President Gets a Reality Check on Ukraine

By Ray McGovern and Robert Scheer | Original to ScheerPost | Jul 2, 2024

In this week’s episode of “Playing President,” Ray McGovern, 27-year CIA veteran and briefer of five presidents, continues to make sense of the world to “President” Scheer, who prepared for this role through his decades as a journalist, including in-depth interviews with five presidents from Nixon to Clinton. This week, McGovern briefs the President on the truth of some of the claims he made on the debate stage — and the President is not happy about it.

Transcript

White House Intern: Mr. President, Ray McGovern is here to brief you.

POTUS (Robert Scheer): Well, it’s about time. I hope… Look Ray.. I know you’re a veteran. I know you got a lot of information, but this is the week I need to hear some good news. I’m being banged around everywhere after that debate. And, you know, tell me what’s the bright spot here.

Ray McGovern: Well Mr. President, we don’t deal with intelligence with bright spots or black spots just the facts, and that’s what we do. So let me just bring you up to date on some of the reaction to some of the things you said in the debate, because they have foreign implications. When you said that Putin was not going to stop with Ukraine. They’ll go on to Poland and the Baltic States and that was clear.

There was a lot of second guessing about that on the part of our allies and others who are familiar with what has been [00:01:00] revealed since the Ukrainian negotiators and the Russian negotiators came to a deal in Istanbul in March and  April of 2022. And I just thought that for your background, I oughta bring up to speed if you’ve forgotten exactly how that played out.

But what happened was, the invasion, of course, was on the 24th of February. The Russians made it very clear that they’re- like to talk about this, like to talk about it. And the Ukrainians, they wanted to test the Russians and so they said yeah. So they named their chief negotiator, David Arakhamia, on the 28th of February.

So four days after the invasion, he went up to Belarus, did some negotiating and came to a final settlement there, initialed the final settlement in Istanbul. And the deal was simply the Russians- the Ukrainians would forswear any [00:02:00] attempt to become a member of NATO and the Russians would say, “All right, we will give you guarantees for your… we’ll arrange guarantees for your security from us. We won’t object to your joining the EU and we’ll have… we’ll stop the fighting.”

That was agreed to at the end of March 2022. And what happened in a word, was that Boris Johnson came in from the UK and no doubt in coordination with people like Tony Blinken, and said, “No, we won’t have any of that.”

Now, the important thing here, Mr.President, is that this is not me saying this.Arakhamia, the negotiator, spilled the beans to the Kyiv Post last year. Just want to give you a taste for what he said. The report in the Kyiv Post was titled, “Russia offered to end the war in 2022 if [00:03:00] Ukraine scrapped its NATO ambitions.”

Now this is the Kyiv Post. And here’s Arakhamia saying that he confirmed this later. He said, “Look, for the Russians, neutrality was the thing, the biggest thing. They were ready to declare themselves neutral like Finland during World War II. And they made a commitment that they wouldn’t, that we made a commitment that we wouldn’t join NATO.”

That was the key point. Next paragraph. And this is again, the chief Ukrainian negotiator speaking to the Kyiv Post. “While negotiations continue in Istanbul, former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson unexpectedly arrived in Kyiv on April 9th. And said that Ukraine shouldn’t sign anything at all with them and let’s just fight,” says Buck Johnson.

Now, I think I have a little- I think we have a little photo of Johnson [00:04:00] waltzing around there with Zelensky on April 9th, the day he arrived unexpectedly in Kyiv. Could you show that, Max? Yeah, there they are. Johnson in Kyiv and Zelensky. And they’re- they’re showing the flag and that Johnson had just given Zelensky orders not to follow through on that agreement that had already been signed.

Now, those who were following this earlier – as I was, as my colleagues were – knew that Ukraine is the problem in the story, a year and a half before. So in May 2022, they had the whole story about Boris Johnson coming there and putting the kibosh on this agreement. You could take that photo away now if you would.

So the question really becomes where does this information come from that the Russians are determined not only to take [00:05:00] over all of Ukraine, and we know they stopped in April of 2022… All of Ukraine and then all Poland and the Baltic States and Hungary. And people are saying, quite frankly, Mr.President, they’re reminded of the WMD escapade where Saddam Hussein was going to do mushroom clouds over the world.

They say, “Where’s the evidence that Putin really intended to do this?” Now, I have just one more thing to add here, and that is that we know some of the people who have been running Russian analysis at the CIA and then at other think tanks and so forth.

