Author: Ray McGovern

Throwing down the gauntlet on alleged abuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) by the Department of Justice and the FBI, House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) stated that there could be legal consequences for officials who may have misled the FISA court. “If they need to be put on trial, we will put them on trial,” he said. “The reason Congress exists is to oversee these agencies that we created.”

Nunes took this highly unusual, no-holds-barred stance during an interview with Emmy-award winning investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson, which aired on Sunday.

Attkisson said she had invited both Nunes and House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) but that only Nunes agreed. She asked him about Schiff’s charge that Nunes’ goal was “to put the FBI and DOJ on trial.” What followed was very atypical bluntness – candor normally considered quite unacceptable in polite circles of the Washington Establishment.

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The long-awaited House Intelligence Committee report made public today identifies current and former top officials of the FBI and the Department of Justice as guilty of the felony of misrepresenting evidence required to obtain a court warrant before surveilling American citizens. The target was candidate Donald Trump’s adviser Carter Page.

The main points of what is widely known as the “Nunes Memo,” after the House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), have been nicely summarized by blogger Publius Tacitus, who noted that the following very senior officials are now liable for contempt-of-court charges; namely, the current and former members of the FBI and the Department of Justice who signed off on fraudulent applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court: James Comey, Andy McCabe, Sally Yates, Dana Boente and Rob Rosenstein. The following is Publius Tacitus’s summary of the main points:

• The dubious but celebrated Steele Dossier played a critical role in obtaining approval from the FISA court to carry out surveillance of Carter Page according to former FBI Deputy Director Andy McCabe.
• Christopher Steele was getting paid by the DNC and the FBI for the same information.
• No one at the FBI or the DOJ disclosed to the court that the Steele dossier was paid for by an opposition political campaign.
• The first FISA warrant was obtained on October 21, 2016 based on a story written by Michael Isikoff for Yahoo News based on information he received directly from Christopher Steele – the FBI did not disclose in the FISA application that Steele was the original source of the information.
• Christopher Steele was a long-standing FBI “source” but was terminated as a source after telling Mother Jones reporter David Corn that he had a relationship with the FBI.
• The FBI signers of the FISA applications/renewals were James Comey (three times) and Andrew McCabe.
• The DOJ signers of the FISA applications/renewals were Sally Yates, Dana Boente and Rod Rosenstein.
• Even after Steele was terminated by the FBI, he remained in contact with Deputy Attorney General Bruce Our, whose wife worked for FUSION GPS, a contractor that was deeply involved with the Steele dossier.

Continue reading “Nunes Memo Reports Crimes at Top of FBI and DOJ”

On December 7, 2017 I moderated an event at the NPC in which Gilbert Doctorow addressed the wider, Russia-related issues in his new book, Does America Have a Future? Gil is an American historian of Russia, whose academic and business credentials simply won’t quit. Gil asked me not only to moderate but also to chime in at will. I found it difficult to avoid abusing the privilege; it all made for a lively Q&A.

Journalist Seymour Hersh, whose career includes exposing U.S. intelligence abuses, received an award for integrity from an organization of former US and Western intelligence officials who share Hersh’s ethical concerns about such abuses.

The trademark “Oscar” for Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence (SAAII) was presented to longtime investigative journalist Seymour Hersh at a dinner in Washington on Sept. 22. The symbolic award is a candle sitting atop the traditional corner-brightener candlestick holder.

SAAII confers its annual award on a member of the intelligence profession or related field who exemplifies the courage, persistence and devotion to truth of Sam Adams, a CIA analyst on Vietnam who exposed lies of the generals in Saigon and was then silenced.

Adams, a descendant of the famed Adams family of the American Revolution, died prematurely at age 55 in 1988, regretting that he had not gone public with his information earlier to stop the slaughter in Vietnam. [To learn more about the organization and previous honorees, go to samadamsaward.ch.]

Hersh, now 80, first came to national prominence in 1969 when he helped expose the massacre of Vietnamese civilians in the village of My Lai. More recently, Hersh revealed the US military’s torture of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in 2004 and, in 2014, debunked Western propaganda that sought to justify a major US military attack on Syria by pinning a sarin-gas attack on the government.

Continue reading “Seymour Hersh Receives Adams Award for Integrity”

Journalist Seymour Hersh is to be honored with this year’s Sam Adams Award for Integrity to be presented to him at the Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence (SAAII) award ceremony on the evening of Sept. 22 at American University.

Sam Adams Associates, who selected Hersh last month from a truly impressive roster of truth-tellers, are enthusiastic at the prospect of Sy joining the ranks of the 15 earlier awardees – from Coleen Rowley (2002) to John Kiriakou (2016). Included among those in between are other patriots: like Katharine Gun, U.K. Ambassador Craig Murray, Col. Larry Wilkerson, Julian Assange, Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Fingar, Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, and Bill Binney. [To learn more about previous honorees, as well as other material on whistleblowing.

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Ray will be in Court Wednesday and Thursday in Syracuse to face the music. He and his Catholic Worker, Jewish mother, and other friends twice blocked the main entrance and exit to Hancock drone base to call attention to the push-of-the-computer-button cowardly killings done in our name. Those of you who, like our Quaker friends, are in the practice of holding Justice people in the Light, please do.

Here is a link to a piece Ray wrote a few years ago on the moral imperative of activism; even more necessary now.

Pasted in below are a couple of links. Ray is grateful to have fallen in with the very best people to be in trouble with, witnessing at Hancock Drone Base, Syracuse, New York

Jerry Berrigan Brigade, January 28, 2016

Crucified by Drones: Good Friday, April 14, 2017

If Herod Had Drones, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph Would Have Been Incinerated)