All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
Our first guest today is a co-founder of veteran intelligence professionals for sanity, which is asking a hell of a lot in the 21st century.
I think, um, he, uh, for 27 years was an analyst at the CIA was the morning briefer for vice president George H W Bush back in the 1980s, he writes with, uh, Robert Perry at consortium news.com and he's got a new website of his own Raymond McGovern.com.
Welcome back to the show.
Ray.
How are you?
Thanks, Scott.
Doing well.
Good.
I'm very happy to talk with you again.
It's been a little while.
Same here.
All right.
So, uh, get this.
Somebody is being prosecuted for torture and get this too.
I got to start the interview off this way.
Cause I just think it's so cool.
Uh, it was my wife, Larissa Alexandrovna that wrote the article for raw story back in 2007, showing how, uh, it was identifying the former Nazi, then Soviet compound, uh, used by the CIA to, uh, torture people, uh, one of the black sites, uh, back in the, uh, early part of the last decade.
And so now the head of Polish intelligence who had cooperated on this plot is actually being charged with a crime in Poland.
So, uh, I guess, first of all, can you tell us what you know about this?
Maybe, um, you know, for how long this went on, uh, about how, uh, the U S and the UK got Poland to go along with it, that kind of stuff.
Background who was tortured there.
Yeah.
First off, Scott, I need to say that, uh, in being asked some of these questions on Russian television yesterday, I found it a surreal experience.
Um, I, you know, I was alive for world war two, just a boy, but I remember that the Nazis were really bad guys because the SS and Gestapo used to have black prisons where they tortured people.
Then of course, as I became a young adult and majored in Soviet studies, it was quite clear to me that Stalin was here to this and that Poland was a fertile field for these black sites.
And so to have it revealed by the polls themselves, and this is no Polish joke to have it revealed by the Polish prime minister, that the, that the CIA, um, at the directions of the president, uh, corrupted this young fledgling democracy into forfeiting all the values that we stand for, as well as the polls stand for and bring us back to the era era where, uh, uh, the polls were used in this fashion by the Nazis and by the Stalinist, it was almost too much for me to address.
It's just really, really bizarre.
And, uh, the good thing about all this is that finally, and you know, as I said yesterday, hats off to the polls.
I mean, they didn't need to do this.
There's all kinds of political embarrassment attached to this.
And it looks like somebody is going to be held.
I have to be careful here, Scott, because I'm in Washington, but the word is actually banned from the lexicon.
Let me just whisper it.
Accountable.
Okay.
No way.
Come on.
No, I think you're right.
And you know what?
It's funny too.
Cause when this first started, uh, when the story broke, uh, Larissa story at the raw story, Soviet era compound in Northern Poland was site of secret CIA interrogation detentions.
The, uh, I forget if it was the president of the prime minister of Poland called her a liar and said, Oh, this reporter's a liar.
This is just about influencing the election.
Yeah.
You know, and there was no election, of course it was, it was the spring of 2007 when there was no election really.
Yeah.
The thing is, you know, that, uh, when the Polish prime minister at the time and everybody else in the mainstream media, uh, call this absurd, call this just beyond the pale.
Well, they were proceeding on the assumption that our values, you know, the values that I, as an army officer and as a CIA official abided by for, you know, 30 years in my case that they were pretty sacrosanct and we just didn't go around creating my prison.
I got that or torturing people.
So there was still a degree of credibility to be attached to these denials.
Now, of course, it's all out in the open.
And my hope is that not only these, the polls who let themselves be suborned, but also the other people, you know, other people closer to home who demonstrably were participants in this, you know, these war crimes and that's the word for them, that they'd be held to account.
Let me add just one little thing here.
And I, I still read the Bible.
Okay.
And there's one, one portion in there that says, uh, you know, those who, who scandalized these young ones should have a millstone hung around their necks and thrown into the sea.
Okay.
Well, that's what happened here.
This is a fledgling youngster democracy.
Okay.
All we did was not only to hurt our own values, but persuade this young democracy that it's okay.
It's okay.
Because all these terrorists, of course, to violate the basic norms, not only of democracy and international law, but human dignity, because people, human beings don't do those kinds of things to other human beings.
You don't have to be a believer to understand that.
