Misty Winston: Alright, my friends. I’m very excited. Our conversation today is with the one and only Ray McGovern. Ray is a political activist and former CIA analyst serving from 1963 to 1990. He received the Intelligence Commendation Medal, which he returned in protest in 2006 over CIA use of torture. He has been vocal on numerous issues, including in case of journalist and publisher Julian Assange. He has appeared on the Action for Assange vigils that I co-host several times.
And he’s also been outspoken most recently against the escalation against Russia. You can find his work at raymcgovern.com. And as always, you can find all of his links mistywinstondotsubstack.com. Ray, thanks so much for being here. It’s an honor, sir.
Ray McGovern: Most welcome, Misty. Glad to be with you.
Misty Winston: Okay. So, you may have heard what we were just speaking about before the break at the top of the show. We were mentioning the fact that President Biden has now signed an executive order activating over 3000 reservists for deployments in Europe.
I’m curious what your take on that development is. It seems as if that is a blatant escalation. But what do you make of that?
Ray McGovern: Well, first, Misty, I got the last minute or two of your program. And I have to speak out for my good friends who are psychopaths. They don’t like to be put in the same ranks with the people running the White House right now. So, I hope that you’ll just say they’re crazy and psychopaths. Okay. Because I want to register for that. Okay? Now, I’m sorry. Who would you ask me?
Misty Winston: I’m just wondering what you think about Biden signing this executive order activating these 3000 reservists?
Ray McGovern: Well, you know, they had to do something. Right? Often Washington does something because they have to do something. And that’s what the case is here. They told Ukraine, look, you’re not going to be a member of NATO. Let’s face it, not until the war’s over. If then, you know, and, you know, it’s just until conditions are met. It’s worse than back in 2008.
What? 2008 toward that’s 15 years ago. When, finally, NATO said, yes. Ukraine and Georgia, the country of Georgia, will become members of NATO. They didn’t put any conditions on it. Now they even imposed extra conditions. You know? When all the allies agree and when conditions are right. So, what are you going to do in support of Ukraine where you convene a group that has nothing to do with the foreign military affairs, a group of seven or whatever it is now. And you say- Well, yeah, we’ll support you too. But in the final analysis, Ukraine was promised more support. In my view, it will come late to the party that the Russians will be tempted to move within the next month all the way to the Nueva River. And then stop and say, -Alright, are you guys willing to stop, ceasefire, and negotiate now? Then the west will be an even more precarious position with even fewer good cards to play.
Misty Winston: Yes, and it’s terrifying. I feel as if we’re on a train with no control over where it’s headed. We have no control over how to stop it, and it’s a really terrifying proposition. O, you know, it’s just, I don’t even know. And it feels as if we were talking about currently, over the last couple of months, is one escalation after another. Whether it’s the billions of dollars, the cluster munitions, the F-14s, whatever it is.
It feels as if there is just a constant barrage of us poking out the bear, which we’ve been doing for many years. This is nothing new. Like I said, this is something that has at least been going on since 2014. Frankly, it was going on long before that, but certainly since 2014. And it feels as if it’s just nonstop. So Now I’m glad that you mentioned the quote unquote, conditions and all of that stuff. You know, Zelensky was at the recent NATO summit. He was a PR nightmare. There were all kinds of pictures of him looking absolutely miserable. I think that he was disappointed in the outcome of the summit and what he was offered there. But you mentioned the conditions. And, I feel as if this is kind of you know, they’re kind of dangling this in front of Ukraine. But they’ve used very vague wording. And, I think that there’s do you think that there’s any way that Ukraine is going to be allowed into NATO at any point whatsoever?
Ray McGovern: Not during my lifetime. Yeah. You know, it’s just you know, you have to look at the map for God’s sake. Yeah. I encourage all Americans. Just look at the map and see where Ukraine is. See where Russia is. Okay? Let’s see where the United States is and then see where China is.
Now I mentioned China, I’ll get to that a little bit later. But, you know, a basic army infantry intelligence officer, such as I was way back in the day, it is drummed into us the fact that before you do anything, you’d make an estimate of the situation. That sounds corny, doesn’t it? But there are certain steps there. Right? First one, Just look at your enemy. How many there are? How well armed are they? How much resources do they have? Can they resupply their arms? Yeah. That’s number one.
Number two, what’s the morale?
Number three, what’s the weather going to be like? You know, we’ll be able to move in the mud.
And number four, you look at the terrain and all this.
