10/14/13 – Ray McGovern – The Scott Horton Show

Hey y'all, Scott Horton here for WallStreetWindow.com.
Mike Swanson is a successful former hedge fund manager whose site is unique on the web.
Subscribers are allowed a window into Mike's very real main account and receive announcements and explanations for all his market moves.
The Federal Reserve has been inflating the money supply to finance the bank bailouts and terror war overseas.
So Mike's betting on commodities, mining stocks, European markets, and other hedges against a depreciating dollar.
Play along on paper or with real money and then be your own judge of Mike's investment strategies.
Let's see what happens at WallStreetWindow.com.
All right y'all, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is my show, The Scott Horton Show.
We're at scotthorton.org and we're also at Liberty Express Radio, at No Agenda Radio, at Anomaly Radio.
We will be repeated at the Liberty Radio Network and on and on and on like that.
Isn't that nice?
All right.
Today's the first show in the new time slot.
I'm liking it.
I think it's good.
I think I'm better in the afternoon than in the morning.
Maybe that's just me.
Also, you can follow me on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube at slash scott horton show.
All right, good.
Ray McGovern's on the show.
Hey, Ray, how are you doing?
Doing fine, Scott.
Good, good.
Hey, everybody, you know Ray McGovern.
He's an anti-war activist, big time, all over the place on every subset of American foreign policy that you could think of, from Guantanamo to each and every one of the wars and all the rest of it.
Now, here he is.
He went with really the A-team of the whistleblower group over there, Jocelyn Raddick, who's a whistleblower on the John Walker Lind case and now a huge whistleblower advocate, Colleen Rowley, who, as we just talked about with the previous guest, she and her compatriots at the FBI office in Minneapolis could have stopped 9-11 if their bosses had let them, and Thomas Drake, the famous NSA whistleblower.
And you guys went to Moscow to give the Sam Adams Award to Edward Snowden, the NSA whistleblower.
So tell us all about your trip.
Tell us all about the Sam Adams Award.
Take half an hour.
Tell us whatever you want, Ray.
I know you've got stuff to say.
Okay.
Well, it was quite an adventure.
The Sam Adams Award stems from a colleague of mine who entered the CIA as an analyst on the same day I did, during the presidency of John Kennedy.
He was given the account to count up, to figure out the OB, the order of battle of the Vietnamese communists under arms in South Vietnam.
And he did an assiduous job, collected all manner of information from all kinds of sources, and came up with a figure of about 500,000 to 600,000.
Then he went over to Saigon, and General Westmoreland said, no, it can't be more than 299,000.
That makes you suspicious.
I mean, the precision of that 299,000 is sort of like 1,429 people killed by those chemical things in Damascus.
Something like that.
So anyhow, he was baffled until I came up to him at the bar that night and said, now, Mr. Adams, you've got to realize that, yeah, your figures are right, but they're always going to have them.
They're always going to cut them in half, because they just can't let the folks in Saigon and the bar and the press know that there are more people than, you know, we've been killing so many, so many hundreds every week.
You know, the press ain't real smart, Mr. Adams, but they can do arithmetic, and there's no way that we could survive if they knew the truth, see?
So Sam comes back to Washington, and he is really angry.
He had served in Vietnam, so he knew what it was like, okay?
So we try, manfully, to get the real figures up the chain up there to the president, and guess what?
Richard Helms, the CIA director at the time, punts.
He tells us, we can't get involved in a big controversy with the U.S. Army when it's at war.
That's not the way we protect the agency.
So we were really, really, really scraping around to get some sort of way to get this word out.
Now, what happened was, Sam was a big, you know, he's a true believer, he played by the rules, so he went to the inspector general of the CIA, went to the inspector general of the Pentagon, and went to Congress and got nowhere.
Now we're talking 1967, okay?
After he got back from Saigon, he couldn't get a fair hearing.
So he's saying, in August of 1967, that there are 500,000 to 600,000 Vietnamese underarms in the South, military is saying 299,000.
What happens?
Well, we get a cable from General Abrams, Westmoreland's deputy, and Abrams says in black and white, and I quote, we cannot possibly go with the real figures because we have been projecting an image of success in this war, and there is no way, despite all the caveats we could adduce, that we could avoid the press reaching an erroneous and gloomy conclusion, period, end quote.
