Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 2/24/23 Ray McGovern Dissects the Official Reaction to Hersh’s Nord Stream Revelations

Episode Date: March 2, 2023

Ray McGovern is back to discuss his testimony at the UN about Nord Stream. They discuss Seymour Hersh’s reporting and the reaction from the White House and CIA. McGovern draws parallels between the official reaction to these revelations and some similar episodes from the past. They also examine the current situation in Ukraine, consider the risk of nuclear war and question Washington’s goals for the conflict.  Discussed on the show: “How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline” (Substack) Video of McGovern testifying at the UN “Washington Post Lets Hersh’s Dangerous Cat Out of the Bag” (Antiwar.com) The Day After (IMDb) “Why War Pledges for Ukraine Fell Flat in Munich” (Defense One) Ray McGovern is the co-creator of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity and the former chief of the CIA’s Soviet analysts division. Read all of his work at his website: raymcgovern.com. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott. Get Scott’s interviews before anyone else! Subscribe to the Substack. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjY Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show. I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of anti-war.com, author of the book, Fool's Aaron, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and The Brand New, Enough Already, Time to End the War on Terrorism. And I've recorded more than 5,500 interviews since 2004. almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at scothorton dot for you can sign up the podcast feed there and the full interview archive is also available at youtube.com slash scot horton's show all right you guys on the line i got ray mcgovern of course he was the chief analyst of the soviet division at the cia way back when was the morning breeder for vice president george bush senior in the 1980s and it's been a great anti-war guy this whole century long so far in counting. And, of course, he's a regular at anti-war.com.

Did I say co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity? Welcome back to the show, Ray. How are you, sir? Thanks, Scott. Doing well. Good. Happy to have you here. So listen, I saw you on the TV, man. You're testifying in front of the United Nations Security Council of all things. That must have been a first, huh? it wasn't first for me uh i suspect it will be the last as well yeah all right well so what'd you tell

them well the uh the topic for discussion was the blowing up of the north stream pipelines uh and uh say hirsch's uh article uh spelling out chapter and verse about that by the way i'm going to talk with him well i'm scheduled to talk to him in a couple hours here so we'll see how it goes. Good. Good. Yeah, well, what can I say? I could say that when people smear, that's the right word, when they smear Sy Hirsch, it's really the, it's giving hypocrisy a bad name. When you have the CIA spokesperson, what's her name? Tammy Thorpe, I think, yeah. But when she said, that what Hirsch writes is, quote, completely and utterly false. Well, end quote. Well, that goes back. That reminds me of 20 years ago, Scott. You may remember this. 20 years ago, the U.S. and Britain were preparing to invade to attack Iraq on false pretenses. Now, this is a little piece of history that hardly anyone knows, you no doubt remember, but someone gave

Newsweek a copy, an authentic copy of the debriefing of Hussein Kamel, one of Saddam Hussein sons-in-law, on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Now, here's the deal. Man, you know, I didn't know that, Ray. I don't have that note. I have, you know, I know he did an interview on CNN. I remember I got it in my brain. I watched it with my own eyes in 1996 when, and you can find the transcript of that. But yeah.

I did not know that Newsweek had gotten a hold of what, his CIA debriefing? Well, it was a CIA debriefing, a separate but identical MI6, British, intelligence debriefing and who had that and and he was and he was debriefed by three UN inspectors it happened in 1995 yeah i mean i knew all that i just didn't know that you could read all that that you're blowing my mind i'm sorry go ahead please while i google okay well what happened was um john kelly of newsweek was given the transcript now i happened to know who gave him the transcript. And if you don't tell anybody else in the world, I'll give you his initials. It was you? No. It was another fellow named Scott. Scott Ritter.

Of course. Now, there's a backstory here. Scott pulled his hair out. He tried to get people to recognize no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. He knew it because he was a UN inspector in He couldn't get in to see his senator, Hillary Clinton. He couldn't get in to see the Senate Foreign Relations Committee run by Joe Biden and Tony Blinken. And so he saw the war coming, of course. And so exactly, yeah, what's today? The 24th, exactly one year ago, Newsweek ran a little blurred. Now, I have the little blurb here.

Let me see if I can retrieve it, so I'm not speaking off the top of my head here. Well, suffice it to say, the transcript read this way. This is a virtual quote. All chemical, biological, missile, strategic missiles, and radiological nuclear programs were destroyed in 1995. According to Saddam Hussein's son-in-law who defected and told this to the British, the U.S., and to the U.N. inspectors in 1995, they asked him, well, how do you know? And Hussein Kamel said, well, I don't know how it works in your country, but like I was in charge, right? And I ordered them destroyed. And then they said, well, yeah, can you prove it?

Did you go and see if they were destroyed? And he said, well, yeah, I did a couple. Wait a second. Are you trying to tell me, are you trying to get me to say that they're still there? It's great. Anyhow, the transcript was made available to Newsweek, all right? Now, John Barry, I mean, imagine he held his nose, but he said, hey, Edders, we really have to say something about this, right? You know, I found the article, but they don't have the hot links to the documents here anymore at all.

well surprise surprise i got them all if anybody's interested i i want them but anyway go ahead i'll post them on my own on my own site i have kind of an archive at scott horton dot org of hard to find pdfs and things like that so i will do that but anyway i'm sorry go ahead ray okay no problem so um so what happens well uh barry decides he's got to he's got to publish something on this just too embarrassing not to and so his editor's given permission to put a little periscope item. You know what those were? Those little things, a little blurbs. Okay. So, and he spills the beans. He said, this is according to a source that knows, had access to this information, actually had charge of these, these weaponry, this weaponry. Okay. So what happens? That's the 24th of February

on their website, Newsweek, and they publish it the next week. Okay. So what do the, what do the mainstream media people do. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. We better find out about this. And so where do they go? They go up to Langley, Virginia, to talk to the PR person who was in charge of all this for the CIA. His name was Bill Harlow. And what did Bill say? Bill said, this is, quote, incorrect. It's bogus. It's wrong. And besides that, it's untrue. He said all those things because he couldn't explain how or why. why in any way. Yeah. Well, this is not surprising.

