At 75, NATO Needs a Neurological Exam

By Ray McGovern and Robert Scheer / Original to ScheerPost

In this week’s episode of “Playing President,” Ray McGovern, 27-year CIA veteran and briefer of five presidents, continues to make sense of the world to “President” Scheer, who prepared for this role through his decades as a journalist, including in-depth interviews with five presidents from Nixon to Clinton. In the universe of “Playing President,” however, Scheer is not a journalist, but instead plays the President of the United States attempting to navigate the geopolitical landscape of governance and media with the help of his trusty daily briefer from the CIA, Ray McGovern.

This week, McGovern briefs the President on the much needed neurological exam that NATO needs after 75 years of existence — and perhaps the one the president needs as well.

Transcript

White House Intern: 00:00:00] Mr. President, Ray McGovern is here to brief you.

POTUS (Robert Scheer): Finally, somebody as old as I am. Boy, we’re getting there. You must get beat around the head a lot too while you’re still CIA briefing and you look worse than I do! But… I gotta wear these glasses because the people don’t know, it’s not just for sun, it’s prescription and it changes things and it helps me get on the stage. But I could talk honestly to you, Ray, because it’s no fun getting old. But we’re just both sharp as can be. And that’s what we’re here to do. 

And this is going to be a good week for me. Because, Trump, he puts down NATO. He doesn’t understand. People make fun of me when I say we’re running the world, right? That was what I did with that Stephanopoulos who used to work for Clinton. He never did like me. But you know, we do run the world. That’s what we’re here to do. That’s what America- that’s America’s great. Not going to be made great again. It’s great now. 

Hillary pointed that out. We’ve always been great and we do run the world. We’ve been running at least since the 00:01:00] end of that, when we won the second world war. Russians did- they claim they did a lot. They didn’t do anything, you know, we gave them all the stuff to run. 

But anyway yeah, with you I could leave the glasses on. I really do need them… read here a little bit… But NATO this week – this is a big deal. This is when we show that I know what I’m talking about. This is what I say. I don’t need to take a test. You don’t need to test how we think you know. You do things and I do it every day. I’m tested every hour…

Tell me what- first of all, what’s going on this Hungarian guy, forgetting his name… Orbán, Orman- 

Ray McGovern: Yeah, Viktor Orbán, uh-huh. Yeah.

POTUS: He always got the pronunciation… Okay. Yeah. So what’s he doing? He’s meeting with Putin and then he meets with the Xi over there in China. Boom, boom boom! And he was trying to make peace in the Ukraine. Wait a minute, we don’t want- that’s going to betray the Ukrainians.

And so what’s going on there with all that stuff

Ray McGovern: Mr. President, you’re quite right in focusing on Viktor Orbán and 00:02:00] his machinations over the last several days. But if I may, I’d just like to pick up on your comment about running the world. I know that you have quoted Madeleine Albright before, in private as well as public conversations, citing her as the wise woman who invented this indispensable role for the United States. Just to put a little context around that, just as a refresh- or a reminder, it was the case that we were the indispensable country in the world. 

As a matter of fact, George Kennan – the famous person who invented the containment doctrine for the Soviet Union – he said, in the first State Department policy planning paper, that, “The United States has domain over 50 percent of the world’s natural resources, but only comprises 6.5 percent of its 00:03:00] population. And therefore, we have to devise policies that can’t be sweetened by soft concepts like human rights or things of that nature. We have to exert our power to keep that disequilibrium to keep that disproportionality, and it’s going to come to the exercise of raw power.”

That’s what Kennan said back in 1948. Fifty years later – and this gets us to the NATO thing – when Bill Clinton was starting to enlarge NATO, Kennan had quite a different tune. He said, “No, this is really crazy. This is the worst thing you can do.” I have some little quotes from him here. “Oh, let’s forget it,” he says, ” this is this is something that will begin the Cold War. I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely as it will affect their policies. It’s a tragic mistake. There’s 00:04:00] no reason for it whatsoever. No one was threatening anyone else.” 

That’s 1998. So it’s 50 years later. Now, the reason I mentioned that is because NATO is conceived by most people as being a reaction to the Warsaw Pact, right? Warsaw Pact. And then we had to react to make sure that the Russians didn’t take over Europe. 

Actually, Mr. President, you should know that the -NATO came first, right? NATO came several years before the Warsaw Pact. So it was a way of controlling Europe. And as the first Secretary General said… 

POTUS: Hey, hey, Ray… Do you know what kind of week I’ve been having here? People- give me information that I can use because I’m not going to give us some history lesson. I’ll get something wrong. And everybody will give me a hard time about it, and that’s the game they’re playing now. They’re after me on everything. Tell me, NATO saved the free world, right?

It saved- stopped communism and saved the free world. Somebody asked me the other day in my 00:05:00] family, ” So what are we doing with putting NATO in with Japan and Korea and Asia and China,” and I couldn’t think of the answer! Don’t quote me on this now. Where’s that- is that White House intern there? Is he still listening to this? Yeah. What’s his name? Yeah.

Ray McGovern: There he is. 

POTUS: Okay. You just don’t… none of this is to be recorded now, what I’m saying… 

White House Intern: Yes exactly.

POTUS: But frankly, Ray, I need information I can use here that doesn’t trip up. We’re in a different ball game. I got four months here to show that, you know, yeah, okay, we run the world… I’ve got to show that I can run it. And I, frankly, I didn’t know the answer to that. So what I thought NATO was just for Europe. And what are we doing in expanding it to Asia? What’s it got to do with China? Don’t we have other pacts and other things? What’s happening here? And… 

Ray McGovern: Well they are expanding it, you know, in… 

POTUS: What is NATO anyway? It used to be what, just a bunch of European countries… how many was it like 16, or something like that? I can’t even remember who’s in 00:06:00] it now. How many have gotten there now? 

