So how many of you saw Secretary of War Donald Rumsfeld get called a liar in Atlanta last month? Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern got a chance to ask a question and he said "you (Rumsfeld) said on March 30, 2003 that you knew where the weapons of mass destruction were. 'They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south, and north somewhat.'" Rumsfeld denied this statement, but it was too late. After the forum news agencies like CNN had contacted McGovern and asked him what were his sources for the Rumsfeld quote. McGovern told them that "you (CNN) were the source," and sure enough they were. Soon MSNBC picked up the story and by the next week every major media outlet was running the story. So it took a former CIA analyst asking a basic question to get the major news media to actually practice journalism and say "hey, Rumsfeld did actually say that they knew where there were WMDs."

Little did we know that when we booked Ray McGovern to speak in March that he would make such a roar the week before coming to Grand Rapids. This is a promoter's wet dream and it paid off well for us. Ray was a guest presenter in the Community Media Center's Media & Democracy lecture series. For weeks we had been promoting the event and trying to get the local news interested in covering his visit, not only because he has an important message, but also because he had targeted Rep. Pete Hoekstra from Holland, who is the head of the House Intelligence Committee. In March, McGovern, in an attempt to draw attention to the appalling record of torture committee by the US military in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, went to Hoekstra's DC office in an orange jump suit and returned his CIA medal. You'd think that might be reason enough to get the media's attention for his impending visit, but no. It wasn't until the Atlanta incident that eyes would open. We invited Hoekstra to debate Ray, but his DC staffer told me that "we wouldn't want to submit the representative to that sort of environment."

Ray arrived on a Wednesday morning and before noon we had set up an interview opportunity with WOOD TV, for their Sunday morning political talk show "To the Point" with Rick Albin. Albin, a former staffer for Hoekstra, did not do the interview, an interview that lasted 55 minutes. After lunch we went to the federal building in downtown GR to speak with Senator Levin's staff. Going to the federal building these days is always an experience and this visit was no different. You have to go through a medal detector and 3 federal marshals. I went through with ease, but the machine buzzed when Ray walked through. "Go back and try again Sir," was the comment from one of the cops. Again he walked through with the same result. After 6 times they finally told him to take his coat off, which seemed to work. When his coat went through the machine a medal object appeared on the screen. They asked Ray to take it out and after 30 seconds of fishing around he produced a button, which was pointed in my direction. I laughed and as he turned it to face the feds one of them read it out loud "Is it fascism yet?" Needless to say they watched us extra close as we boarded the elevator to the Senator's office.

The meeting upstairs was pleasant but as expected. Levin's staff just nodded their heads a lot and attempted to defend the Senator's integrity. When McGovern asked why the Senator hadn't forced the issue about the government lying about going to war with Iraq over WMDs, the staffer simply stated that it wouldn't do any good unless the Democrats controlled Congress. Ray wasn't impressed and said something about the Constitution, War Crimes and the importance of having a spine when representing the people.

The rest of that afternoon consisted of 2 radio interviews and several over the phone interviews. That night the crowd kept coming until nearly 250 people filed in to Wealthy Theater to hear what the former CIA analyst had to say. He spoke for an hour, took questions from the mic for an hour and then chatted with people informally for another 45 minutes. People were hungry for the truth and they got plenty of it, with McGovern using stories, analysis, history, and poetry to state his case against the war in Iraq, torture, a possible war with Iran, US support of Israel and then need for people in the US to get mad and do something.

The next morning we went to Hoekstra's Holland office. It was raining and the Tulip festival was in full swing, but we were able to navigate the bust streets of Holland nonetheless. A GR Press reporter joined us, as did the Democratic candidate running against Hoekstra. Hoekstra's staff acted as if they didn't know who Ray McGovern was and quickly the meeting resembled the one we had with Levin's staff the day before. The only real difference was no metal detectors, no federal marshals, but there was a mounted TV with FOX news blaring. McGovern talked about the same issues....government deception on Iraq, how US using torture was an abomination, that Bush's choice for the CIA, Gen. Heyden would be bad since Heyden led the domestic spying program with the NSA, and that the latest news of the US government's access to the phone conversations of US residents with the cooperation of companies like AT&T and Verizon. Aren't our media companies wonderful. I can't wait for the day when they just put a tracking chip in our skulls. We left with a sense that Hoekstra's staff would not "pass along" any of the comments to Pete who was busy voting in DC.

So it was back to GR for more phone interviews and then lunch at the Pita House, where Ray spoke with local activists working on an anti-Military recruiting campaign. For nearly an hour he seemed completely engrossed in the comments of these student activists and kept asking their advice on better ways to communicate with younger audiences as he hop around the country. He had a private gathering to go to and then was off to Minnesota for his next stop on the truth tour.

That following Sunday the "To the Point" show gave Hoekstra about 15 minutes to talk in circles and only used 5 minutes of the interview with Ray, even though they had 55 minutes. We did a media alert with the hopes of having people challenge channel 8's pitiful use of McGovern's comments and the complete lack of coverage from channel 13 and 17. The only good story from the local media was a pre-lecture article by veteran GR Press writer Pat Shellenbarger and a substantive posting by Media Mouse. We also taped the Wealthy Theater lecture and have it on DVD for those who didn't get a chance to hear him unedited.

Jeff Smith had Ray McGovern stay at his house just to see how much more government surveillance he could garner. If you wanna find out just submit a Freedom of Information Act request to see which Monte Python film Jeff and Ray watched that night. jsmith ( at ) grcmc.org