Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity

Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) is a group of former officers of the United States Intelligence Community which formed in January 2003. In February 2003, the group issued a statement accusing the Bush administration of misrepresenting U.S. national intelligence information in order to push the US and its allies toward that year's US-led invasion of Iraq. The group issued a letter stating that intelligence analysts were not being heeded by policy makers. The group initially numbered 25, mostly retired analysts. Members Members include founder Ray McGovern, a former CIA analyst, as well as William Binney, Thomas A. Drake, Patrick Eddington, Philip Giraldi, Larry C. Johnson, David MacMichael, Jesselyn Radack, Scott Ritter and others. Ray McGovern, a member of the VIPS steering committee, said VIPS had 35 members as of March 2004. A year earlier, the group had 25 members. Two members, Bill and Kathleen Christison, resigned from the group in July 2003 following a VIPS open letter calling for the resignation of American Vice President Dick Cheney. In an open letter explaining their resignation, they said VIPS should write about policies and actions rather than personalities, and they wanted to avoid Cheney becoming a scapegoat which would end calls for further change to the Bush administration's foreign policy. They also said the memo included statements that "diminish VIPS' credibility and open it to charges of the very kind of truth-stretching that it is trying to combat." They said VIPS must be scrupulous since it is made up of "retired intelligence officers without firsthand inside information."