Yeah.
Well, you know, I think it's in Jane Mayer's book, um, the dark side, was it, is it the dark side, um, where she talks about how she quotes one CIA officer saying, Oh, Poland is nothing but the 51st state and the American people may have no idea about the, the people of Poland may have no idea, but to even say that this is a government or whatever at all is ridiculous.
It's all just a facade for our rule there.
Yeah.
And the good news is these things evolve and the present Polish prime minister, uh, is feeling his oats and he has a degree of expectation that the Polish people still have a basic, uh, value system that will say, you know, this was really beyond the pale.
And as he said yesterday, you know, I don't care if it's the only superpower in the world, we shouldn't be pressured into doing these kinds of things.
Well, maybe because Soviet rule, uh, you know, absolute totalitarian rule is something still in the memory of the people in charge over there that they care that much more about the law than people do here, where we just figure that for whatever reason, we can let all the Republicans get away with torturing people to death and whatever.
And it just doesn't matter because there just will be no comeuppance, you know, that could be now, um, European authorities are involved in this now, of course, because Poland is part of the EC and the whole European security framework, that's going to be very interesting to see if the United States of America still has the political influence that comes with the money we shower on our agents of influence, whether the U S can still prevent the kind of, uh, uh, juridical, uh, procedures that would hold not only these Polish officials whose palms were no doubt raised by ample dollars, but also those who sent them there, the, the, the people who, uh, uh, pilot, the planes, the people who ordered them to be done, uh, to be tortured.
And these were the high level, you know, this was always a beta.
This was highly cheap.
Muhammad and non the shiri.
These were the guys.
And these were the people who are water boarded.
So, you know, somebody is accountable for that.
It's the president of the United States as the Senate intelligence committee said, I'm sorry, the Senate armed forces committee, which said the president's memo of the 7th of February, 2002, which exempted not only the Taliban, but Al Qaeda from the Geneva conventions and said, instead, we will quote, treat these detainees humanely as appropriate.
And as consistent with military necessity and quote, that is beyond the pale that these people need to be held to count.
It's very interesting how George Bush and Don Rumsfeld and Lisa Reiser and Cheney even are traveling around the country, uh, to greater claim and are being lionized by various and sundry.
Whereas in effect, they can't, they can't travel abroad.
Uh, Bush had to cancel a trip to Geneva.
Yeah.
Well, you know, the thing is, is cause it's not law.
It's just a matter of politics and the American people don't care.
I mean, obviously there's some kind of pressure going on, or I don't know if there's pressure.
Maybe there's actually a law in Poland, but here, as long as the American people don't care, uh, then they'll get away with bloody murder.
Just like they have been.
We'll be right back with Ray McGovern right after this.
All right, y'all.
Welcome back.
It's anti-war radio.
And we're on the phone with Ray McGovern, a veteran intelligence professional for sanity, writer for Consortium News and a anti-war activist who's given a speech in a town near you soon, or he just finished up one, but he'll come back.
So just invite him.
In fact, Ray, tell us how people go about doing that Consortium News.
Well, actually my website is the easiest way, but easier still is my email, which is rr, so two R's before McGovern, rrmcgovern at gmail.com.
Uh, I run my own travel agency.
Good deal.
Um, well, uh, yeah, I think it's just great to know that you're out there talking.
I don't know what you're saying exactly, but I figure it's pretty good.
Talking mostly about Iran these days, because I find woeful ignorance, uh, uh, among even educated people.
I'm going out to Wichita and I'm going down to Oklahoma city and I'm, uh, going hither and yon and, uh, it's not only, you know, in the, uh, in the boondocks that people don't know, but it's in places like New York city where I, I taught at Fordham college and Manhattan college and Albright college and Pennsylvania, no one seems to know the basic facts because as you know, better than I, uh, the fawning corporate media, it doesn't make it easier for easy for you to know, for example, one that Iran is not working on a nuclear weapon and that the defense ministers of both countries have said that.
And number two, that, uh, the proof is in the pudding.
When you're talking about the Israelis being afraid of a nuclear weapon in Iran, if they're so afraid, then why did they sabotage the best chance where Iran had agreed to ship out of country, out of its control between two thirds and three quarters of its low enriched uranium to be refined for its medical reactor that happened in October of 2009.