Now there's that cable, okay?
It was very strictly held, of course, but Sam told me about it because we used to have lunch.
And I thought, wow, you know, somebody, somebody ought to take that cable, make a copy, and take it down to the New York Times Bureau in Washington.
Oh, I probably should explain, Scott.
In those days, the New York Times was an independent newspaper, and it didn't go to the White House for things like this to ask permission to publish it.
It would just go ahead if it was newsworthy.
No, really, really, it was newsworthy to just put it in front of the press.
That's like back in the olden days, when pictures were all in black and white, and dictators roamed the earth.
So anyhow, you know, this is sort of jocular, but it's dead serious.
I didn't have the guts to do it.
And Sam was the kind of a guy who just wouldn't do it.
He'd play, you know, he went through channels.
And so to this day, I regret that I didn't have the courage, if it was Snowden or Bradley Manning or Julian Assange, you know, I had all the reasons not to do it, and I let those reasons prevail.
Now, Sam, Sam Adams, went to an early death with regret that he couldn't shake, that if he had gone public in 1967, and this was before the countrywide offensive by the Communists during Tet in January and February of the next year, 1968, if he had gone public, there's a really good chance that those of you who know the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, well, there'd be no wing on the left side, there'd be no, there'd be no structure there because there'd be no names to carve into that granite, okay?
That's a heavy burden to carry around with you.
How did he die?
When did he die?
Well, he had a sudden heart attack down the cellar one day, didn't know previous symptoms.
And he died, I think was about 84 or something in 1984.
He was only about 56.
I've talked on the show, Ray, with Dan Ellsberg, and he feels the same way, that he really could have stopped the war in 1964 himself, and that he didn't do it.
And Dan had cried about it on the show one time, I think, you know, took it real seriously.
We all come out of this experience, and I guess if there's any good news in this, it's that we've been candid, and we've been confessing, and we've been saying, Dan has always said, don't wait, don't do what I did, don't wait until the war is well underway or almost over, and bring the documents.
So what happened, of course, is Bradley Manning brought the documents to a fairly well, right?
And Edward Snowden did the same thing.
So I think Dan can be proud of the fact that not only did he encourage people to do this, but as soon as Snowden did what he did, as soon as Assange and as soon as Bradley Manning did what they did, Dan was out there defending them, saying, look, it's exactly the same thing that I've become a hero about, and you're calling them traitors.
So long story short, neither Sam nor I had the courage to do this thing.
But after Sam died, I thought that it might be entirely appropriate to honor whistleblowers, people who did have the courage and the foresight and the flexibility to go outside the system with the Sam Adams Prize.
And so we just awarded our 12th, and it was just incredible.
We always love to go and give the prize in person, and we made that clear in the beginning, but I guess, truth be told, I never really thought we'd get to Moscow to give Edward Snowden his prize.
So we did, and it was wonderful.
It was an incredibly warm ceremony.
We got to talk to him about five hours after the formal ceremony.
We were welcomed by one of the NGOs there, headed by a really jocular Russian fellow named Kucherina was his name.
And it was just an incredibly warm thing, and Snowden, if you'll see on Democracy Now!if you like, when I gave him the award, and Tom Drake gave him the Korner-Breitner candlestick, which is our Oscar or our Emmy, I whispered to him, I said, Ed, if you'd like to say a couple words that would be appropriate.
So he sat down, and you could see the three-minute little speech he did ad lib.
It wasn't rehearsed or anything like that, but he's right on the mark with respect to the unconstitutionality of what he uncovered, the NSA doing, how NSA's leaders have lied through their teeth, how Edward Snowden has told the truth, and now is paying the price for that.
But he's safe, and there are all kinds of ironies attached to this, because he never, never in his life thought he would end up in Russia, but truth be told, he couldn't have found a safer spot.
Why do I say that?
Well, because, you know, the Mike Haydens, previous NSA and CIA director, and the Mike Rogers, who's now House Intelligence Chair, they both have said jocularly that they'd like to have Snowden put on a kill list, right, a kill list for assassination.