I mean, the guy was a liar from the word go. And by the way, look, I'm sorry, I have to say, and I'm not bragging. I'm just saying because this is the benchmark, because for just regular people, anybody who was paying attention at all in 1995 and 1996 knew the story of Hussein Camel and what he had said there. And then when Dick Cheney, and I know I'm pretty sure you made a big deal about this at the time in, you know, the same day or the next day. And when Dick Cheney brought up Hussein Camel in the VFW speech in August of 2002,

we all went, you know, throw our hands up and laughing and mocking and saying, you see what a premeditated lion SOB this guy is when he gets up there and he says, yeah, Hussein Kamel admitted that they kept some stuff after 1991. And then he just completely omits the rest of the sentence, which is. But then they got busted and they destroyed it all by the. end of 1991 and they never were shown to have a scrap of anything since then verified by the UN

and the U.S. in 1995 and confirmed by him he was confirming what they already knew was that they destroyed it all by the time he defected and so for Dick Cheney to get up there and he's lying who's he lying to he's lying right to the faces of the guys who fought in World War II

Korea and Vietnam and telling him give me your sons, give me your grandsons based on this just outright lie It's incredible to see. And, you know, for anyone who was wise to it and I was wise to it, at the time, it was unbelievable to see him go that far. The same guy was claiming that Iraq, you know, met with Mohamed Atta in the Czech Republic. Czechoslovakia, as he called it, during his lives.

But anyway. Yeah. Well, Scott, you're quite right. I would just add that of the over 4,000 U.S. soldiers killed. not to mention the hundreds of thousands, Iraqis. You know, Rudid Kipling had this line. He said, you know, if they ask us why we died, tell them because our fathers lied.

He was talking about his own son, that he got enrolled in the British Army underage and two years later was killed. So these are personal. things. These are people who have been killed. These are people who have been sold a bill of goods that is not true. Now, Cheney, you know, this gets awful dreary. That's why I love interviewing you. We're like seven minutes down this path, this tangent of Iraq War II. And this is just a metaphor for a point about Ukraine you're making. But I'm with you. Keep going.

Well, I was going to say that, you know, my friends, my Catholic friends are very devout people. pray hard. And one woman came up to me during all this, a very, very bright woman who kept up with the news. And she said, Ray, I don't know if God is hearing my prayers anymore. I said, why that? She said, well, every time Dick Cheney goes into the hospital with a serious heart problem, I pray so hard. And then he always gets better. So, so pardon this little aside, but it was so obvious. I would say a word about Scott, right? I know that he gave this thing to Newsweek, and it was an act of desperation. And, I mean, Scott was not going to sit by and watch this war happen without pulling out all the stops, okay?

So he gave the stretch. He deserves credit for no doubt, no matter what people think of him now and his different circumstances. At that time, he wasn't just writing articles. He was doing everything he could to try to get people to disbelieve the lies about the weapons. And, you know, the day of Colin Powell's UN speech, he was in Tokyo giving a speech of his own about how this is all lies. Don't believe it. And don't let them do this. So that's going the extra mile, man.

He's still doing it. And I'm proud to call him a close friend. Now, no one knew better than Scott Ritter, form. or UN inspector as to what happened to those weapons of mass destruction that weren't there. Let me just add a thing or two, because this is really, really, really sad. The fellow who could have verified and knew that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, it was a fellow named James Clapper. He was an Air Force general.

And when Bobby Gates was a defense secretary, he made sure that James Clapper came in to run what CIA used to run in an objective way, namely the analysis of imagery intelligence, okay, satellite stuff, all kinds of stuff. They would come down to an outfit called the National Imetry Interpretation Center, NPEC, and we would have purview over an analysis. that. Now, so before Cuba, for example, we found those intermediate range ballistic missiles in Cuba. Now, that was given Kit and Caboodle to the Defense Department in 1967. No, 1997. And so the Defense Department is now running imagery analysis. James Clapper was appointed to be head of this group. Now, long story short, he wrote. He wrote in his memoir. quote Dick Cheney was

insistent that we find weapons of mass destruction and so we picked out 121 sites and we just looked at it very carefully and I accept responsibility for this. We found things

that weren't there. Period. End quote. He reached that in his book. Yeah, in other words, he was lying. going to, oh look, a building with a roof, where you know what could be under that roof if you use your imagination, Ray. And then he's the same guy who, and this live course originated in Israel, but Clapper picked it up and said, oh, yeah, no, I verified that's true. Putin came down

from Russia and helped them move Saddam's chemical weapons to Syria. Yeah. Well, that's how crazy. They really tried that, everybody. I swear to God, Google it. It's true. Sure. Well, now, the Clapper is also... I mean, it's not true, but I'm saying it's true that they lied that it was true. Sorry. Yeah.