Ray McGovern: It was 14 in my day. It’s now grown like topsy to 32 members, some of them of very little consequence. And the whole idea was to confront the Soviet Union and make sure that it didn’t invade Western Europe.

Now, what I was about to say, is now it’s an anachronism. It’s a military alliance. And when the Soviet Union fell apart, there was no enemy! You ask why… 

POTUS: You’re sounding like Trump. He says we don’t need it. They’re not paying their share… 

Ray McGovern: At the risk of sounding like Trump, there are facts, and the facts are that when the Soviet Union imploded, Putin went to Bill Clinton and said, “Hey, I got an idea. Let us join NATO. We’ll be all one happy alliance here. And we’ll nourish each other and grow.”

And Clinton said, “Wow, let me ask my team,” and came back that evening at dinner and said, “My team says 00:07:00] no.” And the reason, of course, is that if you have no enemy, you have no profiteering by the military industrial complex.

So that was the situation shortly after Putin took over. So he took it to heart and he built up a military in Russia that hardly could be believed in terms of what he claimed. And now it’s turned out that it’s very effective and that it has hypersonic missiles… 

POTUS: All this, look, I got to appeal to people like this young Max here. How’d you get in this job anyway?  You’re just that Dianne Feinstein, she’s your aunt?

White House Intern: Yes

POTUS: Or knows you, or knows your aunt’s aunt? Anyway… 

White House Intern: She’s my aunt. 

POTUS: You got all the security clearances, right? And you’re on our side of this thing, right Max?

White House Intern: Yeah. 

POUTS: So what this guy’s telling me, Ray is telling me, do you know any of that? So what’s this whole thing? What does NATO got to do with Korea and all that? What do they teach in school? And what do you know 00:08:00] about this? 

White House Intern:  Well, as far as I know, Mr. President, NATO is there to defend democracy globally. And, you know, it’s a great tool to do that. And I think… 

POTUS: Oh, globally. So we defend NATO, then it should be in Asia, right? NATO?

White House Intern: Yeah.

POTUS: I mean that’s confusing me a little bit because people keep asking me, what are we doing now? We’re lining up Japan, Korea, who knows what else. And I’m getting confused because here’s India now, Modi he’s also– not only Orbán! Orbán, is that his name?

Modi, he went to see Putin! He’s India, right? And what is he doing? Now it’s my guys over at the Pentagon, they told me that India gets a lot of its arms from Russia. And they’re buying the, what, they’re the biggest oil purchaser, big as China? So much for our barrier. So, Max what do you know about NATO?

Yeah, we got- I asked the CIA guy here, McGovern. See, give him a test, Ray? What are they teaching you there? 00:09:00] 

White House Intern: Well, I think… 

POTUS: Yeah, because you’re the people I got to reach. They say I’m too old to reach people like you. What are you, 20 or something? 

White House Intern: Well, yeah, the thing is, Mr President, is that I think what you’re doing is great. I think that the only people that don’t like NATO are the far right. And maybe some people that are compromised by Russia. 

And I think that– I think that you’re doing the right thing. And the only people that, young people, in my opinion, all the young people I know, my friends from Harvard and Yale and all of us guys, we really love NATO and we think it’s a great thing.

The only people that don’t like it really are, the Trumpists and the Russians. So I’m a little concerned with the advice that Ray here is giving you. And I would love an opportunity to maybe work and work with you closely on this. 

POTUS: Yeah, well don’t be disrespectful of older people. Ray’s been with the CIA, was there for 27 years… before you were ever even born… And he knows- let’s 00:10:00] get back to Ray here. Ray, give it to me short and sweet. What are they going to pull on me this week? This NATO meeting, it’s the 75th anniversary, that much I know. What’s going to happen here?

Are they falling apart? I know Turkey plays footsie with Putin. Now you got Hungary. India is now… We were supposed to be isolating Putin!? Where did that go? 

Ray McGovern: That didn’t really succeed, Mr. President. The isolation really worked the other way. We and the British and other white folks in NATO pretty much are the minority now. The big issue here, of course, is as usual, whether NATO wants to bring Ukraine in as a membe. Now that has already caused one war, namely the war that goes on now in Ukraine. 

And that was very clear because the Russians told us way back in 2008 when a NATO summit – like the one starting tomorrow – happened 00:11:00] in Bucharest. And the final declaration under Bush and Cheney and Condoleezza Rice said, “Ukraine and Georgia will become members of NATO.” That set down the cudgel there, that threw down the gauntlet, and the Russians have been trying to tell us ever since, “Look, this is a no. Net means net. This is a red line. And if you take Ukraine into NATO, we’re going to have to decide whether we need to invade Ukraine or not.”

The last thing of consequence that happened was…

POTUS: Wait a minute. They invaded Ukraine and then we beat them back, right? The Ukrainian people rose up, beat them back, and now they seized four provinces there. And now what is– China’s talking about how they want some kind of peace deal? That’s what the…

Ray McGovern: Yeah, I was referring to the outset of this one when we decided that we should have Ukraine and NATO. That was in 2008 and it came down to 2022 00:12:00] and again, the Russians laid out a plan: “Look, we don’t want.Ukraine and NATO. And here’s how we can restructure the security structure in Europe. And if you agree not to let Ukraine and NATO, we will not invade Ukraine.” 

Now, how do I know that? Stoltenberg, the secretary general said so on the 7th of September last year before the EU Parliament. What he said was, “The Russians, they said, ‘We will invade Ukraine if you don’t come to an arrangement with us.’

