Take a look at the short CNN video interview below with 27-year CIA analyst Ray McGovern on WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange. It’s astonishing and disturbingly telling.
McGovern, as we noted on Friday, is one of a number of high-level intelligence whistleblowers and former government officials who signed a very strong statement in support of WikiLeaks and Assange last week. Other signatories of the statement include Pentagon Papers’ whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg and the FBI’s 9/11 whistleblower and TIME 2002 Person of the Year, Coleen Rowley.
McGovern, who was formerly personally responsible for giving Presidential Daily Briefings to both George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton has, for years, been an outspoken opponent of the Bush Administration’s unprecedented secrecy regime. He’s perhaps best known for his remarkable 2006 confrontation with Don Rumsfeld, calling him directly out as a liar for tying Iraq to WMD and al-Qaeda.
It’s embarrassing enough, in the below, to see CNN shamefully use the chyron “ASSANGE: JOURNALIST OR TERRORIST”, since Assange has not been charged with anything remotely akin to “terrorism”, nor has he like, ya know, a terrorist, either killed someone, tried to kill someone, or even advocated killing anybody — unlike many of those who have advocated killing him.
But in the exchange that follows, as posted yesterday, note the telling positions expressed by CNN’s Don Lemon about not only his, but CNN’s apparent regard for WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange as “a pariah”. He seems genuinely taken aback at the notion that, as McGovern tells him, CNN “should be following his example.”
Watch the whole thing, please, for other important points and CNN embarrassments, but the section I mention above is transcribed below the video, along with one point on which McGovern appears to be wrong…
RAY MCGOVERN:Yeah, actually, with all due respect, I think you should be following his example. Seek out the secrets. Find out why it is that my tax-payer money is going to fund trafficked young boys performing dances in women’s clothing before the Afghan security forces who we are recruiting to take over after we leave. Take a look at the documents and see the abhorrent activities that our government has endorsed or done through its contractors. And then tell me you don’t think the Americans can handle that. Well I think they can handle it. But they can’t handle it if they don’t have it.
I should note, to be fair, McGovern does appear to be incorrect on one point in the above interview, however. He asserts WikiLeaks is not redacting documents because the Pentagon has declined to help them do so. While some of their earlier leaked documents (CNN and Lemon might be shocked to learn WikiLeaks has been doing this for about four years) were correctly criticized for lacking redactions that might have endangered sources, in fact they have been redacting documents since then, including their Afghan logs, Iraq War logs and the current batch of diplomatic cables. In at least one instance, however, the New York Times published the name of a sensitive source in their publication of one of the documents, whereas WikiLeaks had redacted that name when they published it.
All of which raises the key question which I hope CNN will discuss next: “NEW YORK TIMES: JOURNALISTS OR TERRORISTS”?
12/28/10: CNN fails on WikiLeaks/Assange coverage again. Details on that and both CNN and Don Lemon’s response to the above article now posted here….
Wow! Talk about corporate media hacks. I can’t believe that these clowns would seriously attempt to compare Julian Assange to Bonnie & Clyde.
Lemon is so clueless that McGovern’s lecture on the role of journalism in a democratic society sailed right past him.
BTW, I’m having trouble finding the link for the point I mentioned at the end of the piece above re: NYT publishing an unredacted version of the document that WikiLeaks published redacted. If anyone recalls that, from a week or two ago, and is able to track the link for it, it’d be much appreciated if you could post it here. Thanking someone in advance.
Everyone knows that a journalist’s job is to look pretty in front of the camera, allow the idiot on the left and the idiot on the right to shout at one another, and maintain access at all costs.
Therefore Assange is no journalist. Ergo, he must be a terrorist.
Thank heavens no one in the American mainstream media shows the slightest inclination to act like Assange.
The most important part of corporatist journalism is to provide the public with excuses to support the crimes of corporatism.
@Brad Re: NYT
The Times sought and received help from the Obama administration in redacting WikiLeaks documents. WikiLeaks sought the same assistance, but was turned down. Maybe that’s what you’re thinking of.
ABC/CBS/CNN/FOX/MSNBC/NBC do not know what journalism is.