It's very true that they lie through their teeth. Yeah, it sounds like I'm lying, that I'm making that up because it sounds so stupid, you know? Well, Clapper, you know, it was asked, you know, about the Russians, and he said, well, you know, I have a lot of experience with Russians, you know, and, you know, look at their history. They are almost genetically inclined to deceive, to mislead. to do blah blah blah blah blah where a second now clapper almost genetically i mean this is the guy running the entire u.s intelligence community including the cia now what kinds of people do you suppose james clapper would put in charge of russian analysis well people who know about this

chromosome advantage that the russians have of being almost genetically in clapper to be deceitful. So that's what we've been exposed to here. The point I want to make here is the point that's important now. And that is that when Newsweek publishes, and it's just a couple sentences, I have the text, I've found it, here it is. Hussein Kamel, the highest ranking Iraqi official ever to defect from Saddam Hussein's inner circle told CIA and British intelligence officers and U.S.

inspectors in the summer of 1995 that after the Gulf War, Iraq destroyed all its chemical and biological weapons, stocks, and missiles to deliver them. Kamel had direct knowledge of what he claimed. For 10 years, he had run Iraq's nuclear, chemical, biological, and missile programs, period, end quote. So, that's what John Barry put in Newsweek. happened? The media in Washington descended on CIA headquarters and asked this fellow Bill Harlow, who I remember his last name easily because it rhymes with Harlot. Okay. What he said was this. I'll say it again. Okay. This is incorrect, bogus, wrong, untrue. And so when Cy Hirsch comes out with this incredibly detailed authoritative article about how the U.S. blew up Nordstreet.

Well, it's no surprise that Tammy Thorpe would say his claim is completely and utterly false. And the NSC spoke, the National Security Council spokesman said the same thing. So I guess, you know, if you want to smear Cy Hirsch, well, you ought to look at the people that are smearing him, okay? And seriously, his list of accomplishments, too. You know, Ray, there's a lot of young people listen to this show who may not know who Cy Hirsch is. What's so special about a name brand reporter necessarily anyway, right? Tell me. Well, Cy is still sharp as attack.

He's even older than I am, okay? But he, as an independent reporter, found out and published on the Milai Massacre in Vietnam, where a whole town, women and children were massacred by Lieutenant. Cali and the U.S. Army. That story came to light because of Sy Hirsch. He has published many other stories of equal gravity and equal truthfulness, the false flag chemical attacks in Sarin. Now, he used to write for the New York Times. Back in the 70s and 80s, he was their star reporter. then he was no longer welcome there and so he wrote for the new yorker pretty pretty mainstream publication you know one of my favorites was um he's the guy that debunked the fake assassination

attempt against bush senior in kuwait in 1993 which people still believe in which is a total hoax that you know what you just what you just said scott is the operative thing here people still believe it that's right that's right that's right I mean, look, there's credible reason to believe that this is part of W. Bush's motive to go to war. I mean, a small part of it, but I did it for my daddy. I did it to avenge my daddy. They almost killed my daddy. I'm going to do me out of it.

A lot of people are naive enough to accept that sort of thing. Anyhow, what happens is the correspondence, the Western journalists who go to Langley and get fed this, you know, this incorrect, bogus wrong on truth. they say oh gosh thanks bill harlowe for telling us because we were we were thinking we had to publish a story on us and now bear in mind 24 February 20 years ago was one month before the U.S. UK attack on Iraq so it's not like these journalists didn't have any time time to check on us out. No, it's sufficed because Bill Harlow said, once again, it was incorrect, bogus, wrong, and untrue. And they said, wow, thanks a lot, Bill. We don't have to publish on this. So what's happening now is exactly the same thing, except the New York Times two days ago,

departed from the silence attending Sy Hershey's latest bomb shell, which indicates that the U.S. was behind the destruction of those Nord Stream pipelines. Now, for those of you who don't know what the Nord Stream pipelines, there was a lifeline of natural gas given to Germany and the rest of Europe, which allowed them to prosper economically and to stay warm during the winter. That's the long and short of it. So they were sabotaged. now what did the new york times do this time uh they stayed silent no mention of si hers not even

a mention of what tammy thorpe the cia spokesperson said that it's completely and utterly false they didn't they didn't even refer to the uh denial because then people might say well what was she denying and look before you even mention the post i'm gonna you know take away any credit that they get for mentioning it because they only mentioned it because it was going on a discussion about what was going on at the UN Security Council. Otherwise, they would not have. Give me just a minute here. At the Libertarian Institute, we published books. Real good ones. So far, we've got Will Griggs Snow Quarter. Sheldon Richmond's coming to Palestine and what social animals owe to each other. And four of mine. Fool's Aaron. Enough already. The great Ron Paul.

And my brand new one. Hotter than the sun. Time to abolish nuclear weapons. And I'm happy to announce that we've just published our managing editor Keith Knight's first one, The Voluntarius Handbook, an excellent collection of essays by the world's greatest libertarian thinkers and writers, including me. Check them all out at libertarian institute.org slash books. And for a limited time, signed copies of enough already and hotter than the sun are available at scotthorton.org slash books. Hey guys, I had some wasps in my house. So I shot them to death with my trusty bug assault 3.0 model with the improved salt reservoir and bar safety.

I don't have a deal with them, but the show does earn a kickback every time you get a bug assault or anything else you buy from Amazon.com by way of the link in the right-hand margin on the front page at Scott Horton.org. So keep that in mind. And don't worry about the mess. Your wife will clean it up. Searchlight Pictures presents The Roses, only in theaters August 29th, from the director of Meet the parents and the writer of poor things. Comes The Roses, starring Academy Award winner Olivia Coleman, Academy Award nominee Benedict Cumberbatch,

Andy Sandberg, Kate McKinnon, and Alison Janney. A hilarious new comedy filled with drama, excitement, and a little bit of hatred, proving that marriage isn't always a bed of roses. See The Roses only in theaters, August 29th. Get tickets now. You're right about that, Scott, but indeed that security council, at which I spoke, by the way, did go on. But still, what's her name?