One is Fiona Hill. Now, we have an op ed that she wrote back on January 24, 2022. It appeared in the New York Times, so exactly a month before the war started in Ukraine. [00:06:00] And what was the title of this thing?

It was a guest essay and the title was, “Putin has the U.S. right where he wants.” And this is the gist. This time, Mr. Putin’s aim is bigger than closing NATO’s open door to Ukraine, and taking more territory, he wants to evict the United States from Europe, and he might put it, “Goodbye America, don’t let the door hit you on the way out.”

What you’re seeing there is Putin doing precisely that, courtesy of the New York Times graphic artist. And it shows the last five U. S. presidents turning around and Putin saying, [00:07:00] “Take care, and don’t let the door hit you on the way out.” Now, that’s really nice graphics, Mr. President, but there’s no evidence at all that Russia intends to go any farther in Ukraine, and it already is, really, without talking through things.

And, Putin himself, just to close up here, was asked about this and I want to make sure I don’t misquote him. He says, “Oh yeah, they say that Russia’s going to attack NATO countries. Have you gone completely crazy? Who came up with this? It is just complete nonsense. Total rubbish.” So that’s Putin.

Now, you don’t have to believe Putin. What I’m suggesting is that the Ukrainian negotiators came to this deal, where once again Ukraine agreed not to join NATO but remain neutral. I guess you have to give a little bit more credence to them. Why I mention this, why I mention this just to finish up, [00:08:00] is that most Americans are conditioned to think the very worst of Putin and his objectives.

And they’ll be all too easily misled by this kind of rhetoric if they really believe it and they think that Russia is going to take over the rest of Europe and push us out and don’t let the door hit us on the way out. And so it’s a mischievous thing because God knows what’s going to happen in Ukraine.

And if extreme measures are needed, the Americans are likely to support extreme measures. Rather than more moderate things to talk about these things and come to resolutions of really thorny problems as the Ukrainians and the Russians did under Putin and Zelensky personally who micromanaged this thing and who are going to meet to sign this thing as they did back in March, April 2022.

It’s got more than rhetorical or objective evidence [00:09:00] significance here. It has significance to what happens now if we impute the worst of motives to our rivals, the Russians.

POTUS: Ray, I don’t know where you’re going with this. I know you’ve been at this business a long time, I’m aware of your career. Are you… You realize that we are heading into an election. And you realize that my opponent claims he can solve this in 24 hours. Now he’s going to just make a call to Putin and he’s going to stop it. And maybe some people believe him, maybe they don’t believe him. But you know, what’s the rabbit he’s got that he’s going to pull out?

And I’m stuck with we’re spending upwards of 200 billion on this war. And what do we got to show for it? And we see no [00:10:00] sign of winning. And I’m heading into an election where you told me in our last briefing, the Russians might make significant advances. You predicted that. And we’re going to look like fools here.

We made a 10 year commitment to these people. We said the whole fate of Western democracy hangs on them. And now you’re telling me about some deal that went wrong two years ago. And what are we going to do now? And it looks to me, I thought I was supposed to be on the offensive. I thought in this debate, I would be blasting Trump for being a Putin simp, for being close to the Russians, being on their take.

He turns it into an asset. He says he can make a deal, the war would be over. And I noticed, you haven’t mentioned it, but in Europe now, you got in France, Macron, he wanted to send troops there to fight. He was going to send the weapons. He now gets beaten, two to one, more than two to [00:11:00] one, by these right wing people, right?

And they say, “No, no French troops would go to Ukraine, and no French missiles would go.” So our alliance is coming apart. I got an opponent that says we shouldn’t even be there and that he could solve it. Boom boom boom. And maybe he could, I don’t know how he does it. Did the Russians get to keep those four provinces?

They’re certainly not going to give back Crimea, but maybe he’ll make some kind of deal. And what are you offering me? I should go tell the American people some fairy tales about what could have been done two years ago. We’re in a whole lot of pain here. A lot of costs, a lot of defeat, and maybe you didn’t watch the debate, did you?

I look like I don’t know what I’m talking about, and sometimes I wonder whether I know what I’m talking about. Because I’m following the talking points that my aides are giving me, and they’re not holding up real well.

Ray McGovern: Yes, Mr. President. Regrettably, your [00:12:00] speechwriters don’t check with us for a fact check.

