@86, 87:
I have written about this group, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), on this blog about a month ago. Let me clarify my opinion of them.
I do not question the integrity of the group in promoting their stated agenda, “to speak out on the use of intelligence to justify the war” — a policy I clearly agree with. In that respect, they have maintained a clear and steady public presence, mainly in the issuance of memoranda, but also in public protest, and other media outreach. They have been vocal against war with Iran and Syria. Their communications are collected on the “warisacrime.org” (formerly Downing Street) website, if anyone is interested in reviewing them.
I should also add that George Kenney’s essential radio program, “Electric Politics,” has featured the Christisons (original founders of VIPS along with McGovern), who were both career CIA intelligence officers, on several occasions over the years. Bill, was the first US intelligence official to publicly and bravely question the official conspiracy theory of 9-11, I believe as early as 2004 — which was going pretty far out on a limb at the time. I have a lot of respect for the two of them. They have spoken forthrightly about their careers, and their regrets over their roles in government policy they later disagreed with. By way of introduction and context, Kenney, a former State Department official, publicly resigned over US policy in Yugoslavia, forgoing a potentially long and profitable career.
Similarly, anyone familiar with people like Phillip Agee, John Perkins and Howard Zinn, will know that before critiquing the agencies they worked for, all issued extensive personal mea culpas for the harm they believe they had done. To the best of my knowledge, I am not aware that Ray McGovern has ever done so, despite his religious background. I find that strange, to say the least. It seems to indicate a certain shortfall of personal integrity to me. All then went on to expose the roles those organizations have been playing in committing the crimes involved in maintaining US hegemony at all costs.
Additionally, there are several other things I do question.
First, their accountability. I caught McGovern in two rather egregious lies whitewashing past US intelligence black-op generated lies, and respectfully wrote him about them. He never responded. That does not bespeak well of him, in my opinion. My name, which was on the email, can by googling be found to be connected with left-wing and anti-war causes and public community media, especially radio — certainly his market segment, and one that a public persona would be foolish to ignore.
Second, and dependent upon #1, all people and groups have agendas, and it would not surprise me that even those on “our side” might have multiple conflicting personal agendas. The pressures are bound to be immense on anyone of McGovern’s stature publicly opposing the government.
Therefore, people we agree with should be held accountable along with those we disagree with. In a sense, because they are representing our own views, which we do not want to see discredited, they should be held to an even higher standard. And it was in this sense, of not wanting to see someone representing my views leave himself open to criticism which could then discredit positions I advocate, that I wrote to him. Similarly, the Christisons resigned from VIPS in 2004 over “showy” language (attacking a personality instead of a policy) in a memo which they felt could be turned against the group.
Finally, and most importantly, while I recognize that in any government, intelligence agents are necessary and have a legitimate informatory and advisory role, I don’t think I need to recount the endless litany of CIA crimes since its founding, nor the record of intelligence lies being used to start wars. (Indeed, all wars are started on lies — we will see why below.) Therefore, absolute integrity involving communicating to the public how the intelligence tradecraft is used in actually formulating public policy is essential. An agency which has the reputation of being out of control, and of not functioning in the greater public’s interest, but in Wall Street’s, has the extra burden of absolute honesty if it expects to allay people’s justifiable doubts.
In one case I singled out to Mr. McGovern in my email to him, the La Belle disco bombing in West Berlin, he justified US actions based upon a single piece of intelligence. But as we, and most assuredly, he, well knows, policy should never be conducted based upon a single piece of intelligence.
We are all familiar from the record of the past ten years alone of how intelligence can be “sexed up”, or “twisted,” or “fixed,” or “cherry-picked” to support pre-planned policies, and the dangers inherent in such a misuse of intelligence. Indeed, as the blogger most interested in these matters, Arthur Silber, states:

The record has been indisputably clear for some time now — and the record is amplified almost every day — that the decision to go to war was made first, entirely separate and apart from the intelligence, whatever it may have indicated and whether it was correct or not. Subsequently, the intelligence was “fixed” around the policy. To be more exact in terms of its purpose: the intelligence was used selectively and misleadingly as the propaganda to justify the war to the American public, and to the world. (The entire post is well worth reading along with the attendant links.)

Indeed, long-term strategic policy is ALWAYS planned first, generally years in advance, and then intelligence is later found and assembled when needed to marshal public opinion in supporting the policy our leaders have decided to implement. If it were not so, the US would certainly have responded to the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty, or the Iraqi attack on the USS Stark, but despite the intelligence being a glaring public matter in those very well known and deadly cases (263 US casualties combined), it did not. And that is precisely because policy is not a sudden tactic decided by incompetent government officials on a whim, despite what most public officials and concerned bloggers want you to believe, but a long-term, pre-planned strategy, which is then coldly implemented — often in complete opposition to what any real and contextualized intelligence may show.
The technical term for this deformation of policy is “Backstopping.” According to the book, “Intelligence Theory: Key Questions and Debates,” backstopping involves the intelligence analyst’s “mechanical search for facts tending to support a policy decision that has already been made in order to protect the decision-maker by ‘supplying him with facts to defend his position.’” Furthermore, it notes that “in the absence of order, context, or structure, imposed on the facts, they can be chosen, arranged, and accommodated to the preconceived ideas of opinionated men.” Intelligence officers gather and assemble information, perhaps flawlessly and with complete integrity, but politicians have the later, more important roles of filterer and editor of the information chosen to be revealed to the public in the headlong rush to manufacture consent for war.
And there lies my biggest issue with Mr. McGovern and the VIPS organization. If one reads their memos and follows McGovern’s public appearances, one is left with the distinct sense that, rather than ever discussing and informing the public about these intentional propaganda techniques and how, in reality, intelligence analysts are always used — at least in their public role — to promote already decided upon policies, one gets the distinct impression that his role is more one of rehabilitating the intelligence agencies, and covering for any role they might have, however passive. Instead of saying “The intelligence does not support bombing Syria” — a correct assertion — he should go further and explain that, even if the intelligence the government chooses to disclose did show evidence of Syrian duplicity, it still would not support the policy to go to war, and why this would be so. This would represent a radical change in framing the role of intelligence in formulating public policy to the public. Furthermore, short-term intelligence should be exposed as always irrelevant to the setting of long-term policy goals. Then policy could be more properly critiqued either from a practical real-politik position (it won’t get us what we want), or from a moral position (we would be killing innocent people for corporate profits).
So, in sum, while I do not question the general integrity of the group, I do question the accountability of Mr. McGovern, and the contextual framing through which the group presents its work, which I feel is liable to mislead the public on the relationship between intelligence and public policy.

Posted by: Malooga | Sep 2 2014 10:51 utc | 101