Karen DeYoung. She's like one of the most senior people. And I am virtually certain that she had to get permission, not only from her editors, but from the White House to publish that. Now, that's big because they had a live link. They had a live link to Hershey's article. It's not like it was just a piece of, just a report on the UN Security Council the previous day.

So anybody who has, as most of us do, pays 30 books a month to get the New York Times live, I can just click on that link and see what Sae Hirsch has to say. That's big. So what I'm trying to say here is that that should sound the death knell for Joe Biden. There are people out in Washington that are out to get him now. And if, as it seems to be happening now, Cy Hershey's recording is being corroborated, if even the Germans, even the Germans come around.

Now, one little... Wait, let me stop you there. Who's cooperating it? Well, there have been reports coming out of, let's see, one person was Gil Dactora, who was told by some of his sources that some people watch the, these people prepare to deep sea dive and do this,

there are other people that are in the woodwork, and I expect them to be coming out. People who were familiar in one way or another with the kind of operation it had to include and sorrowfully for their purposes. Too many people had to know about this. It's going to come out. The site will, once again, as he always is,

it will be confirmed. I bet on it. Yeah, well, yeah, it won't, we'll be right away. Everyone will deny it right away. I guess it really has to be tied into what's going on now in Ukraine, Scott. And maybe I could speak to that just a little bit. There's the situation on the ground. And, you know, I am a Army intelligence officer,

but that was 135 years ago. ago. So I depend on Army intelligence officers who know a hell of a lot more what's going on now. And first and foremost is Doug McGregor. And if Doug is right, the war of attrition that Russia has been waging is about to take off and they're going to a trit and a trit until they get to the Dineeper River. Now, when will that happen? the best guess is maybe a month from now, maybe two months from now. Coincidentally, there will be a big visitor in Moscow at that precise time. His name is Xi Jinping.

He happens to be a China person and he happens to be the head of China. Now, why do I mention that? I mention that because the tectonic shift that has happened that has been cataloged. by the Ukrainian conflict has Russia and China in a virtual military alliance against the United States.

Now, the people, the benighted, exceptional, well-educated people running our policy for Joe Biden seem not to get it. I mean,

it's really incredible to watch them, to watch Blinkin today at the UN, telling all kinds tales. I mean, he did everything but accused the Russians of throwing little Ukrainian babies out of incubators. The illusion, of course, is back to the Iraq War when the press ran with that fabricated story. But what did he say? Well, he said a whole bunch of things, but

you know, he talked about sexual aggressions, all kinds of terrible things that the Russians are doing in Ukraine, and it was sort of a parody of what has happened before whenever the U.S. wants to drag up its allies and say, this is terrible, we have to go to war. So what's happening here is notable, really, isn't it, that it was the Americans who were passing out Viagra, and it was to the warlords in Afghanistan to rape little kids with, the people that America was putting in charge as policemen and mayors and governors, the warlords of that godforsaken land it wasn't kadafi wasn't vladimir poohan yeah we know that george w bush and baroque obama that did that yeah we know even who did it we have the

email showing that uh max plumbent's all's dad uh sarah flea was telling uh uh it's hillary clinton hey you know it's this this would be a really good one let's accuse kadafi of giving biagara to his troops so no i never saw that email Yeah, well, it's in there. It's in there. You could see where... WikiLeaks has all the emails, including the ones released by the State Department, which all the Libya ones or the State Department releases. Yeah. But they're at WikiLeaks. You can read them all, everybody. And that's Sidney Blumenthal is Max's dead.

That's right, Sydney, yeah. Good thing the Bible says something about the sins of the father don't count against the son. Max is a good dude. Thank God for that, huh? Because Max is the best. I don't know what the Bible says about that, actually, but I'm sure you do, and I'm sure it says that Max is cool. Well, it does say, except for Blumenthal. Yeah, actually, it's Maccabees 3, verse 26. I make a joke.

Okay, so, sexual violence, rape, war crimes. Now, it's a typical arrow in the quiver of people like Blinking to accuse the other side of what you're doing. War crimes. Blowing up Nord Stream 2 and 1 is a war crime, pure and simple. Professor Francis Boyle, who has done a lot of terrific work on UN and on war crimes, has said, you know, this is pure and simple a war crime, and it could be prosecuted under various international statutes, not the rules-based.

international statutes, whatever the hell they are, but under existing law, okay? So all these things are being thrown at the Russians, and, you know, it reminds me, really, of the things of the past when similar things were adduced. Stealing children, did you know that the Russians are stealing Ukrainian children from their families and bringing them back to Russia. Did you know that? Well, just listen to Tony Blinken. He would never tell a lie. Let me go

back, Scott, just so people who are coming a little bit new to this subject of lying, when I was still on active duty, so to speak, in my analyst's capacity, KAL, a

Korean Airlines airliner, was shut down over Siberia. First of September, 2000, I'm sorry, 1983. Yeah, and with the head of the John Birch Society on board, too, and a great conspiracy was born. Well, I don't know about the passengers, but what I do know. Yeah, it's Congressman Larry McDonald from Georgia, Democrat from Georgia. That's right. Yeah. Yeah, I don't really think the passengers themselves have much relevance here.

The idea was that the Russians shut this plane down. I was very much aware Well, I'm sorry, since I brought up I'll go ahead and tell you, the conspiracy was that the plane landed safely in Russia and that that was the original reports. But then they said that nope, it was lost at sea and everybody was

dead and you're never going to find your friend again. So that was why they were freaking out. But anyway, and then of course it's widely disputed about how it got shot down, but I think that may be about, maybe what you're about to say. Well, you know, the U.S. intelligence

has excellent ways of finding out what happened. We have actually liaison services that were following this by the minute. One of them was in an eastern country called Japan. So we know exactly what happened. It was the thick of night. The airliner had followed the path of an RC 135, which was an intelligence collection of ice plane. just several hours before, the Russians clearly felt it was an intelligence-gathering thing by the White House.

