Former CIA Analyst Ray McGovern on SignalGate and JFK Files
Useful Idiots with Katie Halper and Aaron Maté
Useful Idiots, LLC
4.5 • 4.6K Ratings
🗓️ 28 March 2025
⏱️ 68 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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Click here for the full interview with Ray McGovern: https://www.usefulidiotspodcast.com/p/extended-episode-former-cia-analyst?r=je5va&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
Watch this week's Thursday Throwdown: Trump Bombed Yemen the Wrong Way https://www.usefulidiotspodcast.com/p/trump-bombed-yemen-the-wrong-way?r=je5va&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
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There’s a lot going on in the world this week: Israel is increasing nuclear tensions with Iran, the Trump Administration leaked on Signal its plans to attack a civilian apartment building in Yemen, US federal officials kidnapped another college student for pro-Palestine speech, and the JFK files unveiled decades of new classified information.
This is high level stuff, which means we’ve got to go high up to get real answers.
Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, who served in the CIA at the time of JFK’s assassination, has become one of the most important peace activists in the country, breaking important classified stories and fighting the military industrial complex. He also cofounded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity to “protest the use of faulty intelligence” to justify US wars.
Ray breaks down SignalGate, US terror in Yemen, the JFK files, the latest in the proxy war in Ukraine, and how the intelligence community uses the threat of Iranian nukes an excuse for Israeli aggression.
This week, the Tulsi Gabbard-controlled Office of National Intelligence put out a threat assessment that flies in the face of Israeli officials who are constantly fear-mongering about Iran’s nuclear program and encouraging the U.S. to bomb Iran accordingly.
“This is the front burner question right now,” Ray says. “It's worth reading because I think it will be a very great disincentive for the administration to claim that the reason they are with Israel attacking Iran is because Iran has a nuclear weapon.”
He reads the report: “The threat assessment dated two days ago says this, ‘We continue to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and that Khamenei has not reauthorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003.’”
Ray explains what all this means for the Middle East, analyzing all the players from the Houthis in Yemen and their effort against Israel to Marco Rubio’s State Department and its funding of the ongoing genocide.
Subscribe for the full interview with Ray McGovern where he breaks down the new information in the JFK files, if Trump actually has an anti-war agenda, and the unsolved mysteries surrounding the DNC email leaks.
00:00 Intro
01:43 Chuck Schumer is fine with Trump kidnapping students
11:18 ICE agents kidnap Tufts student
18:40 "Thank You Elon Musk" Country Song
22:26 Misogynist Christian Pastor needs more women for singles event
26:55 Ray McGovern interview
27:47 SignalGate
30:21 US terror in Yemen
32:37 Why did the US attack the Houthis?
37:52 When Israel killed US soldiers
42:28 Does Iran have nukes?
50:48 What does Iran want?
53:38 Why does Israel have nukes?
59:59 JFK files UNCLASSIFIED
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Transcript
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| 0:55.0 | secure. Hello and welcome to Useful Idiots. I'm Katie Helper. I'm Mary Mate. Hey, everybody. Thanks so |
| 1:05.8 | much for being here. Our website, as always, is Useful Idiotscast.com. Go there to support the show and get |
| 1:13.1 | bonus content and do it now and you'll be taking part in a celebration because we're now entering |
| 1:17.2 | our fifth year on Substack. And thank you to everyone who supported us there. You're what |
| 1:23.0 | keeps the show going. We really appreciate it. And I appreciate the fact that now being on substack |
| 1:27.6 | means you're no longer a grifter. I recall those old days when those of us who joined substack |
| 1:32.8 | early on, we're just called grifters because we were daring to get the support of our audience |
| 1:38.1 | directly rather than, I don't know, some big corporation or NGO or a billionaire. |
| 1:48.3 | But since now, everybody's on substack, it's no longer being called being a grifter. |
| 1:49.7 | So I'm grateful for that too. |
| 1:54.0 | And thanks to everyone who grifted along with us and supporting his independent. |
| 1:55.1 | We appreciate it. And we have a great guest for you today. |
| 1:57.8 | The legendary Ray McGovern, former intelligence analyst for the CIA. His beat is Russia, |
| 2:05.6 | and he happens to be, by the way, fluent in Russian, German, and Spanish. And Ray is the co-founder |
... |
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