May 8, 2006
Ray
McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical
Church of the Saviour. A 27-year veteran of CIA’s analyst ranks, he now
serves on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for
Sanity.
"Hold 'em, Yale" is one of the best short stories of "Guys and Dolls" creator Damon Runyon, who depicted the New York City
underworld in the 1920s. The story deals with an undercover operation
to scalp ducats before the annual Yale-Harvard football game. It begins:
What I am doing in New Haven on the day of a very large football
game between the Harvards and the Yales is something calling for no
little explanation, for I am not such a guy as you are likely to find
in New Haven at any time—and especially not on the day of a large
football game.
A variant came to mind Thursday as I walked through a posh Atlanta neighborhood to the Southern Center for International Policy to hear a speech by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
What I am doing in Atlanta on the day of a very large lecture by
Donald Rumsfeld to an establishment audience is something calling for
no little explanation, for I am not such a guy as you are likely to
find in such a venue at any time—and especially not when the ducat
requires $40 up front.
But serendipity prevailed. The ACLU of Georgia had invited me
to their annual dinner on Thursday, May 4, to receive the National
Civil Liberties Award. Friends in Atlanta
arranged for me to bookend my remarks at the ACLU dinner with a
Wednesday presentation to Pax Christi, the Catholic peace movement, and
a talk on Friday evening at Quaker House in Decatur. I planned to put the rationale for looming war with Iran in context by drawing an unhappy but direct parallel with the bogus reasons adduced to "justify" the U.S. attack on Iraq more than three years ago.
When those friends learned last Monday that Rumsfeld would be in Atlanta
Thursday to give an afternoon speech at the Center, it seemed a natural
to go. The event was said to be open to the public, but it took
tradecraft skills assimilated over a 27-year career with the CIA to
acquire a ticket. (The event was strangely absent from the Center’s
website, reportedly at the insistence of the Defense Department.)
The fact that my presence there was pure coincidence turned out to
be a huge disappointment for those who began interviews later that day
by insisting I tell them why I had stalked Rumsfeld all the way from
Washington to Atlanta. Especially people like Paula Zahn, who asked me
on Thursday evening "what kind of axe" I had to grind with him.
To prepare for my presentations, I took along a briefcase full of notes and clippings, one of which was a New York Times article datelined Atlanta,
Sept. 27, 2002, quoting Rumsfeld’s assertion that there was
"bulletproof" evidence of ties between al-Qaida and the government of
Saddam Hussein.
This was the kind of unfounded allegation that, at the time,
deceived 69 percent of Americans into believing that the Iraqi leader
played a role in the tragedy of 9/11. Rumsfeld’s "bulletproof" rhetoric
also came in the wake of an intensive but quixotic search by my former
colleagues at the CIA for any reliable evidence of such ties.
A fresh reminder of the Bush administration's Iraq deceptions surfaced Thursday morning, when the Spanish newspaper El Pais published an interview with Paul Pillar, the senior U.S. intelligence specialist on the Middle East
and terrorism until he retired late last year. Pillar branded
administration attempts to prove a link between al-Qaida and Saddam
Hussein "an organized campaign of manipulation... I suppose by some
definitions that could be called a lie."
I arrived at the Rumsfeld lecture early, took a seat near a
microphone set aside for Q-and-A, and thought I might ask Rumsfeld to
explain his use of the "bulletproof" adjective, which came at a time
when none other than Gen. Brent Scowcroft was describing such evidence
as "scant," and the CIA was saying it was non-existent. (The 9/11
commission later ruled definitively in CIA’s favor.)
Rumsfeld brought up bête noire terrorist al-Zarqawi as proof of collaboration between al-Qaida and Iraq,
but that was a canard easily knocked down. It appears that Rumsfeld
thinks no one really pays attention. Sadly, as regards the mainstream
press, he has been largely right—at least until now.
When Rumsfeld broadened our dialogue to include the
never-to-be-found Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, saying,
"Apparently, there were no weapons of mass destruction," I could not
resist reminding him that he had claimed he actually knew where they
were. Anyone who followed this issue closely would remember his remark
to George Stephanopoulos on March 30, 2003:
We know where they are. They’re in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.
As soon as the event was over, CNN asked me for my sources, which I
was happy to share. The CNN folks seemed a bit surprised that they all
checked out. To their credit, they overcame the more customary
"McGovern said this, but Rumsfeld said that"—and the dismissive "well,
we’ll have to leave it there"—kind of treatment. In Rumsfeldian
parlance, what I had said turned out to be "known knowns," even though
he provided an altered version on Thursday of his "we know where they
are." Better still, in its coverage, CNN quoted what Rumsfeld had said
in 2003.
That evening a friend emailed me about a call she got from a close
associate in "upper management at CNN" to ask about me. She quoted the
CNN manager: "We checked and double-checked everything this guy had to
say and he was 100 percent accurate." He then asked if those
protesting the war "were getting organized or something." She
responded, "Indeed we are and have been for some time, and it’s about
time the mainstream media caught up."
With the exception of CNN—and MSNBC which also did its homework and
displayed the tangled web woven by the normally articulate defense
secretary—the other networks generally limited their coverage to the
"he-said-but-he-said" coverage more typical of what passes for
journalism these days. Even CNN found it de rigueur to put
neocon ideologue Frank Gaffney on with me for Wolf Blitzer. Gaffney is
well to the right of Rumsfeld, so I should not have been surprised to
hear Gaffney take the line that the U.S. may still find evidence of
ties between Iraq and al-Qaeda, and of weapons of mass destruction in
Iraq. Hope springs eternal.
And there were more subliminal messages. In some press reports I was
described as a "Rumsfeld critic" and "heckler" who was, heavens, "rude
to Rumsfeld." Other accounts referred to my "alleged" service with the
CIA, which prompted my wife to question—I think in jest—what I was
really doing for those 27 years. I believe I was able to convince her
without her performing additional fact checking.
All in all, my encounter with Rumsfeld was for me a highly
instructive experience. The Center’s president, Peter White,
singled out Rumsfeld’s "honesty" in introducing him, and 99 percent of
those attending seemed primed to agree. Indeed, their reaction brought
to mind film footage of rallies in Germany during the thirties. When Rumsfeld replied to my first question about his false statements on Iraq 's WMD, the applause was automatic. "I did not lie then...," he insisted.
This was immediately greeted with what Pravda used to
describe as "stormy applause," followed immediately by rather unseemly
shouts by this otherwise well-disciplined and well-heeled group to have
me summarily thrown out. At the end, as we all filed out slowly, I
could make eye contact with only one person—who proceeded to berate me
for being insubordinate.
Scary. No open minds there. A graphic reminder for those wishing to
spread some truth around that we have our work cut out for us. We have
to find imaginative ways to use truth as a lever to pry open closed
minds.