Call Lies Lies

The man said call a spade a spade.

Ray McGovern has seen the inner workings of the intelligence world and believes the United States is in desperate need of rediscovering its morality.


Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern speaks at Lancaster Church of the Brethren Sunday. (Intelligencer Journal Photo/Dan Marschka)
The former CIA intelligence officer and Iraq War critic addressed the audience at Lancaster Church of the Brethren Sunday afternoon as the feature speaker at the Lancaster Interchurch Peace Witness Fall Forum.

His speech, "Prospects for a Moral U.S. Policy in the Middle East," focused on the ethical dilemmas facing the American public and lawmakers and ways to use faith to point the country's moral compass back in the right direction.

McGovern's group, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, has spent the last three years lobbying the Bush administration to admit to what it calls the "lies" that led to the Iraq War.

He said the current presidential administration is in need of a "sanity check," a term he said goes back to his days at the CIA, when analysts consulted with each other to find the truth.

"Prevarication, disingenuousness, untruthfulness -- they won't do anymore," McGovern said. "We need to call lies 'lies.'"