THE SCOTT RITTER SAGA: Cancel Culture, Round Three: Get Out of My Damn Backpack

[Note: Since this article was written, the organizers of “Rage Against the War Machine” have reversed their decision to withdraw their invitation for me to speak at the February 19 anti-war event in Washington, DC. They made this decision under pressure from many of the other speakers scheduled to attend who opposed my being removed from the event. This is the right decision. I recognize that being invited to speak at an event such as the one scheduled for February 19 is a privilege, not a right. I will do my utmost to ensure that my presentation is worthy of the occasion. I have no hard feeling against the organizers. However, the decision to kick me off the speakers list, after publicly announcing I would be speaking, sent a message to all those who promote “cancel culture” tactics that their methods work. This is a threat to everyone. Moreover, given the vicious and vociferous attacks that have been leveled against me, I believe it only appropriate that I respond by staying true to the emotions and mindset I had upon learning I had been removed, and which governed the tone and content of the article as originally written. Cancel culture cannot be allowed to prevail. Thank you again to those who supported me, and to the event organizers who have honored me by allowing me to be in the company of such esteemed individuals working in support of such a worthy cause.]  

Back in early January 2003, I was involved in a project intended to be a last-gasp effort to head off a US-led war with Iraq. In December 2002, Ari Fleischer, the White House spokesperson, had articulated during a press conference that while the official US policy toward Iraq was regime change, this did not necessarily mean removing Saddam Hussein by use of force. Fleischer indicated that a significant change in behavior on the part of the Iraqi government could constitute “regime change.”

I picked up on that theme and reached out to the Iraqi government (keeping in mind I had addressed the Iraqi Parliament back in September 2002 in a successful bid to get UN weapons inspectors back on the job), and outlined a proposal based upon a six-point plan of action that would have the Iraqi government agree to changes in policy regarding disarmament, human rights, democracy, diplomacy, economy and peace.

I proposed that Iraq accept a high-level delegation from the international community who would meet with senior Iraqi leadership, including Saddam Hussein, where they would take these six points and turn them into a formal commitment by the Iraqis to, in short, conduct “regime change” through self-induced behavioral modification.

To my surprise, the Iraqi government agreed to my proposal.

I began working with contacts I had developed over the years, and soon assembled a delegation which included Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa and other international dignitaries, including the former UN coordinator for humanitarian affairs in Iraq, Denis Halliday. Normon Soloman, the director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, agreed to help fund the delegation.

We were planning to fly to Iraq on January 23, hold meetings with the Iraqi officials on January 24-25, and hold a joint press conference on January 26 announcing the Iraqi government’s acceptance of the six points for peace, as I was calling the agreement.

My work caught the attention of the FBI, and a senior Special Agent with the National Security Division named Beth Gallagher asked for an emergency meeting to discuss my upcoming trip.

My policy regarding the FBI was to be fully transparent, and so I agreed to the meeting. On January 17, I met with Special Agent Gallagher and other FBI agents in a hotel room in downtown Albany, where they proceeded to question me about my sources of funding and my personal motivations in making the trip. Apparently, my answers satisfied them, and we departed on good terms (several FBI agents had brought along copies of my book, Endgame, which they asked me to sign before departing).

No sooner than I returned home, my phone rang. On the other end was a reporter from The Daily Gazette, a Schenectady, New York newspaper, who told me his paper was preparing to publish a frontpage story about an incident between myself and the Colonie Police Department in June 2001 that had led to Class-B misdemeanor charges of Child Endangerment being filed against me (charges that were eventually dismissed, and all records relating to the incident sealed under court order).

That was the end of my effort to stop a war with Iraq. Normon Soloman withdrew his funding support, and the delegation evaporated. If I wanted to proceed with the mission, I would have to do so alone. So I, too, dropped out.

I quit.

On February 5, 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell delivered his now infamous presentation to the United Nations Security Council, and a little more than a month later, the UN invaded Iraq.

Scott Ritter will discuss this article and answer audience questions on Episode 42 of Ask the Inspector.

Beth Gallagher has denied any role in leaking information about the 2001 law enforcement encounter to the press. That may be, but the FBI did have a close working relationship with former Colonie Police Lieutenant Tom Breslin, who was the supervising officer during the incident in question.