Now, with respect to Mr. Trump, his options are very limited with respect to Russia. One thing that has come to the fore this week, three days ago, Mr. Putin said that with the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty dissed by President Trump back in 2019 the Russians are going to build a whole class of small–that is small range and medium range ballistic missiles.

Now the background of that is really sorrowful, Mr. President, because as good as the ABM treaty was to- to add to stability for 30 years from 1972 and to 2002, the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty was something that I never believed [00:13:00] could happen. What it involved was destroying in place intermediate and medium range ballistic missiles with their warheads under verification by both sides.

They did it. Whose idea was that? Karabachoff. He suggested it to Reagan, and Reagan was listening to Schultz and his Vice President Bush. He said “We’ll try that.” And with verification, it succeeded. Now, who got out of that one? Trump did. Now, how long did that last? Well if my math is right 87 to 2019–

that’s two years longer than the ABM Treaty. So to the degree that our relationship in Europe is precarious right now, with the Russians building the equivalent of SS 20s of the old days, and we having to retaliate or to compensate for them, that could be laid at the foot of the last administration.

Not that we’re in [00:14:00] the blame game, but that’s what happened. And it really bears close scrutiny when people claim that they can resolve a thorny issue like Ukraine even before they’re sworn in.

POTUS: So you think that he’s got the losing hand, right? Why doesn’t the media see it now? Why doesn’t the public see it now?

I sound like some kind of babbling idiot in that debate. You’re telling me I got the strong hand instead of– I didn’t lay a shot on him. I couldn’t make a single point. And what’s going on here? He says, he basically, he’s saying we don’t need Ukraine. He’s putting down NATO and he gets away with it.

What’s happening? And my advisors told me that the Russian army would collapse.

Ray McGovern: Mr. President, we’ve gone over that field before. I think you ought to [00:15:00] call up your advisors, like the head of the CIA. And actually the head of the national intelligence, that woman who said, who told you back in January, two years ago, that the Russians were running out of ammunition, remember that?

And that they had no indigenous capability to produce the ammunition and weaponry that they were losing in the field. Her name was Avril Haines and she was just 180 degrees off. And I can see presidents being misled into making decisions based on intelligence of that nature. Now, one thing that you might not be fully briefed on is Putin’s own proposals.

Are they stringent? Yes, they are. Is there leeway? Is there flexibility in them? Yes, there is. I don’t know if anybody else has told you that, Mr. President, but he pointedly avoided the key cities of Kyiv, Odesa, and Kharkiv. Now, [00:16:00] where was that? Any military analyst would know that it’s a formidable task to take cities as Kyiv – three million – Kharkiv, Odesa and there are many pro Russian people in those cities.

What I’m saying here is that it seems to me that if you look closely at these proposals, Putin is still ready to deal, and he’s ready to deal now. And the terms later will be worse because his forces – as I’ve been telling you – are inexorably moving west, defeating what the Ukrainians can put up against them.

So he has the initiative, the trajectory is in terms of the Russian win here. And when he chooses to, to win definitively, depends on what reaction he gets to this proposal to negotiate. If your advisors are telling you that this is– this is dead on arrival, that [00:17:00] you shouldn’t even look at it. I would just suggest that my colleagues say, “Take a close look at it and pursue talks.”

Now, the good, I think last time we talked, Mr. President, we had just learned that Secretary Austin, Lloyd Austin, the defense secretary had called his opposite number, Belousov in Moscow. That is good. That is big. That hadn’t happened. That is direct contacts between defense ministers since March 15th of last year.

The Ides of March, mind you. It’s a good omen if we can start the dialogue, and not only with Lloyd Austin, but with other people who could speak for the Kremlin authorities. And if we can get around Tony Blinken, who really doesn’t seem to be able to deal with Lavrov, his opposite number, then we can maybe look at whether there’s some possibilities before the election to have some [00:18:00] some sort of compromise. Which is what really has started.

That was a compromise worked in, worked out in Istanbul and the Ukrainian negotiators have spilled the beans now and said, “Hey, we agreed not to join NATO.” And the Russians agreed to a whole slew of commitments. Including, allowing us to join the EU, stopping the fighting and arranging for a regime that would protect our interests against them.

