Whether knowledgeable veteran CIA analyst Ray McGovern’s initial evaluation of the results of the Jan. 10 U.S.-Russia talks in Geneva will ultimately prove accurate, his warning against relying on the corporate media — “the linchpin of the MICIMATT (Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think-Tank complex) that profiteers on war"— for any evaluation is very solid advice. “Given the very high stakes, the media is a huge part of the problem, since they keep millions in the dark about the real world and hinder progress toward reducing U.S.-Russian tensions,” he noted.
In his column in antiwar.com today, McGovern tears into the Washington Post’s coverage of the Geneva talks, captured in its headline, “Russia-U.S. talks hit impasse over NATO expansion, but Moscow says the situation is not ‘hopeless’.
“In my view, those little (and/or warmongering) minds miss the significance of what just happened in Geneva. Here’s how the headline should have read: `Geneva: Agreement to Discuss Where Missiles Can Be Emplaced’,” McGovern argues.
McGovern has been focused throughout this crisis on the direct talks between the Presidents of Russia and the United States, rather than the media or the statements by lesser government officials. He refers in this column to the Dec. 30 Putin-Biden call, in which, according to the Kremlin’s read-out, “Joseph Biden emphasized that Russia and the US shared a special responsibility for ensuring stability in Europe and the whole world and that Washington had no intention of deploying offensive strike weapons in Ukraine.”
That was not reported by the corporate media here, but at the end of today’s Geneva talks, Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman reported that her team had “raised ideas about where U.S. and Russian intermediate-range missiles are located.” McGovern views that offer as coherent with his earlier suggestion that “the Biden promise to talk about locations for offensive missile emplacement was an opening `Quid’ for the talks. It seems now that this turned out to be the case. In due course, one can expect a sizable Russian troop withdrawal from areas near Ukraine.... Impasse, Deadlock? I don’t think so.”
