{"id":24513,"date":"2014-11-08T21:04:52","date_gmt":"2014-11-09T05:04:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=24513"},"modified":"2014-11-08T21:04:52","modified_gmt":"2014-11-09T05:04:52","slug":"the-mystery-of-ray-mcgoverns-arrest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2014\/11\/08\/the-mystery-of-ray-mcgoverns-arrest\/","title":{"rendered":"The Mystery of Ray McGovern’s Arrest"},"content":{"rendered":"

Why, I asked myself, would the New York City police arrest me and put me in The Tombs overnight, simply because a security officer at the 92nd<\/sup> Street Y told them I was \u201cnot welcome\u201d and should be denied entry to a talk by retired General David Petraeus? In my hand was a ticket for which I had reluctantly shelled out $50.<\/p>\n

I had hoped to hear the photogenic but inept Petraeus explain why the Iraqi troops, which he claimed to have trained so well, had fled northern Iraq leaving their weapons behind at the first whiff of Islamic State militants earlier this year. I even harbored some slight hope that the advertised Q & A might afford hoi polloi<\/i> like me the chance to ask him a real question.<\/p>\n

However rare the opportunity to ask real questions has become, it can happen. Witness my extended (four-minute) questioning<\/a> of then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in Atlanta on May 4, 2006. The exchange wasn\u2019t exactly the oh-so-polite give-and-take of the Sunday talk shows but it represented what Americans should expect of democracy, a chance to confront senior government officials when they engage in deception or demonstrate incompetence \u2013 especially on issues of war or peace.<\/p>\n

It seems a safe guess that somebody wanted to protect Petraeus from even the possibility of such accountability on Oct. 30. Also, let me make clear that I had no intention of embarrassing the retired four-star general and ex-CIA director with a question about his extramarital affair with his admiring biographer Paula Broadwell, which precipitated his CIA resignation in November 2012.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Many an aging male ego has been massaged by the attentions of someone like Broadwell, and she seemed happy to do the massaging to expedite the research on All In<\/i>, her biography of the fabled general. I had decided to resist the temptation to refer to the Biblical admonition against entrusting large matters to those who cannot be faithful in small things.<\/p>\n

The affair may not have been a small thing to Mrs. Petraeus, but it pales in significance when compared to the death and destruction resulting from Petraeus\u2019s self-aggrandizing disingenuousness and dissembling about prospects for eventual success in Iraq and Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

Petraeus Agonistes<\/b><\/p>\n

Assuming that Petraeus\u2019s expertise in counterinsurgency warfare was more than mere pretense, he knew both expeditions were doomed to failure. And he certainly now knows the inevitable answer to the question he famously posed to journalist Rick Atkinson in 2003 as U.S. forces troops began to get mired down in the sand of Iraq \u2013 \u201cTell Me How This Ends.\u201d<\/p>\n

The twin conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq \u201cended\u201d \u2013 if that\u2019s the right word for these late-stage fiascoes\u2013 with two additional stars pinned to Petraeus\u2019s uniform and with some 6,700 gold stars sent to the wives, husbands, or parents of US troops killed, plus tens of thousands of purple hearts for those badly injured in both body and mind. A bad bargain for the American people and especially the dead and maimed US troops \u2013 not to mention the hundreds of thousands of dead and maimed Afghans and Iraqis \u2013 but a pretty successful career move for Petraeus, if not for his fateful extramarital affair.<\/p>\n

Surely, in the grim light of all the bloodshed, L\u2019Affaire Broadwell can be seen as a minor peccadillo, the least of Petraeus\u2019s sins. But many of his ardent admirers view the sexual indiscretion as the only blot on his otherwise spotless dress uniform festooned with row after row of medals and ribbons.<\/p>\n

It was my intent to put the spotlight, via a question or two, on Petraeus\u2019s far more consequentially dishonest behavior. And this seemed particularly important at this point in time, as his starry-eyed emulator generals seem no less willing than Petraeus to throw a new wave of youth from a poverty draft into a fool\u2019s-errand sequel in Iraq and Syria.<\/p>\n

In any event, it seems reasonably clear why they did not let me enter the 92nd<\/sup> Street Y on Oct. 30. Someone thought that the thin-skinned ex-general might be discomforted by a less-than-admiring question. His speech was to be another moment for Petraeus to bathe in public adulation, not confront a citizen or two who might pose critical queies. [For more on Petraeus and his acolytes, see Consortiumnews.com\u2019s \u201cPetraeus Spared Ray McGovern\u2019s Question.<\/a>\u201d] <\/p>\n

