Interview With Ray McGovern

Ray McGovern, a retired CIA analyst of 27 years, came to UNF on the September 22 to condemn what he saw as a massive failure of the US intelligence system of late. “They prostituted the intelligence process. Intelligence is supposed to be about telling it like it is without fear of favor.” Ray McGovern comes across as just a disgruntled former employee at first, but with time you begin to feel his passion and respect for his careers work. He says he looks back at his work as important and “at its best, lifesaving.” But he seems pissed. Slightly uncomfortable amongst the local Wage Peace activists who were hosting a dinner in his honor, he doesn’t fit the profile of your average anti-war activist. His anger was more personal than a general dislike of the President and his policies. Though clearly critical of the war, his anger is really over the black eye he says Bush gave the CIA to cover for the real reasons for war and his belief that the US intelligence system has become too tied into the Beltway political scene, thereby creating a credibility gap in what it reports.

“It all started with William Casey, Reagan’s CIA Director,” McGovern says. “There’s a Soviet under every rock!’ When there was an assassination attempt on the Pope and everyone was saying it was just a lone nut, Casey had a special committee set up, staffed with people more concerned with their careers than with truth, to tell him the answer he wanted: that the Soviets were involved. Those are the same guys who run the CIA today.”

Dr. Ted Stumm, Chairman of UNF’s Political Science Department, had a different opinion. “It happens everywhere, we even teach a course on how to do it in the Public Admin grad program. We teach them how to advance their careers, but also to follow the rules. I don’t doubt that it happens in the intelligence community too.” Stumm is a retired Air Force Colonel who once served as chief military negotiator in Turkey and base commander at Polk Air Force Base. He seems skeptical that the information was tainted by this though. There is never any one truth in intelligence assessments, he says, but rather that CIA leadership makes informed assessments on all the information given.

On the issue of the 9/11 Commission’s reported findings, Stumm and McGovern have widely different beliefs. “Independent?” McGovern began, “It was appointed by the President and they were almost all politicians and lawyers. There were no intelligence professionals there; its main objective from the beginning was to cover two of Bush’s mistakes: what he did before Sept 11, and what he did in response.” When asked to clarify, “They said it was an institutional failure - everyone was to blame - which means no one is to blame. They didn’t want to point fingers, but what the hell is an independent commission supposed to be doing?”

Stumm felt it was easy to level the criticism McGovern had after the fact. “I don’t know that there was an intelligence failure. Commissions always have the benefit of hindsight, something that didn’t exist on September 10th. What the intelligence said before 9/11 was the same thing before Pearl Harbor, ‘we have something cooking, but we don’t know when or where.’ There were 3000 planes in the skies over America when the attacks happened, even if you knew the date and time – how are you going to pick which 4 or 5 of them are the ones to be hijacked?”

“Douglas McArthur said that 95 percent of the intelligence he received as commander is useless,” Stumm continued. “It’s up to the commander to find out that 5 percent that’s important. Sometimes even McArthur picks the wrong 5 percent,” he said, referring to Macarthur’s conviction the Chinese would not fight in the Korean War. “Intelligence is always an incomplete picture; it’s more an art than a science.”

“There were so many warnings,” McGovern said. “Had anybody been doing half their jobs right – had Bush not been on vacation, had the FAA acted on the information that a hijacked plane just smashed into one of the twin towers and there were probably more hijacked airliners in the sky – a lot of this wouldn’t have happened as it did.”

1984 and 2004

“War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength.” This is the mantra of Big Brother, the imaginary head of the Oceana in the grim world that George Orwell painted on his death bed. Doublethink was the process in which Big Brother controlled his subjects, wherein people willfully forgot what they knew was true in order to be spoon fed a new lie, a faux reality. Beginning three years ago this week, I feel this is becoming a creeping reality beyond the literary world of 1984.

What else but doublethink explains a draft dodger having his campaigners criticize his opponent for receiving only minor wounds in Vietnam while he himself was out on a cocaine binge unable to report for National Guard duty? How else could you have “No Child Left Behind” without funding the bill, name a bill “Clear Skies” that leaves out greenhouse gases, or have a “Healthy Forest Initiative” which excludes environmental impact studies and hands our forests over to the timber industry to sell back to us? You’d almost think he hired a mining industry lobbyist as Secretary of the Interior.

Over 1,000 US troops and at least 12,000 Iraqi civilians have died since Bush invaded Iraq to destroy Saddam’s WMD program, bombs that have never been found - try telling that to the 80% of Fox News viewers who wrongly believe that we’ve either found direct evidence linking Hussein and al Qaida, an active WMD program, or believe world opinion supported the invasion. We’re all safer now that our entire defense structure, including the Army reserves, are fighting insurgents that never existed prior to March of last year rather than the enemy whose bite we felt in September two years prior. I certainly feel safer knowing a month ago we had more detailed plans for raiding the sacred Imam Ali Mosque in Najaf than hunting bin Laden in Peshawar.

