Smarter Advice — Interview With Ray McGovern Retired CIA Intelligence Agent

The former CIA officer is traveling the country giving people the information he acquired during his 27 years in service as a federal employee under seven U.S. presidents.

As the mid-term elections draw closer, McGovern will be on the road expressing his opinions on the Bush administration’s foreign policy which he thinks is failing to protect the short-and long-term interests of the United States.

He is not alone in his analysis.

In 2003, McGovern and about five former CIA foreign intelligence analysts formed the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). Their goal was to expose the mishandling of important intelligence on Iraq’s military capabilities prior to the U.S.-led invasion.

VIPS has not stopped its knowledge sharing, especially McGovern who was in Crawford last week sitting on a panel about the war crimes and crimes against humanity in which the Bush administration has been involved in the post 9/11 world.

It seems as if McGovern and VIPS are not alone either.

Most recently, Benjamin Ferenccz, a chief prosecutor of Nazi war crimes at Nuremberg, said last week that President George W. Bush and former Iraq President Saddam Hussein should both be tried for starting “aggressive” wars Bush for Iraq in 2003 and Hussein for Kuwait 10 years earlier.

Also, last week, 21 former U.S. generals and high-ranking national security advisors sent a letter to the Bush administration saying that an attack on Iran would be bad idea and peaceful negotiations over the Islamic nation’s nuclear enrichment program would be smarter.

McGovern told the Iconoclast as much the day before the news of the generals’ letter hit the press during an interview as a free speech program was going on at Camp Casey III in Crawford.

Earlier that afternoon, McGovern had participated in a counter-recruitment action in Killeen with the Iraq Veterans Against the War, Veterans for Peace, and Military Families Speak Out.

At the time of the 9 p.m. interview, McGovern was cleaned up. He wore a black T-shirt that said “We will not be silent” in English and Arabic in support of Raed Jarrar, the Iraq Project Director for Global Exchange who was prevented from boarding a flight at JFK airport because he was wearing a similar T-shirt.

An hour later, the Iconoclast got McGovern’s views of the current Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the relationship between the United States and Israel, and the effects on the United States if Iran is attacked.

Here’s that interview:

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ICONOCLAST: What is the feeling in the CIA right now with the Bush administration?

MCGOVERN: Well, you really can’t speak of one unitary CIA. I g