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4/25/2006
CIA VS. THE WHITE HOUSE: THE VIPS CONNECTION

If there really is a war going on between the White House and the CIA (and even the Washington Post said exactly that) then the very first salvo of the conflict was fired on March 17, 2003 by one of the most unusual groups ever formed in the history of US intelligence.

Calling themselves Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), 25 ex-CIA officers threw down the gauntlet by calling on active duty intelligence professionals to damage the Bush Administration (and by extension, the government of the United States) by leaking the “truth” about the Iraq War:

Invoking the name of a Pentagon whistle-blower, a small group of retired, anti-war CIA officers are accusing the Bush administration of manipulating evidence against Iraq in order to push war while burying evidence that could show Iraq’s compliance with U.N demands for disarmament.

The 25-member group, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, composed mostly of former CIA analysts along with a few operational agents, is urging employees inside the intelligence agency to break the law and leak any information they have that could show the Bush administration is engineering the release of evidence to match its penchant for war.

[...]

The group said officials who act as would-be whistle-blowers can use the same method as those now handing out information—giving it over to members of Congress who can both protect them and show the entire picture.

“They have to basically put conscience before career,” said Patrick Eddington, a VIPS member and former CIA agent who resigned in 1996 to protest what he describes as the agency’s refusal to investigate some of the possible causes of Gulf War veterans’ medical problems.

The question that has always nagged at me is that given the flood of leaks from the intelligence community both in the lead up and the aftermath of the Iraq war, what role (if any) did VIPS members play in facilitating those leaks?

Several VIPS members, including Larry Johnson, Mel Goodman, and Ray McGovern have emerged this past weekend, being quoted extensively in stories about the McCarthy leak case. The fact that they are never, ever identified as belonging to this far left group (their email address is in care of Counterpunch, the notorious left wing rag published by Alexander Cockburn) is almost surreal. Johnson can be safely dismissed as a publicity hound. But McGovern and Goodman have made it abundantly clear that they have it in for the Bush Administration.

Are there any strong connections between VIPS members and reporters? Certainly they appear together at forums like this CIP conference where Dana Priest shared the stage with Mel Goodman. So Goodman is out front defending McCarthy who is accused of leaking to Priest. And there’s proof that Goodman and Priest have at least a passing acquaintance.

Could such an association – casual and innocuous – have any meaning beyond coincidence?

VIPS is a group that has urged their colleagues to leak. Why is it so hard to believe that they would help in accomplishing that fact by acting as a go-between with the press? As a source for a journalist with the reputation of a Dana Priest, a VIPS member would enjoy a certain protection in that Priest would probably go to jail before exposing a source. And as an extra added bonus, the leaker could truthfully say that they never leaked that information to the press.

I want to be as cautious as possible in drawing any kind of conclusions. But here’s New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof in promoting the group as pretty much of a non-partisan outfit:

But Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, a group of retired spooks, issued an open letter to President Bush yesterday reflecting the view of many in the intel community that the central culprit is Vice President Dick Cheney. The open letter called for Mr. Cheney’s resignation.

Here’s what William Sjostrom writing in the Atlantic Monthly wrote about Kristoff’s lack of clarity:

Kristof cites mostly the alleged views of unnamed intelligence officials. So we just have his word for it. Among the only people cited by name are a newly formed outfit, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). Kristof treats them as a disinterested group of non-partisan, non-ideological experts. These are not crazed anti-Bush fanatics, like Paul Krugman or ANSWER. Yeah, right.

And Sjostrom fills in some details about some of the ideology behind VIPS members:

VIPS does not seem to have a website, but its email is vips@counterpunch.org, and their open letter appears to have been published at CounterPunch (run by Alexander Cockburn, the Nation columnist), an outfit whose staple is stuff comparing Bush to Hitler. VIPS also published an open letter in opposition to the war at Common Dreams back in February. The spokesman for VIPS is Raymond McGovern, a retired CIA analyst. McGovern’s email is also at CounterPunch. He is giving a briefing today with Rep. Dennis Kucinich. McGovern has compared the Iraq war to Vietnam, even saying that it could lead to nuclear war. He has charged that if WMDs are found in Iraq, they may well have been planted. He believes Tenet’s job is safe because if Tenet were fired, he would reveal that the White House ignored intelligence warnings pre-9/11. McGovern has urged CIA analysts to illegally release classified documents to show what he believes to be true, specifically citing Daniel Ellsberg.