Terrorists are attacking our freedom (I wasn’t aware that my freedom was dependent on the structural integrity of a potential target), so our liberties must be recessed. Makes sense to me. Forget habeas corpus; let’s give the President the power to indefinitely detain anyone he chooses, that’s what Jefferson intended. In 1984, when a citizen simply disappeared on executive order they were called an “unperson.” In America, we know that at least one of their names is José Padilla. He’s never been charged with a crime, nor does he need to be because our President neither understands nor cares about his constitutionally limited powers. He is now judge, jury, and executioner because of a war on terror he admitted can never be concluded.

Ignorance is strength. Forget that the Nobel laureates in economics have gathered to condemn Bush for his dismissal of inconvenient facts and embarking on a “reckless and extreme course that endangers the long-term economic health of our nation.” Forget that under his administration, we vote alone alongside Saudi Arabia & Co on women’s issues in UN. Forget about ozone holes, deforestation, desertification, rising sea water temperatures and climate change. Forget that CEO’s salaries have risen 23% last year alone the median annual household income fell, while the poverty level rose to 12.5%. Forget all this and believe what he tells you: that we’re stronger, safer, and better off. Try to forget all this and maybe you can vote for Bush with a clear conscious.

My Hurricane Vacation Story

What compels a man to drive to the eye of a hurricane twice the size of Andrew when it seems everyone else in their proper mind is getting as far away as possible? Perhaps it’s just a desire to find deeper thrills, perhaps a desire to have a deeper knowledge of my world, or maybe it’s just plain lunacy as most of my friends and family have suggested. I guess the only way I can describe it is that as we drove around inside the storm, I felt like a box was being checked in some mental inventory that said “Go through the eye of a Hurricane.” It was right between “Spend Spring Break in Amsterdam” and “See Phish before they break up.”

I led an expedition of two other UNF students to Hollywood on Thursday night, where we met with one of their friends, Tim Millar, who had a Jeep Cherokee 4x4 that had braved Charlie in the weeks prior. We left at 11pm on Thursday night after loading up on supplies and reserve fuel. I-95 southbound was a pretty lonely route, and even northbound was pretty clear that late a night though the rest areas were filled to the brim with sleeping refugees.

With the latest National Hurricane Center projections and a weather radio, we ventured out of Hollywood north about an hour or so until we reached Fort Pierce. The NHC was predicting a landfall somewhere between Melbourne and Vero, but intuition was telling us to stick further south. After finding a vacant motel in Fort Pierce where several professional storm chasers were staking out, we decided to camp out there and wait for the next day. We had left too early; the storm was slowing down over the Bahamas. We sat in our motel room, watched some movies and kept close track on the hurricanes movement. It was looking more and more like we were going to be in ground zero.

We woke up early on Saturday to a worsening situation. The sky was darkening with thick cloud cover. Every hour or so a strong band would hit with upwards of fifty mile an hour winds and horizontal rain would pound us for 20 minutes. As the day wore on the bands became more frequent, stronger, and lasted longer. In our original drive around Fort Pierce, we discovered the key locations around town to view things. The barrier island had been blocked off by squad cars but there was a Marina on the Indian River where you could watch the wave’s crash against the yachts where we could observe safely without wind gusts throwing formerly landed objects at you.

We used our hotel map to stake out different locations around Fort Pierce to watch the storm. We noticed that as soon as we found a location, professional storm chasers would wind up there a few minutes later asking us about where we had been. In fact, I have a picture of a Miami Herald picture being taken.

She was a slow mover, so we had all day to drive around and find different spots. Our favorite was Jensen Beach, a scenic little retirement town on the Indian River between Jupiter and Fort Pierce, only minutes from Stuart. Along the river were several marinas and trailer parks as well as an unanchored houseboat slamming up against the seawall.

After driving around a bit and scoping out other areas, like Savannas Sate Park, we arrived back in Jensen a few hours later. Our immediate concern was finding shelter for night when things would get bad, so we checked out a local elementary school where they told us that though they had over 600 people inside without power, they wouldn’t turn anyone away. The storm had worsened and the houseboat had disintegrated against the seawall. The trees we were parked under were now fallen. Six foot swells in the river were slamming into the seawall pelting us with thick blasts of salt water. I hid behind another photographer’s car to get the shots I did of the trailer park on the water getting hit like we were. Soon another car pulled up, and an old man came out and starting talking to Tim as he was filming to figure out just what we were doing, to which we always replied that I was reporting for a local newspaper and he’s reporting for a Miami radio station, which was true in the loosest of definitions of free-lancing. He offered us shelter.

