Larry Johnson's Group (VIPS) Called On CIA Employees To Leak Secrets To Hurt Bush

the name of a Pentagon whistle-blower, a small group of retired, anti-war CIA officers are accusing the Bush administration of manipulating evidence against Iraq in order to push war while burying evidence that could show Iraq's compliance with U.N demands for disarmament.

The 25-member group, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, composed mostly of former CIA analysts along with a few operational agents, is urging employees inside the intelligence agency to break the law and leak any information they have that could show the Bush administration is engineering the release of evidence to match its penchant for war.

VIPS member Ray McGovern, a 27-year CIA veteran who gave intelligence briefings to top Reagan officials before retiring in 1990, said the administration has not made the case that Iraq has ties to Al Qaeda and is providing information that does not meet an intelligence professional's standard of proof.

"It's been cooked to a recipe, and the recipe is high policy," McGovern said. "That's why a lot of my former colleagues are holding their noses these days."

But the CIA said McGovern doesn't have any authority to speak of the quality of intelligence policy-makers are reviewing.

"He left the agency over a decade ago," spokesman Mark Mansfield said. "He's hardly in a position to comment knowledgeably on that subject."

VIPS say their appeals to CIA staff are an attempt to evoke another Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret study on U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

Leaking classified national defense information is illegal, and CIA officers, who take a secrecy oath when they join could lose their security clearances or jobs, and may even face prosecution...

From the WSJ Opinion Journal
BEST OF THE WEB

BY JAMES TARANTO
Wednesday, July 16, 2003 2:22 p.m. EDT

'Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity'
Give Nicholas Kristof credit for being slightly ahead of his time. The New York Times columnist has been beating the drum for more than a month now about purportedly "politicized" intelligence on Iraq, and now the entire percussion section has joined in. And unlike fellow Times columnist and former Enron adviser Paul Krugman, who is a fount of pure partisan rage, Kristof at least seems to have a reasonable, high-minded argument. Here's how he put it in his May 30 column (the link is from the next day's Paris edition of the Times):

[Intelligence professionals] are coming forward because they are fiercely proud of the deepest ethic in the intelligence world--that intelligence should be nonpolitical--and are disgusted at efforts to turn them into propagandists. . . .
The atmosphere within the intelligence community is so poisonous, and the stakes are so high--for the credibility of America's word and the soundness of information on which American foreign policy is based--that an outside examination is essential.

In that column, Kristof introduced the world to a group that styles itself Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. This outfit made another appearance in yesterday's column:

Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, a group of retired spies, issued an open letter to Bush Monday reflecting the view of many in the intelligence community that the central culprit is Vice President Dick Cheney. The open letter called for Cheney's resignation.

So who are these purported voices for "sanity" and against "politicization"? Blogger William Sjostrom did some online sleuthing, and here's what he found:

VIPS does not seem to have a website, but its email is vips@counterpunch.org, and their open letter appears to have been published at CounterPunch (run by Alexander Cockburn, the Nation columnist), an outfit whose staple is stuff comparing Bush to Hitler. VIPS also published an open letter in opposition to the war at Common Dreams back in February. The spokesman for VIPS is Raymond McGovern, a retired CIA analyst. McGovern's email is also at CounterPunch. He is giving a briefing today [Tuesday] with Rep. Dennis Kucinich. McGovern has compared the Iraq war to Vietnam, even saying that it could lead to nuclear war. He has charged that if WMDs are found in Iraq, they may well have been planted. He believes Tenet's job is safe because if Tenet were fired, he would reveal that the White House ignored intelligence warnings pre-9/11. McGovern has urged CIA analysts to illegally release classified documents to show what he believes to be true, specifically citing Daniel Ellsberg.
Another member of the VIPS steering committee is William Christison, who among other things believes that the Bush administration is attempting to colonize the Middle East, jointly with Israel. He believes that the war on terror is being used to turn the US into a military dictatorship. He is also a backer of the left-wing UrgentCall, along with people such as Noam Chomsky, Barbara Kingsolver, Julian Bond, and Jonathan Schell.
None of this proves that VIPS is evil, or even wrong. It does say that Kristof is trying to pass off a fairly left-wing group as a group of non-partisan "professionals."

The question is: Was Kristof merely duped, or is this part of a broader pattern of dishonesty and delusion at the New York Times?

http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110003753

Sincerely yours,

Larry C. Johnson, former Analyst, CIA <----- VIPS

JOINED BY:

Mr. Brent Cavan, former Analyst, CIA

Mr. Vince Cannistraro, former Case Officer, CIA <----VIPS

Mr. Michael Grimaldi, former Analyst, CIA

Mr. Mel Goodman, former senior Analyst, CIA

Col. W. Patrick Lang (US Army retired), former Director, Defense Humint Services, DIA

Mr. David MacMichael, former senior estimates officer, National Intelligence Council, CIA

Mr. James Marcinkowski, former Case Officer, CIA

Mr. Ray McGovern, former senior Analyst and PDB Briefer, CIA <-----VIPS

Mr. Jim Smith, former Case Officer, CIA

Mr. William C. Wagner, former Case Officer, CIA

++++

Let's track down Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)
Ray McGovern, a retired C.I.A. analyst
Larry Johnson, who used to work in the C.I.A. and State Department
Greg Thielmann, who retired in September after 25 years in the State Department,
the last four in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research.

Steering Group Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
Kathleen McGrath Christison, Santa Fe, NM
William Christison, Santa Fe, NM
David MacMichael, Linden, VA
Raymond McGovern, Arlington, VA

VIPS is a coast-to-coast enterprise; mostly intelligence officers from analysis side of CIA. Ray McGovern (rmcgovern@slschool.org) worked as a CIA analyst for 27 years

The VIPS can be reached at: vips@counterpunch.org

Patrick Eddington, a VIPS member and former CIA agent who resigned in 1996 to protest what he describes as the agency's refusal to investigate some of the possible causes of Gulf War veterans' medical problems.

Vince Cannistraro, a former CIA counterterrorism chief, said he saw little chance of CIA analysts going public to contradict the Bush administration.

Eugene Betit, a former defense intelligence analyst who belongs to Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), formed in January to speak out on the use of intelligence to justify the war.

WMD Links
http://zfacts.com/p/471.html

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