Ray McGovern

McGovern, 2008

After retiring from the CIA, McGovern became a commentator on intelligence-related issues from the late 1990s onwards.[9] He was heavily critical of the government's handling of the Wen Ho Lee case in 2000.[10] In 2002, he was publicly critical of President George W. Bush's use of government intelligence in the lead-up to the war in Iraq.[11]

In 2003, together with other former CIA employees, McGovern founded the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).[12] The organization is dedicated to analyzing and criticizing the use of intelligence, at first concerning the Iraq War.[2]

In the same year, McGovern confronted Donald Rumsfeld openly and live-broadcast by CNN interrogating him about his lies concerning weapons of mass destruction,[13] a dispute later called the "vivisection of Donald Rumsfeld" by Keith Olbermann.[14]

In January 2006, McGovern began speaking out on behalf of the anti-war group Not in Our Name. According to the group's press release, McGovern served symbolic "war crimes indictments" on the Bush White House from a "people's tribunal."

In 2006, McGovern returned his Intelligence Commendation Medal in protest at the CIA's involvement in torture.[2] He commented, corruption had run amok in intelligence circles and the president should be impeached.[15]

On October 9, 2013, McGovern, along with three former winners, gave the Sam Adams Award for integrity in intelligence to Edward Snowden in a Moscow ceremony.[16][17]

In September 2015, McGovern and 27 other members of VIPS steering group wrote a letter to president Barack Obama challenging a recently published book, that claimed to rebut the report of the United States Senate Intelligence Committee on the CIA's use of torture.

During a 2011 speech at George Washington University (GW) by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, McGovern stood with his back turned during her remarks, blocking the view of some of the audience and media for about five minutes in "silent protest" of Clinton's foreign policy.[18][19] McGovern refused to cooperate when asked to leave by security, which led to his arrest for disorderly conduct.[18] The incident led to his inclusion on the State Department's "be on the lookout" (BOLO) list, which authorizes law enforcement to stop and question him on sight.[19] The charges were subsequently dropped two weeks later. In 2014, McGovern's lawyer filed a lawsuit against the GW police department for allegedly using excessive force and also against the university and State Department for allegedly violating his right to peacefully protest.[19]

In 2014, McGovern was arrested by the New York City police department at an event where former CIA director and retired Army General David Petraeus was giving a speech. McGovern said he wanted to ask Petraeus about his involvement in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but security told him he was not welcome.[20] He claimed he had a ticket to the event, but was charged for resisting arrest and criminal trespassing.[21]

On May 9, 2018, McGovern was one of several protesters who disrupted the Senate confirmation hearing of Gina Haspel to become CIA director. After he began yelling about waterboarding, McGovern was forcibly removed by Capitol Police and charged with disruption and resisting arrest.[22][23][24]

The CIA knew about the flimsy evidence of a second attack in the Gulf of Tonkin incident. The CIA was ordered by a deputy director not to inform the congress, and McGeorge Bundy, by his own admission, was obliged to sign the official declaration of the LBJ administration.

According to Ray McGovern the CIA advised LBJ strongly against the proposals of Air Force generals to bomb the Ho Chi Minh trail which the CIA knew was not suitable for block transport of weapons and movement of troops on the 160 trails into South Vietnam and not able to weaken the North Vietnamese communists' resistance.[25]

A Catholic from birth,[26] McGovern was highly critical of Pope John Paul II conservative stance on women's rights in church. He saw the former Pope as a repressive force. McGovern had been teaching Sunday school and earned a certificate in theology from Georgetown University. He participated in Cursillo, and was district president of Bread for the City, but by standing during mass for several weeks he protested against the teaching on sex roles and sexual ethics which to him seemed oppressive.[27]

In a television interview with Tucker Carlson on MSNBC in 2006, McGovern said: "I've been using the acronym O.I.L. for many—for two years now: O for oil; I for Israel; and L for logistics, logistics being the permanent—now we say "enduring"—military bases that the U.S. wants to keep in Iraq."[28]

McGovern testified at a Democratic National Headquarters forum in 2005 that had been convened by Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) of the House Judiciary Committee on the Downing Street memo.

The Washington Post reported in 2005 that, in his testimony, McGovern "declared that the United States went to war in Iraq for oil, Israel and military bases craved by administration neocons so 'the United States and Israel could dominate that part of the world.'" He said that Israel should not be considered an ally and that Bush was doing the bidding of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. 'Israel is not allowed to be brought up in polite conversation,' McGovern said. Genuine criticism of official Israeli policy is often portrayed as if it were anti-semitism: 'The last time I did this, the previous director of Central Intelligence called me anti-semitic.'"[29]

When asked in 2010 on TVNZ whether Julian Assange was a hero or villain, he replied "hero".[30] When asked the same year whether Julian Assange was a journalist, he replied to the CNN reporter: "Yeah, actually, with all due respect, I think you should be following his example."[31] In 2010, he co-wrote an open letter of support for WikiLeaks and Assange, with Coleen Rowley, Lawrence Wilkerson, Craig Murray and others.[32]

In 2013, he travelled with Rowley, Thomas A. Drake and Jesselyn Radack to Russia to present Edward Snowden with the award of the Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence.[33]

McGovern holds a position that the theft of the DNC emails was an inside job, and not the work of Russian agents (contrary to the findings published by the US intelligence community).[34] In his view, the metadata in the files released by Guccifer 2.0 (whom the US intelligence community identifies as a Russian military intelligence operation) has been manipulated to show that the documents came from Russia, where in fact according to this theory they originated from a computer in the Eastern United States. McGovern subsequently released a VIPS report in support of his theory. Many of the VIPS members however, did not sign the report and expressed a view that the inside job theory itself is a disinformation campaign run by a pro-Kremlin hacker Tim Leonard who lives in the UK.[35]