Ray McGovern – from CIA insider to fighting for Gaza

I was honoured to have the opportunity this week to interview my occasional pen pal Ray McGovern - one of America’s most distinguished activists.   Below are excerpts from that interview which gives an insider's view of the Reagan-Bush years, Weapons of Mass Destruction, and the events that lead him to activism against US state policy. 

Ray worked at the highest level of the US intelligence community, including 27 years in the CIA. Fluent in Russian, he spent years analysing Soviet intentions, Soviet-China relations, Russia and Eastern Europe, and assessing critical issues such as: Were the Russians serious about peace? Could Gorbachev be trusted? 

He was decorated for his service but returned his medal in protest at CIA torture programmes.  Ray worked for 7 US presidents - from the administration of John F. Kennedy to that of George H. W. Bush.

He chaired the National Intelligence Estimates that combined the threat assessments of more than a dozen US security agencies and was one of those rare people who prepared the highly classified daily intelligence briefing for the President.

And yet … today, and for many years now, Ray is one of the leading critics of the US state and its conduct around the world from the Middle East to China and the Russo-Ukrainian war. 

Below are excerpts from my interview which you can view in full here.

Thinking like a Russian

Eugene Doyle: One of the things I like about people like you and George Beebe (former head of the CIA’s Russia desk) is your empathy –  not “sympathy” but empathy – for the Russian perspective. You're trying to actually get inside their heads. You're trying to understand what drives them, rather than just just accepting a simplistic narrative that they're bad and we're good.

Ray McGovern: The Russians called us “glávnyy vrág” – the main enemy; and we were. And we considered the Russians the glávnyy vrág back, because we saw them as a threat. 

I was in the Office of Current Intelligence. For four years, 1991 to 1995 I briefed all of Ronald Reagan's chief national security advisors, one on one, no one else in the room.

This gave me an opportunity to talk to Secretary Schultz, who had his head screwed on right about the possibilities of dealing with Russia. Bush was quite open to working with the Russians. And when I came in and I said Gorbachev looks like the real deal, Schultz looks at me, and he says, ‘That's not what your supervisors are saying.’ And I said, ‘Well, Secretary Shultz, you know that I don't always agree with my supervisors. And you asked me for my opinion.’ Long story short, it was incredible, the best kind of duty you could imagine.

“So here I am in Moscow in 1972 …”

Eugene Doyle: You really interest me as a person, because you're one of those rare individuals who make a jump from deep inside the state through to being an oppositional activist. What makes you tick?  I want to understand what it was like for an individual like you inside the vortex of that power at that time. How did you process it?

Ray McGovern: Well, my schtick, of course, was analysis of Soviet foreign policy, and I was able to do that and do a fairly decent job, especially since a lot of things were happening between Russia and China and the International communist movement. We saw Russia and China at loggerheads, and we thought that the Nixon and Kissinger government could take advantage of that – which they did. 

… So here I am in Moscow in 1972 for the conclusion of the SALT treaties, particularly the one that banned anti-ballistic missiles – more than one or two – and made [the world] stable for three decades. I felt really good about that. 

Now, when I came back and I encountered Bobby Gates and Bill Casey appointing managers that knew nothing about Russia … so that they could be controlled by Gates and Casey, I found myself in that unique position where I could tell the truth, because it was one-on-one. 

I knew I wasn't long for this world, I mean in that position, but I had a really gutsy supervisor, and he valued what I was doing. So when they said ‘We have to get rid of him,’ my supervisor said, ‘You would have to tell Vice-President Bush.’ So I was protected.

When Gorbachev came in, that was the best.  We were able to make a real dent on Bush as vice president, and finally, under Reagan. Long story short, the most comprehensive arms control agreement was concluded in 1987 by the Russians and us [INF Treaty] –  banning, not only banning, destroying, a whole class of intermediate range ballistic missiles.  By God, they were torn up. Scott Ritter, my good friend, was there for two years, making sure that they hacked through those missiles. It was “Doveryai, no proveryai”, Trust but verify.

Bush had the right instincts.  He talked about a Europe free and secure from Lisbon to Vladivostok. 

Bill Clinton came in and messed the whole thing up, went back on the promise not to move NATO one inch farther east than East Germany. There was a series of betrayals, as the Russians see it – and as I see it. 

Iraq: confronting the great lie of Weapons of Mass Destruction

Eugene Doyle:  In 2003, appalled at what you saw as the misdirection and corruption of the CIA, you co-founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). Tell us about that moment for you – when Colin Powell told the UN that Iraq had Weapons of Mass Destruction. 

Ray McGovern: We wrote our first memorandum the same day. And we got quite a bit of exposure – this group of retired intelligence officers who think that Colin Powell is not telling the truth. We said: We strongly suggest, Mr. President, that you broaden the circle of your advisors beyond those clearly intent on making a war for which we see no cogent reason, and from which we believe the unintended consequences will be catastrophic.

Eugene Doyle: And my god, they were. Hundreds of thousands of people end up dying, and you were one of the very first to call out the lie.

Ray McGovern: It was really a sad thing to see our former colleagues let themselves be prostituted, some of whom got cash awards for preparing an estimate that we could see from the outside was slanted in favor of war. That's the worst – when you have an intelligence memorandum or an estimate that is prepared to justify a war. I mean, that's as bad as you can get on intelligence analysis.

The Irish Famine and the Gaza Famine

Eugene Doyle: “I was hungry, and you gave me to eat.”  So us Irish have a cultural memory of the Famine, and we're living through another famine today that we, the Collective West, are imposing on the people of Gaza. Tell me about that, Ray.

Ray McGovern: Forced starvation.  Yeah, the ones that are not hit by our 2,000 pound bombs are being starved to death as we speak. Maybe I feel a little different about this since, by a stroke of luck, two of my great grandfathers escaped the famine, and that's why I'm here. 

[President] Biden's great grandparent, by a stroke of luck, escaped on a boat to come to America. So here we Americans are enabling the Israelis to do what they couldn't without our approval, our arms and our military and financial support. 

I was alive for the entire World War II, and I heard what was happening to the Jews. I said,”When I get big, I will never let something like that happen. Well, I'm big now!  I'm big and to my dying breath, I'm going to do everything I can to rally support for ending this oppression, this terrible, forced, starving of the people of Gaza.”

Eugene Doyle