Okay? Now, they identified it, and that is, it was dark, right? They went up, and they tipped their wings, and they tried to get it to stop, and they got no, no response. Pilot to ground, what shall I do about this? Shoot it down, and they shot it down. Okay, so were the Russians guilty of shooting down a passenger aircraft over Siberia? Yes. Did they know it was a passenger aircraft?

No. Now, the intercepted conversations that we had were whittled down from 50 minutes to eight minutes when the U.S. bought this before the UN Security Council. What did those eight minutes show that the Russians deliberately downed K-A-L-O-O-7 on the 1st of September 1983? Now, what were the Russians accused of? Deliberately shooting that down, knowing that it was a civilian aircraft and not an intelligence collection aircraft by the U.S. Air Force. Oh, where was that if I'm? Oh, well, I told you was a 50-minute transcript, right? Well, that was in the other 42 minutes. Now, how do I know that? The fellow named Alvin Snyder, who was the State Department video guy, admitted later in his book. He said, you know, we knew there was a 50-minute transcript, but they only gave us eight minutes, so we dressed that. up really well and we played it. I didn't know, says Alvin Snyder, until 10 years later.

That it was bogus. They deliberately concealed the fact that the Russians thought it was an intelligence Air Force aircraft and it wouldn't respond to any tipping of wings or whatever they do up there. It was pitch dark. And yeah, they shut it down. Did they deliberately shot it down? Yeah, they deliberately shut down. Did they know it was a passenger? No, they didn't. But we conceal it. Now, the interesting thing is that when Mr. Snyder wrote his book,

there was not a tinge of regret. His conclusion was this, and I know this from Hort. The lesson is this. All countries lie, including our own country, the price goes to whoever lies first. That's the name of the game, and we won. We won that round. Now, one little footnote here, that was September 1st, 1983.

There was a major strategic exercise, including ICBMs and all kinds of other strategic weaponry in November of 1983. Suffice it to say, the Russians thought this was the real deal. This is the same year, 1983, when Reagan called them the evil empire, when we accused them falsely of deliberately shooting down a civilian aircraft, two months later, we're running this major exercise, including the vice president of the United States. And my friends in CIA, first and foremost, Mel Goodman, knew that the Russians were thinking, this is the real thing. My God, what does he do? He goes to Bobby Gates.

Bobby Gates used to work with Mel and me. He goes to Bobby Gates, who's the head of the analysis. He says, Bob, for God's sake, tell the White House to knock it off. The Russians think this is a real thing, okay? And Bobby Gates said, I don't care about the Russians. Making Russians happy was never in the top of my to-do list, right? So what does Mel do? He goes to Bill Casey, who hates the Russians even more than Bobby Gates.

It's just, Mr. Casey, for God's sake, please tell the White House, the Russians think this is a real thing what's Casey do he tells the White House they knock it off and we all get to live a little bit longer that's a true story okay I know it I was there I know Mel he's a good friend so I'm sorry wait wait I have to stop because I think I had part of this anecdote in my head and I guess it was wrong I'm actually going to talk to chas Freeman later today too and I thought wouldn't it Choss Freeman got in the car and drove down from Langley to D.C. and told them to make sure, and they swapped out the vice president for the deputy secretary defense to sit in on the exercise? Or that's Mel that you're talking about, Mel Goodman.

We out, well, no, it was Mel. Yeah. And he's written, he's actually had a, I'm sorry, I thought I got that from Chas Freeman, but I guess that's your anecdote that I'm thinking of that you've told me before, and I had just got that mixed up. Yeah, now, now Chaz independently may have done the same thing, uh, or something akin to it, but, well, I can ask him in a minute. So I think I might. But anyway, go ahead. Because this is so important, right? And there was also, I think, there was a Soviet spy in a British Soviet spy inside NATO who told them, hey, guys, trust me, this really is not a cover for a first strike.

This is just an exercise. And there was those two things that saved humanity. You got it right now. His name was Grydevsky, okay? And Maggie Thatcher, to her credit, I made sure. that Ronald Reagan knew about this, okay? And one little extra result of this was that Maggie Thatcher was one of the people

that talked, she was very close to Ronnie, of course, and she said, you know, Ronnie, looks like maybe this new fellow Gervasov, he may be somebody we can deal with, but let's not let this happen again, Ronnie, okay? Let's not let this happen again. Well, you know, they say, Ray, that, What happened was he saw that mini-series the day after that depicted pretty good special effects for 1983.

This is what it would look like to have H-bombs going off in the American Midwest and that he had nightmares about it and freaked out because it was his responsibility. It really was. And then he decided he was on a mission from God like the Blues Brothers to get rid of all nuclear weapons after that. He had this kind of religious conversion because he had brought us so close to the brink there, essentially accidentally. It's not like there was a Cuban missile crisis. going on it was a damned exercise you know yeah um you know when you say that Reagan was converted uh like like John Kennedy when you come close to destroying the planet you kind of leave with you you don't have to be very impressionistic to

realize that you have an incredible responsibility now the fly is in the ointland here at Rachevik 19 86 yeah 86 all right so

Gada Bachev goes to Reagan as you will know and he says hey let's get rid of all these nuclear weapons for God's sake they're just going to destroy us all and Ronnie says hmm and he's

he's got Maggie Thatcher in the back of his brain here I said oh wow mean we wouldn't have to come so close anymore. Wow. And then he goes to his advisors, right? And he says, what about this? And his advisors, some of them having worked for Lockheed Martin and Raytheon and the others, and going back to jobs there, said, but Mr. President, what would happen to Star Wars?