And so we said, ‘No arrangement.’ And so they invaded Ukraine. And so they wanted no expansion from NATO and they got two more! Sweden and Finland.” As if that compensates for destroying a whole country, killing upwards of 400- 500,000 00:13:00] young men. In other words, that was the name of the game. They wanted Ukraine in NATO, so that NATO would be on that long border with Russia and able to be a bulwark against Russia for anything that NATO – a military alliance, mind you – might plan.

POTUS: You got to help me now. It’s not a function of age, but it’s a lot– a lot to know. The more, the longer you live, the longer you learn and so forth. But, and sometimes I just slip back and I think about now how the hell did Putin– isn’t he the guy we picked? When he was with that drunken guy, Yeltsin? The guy that said he’s too drunk? 

The guy who opposed Gorbachev before, when Reagan was going to sell out the country? And then under the first President Bush, we saved it, but we went– we backed Yeltsin there at some point, and then Yeltsin was drunk most of the time. Most of those Russians are drunk, or 00:14:00] used to be. Putin is some kind of teetotaler in that case. 

So anyway Putin was our guy, right? Our guy. And he said he hated communists and everything. Now he’s getting along with India. He gets along with China. He gets along with all these people, Hungary. And he isn’t a communist, right? So NATO was about stopping communism. 

See, I think Trump is going to go wild on this. If I have to debate him again, because he’s going to say, what does NATO do? And who’s paying for it? Why don’t those other people pay for it? That’s what he says. I got to be able to defend NATO.

I got to defend NATO this week. So what is the… is Putin a communist? Is he still a communist? 

Ray McGovern: No, he’s not. 

POTUS: We’ve got intelligence. Does the CIA know? Is that why he’s getting hooked up with China? You gotta help me make some sense of this. 

Ray McGovern: Mr. President, if he’s a communist still, he’s a really sneaky fellow because there’s 00:15:00] nothing to indicate that he feels that communism is the wave of the future. As a matter of fact, he’s disavowed it openly. 

POTUS: Yeah, and he tells me he’s a Christian. He tells me he’s a faithful person. 

Ray McGovern: And he’s a practical guy who wants to put Russia back on the map and has largely succeeded in doing that. As for “we picking him,” not really, Mr. President, what happened was Yeltsin groomed him to take over.

And then he asked somebody else to take over when he was just about petering out from drunkenness and that didn’t work out. And so Putin was the second choice, but he rose to the occasion. He said he’d rebuild Russia and that he’d stand up, make sure that people didn’t tear Russia apart. Now that was after a decade of precisely that. Of the oligarchs, east and west, absconding with the wealth from Russian national resources and so forth. 

So he’s responsible for reaching out to China as a counterweight to us in the United 00:16:00] States. And he’s done splendidly on that because China, as you know, is pretty much joined at the hip with Russia. And so it’s really two against one now. If you count North Korea and the treaty, the defense treaty that Russia has with North Korea, you could say it’s two and a half against one. 

POTUS: Yeah, but explain, because look… And you know, old people can think clearly and I can think clearly. I’ve been around a long time. 

But to try to make sense of a world that changes all the time, that’s a different thing. Now, my memory was that when China and Russia were both communist countries, they didn’t get along. They fought, they shot at each other over the… there was a Sino– what do you call it? Sino-Soviet dispute, right? 

Ray McGovern: Exactly. 

POTUS: I got it right? There was Sino-Soviet dispute, goes back to Mao, didn’t get along with Stalin.

Ray McGovern: You got it. 

POTUS: And then– Who was it? 00:17:00] Mao went to Russia, Khrushchev treated him like shit, kept him locked in a hotel room or something. I remember hearing all those stories.

So when they were both communists, they didn’t get along at all. 

Ray McGovern: That’s right. 

POTUS: And yet, and we got into that Vietnam War because Vietnam was supposed to be beholden to these communists. They read the same Marx or Lennon or somebody. So now Vietnam is still communist, China is still communist. They don’t get along so well.

We think we can work with Vietnam to counter China. Russia is not communist, but now for the first time they’re getting along with China. Meanwhile, you got India and China; that all my life I’ve been hearing, don’t get along, and they’re gonna fight, and they’re fighting about their border, and everything, and yet, they’re both getting along with Russia. 

Why is Modi in Russia now? What’s he doing there? What’s going on? It’s hard– now, if I ever expressed this– I’m talking to you like a guy I’ve known a long time, 00:18:00] Ray. If I say this to other people, they say his brain’s not working well, he’s not thinking clearly, but how do you make sense of this?

Why do we lose Putin? He believes in capitalism. He believes in God, Christianity the Russian Orthodox, it’s another form of Christianity, but he believes in that. So why India? And what is this BRIC thing that they keep talking about? Why are they in the same alliance or that Shanghai thing I just heard about?

And so what we got going is NATO, which is a military alliance to stop Russia when it was communist. Now we’re using it to stop both China and Russia. Where is the sense in all this, Ray? 

Ray McGovern: Mr. President, if I may say so, there are a lot of folks who think we’re overextended, particularly in trying to extend some purview for NATO, the national– the Atlantic establishment to the Pacific.00:19:00] 

So when you have the North Atlantic Treaty Organization fooling around China and Japan and so forth, you’ve got an overextended situation here, which is not going to work. Now, the focus this week is on NATO, and the question is how they will treat Ukraine. 

Now, the whole business is that the U.S. has refused to talk to the Russians, to the Russians with respect to how to fix this problem. Now, Orbán, who we’ve mentioned before, the president of Hungary was in Kyiv just four days ago. And then he visited Moscow, and lo and behold, as he left Moscow, he warned his interviewer, “Look, you’re going to have a surprise on Monday.”

