| Police State: Another Truth-Teller Steps Forward!

Another Truth-Teller Steps Forward ~  Ray McGovern, Common Dreams.

Edward Snowden, the person who disclosed top-secret documents on the U.S. government’s massive surveillance programs, is reportedly in Hong Kong and seeking asylum from countries that value openness and freedom, conditions seen as slipping away at home.

Before the U.S. government and the mainstream media engage in the customary character assassination of truth-teller Edward Snowden – a fate endured by Pfc. Bradley Manning and others – let’s get on the record the motives he gave for releasing the trove of information on intrusive eavesdropping by the National Security Agency.

Edward Snowden, who revealed himself as the leaker of top-secret documents related to the National Security Agency’s electronic surveillance. (Photo/UK Guardian)

Why would someone like Snowden, a 29-year-old employee of national-security contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, jeopardize what he calls “a very comfortable life” in order to blow the whistle on the U.S. government’s abuse of power?

If what he did sounds weird, this is only because there are so precious few like him who will stand on principle and risk everything. Snowden explained that if the public does not know about these intrusive programs, there is no room for citizen input regarding how they square with our constitutional rights.

Snowden, who was living in Hawaii with a promising career and a salary said to be about $200,000 a year, told the London Guardian: “I’m willing to sacrifice all of that because I can’t in good conscience allow the U.S. government to destroy privacy, Internet freedom, and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they’re now building.”

He added that he wanted to reveal the “federation of secret law, unequal pardon, and irresistible executive powers that rule the world I love. … What they’re doing poses an existential threat to democracy.”

Snowden enlisted in the Army in 2003 and began training to join the Special Forces. He told the Guardian: “I wanted to fight in the Iraq war because I felt like I had an obligation as a human being to help free people from oppression.” He quickly found, though, that, in his words, “Most of the people training us seemed pumped up about killing Arabs, not helping anyone.” Snowden broke both legs in a training accident and was discharged.

In several key respects, the experiences of Snowden resemble those of Bradley Manning. Both took the enlisted person’s oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” As a condition of employment, both signed a promise not to disclose classified information; and both witnessed at close hand flagrant abuses that their consciences told them they needed to expose.

All this required them to go back on their secrecy promise, in order to achieve a greater good. What they were able to understand, and act on, is what ethicists call a “supervening value.” [See Daniel C. Maguire’s The Manning Trial’s Real Defendant” regarding the moral balancing act between democracy’s need for information and government insistence on secrecy.]

It didn’t require a law degree for Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden to understand how the Bush and Obama administrations were playing fast and loose with key provisions of the Constitution of the United States.

‘Safety’ Before Constitution

As for the current President, he seems to have been editing the oath he took to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Few caught it when he preached on national security on May 23, but Greg Sargent noted in the Washington Post that Obama defined his commander-in-chief role as requiring him to tilt toward national security and away from civil liberties – clearly prioritizing the latter out of a warped zero-sum mindset.

Obama said “constitutional issues” must be “weighed” against “my responsibility to protect the American people.” Got that? He was even more explicit last Friday about how he sees these choices. “You can’t have 100 percent security and also then have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience,” Obama said. “We’re going to have to make some choices as a society. … There are trade-offs involved.”

Regarding his priorities, he said: “When I came into this office I made two commitments … Number one, to keep the American people safe; and Number two, to uphold the Constitution. And that includes what I consider to be a constitutional right to privacy and an observance of civil liberties.”

Thanks for tacking on that last sentence, Mr. President, but your defense of the incredibly wide and intrusive programs – alien to Fourth Amendment protections – strain credulity well beyond the breaking point. You lost me when you described the recently revealed eavesdropping programs that suck up data on billions of our communications daily as “very narrowly circumscribed” and “very focused.”

In July 2008, when Congress passed and President Bush signed a law making government eavesdropping easier and granting immunity to telecommunications companies, which had already violated, together with the Bush administration, our Fourth Amendment rights, this seemed to me a watershed. What possible incentive would the telecoms now have for abiding by the Constitution, I asked myself.

When I heard that then-Sen. Barack Obama had flip-flopped on this vote – as he was burnishing his national security “cred” for his White House run – I wrote him an open letter. He had said he would vote against the bill, before he decided to vote for this major revision of the Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978.

I gave my open letter the title “It’s a Deal Breaker for This Intelligence Officer.” Here’s the main part:

“July 3, 2008

“Dear Senator Obama,

“I speak from 30 years of experience in intelligence work. I don’t know who actually briefed you on the eavesdropping legislation, but the bill is unnecessary for intelligence collection and POISON for our civil liberties — not even to mention the unconscionable retroactive immunity provision.

“You have made a big mistake, Senator, in indicating you intend to vote for it. There is still time to change your mind. That’s what big people do. Your ‘explanation’ was unworthy of one who has sworn to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States (including the Fourth Amendment).”

 ‘Turnkey Tyranny’

The consequences of this law are what Snowden ended up warning us against in the video arranged by the Guardian, after he reviewed some of what he had seen from his vantage point. His window into the National Security Agency and its management no doubt provided unflattering insight into the behavior of its leaders and their nodding, dismissive acquaintance with any limitations in existing law.

Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden who saluted smartly when ordered by President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney to discard what had been known as NSA’s “First Commandment – Thou shalt not eavesdrop on Americans without a warrant.” The rubric-justification was: “After 9/11, everything changed” – including any need to pay much attention to the law. Like the telecom corporations, Hayden was not only held harmless and forgiven but lauded for his patriotism

And if you think his successor, Army General Keith Alexander, feels constrained by his own oath of office, think again. It is a felony to lie to Congress. He did. In olden days it would have been an embarrassing, career-ending story. Not for Alexander. The “mainstream media” has lionized him rather than holding him accountable. And he now sports four stars and not only directs NSA but also is Commander of the U.S. Cyber Command.

It’s a long but instructive story: In December 2005, top New York Times executives belatedly decided to let the rest of us in on the fact that the George W. Bush administration had been eavesdropping on American citizens without the court warrants required by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978.

The Times had learned of this several months before the presidential election of 2004 but acquiesced to White House entreaties to suppress the damaging information. However, in late fall 2005, Times correspondent James Risen prepared to publish a book, State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration,” revealing the warrantless eavesdropping anyway. Times publisher, Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., recognized that he could procrastinate no longer.

It would simply be too embarrassing to have Risen’s book on the street with Sulzberger and his associates pretending that this explosive eavesdropping story did not fit Adolph Ochs’s trademark criterion: All The News That’s Fit To Print. (The Times’ own ombudsman, Public Editor Byron Calame, later branded the newspaper’s explanation for the long delay in publishing this story “woefully inadequate.”)