Nobody knows that.
How did it get sabotaged?
The Israelis ran a sabotage effort in Iran and killed no fewer than five revolutionary guard generals the day before Iran was going back to Vienna to compromise that deal.
Now for your listeners, they need to know that the way you get high enriched uranium build a bomb is by having a lot of low enriched uranium.
And the notion that Iran was willing to ship out of country at dispense with two thirds to three quarters of its low enriched uranium speaks volumes to me about these fugitive plans to build a nuclear weapon.
The same thing happened less than a year later when at the president, our president, Wait, I just want to reemphasize that point right there because everybody always says that, um, no, it wasn't that Obama refused to accept Iran's acceptance of his offer.
Uh, it was that, um, you know, something between Ahmadinejad and Khomeini and Iran, uh, politics there, uh, made them decide that they would not go ahead with the deal that everybody seemed to agree on just a minute ago.
And in fact, you're the first person, I don't remember, you know, the play by play the way you do.
Uh, you're the first person I've ever heard say, yeah, it was a Jundala series of Jundala attacks, right in what are you saying?
September, October, 2009.
October 18th, 2009.
And there was also the whole bogus series of accusations about the comm facility and how it was, uh, you know, a secret atom bomb factory when the Iranians had themselves declared it to the IAEA before Obama pretended to bust them with it.
Yeah, that too is hypocritical.
But the thing here is that never in the discussion, as it mentioned that Obama finally came through on his campaign promise, right?
He sent the deputy head of the state department to Geneva and they made an offer that they were sure Iran would reject.
And that offer was, you give us two thirds to three quarters of your low interest uranium, we'll refine it out of country, Russia, France, Turkey, and we'll make it suitable at 20% enrichment for your medical, for your isotope, you know, for the kinds of, uh, cat scans that I have to undergo every now and then to make sure that I have my cancer back.
We'll do that for you.
Now, guess what the, what the Iranian representative said is very high level.
He says, Oh, it sounds good to me.
Uh, let's go back to Vienna, uh, in 19 days and put the, put the signature on this agreement.
Then what happened was twofold.
The one I mentioned, and you know, this is the one that has escaped attention, John Dolla, whom my colleagues in the CIA have said, uh, the CIA, as well as Mossad, and even the Pakistanis have, have supported in the past.
They had this incredibly accurate intelligence Scott about where these revolutionary guards people meeting.
And they did this, uh, you know, this bomb would kill five generals that wounded maybe 15, 16 colonels and so forth on this, on the 18th of October, 2009, now, you know, how many, the Supreme leader pretty much runs the revolutionary guards and they see him as their patron.
So it's not a, it's not a leap of imagination that they went to him and said, Oh, this is great.
You're going to negotiate with these guys.
You're going to go to Vienna and give away two thirds to three quarters of our launch.
Give me a break.
Now they did send a lower level official, but they did backtrack on this.
And you can imagine why the other part of it is what you suggest that is that the opposition to Ahmadinejad did mount a nationalist kind of a reaction to this saying, Hey, what are you doing?
Give it away.
Or give it, or, uh, lower this uranium.
So it was a twofold thing, but I'm convinced that it was the, it was the, uh, the sabotage, the terrorism really sponsored by, uh, you know, who, uh, John Dolla being the, the active agent that sabotaged the thing.
What I was going to say before is we tried again.
Now, president Obama wrote a letter to the president of Brazil and the prime minister of Turkey about six months later and said, Hey, give it another try.
That was really good deal.
I don't know what happened, but let's try again.
And I don't know if you remember the pictures, but, uh, there were pictures of the front of the paper of the silver from Brazil, Erdogan from Turkey and Ahmadinejad with their arms raised.
We did it.
We did it.
This time it was only half of the low, only I say half of the low emissions uranium that we should be shipped out of country.
I guess what happened the next day, Hillary Clinton got up before the cameras in Washington and said, this is our response to that agreement.
We're going to sanctions this time.
We have the Russians and the Chinese on our side.
Now who's running this, this policy.
Obama asked these guys to do that.
Hillary Clinton gets up and says, no dice with the silver at Erdogan went back to the white house and said, Hey, what's going on here?