Lingering Mystery<\/strong><\/p>\n

But one mystery lingers. The \u201corgans of state security\u201d (the moniker that we in the CIA used to apply to the Soviet intelligence\/security services) were lying in wait for me when I walked into the Y? Why? How on earth did they know I was coming?<\/p>\n

My initial reaction was that the culprit could be a lingering BOLO, the \u201cBe on the Look-Out\u201d warning that the State Department had issued against me earlier for my nonviolent antiwar stances. In September, thanks to a civil rights lawsuit filed on my behalf by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF), the State Department rescinded that BOLO alert for me, under which State Department agents had been ordered to stop and question me on sight.<\/p>\n

State Department documents acquired under the Freedom of Information Act showed that the damning evidence behind that draconian (and patently unconstitutional) order was \u201cpolitical activism, primarily antiwar.\u201d<\/p>\n

The proximate cause was my standing silently with my back to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Feb. 15, 2011, to protest the unconscionably violent policies she had promoted, including her vote for the Bush-Cheney war of aggression against Iraq (which she thought politically smart at the time) and her infamous suggestion during her political campaign that we could \u201cobliterate\u201d Iran.<\/p>\n

In response to my silent protest, I was roughed up, cuffed, arrested, and jailed as Clinton delivered a major speech at George Washington University admonishing foreign governments not to stifle dissent. Heedless of the irony, Clinton did not miss a syllable, much less a word, as she watched me snatched directly in front of her and brutally removed. [See Consortiumnews.com\u2019s \u201cStanding Up to War and Hillary Clinton<\/a>.\u201d] <\/p>\n

The charges were immediately dropped, since there were simply too many cameras recording what actually did happen to me. A State Department investigation into my background came up dry; but the words \u201cpolitical activism, primarily antiwar\u201d were enough to get me BOLOed.<\/p>\n

The State Department assured my pro bono lawyers at the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund that State not only had rescinded the BOLO but also had notified other law enforcement agencies that the BOLO was \u201cnon-operational.\u201d But I remained suspicious that, while the State Department\u2019s assurance may have been made in good faith, God only knows (and then only if God has the proper clearances) what other organs of state security had entered the \u201cderogatory\u201d information about the danger of my \u201cpolitical activism\u201d into their data bases.<\/p>\n

Had my \u201cderog\u201d been shared, perhaps, with the ever-proliferating number of \u201cfusion centers\u201d that were so effective in sharing information to track and thwart the activists of Occupy \u2013 including subversives like Quakers and Catholic Workers? However, as I reflected on the circumstances of my arrest on Oct. 30, I came to discount the possible role of the BOLO.<\/p>\n

Taken by Surprise<\/b><\/p>\n

As I walked up the steps to the 92nd<\/sup> Street Y on Oct. 30, I had no idea there would be a reprise of the treatment accorded me three-and-a-half years ago at Hillary Clinton\u2019s speech.<\/p>\n

My friend and associate in Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) Bill Binney, a former Technical Director at the National Security Agency before he left in protest against NSA\u2019s unconstitutional eavesdropping on Americans, long since advised me to assume that I am one of several thousands subjected to post-Fourth-Amendment surveillance.<\/p>\n

So I had taken the precaution of asking a friend, who was in no way linked to me via email or phone records, to order the ticket for me, just on the off-chance the organs of state security might learn I intended to hear Petraeus speak at the 92nd<\/sup> Street Y and might do something to prevent my attending.<\/p>\n

Actually, it was pure coincidence that I happened to be in New York on the day of the Petraeus event. Months before, I had committed to teaching classes at Manhattan and Fordham universities on Oct. 30. I learned of the Petraeus event much later.<\/p>\n

At that point, I chose what I thought would be a safe way to purchase a ticket. But I apparently failed to practice the kind of \u201ctradecraft\u201d in terms of limiting associations that is needed to function in today\u2019s democratic society.<\/p>\n

How did the organs of state security learn I was coming? It is more likely to have been guilt by association than the residue from a BOLO. In short, when I travel to New York to teach, I normally email my friend Martha at Maryhouse in the Bowery \u2013 the Catholic Worker house founded by her grandmother, Dorothy Day.<\/p>\n

