Ex-CIA analyst says lies led to war

PAULA M. DAVIS
Kalamazoo Gazette
Wednesday October 17, 2007

A retired CIA intelligence analyst told a Western Michigan University audience Monday that deliberately fabricated intelligence pushed the United States into invading Iraq.

Ray McGovern puts blame for what he called an unnecessary war on an executive branch focused on oil and Israel, on corporate-controlled media that don't probe, and on lawmakers overly interested in their own political survival.

``The Bush regime came into office determined to have what they called regime change in Baghdad,'' McGovern said.

It's up to American citizens to agitate for change -- even to the point of pressing lawmakers to pursue impeaching the president and vice president, said McGovern, who retired after 27 years in the CIA, serving administrations from John F. Kennedy's to George H.W. Bush's.

He spoke to a seemingly sympathetic crowd Monday that included peace and anti-Iraq war activists on the opening day of Peace Week, sponsored by the Swords Into Plowshares Peace Center at WMU.

McGovern played video clips showing former Secretary of State Colin Powell and then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice both saying months before 9/11 occurred that Iraq posed no threat.

The former CIA analyst said he's seen his former profession ``corrupted for the purposes of deceiving our elected representatives in Congress into approving an unnecessary war. It doesn't get any worse than that.''

Last year, McGovern received national media attention for publicly challenging former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld about intelligence failures.

He has traveled around the country sharing his ideas on behalf of the Ecumenical Church of the Savior. He's also part of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, a group of former intelligence officers from various agencies.

McGovern said citizens ``need to lean on these congressmen. ... We need to do whatever it takes, folks. As Martin Luther King said at one point, there comes a point where you have to put your bodies into it.''