And on Monday today, he shows up in Beijing. And what’s he doing? Well, he’s making no bones about the fact that he’s trying to create some sort of structure, whether it’s only him or whatever, 00:20:00] some sort of structure to get people to talk to one another. 

POTUS: Yeah, another briefing I had earlier from the state. This guy Orbán, he’s the head of the European Union right now. 

Ray McGovern: That’s correct, yeah. 

POTUS: How the hell did that happen? And what’s this? 

Ray McGovern: They have a… 

POTUS:  I thought the European Union, they were allied with us, so what’s he doing? 

Ray McGovern: They have a rotating presidency, and by chance, or providence if you will, Orban has six months in this post. And he’s made no bones about the fact that, look, I’m in this position of some authority, I’m going to do what I can. 

POTUS: What’s the title? What’s his title? 

Ray McGovern: He’s president of the European Council, is it? Those European things kind of confuse me.

POTUS: But he’s not a figurehead, he can speak, or do–? 

Ray McGovern: Yeah he’s not given permission by the other EU authorities, but whether he needs that or not, A different kind of person would solicit that, but Orbán says, “Look, this has gone too far. This is far too serious. The solution is to talk to one another.  So I’m going to 00:21:00] talk to Zelensky.” 

He goes to Zelensky and he says, “Look, here’s an idea. How about an immediate ceasefire without any conditions”? And Zolinski looks, and publicly, Zelensky says “No, no, we can’t do that, we can’t trust the Russians.”

So Orbán goes to Moscow and talks to Putin. Okay? And then they have this final press conference afterwards. And one of the reporters says, “Now Mr. Orban when– what did Zelensky say when you proposed this arrangement to include an immediate ceasefire?”

And Orbán’s a clever guy. He turned to President Putin and he said, “Well, I told President Putin.” And so the reporter says “President Putin, will you share with us what Zelensky’s reaction was?” And Putin says, “No.” 

Now, what’s my point here? There’s some secret stuff going on here. There’s some leeway in both positions, okay? Orbán is trying to get people together so at 00:22:00] least they can talk, okay? And I imagine – and the State Department has not been answering my calls – I imagine that Orbán’s people are in touch with your people and would very much like to meet with you this week before Orbán leaves Washington with the other NATO members.

So you might be alert for that because it’s gonna look– it’s gonna look very funny if Orbán can speak to the head of Ukraine, and he can speak to the head of Russia, and he can speak to Xi Jinping, and then he has to speak to you, and he doesn’t get an interview. So you might want to keep that in mind.

This might be an opening where you could find out what flexibility there really might be in Putin’s position, for example. Because if anyone would know that by now, Orbán would, and they’re holding their cards close to the vest, witness the fact that Putin said, “No, I won’t share with you what Orban told me about 00:23:00] Zelensky’s reaction.”

POTUS: So what the hell are they talking about? We just committed to 10 years of backing for Ukraine. And the Russians, they’re not going to give them back Crimea. They claim it was historically the seat of the whole Russian Empire. Catherine the Great and all that crap. And then those four provinces, they’re mostly Russian speaking people, right?

Ray McGovern: That’s correct. 

POTUS: That intern, Max… you still on there? That kid. Hello. Yeah, Max. 

White House Intern: Yes. 

POTUS: Yeah, wake up. You’re working in the White House for God’s sake. Okay. Tell the guy from the CIA here what you were telling me about Ukraine and the four provinces of Crimea. I don’t know where you heard that stuff. You went to some kind where young people do. They talk about politics. All the time. So what was that crap you were giving me the other day? 

White House Intern: Are you talking about 2014, Mr. President and 2015? 

POTUS: Well, the whole thing about that Ukraine is a minority. They speak Russian and the whole stuff. 00:24:00] What was that? 

White House Intern: In 2014… well with the administration that you were vice president of, worked to help Ukraine regain their democracy by overthrowing the government, the pro-Russian government, of Victor Yanukovych.

And then… And you guys did that by funding, you know, lots of NGOs that were on the side of the protesters. There’s arguments about whether the protesters were the majority or the minority, but I think they’re the majority. I don’t know what Ray says about that. And then Putin actually annexed Crimea after, and he said that the precedent established by what we did in Kosovo was the way that he was able to do that.

But the difference there is that we’re a democracy, I believe. And then Putin is a dictator, so it doesn’t exactly work the same way when you have two different kinds of governments doing it, so that’s…

POTUS: But the thing you were telling me, because the sticking point is going to be Crimea, yeah, and then the four 00:25:00] provinces, right?

I got that right? That they control now most of it. And then they’re going to say, “these are people– that’s all bullshit, because they had an election, but that don’t mean anything.” But he says that Max, you were saying they speak Russian and they got a different branch of…

White House Intern: Yeah the eastern part of Ukraine is ethnically Russian. So a lot of them actually support Russia. 

POTUS: Ray, Ray, is that right Ray? This kid know what he’s talking about?

Ray McGovern: That’s correct.

POTUS: So why doesn’t anybody tell me this stuff? So what is Orbán doing? He wants to give away those four provinces and let Russia stay in the Crimea and call that peace? Is that what you think? You know what Trump would do to me? I’ll get 10 percent of the vote. 

Ray McGovern: Well that’s what– that’s what Orbán…

POTUS: You can tune out there, Max. Thanks. That’s what you were saying the other day, right? I try to listen to these young people and talk to them, but they– I don’t know… I don’t know where they’re coming from!