We did exactly what you wanted us to do.
And now Clinton has sabotaged this.
They're not afraid.
I repeat, they're not afraid of a nuclear weapon in Iran.
Otherwise they would have jumped up with joy to get, to get the two thirds or a half of the low enriched uranium out of Iran into international quarters so that they could be refined in a innocent kind of way.
All right.
Now I'm Scott Horton.
I'm talking with Ray McGovern and I'm going to have to keep you through the long break at the top of the hour for one more segment, because we've got to get back to Poland and torture.
Cause I don't think we're done yet.
If that's okay, can I keep you?
Sure.
Okay, good.
Cause now we got to still talk about Iran since we're talking about Iran, the way we're talking about Iran.
What do you think about these leaks to James Risen and Mark Mazzetti at the New York times, three, three rising pieces in a row that at least include the information that CIA and the rest of them agree that they're not really making nukes over there.
And also the big one by Mazzetti about, Hey, we did a war game.
And if Israel attacks Iran, Americans will die.
And it'll look like Israel's the ones who got them killed.
Seem to really throw a cold bucket of water on Benjamin Netanyahu's head, but maybe I'm misreading it.
Who's behind this?
Uh, Obama, Clinton, low-level CIA people like you used to be, or mid-level people who are leaking the truth the way they should have back in oh two or what the hell's going on, right?
I think it's mostly the military, Scott.
Um, if you look at the, the people who have the most to lose here, it's the military.
And it always has been Admiral Fallon.
Do you remember?
And Admiral Mullen?
Yeah.
Back in 2007, Admiral Fallon was the head of CENTCOM and he stopped the war.
He said over my dead body, this is just not going to happen.
So forget it.
And that's what finally killed the drive in the spring of OSEP.
Well, actually he was fired.
He said, we're not going to do Iran on, on my watch.
Okay.
And then Mullen came in as chairman of the train chiefs and fortuitously or not fortuitously, I'm very proud to say that the CIA analysis division lived up to our ethos in the past of speaking truth to power.
An honest fellow came in to run the estimates.
And in November, 2007, after a year long bottom-up assessment, they decided, and it was unanimous, all 16 intelligence agencies of the United States government, quote, with high confidence and quote, that Iran stopped working on a nuclear weapon at the end of 2003 and had not resumed work on it.
Right.
And we know that this is what they're writing about now.
Finally, what Hirsch wrote a year ago, what Mark Hosenball originally wrote that the 2010 NIE says the same thing.
We'll be right back with Ray McGovern after this break.
All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton.
I'm talking with Ray McGovern from ConsortiumNews.com and RaymondMcGovern.com.
He's a 27 year veteran of the CIA, an analyst, not a guy who cuts people's throats.
And he's co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.
And you know, he's cool because he hangs around with Robert Perry, who is one of the greatest reporters ever.
So now we're talking about Iran and their nuclear program.
And I kind of want to get back a little bit to who's behind these leaks, who's standing up and putting out.
I mean, because I, well, I don't want to read too much into it.
I'll let you do the reading into it, Ray.
But what does it mean when there's three rising stories on the front page of the New York Times in a row that say that the Iranians aren't making nukes?
And when the Pentagon is doing a war game that has Americans getting killed in a war were dragged into by Israel and they put that right on the front page of the New York Times as well.
Does that mean that?
Well, I guess you were saying you don't think it's Obama and Clinton behind this.
You think this is the military and maybe lower level CIA people, the same kind of people who, you know, stood firm by their analysis of 2007?
Yes, Scott, it is actually not only the military, but it is the White House.
They don't want a war.
They clearly don't want to.
So you think it was Barack Obama that put these stories on the front page with with James Risen there?
He told them, go ahead and tell the New York Times, you know, because we're talking about the old NIE that at the time, apparently they told all their reporter friends, just don't cover this.
And James Mark Hosenbaugh wrote one story about it.
Maybe there was one in McClatchy and then it was dead.
And then Hirsch mentioned it months later.
Other than that, you can't find anything from late 2010, early 2011 about the new Iran NIE.
Yeah, for a couple of years it was dead in the water.
Now, I'm no expert on this, but my way I piece this thing together is the New York Times is pretty antsy now.