Breslin had retired from the Colonie Police Department in the fall of 2001, shortly before the charges against me were dismissed and the records sealed. Apparently, the judge’s decision, which was fully backed by Breslin’s fellow police officers, enraged Breslin, who had taken a personal dislike to me.

Breslin took a job with the Office of Security for Siena College, located in the Town of Colonie. It was at Siena College where Breslin and I next met, in December 2002, while he was providing security for a speaking event where I was the featured speaker. As I spoke, Breslin was beside himself with anger, turning nearly purple in the face while he glared at me. I left once the event finished, the two of us never having exchanged words.

It turned out it was Tom Breslin who had placed the call to the Schenectady Gazette, a fact acknowledged by the Colonie Police Chief, who said that while it would be illegal for any serving officer in the department to discuss sealed files in their possession, there was nothing the department could do about retired officers. Tom Breslin was the only police officer involved in the 2001 encounter who had retired at the time of the news leak. And he clearly had it out for me.

For the benefit of those who haven’t allowed what I just wrote to fully sink in, let me reiterate:

• On my own initiative, I came up with a plan which, if implemented, had a very real chance of preventing a war from breaking out. To be clear—the Iraqi government, including Saddam Hussein, was on board. All I had to do was to have the courage to pull it off.

• I formed a team of people I thought were as committed as I was to the cause of preventing war to help me implement this plan.

• Then a disgruntled cop, with or without the assistance/collusion of the FBI, made a phone call to the press, putting into the public spotlight a story which was designed to compel those whom I had entrusted with this mission of peace to pull out, killing the effort.

It worked.

And one of my biggest regrets in life is that I let it work.

I had the opportunity to go it alone, to travel to Baghdad by myself and see the mission through. The Iraqi government was ready to receive me. My previous intervention, in September 2002, to implore the Iraqi government to allow UN weapons inspectors to return to work, had forestalled the US invasion by helping discredit the false claims about weapons of mass destruction.

I had momentum on my side, and the six-point peace plan should have been given a chance.

But I allowed it to die because I allowed the concept of cancel culture premised on the age-old tactic of character assassination to succeed.

Nearly 4,500 American military personnel were killed as a result. Tens of thousands more were wounded.

More than 110,000 Iraqis lost their lives through violence because of the US invasion. Millions more had their lives torn asunder.

The Middle East was destabilized because of the US invasion, and it still hasn’t recovered.

Whether Tom Breslin acted on his own in making his phone call, or was acting in coordination with the FBI, I will probably never know.

What I do know is that his phone call set in motion events that were responsible for stopping the last remaining chance of preventing a war with Iraq, and for that he can rot in hell.

But the lives lost and altered are on me because I quit, and I must live with that reality every day of every week of every year for the rest of my life.

Fast forward 20 years.

On January 15, 2023, during the “Plan B” book signing/speaking engagement event that WBAI radio host Randy Credico had organized in the aftermath of the cancellation of the original event scheduled at the Russian Samovar, I was approached by Nick Brana, the National Chair of the People’s Party, about attending an anti-war rally (“Rage Against the War Machine”) scheduled for February 19, at the Lincoln Memorial, in Washington, DC.

“We really want you to attend,” Nick said. “Your voice is essential to our message.”

I agreed, and a few days later Nick sent me an email that connected me with Angela McArdle, the Chair of the Libertarian Party, and a co-coordinator of the “Rage Against the War Machine” event.

“We have an amazing group of people speaking with you at the Lincoln Memorial and marching to the White House,” Nick wrote, “including Jimmy Dore, Medea Benjamin, Scott Horton, Garland Nixon, David Swanson, Daniel McAdams, Max Blumenthal, Anya Parampil, Supreme, Tara Reade, Diane Sare, Jackson Hinkle, Matthew Hoh, Kim Iversen, and Pasta Jardula.”

I had appeared on the Jimmy Dore Show several times, and Medea Benjamin and I had a long history of working together against war and injustice (indeed we last met in October 2022, at a rally in front of the Department of Justice in Washington, DC, in support of Julian Assange, the imprisoned founder of Wikileaks).