You know, they don’t get quite the patriotism that we… You know, you Ray! You joined 00:26:00] when you were in college, right? You went into ROTC. You went into army intelligence, then spent 27 years… You know that we’re on the side of virtue. 

Ray McGovern: Well, Mr. President in realpolitik virtue is in the eye of the beholder. What would I say about– Well, in 2014, things changed. And that was, as Max pointed out, because we orchestrated, together with our European colleagues, a coup d’etat in Kyiv, replacing Yanukovych, who was relatively pro Russian. And replaced him with a regime, the first thing of which they did was, declare that we want to join NATO. A no-no. The Russians had made that clear in 2008 and that slithers down all the way to today because that’s the big deal.

Now Biden, excuse me, Mr. President. You, Mr. President, I’ve talked about Putin, not stopping… 00:27:00] 

POTUS: Was that a senior moment? Was that an episode or is that an illness there Ray? Have you been tested? 

Ray McGovern: No, but…

POTUS: They want to test me. They all want to test me. You just made a typical slip. Even a young kid could make that slip. And they’re hounding me for that! 

Ray McGovern: Yeah, I have to say… 

POTUS: …forgot who you were talking to. 

Ray McGovern: Mr. President, that’s a good point. I do herewith declare that I will submit to a neurological test and have the results publicized in the Washington Post if they’re interested. What I was saying was…

POTUS: You’re being a little flippant there. The fact is they’re hounding me with this crap and I wonder how many heads of big businesses, how many heads of universities, how many people that have power really want to have that kind of test. 

Because we know part of the life cycle, you slow down. I don’t walk the same way. I don’t speak the same way and so forth, but we’re having an intelligent discussion here, Ray! About stuff that most people don’t know about, you know? They don’t know about it and they run countries to0! Tell me what the hell is going 00:28:00] on with France and Macron and all that stuff. I thought this guy had Western Europe solid, and France solid.

And he was going to even send some troops over there to Ukraine and do some stuff… Now he can’t even win a goddamn election! And what you got these lefties. That’s another thing. Before we end here, what the hell is going on in England? What the old labor party, I thought they were finished, they come back in. 

And then you got France there. You got some people who are really dangerous. They’re in this what they call Popular Front, it’s got something to do with World War II. And, what, they claim a world where there was a popular front against it. I don’t even know what the hell that’s about. I never heard of that, but what’s going on?

Can we count them in right now? Can we count on France and England? And who’s with us? I know we got the– the Swedes is great because they used to be neutral. Yeah neutralist, you know, that’s a phony position, but, some of them others… But what’s happening and try to do faster because we got to get out of here.00:29:00] 

I got to prepare for all these people coming. I can’t even remember all the countries! That’s one of the really bad things. How many did you say? There are 35 now in NATO? 

Ray McGovern: 32, 32.

POTUS: They’re all gonna be here and I got supposed to remember who’s running each. country and where these countries are?

Ray McGovern: Their name tags, Mr.President. So it’s real, real easy to remember their names. 

POTUS: Well make sure they got their name tags on there. Cause you know, they give me a chart. They say, “This is how you climb up the steps.” And now there’s fewer steps, thank god, on air force one… But you know, they tell you, “You come in and the left, you go…” But they don’t– those cards, first of all, they gotta be big or I don’t know what the hell they’re saying. 

And then everybody in the press makes a big thing about it. So I just know I get one of those– what does Trump call them, shit ass countries? You know, he’s right in some ways. There’s a hell of a lot of countries there, and so I gotta remember every one of them and what they eat for dinner and where– who’s their leader. 

But okay cut it sweet and short. 

Ray McGovern: Yeah Mr President, I think one thing you need to be aware 00:30:00] of is that there’s something very distinctive about all these leaders. And that is that they’re all really quite like you and like me. Unlike the majority of the rest of the world, which is people B.I.people of color, we white folks are all put over into the corner where NATO is the primary power.

So that’s one factor to remember. Another is that your opponent in the election has been quoted by. Mr. Putin himself in answer to a question about, “What about what about Mr. Trump saying that he’d like to settle this thing in one day?” And Putin said, “We welcome that.That’s a good idea. We’re not quite sure how he’s going to do it, but we approve it and we welcome it.” 

Now, for what that’s worth you should know that’s out 00:31:00] there, and that these people will be hearing that. But more important, they’ll be hearing a firsthand report from Orbán. And as I say if you haven’t heard from your people yet, that Orbán would dearly love to speak to you.

I fully expect that. There’s one other thing, Mr. President, that I want to make sure I call to your attention. That General Dynamics factory for very sensitive and sophisticated munitions that was blown up just a couple days ago… it’s a little bizarre that there’s nothing very much in the press or anything else about that.

And we just hope that the FBI is more devoted to answering your telephone calls, than ours. Because to the degree that investigation is proceeding, it’ll be really interesting to know who has the incentive, or cui bono, for blowing up the kinds of factories that make all kinds of arms that 00:32:00] are headed to Ukraine.

So these are things that we, the intelligence community, try to put together, but very often we run into resistance for security reasons to share this information. So best I can do on that one will be to make sure that you know that this investigation is going on. We don’t know here, what’s what the results are…

POTUS: But what do you know? Because no one’s ever made it clear to me who blew up those pipelines. 

Ray McGovern: Yeah.

POTUS: That the Germans had invested so much in. Do we know that even to this day? I keep wondering about that. That might come up. 

Ray McGovern: Mr. President, we know that, at least we’re convinced that Sy Hirsch is correct in reconstructing the whole episode there as to how those things were blown up.

