Author: Ray McGovern

Journalist Jeff J. Brown and Ray interviewees
July 24, 2022

I pointed to three very important developments over recent days:

1 – Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian openly declared support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, casting the blame on NATO and the U.S.

2 – Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian did the same. Here’s part of his statement:

As the one who started the Ukraine crisis and the biggest factor fueling it, the US needs to deeply reflect on its erroneous actions of exerting extreme pressure and fanning the flame on the Ukraine issue and stop playing up bloc confrontation and creating a new Cold War by taking advantage of the situation. The US needs to facilitate a proper settlement of the crisis in a responsible way and create the environment and conditions needed for peace talks between parties concerned.

Continue reading “Interview with Ray McGovern: Update on the Week in Ukraine”

Corporate media are ignoring the stark implications of Russia’s stated intention to take control of more Ukrainian territory than just Donetsk and Luhansk. I discussed this on The Critical Hour yesterday and supplement those thoughts in the paragraphs below.

On Wednesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov announced Moscow’s broadened aims, explaining, “Now the geography is different. It’s far from being only the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, it’s also Kherson and Zaporizhia Oblasts and a number of other territories.” (I had just written on this.)

In his interview, Lavrov pointed specifically to HIMARS (High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, made by Lockheed-Martin) as the kind of “weapon that will pose a direct threat to our territory and the territories of those republics who have declared their independence (Donetsk and Luhansk).” The HIMARS being provided to Ukraine have a range of 50 miles, putting them also at easy reach of Crimea – which Kyiv (and the U.S.) insist is legally still part of Ukraine. It all depends on “geography.”

Continue reading “Ray McGovern: Media Miss Major Moves on Russia-Ukraine”

The Carnegie Endowment has made a stab at rehabbing James Clapper, whose imagery analysis unit lied us into the war on Iraq. For Clapper’s second try, Carnegie used the title (now get this) “Getting the Intel Right With James Clapper, July 11, 2022,”

On Nov. 13, 2018, Clapper appeared at Carnegie hawking his memoir, “Facts and Fears: Hard Truths From a Life in Intelligence,” in which he openly admits to making the cardinal sin in the intelligence-analysis trade – cooking intelligence to the taste of policy makers. Hard truths, indeed.

That Nov. 2018 talk was not virtual; there was ample time for Q & A. I had read Clapper’s book; then-President of Carnegie, William Burns (now CIA director), indulged my questioning for as long as he could, then moved to rescue Clapper. (See: Clapper’s Credibility Collapses).

Continue reading “James Clapper Gets a Mulligan at Carnegie”

Ray interviewed on The Critical Hour July 11, 2022, 13 minutes

The questions posed led me to comment candidly on the regrettable state of Western statesmen like EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell and Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Yes, the same Blinken who, in one breath excoriates China and the “systemic challenge” it supposedly represents, and in the next makes a pathetically quixotic attempt to cajole his Chinese counterpart to abandon Beijing’s lockstep with Russia on Ukraine. (It’s a bipolar world again: the lily-white West pitted against pretty much everyone else – most of whom are people of color.)

Blinken

Since Blinken and President Joe Biden will spend two days in Israel later this week, I called to mind the key role Blinken played in greasing the skids for the attack on Iraq in March 2003, in large part to eliminate what Israel argued was an existential threat from armed-to-the-teeth-with-WMD Saddam Hussein.

Continue reading “Ray McGovern on Blinken, Borrell; Blindfolds of the Effete Elite”

TIME OUT! Let’s think this through. We are told that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was “unprovoked.” But was it?

How can we estimate how far west Russia’s forces will advance, without knowing why Russia invaded Ukraine in the first place? Theories abound; evidence is available but is overlooked, or hidden.

I apply the skills I learned as a Kremlinologist to scrub official statements, rinse them thoroughly, and squeeze out meaning.

This was known, back in the day, as “media analysis” and remains a lucrative tool. Often, though, it requires “getting into the weeds.” Those weeds cannot always be included in more broad-brush analyses like those of John Mearsheimer, but often add a brick or two to the foundation of his incisive conclusions.

Continue reading “Ray McGovern on Russia-Ukraine: A Taste of the Truth (video)”

An interview with The Critical Hour yesterday provided an opportunity to add some important NATO-related reporting that has been pretty much overlooked in the corporate media. Some of that detail, with my comments, are offered below.

As NATO leaders (aka ‘The 30 Blind Mice) started their summit meeting yesterday in Brussels, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev threw down a seemingly gratuitous gauntlet. Medevdev warned: “Any attempt to encroach on Crimea is a declaration of war on our country.” And that if such an attempt were made by a NATO country, “This is a conflict with the entire North American Alliance. Third World War. Total catastrophe.”

I checked the original Russian; the English translation (verbatim) is accurate. For those who read Russian, here is the original:

Любая попытка посягнуть на Крым – это объявление войны нашей стране, – напомнил политик. – И если это делает страна, входящая в НАТО, это конфликт со всем Североатлантическим альянсом. Третья мировая война. Тотальная катастрофа

“For us, Crimea is a part of Russia. And that means forever. Any attempt to encroach on Crimea is a declaration of war against our country,” Medvedev told a regional news site, as quoted in Reuters.

Continue reading “Ray McGovern on Medvedev/Putin: Highly Unusual Threats to NATO”