If there is a free bed, I gratefully receive Catholic Worker hospitality and have a chance to enjoy the company of those who have been placed at the margins of society, as well to witness the selfless kindness of those forming authentic relationships with them.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the catch. Catholic Workers are involved not only in extending hospitality but also in activism, trying, as Dorothy Day did, to make the world a less violent, more caring place. It is primarily the activism, of course, that brings scrutiny from the organs of security, but you might call it \u201cpolitical activism, primarily antiwar,\u201d as the State Department did.<\/p>\n

Moreover, the Catholic Worker Movement is an international organization widely looked upon as subversive of the Establishment, and this adds to the suspicion. In recent years, many of my Catholic Worker friends have been arrested for protesting the use of drones to kill foreigners dubbed \u201cmilitants,\u201d most of whom don\u2019t look like most of us.<\/p>\n

But the targets can now include American citizens, as President Barack Obama turns the Constitution upside down and takes it upon himself to act as judge, jury and executioner. Yes, the Fifth Amendment has gone the way of the Fourth, and the First has become an endangered species. Worth protesting before it too is extinct, would you not agree?<\/p>\n

At The Tombs<\/b><\/p>\n

In a kind of poetic justice, it turns out my friend Martha has the same court date as I have \u2013 the morning of Dec. 8 at the New York City Criminal Court building (aka \u201cThe Tombs\u201d) at 100 Center Street in New York, where I spent the night\/morning of Oct. 30\/31. She was arrested with about 100 others at a Sept. 22 action dubbed \u201cFlood Wall Street,\u201d protesting the important role of the financial industry in facilitating air pollution and global warming.<\/p>\n

In an aside, Martha told me that the police had as much trouble getting handcuffs on the \u201cpolar bear\u201d sitting next to her that day as they did on Oct. 30 trying to bend my injured left shoulder back far enough to get the cuffs on me. I look forward to standing at the same dock where Martha will be defending her action which was very much in the tradition of \u201cGrannie.\u201d<\/p>\n

My Catholic Worker friends comfort the afflicted, while in no way shying away from afflicting the comfortable, as the saying goes. And for that, they often pay a price, including being snooped upon, in violation of the Fourth Amendment, for exercising their rights under the First.<\/p>\n

I am not making this up: In the fall of 2010, Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine criticized the FBI for conducting \u201canti-terrorism\u201d spy operations against the Catholic Worker Movement and even the Thomas Merton Center in Pittsburgh. According to Fine, spies were sent into the Merton Center to \u201clook for international terrorists.\u201d One of the informers photographed a woman he thought was of \u201cMiddle Eastern descent\u201d to have her checked out by \u201cterrorism analysts.\u201d<\/p>\n

So my possible tradecraft lapse may have been contacting my Catholic Worker friends. On Oct. 26, I sent Martha an email with the innocuous title, \u201cRoom in the Inn?\u201d It contained the usual request for simple lodging at the Catholic Worker together with details regarding my classes at Fordham and Manhattan and the Petraeus event.<\/p>\n

While the title and other metadata accompanying that message might seem singularly unsuspicious, eavesdroppers covering Martha\u2019s or my email addresses (or both) would have had no trouble ferreting out an email exchange following an earlier attempt to attend an event at the 92nd<\/sup> Street Y, three years ago.<\/p>\n

On Sept. 8, 2011, a group of Catholic Workers, together with others \u2013 all of us with valid tickets \u2013 were summarily expelled, most of us 10 minutes before<\/i> an event sponsored by the Jewish Policy Center. That event bore the title \u201c9\/11 a Decade Later: Lessons Learned and Future Challenges\u201d and featured former Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, ex-Attorney General Michael Mukasey, and George W. Bush\u2019s press spokesman Ari Fleisher. It was moderated by neoconservative talk show host Michael Medved.<\/p>\n

Since I was not among those subjected to Y security\u2019s preventive strike before the performance, I sat quietly for Medved\u2019s opening rant about radical, fundamentalist Muslim terrorists, but then stood up in silent witness against the right-wing invective. I was unceremoniously, violently thrown out after a mere two minutes.<\/p>\n

More relevant here: I still have in my email inbox a message of encouragement dated Sept. 12, 2011, in which Martha reminded me that every action, \u201csuccessful\u201d or not, is important; adding, \u201cWe of the Catholic Worker are \u2018fools for Christ,\u2019 as the saying goes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Only Metadata<\/b><\/p>\n