When Sulzberger told his friends in the White House that he could no longer hold off on publishing in the newspaper, he was summoned to the Oval Office for a counseling session with President Bush on Dec. 5, 2005. Bush tried in vain to talk him out of putting the story in the Times. The truth would out; part of it, at least – in 11 days.

Gen. Alexander Out of the Loop

Unfortunately for National Security Agency Director Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander, the White House neglected to tell him that the cat would soon be out of the bag. So on Dec. 6, Alexander spoke from the old dishonest talking points in assuring visiting House Intelligence Committee member Rush Holt, D-New Jersey, that the NSA did not eavesdrop on Americans without a court order.

Still possessed of the quaint notion that generals and other senior officials are not supposed to lie brazenly to congressional oversight committees, Holt wrote a blistering letter to Gen. Alexander after the Times, on Dec. 16, front-paged a feature by Risen and Eric Lichtblau, “Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts.”

But House Intelligence Committee chair Pete Hoekstra, R-Michigan, apparently found Holt’s scruples benighted; Hoekstra did nothing to hold Alexander accountable for misleading Holt, his most experienced committee member, who had served as an intelligence analyst at the State Department.

What followed struck me as bizarre. The day after the Dec. 16 Times feature article, the President of the United States publicly admitted to a demonstrably impeachable offense. Authorizing illegal electronic surveillance was a key provision of the second article of impeachment against President Richard Nixon. On July 27, 1974, this and two other articles of impeachment were approved by bipartisan votes in the House Judiciary Committee and likely would have passed the House if Nixon had not chosen to resign on Aug. 9, 1974.

Yet, far from expressing remorse or regret about his warrantless wiretaps, President Bush bragged about having authorized the surveillance “more than 30 times since the September the 11th attacks,” and said he would continue to do so. The President also said: “Leaders in Congress have been briefed more than a dozen times on this authorization and the activities conducted under it.”

On Dec. 19, 2005, then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and then-NSA Director Michael Hayden held a press conference to answer questions about the surveillance program. Gonzales was asked why the White House decided to flout FISA rather than attempt to amend it, choosing instead a “backdoor approach.” He answered:

“We have had discussions with Congress … as to whether or not FISA could be amended to allow us to adequately deal with this kind of threat, and we were advised that that would be difficult, if not impossible.” Impossible? Regarding that time, James Risen quipped: “In October 2001, you could have set up guillotines on the public streets of America.”

It was not difficult to infer that the surveillance program, soon to be given the respectable label of the “Terrorist Surveillance Program,” was of such scope and intrusiveness that, even amid highly stoked fear, it would have elicited public outrage.

Almost All the News Fit to Print

Like the giant telecoms, the New York Times never had to issue a mea culpa for hiding the crass violations of our Fourth Amendment rights until after the 2004 election and another year for good measure.

The issue arose again in a curious way on Sept. 13, 2010, at a large event at the New York Times hosted by then-Managing Editor Jill Abramson in honor of Daniel Ellsberg for his release of the Pentagon Papers, which the Times and others published in June 1971. (Dan invited me to come along; better late than never, we thought.)

Abramson alluded in a matter-of-fact way to a particularly egregious episode in which theTimes did not cover itself in glory. But one would not have gleaned the latter from Abramson’s casual mention of how the Times had published “the story about the NSA’s eavesdropping program.”

Abramson: The issue [of government pressure] became salient once again after 9/11, when the Times and other publications were the recipients of requests from the Bush White House to occasionally withhold publication of stories that involved secrets and national security issues. Probably the most famous one involved our publication of the story about the NSA’s eavesdropping program.

Ellsberg: By the way, as the only non-Times person up here, I shouldn’t refrain from saying, I’ve been very publicly very critical of the Times’ decision to withhold the NSA wiretap story — not only, for a whole year, but very critically, past the election of 2004. I think it’s quite possible that the revelation that the president had, for three years, been blatantly violating the law …

Abramson (interrupting): Although in truth, it wasn’t known in real time at the election, the gravity of the legal issue was not.

Ellsberg: The legal issue, perhaps. …

Abramson: So —

Ellsberg: The — a whole year. I think that did make a difference.

Abramson: The thing is when the government says — you know, by publishing a story you’re harming the national security, you’re helping the terrorists. I mean there are still people today who argue that the NSA program was the crown jewel, the most valuable anti-terrorism program that the Bush administration had going, and that it was terribly wrong of the Times to —

Ellsberg: And the Times went ahead.

Abramson: — publish.

Ellsberg: In the end, that’s what I’m saying.

Abramson: In the end, we did go ahead. But I’m saying these are not cavalier decisions.

Anyone want to guess why Ed Snowden chose the Guardian of London (and also theWashington Post) over the “paper of record” for his disclosures?

The Need for Truth-Tellers

In September 2004 Daniel Ellsberg and I drafted an appeal to those who might have been thinking of what Bradley Manning and now Ed Snowden have had the courage to do. It is included below as a reminder that blowing the whistle on war crimes and on gross violations of the U.S. Constitution is a laudable form of patriotism. The last time I checked the professional help promised in 2004 was reaffirmed.

September 9, 2004

APPEAL TO: Current Government Officials

FROM: The Truth-Telling Coalition

It is time for unauthorized truth telling.

Citizens cannot make informed choices if they do not have the facts—for example, the facts that have been wrongly concealed about the ongoing war in Iraq: the real reasons behind it, the prospective costs in blood and treasure, and the setback it has dealt to efforts to stem terrorism. Administration deception and cover-up on these vital matters has so far been all too successful in misleading the public.

Many Americans are too young to remember Vietnam. Then, as now, senior government officials did not tell the American people the truth. Now, as then, insiders who know better have kept their silence, as the country was misled into the most serious foreign policy disaster since Vietnam.

Some of you have documentation of wrongly concealed facts and analyses that—if brought to light—would impact heavily on public debate regarding crucial matters of national security, both foreign and domestic. We urge you to provide that information now, both to Congress and, through the media, to the public. …

There is a growing network of support for whistleblowers. In particular, for anyone who wishes to know the legal implications of disclosures they may be contemplating, the ACLU stands ready to provide pro bono legal counsel, with lawyer-client privilege. The Project on Government Oversight (POGO) will offer advice on whistle blowing, dissemination and relations with the media.

Needless to say, any unauthorized disclosure that exposes your superiors to embarrassment entails personal risk. Should you be identified as the source, the price could be considerable, including loss of career and possibly even prosecution. Some of us know from experience how difficult it is to countenance such costs. But continued silence brings an even more terrible cost, as our leaders persist in a disastrous course and young Americans come home in coffins or with missing limbs. …

We know how misplaced loyalty to bosses, agencies, and careers can obscure the higher allegiance all government officials owe the Constitution, the sovereign public, and the young men and women put in harm’s way. We urge you to act on those higher loyalties. … Truth telling is a patriotic and effective way to serve the nation. The time for speaking out is now.