You know, they've been very pro-Israel.
And I believe that the management of the Times is beginning to realize that if it becomes clear to the American people that the Israelis get us into a war that cannot be won, that will have immense casualties that would shoot the price of oil up to 70 and $10 a gallon that, you know, you won't you want anti-Semitism?
Well, well, then you might have a real outbreak of that kind of thing.
The New York Times doesn't want that.
Now, there was a precursor to all these arrested articles, and it was five Saturdays ago.
I remember distinctly I was flying home from from Memphis, Tennessee, and there on the front page of the New York Times was an objective review of what the NIEs with the national intelligence estimates had said in 2007, namely that Iran had stopped working on a nuclear weapon in 2003 and had not resumed work.
That has been reiterated every year since.
And I said, wow, this is interesting.
And it was an incredibly objective thing, completely out of tune with everything else the Times had said up till then or since.
Right.
Because usually this is, you know, Reisen is the intelligence beat leader right over there.
Right.
But then it's David Sanger actually has the the Iran nuclear program beat.
And he's the one who always just refers offhand to the nuclear weapons program over there as though it's proven to exist and, you know, makes a big deal out of things that aren't a big deal.
It sort of seemed like they, Reisen sort of took this beat away from Sanger for the time being, something like that.
Well, yeah, and I think the Times just wants to, we say CYA here in Washington wants to cover its rear end.
OK, because if if there's another war, OK, if the Israelis drag us into a war against Iran, people are going to review what the New York Times has said about this.
OK.
And if the New York Times can go back and say, well, on February such and such, we had a front page article which told the truth, then they can cite something truthful and forget about 80 percent of their garbage that shows that tends to show.
And Sanger is one of the main culprits here.
And he was a culprit before Iraq.
He's a neocon, pure and simple.
So that's part of it.
The other part is that I think they get a little afraid because these Republican candidates and many other people and Netanyahu himself show no no reluctance to start this immense war.
OK, now, the interesting thing is that when Netanyahu had his White House session with the president on the 5th of March, I am convinced that Obama said, look, we don't need another war, especially before the election.
OK.
And so no more war.
Please, please, please don't either attack or, you know, provoke Iran into war.
We don't really want that.
OK.
But you know what, Scott, he wouldn't say that out loud instead.
What do you say?
He said to AIPAC, oh, you know, how can the Israelis deal with a country that threatens to wipe it off the map, which, as you know, is a lie?
Nobody in Iran said that.
That's a mistranslation of a phrase that said the regime in Jerusalem will disappear from the pages of time.
Nothing about wiping off the map, not about nothing about driving Israel into the sea.
Those are lies.
OK, then the president says we're going to march in a lockstep with Israel.
Whoa.
You know what that comes from, Scott?
That comes from the 19th century penal system in our country.
Last half of the 19th century, a prisoner would have a ball and chain.
OK.
A great big, heavy lead ball chain to his left leg and a chain connecting him with the prisoner immediately in front of him on his right.
And so they used to have to shuffle.
OK.
Now, if Obama is marching in lockstep with Israel, which is what he said before the Super Bowl, well, then he says, we got Israel's back.
He said that at the AIPAC conference.
So you put the two together.
Who's leading?
Who's leading?
He's got Israel's back and they're marching in lockstep.
So my point is this.
No matter how many times Barack Obama says privately to Netanyahu, please don't do this, or no matter how many emissaries he sends over there to Tel Aviv, whether it's defense secretary, whether it's chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the head of intelligence, his national security advisor, all of whom have been there in the last six weeks.
How does that look to Netanyahu?
Well, you know, in the Bronx, we would say, well, speak for yourself, Barack.
For God's sake, why are you sending these emissaries over here?
If you want me not to do Iran, you've got to say so publicly, because otherwise I'm going to do it.
And you know why he's going to do it?
Because it's an election year.
And the worst thing, from Netanyahu's perspective, would be for Obama to get a second term.
It's the same thing as it was with Jimmy Carter.
The Israelis were deathly afraid that Jimmy Carter was going to make good on his promise to bend the Israelis toward a reasonable settlement with the Palestinians.
That was clearly in the cards.
And the Israelis did not want that.