And of course, there were warnings by Blinken and by Newland and actually by you yourself saying, 00:33:00] that pipeline will not go through, and all of a sudden it was blown up. There are people in New York… 

POTUS: Why don’t you tell me about this guy, Sy Hirsch? Isn’t he that, what was it, the guy who invented that whole My Lai thing, that we killed a lot of civilians in Vietnam and everything? Didn’t he write that? That wasn’t– he got a full list of lies or something for that? 

Ray McGovern: He didn’t invent it, Mr. President, he reported on it. 

POTUS: How come he’s not in jail? He’s like that guy Assange, that they’re now saying nice things about… You know, I got my hand forced and because the British wouldn’t go along with just turning him over easily. We could have had him in maximum security and that would have been over. 

Now who God knows what he’s going to say, but you’re quoting you– the CIA is quoting Sy Hirsch to me.

Ray McGovern: Well, on this kind of well documented research item, Sy is the best witness… My Lai…

POTUS: So we did, My Lai, we did that.

Ray McGovern: I can’t confess to that. 

POTUS: We killed two year olds and shot them, or our troops 00:34:00] did. 

Ray McGovern: Oh, in My Lai, yes, that’s happened. We– that’s, nobody disputes that. 

POTUS: We admit that?

Ray McGovern: Yeah, there was an investigation, and Lieutenant Calley was convicted and then pardoned by Nixon, if memory serves.

And then, of course, there were the Abu Ghraib torture abuses. Sy Hersh reported on those…

POTUS: Ray, Ray, Ray, we don’t say torture, we say enhanced interrogation. 

Ray McGovern: Yeah. 

POTUS: That’s a scientific expression endorsed by leading psychologist– psychiatrist who did the program… Enhanced interrogation. What are you doing?

We’re running out of time here, but I don’t mean to revisit all this stuff. What I want to know is, and I want you to give it to me straight, are our allies unraveling? Are they losing heart? Because after all, it was Boris Johnson, that guy, he was a good guy. He went over there and told the Ukrainians, “Oh, Zelensky, you can’t make peace with the Russians.00:35:00] We’re in with you for the long haul. Play with us and you’re going to get everything.” 

So now he’s not there. He’s discredited in England. You got the laborers coming back. Now, sometimes labor is even better on these war things, like Tony Blair was, but still I worry about them. What’s happening there?

And then what do you got going on in France? You just have avoided that. You got a Popular Front. You got these other people and they’re raising some questions. Do we–? That’s the heart of NATO! Right? France, Germany. Germany is run by people who think we screwed up their economy. They had that cheap oil from Russia and now they don’t get it.

They’re suffering and the leadership is embarrassed even though they’re supposed to be on the left. They’re embarrassed by the people who normally support them. So let’s end this though, because I got to meet these folks from NATO this week. And aside from remembering their names and all that… And damn it, if somebody had told me we expanded this far 00:36:00] with all these half baked countries or whatever, what is he called, shithead country, what did Trump say?

Ray McGovern: Hole, it’s not head, but hole.

POTUS: Shithole countries. You know, it’s true, but you got to remember, what, 35 names of these… And now they want to put Asia in, and how the hell are we getting that? We’re gonna have Korea and Japan, what? We want them in NATO now? And how do we defend it? 

Ray McGovern: Well Mr. President…

POTUS: Let’s just wrap this up and tell me, are we losing this?

I know they always think I’m losing my mind. I think my mind is pretty clear. I just think what I’m told to sell… You know, that’s what the president does. I’m supposed to– don’t confuse the thing being sold with the thing itself. Okay. The thing itself, we know, is a pretty big mess. You and I know that. The thing being sold is democracy, freedom, accountability, right? Western civilization, the future of the world, right? 

How do I sell that when it looks like our part of the world is floundering, is dividing, is full unhappy 00:37:00] campers? What’s going on here? 

Ray McGovern: Well Mr. President I agree. It’s a hard sell if you look at it. And the way we have supported Ukraine against a much more powerful neighbor Russia, when your president and mine, Obama, warned that the worst thing we could do about Ukraine would be to give those people the idea that they could prevail in an open confrontation with Russia.

They’re in a bad place now, and the worst news, of course, is that it’s just a matter of time. Most people think weeks, which would allow Putin’s forces to move forward, up to and Kyiv if he decides to take them. So that’s what this NATO summit is all about. And people are aware of that. And the information or the money that we have appropriated to help Ukraine, not going to get there on time.

And as I have warned you before, Mr. President, we think that Putin has the capability of finishing the whole mess 00:38:00] before the election. So the question is there another possibility? And what Orbán represents is an honest broker attempt to get people at least talking so that the worst doesn’t happen before the election or whatever.

Let me just finish with one thing that when you talk about enhanced interrogation techniques. Mr. President, you should be aware that’s a direct translation of Verschärfte Vernehmung which is the Gestapo handbook description for enhanced interrogation technique… So, maybe there’d be a better way to phrase it, but it’s not any softer to say enhanced interrogation techniques when you realize that this verschafte is enhanced, okay?

Vernehmung is interrogation techniques and Sy Hirsch – who reported on the destruction of the pipeline, the Nord Stream pipeline – was responsible for uncovering and reporting on these so called enhanced 00:39:00] interrogation techniques. But I just wanted to put that on the record so that when you quote that phrase, that was something devised by Dick Cheney’s speechwriters, and it doesn’t mean anything other than what was spelled out in that Gestapo handbook. We have the handbook, by the way. 

POTUS: So you think I should release that report that Max’s– the senator who appointed him, Dianne Feinstein, that report on torture, because, you know, we never released that. 

