Rumsfeld's "Heckler"

The story line was compelling: A face-off between a beleaguered secretary of defense and a brave former intelligence professional. "Rumsfeld Heckled by Former CIA Analyst" blared the headline on the ABC News website. The AP reported that a "former CIA analyst, Ray McGovern, asked [Donald Rumsfeld], 'Why did you lie to get us into a war that caused these kind of casualties and was not necessary?'" When we Nexised "Ray McGovern and Rumsfeld" last Friday, the day after their confrontation during Rumsfeld's appearance in Atlanta, 50 stories turned up.

What all but one failed to report was the relevant fact that McGovern is not simply a veteran of the CIA but a hard-left conspiracy theorist who blames the Iraq war on "O.I.L." As McGovern that night told MSNBC's Tucker Carlson, the only member of the mainstream media with the elementary curiosity to broach the subject, O stands "for oil; I for Israel; and L for logistics, logistics being the permanent . . . military bases that the U.S. wants to keep in Iraq."

McGovern's extremism on the subject is no secret. He was the star witness in June 2005 at a mock impeachment hearing organized in the basement of the Capitol by John Conyers, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee. As Dana Milbank reported at that time in the Washington Post, McGovern "declared that the United States went to war in Iraq for oil, Israel and military bases craved by adminis,tration 'neocons' so 'the United States and Israel could dominate that part of the world.' He said that Israel should not be considered an ally and that Bush was doing the bidding of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. 'Israel is not allowed to be brought up in polite conversation,' McGovern said. 'The last time I did this, the previous director of Central Intelligence called me anti-Semitic.'"

Milbank further reported that "at Democratic headquarters, where an overflow crowd watched the hearing on television, activists handed out documents repeating two accusations--that an Israeli company had warning of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and that there was an 'insider trading scam' on 9/11--that previously has been used to suggest Israel was behind the attacks."

It was all too much for Democratic party chairman Howard Dean, who the following day joined the unnamed previous director of Central Intelligence in his low opinion of McGovern: "As for any inferences that the United States went to war so Israel could 'dominate' the Middle East or that Israel was in any way behind the horrific September 11th attacks on America," Dean pronounced, "let me say unequivocally that such statements are nothing but vile, anti-Semitic rhetoric."

In January, McGovern popped up again, this time as front man for an exceedingly unsavory group called Not In Our Name. According to the group's press release, McGovern served war crimes "indictments" from a "people's tribunal" on the Bush White House. Not In Our Name is a coalition formed in 2002 by the likes of the Maoist Revolutionary Communist party. It is commonly referred to as anti-war, but it's no such thing. Some of its constituent groups profess a deep belief in revolutionary violence--which is to say, they are pro-war, they just want the United States to lose.

The moral of the "Rumsfeld heckler" story is clear. So long as someone is trashing the Bush administration's Iraq policies, most journalists these days will happily sanitize the critic's unseemly views. As long as Cindy Sheehan was an attractive club to swing against the Bush White House last summer, she was portrayed simply as a grieving mother who had lost her son in Iraq. Which she was, but she was also, rather like McGovern, an enthusiast for the violent left who called Bush a "lying bastard," said that "this country is not worth dying for," and called the Islamist insurgents in Iraq "freedom fighters."

Rumors that McGovern will be lecturing on the Israel lobby at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government this fall appear to be unfounded.

Patrick Kennedy Update