They were sensitive to our core interests that lest they be invaded again. So that’s the precedent here. And all I’m saying here is that it’s not quite right to suggest there is evidence that the Russians want to take over the rest of Europe, despite what experts from Harvard say.

It’s sorta like weapons of mass destruction, the experts from Harvard and from Yale and [00:19:00] from other prestigious places were telling the world that there were weapons of mass destruction. Throw in Stanford for Condoleezza Rice. And you’ll remember the first sign might be a mushroom cloud. So people see through that now. That was only 20 years ago.

I think maybe more reasonable approaches would earn dividends with the Russians, who I do believe would very much like to avoid further escalation of this crisis in Ukraine.

POTUS: All right, Ray. I don’t get it. And I’ll just be honest with you. I don’t get it. Maybe you make sense. Maybe you don’t. But why are you so isolated?

Why is this so out in left field? We got into this because we think this is a fight for Western civilization. We think that what Russia did there is an attempt to [00:20:00] destroy democracy as an ideal in the world. We think that the alliance between Russia and China is the most frightening thing that’s happened because China can make all the stuff that Russia never could and Russia’s got the big weapons that could kill us all.

And you keep telling me week after week that I shouldn’t listen to my advisors who got one thing right. We are protecting the world order. We compromise here, we lose, and it’s– what is it? This multipolar world that they’re talking about, is there’s no order. And our country comes out the big loser.

We came out of the Cold War the most powerful nation the world has ever seen. And we were going to get the call to tune, and we’re the good guys. Now what’s happening? We can’t make anybody dance to our music. [00:21:00] Nowhere. I can’t control Netanyahu. I’m– I can’t even have a debate in which I’m defending the good guys.

What’s going on here? And I don’t know… You hide behind, you just give me expert advice. But I got a deal in the real world and what my people are telling me is that Russia is not going to succeed in Ukraine. That we got these new weapons. These are the most powerful weapons we could be putting in there.

We delayed because of Trump. I’m going to hit him hard the next time we debate. He held back these weapons. But these weapons work because we spent a lot of money making these weapons. How would it look if we tuck tail now and say the Russians beat us on the battlefield?

Ray McGovern: Mr. President, I don’t see it as a tuck tail.

I see it as a normal negotiating process to end a [00:22:00] terrible terrible war where thousands of Ukrainian youth and some Russian youth are being killed every week. Mr. President, if we could have a brief break, I would appreciate it. And I’ll be right back with you.

POTUS: Alright, Ray.

POUTS: All right. Look Ray, enough. I know some of these presidential briefings you did in your 17 years, they only went 10 minutes, 20 minutes or something. We’re already going almost a half hour here and I’m going to cut to the chase.

I’m a harried person, okay? And treat me with some respect. Aside from that, I’m the president. I got to [00:25:00] survive here or the country doesn’t survive. I don’t think that’s nutty on my part. I think you know that this guy, Trump, it could be the end of everything. Everything.

And I got a lousy hand here and I know you keep hiding behind this.You’re just the expert. You don’t deal with– that’s bullshit. CIA deals with politics all over the world. You overthrow governments all over. I know it’s not your division and everything, but that’s how the way the world works. Okay. And now what I get from you… We haven’t even talked today about Israel.

And now, I mean, Netanyahu is coming here in a few weeks and he’s going to tear me a new one! And he’s got– everybody knows he actually would prefer Trump. And you got the right wing here, they all think for biblical reasons and everything else they got to have a hard line on Israel, because otherwise you don’t get the second coming and everything.

It’s all nutty here. Okay, but I got to win an election, Ray, and I’m going to talk to you straight here now. I want to tell [00:26:00] you– you tell me all this long history here…We’ve spent, and you know it now, a couple hundred billion dollars on this war.

We’ve staked our reputation. We’ve said this is a fight for civilization. And I don’t hear from– so we go for some lame agreement now with Russia. What? Zelensky’s going to attack me? You say he wants back this. We’re going to be attacked all over the place. And I can’t do that. And then you got this what’s happening to NATO now.

If France is supposed to be the rock there, they were going to come in to our aid and everything. Now you’re going to have these, if they get these right wingers in there, they’re going to say, no, we don’t need this war. They’ll be like Trump. Isolationists. Who needs NATO? And so forth.

And you’re not giving me any pragmatic advice. You got 10 minutes now. Give me… tell me what can I do in this real world? Not in your fantasy [00:27:00] world.

