Emergency Press Conference in Washington to Avert the Danger of Nuclear War
On June 3, the U.S. State Department prevented U.S. citizen Scott Ritter from boarding his flight to St. Petersburg, Russia, and seized his passport. Ritter, a former U.S. Marine officer and United Nations weapons inspector who has become a prominent opponent of the current war policy, was traveling to participate in the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF). He was subsequently able to at least participate in one panel via Zoom.
The content of what Ritter was going to discuss is key to understanding why the U.S. government intervened so brutally to restrict an American citizens’ right to free speech, and to travel freely. His intention was to go into the need to improve U.S.-Russian relations and to stop the escalating danger arising from NATO’s current posture towards Russia, as seen most starkly in Ukraine, which is dragging the world towards a nuclear World War III.
Indeed, the attacks in late May on a critical Russian early-warning radar system at Armavir, purportedly by “Ukrainian” drones, could have tipped the balance towards war, because it could have confirmed for Russia their stated belief that NATO and the West are intent on “blinding” Russia’s early-warning system in preparation for a possible “preemptive decapitation” strike by the U.S. and NATO against them (cf. SAS 22, 23/24) Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly stated exactly this concern, publicly, and it is the height of arrogant foolishness of the West to dismiss this as a “bluff,” as so many in Washington, London and other NATO capitals are now doing.
As dangerous as attempting to blind Russia’s early-warning radar, are the efforts to silence opposition voices who function as a kind of “early-warning” system in the domain of policy deliberation, those who are warning of the danger of nuclear war, and are presenting alternatives to a policy of confrontation.
Given the urgency, the Schiller Institute moved quickly to set up an emergency press conference on June 12, at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., with the participation of Scott Ritter himself and three other experts: Col. (ret.) Richard H. Black, former head of the U.S. Army’s Criminal Law Division at the Pentagon; former State Senator, Virginia; Ray McGovern, former CIA analyst and co-founder of the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), and Helga Zepp-LaRouche, founder of the Schiller Institute. Our next issue of the SAS will report on the event.
In various interviews done after his passport was seized at the airport, Scott Ritter pointed out that he was on the list of “information terrorists” to be eliminated, compiled by the Ukrainian Center for Countering Disinformation, which is in turn funded by the U.S. State Department. (A number of leaders of the Schiller Institute, including Helga Zepp-LaRouche, also figure prominently on that “kill list” cf. SAS 16, 22/24). He also explained that he planned to speak at the SPIEF about the transition to a multipolar world through the BRICS, a transition that the State Department is desperate to stop.