SIGNATORIES

Appeal from the Truth-Telling Coalition

Edward Costello, Former Special Agent (Counterintelligence), Federal Bureau of Investigation

Sibel Edmonds, Former Language Specialist, Federal Bureau of Investigation

Daniel Ellsberg, Former official, U.S. Departments of Defense and State

John D. Heinberg, Former Economist, Employment and Training Administration, U.S. Department of Labor

Larry C. Johnson, Former Deputy Director for Anti-Terrorism Assistance, Transportation Security, and Special Operations, Department of State, Office of the Coordinator for Counter Terrorism

Lt. Col Karen Kwiatowski, USAF (ret.), who served in the Pentagon’s Office of Near East Planning

John Brady Kiesling, Former Political Counselor, U.S. Embassy, Athens, Department of State

David MacMichael, Former Senior Estimates Officer, National Intelligence Council, Central Intelligence Agency

Ray McGovern, Former Analyst, Central Intelligence Agency

Philip G. Vargas, Ph.D., J.D., Dir. Privacy & Confidentiality Study, Commission on Federal Paperwork (Author/Director: “The Vargas Report on Government Secrecy” — CENSORED)

Ann Wright, Retired U.S. Army Reserve Colonel and U.S. Foreign Service Officer

An earlier version of this article first appeared at Consortiumnews.com

 

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC. During his career as a CIA analyst, he prepared and briefed the President’s Daily Brief and chaired National Intelligence Estimates. He is a member of the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)

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| Wag the Dog + the Larger Question of Chuck Hagel!

The Larger Question of Chuck Hagel ~ Ray McGovern,  Consortiumnews.

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Exclusive: The up-in-the-air nomination of Chuck Hagel to be Defense Secretary has become a test of whether the Israel Lobby can still shoot down an American public servant who is deemed insufficiently passionate regarding Israel, a test that now confronts President Obama, says ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern.

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The Israel Lobby is hell bent on sabotaging President Barack Obama’s tentative plan to appoint former Sen. Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense. And – with Obama now dithering about this selection – the Lobby and its neocon allies sense another impending victory.

Perhaps The New Yorker’s Connie Bruck described Hagel’s predicament best in assessing why the Israel Lobby is so determined to destroy the Nebraska Republican though he is “a committed supporter of Israel.”

But, as Bruck explained, “Hagel did not make the obeisance to the lobby that the overwhelming majority of his Congressional colleagues do. And he further violated a taboo by talking about the lobby, and its power.” Hagel had the audacity, in an interview for a 2008 book, to say something that you are not supposed to say in Official Washington, that the Israel Lobby pulls the strings on many members of Congress.

In Aaron Miller’s book, The Much Too Promised Land, Hagel is quoted as saying that Congress “is an institution that does not inherently bring out a great deal of courage.” He added that when the American Israel Public Affairs Committee comes knocking with a pro-Israel letter, “you’ll get eighty or ninety senators on it. I don’t think I’ve ever signed one of the letters” — because, he added, they were “stupid.”

Finding Other Reasons

Yes, it’s true that when the neocon editors of the Washington Post decried the prospect of Hagel’s appointment to run the Pentagon, they cited a bunch of other reasons without mentioning Hagel’s independent thinking regarding Israel. For instance, the Post’s editors fretted over a September 2011 interview with the Financial Times, in which Hagel said, “The Defense Department, I think in many ways, has been bloated. … So I think the Pentagon needs to be pared down.” What heresy!

The Post’s editors also questioned Hagel’s interest in avoiding another war with Iran, calling his interest in meaningful engagement with Iran “isolated.” The Post noted that Hagel “repeatedly voted against sanctions, opposing even those aimed at the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, which at the time was orchestrating devastating bomb attacks against U.S. troops in Iraq. Mr. Hagel argued that direct negotiations, rather than sanctions, were the best means to alter Iran’s behavior.”

Though the Post noted that Hagel also wrote an op-ed last September that contained the usual refrain about “keeping all options on the table,” the neocon editors worried that a Defense Secretary Hagel might not be enthusiastic enough in carrying out the war option against Iran. Obama “will need a defense secretary ready to support and effectively implement such a decision,” the Post wrote.

Yet, despite the Post’s avoidance of any mention about the controversy over Hagel and the Israel Lobby, you can bet that the editors were particularly worried that Hagel might become a strong voice within the Obama administration against simply following Israel’s lead on issues in the Middle East.

If Obama were to actually nominate Hagel– rather than just float his name as a trial balloon and recoil at all the efforts to prick holes in it – the message would be a strong one to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israel Lobby that the old rules for the game are changing, that they can no longer blackball American public servants from key jobs in Washington.

Defecting on Iraq War

As a two-term senator, Chuck Hagel’s other real sin was that he was one of the few defectors among congressional Republicans regarding the Iraq War. Though Hagel voted for President George W. Bush’s war authorization, he eventually recognized his mistake and fessed up.

Hagel said he believes the Iraq War was one of the biggest blunders in U.S. history. He sharply criticized the Bush/Cheney foreign policy as “reckless,” saying it was playing “ping pong with American lives.” Such comments have made Hagel particularly unpopular with the top tier of hawkish Republican senators, such as Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and John McCain of Arizona.

But Hagel’s ultimate offense, as far as Official Washington is concerned, is his unusual record of independent thinking that could, in Israel’s eyes, endanger or even derail business as usual with the U.S.  He is considered a realist, a pragmatist. Moreover, there can hardly be a more offensive remark to Israeli ears than the one made by Hagel to author Aaron Miller reflecting the sad state of affairs in Congress:

“The Jewish Lobby intimidates a lot of people up here” [on the Hill], but “I’m a United States Senator.  I’m not an Israeli senator.”

This remark, and others like it, have raised doubts in Israeli and pro-Israeli circles as to whether Hagel has the requisite degree of “passionate attachment” to Israel. This has generated a volley of vicious invective characterized so well by former Ambassador Chas Freeman in “Israel Lobby Takes Aim Again.” This invective is aimed at forcing Obama to drop any plan to put Hagel in charge of the Pentagon. After all, it takes courage to counter character assassination.

Why the Fear?

What really lies behind this? I suspect the fear is that, were Hagel to become Secretary of Defense, he would take a leaf out of his book as Senator and openly insist, in effect, that he is the American Secretary of Defense and not the Israeli Defense Minister.

This, in turn, gives rise to a huge question being whispered in more and more corridors of power in Washington: Is Israel an asset or a liability to the U.S., when looked at dispassionately in the perspective of our equities in the Middle East and our general strategic defense?

