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Nadler Disses
Voters on Impeachment
By Ray McGovern
11/03/08 "ICH"
-- -- You would not know it for the news blackout, but New
Yorkers of Congressman Jerrold Nadler’s district held a Town
Hall/Impeachment Forum on Sunday to encourage Nadler, chair of
the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, to begin
impeachment proceedings against Vice President Dick Cheney.
Panelists included former congresswoman Liz Holtzman, former
Reagan Justice Department attorney Bruce Fein, human rights
attorney and Harpers commentator Scott Horton, and John
Nirenberg, the activist who at the turn of the year walked from
Boston to Washington, D.C., in a futile attempt to meet with
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on impeachment.
The
organizers had asked me to be on the panel, but I had to send
regrets and submitted a statement instead (see below). A video
of the proceedings will be posted on
www.afterdowningstreet.org
Taking Stock
In a
post mortem Sunday evening, the organizers reportedly
painted a mixed picture of good and bad news.
On the
positive side, Judson Memorial Church was crammed to
overflowing, with 300 folks to hear the panelists. And this,
despite the fact that most were already aware that Nadler had
announced (late Friday afternoon) that he would be a no-show. He
did not even send a representative.
The
panelists’ remarks were compelling. Blame for inaction on
impeachment was laid squarely on our invertebrate Congress (but,
I’m sorry, that familiar whining can get a bit tiresome). The
audience was described as well-educated, non-fringe, and polite.
On the
negative side, despite Herculean efforts to interest the
“mainstream media,” no one showed.
And
the enthusiasm of those trying to spur action on impeachment was
dampened by continuing frustration at the obstacles, as
politicians like Nadler continue to put political expedience
above their sworn duty to protect and defend the Constitution.
Tories Back in Charge
It
took some 230 years, but the Tories are back in charge—I mean
the Nadlers, the Conyers, the Pelosis, who so clearly lack the
courage of our forebears to defy a new King George, preferring
to let him dis us the people and trash the Constitution.
Remember the final words of the Declaration of Independence?
“We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and
our sacred honor.”
Many
of our forebears were also well-educated and non-fringe;
fortunately, they were NOT polite.
Is it
not clear, finally, that the time for politeness is over?
It is
up to us, now, whether we shall have Constitutional separation
of powers or shall have kings. It is up to us whether an
unrestrained Executive will be able to march our children and
grandchildren off to an endless series of resource wars likely
to dominate this century.
The
time for talking is over. Impeachment proceedings must begin.
And no one is going to get that done but we.
One of
the hurdles is outrage fatigue; it is hard to decide where to
start among the many high crimes and misdemeanors of which Vice
President Cheney is demonstrably culpable.
From
my perspective as a former intelligence analyst, we certainly
cannot allow to escape censure his conjuring up false
“intelligence” to justify what Nuremberg defined as the “supreme
international crime”—a war of aggression—in Iraq.
The
Founders knew that, human nature being what it is, such abuses
would be inevitable somewhere down the line. That’s why they
took such pains to provide an orderly political procedure to
enable us to deal promptly and responsibly with such high crimes
and misdemeanors.
The
process is called impeachment; the rules are clear.
All it
takes is courage. And I do not refer here to the invertebrates
in Congress.
I mean
us.
The
statement I prepared for Sunday’s event follows:
Is Impeachment Necessary to Protect the
Constitution?
Judson Memorial Church, 55 Washington Square South, NYC
March 9, 2008
Statement by Ray McGovern
Congressman Nadler, I am Ray McGovern, born and bred in the
Bronx a bit north of your district.
I
regret not being able to be with you in person to give my
perspective on whether impeachment is necessary to protect the
Constitution—and specifically, whether the manufacturing of
false intelligence to “justify” an unprovoked war fits the
category of “high crime or misdemeanor.”
I was
an analyst at the CIA for 27 years, after serving as an Army
infantry/intelligence officer in the early Sixties. You may
recall that we first met on June 16, 2005, in the basement of
the Capitol, the only room made available to Congressman John
Conyers to take testimony on the Downing Street Minutes.