And then number five, and crucial is LOCs. Now it’s not the lox that I used to eat with bagels back in the Bronx, these are lines of communication and supply. Now Russia can get those supplies in there in a day or two. It takes NATO lots more time to resupply Ukrainian forces who are taking it on the chin now, and let’s face it, losing. Yeah. It pains me beyond repair to see the President of the United States getting up and saying today in Helsinki, well, Putin has already lost the war.
Biden is living in a parallel universe. It’s not the same one. And, if you put yourself in Putin’s shoes, what does that make for the very, sensitive and subjunctive way that you have to react once you can’t rely on these people to react in a reasonable or sane fashion?
Misty Winston: Yes. And that’s really depressing to watch this all play out as you said. Listen, the Ukraine is taking a major monumental devastating hit here. We are wiping out a generation of Ukrainian men to fight essentially what is a proxy war against Russia. It really has nothing to do with Ukraine. It’s so interesting to me that people think that they expect me to believe that this country cares about the people of Ukraine. This country doesn’t even care about the people of this country. I’m supposed to believe we care about Ukrainians?
Of course, we don’t. We’re using them as cannon fodder in a proxy war against Russia and it is so disturbing and despicable that we’re doing it. And that we’re able to get away with it. And yet here we are. Very excited to have this conversation. So we mentioned China. You mentioned it kind of briefly. And, I think that something else that a lot of people in this country at least are not really paying attention to, is what is happening is a major shift in global power.
We’re seeing, you know, Russia and China, along with other countries starting to come together. And it feels like the United States may be an empire in decline. And it feels as if we are a wounded animal backed into a corner. And what’s terrifying about that is, although we may be a wounded animal and we may be in decline, we are also heavily armed. So, what do you think about that? What do you think about the potential global shift in power and how we’re reacting to that?
Ray McGovern: Well, it is an actual shift in power, not potential. It’s happened. Yeah. The tectonic shift is one in which you have China and Russia together against us, the collective west. Two against one, basically, and these are the other two most powerful countries in the world.
The rest of the world pretty much is siding with China and Russia despite what Biden and the others are telling you.
If you look at population and what’s most disturbing is if you look at color, now what you come to Misty is the lily-white west against the rest of the world, 80% of those are people of color. That’s not a healthy arrangement. Now that smacks of all the imperialist actions going back centuries. I have a little Diddy from what’s his name? Well, I’ll remember the ditty later. But it points up the notion that the west should not try to hustle the east. Those days are over forever.
What we used to see is China and Russia back in the seventies, in the sixties, when I was doing my job watching both countries; they were in competition with each other so that neither could seal a match with them in improving relations with the United States.
And when Nixon went to China, that scared the Russians so much that we got very, very important arms control agreements the next year. Actually, it was the same year, 1972, and I was there in Moscow at the signing.
This was the anti-ballistic missile treaty. It held the balance for three decades. Count them, thirty years until George W Bush decided, well, we get out of that treaty. And then Donald Trump decided, well, we get out of the medium missile treaty as well.
And so, we have no treaties to restrain nuclear missile development now, or nuclear control. And it’s a very precarious situation. So, you know, China plays a major role here. And, the last thing I’ll say on this count is that when Putin made one of these long question and answer things with the discussion club back in October, one of the questioners said, President Putin tell me, can you explain why the United States is taking on China at the same time? It’s taking on Russia in Ukraine. It’s very interesting.
You watch Putin, and he says, You know, it’s a good question. I search for some logic there, but I think they’re just crazy. Crazy is the word you used. Okay? And then he said, I attribute it to arrogance and a feeling of impunity.
Misty Winston: — Yes.
Ray McGovern: Well, now so do I. But it doesn’t matter what McGovern thinks. What matters is what’s pushing things. If he thinks these guys are crazy, Well, he’s going to be really, really careful. And he’s got to be hedging his bets on nuclear exchanges in the whole rest of it. Now we have these, what do you call them? These little bombs, these little bomblets, that we’ve agreed to give them.
How did that happen? Well, we ran out of the regular ammunition for 155 millimeter. Howitzer is now an old weapon. I trained on that in 1962-63 for god’s sake. But, they do have new shells. Okay. Now what’s my point? Well, the two points here. That doesn’t speak very well for military planning. Does it, when you run out of the I mean, actually, you know. Okay.
And the second point is, Why? And this, I hope, will get through to your listeners. Why? How come? Why did they run out of ammunition? You know why?
Because, the Soviet Union fell apart in 1991 and posed absolutely zero threat to anyone, especially NATO. So why build these kinds of weapons if there’s no threat? No threat at all.