Garland Nixon and I were doing a weekly podcast together, and I was making nearly weekly appearances on the radio show he co-hosted with Dr. Wilmer Leon. Daniel McAdams and I had last seen each other back in June 2022, when I was a keynote speaker at Ron Paul’s annual conference. Max Blumenthal and his wife, Anya Parampil, had gone out to dinner with my family and I when we visited my daughter in Washington, DC, last summer. I had appeared on both Tara Reade’s and Kim Iverson’s podcasts last year and was doing regular appearances on various media outlets together with Diane Sare, both during her electoral challenge to Chuck Schumer in the November 2022 election, and in support of her stance on arms control and the war in Ukraine.

I knew Matthew Hoh peripherally as a former Marine-turned activist whom I respected, and I had been a regular on Scott Horton’s Antiwar Radio show, as well as Pasta Jardula’s “Conversation Couch” podcast.

The only people I did not personally know on the list of speakers was Jackson Hinkle, a popular YouTube host, and Supreme, the Wu-Tang Clan Affiliate Producer and music artist.

(Other speakers that have since been added to the list include Dennis Kucinich, the former activist congressman and presidential candidate from Ohio whom I worked with frequently over the years, Judge Andrew Napolitano, the host of the Judging Freedom podcast where I am a frequent guest, and Ann Wright, the former Army Colonel and fellow member of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)).  

“All of us are thrilled that you can speak at Rage Against the War Machine!” Nick concluded his email.

“Rage Against the War Machine” published an on-line poster featuring the photographs of the listed speakers, including myself.

“Small actions aren’t making a dent in the military-industrial march to a nuclear WW3,” Angela McArdle wrote in the email containing the poster. “We need to go bigger and bolder. Much bigger and bolder. That’s why we’re organizing buses from across the Eastern US to DC and working to make this the biggest anti-war protest since the Iraq War.” She then concluded, “Your message of dialogue and collaboration to pull back from the brink of annihilation is something the world needs to hear.”

Or not.

Shortly after I was announced as a speaker, I received an email from Angela McArdle. “We’re starting to get questions from conservative publications about the accusations leveled against you,” she wrote. “Is there a way you'd like me to respond when I get asked about your past? I can link to your article if that’s your preference.”

“It’s up to you,” I replied. “If this makes you uncomfortable, I can stay home. Feel free to link my article if that suits you as well. Or,” I observed, “just ignore them.”

But the heat was too much for the organizers of “Rage Against the War Machine.”

“The hit pieces have started to drop,” Angela wrote, “and the reaction from some of our social media followers has been extremely uncivilized. We’re concerned for your safety and the safety of attendees at the event because of violent comments made by several people. I feel terrible about this situation, but we think it’s best if you withdraw as a speaker for this event. We appreciate your anti-war advocacy so much and I wish I’d had a better plan to get out ahead of this. I’m so sorry about how this turned out.”

It looked like I wasn’t going to be given the chance to speak in front of the Lincoln Memorial after all. “So be it,” I replied. “But you have given them a victory. I’ve spoken in public many times. These cowards never do anything. But now you’ve empowered them. You never should have invited me. This is not a good precedent. To say I’m disappointed is an understatement. But I wish you well, and I hope your event is everything you want it to be.”

I’ve been dealing with the harsh realities of cancel culture for decades, starting with my decision to resign as UN weapons inspector back in 1998, and the pledge of the FBI, delivered in person by the CIA Station Chief in New York at the time, Larry Sanchez, on the day of my resignation, that the FBI would “f**k me in the ass” for the rest of my life because of that decision.

They’ve tried their best. They charged me with espionage (a crime that carries the death penalty), forcing me to bankrupt myself in a successful defense. (Mary Jo White was the US prosecutor from the Southern District of New York who headed that effort. Anyone who knows anything about either her or the Southern District of New York knows she never loses a prosecution. She can’t say that anymore.)

The purpose of Mary Jo White’s prosecution, and the underlying FBI investigation, however, was never to put me behind bars.

It was to destroy my life.

In this, they almost succeeded.

Once you get labeled a “threat to national security” (and I had Sandy Berger, Bill Clinton’s National Security Advisor, slap that label on me in successive White House meetings with the FBI), normal avenues of employment are denied to you. Earning a living, and being able to care for your family, becomes a constant struggle. (I have a wife, twin daughters, and at the time, my wife’s parents, refugees from the civil war in Georgia, looking to me for support.)