The
minutes were the official British record of a briefing of
then-Prime Minister Tony Blair on July 23, 2002. At that
briefing, the chief of British intelligence reported on his
discussions with his counterpart in Washington, who told him
three days earlier that, President George W. Bush had decided to
make war on Iraq, and that “the intelligence and facts were
being fixed around the policy.”
In my
testimony in the Capitol that day I drew attention to the words
of Vice President Dick Cheney on August 26, 2002—words that
framed the discussion for the next 45 days during which Congress
was deliberately misled into giving the president approval to
make war on Iraq.
This
is what Cheney said:
“We
now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear
weapons. Among other sources, we’ve gotten this from the
firsthand testimony of defectors—including Saddam’s own
son-in-law.”
This
was a lie.
Saddam’s son-in-law told us just the opposite when he defected
in 1995.
You
can find it on page 13 of his debriefing report. He said: “All
weapons – biological, chemical, missile, nuclear were
destroyed.”
Cheney
continued:
“Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has
weapons of mass destruction...Many of us are convinced that
[Saddam] will acquire nuclear weapons fairly soon.”
In a
memoir published last year, then-CIA director George Tenet
complained that Cheney did not follow the usual practice of
clearing the speech with the CIA, and that what Cheney said
“went well beyond what our analysis could support.”
Tenet
added his “impression” that “the president really wasn’t any
more aware of what his number-two was going to say.” Yet, Tenet
admits that he did not raise the issue with either the president
or vice president. Tenet was all too well aware that the
intelligence was being “fixed around the policy.”
The Power to Intimidate
Intimidated by the vice president, Tenet ended up ordering his
analysts, my former colleagues, to prepare a National
Intelligence Estimate to Cheney’s terms of reference—you
remember, the one that said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction
and ties with al-Qaeda; the NIE that appeared just ten days
before Congress voted to give the president the power to make
war on Iraq.
Col.
Lawrence Wilkerson, who was chief of staff to then-Secretary of
State Colin Powell, and who chaired the preparation of Powell’s
Feb. 5, 2003, speech at the UN, was asked about all this when
Wilkerson testified before Congress on June 26, 2006.
The
question came from Republican Congressman Walter Jones of North
Carolina: Why was it that a small number of individuals got so
much power in the administration that they “had more influence
than the professionals?”
Wilkerson gave a three-word answer: “The Vice President.”
Torture
It is
an open secret that Vice President Cheney was, and continues to
be the prime mover behind torture. As some will recall, speaking
on open radio Cheney called the use of waterboarding a
“no-brainer.”
It was
his lawyer, David Addington, who prepared the Jan. 25, 2002,
memorandum signed by then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales
recommending that the laws against torture could be
circumvented.
George
Bush applied that advice in his own presidential memorandum of
Feb. 7, 2002, launching our country onto “the dark side,” as
Cheney has put it.
That
memorandum opened the gaping loophole through which the
administration drove the Mack truck of torture.
High
crimes? Misdemeanors? Who will argue the point?
The Constitution
Congressman Nadler, articles of impeachment for Dick Cheney have
sat in your in-box since last November. You are Chair of the
House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution; you have
refused to take action.
As an
Army officer I took an oath to protect and defend the
Constitution of the United States from all enemies, foreign and
domestic. You took that same basic oath as a congressman.
With
all due respect, let me suggest you have a duty to act on that
oath—and not on some promise you may have made to avoid anything
that could be viewed as divisive and thus jeopardize Democratic
Party election wins in November.
I hope
you will agree that the transcendent value is to protect the
Constitution, and for that, impeachment is indeed necessary.
Please take the articles of impeachment regarding Dick Cheney
out of your in-box and launch the investigation.
Thank
you.
Ray
McGovern
Steering Group, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
Ray McGovern works with Tell
the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the
Saviour in Washington, DC. He was an Army intelligence officer
before joining the CIA where he had a 27-year career as an
analyst. He is now on the Steering Group of Veteran
Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
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