issues between our government and their government to me, I think are, you know, the most important things to be resolved.
And here, uh, it looks like our political establishment is picking a fight with the Russians who.
You know, they already got it pretty bad.
It's not like they're really a threat to us.
Are they, what do, what is going on over here with the missile shield going into Poland?
Um, you know, the news has it that the Russians are really mad about this.
They apparently don't believe that these missiles are all about Iran, which I don't think the Persian empire was ever historically a threat to the polls, but maybe I'm wrong.
Um, uh, and the Russians are saying, look, you know what, we will bomb your anti-missile missiles.
I mean, they're not threatening to use nukes, but they're saying we will shoot missiles at your anti-missile missiles.
Cause we will not let you have anti-missile missiles on the Russian border.
And that seems to me like somebody in DC is playing with fire.
What's really going on here?
Well, the interesting thing is that they would say that right out.
Apparently the Russians don't realize that we're the only ones and the Israelis are allowed to make preemptive attacks on other countries.
But what, uh, Makarov Nikolai Makarov, the Russian chief of staff said just last week, uh, was that the decision to use destructive force preemptively will be made if the situation worsens.
So this is a very unusual, uh, statement by, by a top level Russian, how seriously they take the threat as another question.
They know as any sophisticated observer knows that what's going on here is pure and simple, the biggest corporate welfare enterprise that our country, the United States has ever seen billions and billions of dollars have been wasted on a system that any sensible engineer or scientists will tell you cannot possibly work in the way intended.
There will be always easy and relatively cheap ways of countering whatever anti-ballistic missile system is set up.
Now that's number one.
Number two, you mentioned Iran.
Well, take a look at the map friends.
If you are a Russian and you were trying to, uh, the U S was trying to persuade you that no, no, no, no, no, no.
The, these are against Iran.
These systems that we're trying to set up in Poland and Romania and Turkey and at sea, it's against the Iranian nuclear threat.
Now we all know, I hope by now that Iran is not working on a nuclear weapon.
Now, without a nuclear weapon, these missiles aren't worth a hill of beans.
I look at all those scud missiles that Iraq actually did shoot into Israel during the first Gulf war.
Uh, there were maybe three or four people killed, uh, unless they have a nuclear warhead on them.
They aren't worth a hill of beans.
So what we have here is, uh, the U S trying to persuade the Russians that this anti-ballistic missile system that's going on into Europe is designed against a non-existent and admittedly non-existent, uh, nuclear threat from Iran.
And they don't even mention Korea now because that'd be too much of a stretch that people know where Korea is.
Well, they started out saying that, right?
Yeah.
I mean, that was part of the excuse when Bush was doing this, you know, it really started the program was, yeah, this is about protecting Eastern Europe from North Korea.
Yeah.
Well, you know, it even precedes, uh, that precedes Bush.
I mean, under Clinton, you had a fellow named, uh, Donald Rumsfeld who was out of, uh, out of office in those days, but nevertheless was brought in to correct a U S intelligence estimate, which said that the threat from a ballistic missile attack from North Korea and other quote, rogue States and quote was 15 to 15 years away.
That's what the professional said.
And you know what Rumsfeld came in and he found out that it was just five years away and that by 2003, we could expect North Korea to be able to rain down ICBMs on us with nuclear tests.
Give me a break.
You know, that's a decade ago.
So, uh, so Rumsfeld was off by 10 years.
Now they still don't have that capability.
So what we have here again is the corporate, uh, the people, the Lockheeds, the, uh, all the other, uh, arms manufacturers, I'll make it a ton of dough on this.
And, uh, those are the, those are the folks, of course, that take a lot of that money and fund the campaigns of representatives and congressmen and, and senators.
And so they're secure in getting reelected.
I mean, is this a great country or what?
It's money that talks here and it's money that's behind this so-called anti ballistic missile system.
Now, Scott, I know a little bit more about this than the average layman, because I headed up the Soviet foreign policy branch in the seventies when we concluded these strategic...
At the CIA.
The Russians.
I didn't say, I didn't say in your introduction that you're a former CIA analyst for 27 years.
Sorry.
Well, Robert Gates, who, uh, who since has come to, uh, different kinds of fame, he worked for me in those days and he worked on the analysis part of what was going on in Helsinki and in Vienna where these agreements were, were negotiated.
Now the anti-ballistic missile agreement of May 26, uh, 1972, and I happened to be in Moscow, uh, uh, to, to witness all that.
Uh, that was the key because once you, once you said you can no longer build more than two anti-ballistic missile defense sites, well, that meant that the, uh, the balance of terror would not be disrupted by one or another country, uh, mounting an effective defense against intercontinental ballistic missiles.
And so they could be arms reductions.
And that started the whole process.
Now, what did Bush do when he came into office?
He didn't wait a year.
He rescinded the, uh, the anti-ballistic missile treaty after 30 years of effectiveness.
And he said, no, no, we're still worried about Iran.
We're still worried about North Korea.
Well, what he was really worried about was the coffers that he needed to get, uh, to get filled up again for his next election.