Hardly a new conundrum. Many decades ago, Albert Einstein, who feared the consequences of creating a “Jewish state” by displacing or offending Arabs, wrote:

“There could be no greater calamity than a permanent discord between us [Jews] and the Arab people. Despite the great wrong that has been done us [in the western world], we must strive for a just and lasting compromise with the Arab people. … Let us recall that in former times no people lived in greater friendship with us than the ancestors of these Arabs.”

Realpolitik, including the increasing isolation of Israel and the U.S. in the Middle East, is breathing some life into this old attitude and generating consideration of a new approach – necessity being the mother of invention.

Few have been as blunt, though, as Zbigniew Brzezinski, who has been described as the “unofficial dean of the realist school of American foreign policy experts.”  In a recent talk, the former national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter minced no words:

“I don’t think there is an implicit obligation for the United States to follow like a stupid mule whatever the Israelis do. If they decide to start a war, simply on the assumption that we’ll automatically be drawn into it, I think it is the obligation of friendship to say, ‘you’re not going to be making national decisions for us.’ I think that the United States has the right to have its own national security policy.”

Even Petraeus Lets It Slip Out

Back when Gen. David Petraeus was head of CENTCOM, he addressed this issue, gingerly but clearly, in prepared testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee in March 2010 on the “challenges to security and stability” faced by the U.S.:

“The enduring hostilities between Israel and some of its neighbors present distinct challenges to our ability to advance our interests. … The conflict foments anti-American sentiment, due to a perception of U.S. favoritism for Israel.

“Arab anger over the Palestinian question limits the strength and depth of U.S. partnerships … in the area and weakens the legitimacy of moderate regimes in the Arab world.  Meanwhile, al-Qaeda and other militant groups exploit that anger to mobilize support.”

Petraeus’s testimony provoked a sharp rejoinder from Abe Foxman, head of the Anti-Defamation League, one of the leading American Zionist lobby groups. Foxman protested:

“Gen. Petraeus simply erred in linking the challenges faced by the U.S. … in the region to a solution of the Israeli-Arab conflict, and blaming extremist activities on the absence of peace and the perceived favoritism for Israel.  This linkage is dangerous and counterproductive.”

Petraeus or someone on his staff had inadvertently touched a live-wire reality that is becoming increasingly debated in official circles but remains taboo when it comes to saying it out loud. Fearful that he would be dubbed an “anti-Semite,” Petraeus began a frantic attempt to take back the words, which he noted were only in his prepared testimony and were not repeated in his oral presentation. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Neocons, Likud Conquer DC, Again.”]

As Ali Abunimah of the Electronic Intifada describes it, this taboo proscribes “stating publicly that U.S. ‘interests’ and Israeli ‘interests’ are not identical, and that Israel might be a strategic burden, rather than an asset to the United States.”

Ironically, while Foxman and hardline Zionists were objecting vociferously, Meir Dagan, then-Israel’s Mossad chief told a Knesset committee, “Israel is gradually turning from an asset to the United States to a burden.”

Taboo or not, an un-passionately-attached realist like Chuck Hagel presumably would be able to see that reality – anathema in Zionist circles – for what it is.

As prospective Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel would bring something else that would be extremely valuable to the job, a real-life understanding of the horrors of war. He volunteered for service in Vietnam in 1967 at the height of the fighting there, rejecting his local draft board’s suggestion that he re-enroll in college to avoid Vietnam. A combat infantry squad leader, he was twice wounded in that crucible. Do not let anyone tell you that this does not have a lasting effect on a man.

First in Three Decades

Were Hagel to become Secretary of Defense, he would become the first in 30 years to bring to the job direct battle experience of war. One must trace 14 former secretaries of defense all the way back to Melvin Laird (1969-1973) for one who has seen war up-close and personal.  (Like Hagel, Laird enlisted and eventually earned a Purple Heart as a seaman in the Pacific theater during WWII.)

Given this real world experience, the Israelis and their supporters in the U.S. might well conclude that Hagel would not be as blasé as his predecessors when it comes to sending troops off to war – and even less so for a war like the prospective one with Iran.

Hagel’s past statements suggest he would urge more flexibility in talks with Iran on the nuclear issue and on Palestine, as well. This leaves him vulnerable to charges from the Israel Lobby, but even some pro-Israel stalwarts reject the far-fetched notion that this makes him “anti-Semitic.”

In comments to the New Yorker’s Connie Bruck, for example, Rep. Gary Ackerman, D-New York, has drawn a sensible contrast between Hagel’s apparent inclination toward more flexibility with Iran on the nuclear issue and the more familiar attitude – which Ackerman described as: “You know ‘Let’s bomb them before the sun comes up.’”

If recent reports are correct in suggesting that Obama intends to enter more than just pro forma negotiations with Iran, he would have in Hagel the kind of ally he would need in top policy-making circles, someone who would support, not sabotage, chances for a peaceful resolution of the crisis.

Recall that in 2010 Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was able to put the kibosh on a plan that had been suggested by Obama himself, and carefully worked out with Tehran by the President of Brazil and the Prime Minister of Turkey, that would have been a major step toward resolving the dispute over Iran’s enrichment of uranium. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “U.S./Israel Challenged on Iran.”]

Avoiding “Complicity”

The year just ending has been a rollercoaster for U.S.-Israeli relations. It started with Obama’s rather extreme professions of fealty to Israel. In a pre-Super Bowl interview with Matt Lauer on Feb. 5, the President said:

“My number one priority continues to be the security of the United States, but also the security of Israel, and we’re going to make sure that we work in lockstep as we proceed to try to solve this problem [Iran], hopefully diplomatically.”

Speaking to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in March – amid suggestions that his devotion to Israel was still not enough – Obama again used the first person in assuring the pro-Israel lobby group: “when the chips are down, I have Israel’s back.”

By late August, as Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu was suggesting that Israel might ignore Obama’s sanctions strategy on Iran and launch a preemptive strike on its own, Obama used Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey to say that he (Dempsey) did not wish to be “complicit,” if the Israelis chose to attack Iran. In September, Secretary Clinton was publicly brushing aside Netanyahu’s pleading for U. S. endorsement of his various “red lines,” and Obama was too busy to receive Netanyahu when he came to the U.N.

What lies in store for U.S.-Israeli relations in Obama’s second term? It is too early to tell. But whether or not the President decides to tough it out and nominate Chuck Hagel for Secretary of Defense is likely to provide a good clue.

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington.  He served was an Army infantry/intelligence officer and then a CIA analyst for 30 years, and now serves on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.

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| Divining the Truth about Iran!