After we were done filming and photographing, we followed his directions to a Moose Lodge about a mile away. A sturdy structure, it was a former bungalow that had the insulation ripped out and concrete poured in. We were met at the door by Phillip Black, captain of Lodge 1690 in Jensen Beach. Kenny Murphy, the man who had introduced himself to Tim, was also there.

The Lodge was essentially a bar and restaurant for the older men of Jensen Beach and we were all forty years the junior of any man there. They quickly offered us warm food and cold beer by candlelight and were all curious to know what the four of us were up to, so we fed them the freelance journalist line. Kenny saw right through it and knew we were there on our own accord, looking for a little adventure. He asked if he could come out with us on the next expedition and told us he knew where we should go.

Two of the guys wanted to stay in and dry up a little bit, but Tim and I wanted to go back out and see the storm in different places. We stopped first to check on Kenny’s boat at a local marina on the St. Lucie River. The waters had risen, but his boats were fine. We left from there and drove to Jupiter Inlet. On the Palm County side of the line, we drove into an expensive condo high-rise and snuck through the locked gates out to the beach. The beach was unlike anything I’ve ever seen in real life. It was straight out of a movie. The eye wall was fifty miles off the coast by this point and the surf was easily fifteen foot high, though you couldn’t see more than a couple hundred feet ahead because of the sandstorm blowing against our backs. I made the mistake once of turning into the wind and being stung in the face by millions of sand grains hitting me at 80 miles an hour.

We left there to go check on another yacht club of his on the other side of the inlet. The winds died down a little and we drove around near the lighthouse and found another club right on the inlet next to the jetties with people standing outside watching the storm. We walked up to their balcony and took some photos and video before getting back to the car.

On the way out of the neighborhood Tim made a wrong turn away from the bridge. Kenny said it was fine, there was another bridge seven miles up the road. It felt wrong, but we went with it anyway. About a mile into the road the winds picked up and we could see the Intercoastal, which was on the immediate left of the Jeep, rising. Trees were suddenly falling all over the road. We put the Jeep in four wheel drive, hit the gas, and started driving around them. The entire island was maybe three homes deep at its thickest and the idea of being caught in a barrier island surrounded by falling trees and rising waters right before landfall was becoming an ever more ominous specter on my mental horizon. We finally hit a tree too big too get around and we had nothing but a hatchet for clearing, so we turned around and drove back even faster. There were even more trees on the road this time, ones we knew weren’t there five minutes before. We made it off the island though and warned another car full of journalist about the dangers ahead, but they proceeded anyway.

After that, we drove through Stuart and shot some video of the St. Lucie River swallowing the local pier. Like in Jensen, traffic lights were lying broken in the road or dangling in the wind by a single wire. Fast food signs were blown out and tree’s and power lines had snapped. We made it back to the Moose Lodge in time for another hot meal – probably the only in the county – before nightfall. The eye would be coming in at 2am.

We stayed inside mostly after dark. Every street light was out and it was simply too hard to see anything falling near you. The vents on the ceiling would slam up and down as gusts would come overhead, bringing in a creepy echoed howl from outside. A gentleman named Allen bought us round after round of drinks to keep the stories and jokes going as the wind became louder outside. He told me his story, mostly of the misfortunes that had befallen him in recent years – both financially and physically. Those who have the least always give the most.

We went outside after getting a little stir crazy. We had an extra poncho so we brought Allen out with us. We didn’t know it at the time, but we were in the eye wall. The trees around the Lodge blocked most of the wind. We walked a block up to a mini-mall and took cover. We could barely hear each other over the constant howl of the wind from above. We shined our MagLite’s around surveying the damage. The landmark Fidelity Financial bank near the lodge had lost its sign. The tin roofing on a bank across the street was making eerie creaks and bangs as it flapped in the 105 mile an hour wind. We could see other searchlights looking up into the sky watching the clouds fly by. Ryan pointed out the smell of fresh cut wood in the air.

The winds slowed down a little bit and we went back inside. One of the men inside the lodge was cranking up his handheld radio. Familiar voices that we had been listening to all weekend were talking about how the eye was making landfall at Jupiter as they spoke. The winds died. The vents on the ceiling stopped flapping.

We grabbed our gear and walked out to the car. It was still a little rainy and still windy. Contrary to my expectations, it was also still cloudy. Turns out the eye had closed off. We drove out and concluded we were indeed in the eye, then after driving little further inland I called my dad on the cell phone to get a radar update of how much longer we had to drive around before the storm picked back up again.