Ray McGovern: That would be an act of extreme courage to do that. As you know, Obama and John Brennan, who had some unexplained very tight connection… Obama did everything he possibly could to deprive Diane Feinstein of outing that report. 

Now, to her credit, to her great credit, she outed the the executive summary, which goes something a couple hundred pages. Okay, it’s awful.

POTUS: Yeah. But we redacted the shit outta it. Come on, Ray, you… 

Ray McGovern: It’s still very clear.

POTUS: Yeah it’s very clear. 00:40:00] I agree with you. We should have redacted more.But what am I saying? You know what I’m saying. 

Ray McGovern: Yeah. 

POTUS: Okay, the public didn’t need to have that kind of– ’cause it breaks their spirit, we don’t like… That’s why we say enhanced interrogation, because we don’t want to say torture, but sometimes you got to do torture, right Ray?

You’re in the CIA, you know all that. You’ve been doing torture forever! 

Ray McGovern: Torture doesn’t work, Mr. President. 

POTUS: Ah. 

Ray McGovern: If you want the reliable information… The head of the army said – on the same day that he knew that George W. Bush was going to get up and advertise these enhanced interrogation techniques – General John Kimmons, three star head of army intelligence, got up at the Pentagon at the same time and said, “We know from previous experience, especially the experience of the last three years, that never has it been possible to get reliable information from using torture techniques. We know that, and we know that especially from the experience of the 00:41:00] last three years, period.”

End quote. Gutsy General. What happened to him? Well he didn’t get promoted, that’s for sure but he told the truth. Torture doesn’t work. As a matter of fact, it’s counterproductive. 

Here’s an example. You’re at Iwo Jima, right? And this is a true story. A lieutenant, sergeant walking about trying to see if there’s any Japanese around says, “Oh, this Japanese comes out of the cave.” 

And the sergeant says, “Lieutenant, should I plug him?” And the lieutenant says, “No, don’t plug him. We don’t do that.” So the guy spoke French. So did the lieutenant. They got together. The guy came in. They apprehended him. Guess who he was? He was the code clerk, code clerk for the Japanese fleet.

They took him back to Washington, helped to break the code, and that, you know, that’s the kind of thing. If you get people shooting people who are who are about to be captured, then they’re going to shoot you first. If they think that maybe they’ll treat you according to the Unicorn Code of Military Justice and the Geneva Conventions, then there’s a chance you could have a 00:42:00] prize, like this particular guy, who didn’t look like a code clerk, but was. 

That’s just one example of why not only torture doesn’t work or shooting people doesn’t work, but that sometimes it’s really counterproductive. 

POTUS: And Ray, not that this is helpful to me anywhere, the last thing in the world I want to talk about this lecture is torture or hand stabbing.

But just between us, you were at the CIA. Now, you were in a different division. They’re doing, I got all that. The bad guys or the other guys, they’re over there. But did you ever tell them that story? 

Ray McGovern: I didn’t…

POTUS: You weren’t a whistleblower. You weren’t like Julian Assange. You wouldn’t be here talking to me now, right?

Ray McGovern: I didn’t actually learn that story until after I had retired, Mr. President. 

POTUS: Oh. 

Ray McGovern: But we were in a position to comment on some of the more odd proposals by the operatives on the other side of those turnstiles that we had on every 00:43:00] floor but very rarely were we able to stop them. 

POTUS: We always bring up those turnstiles when I talk to you. What the hell were they? 

Ray McGovern: Do you remember getting on the subway in New York? There were turnstiles. You had to put in a little token or something and you push it. There were those turnstiles on every floor except the basement of the new headquarters building in Langley built around 1962. Okay? What was it?

What was that function? The analysts, where I work, could not go to the operations side of the house without a special permission that they had to show the guard at the turnstiles. Why? Because they wanted to keep us separate. When I learned about a coup, it was usually from the New York Times or CBS.

Sometimes, and this is maybe interesting to you, Mr. President, under Director Colby he saw the merit in giving us substantive people a look at some of the more bizarre covert action 00:44:00] proposals that were coming up to him from the other side of the house. Very often we’d say, “That’s crazy, mister. That’s never going to work. It’s going to have a rebound effect. Don’t– our suggestion is that it’s not a good idea.” 

And sometimes he took our advice and was able to face them down. That didn’t happen before the Bay of Pigs invasion, 1961, when he was persuaded – Kennedy was persuaded – because Eisenhower said it was okay to try to invade Cuba.

In other words, what didn’t happen was, they persuaded Kennedy that there would be a revolution in Cuba… that Fidel Castro would be thrown out from this great insurrection. And they never checked with the Cuban analysts. They never asked the people who have substantive expertise on Cuba, who would have said, “That’s a cockamamie idea. Castro is very popular, and there’s no way that you’re gonna land on 00:45:00] some beach and start a revolution.” 

So that didn’t happen, and Kennedy, there’s one kind of reason why Kennedy said, “I’d like to tear up the CIA to scatter it to the four winds.” And of course, in my view, that’s what did Mr.Kennedy in.

POTUS: All right, let’s, we’re gonna have to end this today Ray. It’s all interesting, but the main thing is you gotta get somebody over there to give me a cheat sheet. So I know who all these people are from what country they are at this NATO meeting. 

And then something simple, like what am I asking them? Is it personal? How’s your wife? What’s going on? Or the “economy’s booming”?  I need that because I’m going to have…

Ray McGovern: I’d be happy–

POTUS: Ray, you’ve never been in my seat. I’m going to be checked, you know, whatever. Okay? 