Divining the Truth about Iran ~ Ray McGovern

Watching top U.S. intelligence officials present the annual “Worldwide Threat Assessment” before the Senate Intelligence Committee, I found myself wondering if they would depart from the key (if politically delicate) consensus judgment that Iran is NOT working on a nuclear weapon.

In last year’s briefing, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper had stood firm on this key point, despite severe pressure to paint Iran in more pernicious terms. On Tuesday, I was relieved to see in Clapper’s testimony a reiteration of the conclusions of a formal National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) of November 2007, issued unanimously by all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, including judgments like this:

“We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program; … Tehran’s decision to halt its nuclear weapons program suggests it is less determined to develop nuclear weapons than we have been judging since 2005.”

Sadly, this judgment still comes as news to many of those Americans who are malnourished on the low-protein gruel of the Fawning Corporate Media (FCM) – even though the NIE was immediately declassified in 2007 and has been in the public domain for more than four years.

Granted, former President George W. Bush did not like it — not one bit. In an unusually revealing comment in his memoir Decision Points, Bush complained bitterly that “the NIE tied my hands on the military side,” preventing him from attacking Iran. That was the course strongly favored by hawkish Vice President Dick Cheney with his PhD summa cum laude in Preventive War.

And, America’s FCM consistently ignores the official NIE when writing news stories hyping Iran’s nuclear threat. However, if you read the articles very closely you may see references to Iran supposedly working toward the “capacity to build” nuclear weapons, not that Iran is actually working on building a nuclear bomb.

The distinction is important, but it is so subtle as to be misleading. Most casual readers would simply assume that Iran is building a nuclear bomb.

The FCM’s rhetorical shift from accusing Iran of “building” nukes to seeking a “capacity to build” them is reminiscent of Bush’s sleight of hand when he went from talking about Iraq’s supposed WMD “stockpiles” to its WMD “programs” – after it turned out there were no WMD stockpiles.

Oddly, even when Israeli sources concur with this key point that Iran has NOT decided to build a nuclear bomb – as the Israeli newspaper Haaretz and Defense Minister Ehud Barak indicated recently – the FCM in the United States continues to leave the impression among Americans that Iran is on the verge of having nukes. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “US/Israel: Iran NOT Building Nukes.”]

You will almost never see in a major U.S. newspaper the assessment – backed by the 16 U.S. intelligence agencies – that Iran is NOT building nuclear weapons. At most, you’ll see a boilerplate phrase about Iran denying that it is. You’re also not likely to see references to the fact that Israel has a sophisticated nuclear arsenal of its own.

‘Tell-It-Like-It-Is’ Intelligence

Still, it’s encouraging to see U.S. intelligence officials resist bending with the prevailing political winds the way the malleable CIA director, George Tenet, and his deputy John McLaughlin did when they orchestrated the fraudulent October 2002 NIE on Iraq’s “weapons of mass destruction.”

After they left in disgrace (having contributed to the bloody war in Iraq), fresh institutional blood was brought in to manage intelligence estimates. In a professional sense, the two were not a hard act to follow. But courage can still be a rare commodity in the careerist world of Official Washington.

What happened is that the new managers launched a bottom-up assessment of all the evidence on Iran’s nuclear development program. They reached conclusions based on what they found, not on what was politically expedient; they spoke truth to power, and, in the process, helped prevent yet another disastrous war.

This year, though, there was good reason to worry that the current intelligence managers might succumb to pressure for a more “politically correct” course. One factor has been the rising crescendo in the FCM, echoing the Israeli government’s hyperbolic fears regarding a “nuclear threat” from Iran.

The FCM, for example, gave unconscionably inflammatory coverage to a highly misleading November 2011 report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on Iran. The FCM ignored available evidence from WikiLeaks documents showing that the new IAEA management was collaborating behind-the-scenes with U.S. and Israeli officials on the Iran issue.

And there was growing concern that National Intelligence Director Clapper might be outmaneuvered by the new CIA Director David Petraeus, the retired four-star general who is always the darling of Congress.

The ambitious Petraeus’s own words have shown him groveling before the Israel Lobby — to the point of backing away from his own congressional testimony of March 2010, a small segment of which was implicitly critical of Israeli intransigence on the issue of Palestine.

E-mails revealed Petraeus begging neocon pundit Max Boot to help him withstand criticism from neocon circles over the rare burst of honesty that had slipped into Petraeus’s prepared testimony. Petraeus then mistakenly shared the e-mail train with blogger James Morris, who made them public.

On Tuesday, Petraeus was pandering again in his gratuitous repetition of the neocons’ characterizations of the IAEA report. Petraeus said: “The IAEA … report was a very accurate reflection of reality, of the situation on the ground. I think that is the authoritative document when it comes to informing the public of all the countries of the world of the situation there.”

This is a remarkable statement coming from the head of the CIA, an agency that was one of the principal drafters of the NIE in 2007, which stands at variance with the politically tinged IAEA report, which labored to make the case that Iran was gaining expertise needed to build a nuclear bomb.

However, there were, in fact, significant overlaps in the IAEA’s description of Iran’s nuclear program and the key judgments of the NIE, but you would hardly know that from reporting in the FCM. The IAEA report contains no smoking gun regarding Iran’s intentions about building nuclear weapons, but notes that much of Iran’s progress occurred prior to fall 2003 – when the NIE reported that Iran abandoned its weapons program.

Still, many pundits and politicians walked away with two misleading messages from the IAEA report: that it refuted the NIE and that Iran is now making a break for the bomb. Both representations are false, yet the assertions have been repeated often enough to give them traction with the public and Congress, which was evident in Petraeus’s remarks.

As Petraeus knows better than most, the National Intelligence Estimate is the genre of intelligence assessment that the U.S. government considers “authoritative.” I found it shameful, but not surprising, that he would identify himself with the IAEA rather than with the U.S. intelligence community. Shameful pandering, which Clapper — to his credit — would have none of.

The way the wind seems to be blowing from the White House and Capitol Hill, however, I think it a good bet that, before many months go by, Petraeus will be taking over the job of his current nominal boss, and Clapper will be set out to pasture for special services not rendered.

 

 

The Media on the Briefing

True to form, the FCM offered little truth in its reports on the Tuesday briefing – and quite a lot of distortion. Very little mention was made of Clapper’s key assertion that Iran is not building nuclear weapons, just as the FCM discreetly averted its eyes and ears from Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s definitive statement to that effect on Jan. 8.

The Washington Post initially ran an article by Greg Miller titled, “Iran, perceiving threat from West, willing to attack on U.S. soil, U.S. intelligence report finds.” That title was then squished to fit at the top of page one, right next to a smiling photo of Mr. and Mrs. Romney, and reads “U.S. spy agencies see new Iran risk: Tehran more willing to launch attacks on American soil, they say.”