The last thing I'll say about this is that Bush's priorities came through in an amazingly graphic way when it became clear that Condoleezza Rice on nine 11 was slated to speak about the need for an anti-ballistic missile system before a group of dignitaries.
So their focus was on satisfying the corporations that could fill their coffers by giving them make work to do, uh, making a system that will never work.
But billions and billions of people, money that could be devoted to helping people in this country have been wasted.
Well, you know, what's funny is, uh, Andrew Coburn has this great book.
Rumsfeld is rise, fall and catastrophic legacy.
And he talks in there about how Cheney and Rumsfeld have actually had a falling out because Rumsfeld had wanted to run.
I forgot if he even tried to run in the primaries in 88 and Cheney supported Bush senior, the vice president rather than his old friend Rumsfeld.
So they weren't really kind of friends anymore for a little while there.
Um, and then they became friends again when Cheney recommended him, uh, Rumsfeld to be the secretary of defense under junior.
And the way that it happened was that Senator Dan Coats was the first choice to be the secretary of defense.
And at his job interview, he said, missile defense.
Oh no, that's a giant waste of money.
We don't want to do that.
And they said, yeah, well, anyway, don't call us.
We'll call you pal.
And then junior turned to Cheney and said, well, now what?
And he said, well, I know this guy, Don Rumsfeld, who anyway, we'll be right back after this.
It's Ray McGovern, formerly CIA.
Now he's a good man.
Rights for consortium news.com.
Ray McGovern.com.
We'll be right back after this.
Oh, he was good back then.
He was just an analyst, not a throat slitter type.
All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
It's anti-war radio talking with former CIA analyst, Ray McGovern.
He writes for Bob Perry site consortium news.com.
He's got his own website at Ray McGovern.com.
He's got an archive at anti-war.com.
Of course, just page down the right-hand margin there.
And we're talking about NATO, well, NATO expansion.
And part of NATO expansion is the missile defense system in Europe.
And now I'm just lucky that as part of my duties for anti-war.com, I was in charge of editing Gordon Prather's articles and talked with him a lot.
And he's retired now, but he used to write all the time on nuclear issues, set people straight.
Used to make nuclear bombs for the U.S. government, was the chief scientist of the army, was an advisor to Senator Bellman.
And I forgot others.
Anyway, this guy knows about fission and fusion.
He ain't asking you.
He's telling you.
He's Gordon Prather, the nuclear weapons scientist.
And he said, there is a kind of missile defense that works.
It's called shooting a bunch of hydrogen bombs off into space to intercept the Russians in space.
And if you set off enough H-bombs up there, then you have a chance.
And I think especially you would use enhanced radiation, you know, neutron devices, basically is like the layman term for it, right?
Enhanced radiation devices in space to try to short circuit and ruin the incoming Russian ICBMs coming over the pole.
That is the only kind of actual ballistic missile defense that is even workable at all.
And for political reasons, that is off the table.
And so instead, what we have is this ridiculous thing where, as you described, it's just nothing but a welfare program based around the theory of shooting a missile with a missile when it's incredibly hard to do.
So, and every time you make an advance and actually shooting a missile with a missile, they just put more warheads on the, or more bombs on the same delivery vehicle and whatever the hell, and employ new countermeasures and thwart it anyway.
So the whole thing is really just a giant scam.
As you said, it's all about the money.
And people can read all about the corruption in the New York Times.
There's a huge piece on the corruption.
Of the missile defense system.
But the problem is this, they're picking a fight with the Russians, right?
They're putting, this is, and I've learned this from the commenter Klaus Ehrich at antiwar.com/radio.
He has made a point on virtually every interview I've done for years in a row to write that they're changing it from mutually assured destruction to we can kill the Russians with a first strike.
And if we, if our, if our planners are convinced that they can get enough of the Russian missiles on their first strike, plus shoot down enough of the Russians first attempt at retaliation on the second, then we can forever defuse mutually assured destruction.
And we can now launch a preemptive aggressive war against the Russians and defeat them before they have a chance to nuke, you know, more than a few of our cities or whatever is the limit that the Pentagon cares about over here in our country.
And, and then that means that the Russians have to respond on an even closer hair trigger than they already are on when it comes to launch on warning.
On that kind of thing, because they don't want to get obliterated without being able to shoot back.
Um, and so this corruption that you're talking about that drives this whole thing, uh, they're really pushing us closer to the risk of a nuclear war with the Russians that we've been at peace with outright peace with for 20 years.
Yeah, I think it's got, what you say is true, but I think the Russians look at this situation and realize that they've got years and years to make a lot of noise about this, that, uh, when Obama, if Obama gets reelected, he's already told me the president of Russia that, uh, or outgoing president, prime minister, minister, whatever they do rotating musical chairs there.
He's told me in Korea just about a month ago, look, uh, let's get by this next election, then I can be more flexible.
Well, we'll have to see what happens here.
But in any case, when the, uh, uh, the chief of staff says that if a third and fourth stage are deployed, the capabilities interrupt Russian intercontinental ballistic missiles will be real.
And I think they do have a genuine concern about that, but that's way down the road.
