By
Ray McGovern, 7/24/07
What do Rep. John Conyers, D-Michigan, chair of the House Committee on
the Judiciary, and President George W. Bush have in common? They both
think they can dis Cindy Sheehan and count on gossip columnists like
the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank to trivialize a historic moment.
I”ll give this to President Bush. He makes no pretence when he disses.
He would not meet with Sheehan to define for her the “noble cause” for
which her son Casey died or tell her why he had said it was “worth it.”
Conyers, on the other hand, was dripping
with pretence as he met with Sheehan, Rev. Lennox Yearwood and me
Monday in his office in the Rayburn building. I have seldom been so
disappointed with someone I had previously held in high esteem. And
before leaving, I told him so.
Throwing
salt in our wounds, he had us, and some 50 others in his anteroom
arrested and taken out of action as the Capitol Police “processed” us
for the next six hours.
As we
began our discussion with Conyers, it was as though he thought we were
“born yesterday,” as Harry Truman would put it. With feigned enthusiasm
he began, Let’s hold a Town Hall meeting in Detroit so we can talk
about impeachment. Get out my schedule; let’s see, we need to hear from
everyone about this.
Been there, done that, I reminded the congressman.
On
May 29, 2007, Col. Ann Wright and I were among those who flew to
Detroit for a highly advertised Town Hall meeting on impeachment,
because we were assured that John Conyers would be there.
That
Town Hall/panel discussion was arranged by the Michigan chapter of the
National Lawyers Guild less than two weeks after the Detroit City
Council passed a resolution, cosponsored by Conyers” wife Monica
Conyers-calling for the impeachment of Bush and Vice President Dick
Cheney. We had hoped that Monica’s clear vision and courage might be
contagious.
I had to remind the congressman that he did not show up for the Town Hall.
Apparently,
that incident was of such little consequence to the congressman that he
had completely forgotten about it. Small wonder, then, that he has
apparently forgotten the oath he took to protect and defend the
Constitution of the United States from all enemies, foreign and
domestic.
Selective Alzheimers? I don’t know. What was clear was that he had forgotten a whole lot.
When
I raised James Madison’s role in crafting a Constitution that mentions
impeachment no fewer than six times, he replied: Madison did not say
Conyers has to impeach every one. Why, if I had to impeach everyone for
high crimes and misdemeanors, that’s all my committee would have time
to do.
I learned in Rhetoric 101 the name of that technique: reductio ad absurdam.
How about just Bush and Cheney, we suggested.
Conyers
protested that he would need 218 votes in the House and complained that
the votes are not there. His priorities showed through in his loud
lament that if he fell short of the 218 votes, the Republicans and Fox
News would have a field day.
There was no getting through to Conyers, who seemed astonished at the direct questions we were posing.
In
reflecting on this later, the dictum of my father, also a lawyer, began
to ring in my ears: “When you reach the age of “statutory senility,”
you do everyone a favor if you retire.”
He
followed his own example, when he retired as Chancellor of the Board of
Regents of the University of the State of New York, long before
senility-statutory, or otherwise-set in for him.
Septuagenarian
Conyers (and, for that matter, 80-year-old Senator John Warner,
R-Virginia, who has also forgotten his sworn duty to uphold the
Constitution) would do well to heed that advice.
Toward
the end of the meeting, Conyers showed uncommon chutzpah in referring
to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. That was too much for me.
You”re
no Martin Luther King, I found myself wanting to say. Instead, I quoted
a portion of Dr. King’s famous address at Riverside Church almost 40
years ago:
“We must speak
with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we
must speak….there is such a thing as being too late….Life often
leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with lost
opportunity….Over the bleached bones of numerous civilizations are
written the pathetic words: “Too late.””
I
used that quote in a letter I left with Conyers” aides on Monday, in
which I tried to express why my colleagues in Veteran Intelligence
Professionals for Sanity feel it is URGENT to find some way to apply
the Constitution to restrain a run-away Executive.