For his story, Miller selects the two short paragraphs in which Clapper claims that some Iranian officials — probably including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei — “are now more willing to conduct an attack in the United States in response to real or perceived U.S. actions that threaten the regime.” (I can readily imagine the word-smithing by senior officials that yielded that profound observation.)

In an instant commentary, Salon blogger Glen Greenwald described Miller’s article — correctly — as a “monument to mindless stenographic journalism” and asks if anyone is still “doubting that there is a concerted media-aided fear-mongering campaign aimed at Iran.”

For the record, the New York Times’ Eric Schmitt led off his report in a similar vein: “Some senior Iranian leaders are now more willing to carry out attacks inside the U.S. in response to perceived American threats against their country,” citing senior intelligence officials.

It is not at all picayune to note that the Times dropped the “real or” from Clapper’s “in response to real or perceived U.S. actions that threaten the regime,” thus removing the point that Iran might actually encounter “real” threats from the United States. All that high-priced word-smithing for nothing!

As if further proof were needed about the bias of the FCM, blogger Michael Rozeff took the Boston Globe to task for piecing together two unconnected parts of Clapper’s testimony to leave the impression that Iran is making enriched uranium in order to conduct an attack on the U.S.

Who Will Tell the Truth?

As a former analyst of Soviet affairs, I became familiar with how to dissect controlled media. And as a liaison officer to Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty during the late Sixties, I learned ways to penetrate denied areas with radio waves and other means.

It was those two radio stations, plus VOA and the BBC, that played such a key role in informing Russians and East Europeans about what was possible in the outside world. So, how to break through the blanket of the Fawning Corporate Media to give Americans a shot at knowing what is going on?

It seems a kind of delicious irony that — how to say this — the Russians Are Coming to help those of us hoping to break through the FCM and make our reporting and analysis available to our fellow citizens. As senators were clapping for Clapper, RT (for Russia Today) asked to interview me for their evening news program.

Knowing that my old friend Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has already spoken approvingly of RT, I did not think I needed to ask permission. Here’s what I said; I can only hope some folks watched it.

 

 

 

On Tuesday the Senate held a hearing to discuss what the US views as worldwide threats. It is no surprise that Iran made the top of the list as tensions between the West and Iran have grown. According to some reports, 70 percent of Americans believe Iran has a nuclear weapon despite Secretary Defense Leon Panetta admitting that is false. Ray McGovern, former CIA analyst, joins us to discuss should Americans be afraid of Iran and if America should go to war on an if.

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. He entered CIA’s analysis division as a Soviet specialist in 1964 and, after preparing and briefing the President’s Daily Brief (1981-85), served as deputy chief of analysis at the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (now the Open Source Center).

 

| Actually … US/Israel: Iran NOT Building Nukes!

US/Israel: Iran NOT Building Nukes ~  Ray McGovern

America’s newspaper of record won’t even report accurately what Israel (or the CIA) thinks on this important issue, if that goes against the alarmist conventional wisdom that the neocons favor.

January 24, 2012.

Exclusive: Recent comments by U.S and Israeli military leaders indicate that the intelligence services of the two countries agree that Iran has not decided to build a nuclear bomb, a crack in the Western narrative that the U.S. press corps won’t accept, as ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern explains.

Has Iran decided to build a nuclear bomb? That would seem to be the central question in the current bellicose debate over whether the world should simply cripple Iran’s economy and inflict severe pain on its civilian population or launch a preemptive war to destroy its nuclear capability while possibly achieving “regime change.”

And if you’ve been reading the New York Times or following the rest of the Fawning Corporate Media, you’d likely assume that everyone who matters agrees that the answer to the question is yes, although the FCM adds the caveat that Iran insists its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only. The line is included with an almost perceptible wink and an “oh, yeah.”

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak meeting Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in 2007.

However, a consensus seems to be emerging among the intelligence and military agencies of the United States – and Israel – that Iran has NOT made a decision to build a nuclear weapon. In recent days, that judgment has been expressed by high-profile figures in the defense establishments of the two countries – U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Israel’s Defense Minister Ehud Barak.

You might think that you would have heard more about that, wouldn’t you? U.S. and Israel agree that Iran is NOT building a nuclear bomb. However, this joint assessment that Iran has NOT decided to build a nuclear bomb apparently represented too big a change in the accepted narrative for the Times and the rest of the FCM to process.

Yet, on Jan. 18, the day before U.S. Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey arrived for talks in Israel, Israeli Defense Minister Barak gave an interview to Israeli Army radio in which he addressed with striking candor how he assesses Iran’s nuclear program. It was not the normal pabulum.

Question: Is it Israel’s judgment that Iran has not yet decided to turn its nuclear potential into weapons of mass destruction?

Barak: … confusion stems from the fact that people ask whether Iran is determined to break out from the control [inspection] regime right now … in an attempt to obtain nuclear weapons or an operable installation as quickly as possible.  Apparently that is not the case. …

Question: How long will it take from the moment Iran decides to turn it into effective weapons until it has nuclear warheads?

Barak: I don’t know; one has to estimate. … Some say a year, others say 18 months. It doesn’t really matter. To do that, Iran would have to announce it is leaving the [UN International Atomic Energy Agency] inspection regime and stop responding to IAEA’s criticism, etc.

Why haven’t they [the Iranians] done that? Because they realize that … when it became clear to everyone that Iran was trying to acquire nuclear weapons, this would constitute definite proof that time is actually running out. This could generate either harsher sanctions or other action against them. They do not want that.

Question: Has the United States asked or demanded that the government inform the Americans in advance, should it decide on military action?

Barak: I don’t want to get into that. We have not made a decision to opt for that, we have not decided on a decision-making date. The whole thing is very far off. …

Question: You said the whole thing is “very far off.” Do you mean weeks, months, years?

Barak: I wouldn’t want to provide any estimates. It’s certainly not urgent. I don’t want to relate to it as though tomorrow it will happen.

As noted in my Jan. 19 article, “Israel Tamps Down Iran War Threats,” which was based mostly on reports from the Israeli press before I had access to the complete transcript of the interview, I noted that Barak appeared to be identifying himself with the consistent assessment of U.S. intelligence community since late 2007 that Iran has not made a decision to go forward with a nuclear bomb.

A Momentous NIE

A formal National Intelligence Estimate of November 2007 – a consensus of all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies – contradicted the encrusted conventional wisdom that “of course” Iran’s nuclear development program must be aimed at producing nuclear weapons. The NIE stated:

“We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program; … Tehran’s decision to halt its nuclear weapons program suggests it is less determined to develop nuclear weapons than we have been judging since 2005.”