In 2000, I began the process of making a documentary film about Iraq to educate the American people about the truth regarding Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. I had received funding from an Iraqi-American for this project, and in the summer of 2000 I took a film crew to Iraq to begin production.

I was viciously attacked by the mainstream media for making this trip, and the FBI resumed their systemic harassment.

By the spring of 2001, I had run out of money for the film. To complete the film, entitled In Shifting Sands, I had to use $75,000 of my own money, literally wiping out my savings. The movie got finished, but in the process, I succumbed to extreme depression, looking at a stack of bills amounting to thousands of dollars, and a bank account with less than $300, and a refrigerator that was empty, and no way to fill it up.

I had a pistol in my home, and at one point I had chambered a round and was preparing to take the coward’s way out when the school bus pulled up outside my house, discharging my two daughters.

The next day I called the Bethlehem Police Department and surrendered my weapon to them.

But the depression continued, leading to the encounters with the Colonie Police Department and Tom Breslin.

I was able to crawl out of the dark place I had found myself with the love and help of my wife, family, and friends.

Unfortunately, the politics of cancel culture and character assassination never go away. I was proven right about there being no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but instead of being vindicated in the eyes of the American public, I was further singled out for personal attacks. Once again, the task of earning a living wage became nearly impossible.

I had two daughters getting ready to go to college, and I could barely make a mortgage payment, let alone set aside money for their education. Depression again set in, leading to the online activity in an adults-only chat room with someone who turned out to be a cop.

That incident took place on February 9, 2009.

On February 14, Valentine’s Day, my wife and I planned on taking my daughters and their friends into New York City to celebrate their 16th birthday. I had told my wife about the incident the same day it happened. To say she was angry was an understatement. I had showed her the transcript of the conversation that had taken place. She wasn’t happy, but she agreed it was nothing more than an idiot being stupid in an adults-only chat room with other adults. This didn’t mean we were in a good place—far from it. Our marriage hung in the balance, as did the future of our family.

I was a volunteer firefighter at the time, and early on the morning of February 14, I responded to a fire at a local restaurant, Alteri’s, in Glenmont. I was the Lieutenant of Engine 22, and we were given the task of mounting an interior attack on the second floor of the restaurant building, where the fire had gotten into the roof and walls. This was the last chance to stop the fire from destroying what was a popular neighborhood destination. (Indeed, my wife and I had reservations there that night.)

My job was to advance a 4” “Blitz” line up the stairs and as deep into the second floor as possible. Another firefighter covered my advance with a 1 ¾” handline, and a third helped feed the “Blitz” line to me as I made my way into the building.

Getting up the stairs was difficult, with the handline having to knock back flames that were coming from the ceiling. The heat was insane, and I was knocked to the floor immediately. I crawled forward, advancing the “Blitz” line, and every inch forward felt like I was moving further into hell. I got about 20 feet into the building and could go no further. My gear was soaked with water, which the heat was turning into steam. I was literally being boiled like a lobster.

As I directed the stream of water into the ceiling and walls, I looked up, and saw fire over my head.

The entire time I was advancing the line, the weight of the circumstances I was facing at home confronted me. I was in the middle of a burning building. All I had to do was roll over, take off my mask, and inhale, and it would all be over.

No more worries.

I must have thought about that for a few seconds before I heard the other firefighters shouting at me. “Get the fuck out!” they were yelling. The fire was too deeply seated in the building, and we weren’t making any progress.

I looked up at the ceiling one last time. It’s now or never, I thought.

Take off the mask.

Instead, I backed out of the second floor under the protective stream of the handline and withdrew down the stairs.

We had lost—the fire had won. A few minutes later, the second floor collapsed. Alteri’s was destroyed.

I walked away from that fire determined to fight for my life. For my family. For my friends.

For me.

And I’ve been fighting ever since.

At the January 15 “Plan B” event in New York City, during the question-and-answer session that followed my presentation, a member of the audience had brought up the June 1982 demonstration in New York City’s Central Park, where over a million people had gathered in support of nuclear disarmament and arms control. The thought of such an event happening today just blew me away.

