Closing the Gap Between Torturer and Victim

In Washington, I asked Ray McGovern, formerly a senior CIA officer, what he made of Norman Mailer’s remark that America had entered a pre-fascist state. "I hope he’s right," he replied, "because there are others saying we are already in a fascist mode. When you see who is controlling the means of production here, when you see who is controlling the newspapers and periodicals, and the TV stations, from which most Americans take their news, and when you see how the so-called war on terror is being conducted, you begin to understand where we are headed ... It’s quite something that the nuclear threat today should be seen first and foremost as coming from the United States of America and Great Britain."
McGovern was the author of the president’s daily CIA intelligence brief. I interviewed him more than three years ago, and his prescient words are as striking today as Cockburn’s revelation of Rumsfeld’s secret life is illuminating. His description of fascism within a nominally free society recalls George Orwell’s warning that totalitarianism does not require a totalitarian state.

Pilger