Scott Ritter exposes alleged U.S. intelligence failures where the Trump administration, influenced by Fox News and Israeli apparatus, misrepresents Iran's capabilities despite CIA data showing 70% of missile stockpiles remain. He critiques Tulsi Gabbard's absence from propaganda loops, notes Joe Kent's resignation over Israeli-driven war motives, and warns that unacknowledged base damage risks global economic collapse if Gulf infrastructure is targeted, suggesting the conflict stems from narcissistic leadership rather than genuine threat assessment. [Automatically generated summary]
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Leaking Intelligence Outside Channels00:12:24
Well, Americans better buckle up for some hard truths.
We can exclusively report here on Redacted that something very big is happening inside of President Trump's intelligence operation.
And if you care about the national security of the United States, then this should alarm you.
Sources are telling Redacted that there are American intelligence professionals inside this administration who are furious.
They believe the American people are being lied to about what's really happening in the war with Iran.
They believe the official story coming out of the White House does not match the actual intelligence at all.
And they believe Trump's Iran policy has been hijacked, not by America First national security officials, not by sober military planners, not even by the CIA or the DIA, but by the Israeli government and its intelligence apparatus.
In other words, Trump's intelligence operation is truly being run out of Tel Aviv.
And now those U.S. officials are leaking information to the media, including the Washington Post, in order to get these stories out about what's really happening in Iran.
I'm going to show you examples of that.
Here in a minute.
But first, we've all been spoon fed lies about this war.
Mainstream media is feeding you fake stories about what's really happening in Iran, what's happening in the Gulf states, like this laughable gem over the last 24 hours from Jesse Waters.
Watch.
The president says, based on the request of Pakistan and other countries, we have mutually agreed that while the blockade will remain in full force and effect, Project Freedom will be paused for a short period of time to see whether or not the agreement can be finalized and signed.
We suspect the president is letting the Iranians save face.
The enemy just yesterday said they controlled the strait.
That was obviously a lie.
And watching the Americans escort ship after ship out of the Gulf and them not being able to do anything about that was going to be humiliating.
Not only were they going to lose whatever military prestige they had left in the region, their negotiators weren't going to be able to fight for their position after they lost their last bargaining chip.
The commander in chief must believe that the Iranians are serious about surrendering if he's going to pause Project Freedom for the sake of the deal.
Because you could also continue Project Freedom during the negotiations.
You know, you do want to get these foreign ships moving.
The president must know what he's doing.
And we're about to find out how insane in the brain the regime really is.
I wonder what it feels like to have your head that far up your ass.
I mean, and up the ass of the president.
Regurgitating Marco Rubio talking points.
Okay.
So, right, Jesse, right.
So, Trump is losing on purpose because he wants the enemy to feel good about itself.
That's so nice.
That's why Project Freedom has been put on hold.
The Zionists pumping these lies out to the American people think that you are stupid.
The truth cannot be revealed by the Israeli run White House.
Trump watches Fox News nonstop.
So, the information loop is happening in real time.
One of his favored cabinet folks, Begs to go on Fox News, does an interview, pushes propaganda fed to them by the Israeli intelligence.
Trump watches it then on Fox News, and the circle repeats itself.
Megyn Kelly recently summed it up, summed up this loop perfectly.
Watch.
I've spoken to many people at Fox who've told me that administration figures will come to them saying, Please put me on because I have something the president has to hear.
And also, if their fortunes are dwindling, they want a hit, like on Fox and Friends, for example.
Because they want to show.
I'm on TV.
See, I'm relevant.
I'm making your points.
They know the shows he watches and they try very hard to get on them.
But look, we know that the case was made because we know that Tucker Carlson got in front of him three times in the month leading up to this war.
And, you know, just he wasn't persuaded.
So, but there were just so many other voices.
It was nine to one, you know, that he was listening to, pushing him into it.
Not to take agency away from the president at all, but I do think a full assessment.
We know Trump made the call.
That's not a mystery.
But who pushed him into it, who made these representations, also matters.
So, this is what we're watching unfold in real time.
Now you have brave patriots inside Trump's intelligence team at ODNI revealing the truth.
And the leaks are starting to tell a very different story from the one that the Trump administration has been selling to the American people.