So they did everything they possibly could to sabotage Jimmy Carter's reelection.
It's the same now.
If they start a war before the election, what's going to happen?
The economy is going to go to go to hell.
Gas is going to go up to six, seven, some people say $10 a gallon.
And who's going to be blamed for this?
Who's going to be blamed?
Well, Obama's going to be blamed.
And so even though it seems like a very outside chance that some of these clowns might become president, challenging Obama, that could do it.
And that's very much in Israel's interest.
So bottom line.
I can just see Netanyahu saying to his counselors, look, we've got Obama in a corner.
He won't even he won't even say out loud that he doesn't want to start a war with Iran.
What does that say to you?
That says to you, we start a fracas.
He's bound to be forced to come in with both feet because of the political situation in the United States.
And we can give them a really bloody nose, set back their nuclear program and other things.
Six or seven years, maybe two years at least.
And so this is our chance, guys.
Let's go ahead and do it.
And they have all kinds of support, of course, here among the neocons, Krauthammer and all the other people that are hammering on the administration to be tough about Iran.
I was at a this is interesting.
I was at a conference sponsored by the Cato Institute just last week.
Real quick.
A break's coming up.
Yeah.
OK.
The whole thing was, oh, I wonder when Israel's going to attack or maybe this month.
No, no idea about this is a this is a war crime.
This is against the U.N. charter or anything like that.
Oh, man.
What a shame.
That is such a shame.
I mean, you say sponsored by any other think tank in D.C.
It's not a shame.
That's just how it is.
But it's not supposed to be like that there.
But anyway.
All right.
We'll be right back after this.
It's Ray McGovern, veteran intelligence professional for sanity, which is an unreasonable request, obviously.
All right, welcome back, antiwar radio.
I'm Scott Horton and I'm on the line with Ray McGovern from Consortium News dot com and Raymond McGovern dot com.
And we're about to get back to the Bush era black sites.
Some more about that.
Somebody's being prosecuted in Poland.
The former head of intelligence is being prosecuted in Poland.
But first, we needed to wrap up real quick.
You were going to say about this Cato conference you attended where the consensus was, gee, I guess war with Israel is going to break out here in a minute.
Yeah, the you know, the whole thing, all the panelists, both panels were saying we've got to do something to get the Iranians to take us seriously, you know.
Now, that's the question I said.
Now, we all know that defense ministers of both countries, Israel and the United States, have said that Iran is not working on a nuclear weapon.
Now, what are we trying to get the Iranians to take us seriously about?
Do we want them to choose to make a nuclear weapon or will there was there was a disconnect there that nobody could explain.
But the bottom line was that no one no one ever refers to the fact that what they're talking about here and when Obama says all options are on the table, including the military option, that is a violation of U.N. charter, which prohibits the threat of use of force as well as use of force.
So it's an international crime every time he says that.
And people want to point that out because there was a war when I was a kid.
And after that war, we came to international agreements, including the U.N. charter ratified by our senators.
So so part of the supreme law of our land, which outlawed precisely the kind of stuff that's going on without any demurral by the mainstream press.
Right.
Well, and of course, there are federal laws, regular American laws that enforce all of those international treaties and covenants, the War Crimes Act and the Anti-Torture Statute and then whatever old Geneva Convention participation acts or whatever.
These are this is all domestic legislation.
So it's not like it's being put on us by the rest of the world.
In fact, it's the United States that's been behind this entire project of international law since World War Two.
We pretty much wrote the U.N. charter.
And, you know, there's this minor thing called the Constitution, or one of which reserves to our elected representatives the authority to declare or otherwise authorize war.
And you would know that from the cowardly behavior of those that we have elected to Congress.
All right.
Now, one of the things is you mentioned Zebeda when we're talking about the black site in Poland.
And the thing is about Zebeda is, I guess you said, you know, these are the few they put a bunch of nobodies at Guantanamo Bay, the few that were actually, you know, the droids they were looking for.
They went to these black sites.
And it wasn't just Poland, but, of course, Romania and Thailand and ships at sea and Morocco.
And and I don't know if anybody knows where all the black site torture prisons were.
Of course, some people were just renditioned to Syria to be tortured.
But this guy's a beta.