Caught up in the spirit of 1982, I opened up to the audience (including Nick Brana) about a plan Jeff Norman, my long-time friend and collaborator who had tirelessly assisted me in my efforts to oppose the war in Iraq (and who stood by my side throughout my prosecution and subsequent incarceration—next to the definition of the word “friend” in Webster’s Dictionary, they should put Jeff’s photograph), had come up with regarding my book, Disarmament in the Time of Perestroika, and the message it contained.

There is a chance, I told the crowd, that this book—which tells the history of the implementation of the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty, and I believe can serve as a template to further the possibility of future arms control)—will be translated into Russian, and published in Russia.

If this happens, I said, there is the possibility of a book tour in Russia, where I could take this message of disarmament, peace, and peaceful coexistence to the people of Russia.

In our discussions about this, Jeff and I realized that if this book tour took place, it could generate discussions among the Russian audience about their views on America and the prospect of peace, insights that were being denied to the American people because of the rampant Russophobia that has gripped the United States today.

If we could capture these insights, and transport them back to the United States, there might be a chance to turn the corner on the ignorance-based fear that dominates the present discourse regarding US-Russian relations, including disarmament. (One only needs to reflect on the current status of arms control between the US and Russia, where collaboration on the last remaining arms control treaty has ground to a halt, to understand the importance of such a message.)

This documentary, which has the working title “Bridge of Peace/Мост Мира,” could serve as the impetus for a transformation in perception among the people of the United States and Russia which, if acted on, could pressure the US to get serious about arms control with Russia.

It could serve as the impetus for a new million-person demonstration in Central Park in support of arms control.

It might even serve as an impetus for a million-person gathering in Moscow in solidarity with the American demonstrators.

It could save the world from the imminent threat of nuclear war.

That was my vision.

The crowd loved the idea. Nick Brana was there, and said he supported it. “The story you told us [in New York City], of collaboration and finding our common humanity with the Soviets, is exactly what people need to hear today.”

And that was the message I was going to share during my speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial on February 19, as part of the “Rage Against the War Machine” demonstration.

But not anymore.

I don’t need the platform provided by the February 19 event to spread the word about my “Bridge of Peace” project.

What I do need are partners who are committed to the fight.

Because to bring the vision that is “Bridge of Peace” to life will be the fight of a lifetime.

A war against those who seek war.

The list of enemies who do not want this project to succeed is long.

Many of them are known—the US Government, the FBI, the Military Industrial Complex, mainstream media.

They will attack the project, and those who are working to make the project a reality.

I let them defeat me once, 20 years ago, when I quit in the face of adversity.

That got us the war in Iraq.

Today we are talking about the survival of humanity. The future of my daughters, and their children, and their children.

I almost gave up on them twice, in 2001 and again in 2009.

I will never give up on them again.

I will see this project through to the end, whatever that may be.

I may succeed, or I may fail.

But I will never quit.

The proponents of American cancel culture aren’t making it easy for me. While I recently got my Twitter account back, every tweet I make gets swarmed by accounts affiliated with the North American Fellas Organization (NAFO), whose favorite line, “twice-convicted pedophile” is as insulting as it is wrong. (I was only convicted once, and the charges had nothing whatsoever to do with pedophilia or any manifestation thereof.)

I’m being stalked on my Substack blog by someone who goes by the name “Emily Rakaczewski,” which combines the first name of the 24-year-old online persona used by a Pennsylvania police officer to engage me in a conversation in an adults-only chat room where he had to certify himself as an adult on three separate occasions before interacting with others, with the last name of the Assistant District Attorney who had to manufacture a case derived from lies and perjured testimony in order to get a corrupt judge who has a proclivity to illegally listen in on the courtroom conversations of defendants and their lawyers using hidden microphones (yup, Pennsylvania justice in a nutshell) to convict me.

And if it were not for the diligent work of my able administrators who volunteer their time to make my Telegram channel a forum conducive to respectful, informed discourse, NAFO and “Emily Rakaczewski”-like personas would do their best to overwhelm that forum as well.

The purpose of those behind these attacks isn’t to make my online presence difficult, but rather to destroy my life. Thanks to their efforts, United Services Automobile Association, or USAA, an insurance group that caters to military officers, has canceled my banking accounts, my automobile insurance, and my home insurance policies that I’ve had for nearly 40 years. (I joined upon being commissioned in 1984.)