You are perhaps thinking that the National Security Agency stores only metadata; and, if so, you would be wrong. Content is saved. So if the government wants to access the content of emails from the past, no problem.<\/p>\n

As Bill Binney reminded me, former FBI director Robert Mueller let that particular cat out of the bag three-and-a-half years ago. In his testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee on March 30, 2011, Mueller bragged about having access to \u201cpast emails and future ones as they come in.\u201d<\/p>\n

Binney explains that the metadata is used to access the content. And, thanks to the documents provided by Edward Snowden, we know that under NSA\u2019s PRISM operation, data is routinely collected directly from Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple (and God knows where else, again assuming God is cleared).<\/p>\n

So my best guess is that I can blame the \u201csubversive\u201d activities of the Catholic Workers and the monitoring of them by the organs of state security, for my recent arrest and overnight accommodations in The Tombs.<\/p>\n

The people at the World Can\u2019t Wait in New York, who were also aware of my plan to take in the Petraeus performance, are known to have been targets of eavesdropping, too. With the surfeit of people sorting through emails from suspicious folks, it may be that both the Catholic Workers and the World Can\u2019t Wait were both monitored \u2013 all to keep us safe, of course.<\/p>\n

It seems the height of irony that it may have been NSA\u2019s eavesdropping that enabled the White House to get rid of Petraeus, when he was getting too big for his britches (and I allude here not only to his dalliance with Broadwell). To Bill Binney, it is clear as day that the President was ready to move against Petraeus right after Obama\u2019s re-election in November 2012.<\/p>\n

A Final, Sad Irony<\/b><\/p>\n

A couple of days after my arrest and jailing, I received a sympathetic email from \u201cGeorge\u201d in Germany, who described himself as a national security whistleblower in his own right. George strongly suggested I ditch my Gmail account.<\/p>\n

\u201cBefore Edward Snowden\u2019s revelations last spring,\u201d he said, \u201cI too was using Gmail as my primary address. I was dismayed to learn that Google was an NSA PRISM partner.\u201d George strongly suggested that I switch to a more trustworthy email provider outside the U.S. and actually suggested one in particular.<\/p>\n

Why ironic? In the years after my birth in 1939, Germany was widely considered the cutting edge on matters of eavesdropping and enhanced interrogation techniques. And most Germans didn\u2019t challenge these forms of oppression even when it touched them personally. Perhaps saddest of all, those with some pretense to moral leadership \u2013 first and foremost the Catholic and Lutheran Churches \u2013 could not find their voice. Is that history repeating itself in the U.S.?<\/p>\n

In Defying Hitler<\/i>, Sebastian Haffner\u2019s journal of his life as a lawyer in training to become a judge in Berlin in the early 1930s, the author (whose real name was Raimund Pretzel) provides an eerily reminiscent account of what ensued after Berlin\u2019s equivalent of the attacks of 9\/11 \u2013 the burning of the Reichstag.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do not see that one can blame the majority of Germans who, in 1933, believed that the Reichstag fire was the work of the Communists. What one can blame them for, and what shows their terrible collective weakness of character … is that this settled the matter.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith sheepish submissiveness, the German people accepted that, as a result of the fire, each one of them lost what little personal freedom and dignity was guaranteed by the constitution, as though it followed as a necessary consequence. If the Communists had burned down the Reichstag, it was perfectly in order that the government took \u2018decisive measures.\u2019 … From now on, one\u2019s telephone would be tapped, one\u2019s letters opened, and one\u2019s desk might be broken into.\u201d (pp. 121-122).<\/p>\n

Substitute Americans for Germans, terrorists for Communists, September 11, 2001, for 1933, and give some thought to where we seem to be headed. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. warned that \u201cthere is such a thing as being too late,\u201d a quotation that, ironically, President Obama is fond of citing. It would be a good thing if we Americans woke from our lethargy before it is too late.<\/p>\n

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. Co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), he served as an Army infantry\/intelligence officer and then as a CIA analyst from the administration of John Kennedy to that of George H. W. Bush. He is also co-founder of Sam Associates for Integrity in Intelligence.<\/i><\/p>\n

Reprinted with permission from Consortium News<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why, I asked myself, would the New York City police arrest me and put me in The Tombs overnight, simply because a security officer at the 92nd Street Y told them I was \u201cnot welcome\u201d and should be denied entry to a talk by retired General David Petraeus? In my hand was a ticket for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-24513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/64"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24513"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24513\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24515,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24513\/revisions\/24515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24513"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=24513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}