Ray McGovern: Okay. Mr. President, I’ll give it a try. Back in September of last year, the head of NATO, Stoltenberg, got up before the European Union, and he said, “The Russians told us that they needed a security guarantee with no Ukraine and NATO, otherwise we Russians are going to intervene, we’re going to invade Ukraine.”

Stoltenberg looked at the assembly and he said, “We didn’t agree to that, and he invaded Ukraine.” As if he were proud of that, okay. What’s my point? My point is that the Russians sine qua non, okay? The thing that they will always hang on to is no Ukraine and NATO. And so you’re preparing, or your people are preparing, for the NATO summit in Washington on the 9th, I believe it is.

What’s going to be the [00:28:00] decision there? You can do something a little bit more conciliatory, or you can try to get people, including the French, and the Hungarians, and the Slovakians, and the Slovenians and the people who are frittering away, thinking this is not a really good idea, including some of the Germans.

Or you can fashion some sort of sensible response. That’s what Putin has put on the table. That would be my suggestion with response to with respect to what the Russians have out there. I don’t think Putin wants to go very far into Ukraine. I think he’d be satisfied with what he has, okay?

So it’s a stretch for anybody to believe.

POTUS: And so I got to accept that he grabs four provinces of Ukraine, their industrial heartland, and that he still holds on to Crimea. And then what? And then can you imagine what Trump’s going to do with me about that? I can’t bring up that he’s a buddy of [00:29:00] Putin.

He’s going to tell me I gave Putin everything he wants. And let me tell you something else, Ray. This is the whole problem. The CIA, you got very good at selling us a bill of goods all the time. Overthrow this one. Invade there. Go here and do that. It almost never works. I can’t think of whenever it worked.

Even when you manage to overthrow somebody, you get somebody worse there. I just read a whole thing and somebody showed me foreign affairs, how you guys overthrew Lumumba there in the Congo. And the guy he believed in was non alliance. He wasn’t some kind of commie. And he was at least honest or something.

And then the Congo has been a big mess ever since. And, this was the way Africa could have gone more responsibly. No. So you guys are good at making mischief. I’m stuck with a hand here where I gotta be reasonable to all these peace people in the Democratic Party, all these people that are afraid, were wasting a lot of money, getting a lot of people killed.

On the other hand, I got [00:30:00] this guy Trump, and I campaign him as the big menace in the world, which I think he is, because he’s now, says he can get peace in 24 hours. So what am I going to do with the hand I have, not the hand you say we should have had? And I’m telling you, I turn my back on Zelensky and I say, “Hey, accept that you lost the four promises and accept that you don’t have Crimea.”

And what happens to him? The Ukrainians will eat him for lunch. Wait a minute. What was this all about? What do you say then? And I haven’t even brought up Israel now. I’m losing two wars at the same time. Because even if Israel wins, this ain’t the Six Day War. This thing doesn’t have a clear end.

And what are we going to do there? And this guy Netanyahu, Bibi, my old buddy, he’s going to be denouncing me in Congress.

Ray McGovern: That’s right.

POTUS: Yeah. He’s going to destroy whatever chance I got in this election. Because he really prefers Trump. That’s right. [00:31:00] Because on Israel, Trump is a wild man, “Give him whatever he wants, win, go for it, the Bible told us so!” I don’t know if he’s ever read a Bible, but that’s what he says.

Ray McGovern: Mr. President, with respect to Ukraine I would concede that you have a very bad hand. You have been very badly advised. They told you that little Ukraine with fancy weapons could defeat a much larger Russia. Your president, my president, Obama, knew that wasn’t so, and that’s why he kept lethal weaponry out of Ukraine’s hands.

Your choice – and to be very blunt and frank – is between A definitive loss and a negotiated loss. The only other option is nuclear weapons, and no one wants that. I’m sure you don’t want that either with World War III. That would be my take on Ukraine.

Now, with respect to Israel, I find that even more urgent because [00:32:00] yesterday at the cabinet meeting Netanyahu made it clear that he doesn’t really respect anyone in the present administration.

He laughs at them. He said, we’re going full bore in Gaza and we’re going to go against Hezbollah in the North. That’s crazy. Unless it could be crazy as a fox, because what he expects is to get in real trouble with Hezbollah in the North. And he expects the United States to come in. And rescue… rescue what.. rescue the situation.