The text of that letter follows:
A Note to Congressman John Conyers:
On Impeachment and the EdmundPettusBridgeDear John,
We each have our favored crime for which President Bush and Vice President Cheney should be impeached. Many of us have several.
But
the real challenge is to look AHEAD. What are Bush/Cheney likely to do
in the coming months if the impeachment process does NOT begin?One often hears, Oh, they will do what they want anyway, impeachment process or not. Not true.
If
we the people and our representatives in Congress choose the course
given us by our Founders and impeachment proceedings begin, important
swaths of our body politic AND military will be less likely to follow
illegal orders from the White House.These
important constituencies will become sensitized to the peril into which
this administration has brought us and to the extra-constitutional
orders they may be asked to carry out.NEW ELEMENT: Even the Scaife-owned newspapers have begun to question Bush’s MENTAL STABILITY.
What could be more important at this juncture?
We
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) have been applying
all of our analytical techniques to assess the Bush/Cheney
administration. We have helped to establish the long record of abuses
and usurpations of the past. What about the future?Iraq
is going to hell in a hand basket. A Tet-type incident becomes more and
more likely. The Green Zone is being hit by mortar fire more frequently
than before. It may be just a matter of time before the Resistance gets
lucky and lobs a shell onto our spanking new $600-million embassy,
killing a bunch of Americans in the process.What
then? Will Cheney tell the president the US military has found Iranian
markings on the shell fragments and we need to retaliate…and,
actually, while we”re at it, let’s implement Plan A and hit all Iranian
nuclear-related facilities.With Congress voting resolution after resolution against Iran, how would the president react to such a suggestion from Cheney?
Many
of us intelligence analysts have found utility in relying, in part, on
short studies applying psychoanalysis to develop profiles of foreign
leaders. (This marriage of psychoanalysis and intelligence work
actually goes back to the early 1940s, when the OSS commissioned such
studies on Hitler.) We called them “at-a-distance personality
assessments.”Three years ago
Justin Frank, M.D., a psychiatrist here in Washington, wrote a book
“Bush on the Couch” in which he provided keen insights into the
president’s mode of thinking-or not thinking.Eager
to use every tool at our disposal, VIPS recently asked Dr. Frank to
update his observations, with a view to forecasting, to the extent
possible, how Bush is likely to react to the building pressures of the
coming weeks and months. We will issue, perhaps as early as this week,
Dr. Frank’s latest analysis, fortified by our own input. But we already
have his preliminary analysis; there is no other word for it: Scary.In
a quick note to us this morning [July 23], Dr. Frank noted we are
“dealing with a potentially cornered man [who] could lash out, and it
is possible that the best way would be to bomb Iran…. Whatever the
root causes of Bush’s pathology, we have a dangerous man running
things…grandiose and unchecked.”Some snippets from the Memorandum that Dr. Frank is drafting for issuance under VIPS auspices:
“George
W. Bush is without conscience…and destructive, willfully so. He has
always likes to break things…most shocking is the way he is breaking
our armed forces.“He doesn’t
care about others, is indifferent to their suffering…He is almost
constitutionally missing the ability to sympathize or empathize…More
indifferent to reality than out of touch with it, he makes up whatever
story he wants.“Ultimately,
he is psychologically unstable…His goal is to destroy things [and he
can do that] without experiencing anxiety or a sense of responsibility.
An equally important goal is to protect himself from shame, from being
wrong, from being found small and weak.”So what do we do?
At
a similarly critical juncture, Dr. King was typically direct: “We must
speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision,
but we must speak…. there is such a thing as being too late…. Life
often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with lost
opportunity…. Over the bleached bones of numerous civilizations are
written the pathetic words: “Too late.””There is today another Edmund Pettus Bridge to cross, John. And it has fallen to you to lead us across.
With respect,
/s/
Ray McGovern (for VIPS)
Ray
McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical
Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC. He is a 27-year veteran
analyst of the CIA and co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals
for Sanity (VIPS).