What would happen to the ABM system, which will be so airtight that we can prevent any Soviet missiles from coming? What would happen to that? And Ronnie says, oh, yeah, I guess we can't do that. Man, that was close. That was close. And it was the military, industrial, congressional, intelligence, and media, academia, think tank complex that put the kibosh on that. That was our last great moment where it could have happened with a very conservative

Ronald Reagan in power and a sensible Soviet leader named. Michael Gorbachev. Yep. That was probably the one and only chance ever. And, you know, Joe Serencioni told me that story, and he got the story from Schultz himself. And the way he put it was that Reagan said, let's get rid of all the medium-range missiles.

And Gorbachev said, done. And that's the INF Treaty right there. And then Gorbachev said, let's get rid of all of them. And Reagan said to Schultz, they're the only guys in the room. This is the two presidents, the translator, and Schultz. And Reagan says to Schultz, can we do that? And Schultz says, yes, let's do it. And that's the Secretary of State and guy that, you know, I know you understand their relationship,

a hell of a lot better at me. I was a little kid at the time, but I know Reagan really counted on him. And so, you know, it was as close as you could be. They say, like, the Cuban Missile Crisis was the absolute brink of nuclear war. This is the absolute brink of the abolition of nuclear weapons from the face of the earth. And then the opportunity blown. yeah it would have been possible whether they could ever have worked it out as another question but by the way you know he serencioni described that they had a process in mind already

like america and the soviet union would get down to 200 each and then we'd be at parity with britain and france and israel and china and then from there we'd work on the next stage see if we can get everybody down to 100 see if we can get everybody down to 50 so it wasn't like magic pie in the sky stuff but it was an absolute roadmap kind of late out for how to do it and it wasn't like the bircher's fear either that like oh was going to turn them all over to the united nations world state or whatever no it was abolition under iaea inspection and uh could have worked i mean if shaltz thought it could have worked then it could have worked and i don't want to hear it you know yes she the only only problem is i know shaltz

i know wineberger i know the various national security assistants that were in power then because i briefed them every other morning okay uh schultz only gradually won complete confidence from ronnie reagan uh in those years early eighties uh shultz was up against a phalanx uh comprised of wineberger mcfarlane at the n sc um bill casey uh at the cia Schultz was in the minority. So Schultz, in my view, knew that, well, on K-A-L-O-O-7, Schultz would not have by himself accused the Russians of deliberately shooting down a passenger liner knowing it was a passenger liner. His people did that.

Charles Wick and the TV people in the State Department. Did Schultz know that those 50 minutes were going to be whittled down in a dishonest way to eight minutes? I don't know. I know Schultz well enough to think that he was sort of mousetrapped on that. But he was vying. He was vying with these other guys, these troglodytes, Weinberger. My God. Well, I'm not going to talk out of turn here, but Weinberger and McFarland

and Casey and all these guys. Now, the only person that Schultz pretty much had on his sign was George H.W. Bush, but he wasn't going to stick his neck out on any of this. So, my point is simply this. It took years for Schultz to get into the position

where Reagan would meet only with Schultz and got a but Schultz, and Reagan would turn to Schultz said this possible and Schultz would say, yes, sir. Now, my only point after that is that there is many many a slip between cup and lip and I didn't know

that Sirin Sione has told you that things had been worked out the mechanics of this thing so I think you're probably right it might have worked and you know this is the last great chance so far to save the planet yeah hey guys check out my new sponsor

it's Peacehawk coffee at piecehawk dot coffee first of all business you have to drink coffee in the morning and you want it to taste good. Well, Peace Hot Coffee is the best from around the world. But then, just as important, Peace Hot Coffee donates at least a dollar of every pound sold to worthy foreign aid organizations

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I'm the director. Then we've got Sheldon Richmond, Kyle Anzalone, Keith Knight, Lori Calhoun, Jim Beauvard, Connor, Connor, Conner Freeman, Will Porter, Patrick Murfarlane, and Tommy Salman's on our staff, writing and podcasting. And we've also got a ton of other great writers, too, like Walter Block, Richard Booth, Boss Spleat, Kim Robinson, and William Ben Wagonin. We've published eight books so far, including my latest, Hotter Than the Sun, Time to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, and Keith Knight's new Voluntarius Handbook.

And we've got quite a few more great ones coming soon. Check out Libertarian Institute.org slash books. It's a whole new era. We libertarians don't have the power, but we do have enough influence to try to lead the left and the right to make things right. us at Libertarian Institute.org. And so let's talk about nukes more. It sounds hyperbolic and alarmist, and so it's sort of a, it's a self-censoring kind of a thing, right?

And you see this from the war party. They talk about how we could have a war with Russia or regime change in Russia or even, same thing with China, without a nuclear war. In fact, without the existence of nuclear weapons even being mentioned or taken in into account. They just kind of, you know, because otherwise your recommendation is one page long, and that is, we can't do it. They got nukes, right? So, but then if you say, yeah, but there's a risk of nuclear war, then, well, you sound kind of crazy because there's no nuclear wars. And, you know, a good friend of mine has said to me a couple of times that, oh, come on, when I was a kid, they all said Ronald Reagan was going to blow up the world and then nuclear war. We

to have a nuclear war then and you know in the early regan years when he was you know the height of brinksmanship against the USSR we're sure as hell not going to have one now and it does sound crazy because you'd have to be crazy to break out nuclear weapons right that's why they call it the nuclear taboo is because those were tactical-sized nukes and they were enough to destroy entire cities and kill hundreds of thousands of people and you know in hiroshima and nagasaki in 1945 and that everybody knows now that if anybody uses them major powers, start using them against each other, then it's going to

