Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity

Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) is an association of American intelligence professionals, mostly formerly high-ranking employees of the NSA, the CIA, the FBI and various ministries, officers of the army and diplomats who advocate ethical behavior, integrity and against the misuse of secret service information. The VIPS was founded in 2003 in response to the legitimate invasion of Iraq with deliberately misinformation about weapons of mass destruction . At that time the group had 25 members. After David Kay's weapons inspectors found there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Michael W. Robbins wrote in Mother Jones magazine that VIPS had produced some of the most credible and critical analyzes of the Bush administration's handling of intelligence prior to the Iraq invasion.

On August 3, 2010, VIPS issued a memorandum to the US President warning not to trust the Israeli government and predicting an imminent unsettled military attack by Israel against Iran.

In 2013, Muhammad Idrees Ahmad pointed out the anonymous sources of the group in The New Republic and that some of their findings were taken verbatim from the two conspiracy sites Global Research and Alex Jones .

On August 31, 2014, eight VIPS members published an open letter to German Chancellor Angela Merkel warning against viewing commercially available satellite images as evidence of a Russian invasion of Ukraine . The signatories included former FBI agent Coleen Rowley , as well as former CIA analyst Ray McGovern , who advised former US President George HW Bush on intelligence during his time in the White House until 1990. Even William Binney , was one of the signatories. The Süddeutsche Zeitung pointed out that the group "ignored" the other obvious indications for the Russian intervention.

Steering Committee 2017:

• Eugene D. Betit , Intelligence Analyst, Defense Intelligence Agency , Soviet FAO, (US Army, retired )
• William Binney , former NSA Technical Director for World Geopolitical & Military Analysis; Co-founder of the NSA Signals Intelligence Automation Research Center
• Marshall Carter-Tripp , diplomat and former head of a department of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research at the US State Department (retired)
• Thomas Drake , former analyst for the CIA, former senior executive service of the Signal Intelligence Directorate for the NSA
• Bogdan Dzakovic , former Team Leader of Federal Air Marshals and Red Team, FAA Security, (ret.) (VIPS associated)
• Robert Furukawa , Captain, Civil Engineer Corps (CEC), United States Navy Reserve (USN-R) (U.S. Navy, ret.)
• Philip Giraldi , Central Intelligence Agence, Operations Officer (retired)
• Mike Gravel , Former Adjutant, Superintendent, Communications Intelligence Service; Counter Intelligence Corps special agent and former US Senator
• Matthew Hoh , Former Captain, US Marine Corps (USMC) in Iraq and Diplomat in Afghanistan (VIPS Associate)
• Larry C. Johnson , CIA and State Department (ret.)
• Michael S. Kearns , Captain, US Air Force (retired); Former survival trainer [Master SERE Instructor] for Strategic Reconnaissance Operations (NSA / DIA) and Special Mission Units [JSOC]
• John Brady Kiesling , Foreign Service Officer Diplomat (retired)
• John Kiriakou , former analyst and counter-terrorism specialist, CIA, former senior investigator on the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee
• Linda Lewis , Political Analyst, WMD preparedness policy analyst, Department of Agriculture (retired) (VIPS Associate)
• Lisa Ling , TSgt USAF (ret.) (VIPS Associate)
• Edward Loomis , NSA, specialist in encryption procedures with computers, (retired)
• David MacMichael , National Intelligence Council (retired)
• Ray McGovern , Former Army Infantry and Intelligence Officer and CIA Analyst (retired)
• Elizabeth Murray , Deputy National Intelligence Officer for the Middle East, CIA and National Intelligence Council (retired)
• Torin Nelson , former Intelligence Officer / Interrogator, Department of the Army, Department of Defense
• Todd E. Pierce , Major, Army Judge Advocate (retired)
• Coleen Rowley , FBI Special Agent and Legal Counsel [Minneapolis Division Legal Counsel] (retired)
• Scott Ritter , former major, USMC, and former UN weapons inspector in Iraq
• Peter Van Buren , U.S. Department of State, U.S. Diplomat (retired) (VIPS Associate)
• Kirk Wiebe , former Senior Analyst, SIGINT Automation Research Center, NSA
• Sarah G. Wilton , Commander, US Naval Reserve (ret.), DIA (ret.) (VIPS associated)
• Robert Wing , former Foreign Service Officer (VIPS associated)
• Ann Wright , Colonel in the United States Army (retired ), former diplomat for the United States Foreign Service (resigned in protest of the Iraq war)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Ex-CIA Accuse Bush of Manipulating Iraq Evidence. FOX news, March 17, 2003
2. ↑ Michael W. Robbins, The Skeptical Spy , Mother Jones , March 10, 2004.
3. ↑ Lahav Harkov, Obama misplaced trust in Netanyahu , Jerusalem Post , August 5, 2010.
4. ↑ Dana Karni, Will Israel Bomb Iran This Month? ( Memento of the original from August 15, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Fox News , August 5, 2010. 
5. ↑ The New Truthers: Americans Who Deny Syria Used Chemical Weapons , September 12, 2013
6. ↑ Ex-secret service agents doubt Russian invasion. September 4, 2014, Markus C. Schulte von Drach, Süddeutsche Zeitung
7. ↑ https://consortiumnews.com/2017/04/11/trump-should-rethink-syria-escalation

Web links

• Link list of memoranda of the VIPS
• Interview with Ray McGovern about the Ghouta poison gas attacks during the civil war in Syria
• Interview with Ray McGovern et al. a. on the establishment of VIPS, the memorandum to Angela Merkel and the developments in Ukraine (from September 6, 2014, 26:04)