Even the rhetoric. George W Bush talked about how Putin and the Chinese both are on a path to progress and to independence so forth. Okay? So, what happened? Oh, in 2014, there was a coup in Kiev. Okay? And we replaced the reasonably pro-Russian government with the one that was just anti-Russian. Ban the Russian language as an official language and say, well, look, we’re going to take you into NATO. It was then that the Russians had to move in my view.
They couldn’t let NATO seize its own only year-round ice-free naval base in Sevastopol, in Crimea, And that’s where it all started to go downhill. Before that, you had no rhetoric and no threat. Now we have this threat. Who started it? Oh, I just told you, the coup in 2014. So that’s the lesson here. They’re out of ammunition because there was no threat. And you need a little lead time to build these shells. You’d much rather pay these developers to develop more sophisticated things like F-35s that can’t fly at night or have trouble in the rain, kind of stuff. Okay? There’s no money on our jewelry shelves. There’s a lot of money in things that cost a half a billion dollars.
Misty Winston: Yeah. Yes, 100%. And I’m so glad that you brought that up. It has been very interesting to watch. Listen. I am kind of a student of propaganda. I like looking at propaganda and how it’s used against us. I like examining those kinds of things. It has been super interesting to me to watch the propaganda surrounding this conflict and watch the biggest thing for me has been unprovoked. We have heard the word unprovoked so many times over the course of the past year, year and a half, whatever it is, since the conflict has kicked off. I don’t even like to call it an invasion because I feel like that is just completely wholly false. And it’s just a misrepresentation of everything that’s happened. But this conflict has not been unprovoked. It has been thoroughly and wholly provoked by the west, by the United States, and by NATO.
And the idea that they’re able to sell that kind of a lie. And, the reason they’re able to do it is because they just repeat it over and over and over again, and that’s how you make something true.
And they have done that extensively over the course of the past year and a half. And so, that is the prevailing narrative in this country and in the west that it has been an unprovoked war.
They paint Putin as if he is some, you know, raised lunatic who just woke up one day on the wrong side of the bed and decided he wanted to choose violence. And that is the furthest thing from the truth.
Like I said, at the top of the show, he has been incredibly patient over the course of the past eight years and for longer, but in particular over the past eight years. And so the idea that they’ve been able to sell this lie that it has been an unprovoked war is completely ridiculous. and wholly untrue. And but I think it just speaks to the power of the propaganda in this country and how effective they are.
Misty Winston: In a couple of minutes, I want to shift to Julian Assange. Obviously, I can’t have you on the show and not ask about Julian Assange. It’s what I do. I know you’re a longtime supporter. But before we do that, I just wanna wrap up the conversation regarding Russia.
Where do you see this going? Because as I said, I feel like there’s just been one escalation after another, and it seems to me, as somebody who’s just an outsider looking in, and, obviously, you have kind of insider baseball knowledge, you’ve been, you know, behind these closed doors, where these kinds of decisions are being made- How do you think that this thing could possibly end? Because it feels as if there’s no end in sight here.
Ray McGovern: Well, it’s very clear that the Russian forces will beat what’s left of the Ukrainian forces probably within the next month or so. Then the question will be will it happen before the mud sets in, and people can’t drive anything? Not even the well-equipped tanks drive through the mud. What will the Russians do? Will they go west all the way to the Dnipro River? Or will they stay in place and just do this war of attrition, which has been so successful?
Not so much considering they should need to gain land, but they need to kill Ukrainians, and that’s what they’ve been doing. I don’t know the answer to that. The only person that really knows is Putin himself. I think that well, I I think that he’ll probably be just a gradualist. And, since he thinks he can handle these F-16s, and these fancy tanks, and cruise missiles, and all that stuff, there’s no real reason where the people arguing for him to go all the way will prevail. Sorukin, the general who adopted this attrition policy, in my view, is likely to prevail with his drip, drip, drip, until there are no more Ukrainians, and then see what happens.
Misty Winston: Yeah. That’s a really unfortunate reality. It is devastating to realize that we are genuinely wiping out a generation of Ukrainian men, but that is what is happening. And I feel as if that is something that’s at this point, almost unavoidable.
I think you’re probably right. I think this is going to be something that Putin is just going to, you know, have a gradual…there’s no reason for him to go all the way.
There’s no reason. I mean, he just, you know, confirms all of the west’s lies about him if he goes that far, and I think he’s far too smart. to do something like that. So, yes, I think that’s probably a devastating reality here.