I think that this is a mousetrap that could be headed off realizing that yeah. In our view, Netanyahu has written you off. And so how do– you what conclusions do you draw from that? Do you continue? To give him the 2, 000 pound bombs and everything he asks for.

Or you can put your foot down and make sure [00:33:00] the American people are heard. And the genocide that we are enabling would stop. That’s the big thing. I think if you’re trying to get a sense of the American people, most of us still have a conscience and the notion that our country is enabling and promoting and arming genocide.

It’s a bridge too far. It’s just too horrendous.

POTUS: Watch your tongue.

Ray McGovern: Pardon?

POTUS: Watch your tongue. You keep calling it genocide. If it’s genocide, it’s on us. It’s our weapons, our intelligence, our policy. I’m the President of the United States. Don’t sit there telling me that in my effort to preserve the freedom of the only democracy in the Mideast, Israel, that I have committed genocide.

Otherwise, we’re going to have a showdown in this country. We’re going to have it one way or another. Who lost [00:34:00] Ukraine? Who gave Israel this threat, existential threat to its existence? What is this multipolar world where we can’t even get Saudi Arabia to stop cooperating with Russia, where we get… where the communism couldn’t bring China and Russia together?

Now anti-communist Putin, supposed to be, is in bed with Communist Xi. We got India and China cooperating around this BRICS stuff, and bringing Brazil into it and everything. So we got a holy mess here. And this talk about genocide, I don’t want to ever hear that in this briefing again. I know what you’re saying, because some people are saying it.

The damn UN is saying it. But I’m not going to sit here, and I’m not going to be briefed by somebody who’s supposed to be a loyal American keeps talking about genocide, right? Anybody’s committing genocide, that’s Putin, what he’s doing in Ukraine. It’s not what our ally Israel is doing there in Gaza. [00:35:00] You got that straight?

Ray McGovern: Mr. President, I hear what you’re saying. Again, we intelligence people are sorta hide bound to the facts. And the facts are that even the International Court of Justice has ruled that genocide is going on in Gaza, that people are being killed, I think the latest figures are 37– 37, 000, most of whom are children.

And the Congress of the United States has voted not to allow the figures that are counted up day by the health authorities in Gaza to be accepted as real.

What I’m saying, Mr. President, is they’re a matter of integrity and a matter of justice here, and that people can look at this in various ways, and people do, but people who have been there, as I have, in the West Bank and Israel, can attest to the fact [00:36:00] that it is an apartheid regime, and without our support, what we’re doing, it would not have been able to do the kinds of things that it does. That seems to me to be factual. I hope that you’re still willing to hear facts as, at least as we see them.

POTUS: Facts are what you can get people to believe. And when you’re on the side of the good guys, which hopefully Ray, you were in the military, army intelligence.

You’ve been with the CIA for what, seven, 27 years. Okay, all during that time, Ray, whether it was the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that could have been genocide, that could have been terrorism. The world doesn’t remember. Ray, stick with me. I’m the president now, and I’m talking to you as an old friend. We’ve been through a lot together, so I’m not going to take too much time, but I’m [00:37:00] going to take you to the woodshed right now, and you’re going to put up with it, right? Because that’s how it works here.

And I just want to say, you could, Harry Truman – everybody has a blind spot for Harry Truman now, he was a good guy. And they even watched a movie about Oppenheimer and everything, but Harry Truman, he’s not even hardly mentioned there. He made the decision. If I drop even a low level bomb like the Fat Man Little Boy now in Russia, I’d be considered a war criminal, right?

Harry Truman wasn’t considered a war criminal. They managed to, all these years– hey, no, it had to happen, it shortened the war, the emperor, whatever, okay? We got Vietnam, never made any sense, nobody ever could make any sense. Lyndon Johnson said that, it’s on his tapes, in his library, very clearly.

Can’t make any sense out of it, can’t justify sending a single soldier over to get killed. He said it. It’s there. The Gulf of Tonkin was a fabrication. [00:38:00] Lie. There was no attack. He knew it in real time. He knew it before he told the American public that we were attacked. Fulbright, said he was lied to when he passed that resolution to Gulf of Tonkin.

I take his chapter and verse. I brought up the Congo or Lumumba. You could take the Bay of Pigs. Every one of these things been a lie. Every one of them that could be called a war criminal, McNamara said, he could have been called a war criminal. He said three and a half million people died in Vietnam, mostly innocent civilians.