escalate to Armageddon, right? In the words of our own president. Well, yeah. So, well, so as the former chief analyst of the Soviet division and all of that, can you put in real context here of what is the danger that these people

could actually let their emotions run so wild that they start using nukes? And I don't just mean the Russians. I mean the Russians and or the Americans. or the Chinese or the Chinese yeah now let me just

to say this the big difference Scott in my view is that instead of Schultz oh god we've got Anthony Blinken need I mention Blinken

yeah I got to take the rest of the day off go ahead so you know this is nothing to left as my Russian teacher used to say this is nothing to left

you got Blinken instead of Schultz. Now, Biden has something, has, has taken a position that is internally inconsistent. He says Russia has to be defeated in Ukraine and we have to avoid World War III. Okay. Sorry to tell you, Mr. Biden, but you can't have both. You can't defeat Russia. in Ukraine, Russia is going to win.

It has the conventional capability. It's not running out of ammunition and weapons like the West is. It's going to win in Ukraine unless you want World War III. Now, are these bright people from the best

schools, mind you, like Blinken and Sullivan and Newland and Austin? Are they are they the same as the more rational people like Schultz

like George H.W. Bush who could take Ronald Reagan aside and say, well look now we know Weinberger has a bug up his rear end for Godabachev but we think Godabachov is the real deal

that's the deal. There's nobody like that. No. You don't have to believe McGovern on this. at Valdei, the Discussion Club, on the 27th of October, Putin, President Putin, was asked this question. What about this growing tensions between China and the U.S., over Taiwan and over other things? And how do you explain the idea that the U.S. wants to spoil relations with China, at the same time as they're supplying billions worth of weapons to the Ukraine to fight against Russia. This is what Putin says, quote.

Frankly, I do not know why they are doing this. Are they sane? It seems that this runs completely counter to common sense and logic. This seems simply crazy. Now, it may seem that there is a subtle, profound plot. behind this, but I think there is nothing there. No subtle thought. It is just nonsense and arrogance, nothing else. Such irrational actions are rooted in arrogance and a sense of impunity, period, end quote. Now, my point is simply this. If the Blinkins and Sullivan's and

newlands of this world can do something so stupid as to take on the two other major powers in the world who are now joined in a virtual alliance. Look at the statement of Chinese issue just three days ago. My God, it puts them together with Russia against the rest of what the U.S. is trying to do. So if these people can be so stupid as to adopt this kind of policy, You can't rule out the fact that when the U.S. and NATO are taking it on the chin just one month or two months from now, and they have to decide, that is, Blinken and Sullivan and so forth, they have to decide whether the President Biden, okay, Putin has stopped at the NEPA River. It's time to deal. We can make a deal. We can use Adyasa.

And we can save part of Ukraine, including access to the Black Sea, if we deal. Or we can use these little nukes, you know, just tiny little thing. They're no larger than the ones we used in Nagasaki. And we have them on submarine. Now we think, Mr. President. My God, I would hate to be Mr. Putin with a thought that this was possible. And, you know, again, it doesn't matter when McGovern believes, you know, the Russian military have to look at capabilities, not intentions.

And we have capabilities to start a little nuclear war. And if our back is up against the wall, I would not rule out for a moment that Blinken and Sullivan and those unwashed superior people out of the best schools will do the same stupid things that their predecessors did the best and the brightest in Vietnam, resulting thing in 58,000 casualties on the American side, 3 million on the Vietnamese side. At least we avoided nuclear war then. I'm not so sure of it now. That's why we all have to get off our rear ends and do what we can put our bodies into this thing to make sure that our representatives such as they are. They do the right thing and face these people down before they get us all

killed. Yeah, that's what I'm saying too. And it's funny because, you know, they acknowledge the truth of this from time to time and in a way you know there's a quote in the new york times they go well you know we're boiling the frog you have to turn up the heat slowly so we're you know because otherwise the frog could jump out of the pot which means nuke washington dc right they could yeah they can nuke washington dc uh or worse all of us um and and then i keep referring to this because it's pretty instructive i think you had the munich security conference and by the way i'm halfway through an interview with Michael Tracy, I got to do the other half of the interview later today

because we ran out of time. But Michael Tracy went to the Munich Security Conference and watched all of these freaks. And, you know, the worst news that he had was the consensus and the, especially the consensus on the false narrative of, you know, how all of this happened and all of that. It's complete agreement of the innocence of the West and the darkness of Putin's side and all of that.

So that was a big part of it. But so one of the things that's coming clear there, and this is in the defense one piece, Ray, is how the Americans keep saying as long as it takes, as long as it takes. But they make it clear they don't want to, I'm sorry, I'm kind of scanning as I'm babbling here, looking for the great quote, but the point is they know that if they do what it takes to help Ukraine actually win, presuming they have. the manpower for the sake of argument, and give them the amount of weapons that it would take to

really destroy Russia's military in Ukraine and force them out, that to do that would cause a war with Russia and possibly a nuclear war. They know that. So they are not willing to do that. Their goal instead is to essentially drag this on at more or less the status quo until Russia is just exhausted. And in fact, they even say, I'm trying to find it where they talk about, you know, we don't want to negotiate, but we don't want, like, this swift and, you know, sweeping defeat of Russia either that'll provoke a worse response. What we want is, even if it takes 10 years, Ray, as though we'll all survive that long, if it takes 10 years, we want the Russians to finally just give up exhausted and withdrawal like Afghanistan, 89. That's the model. And they're

willing to keep this thing going and going and going at what they consider to be, what, low-level warfare, relatively speaking, which, of course, is anything but for the people on the front there who are being blown to bits by artillery and tank shells and things right now on both sides. Well, yeah, you're right. This is crazy, right? Like they're saying, you're right, McGovern. We can't really win.