For weeks, President Trump and his team have told us that Iran is being crushed, that Iran's missile program has been obliterated or decimated, to use their words.
Jesse Waters and his types have been telling you that the U.S. blockade of the Strait of Hormuz is breaking Tehran economically, that the U.S. military assets in the region are secure, nothing to see here, and that it's all going according to plan.
But now look at what leaks are coming out this morning.
The Washington Post is now reporting that a confidential CIA assessment delivered to the administration policymaker says Iran can survive Trump's naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz for at least three to four months before facing more severe economic hardship.
That directly undercuts what the White House narrative is that Iran is on the verge of collapse or that they've already collapsed.
So the Israeli intelligence team running the White House messaging is lying to you, and they're lying to President Trump, selling him falsehoods about Iran's ability to control the Strait of Hormuz.
Here's the Daily Mail.
Another leak from the Patriots in Trump's ODNI reports that despite what you've been hearing, Iran still retains 75% of its mobile launchers, 70% of its pre war missile stockpiles, not 18%, as they're telling us.
And they're not mostly decimated, 70%.
And according to these folks, inside Trump's intel team, they've even reopened much of the underground tunnels and missile production.
So we have to ask ourselves why is that information only reaching the American people through leaks?
Why are we learning from anonymous intelligence officials that Iran's underground storage facilities have largely been recovered or even reopened?
Why are we learning that Iran has repaired some damaged missiles, even assembled new ones?
They've been producing missiles during this time period?
I thought they were decimated.
This is the intelligence problem Trump has on his hands right now.
And since Trump only watches Fox News and gets his information from Israeli intelligence, how is he being informed?
So Tulsi Gabbard is supposed to be there every morning providing the intel assessment.
Right?
Is that still happening?
Has she been pushed out?
Is he seeing this truthful info or is it being kept from him?
I know Megyn Kelly's giving him, you know, credit saying he has agency here, but does he?
Either he's not being told the truth or he knows the truth and is allowing the public narrative to continue anyway to save face.
But it gets worse because the Washington Post this week also, thanks to these leakers inside ODNI, published satellite imagery analysis showing that Iranian strikes damaged or destroyed at least 228 structures.
Pieces of military equipment at U.S. military sites across the Middle East.
That includes barracks, hangars, fuel depots, aircraft, radar, communication systems, air defense equipment.
We talked to Colonel McGregor yesterday.
He says, uninhabitable, most of these places.
Probably never to be used again.
Now, the Post says that level of destruction is far larger than what the U.S. government has publicly acknowledged.
Think about that.
The American people were told their reports of major U.S. losses were fake news, exaggerations, propaganda.
Same kind of propaganda that Israel sells to its own people.
The Iron Dome stopped all the missiles.
No, it didn't.
The satellite imagery shows that U.S. facilities were hit and destroyed.
It shows that Iran's targeting was more precise than officials wanted to admit.
It also shows that American bases across the region may be far more vulnerable than the Pentagon has been willing to say out loud.
And this is exactly why intelligence sources appear to be going outside normal channels right now, trying to leak this info to the American people, because sources are telling Redacted that they believe the war is being run through a foreign intelligence apparatus.
And this brings us to Joe Kent.
Kent was the head of the National Care and Terrorism Center.
He was close to Tulsi Gabbard.
He was a Trump supporter.
He was not some left wing resistance nut job.
And he resigned over the Iran war.
In his resignation letter, Kent said he could not support the war.
He said Iran posed no imminent threat to the U.S., and that was the assessment of the intelligence agencies.
And he said the U.S. went to war because of pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.
So the Washington Post reported that Kent accused high ranking officials and influential media figures of pushing misinformation.
About a swift path to victory.
It was going to be four days in order to sell the American people on this war.
It didn't work.
The American people hate this war.
So I don't know what selling they were really doing anyway.
And then Kent went even further in an interview with Tucker Carlson.
Kent said that senior officials who had doubts about the strikes were not allowed to share those concerns with President Trump.
He said that Israeli officials were providing information that U.S. officials could not confirm through intelligence channels.
That's shocking, meaning our own CIA didn't trust what the Israelis were selling.
And notice something else here.
Where the hell is Tulsi Gabbard?