And it got to be an even larger number after, so the fact of the matter is, no, we aren’t held accountable. It’s a good thing too, because you hold us accountable. You’re holding democracy accountable. You’re holding the free world accountable. The fact of the matter is winners are not held accountable.

And as I’ve been saying, in my response to Trump, he keeps running us down. We are the most powerful. nation that’s ever existed in the world. And it’s a good thing for the world because we’re on the [00:39:00] side for the good guys, we’re on the side of virtue. And if you don’t understand that and you can’t accept that, don’t come back next week and brief me, because that’s not the role of the CIA.

I go along with you killing a lot of people around the world. Yeah. Not your division. Yeah. The other side of the building, but they overthrow governments. They get us into one mess after another. And I got to get elected. I got to convince the American people that doing all that mischief out there, that dangerous stuff, including torture and everything else, that’s all makes sense to somehow has to be done.

And I sit here with you week after week, trying to get you to give me some arguments to make our system, our position sound reasonable, and you don’t come up with anything. Which side are you on? Are you for Trump?

Ray McGovern: Mr. President with respect to our being the most powerful country in the world, I noticed you adverted to that three times in [00:40:00] your debate with Trump. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but we ain’t that anymore. Russia and China, two against one. North Korea, you could say, two and a half against one. The era is over. The post war era is over. We are just one of many. And although many people reject the multipolar world, it is a multi polar world now.

Now with respect to war crimes, you may recall that our Defense Secretary McNamara, who worked for an Air Force General named LeMay. The way they incinerated Japanese cities with far more casualties than they atom bombs, okay, McNamara turned to LeMay at one point and said, “You know, if we don’t win this, we’ll be, we’re war criminals right now, but we’re gonna win.”

So that’s in the back of people’s mind. And when you [00:41:00] win you could still be a war criminal, it seems to me. So what I’m saying here is that one has to adjust as the years go by and the paradigm of the U. S. being able to hold sway over the rest of the world, that’s been frittered away. Partly, I dare say, by the poor advice your advisors have been giving you in taking on Russia and China and North Korea, and God knows who else, at the same time.

Didn’t make any sense, but that’s what you’re living with now. And all I can say is that this paradigm of the U. S. being able to dominate the rest of the world, the exceptional– you have quoted Madeleine Albright, the indispensable country in the world.

Well, you know, Madeleine Albright said 500, 000 Iraqi children dead because of our sanctions? That’s worth it. There are a lot of Americans that don’t agree with that approach, and I happen to be one of them. [00:42:00] That’s a personal opinion. All I’m saying is the reality is such that the world has changed, and even though it’s nice rhetoric to say we are the most powerful country in the world, that’s no longer the case.

And the implications of that are that we have to deal. We have to deal on Ukraine. We have to put Benjamin Netanyahu in his place, while we still have time, before he draws us into an open war against Hezbollah and maybe Iran. We have that power, but we have to use it judiciously, in my view, and you need some real good advisors to guide you in that way.

Final thought here. At the end of Vietnam, as you will remember when President Johnson was misled by General Westmoreland, his commander out that way. Westmoreland was saying, “Look, we got this. We got it made. All we need is [00:43:00] 206, 000 more troops, and then we’ll go into Cambodia, up through North Vietnam. Maybe we’ll go up to the Chinese border.”

You, that is, your predecessor, Lyndon Johnson, said, “I was prepared to give Westy those troops.” When what happened? When all hell broke loose, The Communists, who had been underestimated in their strength by the U. S. Army, came through the Tet Offensive in late January, early February 1968 did irreparable damage to Johnson.

And when he convened his Circle of wise men – In those days, there were no wise women, anyhow – he had people like Clark Clifford and the others and he got, What’s going on here? And they said Mr. President, you’ve been lied to. And what did he do? He said, “Damn. Okay. I’m going to stop the bombing. I’m going to go to negotiations.” [00:44:00] And on March 31st, 1968, he got on the TV and said, “I’m not going to run again. I’ve had it at being president.”

I’m not suggesting this is anything other than a historical parallel here you’ve been lied to. You’ve been ill advised. We’re not going to win in Ukraine. Obama even knew that. That’s why he didn’t go down the path. Your advisors have advised you to do that. Obama said, “Look, the worst thing we could do for the Ukrainians is to give them the idea that they could prevail militarily against a much stronger Russia.”

