Yellow Dog

Wow. This is a story from the conservative Washington Times, who interviewed yet another disgruntled career CIA official:

A 27-year veteran of the CIA, spanning administrations from John F. Kennedy to George Herbert Walker Bush, the current president's father, McGovern has taken, in recent years, a vocal stand on several aspects of the current Bush administration's handling of the war in Iraq and ensuing events.

Returning his medal for "especially commendable service" took a lot of thought. "I had been thinking of ways I could disassociate myself from torture," he said, describing it as a response for his grandchildren who, he said, would ask him what role he played in current events.

During his time at the CIA, McGovern at one point was responsible for daily briefings to the first President Bush. After retiring in 1990; he said he received a "wonderful letter from Bush, Sr. We do stay in touch periodically," but would not comment on the former president's opinions on McGovern's current activities. Today, he spends his time writing and speaking around the world and abroad, mostly about the Iraq war, "trying to spread a little truth around," he said.

The alleged corruption of intelligence strikes a heavy chord with McGovern. The war in Iraq started, he said, because former CIA director George Tenet, was given no choice but to state the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. "Back in my day, I like to think we would have got up and walked out," if asked to force intelligence, he said. "Cooking intelligence is a cardinal sin in the intelligence world."

"As outraged as we are by the politicization, some say prostitution, of intelligence procedures, we are upset by the undermining of the Constitution," he said, speaking for the anti-war group, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, of which he is a founder. "If you're going to have an intelligence apparatus that tells the president what he wants to hear, you might as well just abolish the whole thing," and let the State Department run intelligence operations, said McGovern. The point of the CIA was to be accountable, he said. "We're supposed to tell the truth."

"The American people need to wake up now, the evidence is all there," he said. "Our president and vice president have started a war of aggression defined by Nuremberg as a supreme international crime." Describing members of Congress as tools of the White House, McGovern expressed a need for the people to take a different way. "Together with torture and clearly illegal wiretapping, we need to look for ways to stop all these crimes and indignities," he said.

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