Another member of the VIPS steering committee is William Christison, who among other things believes that the Bush administration is attempting to colonize the Middle East, jointly with Israel. He believes that the war on terror is being used to turn the US into a military dictatorship. He is also a backer of the left-wing UrgentCall, along with people such as Noam Chomsky, Barbara Kingsolver, Julian Bond, and Jonathan Schell.

This “non-partisan” group also has several members involved with the National Security Whistelblowers, a group of professionals who have suffered persecution at various agencies, some of them for outing what they consider to be malfeasance by leaking to the press. Two names from that group – Larry Johnson and Ray McGovern – are of interest only because neither one of those worthy gentlemen blew the whistle on anybody or anything while they were on active duty. Only when President Bush came to power did they suddenly believe it necessary to support whistleblowers. A question that comes to my mind is what reason would those two gentlemen have in associating with leakers?

When Russ Tice, the self-proclaimed leaker of the NSA intercept program came in from the cold, none other than Ray McGovern was shepherding him around town from interview to interview. Tice may or may not be the ultimate source for the New York Times on the NSA intercept program but it is just a bit odd that he would attach himself to a man who urged people like him to leak secrets to the press.

I will repeat for those of you who may have missed this post: I am not a believer in conspiracy theories as a general rule and especially in this case where much more evidence is required to prove any collusion between VIPS and the media in leaking classified data. Having said that, some enterprising journalist may want to look into this web of innocuous but rather curious connections and see if there’s anything to the notion that members of VIPS may have acted as a conduit to the press in passing along classified information from active duty intelligence personnel.

By: Rick Moran at 11:14 am
14 Responses to “CIA VS. THE WHITE HOUSE: THE VIPS CONNECTION”
  1. 1
    A Blog For All Trackbacked With:
    12:05 pm 

    McCarthy’s Mess

    ... nothing is simple when it comes to the CIA, leaks, and politics.

  2. 2
    Scrapiron Said:
    12:30 pm 

    Groups like this go much deeper than the left wing and the democratic party. While it’s true that the democratic party has fallen prey to the communist/socialist (Soros crowd), it’s clear there are several groups in the U.S. working for a total takeover of the United States and the democrats are aiding them for their own short term political purposes. Beware, these people don’t care if you are a democrat or a space alien, they’re using you for their own purpose. A lot in the left wing of the democratic party have progressed beyond the label ‘unpatroitic’ to the label ‘traitor’. Is that because of their deep rooted ‘hate’ of a free America? Their stated hate of one man cannot possibly be the problem.

  3. 3
    tyk Said:
    1:03 pm 

    Expect the Republican strategists to let Mary McCarthy and this situation twist in the wind all summer. A political campaign is a lot like a basketball game: coaching them is mainly manipulating momentum so that your team has it with 1-2 minutes left in the third quarter. Momentum has been with the Dems this spring, but now it is leaving them. The only danger for the GOP now is that the fires flare too fast, leaving time for still another shift before the buzzer.

  4. 4
    DaveG Said:
    1:49 pm 

    I have to chuckle at the constant hysterical rantings that the Bush Administration is part and parcel of a tyrannical regime we hear from the far-left base of the current minority party. Were there even a glimmer of truth to such infantile rantings, it would be evidenced by the fact that these VIPS would have been ‘disappeared’ years ago. Yet here they are, in open rebellion against the Administration, seemingly paying no penalty for their sedition at all.