Besides don't they still have a submarine launch ballistic missile capability?
I mean, that's, that was the point of the triad, the bombers, the submarines and the intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Uh, if you put out, if you took out one, there was always the other to threat.
So the Russians, I think, are not overly concerned.
I think that what they want to do here is embarrass the United States.
This is a big conference.
They haven't talked in these tough terms in a long time.
And I think they want to embarrass the U S which is pretty much, uh, on its, on its back in terms of being over committed.
And, uh, I think that's part of this whole thing.
Russians want to shake the stick and say, look, you know, we're still a power to contend with, but we're not going to get involved in a tit for tat here.
We know that we can always develop countermeasures to these things or other branches of the triad.
I think they feel pretty secure.
And we're just as soon, some of them just as soon as the United States spend, it's spend, it's, uh, it's tax money into oblivion by funding these, these idiotic, uh, um, schemes that enrich the pockets of the defense contracts.
One last thing I'd say about this is I was in a very prestigious, uh, program in the Harvard business school way back in 85 and, uh, the Pentagon came in as part of a media segment of our, of our exposure there.
And they showed these, uh, uh, star Wars type videos of how these, uh, how these APM missiles going to work the interceptors.
And then some got through the, you know, and it was, ah, man, they got every one of them and the, you know, there's 400 of there and everybody's shaking head.
Man, we got a great.
So I asked, I asked the presenters, where'd you get those, uh, did you get those videos or we get the front of Pentagon?
I said, oh, you didn't tell us that you got them from the Pentagon.
What makes you think the Pentagon is telling us the truth about their capability to intercept all these missiles?
Oh, well, uh, it's the only place we get our information.
So the other 399 of my classmates got a real treat in seeing how deaf they are at playing on these star Wars concepts.
And you ask them once, one question about what I got through information and it, you know, belies the whole thing.
So the PR is really big on this was Lockheed Morton.
They use our tax dollars to do the PR and, uh, you know, it just enriches the pockets of those folks and people ought to realize that the threat is not from ICBMs or non-existent nuclear missiles from Iran or North Korea, that the, the threat to the extent there is one is one that's not going to be counted by APMs.
It's one that's going to be counted by a, an efficient way of finding out what's in those containers coming in by ship.
So if they got extra money around, they should throw it at that.
Make sure that the, these, uh, suitcase bombs or, or bombs that they're very rudimentary in nature, that they don't get into our country.
That's what they should be.
And nine 11 should have shown that one.
When a bunch of folks, 19 of them drew drove or piloted airliners into building.
Those are the kinds of non-conventional threats we should be concerned with.
We shouldn't be enriching the pockets of these contractors.
All right.
Well, a couple of things there.
First of all, I'm very glad to hear you say that they're not really worried about this, you know, complete full spectrum dominance, the loss of their mutually assured destruction posture that has after all kept us at peace all these years, uh, even though it's holding the whole world hostage to do so.
Um, so I'm very glad to hear that.
Then I wanted to remark on the irony of Russia, basically learning if, if they're, you know, I don't know exactly how they're thinking of it, but it sounds like they're learning from like John Mueller's example, uh, in his book overblown, where he says it was when America stopped containing communism after Vietnam, that they went and got themselves a whole bunch of new obligations and they went bankrupt.
You know, Afghanistan, uh, was just one of them.
Of course, all different dictatorships in Africa and in South America and Central America, they were trying to support and they ended up just making everything worse.
It seems like the Russians kind of have that same idea.
Like you're saying, Hey, go ahead and spend your money.
Go ahead and occupy Afghanistan.
Go ahead and expand NATO and buy them all F-22s and whatever.
The all the better to eat you with my dear kind of thing.
Yeah, they've been there, done that.
Yeah, that's exactly why they collapsed.
And, uh, you know, so they know what happens when you have an inordinate, uh, uh, preference to military for military weapons.
And, uh, uh, I think they're, they're relatively relaxed this time around.
And they're just happy to see us bogged down in the big money in Afghanistan and spending our, our, uh, precious resources on other, uh, nonsensical schemes.
Well, and one more thing there too, is that, uh, Gordon Prather instructs me that the suitcase nuke is a myth that the smallest nuke anybody ever came up with was the Americans, uh, artillery piece nukes, uh, the most miniaturized are, um, you know, battlefield nuclear weapons, and it's still about the trunk of a Lincoln town car.
So yeah, you could ship one in, but you couldn't walk around carrying it.
No, I don't think it's likely, but it's more, it's less unlikely, uh, than, uh, an ICBM from, uh, from Iran or North Korea.
By 10, 10 years, 10 years ago, it's more likely.
I'm going to set off a nuke than Iran or North Korea is come on.
We all know better.
Uh, thanks.
And a great part to the great work of Ray McGovern.
Thanks very much for your time.
As always, Ray, you're most welcome, Scott.
Great.
Talk to you.
All right.
Anyway, that's Ray McGovern, veteran intelligence professional for sanity.
Ray McGovern.com consortium, news.com, anti-war.com.
Thanks for listening.
See y'all tomorrow.
