The Media's New Favorite Moonbat, Ray McGovern

(The media's new favorite moonbat, Ray McGovern, at a "9/11 Truth Event" last July. Media outlets are now telling us that he is to be respected.)

I saw a segment on Wolf Blitzer’s CNN show tonight in which Ray McGovern, a former CIA analyst turned Bush administration critic, was basically lionized. McGovern is the fellow who recently accused Rumsfeld of lying about Iraq’s WMD programs. The segment made it seem like it was just those wacky right-wing bloggers who were trying to vilify poor old Ray and that he was really just a straight-shooting, no nonsense analyst.

They flashed a picture of Gateway Pundit quickly, saying that the blog was making a big deal out of the fact that McGovern tried to deliver mock indictments at the White House in January 2006. Nowhere in the segment did they mention all of McGovern’s wacky statements and opinions, as pointed out at Gateway Pundit and elsewhere. Instead, they just left the viewer with the impression that the blogs were attacking McGovern simply because he went after Rumsfeld. (I’ll post a transcript of the segment as soon as it is up.)

CNN is not alone in this regard. In typical fashion, the AP, the New York Times, and countless media outlets are pretending that McGovern is a sober-minded analyst, who is simply pursuing the truth. (The CNN segment even regurgitated that old saying, “Speaking Truth to Power.” No, I’m not kidding.) Andrew Sullivan says he’s “not some crazed lefty.” Sullivan links to a piece by Larry Johnson, who is McGovern’s buddy and a wingnut himself, as somehow demonstrating this point. (Johnson, you will recall, is the former CIA analyst who told us not to worry about terrorism just two months prior to 9/11. I’m glad to see his opinion is still respected.)

The amount of ignorance all around is staggering. McGovern has peddled some wild tales. Here is what these people need to do: Go to Google, type in “Ray McGovern,” and peruse some of his writings and citations. Then come back and tell me that he is not unhinged. To give them a healthy start, here is a small sampling.

Was the U.S. Government Complicit in 9/11? Ray McGovern thinks so.

This website is devoted to David Ray Griffin and his theory that the U.S. government was complicit in the 9/11 attacks. The site says that after reading Griffin’s book, McGovern openly endorsed it on Wisconsin radio:

On Wisconsin Pubic Radio (2/7/05) 27-year-CIA veteran Ray McGovern said he "used to be an agnostic" on the issue of official complicity in 9/11, but that Dr. David Ray Griffin's new book The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions has made a believer of him. McGovern is now fully convinced that the 9/11 Commission Report was an egregious cover-up and the case needs to be re-opened. McGovern is working with a group called Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, who represent the tip of a very large iceberg of insiders who are appalled at what has been going on and are hoping to do something about it.

According to the same website, McGovern was one of the 100 wingnuts to sign a petition asking the U.S. government twelve questions that supposedly help illuminate the government’s role in 9/11. The twelve questions are preceded by this text:

…we have assembled 100 notable Americans and 40 family members of those who died to sign this 9/11 Statement, which calls for immediate public attention to unanswered questions that suggest that people within the current administration may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war.

You can view pictures of Ray McGovern at a moonbat rally, which prominently featured Griffin’s theory, here. Griffin’s address to this gathering can be read here.

The Iraq War was about O.I.L. (Oil, Israel, and the neocons’ Logistical bases)

McGovern explained the conspiracy that led to the Iraq war during the Downing Street Memo Hearing (pp. 91-93):

“I use the acronym OIL. O for oil, I for Israel, L for the logistical base necessary, or deemed necessary by the so-called neocons, and it reeks through all their documents, the logistical military base whereby the United States and Israel can dominate that area of the world. It's a very strategically important area of the world, mostly because it has oil but also because Israel, which is traditionally described as our ally--and I don't know of any alliance we have with Israel--has been very influential in our policy. Witness the fact that the first President Bush's national security advisor, Scowcroft, has described the president as being mesmerized by Ariel Sharon, who has our president wrapped around his little finger. So what I'm saying here is oil was a major factor, Israel was another factor--and I have to say that Israel is something that is not allowed to be brought up in polite conversation; last time I did this, the previous director of central intelligence called me anti-Semitic…”

Here is Dana Milbank’s take on the “hearing” in the Washington Post.

McGovern thought there was a possibility of staged terrorist attacks, used to delay the 2004 presidential election:

[McGovern] went on to talk about the faulty intelligence attorney general John Ashcroft used when he announced that terrorist attacks may occur before or around election time, saying that elections might have to be postponed if the United States is attacked. "There might be a real or staged terrorist attack in order to postpone the elections," McGovern said. "This might seem outlandish; I hope it is."

McGovern and his crew have given serious consideration to the theory that the Bush administration would consider planting WMD’s in Iraq if none were found. (See also here.)

Daniel McKivergan explains that McGovern's history of moonbat theories goes back a long way, including a wacky theory about the first Gulf War. There's more in the new Weekly Standard Scrapbook as well.

That's just the beginning. Like I said, type "Ray McGovern" into Google and then tell me that he is not a moonbat. As I have said before, it takes "willful ignorance" to pretend that this information does not exist.