Well, he being in Russia, it's very unlikely, in my view, that any drones that go anywhere near where Snowden is, if they can find him, and still less likely is it that SEAL Team Six or Seven or Five or whatever will try to sort of jump in there and grab him.
So ironically, even though he never intended to be in Russia, he is there now, he's being well protected, he's as free as he can be, you know, there's so many people interested in finding out exactly where he is that he needs to be discreet about where he goes, but he certainly keeps up on everything.
And when I asked him, you know, I said, do you know that General Hayden and, you know, the head of the House Intelligence Committee have sort of suggested broadly that you be put on the kill list for assassination, he looked at me and shook his head and he grimaced and he said, yeah, I know that, I keep up, and I look as if to say, what's this country really come into?
Unconscionable.
You don't joke about things like, number one, you don't have a kill list, you know, the Fifth Amendment is supposed to be against that.
But number two, you don't jocularly suggest that somebody you don't like, somebody who told the truth and exposed your lies, that he should be killed.
All right.
So I want to hear more about what he said to you and your trip and really whatever all you want to say.
There's just a couple of little points I wanted to, well, not that little of points, but specific points I wanted to catch up on real quick before I turn it back over to you, you know, full time.
Sure.
This is a little bit of an irony being a former USSR analyst in Moscow, given a freedom of information type of award to somebody like this.
More than a little, Scott, my God, I was stationed at the embassy, but it was 40 years ago.
Now I knew there had been some changes, but the irony of this one where, you know, I was followed every inch of the way and it was pretty hostile surveillance.
And here we are in a place where Snowden is watched over, he's protected, but he's not harassed.
It's the kind of harassing surveillance that I was subjected to.
And irony of ironies, what he fears is the U.S. getting at him.
He can't come home because he told the truth and there are all kinds of very, very strong money and military interests that are out to get him.
So, you know, as I was driving to the studio at Democracy Now!
this morning, I was thinking, hey, it's Columbus Day.
And I was remembering the introduction to a chapter on the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus.
It's out of Samuel Eliot Morrison's history book and it starts this way.
America was discovered by someone who was looking for something else.
The next two centuries were spent trying to figure out a way through it or around it.
It was named after somebody who had nothing to do with the discovery of America.
And the people were called after inhabitants of a nation on the other side of the world.
History is like that.
Very chancy.
Here's Edward Snowden, he looks at the example of Bradley Manning, of Tom Drake, of Julian Assange, and realizes that if he's to achieve his aims, he can't go through channels, that's for sure.
And he can't even reveal his stuff within the U.S.
And so he gets out of Dodge, he leaves his comfortable $100,000 salary, his girlfriend at this nice little place there in Honolulu, goes to Hong Kong and, you know, by prearrangement gives the data to Blaine Greenwald and Laura Poitras.
And then, you know, they're not medical missionaries, they're not Red Cross, they're correspondents.
They take off and write their stories.
And there's Edward Snowden.
And so what happens?
Wiki leaks to the rescue.
Julian Assange and Sarah Harrison.
Sarah goes down to Hong Kong, figures out a way to get him out of Hong Kong, en route to Russia, and then en route further to Cuba and Latin America, where he has been offered asylum.
What happens?
Too bad they didn't go east there, he could have gone straight to Latin America.
Why the long way around the Earth to get to Latin America?
Because he would have had a transit someplace where they would have nabbed him.
See, from Hong Kong to Russia, that's the long way, but they wouldn't nab him.
In any case, on the way to Russia, he's deprived of his passport.
So he arrives in Russia stateless.
And for the next five weeks, like, you know, like Columbus and the other explorers, he's trying to figure out a way through, a way through Russia and not to stay there.
But he's left with no choice.
He asks for asylum.
And Putin says, yeah, you can stay here, but as long as you don't divulge any more embarrassing material against our friend, the United States, knowing, of course, that Snowden had already shot his wad, all this stuff was available to Greenwald and others.
And so it was a safe, a safe condition.
So bottom line, as I said before, the height of the irony is that Snowden is safer in Russia than he ever would be in our country or any other country on the face of the globe.
Yeah.
And the thing is, when you talk about Snowden's journey as it is, it's where he's ended up more or less safe and sound, safe as he can be, at least for the time being, in Russia.