Tulsi Gabbard is the director of national intelligence.
She's supposed to be the person overseeing the intelligence community, advising the president on national security.
But since this war began, you don't see her doing Fox News hits.
She's not popping up on Fox News so that she can sell anything to the president, not being even allowed to do those hits.
And that tells you something.
And here's something else the John Brennan investigation.
We were told for months that accountability was coming, an indictment was coming.
We were told the former CIA director was under serious scrutiny, whether he lied to Congress, and then also, I mean, criminal, really demonic stuff that they were apparently uncovering.
And then suddenly the lead prosecutor was no longer on the case.
Subpoenas withdrawn, replaced with like voluntary interview requests.
CBS News, Barry Weiss's CBS News, reported the lead prosecutor overseeing the criminal investigation was no longer assigned to the case.
Done, gone.
So John Brennan now is a cushy consulting gig.
Pierce is a contributor on MSNBC.
So, all good.
Nothing to see here.
And former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter is saying the quiet part out loud in a recent interview with Glenn Deeson.
He said that U.S. policy towards Iran is not being written by the CIA, not by the DIA, but by the policy circles aligned with Israel.
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So, former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter.
Joins us now to dissect all of this.
Scott, great to see you.
Welcome back to the show.
Thanks for having me.
Assessing Military Damage and Dysfunction00:10:37
So, when you hear these leaks coming out of the Washington Post and other media right now from sources at ODNI and others trying to get this information out to the American people, what does that tell you about the people that are surrounding Trump right now who are providing him with intelligence assessments of the Iran war?
Well, you know, Washington, D.C. is always leaked.
I had my first experience of that was in the late 1980s with the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty.
And we saw there were elements inside the United States Congress who had allies in the U.S. intelligence community who didn't want this treaty to work.
And so they would leak misleading intelligence to the Washington Times that would publish it on the front page and suddenly became a talking point.
So we've seen leaks used for a number of reasons.
Just because something's leaked doesn't mean it's right, it means that there are Interested parties within the United States government to take umbrage at the official line.
So, this isn't new, the leaking.
Washington, D.C. has been leaking like a sea forever.
But what it tells us about the Trump administration is that there is pushback from within the system to the narrative that's being promulgated by the White House and the people surrounding them.
Then, what makes this interesting is that the facts tend to align with the leakers, not the policymakers.
Sometimes it's the opposite case, as was with the INF Treaty, where the leaked information was factually incorrect.
They leaked it not to tell the truth, but to create perceptions, because perceptions create their own realities.
Here we have the White House in the business of manufacturing perceptions, and the reality is being suppressed.
And we have people seeking to release fact based evidence that contradicts the narrative.
I'd always like to believe that our policy aligns with truth.
And what we see here is that it doesn't.
We have a White House that's been lying to the American people, a White House that's been lying to itself.
I mean, just listen to what Megyn Kelly said.
I mean, I know you did because you spoke about it, but just for a second, understand the dysfunction.
You're somebody who was brought into your position to advise the president, you were picked for that purpose.
But because this president operates in such a tight circle of sycophants, Who exists only to appease his narcissism?
You can't get access to the person you're supposed to advise.
So you have to go to a non governmental entity, a mainstream media outlet, Fox News, in order to send a message.
I mean, this is dysfunction at its worth.
This is dangerous dysfunction.
This is the kind of stuff that should prompt immediate congressional investigations.
But instead, and it also should prompt the outrage of the American people.
We went to war.
And I know the president is playing stupid games.
It was a skirmish.
No, this was a war.
This is one of the most serious strategic air campaigns launched since Operation Desert Storm.
This is a big deal.
Tens of billions of dollars of American taxpayer money was expended.
Perhaps over $100 billion of damage has been done to American assets in the region.
And, you know, this president treats it as if it's some sort of parlor game.
This is insanity personified.
When you hear the assessments from these leakers, Inside the administration are trying to get this information out about, like, the military, the U.S. military bases destroyed, Iran's ability to withstand months of Hormuz closure pressure, their stockpiles of missiles, et cetera.
Do those leaks sound accurate to you based on your assessments?
Well, first of all, I'm always a little bit reticent to talk about battle damage assessment because I'm an American.