The Key Judgments of that Estimate elicited a vituperative reaction from some Israeli officials and in neoconservative circles in the United States. It also angered then-President George W. Bush, who joined the Israelis in expressing disagreement with the judgments. In January 2008, Bush flew to Israel to commiserate with Israeli officials who he said should have been “furious with the United States over the NIE.”

While Bush’s memoir, Decision Points, is replete with bizarre candor, nothing beats his admission that “the NIE tied my hands on the military side,” preventing him from ordering a preemptive war against Iran, an action favored by hawkish Vice President Dick Cheney.

For me personally it was heartening to discover that my former colleagues in the CIA’s analytical division had restored the old ethos of telling difficult truths to power, after the disgraceful years under CIA leaders like George Tenet and John McLaughlin when the CIA followed the politically safer route of telling the powerful what they wanted to hear.

It had been three decades since I chaired a couple of National Intelligence Estimates, but fate never gave me the chance to manage one that played such a key role in preventing an unnecessary and disastrous war — as the November 2007 NIE did.

In such pressure-cooker situations, the Estimates job is not for the malleable or the faint-hearted. The ethos was to speak with courage, and without fear or favor, but that is often easier said than done. In my days, however, we analysts enjoyed career protection for telling it like we saw it. It was an incredible boost to morale to see that happening again in 2007.

Ever since the NIE was published, however, powerful politicians and media pundits have sought to chip away at its conclusions, suggesting that the analysts were hopelessly naïve or politically motivated or vengeful, out to punish Bush and Cheney for the heavy-handed tactics used to push false and dubious claims about Iraq’s WMD in 2002 and 2003.

A New Conventional Wisdom

There emerged in Official Washington a new conventional wisdom that the NIE was erroneous and wasn’t worth mentioning anymore. Though the Obama administration has stood by it, the New York Times and other FCM outlets routinely would state that the United States and Israel agreed that Iran was developing a nuclear bomb and then add the wink-wink denial by Iran.

However, on Jan. 8, Defense Secretary Panetta told Bob Schieffer on “Face the Nation” that “the responsible thing to do right now is to keep putting diplomatic and economic pressure on them [the Iranians] … and to make sure that they do not make the decision to proceed with the development of a nuclear weapon.”

Panetta was making the implicit point that the Iranians had not made that decision, but just in case someone might miss his meaning, Panetta posed the direct question to himself: “Are they [the Iranians] trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No.”

Barak’s Jan. 18 statement to Israeli Army radio indicated that his views dovetail with those of Panetta – and their comments apparently are backed up by the assessments of each nation’s intelligence analysts. In its report on Defense Minister Barak’s remarks, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz on Jan. 19 summed up the change in the position of Israeli leaders as follows:

“The intelligence assessment Israeli officials will present … to Dempsey indicates that Iran has not yet decided whether to make a nuclear bomb. The Israeli view is that while Iran continues to improve its nuclear capabilities, it has not yet decided whether to translate these capabilities into a nuclear weapon – or, more specifically, a nuclear warhead mounted atop a missile. Nor is it clear when Iran might make such a decision.”

At the New York Times, the initial coverage of Barak’s interview focused on another element. An article by Isabel Kershner and Rick Gladstone appeared on Jan. 19 on page A5 under the headline “Decision on Whether to Attack Iran is ‘Far Off,’ Israeli Defense Minister Says.”

To their credit, the Times’ Kershner and Gladstone did not shrink from offering an accurate translation of what Barak said on the key point of IAEA inspections: “The Iranians have not ended the oversight exercised by the International Atomic Energy Agency … They have not done that because they know that that would constitute proof of the military nature of their nuclear program and that would provoke stronger international sanctions or other types of action against their country.”

But missing from the Times’ article was Barak’s more direct assessment that Iran apparently had not made a decision to press ahead toward construction of a nuclear bomb. That would have undercut the boilerplate in almost every Times story saying that U.S. and Israeli officials believe Iran is working on a nuclear bomb.

But That’s Not the Right Line!

So, what to do? Not surprisingly, the next day (Jan. 20), the Times ran an article by its Middle East bureau chief Ethan Bronner in which he stated categorically: ”Israel and the United States both say that Iran is pursuing the building of nuclear weapons — an assertion denied by Iran — …”

By Jan. 21, the Times had time to prepare an entire page (A8) of articles setting the record “straight,” so to speak, on Iran’s nuclear capabilities and intentions: Here are the most telling excerpts, by article (emphasis mine):

1- “European Union Moves Closer to Imposing Tough Sanctions on Iran,” by Steven Erlanger, Paris:

“Senior French officials are concerned that these measures [sanctions] … will not be strong enough to push the Iranian government into serious, substantive negotiations on its nuclear program which the West says is aimed at producing weapons.”

“In his annual speech on French diplomacy on Friday, President Nicolas Sarkozy accused Iran of lying, and he denounced what he called its ‘senseless race for a nuclear bomb.’”

“Iran says it is enriching uranium solely for peaceful uses and denies a military intent.  But few in the West believe Tehran, which has not cooperated fully with inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency and has been pursuing some technologies that have only a military use.”

(Pardon me, please. I’m having a bad flashback. Anyone remember the Times’ peerless reporting on those infamous “aluminum tubes” that supposedly were destined for nuclear centrifuges — until some folks did a Google search and found they were for the artillery then used by Iraq?)

2- “China Leader Warns Iran Not to Make Nuclear Arms,” by Michael Wines, Beijing

“Prime Minister Wen Jiabao wrapped up a six-day Middle East tour this week with stronger-than-usual criticism of Iran’s defiance on its nuclear program….”

“Mr. Wen’s comments on Iran were unusually pointed for Chinese diplomacy. In Doha, Qatar’s capital, he said China ‘adamantly opposes Iran developing and possessing nuclear weapons.’”

“Western nations suspect that Iran is working toward building a nuclear weapon, while Iran insists its program is peaceful.”

3- “U.S. General Urges Closer Ties With Israel.” by Isabel Kershner, Jerusalem

“Though Iran continues to insist that its nuclear program is only for civilian purposes, Israel, the United Stated, and much of the West are convinced that Iran is working to develop a weapons program. …”

Never (Let Up) on Sunday

Next it was time for the Times to trot out David Sanger from the Washington bullpen. Many will remember him as one of the Times’ stenographers/cheerleaders for the Bush/Cheney attack on Iraq in March 2003. An effusive hawk also on Iran, Sanger was promoted to a position as chief Washington correspondent, apparently for services rendered.