The only journalism we’ve had for awhile is through internet and bloggers, and a touch over at WAPO or NYT, but not so much.
WIKILEAKS is what journalism should look like.
I am thankful for WIKILEAKS and see good things each day because of them.
The politicians hate WIKILEAKS because we can see that our Emperors have no clothes.
I hope something happens soon, as our current govt plans to reduce payroll deductions that fund Social Security. Then they’ll say oh no social security has to go!
WIKILEAKS – oxygen for democracy.
Billy @ 5:
Nope. I remember the story quite specifically. Believe it had origanally come to my attention via Twitter. Just can’t recall from whom or where it was published to post the link here. 🙁
Brad,
Can you find the link on your browser history? Firefox keeps the sites you looked at for the month. I don’t know of the others.
Well…I suppose you’d have to understand the position CNN and any other large media corportation is in when it comes to their ownership and why they have to be “nice” to the government’s position. True hardcore journalism that Assange and his supporters is very upsetting to alot of people but yet it is the truest form of investigative journalism.
What I do applaud him for doing is finding a vehicle to report his findings that is totally unbiased fashion and actually having the balls to follow through on his initial goal.
Nice Mike ,your site is really classy !
Sorry to interupt the lovefest, but I still do not trust Wleaks.
Why has J.Ass. been such a publicity hound since even before the “collateral murder” video?
He could have easily stayed in the shadows.
But no, in classic frontman (CIA/mossad stooge) fashion, he has been jet setting around the world, hob-knobbing w/paparazzi like Paris Hilton.
He is not “the founder” of Wleaks. He was not a billionaire. He was not a millionaire. He was not even a hundredthousandaire. He was a broke, busted punk hacker. Got caught messing with the big boys, government/defense websites.
Most people caught playing those type games spend a little time in the big house. Not assclown.
Have you seen the photos of their underground compound? Very James Bondish and most decidedly not possible on a “hackers” salary.
Sadly, I’m afraid this phonyleaks operation will lead to a serious clampdown on internet freedom.
“…rebel”
Can you say, jealous? Your skirt is showing.
Wow! Michael Moore posts bail for Assange!
Proud to have held Michael’s Oscar. (No, that’s not a metaphor.)
Seriously, the pool of available modern-day heroes is dwindling, but Michael can always be counted on it seems.
Assange is what they wanted to be, but they have become something else. So, of course they hate him.
@camusrebel
I think the problem you’re having stems from your personal fascination with Julian Assange and not with our determination to get at the truth.
don’t be so silly, billy.
The truth is that the official fairy tale we are told about nine eleven is complete and utter horseshit. Scientifically impossible.
When a nobody is transformed into a rock star by the corporate lamestream, wise folk reserve judgment. When same nonentity goes out of his way to gratuitously denigrate those searching for the truth, we know.
It’s called a “tell”.
ok…….resume lovefest
Big media not be a mouth-piece for The State? Hurh, hurh, hurh…thasss sooo ree-deek-you-lusss!!
I don’t think Assange is a CIA plant, lol. That is far too clever for them. Get real.
How bout another theory? In all that I’ve read about this no one seems to guess that Wikileaks is using Assange- with his full knowledgeable cooperation- as a decoy. While the meat of Wikileaks, the programmers and web geeks, do their jobs unhindered, undistracted from their roles. He’s playing the bit role of mediamagnet celebrity. Wikileaks is certainly not Assange no matter how you slice it. He’s a pawn for the hidden mechanism.
Man looking at all the “Chicken Littles” running about and shouting that Julian is nothing more than a front man… Perhaps if the average american had an attention span a little longer than an egg plants, they might just begin to recognize that he is a whole lot more brilliant and intelligent than the ritalin sodden last 4 generations of American Citizens. I have watched and seen just how hopeless the average ‘murican today has become. Most are beyond help, and seeing that I am so very glad that I am no longer a resident in your country. I would much rather my childred be raised in a good stable European household that teaches history, languages, self worth, honor and above all critiques the governments that are a part of their countries. Just little things that do not seem to matter these days in the United States.