Former analyst criticizes Bush

Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern has been traveling around the country "to spread a little truth around."

McGovern, who is speaking out along with other members of the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, presented his views of the use of intelligence by the Bush administration Wednesday night to a casual crowd gathered in the Hanes Art Center Auditorium.

He said the CIA was started for two main reasons: to have a central place for intelligence and to have a branch of the government that would "tell it like it is."

In the last few years, McGovern said he and his colleagues in the VIPS have felt the morals of the system they previously worked for have not been upheld.

"We've been there and done that and tend to be upset when we see intelligence messed with," he said.

When speaking about the issues surrounding the invasion of Iraq, McGovern said intelligence was bad and swayed by politics.

"(But) intelligence had absolutely nothing to do with the president's decision to invade Iraq," he insisted.

McGovern said the intelligence agencies were not initially asked about the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

And when they were, he said it was made clear that the evidence should support a claim previously made by Vice President Dick Cheney that Saddam Hussein had begun rebuilding nuclear weapons programs.

McGovern said evidence like this, and a false report that Iraq was trying to buy uranium, is what the administration used to convince Congress to approve the declaration of war.

"What happened to the intelligence process and the folks running it now is outrageous, but not half as outrageous as what happened to our constitution," he said.

One audience member brought up the conspiracy theory that the federal government was aware of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks before they occurred.

McGovern was quick to assert that he did not believe in this conspiracy theory but thinks there was not enough attention paid to the intelligence.

But he did not discredit the idea that Bush might have used the Sept. 11 attacks as a catalyst to move forward with an invasion of Iraq.

"It was an incredibly cynical manipulation of the trauma we all felt," he said.

He added that the 9/11 Commission found there were so many people to blame that it would be better to not blame anyone and concluded that Sept. 11 was unavoidable.

McGovern also said he thinks the commission should have placed blame. He said that if the information the CIA director possessed had been noticed, the attacks could have been avoided.

McGovern also criticized the press for not providing the public with adequate information.

International intelligence concerning America has been leaked to news agencies and has been printed in other countries' media, but not in the United States, he said.

McGovern added that if intelligence members in his time had known the evidence was false, the director would have anticipated it being leaked and printed in the American press.

"In a very real sense, we don't have free press anymore," he said.

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