"Speaking truth to power for some, just plain rude for others"

Here's the transcript of CNN's segment on Ray McGovern that I saw last night and mentioned below:

JOHN ROBERTS, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Wolf, overnight Ray McGovern has become one of the most talked-about men in America. Praised by some, vilified by others for his terse exchange yesterday with the secretary of defense over Iraq's reported weapons of mass destruction.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RAY MCGOVERN, FORMER CIA ANALYST: You said you knew where they were.

DONALD RUMSFELD, DEFENSE SECRETARY: I did not. I said I knew where suspect sites were and we were ...

MCGOVERN: You said you knew where they were, near Tikrit, near Baghdad, and north, east, south and west of there. Those are your words.

ROBERTS (voice-over): So who is McGovern? A 27-year-old veteran of the CIA, who during the Reagan administration, prepared the super- secret president's daily brief and upon retirement in 1990, received a letter of thanks from the first President Bush. And he has no regrets about the very aggressive stand he took with Rumsfeld.

MCGOVERN: He has the kind of confidence -- I would say arrogance, hubris -- where, you know, he can handle just about anything. Well, he can handle just about anything except the facts.

ROBERT: McGovern is also a fierce opponent of the war in Iraq, the founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, a group of 54 former analysts and operatives from the CIA and other intelligence agencies. He is well-known for his anti-administration writings on intelligence, secret prisons, even the CIA leak investigation. Former CIA director John McLaughlin has known McGovern for years.

JOHN MCLAUGHLIN, FORMER CIA DEPUTY DIRECTOR: Ray McGovern was a very well-respected analyst who was always outspoken, entitled to his views and not shy of controversy.

ROBERTS: The conservative blogs are all over McGovern, describing him as a nut job with extreme views on a variety of topics, highlighting how back in January, he tried to deliver a set of mock indictments to the White House. How does McGovern feel about such criticisms?

MCGOVERN: That's true. We have extreme views. You see, we were brought up in a culture that's really exemplified by the inscription in the marble right at the entrance to the CIA headquarters that says "you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free".

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ROBERTS: What's interesting about yesterday's exchange and the vilification of McGovern is that in arguing with Rumsfeld, he did appear to have the facts on his side. So what's really at issue here is the tone. Speaking truth to power for some, just plain rude for others -- Wolf.


So, that's it. Roberts doesn't bother to look up some of McGovern's wacky views. He leaves the viewer with the impression that this is just a right-wing attack job. Not so. I think there are a lot of people on the Left who would disagree with McGovern's worldview and would agree that he is not a serious analyst at this point. Personally, I thought Rumsfeld's answer to McGovern's question was pretty stupid (add his comments to a long list of answers I find lacking). He most certainly said that he knew where the WMD were because that's what the intelligence community, including the CIA, was telling him. Guys like McGovern, however, now like to pretend that the Agency never said that Saddam had WMD's. Every shred of evidence says otherwise.

I don't think that the blogs that criticized McGovern, including Gateway Pundit, were going after him simply because he criticized Rumsfeld. (I have my own criticisms, by the way.) I do think that there was an immediate reaction to the media's lionization of McGovern in the process.