On today’s BradCast, how corporate media control of our public airwaves helped elect Donald Trump, and a decades-long, top-level CIA intelligence briefer of U.S. Presidents responds to concerns about Trump skipping Presidential Daily Briefings and on, so far, evidence-free, anonymous claims that Russia hacked and manipulated the U.S. election.
First up today, speaking of questioning “conventional wisdom”, there is no doubt that the stranglehold of our public airwaves by corporate media helped elect Trump. But a new report suggests their helping hand may have been even worse than we knew, as Sinclair Broadcasting, the infamously rightwing media behemoth and largest single owner of television stations in the nation, apparently struck a deal with the Trump campaign to provide non-critical coverage on its scores of television “news” outlets in the South, Midwest and elsewhere.
Then I’m joined by 27-year CIA analyst, Ray McGovern, who served as Chief of the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch and prepared and personally delivered the CIA’s Presidential Daily Briefings (PDBs) each morning to American Presidents from Kennedy to Clinton. Since leaving the agency, he has become an outspoken anti-war advocate and peace activist and co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), a group which includes esteemed former intel officials, analysts, experts, and whistleblowers such as Daniel Ellsberg, Coleen Rowley, William Binney, Thomas Drake, John Kiriakou, Karen Kwiatkowski, Col. Ann Wright and others. He is also a contributor at Consortium News and his writings and appearances can also be found at RayMcGovern.com.
I invited him back on today to offer insight as to how the preparation and delivery of PDBs to Presidents and Presidents-Elect have changed over the years and how important they are. McGovern offers some fascinating insight and inside Presidential stories on all of the above. But I wanted to talk to McGovern about this specifically in the wake of Trump’s somewhat alarming recent admission that, he rarely attends the briefings because he’s “smart”, and doesn’t “have to be told the same thing in the same words every single day for the next eight years.” Instead, Trump says, he sends his national security team to attend what McGovern describes as “the acme of the intelligence cycle, just to give you an awareness off how important the process is.”
But our conversation soon moved to the various allegations — still without evidence and said to be from unnamed intelligence sources citing secret National Security Estimates (NIEs) that some respectable critics say don’t necessarily make a lot of sense — charging that Russia hacked DNC and other emails during the campaign in hopes of helping Trump defeat Hillary Clinton.
In short, McGovern and his fellow team of longtime intelligence analysts, experts and whistleblowers believe the allegations are, in McGovern’s words, ‘a crock’. He explains why he and his colleagues recently released a memo explaining their dispute with the charges, and what they actually believe is at the root of the thousands of leaked emails. While I agree with Ray on the lack of evidence presented at this time in support of the claims against Russia, I am also skeptical of VIPS’ assertions about what they believe really happened, as we discuss on today’s show as well.
But, of course, I am always skeptical of anything that cannot be independently verified, especially when it comes to anonymous claims and secret evidence used to lead us into wars. McGovern offers some fascinating details and reminders on the show today as to why such skepticism is a very good idea! Unfortunately, similar skepticism seems to be all too rare these days in much of the rest of our media. Either way, I’ll look forward to your thoughts on today’s program…
Whenever I click on the download link,
(see right above your Donate/Subscribe options:
” Download MP3 or listen to complete show online below…”
it never really downloads, but only plays the current show live, eg today’s show, which included the interview with Ray McGovern. How can I actually download your shows. I have mac and was in firefox.
G. Krane @1:
On Windows systems, one just right-clicks on the link and chooses “Download File” (or “Download Target” or “Save File”, depending on the browser.)
But, I’m not a Mac guy, so not sure what the similar command is with a Mac. Hopefully someone else here can help with that?
Great coverage Brad.
On a Mac you do Ctrl-click, which brings up the menu. It’s the only use I’ve found for the Ctrl key on a Mac, not that I use them very often.
WOW! Everyone should listen to this chilling interview with Ray McGovern, the founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.
THIS was TOP NOTCH broadcast journalism.
McGovern, who is not a partisan, and who is not a Trump supporter, raises serious, informed, questions about the assertions that Russia hacked our elections.
The interview started on the relatively benign question about Trump’s failure to take daily intelligence briefings, and went in a completely unexpected direction. Well done Brad Friedman for allowing McGovern to speak, for allowing the interview to unfold, and for keeping an open mind, while, at the same time maintaining a healthy sense of skepticism, even of McGovern.
Stand-out show today.
This is what progressive media is all about—The real stuff, whether it is disturbing,
or not.
And this is.
As a lifelong FDR/New Deal, anti-war Democrat who was raised by same, and who grew up in the midst of the cold war in upstate NY in the 50s-60s, I must say I find the current Democratic Party McCarthyism abhorrent, pathetic and repulsive.
Just give me the frikkin’ evidence, and I’ll buy-in to the prevailing “bad bad Ruskies” argument.
But I have been hearing variations on this BS since I was knee-high. It’s been 99% bull every step of the way.
We all, as Progressives, have a sinister corporate-Trump assault on the Social Contract to face. But I have trouble feeling united with the Democratic Party masses who, with the anti-Putin paranoia, are in spiritual harmony with the “WMD/Saddam has Nukes” garbage of the early 2000s.
For the Democratic Party, this is serious.