It's important, I think, the kind of small point you made there that he gave all his stuff to Greenwald and then he took off and then he got exiled and Obama took his passport away and whatever.
But Greenwald and Poitras and I guess Gelman, I'm not exactly sure when he got his hands on what.
But anyway, they got the stuff and it's come out recently, at least he says or WikiLeaks has said on his behalf that he didn't even bring anything with him to Russia, that even I think paraphrasing him or something, even if they tortured him, he made sure that he didn't have anything to give them.
And so anyway, I was wondering what exactly he told you about that, because, of course, as you're well aware, as the audience may well be aware, especially on the right, the slogan is, well, in all probability, he gave everything he had to the Chinese and the Russians.
Because why not?
Time magazine even ran a basically a fantasy piece about, well, you know, I bet they probably drugged him and then he probably did whatever they wanted.
The Rohitnall story in Time, for crying out loud.
And it was, and he even said, no, the following is my imagination about what I bet probably happened or something.
But anyway, so what do you know?
What can you tell us about that?
Well, let's start with the famous four laptops.
You remember the stories about him arriving in Hong Kong with four laptops.
You know, you don't store a lot of information on laptops.
Use of the media.
OK.
And so the laptop story is really a red herring.
But it was a convenient diversion from what what actually was given to Greenwald and Poitras.
So that's one thing.
The other thing is that really and truly, he doesn't have more to give.
He gave it all up.
Now, one might say, well, yeah, but, you know, the KGB successors there, they can get at him and, you know, they can probably do enhanced interrogation techniques.
I wonder where we heard that before.
Well, guess what?
That's where WikiLeaks comes in.
Sarah Harrison has been at his side from the day that she rescued him from Hong Kong.
And so she's witness.
She's witness to the fact that nobody's got at Snowden.
Nobody's drugged him.
Nobody's, you know, done enhanced interrogation techniques against him.
And that's big.
That's a big witness.
And, you know, for her to do that required quite a sacrifice, too.
And, you know, she doesn't know if she can ever get back home to the UK because they'll get her at Heathrow.
And, you know, so there's a lot of public spirited, you know, I would say just really idealistic people here who are doing what they can to show that, hey, Ed, you know, you're not alone.
And when we four arrived, you know, it was really pretty poignant.
He hadn't seen anybody like us, of course, in months and months and months.
And Tom Drake, from whose experience of four years of persecution, persecution at the hands of the Department of Justice, 10 felony counts, 35 years prison he was facing, OK?
And when the judge decided that this was all a force, he excoriated the Department of Justice lawyers saying, you are unconscionable.
You should be barred from further practice of law.
This was there was this was no case at all, OK?
So what he did, what he did was plead to a misdemeanor.
He said that he had he pled guilty to exceeding approved use of government computers because he wrote his wife a couple of emails on or something like that.
OK, for that, he did some community service.
But the whole thing was a force.
Now, the point of all this, of course, is that Snowden's watching all this stuff, right?
And it is because of Drake's experience, as well as Assange, as well as Bradley Manning, that he Snowden does it cleverly.
He figures it all out.
Now, he didn't figure much beyond Hong Kong, but that didn't matter to him.
What mattered to him was getting this stuff out.
If something bad happened to him after that, well, he didn't want that.
But as I say, he was rescued.
So this is so important.
I'm sorry.
We're almost out of time.
I just wanted to work in here real quick.
And then you'll get the last word is that it's not just that what they said about him wasn't true, that he's some kind of traitor and that never mind what you might learn from all of his awesome revelations, because he's some bad guy.
Not only is that not true, but all the people who said that they were wrong, at least, and maybe lying.
And think about how powerful that narrative was, that what this guy did, he did for his own selfish interests, betrayed us to foreign nations and whatever, is just not right.
He's just a whistleblower, like dictionary definition.
That's exactly right.
And that's what they want to project, because they want to defend themselves.
They're a bunch of liars.
I mean, let's face it.
They lied under oath and nothing happened to them.
But what I was about to say is when Tom Drake walked in and Ed Snowden recognized him, it was a poignant moment because Snowden is looking at Drake and saying, this is the guy whose example saved me.