Two hours was what we had. The eye was somewhere between sixty to eighty miles wide and moving at six miles an hour. The four of us drove around the county taping and surveying the damage. Things were a lot worse now than they were eight hours earlier in the daylight. We made it as far as Palm Beach County before we started running into cops again. Police were a persistent fear because of the curfew in place and the “zero-tolerance” approach heralded on the radio.

Eventually we dropped the other two guys from the UNF contingent back off at the Moose Lodge and Tim and I drove out to the river. The water had risen considerably. I took his searchlight and started taping the damage. We drove through the trailer parks we saw getting battered earlier and filmed the damage inside. Eventually we had to turn around because storm surge had covered State Road 707 along the Indian River.

We went back and I fell asleep. Ryan and Tim went out filming earlier in the morning when I was asleep. They woke me up at nine and we drove out back to Hollywood. We didn’t stay in the area long and got on I-95, which wasn’t too damaged, to avoid the roadblocks.

The trip back home from Hollywood was faced with one giant problem from the outset: we didn’t have enough gas to get back home. South of Jacksonville gas was nearly impossible to find. Once we got near Miami, I was able to cap off my tank and had two five gallon canisters with me. We brought the canisters with us in the Jeep and used about four gallons to keep the generator at the Lodge running. Though Kenny had given us two gallons at the Lodge, we still needed enough to get the Jeep back to Hollywood. By the time we left I had 13 gallons of gas on hand, but needed 16 to get home. I called a friend to arrange for him to deliver gas in case we ran out but was informed that all the gas stations were closed in Jacksonville because the power was out.

Before we hit the highway, we found one stations open in Davie. The clerk told us the highway patrol had escorted a tanker in from Port Everglades earlier. We filled up our tanks and drove back. With no cops on the highway, we booked back on 95 until we reached Daytona. Once there, every mile or so we’d find a huge tree fallen over in the right hand lane of I-95. We decided to pull off into Daytona Beach to check on UNF legend Abe Kowitz. We never quite made it because the police were on every street. Daytona was hit a lot harder than we thought and the police were out rigidly enforcing the curfew to stop looters. Eventually we were pulled over and threatened with jail unless we turned around and left the way we came.

We made it home without a scratch, except for the small dent in my car from the encounter with a fallen tree in Palm Coast. It was nice to be home, dry, with hot food and hot showers. It was nice to get the familiar calls from friends and family once I got reception on my phone again, and they all said the same familiar thing, “Trey, glad you’re safe… but that was stupid. I hope you don’t plan a career in this now.”

Kerry Got Baited

Though it's been very difficult arriving at this conclusion, I've decided to write a column in support of a Bush campaign initiative. I felt baited while weighing the issue out and I wasn't able to solidify my own position until hearing Kerry's weak rebuttal. The issue was George Bush deciding to bring home 70,000 troops from their Asian and Western European posts. Bush supported this decision with his own ideology of "Force Transformation," which I feel was inapplicabable and was only brought up to successfully bait Kerry.

"Force Transformation" has been a stable of neocon lexicon for the past four years, referring to the now discredited belief that we simply do not need as many infantry in our Army because of advances in weapons technology. Rumsfeld & Co have been trumpeting the idea of a leaner, stronger, more mobile army without tanks and artillery that packs more punch with fewer logistical requirements. While we do need a more mobile force, few of the reservists in Iraq that left families and idling careers half a world away would agree that our current active duty army is too large.

Bush has packaged this ideology with a military necessity that John Kerry should be behind too - changing our militaries basing structure. We're on the brink of a global realignment of our military posture. With the Cold War over, we no longer need troops poised to stop Soviet armor from passing through the Folda Gap into Western Europe. What we need now is the ability to contain possible Chinese expansion in addition to being able to project our forces anywhere we need them in the Terror Wars - which has a front stretching from the Atlantic coast of Morocco, as far north as the Caucuses, and as far east as the Philippines. It looks as if the center of this will be in Iraq, where we will be sure to have a large military presence for many, many years to come so long as we "win the peace." The conventional wisdom has held that he troops stationed in Western European NATO countries will be moved into the more amiable "New Europe," as Rumsfeld so eloquently put it. These are the former Soviet Bloc nations eager for US aid and protection, and are consequently more easily in line with our foreign policies

Instead of building huge new bases and simply shuffling troops around, Bush wants to build a series of skeleton bases around the globe that would easily expand to carry tens of thousands of troops and their pre-positioned weapons. Far from shrinking the size of the Army, this would be an anecdote for the "Second Christmas Syndrome," wherein soldiers are far less likely to stay in the military after spending a second Christmas away from their families in a far off corner of the globe.

Tags: Treyopia Current Events Spinnaker Bush Kerry Force Transformation