Ray McGovern Quotes

• Our bill of rights has been shredded. The fourth amendment specifically prohibits the kind of activities the NSA is involved in domestically. The fifth amendment prohibits any president or anyone else from killing anyone without due process.

  Ray McGovern

  Rights, Nsa, President

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• I would answer with the words of the Stasi alumnus Wolfgang Schmidt, who was asked that question: "What about these Americans who say, I have nothing to hide?" And he said, and I quote: "This is very naïve. This is the reason that the government collects the information in the first place to use against you. The only way to prevent that is to prevent the information from being collected in the first place." End quote.

  Ray McGovern

  Government, Use, Answers

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• Well, the role of our "allies," in my view, is a scandal. 53 other countries cooperated in the kidnapping, "extraordinary rendition," of suspected terrorists to black sites where they were administered enhanced interrogation techniques, which by the way is a direct, literal translation of "verschärfte Vernehmung" right out of the Gestapo manual.

  Ray McGovern

  Country, Views, Interrogation Techniques

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• Now, how do you explain Obama's claim, that he can kill American citizens without due process? Well, he has his attorney general get up and say, "Well, it doesn't say in the constitution judicial process. It just says due process." Now that's a lawyerly diversion from the truth.

  Ray McGovern

  Citizens, Constitution, Get Up

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• We all have a responsibility, and as Rabbi Heschel, one of my prophets, has put it: "Those who condone, or are silent, in the face of injustice, are more guilty than the perpetrators." And so, to the degree we pretend to be a democracy, we have a corresponding duty to be activist enough to prevent our human rights form being infringed upon.

  Ray McGovern

  Responsibility, Rights, Democracy

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• My view of Bradley Manning is that he's a very courageous young man who... did what I didn't have the guts to do during the Vietnam war.

  Ray McGovern

  War, Men, Views

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• When an administration embarks on a war justified by little or no intelligence, speaking the truth can be regarded as treachery. The country could use more of that kind of "treachery".

  Ray McGovern

  Country, War, Tyrants

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• And the passiveness, you know, the apathy, well, that's not responsible citizenship. When I'm asked, why am I an activist, I say, well that's the rent that I pay for living on this planet, okay?

  Ray McGovern

  Apathy, Pay, Citizenship

  Source: www.truth-out.org

  4 Copy quote

• You do what you know is good, because it's good, and then you have a certain peace of mind, saying, you've been an activist in a constructive way.

  Ray McGovern

  Mind, Way, Certain

  Source: www.truth-out.org

  5 Copy quote

• I would have never thought that I would hear myself saying that the president of the United States is afraid of the CIA. But he is. He's afraid of the NSA as well. How else to explain that the National Intelligence director, who lied under oath to his senate overseers on the 12th of March 2013, is still the director of National Intelligence?

  Ray McGovern

  Nsa, President, Directors

  Source: www.truth-out.org

  5 Copy quote

• When Private Bradley [aka Chelsea] Manning put his conscience ahead of his personal well-being by allegedly releasing important information to the world's public via WikiLeaks, he was put into an inhumane solitary confinement and is now facing charges that carry the possibility of him spending the rest of his life in prison.

  Ray McGovern

  Aka, Important, Wikileaks

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• Form a small group. Five or six people, of people who think the way you do, and are willing to meet regularly, every week, and you will be surprised at what imaginative, gutsy thought and action comes out of that synergy. Takes a while, but there's something that every little group like that can do.

  Ray McGovern

  Thinking, People, Groups

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• Now the big danger is to avoid doing anything, unless you have a surety, unless you have an assurance that you'll be successful. It's not about being successful. It's about being faithful. The good is worth doing, because it's good. And who knows what the results will be?

  Ray McGovern

  Successful, Faithful, Danger

  Source: www.truth-out.org

  4 Copy quote

• Everyone knows that due process means judicial process, and when John Brennan brings him a list of people to be killed this particular week, that's not due process. That's certainly not judicial process. So there's the fifth amendment. Not even George Bush claimed the right to kill American citizens without due process.

  Ray McGovern

  Mean, People, Citizens

  Source: www.truth-out.org

  4 Copy quote

• I would say that not many German people are still alive, who experienced what happened during the third reich. We don't have to go to the Stasi, we can go to the Gestapo, and see what happens, when your human rights, your ability to a freedom of expression and a freedom of thought is infringed upon. This is terribly, terribly dangerous territory.

  Ray McGovern

  Rights, Expression, People

  Source: www.truth-out.org

  13 Copy quote

• You know, it's hard to say this, but I suspect that Obama is afraid either of blackmail potential or even worse. And he has referred to the killing of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in this main saying, "don't you remember what happened to Dr. King?"

  Ray McGovern

  Kings, Drs, Remember

  Source: www.truth-out.org

  4 Copy quote

• This was the ethos of the intelligence analysis directorate during most of the 27 years I spent there.

  Ray McGovern

  Ethos, Years, Analysis

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• I have the manual, and the sad thing is that many of the techniques are exactly the same ones with a few enhancements by the US since World War II. So the role of our European allies and others has just really disappointed me greatly.

  Ray McGovern

  War, Technique, Allies

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• I knew about some experience on the operational part of the CIA with Latin American services and so forth having to do with torture. But this was the first time that the CIA was openly advocating for permission to be able to torture. And that seemed to me so abhorrent that I wanted to disassociate myself from the CIA for the first time since 1963, because I didn't want to be associated in any way, however remotely, with an agency engaged in torture.

  Ray McGovern

  Latin, Agency, Firsts

  Source: www.truth-out.org

  4 Copy quote

• You know, we may just be planting seeds for future generations, but that's okay. We can't be deterred from doing things, because we might be laughed at, because somebody might say, "What did you think you'd accomplish by turning your back on the secretary of state," or something like that.

  Ray McGovern

  Thinking, Generations, May

  Source: www.truth-out.org

  4 Copy quote

• I think the question really is, whether our political leaders have stepped out of bounds. Because all this has been approved by our political leaders, Cheney and Bush in the first instance, and now, sadly, Barack Obama in the second instance.

  Ray McGovern

  Thinking, Leader, Political

  Source: www.truth-out.org

  4 Copy quote

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