  5. 5
    tyk Said:
    2:22 pm 

    Scrapiron.
    I can’t figure out if these people you write about are dangerous. Maybe it is simply a collection of people who have difficulty seeing past the ends of their noses. Try asking them what they think would happen if we took our troops out of Iraq. The ones I have asked don’t seem too have given it thought. Maybe just the agitation is what they wish for. The Kerensky government fell because there was a perfectly balanced stalemate in political power that allowed Lenin, who had only about 20,000 followers (well disciplined followers), to get his hands on the levers of power. Our moonbats don’t seem to be disciplined, and seem to be doing nothing but screaming shrilly. But, then, that also is all that Lenin did.

  6. 6
    Sirius Familiaris Said:
    4:14 pm 

    One would think that if disgruntled former and present CIA employees were actively trying to unseat a sitting United States President, they would be more competent in the execution of their plans. But then again, I suppose this is the same CIA that failed to derail the September 11 attacks.

    That said, if it turns out that this is part of a bigger conspiracy, it would be nothing less than an attempted coup d’etat…how do you suppose the MSM, Dhimmicratic Party and the retired generals are going to explain this one away?

  7. 7
    Hot Air » Blog Archive » CIA Leak Update: Backtrack? Pinged With:
    6:06 pm 

    [...] More on today’s WaPo article from Steven Spruiell, who’s being cautious, and AJ Strata, who isn’t. Meanwhile, Rick Moran looks at VIPS, an organization which may or may not have anything to do with McCarthy but which might very well pop up later in other contexts as leak crackdown ‘06 unfolds. [...]

  8. 8
    Svenghouli Said:
    9:53 pm 

    Has anyone noticed that movies involving the CIA as a shady organization has a disappeared? Even the shows like the Boondocks have replaced CIA with Reagan as the cause of AIDS, crack, and poverty of the black community. It makes me wonder. Does this mean that Hollywood now sees the CIA as an incompetent and no longer this shadowy evil entity? Or do they see them as an ally to promote their idealogies. With being said…...

    “Cockburn” LOL If I had a name with that I would want revenge on all of the popular kids.

  9. 9
    Hot Air » Blog Archive » CIA Leak: DNC to Organize Defense Fund for McCarthy? Pinged With:
    12:55 am 

    [...] If you missed Rick Moran’s post earlier about who some of those “associates” might be, make amends. [...]

  10. 10
    Ken McCracken Said:
    4:05 am 

    Geez Rick you know, I said ‘never assume conspiracy when stupidity will suffice’ and I really don’t think there is a conspiracy here.

    But, man, as this stuff is piling up, I might have to get a new tinfoil hat fitted – this is all starting to blow up into something beyond a conspiracy and into an actual shadow insurrection in our intelligence community.

    What’s the frequency, Kenneth?

  11. 11
    Super Fun Power Hour Trackbacked With:
    6:07 am 

    Mary McCarthy – Day 5

    Wow, miss a half of a day, miss alot.

    Mary McCarthy has hired super-defense lawyer, Ty Cobb who says, naturally, his client is innocent.

    A primer on Cobb:

    Cobb is a partner in the powerhouse law firm of Hogan & Hartson, Clinton National Securit

  12. 12
    The Dragon and the Phoenix Trackbacked With:
    10:29 am 

    The CIA’s War on the Bush White House

    Fascinating must-read on Rightwing Nuthouse, via Hot Air

  13. 13
    Hot Air » Blog Archive » Rumsfeld heckled … by wacko conspiracy theorist Ray McGovern Pinged With:
    7:57 pm 

    [...] But there’s more still. McGovern belongs to a group of ex-intel officials called Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, or VIPS. VIPS is known for — no, I’m not kidding — encouraging intelligence operatives to undermine the war in Iraq by leaking information. As McGovern himself put it in a September 2004 op-ed, “[l]eaking can be patriotic.” Here’s Rick Moran’s lengthy post about VIPS from April 25th speculating about the group’s possible role in the flood of intel leaks Porter Goss is hard at work trying to stop. [...]

  14. 14
    Joust The Facts Trackbacked With:
    7:57 am 

    Furtive Glances – Too Much To Cover Edition

    Okay, there are a lot of stories percolating. You should consider each section an update as you read, and the updates, hopefully, will continue this morning time permitting. You Make The Call: The Boston Herald, quoting an anonymous source (so

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