According to Jesse Aldridge, who works in the office of the USAA CEO, Wayne Peacock, these decisions were made because “the trust and confidence necessary for an insurance relationship has been broken due to the prior felony conviction” that had been brought to their attention by one of the legion of NAFO-like detractors who stalk my every move.

The USAA decision may, in fact, be in violation of New York State law, at least as it applies to automobile insurance, but that’s not the point. The fact is this decision, which is self-contradictory (my conviction occurred in 2011, which means that for the past 12 years I was clearly capable of having a good enough insurance relationship for USAA to renew on an annual basis), is designed to wreak havoc on my personal life, disrupting and damaging the critical financial and insurance relationships that are essential in modern society.

The ghost of Tom Breslin hangs heavy over my life. This abomination of a police officer, placed a phone call to the media in 2003 that not only was designed to destroy me personally but helped start a war. Moreover, his perjured testimony played a central role in my conviction at trial. Breslin colluded with the prosecutor, Rakaczewski, to manufacture a last-second “recollection” of a confession I allegedly gave him back in 2001. While the judge at first excluded this testimony, she allowed the prosecutor to introduce it once Breslin was no longer available for cross-examination regarding this “memory.” However, Breslin’s “memory” included details about my relationship with Iraq that took place in the summer of 2002, and which I spoke about publicly only in December 2002 at the Siena College event Breslin attended. I never made a confession, because I committed no crime. (If I had, in fact, confessed, the charges would never have been dropped.) Breslin “convicted” himself, proving that my efforts to prevent a war with Iraq in 2002 served as the motivation for his efforts to destroy my life in 2003 and again in 2009.

The disease he unleashed continues to infect the world today. And the most recent manifestation of this infection is the decision by “Rage Against the War Machine” to drop me as a speaker.

This is a defining moment. If I allow this action to go forward unanswered, then I am quitting in the face of adversity.

Tom Breslin would win, and that son of a bitch can never be allowed to win.

The organizers of “Rage Against the War Machine” have made their decision. They caved into the pressures brought on them by the forces of American cancel culture. The extent of their surrender is perhaps best encapsulated by a tweet sent out by one of the organizers, Joshua Smith, himself a veteran of the United States Navy who served in Iraq and who became an anti-war activist upon his return home in 2005.

“To those asking and making a scene about the speakers at Rage Against The War Machine,” Joshua tweeted, “Scott Ritter has been disinvited as a speaker there.”

I’m not running away from anything. I’m marching forward, more determined than ever before so see this mission to the end.

I’m reminded of a speech made by George Clooney’s character, Ryan Bingham, in the movie Up in the Air.

“How much does your life weigh?” he asks. “Imagine for a second that you’re carrying a backpack. I want you to feel the straps on your shoulders… You feel them? I want you to pack it with all the stuff that you have in your life. You start with the little things. The shelves and the drawers. The knick-knacks. Collectables. Feel the weight as that adds up.”

Ryan continues: “Then you start adding larger stuff. Clothes, tabletop appliances, lamps, linens, your TV. That backpack should be getting pretty heavy now and you go bigger. Your couch, your bed, your kitchen table. Stuff it all in there. Your car, get it in there. Your home, whether it’s a studio apartment or a two-bedroom house. I want you to stuff it all into that backpack.”

Then Clooney’s character delivers the punchline: “Now try to walk. It’s kind of hard, isn’t it? This is what we do to ourselves on a daily basis. We weigh ourselves down until we can’t even move. And make no mistake—moving is living.”

So I am making this declaration to what constitutes the anti-war movement in America today: the threat of nuclear war is real—more real today than at any time since the mid-1980’s.

For that reason, I’m moving forward in my effort to breathe life back into the moribund body that is American arms control policy.

I’m moving forward to help build a vision of peaceful coexistence with Russia founded on the principle of nuclear disarmament that promotes the welfare of both nations.

I’m going to make a movie that seeks to inspire others to join this cause.

I’m going to help put a million people in Central Park to make this point.

You’re welcome to accompany me on this journey.

However, to do so, you must be willing to reject cancel culture in all its manifestations. Otherwise, all you are doing is empowering the enemy, and if you’re empowering the enemy, you’re in my backpack.

And I’m not going to carry you.