Apparently, yeah, he was one of them in the sense that he was an associate of the bad guys.
But when it came to being a high value target, only according to the jargon of some bureaucrat, because it turned out, of course, that the guy was a lunatic and that he didn't know anything because everybody knew he was a lunatic.
So they didn't tell him anything.
And basically, he was the travel agent for them bringing their wives from Saudi Arabia to visit for the weekend and stuff like that.
And they tortured this guy within an inch of his life.
And there's a direct quote.
I believe it's Ron Suskind has the quote of George Tenet explaining to George W.
Bush that, hey, it turns out that the FBI was right all along.
And this guy's a bait is a nobody.
And he's out of his mind.
And his journal is written in six different personalities.
And we're pretty sure he's not faking it.
And George Bush said, I already said his name to everybody.
You're not going to make me lose face on this, are you?
And George Tenet said, no, sir.
And so then they went on after that, pretending still that this guy was a beta was, you know, the maybe Osama bin Laden's commander.
He was such a big deal instead of, in fact, just some nobody that they tortured within an inch of his life, apparently for months or years on end.
Well, you're right about that, Scott.
You got a good memory.
And the reason they didn't think these so-called high value detainees at Guantanamo was because it was really kind of hard to disguise what was happening to what they intended for them, including waterboarding.
So they end up in Poland, these three at least.
And Abu Zubaydah, you know, what's interesting here is not only that he was a travel agent and no more, but, you know, this torture, everyone, everyone I know recognizes that you don't get accurate information from torture.
OK.
General Kimmons, the head of Army Intelligence, said on September 6, 2006, the very day that our president later in the day sang the praises of enhanced interrogation techniques.
What Kimmons said was, quote, No accurate intelligence has ever come from the use of harsh interrogation methods.
That has been true in history.
History has proved that.
And the experience of the last five years, comma, hard years, comma, also shows that.
But they knew that that's why they were doing the torturing, right?
Like Sheikha Libby, they tortured him into pretending that Saddam Hussein had taught him how to hijack airplanes and make chemical weapons.
There you go.
And Binya Mohammed, they tortured him into accusing Jose Padilla of all of his apartment bombings and dirty bomb plots and all that.
Right.
So you're still you're still on my lines here, because what I wanted to say is you can't get accurate information from torture.
But if you want inaccurate information, if, as was the case in 2002, when Abu Zubaydah was wrapped up, the primary requirement, what we in the army used to call a central item of information, was to prove that there were ties between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.
Well, torture really works well.
You mentioned Alibi.
You know that he was tortured by the Egyptians into saying this.
You know that the president told the U.S. and the world what Alibi was tortured into saying, namely that Saddam Hussein was training al Qaeda in chemical and explosive weaponry.
You know that Alibi, when he got free two months later, said, you know, this was a crock.
I only said it because I wanted him to stop torturing me.
Then he was sent to Libya.
And guess what?
He committed suicide.
Now, Muslims don't usually commit suicide, but he was one of those that committed suicide in Libyan prison.
What's the bottom line?
Yeah, when we renditioned him to our friend, Muammar Gaddafi.
Yeah.
So this is, you know, the bottom line here is that if you want inaccurate information, torture is great.
That's exactly what they wanted.
That's why they put these guys out of sight, waterboarded them in places like Poland.
And, you know, the whole thing just stinks to high heaven.
It makes you, well, it makes me angry.
It's not just because I'm Irish.
I'm really angry about this, not only because the rest of my, you know, some of my colleagues on the other side of the agency were suborned into doing this, but because our country has been besmirched, our country has lost its values to the rest of the world.
Witness the fact that it takes the polls, it takes the polls to proceed against those who were guilty, who are at least charged now of doing the kinds of things that were banned after the sad experience of World War Two.
Yeah, well, do you hold out any hope that maybe years from now some of these war criminals will be put on trial, like what's happened to some of the South American dictators and torture masters?
There's always hope.
And Augustine said famously that hope has two daughters, anger and justice.
And I think people may be brought to justice over the long run.
All right.
Well, we got to go.
But nice to end it on a good note like that.
Thanks very much.
Ray McGovern, everybody from Consortium News dot com and Raymond McGovern dot com.
See ya.
