Obama to Nominate John Brennan, ‘Kill List’ Architect, as New CIA Chief

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Obama to Nominate John Brennan, ‘Kill List’ Architect, as New CIA Chief

As many listeners know, President Barack Obama has nominated John Brennan as director of the CIA. Brennan is currently Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism. In this capacity Brennan meets with the president daily and is governed the administration’s program of extrajudicial assassinations known as the “kill list.”

In 2011 and 2012, Brennan used his position to “re-organize” the process by which people outside of war zones were put on the list of drone targets.  Basically, this “reorganization” gave the White House the power to secretly determine who would die in the US assassination program overseas.

We welcome back retired CIA officer, Ray McGovern, now a political activist. McGovern was a federal employee under seven U.S. presidents in the past 27 years.  Ray McGovern’s article on Consortium News: The Grilling That Brennan Deserves.

Ray McGovern:

  • After 9-11, the acceptance of things like torture has become even more widespread.
  • I spent a little time in Germany and I know about Gestapo tactics, and it seem to me that enhanced interrogation techniques sounded very familiar, and indeed its right out of the Gestapo lexicon.
  • The immediate post World War II experience was very vivid.
  • Obama is very fastidious in looking over this “kill list.” He’s got his own priest.
  • It did me great good to know there were a handful at least of Fordham students that stood with their back to Brennan and protested vigorously against not being the commencement speaker but awarded the Doctorate of Humane Letters.
  • He openly advocated kidnapping, the euphemism there is extraordinary rendition.
  • There are black prisons all over Europe and Asia where these people were kept and tortured.
  • He was an open advocate of at least the kidnapping and he was there. He was at the right hand of George Tenet so to speak.
  • I have good information that Brennan was among those in the White House basement supervising the demonstration of “enhanced interrogation techniques” that Condeleeza Rice arranged for all the personages there.
  • It’s all a master weaving, webbing of deceit and John Brennan is at the bottom of it.
  • He was a classis example of a failed analyst. Why did he get where he is?
  • He made an important friend George Tenet.
  • Is Brennan suggesting that Muslims are hard wired to want to knock down planes over Detroit.
  • I have very good information in that report that Brennan is the prime mover in all these abuses.
  • It’s not about success, it’s about principle here.
  • I like Dr. King’s motto, there is such a thing is too late. Sometimes you really have to put your body into it.
  • Unless we act, nothing will be achieved.
  • There are 2 CIAs. The one that Truman set up to give him honest answers to what’s going on in the world.
  • To speak without fear or favor, to tell ‘em the truth. That’s the one I worked in. That’s the one I could with career protection knock noses out of joint in the Pentagon and the State Department. I could do that.

Guest – Raymond L. McGovern retired CIA officer turned political activist. McGovern was a Federal employee under seven U.S. presidents in the past 27 years.  Ray’s opinion pieces have appeared in many leading newspapers here and abroad.  His website writings are posted first on consortiumnews.com, and are usually carried on other websites as well.  He has debated at the Oxford Forum and appeared on Charlie Rose, The Newshour, CNN, and numerous other TV & radio programs and documentaries. Ray has lectured to a wide variety of audiences here and abroad.   Ray studied theology and philosophy (as well as his major, Russian) at Fordham University, from which he holds two degrees.  He also holds a Certificate in Theological Studies from Georgetown University.

A Catholic, Mr. McGovern has been worshipping for over a decade with the ecumenical Church of the Saviour and teaching at its Servant Leadership School.  He was co-director of the school from 1998 to 2004.  Ray came from his native New York to Washington in the early Sixties as an Army infantry/intelligence officer and then served as a CIA analyst from the administration of  John F. Kennedy to that of George H. W. Bush. Ray’s duties included chairing National Intelligence Estimates and preparing the President’s Daily Brief, which he briefed one-on-one to President Ronald Reagan’s most senior national security advisers from 1981 to 1985.


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