And Drake is looking at Snowden and saying, my God, those were really torturous four years of persecution.
And he said, you know what?
Something good came out of that.
If my example was used by Snowden to escape this kind of fate for himself, well, so be it.
It may have been worth it, at least in that sense.
So it was just a really poignant moment and they gave each other a really big hug.
And you could tell that they, as Tom said today earlier, you know, he didn't really identify with this fellow NSA whistleblower.
And I'm sorry, I'm stepping all over my own clock here.
I didn't have to interrupt you to get those words in edgewise there.
I couldn't let you finish.
I'm sorry.
But yeah, anyway, so the footage I saw that people can can see on RT, I guess it's just RT.com, they have it all on their YouTube channel, etc., of you guys meeting with them and footage of you guys sitting there having a meal and whatever.
And I'm sorry that we are pretty much out of time and half a minute to go here or something.
But I want to thank you and I want to invite you to come back maybe even later this week to finish talking about your time there.
I'm going to, of course, have Colleen Rowley on if I can and maybe Thomas Drake to talk about their angle on it.
I'd be happy to have you back on to talk about your time there with more time, Ray.
OK, just give me a call, Scott.
Be happy to do it.
OK, great.
I sure appreciate your time again on the show, Ray.
OK, bye now.
That's Ray McGovern.
He's a former CIA analyst and he writes for ConsortiumNews.com and his own website is RayMcGovern.com.
Hey, I'm Scott Horton here for The Future of Freedom, the monthly journal of the Future Freedom Foundation.
As you may already be aware, Jacob Hornberger, Sheldon Richman and James Bovard are awesome.
They're also in every issue of The Future of Freedom and they're joined by others of the best of the libertarian movement.
People like Anthony Gregory, Wendy McElroy, Lawrence Vance, Joe Stromberg and many more.
Even me.
Sign up for The Future of Freedom at FFF.org slash subscribe.
It's just $25 a year for the print edition, $15 to read it online.
That's The Future of Freedom, edited by Sheldon Richman at FFF.org slash subscribe.
And tell him you heard it here.
Hey, I'm Scott here, hawking stickers for the back of your truck.
They've got some great ones at LibertyStickers.com.
Get Your Son Killed, Jeb Bush 2016, FDR, No Longer the Worst President in American History, the National Security Agency, blackmailing your congressman since 1952 and USA.
Sometimes we back Al-Qaeda, sometimes we don't.
And there's over a thousand other great ones on the wars, police, state elections, the Federal Reserve and more at LibertyStickers.com.
They'll take care of all your custom printing for your van or your business at the BumperSticker.com.
LibertyStickers.com.
Everyone else's stickers suck.
Why does the U.S. support the tortured dictatorship in Egypt?
Because that's what Israel wants.
Why can't America make peace with Iran?
Because that's not what Israel wants.
And why do we veto every attempt to shut down illegal settlements on the West Bank?
Because it's what Israel wants.
Seeing a pattern here?
Sick of it yet?
It's time to put America first.
Support the Council of the National Interest at councilforthenationalinterest.org and push back against the Israel lobby and their sock puppets in Washington, D.C.
That's councilforthenationalinterest.org.
Hey everybody, Scott Horton here.
Ever think maybe your group should hire me to give a speech?
Well, maybe you should.
I've got a few good ones to choose from, including How to End the War on Terror, The Case Against War with Iran, Central Banking and War, Uncle Sam and the Arab Spring, The Ongoing War on Civil Liberties, and of course, Why Everything in the World is Woodrow Wilson's Fault.
But I'm happy to talk about just about anything else you've ever heard me cover on the show as well.
So check out youtube.com slash Scott Horton Show for some examples and email scott at scotthorton.org for more details.
See you there.
Hey y'all, Scott here.
Some stock market investors are making money hand over fist, while others sit on the sidelines afraid of the dangers.
Are you looking for answers?
Before you invest one dollar, I'd like you to take the time to watch this new video from Martin Weiss at moneyandmarkets.com.
The video names the seven riskiest and four safest major stocks in America.
Learn from the experts and invest wisely.
Go to crisis16.com.
That's crisis16.com.