In his Jan. 22 article, “Confronting Iran in a Year of Elections,” Sanger pulls out all the stops, even resurrecting Condoleezza Rice’s “mushroom cloud” to scare all of us — and, not least, the Iranians. He wrote:

“‘From the perception of the Iranians, life may look better on the other side of the mushroom cloud,’said Ray Takeyh, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He may be right: while the Obama administration has vowed that it will never tolerate Iran as a nuclear weapons state, a few officials admit that they may have to settle for a ‘nuclear capable’ Iran that has the technology, the nuclear fuel and the expertise to become a nuclear power in a matter of weeks or months.”

Were that not enough, enter the national champion of the Times cheerleading squad that prepared the American people in 2002 and early 2003 for the attack on Iraq, former Executive Editor Bill Keller. He graced us the next day (Jan. 23) with an op-ed entitled “Bomb-Bomb-Bomb, Bomb-Bomb-Iran?” – though he wasn’t favoring a military strike, at least not right now. Here’s Keller:

“The actual state of the [nuclear] program is not entirely clear, but the best open-source estimates are that if Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ordered full-speed-ahead — which there is no sign he has done — they could have an actual weapon in a year or so. … In practice, Obama’s policy promises to be tougher than Bush’s. Because Obama started out with an offer of direct talks — which the Iranians foolishly spurned — world opinion has shifted in our direction.”

Wow. With Iraqi egg still all over his face, the disgraced Keller gets to “spurn” history itself — to rewrite the facts. Sorry, Bill, it was not Iran, but rather Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other neocons in the U.S. Department of State and White House (with you and neocon allies in the press cheering them on), who “foolishly spurned” an offer by Iran in 2010 to trade about half its low-enriched uranium for medical isotopes. It was a deal negotiated by Turkey and Brazil, but it was viewed by the neocons as an obstacle to ratcheting up the sanctions.

In his Jan. 23 column, with more sophomoric glibness, Keller wrote this:

“We may now have sufficient global support to enact the one measure that would be genuinely crippling — a boycott of Iranian oil. The Iranians take this threat to their economic livelihood seriously enough that people who follow the subject no longer minimize the chance of a naval confrontation in the Strait of Hormuz. It’s not impossible that we will get war with Iran even without bombing its nuclear facilities.”

How neat! War without even trying!

The Paper of (Checkered Record)

Guidance To All NYT Hands: Are you getting the picture? After all, what does Defense Minister Barak know? Or Defense Secretary Panetta? Or the 16 agencies of the U.S. intelligence community? Or apparently even Israeli intelligence?

The marching orders from the Times’ management appear to be that you should pay no heed to those sources of information. Just repeat the mantra: Everyone knows Iran is hard at work on the Bomb.

As is well known, other newspapers and media outlets take their cue from the Times.  Small wonder, then, that USA Today seemed to be following the same guidance on Jan. 23, as can be seen in its major editorial on military action against Iran:

“The U.S. and Iran will keep steaming toward confrontation, Iran intent on acquiring the bomb to establish itself as a regional power, and the U.S. intent on preventing it to protect allies and avoid a nuclear arms race in the world’s most volatile region.

“One day, the U.S. is likely to face a wrenching choice: bomb Iran, with the nation fully united and prepared for the consequences, or let Iran have the weapons, along with a Cold War-like doctrine ensuring Iran’s nuclear annihilation if it ever uses them. In that context, sanctions remain the last best hope for a satisfactory solution.”

And, of course, the U.S. press corps almost never adds the context that Israel already possesses an undeclared arsenal of hundreds of nuclear weapons, or that Iran is essentially surrounded by nuclear weapons states, including India, Pakistan, Russia, China and – at sea – the United States.

PBS Equally Guilty

PBS’s behavior adhered to its customary don’t-offend-the-politicians-who-might-otherwise-cut-our-budget attitude on the Jan. 18 “NewsHour” – about 12 hours after Ehud Barak’s interview started making the rounds. Host Margaret Warner set the stage for an interview with neocon Dennis Ross and Vali Nasr (a professor at Tufts) by using a thoroughly misleading clip from former Sen. Rick Santorum’s Jan. 1 appearance on “Meet the Press.”

Warner started by saying: “Back in the U.S. many Republican presidential candidates have been vowing they’d be even tougher with Tehran. Former Senator Rick Santorum spoke on NBC’s Meet the Press: ‘I would be saying to the Iranians, you open up those facilities, you begin to dismantle them and make them available to inspectors, or we will degrade those facilities through air strikes and make it very public that we are doing so.’”

Santorum seemed totally unaware that there are U.N. inspectors in Iran, and host David Gregory did nothing to correct him, leaving Santorum’s remark unchallenged. The blogosphere immediately lit up with requests for NBC to tell their viewers that there are already U.N. inspectors in Iran, which unlike Israel is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and allows IAEA inspections.

During the Warner interview, Dennis Ross performed true to form, projecting supreme confidence that he knows more about Iran’s nuclear program than the Israeli Defense Minister and the U.S. intelligence community combined:

Margaret Warner:  If you hamstring their [Iran’s] Central Bank, and the U.S. persuades all these other big customers not to buy Iranian oil, that could be thought of as an act of war on the part of the Iranians. Is that a danger?

Ross: I think there’s a context here. The context is that the Iranians continue to pursue a nuclear program. And unmistakably to many, that is a nuclear program whose purpose is to achieve nuclear weapons. That has a very high danger, a very high consequence. So the idea that they could continue with that and not realize that at some point they have to make a choice, and if they don’t make the choice, the price they’re going to pay is a very high one, that’s the logic of increasing the pressure.

Never mind that the Israeli Defense Minister had told the press something quite different some 12 hours before.

Still, it is interesting that Barak’s comments on how Israeli intelligence views Iran’s nuclear program now mesh so closely with the NIE in 2007. This is the new and significant story here, as I believe any objective journalist would agree.

However, the FCM — led by the New York Times — cannot countenance admitting that they have been hyping the threat from Iran as they did with Iraq’s non-existent WMDs just nine years ago. So they keep repeating the line that Israel and the U.S. agree that Iran is building a nuclear weapon.

In this up-is-down world, America’s newspaper of record won’t even report accurately what Israel (or the CIA) thinks on this important issue, if that goes against the alarmist conventional wisdom that the neocons favor. Thus, we have this divergence between what the U.S. media is reporting as flat fact — i.e., that Israel and the United States believe Iran is building a bomb (though Iran denies it) – and the statements from senior Israeli and U.S. officials that Iran has NOT decided to build a bomb.

While this might strike some as splitting hairs – since peaceful nuclear expertise can have potential military use – this hair is a very important one. If Iran is not working on building a nuclear bomb, then the threats of preemptive war are not only unjustified, they could be exactly the motivation for Iran to decide that it does need a nuclear bomb to protect itself and its people.

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. During his 27-year career as a CIA analyst, he prepared — and briefed — the President’s Daily Brief, and chaired National Intelligence Estimates. He now serves on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).