I don’t know why your advisors, who happened to be in the administration at that time, thought differently and thought we could proceed in a different way with Ukraine. The military industrial complex made a lot of money out of this, but outside of that, I don’t see who profits from the continuation of this war.

It is within your [00:45:00] power to look at those proposals that are on the table. See if there’s any give in it. What’s to lose? You have some contact now. Austin is in contact with Mullah Yusuf, okay? See if in my view, contacts like that are salutary. They’re not only prophylactic, they can prevent a war, but they can start, they can engender talks on things like the IMF Treaty, the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty– which was a miracle which destroyed a whole class of weapons. Now we’re in the reverse kind of direction.

We could stop it. We take strong leadership. And I think the American people would very much appreciate people taking the bull by the horns and saying, “Look, this is not necessary. The Russians were willing not to go any farther in April, 2022. Now let’s not make believe that the Russians want to take over [00:46:00] all of Ukraine, all of Poland, Baltic States and go to the beaches at Dunkirk. Let’s not make that to be  the new weapons of mass destruction justification for wider war.”

And this war would dwarf what happened in Iraq in significance. So pardon me for expressing these views, but since you raised these issues, I thought that you deserve the best response that I can muster.

Based on conversations with the people I respect back home at the agency.

POTUS: I don’t know if this is going to be our last conversation, but I’ve been through a very rough week and I was humiliated in front of the American People. And frankly, I don’t think it’s because I’m old. I don’t think it is. I think it’s because what was supposed to be reasonable turned out to be [00:47:00] unreasonable.

And that is the posture. of our government, our party, and so forth. And I’ve been thinking about Lyndon Johnson. Lyndon Johnson wanted his president to end poverty. He wanted to change the American economy, which is really what people care about, right? That their wages can buy them something, that they got some opportunities.

Is the economy stupid, is what Clinton came up with, right? And certainly that’s what I wanted to do. It’s what I’ve done as a politician all my life. I’m a realist yeah? I represent Delaware, which was nothing but these banking hustlers and phony companies and everything. But, I got them to try to do a little better and I try to support some enlightened policies when I could, not always, and so forth.

And what trips you up every time [00:48:00] is foreign policy, the empire. Every time. It’s what Washington warned about in his farewell address. Avoid any military means. Here’s a general. It’s what Eisenhower warned about. Beware the military discovery. It all gets irrational. And like when, listening to your briefing, and here I’ll give you, I’ll give you some points.

It’s crazy. We’re talking about what we did in Vietnam. It’s still a communist country. Why am I kissing their asses so that they’ll go against China? We’re right now treating communist Vietnam just like we treat theocratic, crazy Saudi Arabia. I give them fist bumps. I got to do business with all the world.

It was easier to deal with the Soviet communists than it is with Putin. Who is, big believer in the Christianity, Russian Orthodox Church, and he doesn’t like the communists, [00:49:00] he’s a tougher opponent. So I’m in this crazy situation, I’m trying to kiss up to Vietnam, I’m trying to kiss up to Saudi Arabia, which, God, their hands are all over 9/11 and everything.

And what I’ve taken away from this, and I’m just talking to you as an old friend, Colleague, friend, everything. You can’t go into this empire building without being nuts. And it is always going to blow up in your face, and every emperor ever discovered. And my only regret about this whole thing is I couldn’t stick to putting a chicken in every pot. That I couldn’t stick to getting wages up and ending some of this income inequality and doing what you should do.

And right now we’re in the worst mess that I’ve ever been in. And I’m not just saying personally, which is a big mess. I act like a damn fool with this guy. Trump could swing every which way he wants peace, but he wants more. He [00:50:00] wants everything. And I just want to say there’s something so arrogant about you guys at the CIA.

You, you told us every inch of the way you had it figured out. And you didn’t. That’s it. I’m going to call it an evening, but think about it. Don’t quote me. I don’t want anybody to hear this, but I’m– I just disgusted with the whole situation. My family tells me I should hang in there. I should give it the college try.

And I just want to say one thing in my defense. I haven’t lost it. My party, the country, the way we do business, the way we think we’ve lost it. We just don’t know what we’re doing and how we got into this business. That we had a world order in which everything would go our way and we had the magic here and we don’t. We don’t, italways comes out shitty all right but don’t go see you next week maybe [00:51:00] See you next week, maybe.

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