McGovern calls for whistleblowing before alleged US attack on Iran

February 17, 2006

Ex- agent, of , has called for people with inside information on the alleged - threats to launch an attack on Iran to become by revealing this information. McGovern is strongly critical of the administration of the US.

He claims that he personally had missed a chance to try to stop the by failing to whistleblow about a cable sent by General  on August 20, 1967 regarding a significant underestimate of  troop numbers. He called for "shedding light on what the Bush administration is up to beneath the " and asked that "Those of you clued into Israeli plans and U.S. intelligence support for them might clue us in too."

McGovern alleges that an attack on Iran is likely to happen in March, saying "Anyone who has been near a TV in recent weeks has heard the drumbeat for war on Iran. The best guess for timing is next month."

He recommended from his personal experience "Don't bother this time with the once-independent congressional oversight committees... Nor should you bother with the once-independent . Find some other way. ... just be sure you get the truth out – information that will provide the oxygen for democracy."

McGovern also claims that whistleblowing could have stopped the, saying "Any number of people would have had a good chance of stopping the Iraq war, had they the courage to disclose publicly what they knew BEFORE it was launched." Just five days before the attack on Iraq officially started, McGovern and his colleagues called for whistleblowing and claimed that the Bush administration was misrepresenting the case for an attack on Iraq. McGovern described the administration's information on March 15, 2003, saying "It's been cooked to a recipe, and the recipe is high policy."

In September 2004, McGovern along with, who had precipitated a national uproar in 1971 when he released the Pentagon Papers, the US military's account of activities during the Vietnam War, to The New York Times, along with several other colleagues had already announced that they would form a whistleblowers' support network for revealing possibly classified information regarding the conduct of the occupation of Iraq.