That's why we're trying to just keep it going for it. Like the way the Israelis talked about Syria 10 years ago, we just want to continue to see them hemorrhage to death and all this kind of craziness. totally illusory, the more so since China, India, Indonesia, South Africa, Iran, Brazil. They're not going to let it happen. China knows it's next in line, for God's sake. It doesn't have to suspect that. It reads that in U.S. policy documents.

The only hope, really, is in the next several months, will the German people realize what the hell is going on? Now, Schultz, Chancellor Schultz, was at the next podium on the 7th of February, 2020, when Biden said, yeah, we'll put an end to the, we can do that, trust me, we can put it into the Nord Stream pipeline. Now, what did Schultz do? He was asked, how, he explained us, Chancellor Schultz, and what he said was this, we do everything together. together we proceed on these critical problems we don't do anything without doing it together so what the German people need to ask is oh so Chancellor Schultz

did you do this together did Biden tell you he was going to blow up this pipeline so important to us or did he forget to tell you when you were together there after the plans were well advanced. Together. What does together mean? Does together mean we freeze to death

in our industry or leaves for the parts? What does together mean, Mr. Schultz? That's what has to happen. The Germans have to grow up. They have to realize that they're adults. Unlike after World War II, they can stand on their own at least to keep warm during the winter.

Yeah. You know, when the war started, McGregor said, Well, you know, the saving grace here is the Germans eventually, hopefully sooner than later, are going to say, all right, all right, all right. The same way they did with Minsk 1 and 2 back in 14. Look, how many refugees are we going to take? How much disruption?

I mean, this is not in Afghanistan on the other side of Uzbekistan from everybody. This is right here, you know, on the doorstep of Europe anyway, right at the border of it. Yeah, but there's a big difference, Scott. those refugees are white. Those are white refugees. And I want to make this point, okay? Okay. It's now the lily white west against the rest of the world.

Most of them, people of color, about 80% of the rest of the world. Well, the Russians are white too, though. Well, yeah. They're no longer white in propagandistic terms here in the United. United States. They've been blackened to the point. Of course, they're half oriental as well. So that's the George Carlin joke. He says, when's the last white people you can remember we bomb? The Germans. And that's just because they were trying to cut in on our action. Dominate the world. That's our job. Well, I want to give you a little Kipling here. It is not wise for the

Christian white to hustle the Asian brown. For the Asian smiles and the Christian riles, but the Asian weareth the Christian down. At the end of the fight lies a tombstone quite with the name of the late deceased and the epitaph Dreer, a fool lies here who tried to hustle

the East. The Chinese used to say, Scott, it's going to come to a no good end unless more responsible people enter the room and start acting like adults in the White House, not else

where. Yep. All right. Listen, I'm sorry. I got to go and you got to go, but it's worth bringing up here for what it's worth. And I know he was already a very, very lousy president. And I'm not saying anything about the man himself necessarily, but I'm just saying, I don't know if he saw Donald Trump's statement the other day where he goes hard against the Mickey Matt. He goes hard against the whole deep state structure. He calls it that the military, industrial, national security state and he names the Pentagon, the CIA, and the State Department. He confirms or at least accuses. I don't know if he read the actual brief on it or not, but says that Newland did the coup or, you know, the State Department did the coup in Ukraine that led to this

crisis. And he's got at least a year before, you know, a year and a few months before the convention. And then, you know, possibly a year and a half at this. And he's already, you know, decided that and and I don't know if this will stick or not but so far he's decided that his take is that all the other Republicans have Nikki Haley's George W. Bush foreign policy which is true right desantis and all of the rest of them they're all George W. Bush they're all Lindsay Graham his best friend and he does whatever Lindsey Graham says but anyway they're all you know what he calls liberal interventionists globalists and he is staking himself out as the true, you know, right-wing populist on an anti-war position, saying if I was the president,

I would end the war. And look, I'm not saying that's true or he deserves the benefit of the doubt or whatever for his good faith necessarily or anything like that. But all I'm saying is he could be saying what, is it Michael McCall, the congressman from Texas is saying, which is that Biden's a wimp. And Biden is weak and Biden needs to be 10 times tougher. That's what a Republican is supposed to say that Democrats are weak and effeminate and what a real man would do is triple down. And Donald Trump instead is saying, no, that's what a weak loser like you would do, dude, which is, oh, my God, that's the, you know, just rhetorically speaking, that's the most important invention of Donald Trump and really of our current political era is that you have that kind of position being argued from the right against, you know, and putting. putting right-wing hawks in the center with John McCain's corpse, you know? It's bizarre.

And, of course, that is why they emasculated him. That is why they made it impossible for him to reach out and have a decent relationship with Russia. That is why, two weeks before he took office, Chuck Schumer told, what's her name, Rachel Maddow, oh, Trump is being very foolish and taking on the intelligence community because they have six ways. to send you to get back at you. He better not try to do that. Well, he did try to do that. Look, what happened to him.

I'm not saying that he's, I think on this he's exactly right. But all I'm saying is that the deep state is very, very powerful. The Chuck Schumers of this world have been co-opted into it. And so we have to find some other way and try to persuade the Chuck Schumers of this world that we need business. We don't want war.

and we're willing to put our bodies into it to make sure this point is made. Yep, absolutely right. All right, thank you so much again for your time, Ray. Love talking to you. Okay, thanks. All right, you guys, that's the great Ray McGovern. He's at anti-war.com.

The Scott Horton Show, Anti-War Radio, can be heard on KPFK, 90.7 FM in L.A. APSRadio.com, anti-war.com, ScottHorton.org, and Libertarian Institute. Thank you.