Ray McGovern: Happy to do that, Mr. President. Please be alert for a call from Orbán because my sense is – and this is just from my experience – that he would like to 00:46:00] talk to you and that if he’s unsuccessful in doing that, you will be– you will have the appearance of being the odd man out, he having talked to Zelensky, Putin, and Xi Jinping within the last one week. I’d be alert for that. I hope your people tell you about it. 

POTUS: You know what I don’t– okay… Orbán, he’s supposed to be on the right, right? 

Ray McGovern: Yeah

POTUS: What the hell is he doing being this peacenik here, you know? And the same thing with Modi in India. What the hell is he doing? He’s supposed to hate China, and he’s supposed to hate the communists, right? He’s a religious guy, and what the hell is he doing cozying up to Putin, who’s also supposed to be on the right? You know, people get angry. They’re saying, I can’t– they say it’s my brain, it’s not working. 

I’m going to tell you, because I’ve known you a long time. What’s not working is the logic and the facts that I’m supplied. Year after 00:47:00] year, I’ve seen this all my life. You make– they make fools out of us by lying to us. I’m talking about our own people and then you got to remember all this stuff, right?

So what do I do? What do I think about the French election? Now, should I be happy that the lefties won? And the right got defeated? Or that our guy, Macron, who I complained about in other times, now I’m supposed to worry that he doesn’t seem to represent a very large number… And so I want to put yourself in– you, to put yourself in you to put yourself in my shoes. 

Ray McGovern: Sure. The reason– he’s a weak sister. Macron is a weak sister.

POTUS: I know I’m talking about a larger problem and we’re going to have to stop this conversation, but think about it for the next time. Am I crazy or is the country crazy? Am I– is my brain not working well, or is our overall position not working well?

Because I’m expected to go before the American people now this 00:48:00] week and make sense of a world… Yeah, I voted and I voted on one side, I didn’t want to go for that build up and I went for that one. But the fact of the matter is. Our policy, our defense of what we’re doing, our things around the world… I’ve got to go out there and say, “We’re defending democracy, we’re advancing democracy,” and, it’s not my brain that’s not working well when I try to make it all logical. I’ve been given a ridiculous hand here to play with, and that came from guys like you at the CIA and the State Department and everyone else. 

So cut me a little slack here, Ray. It’s a hard thing to sell. 

Ray McGovern: I just hope that you have time to review the things that I’ve told you. I think you’ll find them quite different from the things you were told to say exactly – wow – exactly a year ago when you said Putin had already lost in Ukraine.00:49:00] 

He had suffered a strategic defeat. Now, unfortunately, that is what Bill Burns, the head of the CIA, told you to say. But as you know now, it was dead wrong. And right now, it’s only a matter of weeks before Putin can move and pretty much destroy what’s left of the Ukrainian forces. And in my view, you’re going to be faced with some really tough decisions.

What do you do then? Right before the election, is there some way you can stem the Russian advance? And my fear, Mr. President, for what it’s worth is that your advisors will say, “We did the cluster munitions when we ran out of the one five, five millimeter, now we have little low yield nukes. Let’s use one of them.”

I hope you’re prepared for that because I wouldn’t put that past the people who have been advising you in error. 

POTUS: Yeah. Let me tell you something, Ray. The reason that you’re over there in 00:50:00] supposed intelligence and everything and the reason I’m president, is there’s a third way. I’m going to say, correctly, and you’re going to give me information next time we talk to back it up. That it’s… somebody lost this thing. It’s who lost China? Who lost this? Who lost that? 

And they’re not hanging on me because we would have given those arms faster if the Republicans in Congress hadn’t opposed. And if that Trump, when he was president, hadn’t cozied up to Putin, they wouldn’t have been able to do this thing at all. So Trump is the pro-Putin guy, the agent of Putin. 

I’m the guy that’s trying to save the Ukrainian people and the rest of the people in this world from tyranny. And I want you to give me a position paper that backs that up. And if you can’t do that, get someone else to do it and hand me your resignation. Okay? 

Ray McGovern: Mr. President, I can tell you 00:51:00] already, that that kind of position paper will be crafted in the tradition of your new advisors to please you, to tell you what you want to hear.

We do do that kind of stuff. I will give you a fact laden answer. Brief and you can decide yourself whether it supports that kind of view or whether it does not. 

POTUS: Okay, Ray, you know, maybe came down a little hard… and we are too old timers. By the way, how come when I stand up and the cameras come over –  now they come in at all these different angles – they show I got this big bald spot back there.

You got a big bald spot back there?

Ray McGovern: I’m not going to show you, Mr. President, because it would destroy my image. 

POTUS: Yeah let me just say, because I had all those hairs put in there and it looks good, but that, and that probably hurt me more than all my gas and everything.

But you could tell! You’re with me all the time! You know how reasonable, smart and everything I am. So that’s why I keep you 00:52:00] around. You know, we’re on the same page. And what do these young people know? I hope that kid’s not listening. All right. Take care. See you next time. You still got a job. 

Ray McGovern: Thank you, Mr.President.

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Ray McGovern

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. His 27 years as a C.I.A. analyst included leading the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch and conducting the morning briefings of the President’s Daily Brief. In retirement he co-founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

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Robert Scheer

Robert Scheer, publisher of ScheerPost and award-winning journalist and author of a dozen books, has a reputation for strong social and political writing over his nearly 60 years as a journalist. His award-winning journalism has appeared in publications nationwide—he was Vietnam correspondent and editor of Ramparts magazine, national correspondent and columnist for the Los Angeles Times—and his in-depth interviews with Jimmy Carter, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Mikhail Gorbachev and others made headlines. He co-hosted KCRW’s political program Left, Right and Center and now hosts Scheer Intelligence, an independent ScheerPost podcast with people who discuss the day’s most important issues.

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