The Journal

Issue date: 10/5/06 Section: News

MCGOVERN

Former CIA Analyst Ray McGovern summed up his decision to speak out against the Iraq War with a quote from medieval philosopher Thomas Aquinas:

"If you can live amid injustice without anger, you are unjust."

McGovern spoke in the Winifred Moore Auditorium Oct. 3 as a part of the International Studies Symposium Series. His lecture, "CIA truths," detailed what he saw as the manipulation of intelligence that led to the unjust invasion of Iraq in 2003.

McGovern worked in the government for more than 27 years, and was often responsible for the daily intelligence briefings given to President George Herbert Walker Bush.

He said in earlier administrations, the intelligence community would be consulted when the president needed someone to "give it to them straight."

During the Vietnam War, he said the CIA was contacted about the idea of bombing the Ho Chi Minh trail to force the Viet Cong to surrender. The Air Force had suggested the operation.

"We would go back to all of our experience in what bombing would do and what it wouldn't do," McGovern said.

McGovern said the CIA concluded the bombing wouldn't work.

"That's how the system was set up," he said. "But think about this president; if he wanted an unbiased or apolitical place to get info on this war - there's no place to go. Everything has been so corrupted."

McGovern said the Bush administration has politicized the intelligence offices. Bush visited the CIA headquarters 12 times during the planning phases of the Iraq War, suggesting the intelligence officers' focus on certain areas Bush thought was important, McGovern said.

"Someone asked me, 'Is that unusual, for the president to visit the CIA headquarters 12 times?' And I would say that's not unusual ­- it's unprecedented," McGovern said.

McGovern said this sort of political tampering hurts the president's ability to make well-informed decisions. But worse, he said, was when Bush ignored the advice outright.

When excerpts from the National Intelligence Estimate were published by the New York Times outlining the positions of 16 different intelligence agencies on where the United States stands in Iraq, McGovern said Bush made the estimate out to be a "tool of enemy propaganda."

"Sixteen U.S. intelligence agencies aren't smart enough? Give me a break," McGovern said. "We have a right to know this."

McGovern also outlined ways the United States can get out of Iraq safely.

Continued...

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