In favor of this war, the last thing I want to do is give somebody who's firing missiles at American service members an indication of how successful those strikes are.
So I'm always a little hesitant to talk about battle damage assessment, but I'll take the Washington Post at its word.
I will also say this about the assessments coming out from the U.S. intelligence community about surviving percentages of missiles, et cetera.
I think that these are inaccurate numbers.
I think that they underplay actually the survival rate of the Iranian missiles.
Wow.
You know, we, because they're derived from, you know, reporting that includes, you know, battle damage assessments from the people launching the strikes.
The president's just straight up lying.
So when he says 18%, it's just a manufactured number.
We know that.
But the U.S. intelligence community always, you know, leans towards what the, The operators say.
And I just go back, I can speak on personal experience here during the Gulf War.
If we say we destroyed, you know, if there's 70% left, there's 90% left.
If, you know, it's that's the case because we clearly don't know what the Iranians are capable of.
We don't know what they've done.
The same thing with, you know, the estimates about, you know, three to four months worth of, you know, sustainability on the energy side.
I'd say that's probably three to four years because we, Don't know the truth about Iran's economy.
This is conventional analysis done without any incorporation of the extensive gray markets that exist, the black markets.
I wonder if they calculated accurately how much oil is consumed domestically by the Iranians that doesn't need to go into storage, or what's going on with the amount of oil that's being shipped across the Pakistani border by trucks now.
From all accounts, it is literally.
You know, the entire border has been turned into a massive highway.
So I would say that the intelligence community doesn't have as clear a picture about Iran as some people want to give them credit for.
I give them credit for putting out an assessment that isn't spun politically, but I would say that the CIA doesn't have an insight into the reality of Iran, both in terms of their military and their economy.
So, Scott, I'll get your assessment then where you think things are heading.
We've been hearing reports from I think Larry Johnson and others believe that a new round of military action is imminent, maybe within 48 hours against Iran.
What are you hearing?
What do you think?
Well, I'm not as plugged in as Larry is, so I can't say I'm hearing anything.
This is just purely an assessment on my part.
But it's an assessment based upon reality.
And therein lies the problem.
I think we need to acknowledge up front that we're dealing with a president who is clinically insane.
The man is suffering from narcissistic personality disorder of the most malignant nature.
It makes him antisocial.
If he lived in the state of New York, he could be involuntarily confined because he represents a danger to society.
But he's the president of the United States with his finger on the nuclear trigger.
You know, and I'm being serious here.
I'm not being facetious at all.
This is a man whose social postings are clearly of mental instability.
And so that means we don't know what is going to happen.
But what I can say is that the people surrounding the president know exactly what would happen if we resumed attacks against Iran.
We can't beat the Iranians.
We proved that with 39 days of incessant bombardment that accomplished literally nothing.
And we now know that.
The Iranians retain capacity to strike back.
The military knows that it can't accomplish any mission given to it to eradicate in short order Iran's ability to launch ballistic missiles.
We had 39 days to do that.
We didn't do that.
The Iranians only got stronger.
Now the Iranians are locked and loaded.
We know that they can accurately strike targets that they aim at.
And the Iranians have made it clear that if there's renewed action against them that targets their energy infrastructure, That they will eradicate the energy infrastructure of the Gulf Arab states.
That means that Kuwait will no longer produce energy, Qatar will no longer produce energy, Bahrain will no longer produce energy, and the United Arab Emirates will no longer produce energy, and Saudi Arabia will no longer produce energy.
That's it for the global economy.
Game set, match, shut it down, it's all over.
Even though it's 22%, when you remove 22% as precipitously as it's being removed right now, it will cause a collapse, a total collapse.
A building structure that loses 22% of its.
Of its load bearing capability collapses.
You can say, well, there's 78% remaining or 88%.
No, it doesn't matter.
When you remove that much this fast without any shoring taking place, the global economy collapses.
And this includes the American economy.
And people, I believe, are telling the president that you will be committing political suicide, that there is no recovery from this.
So I believe that what's going on is a lot of posturing right now, that this president is desperate for an off ramp.
And the militant rhetoric that we're hearing is simply flexing of muscles that no longer exist.
Now, I could be proven wrong, as I said.
This man is clinically insane, and clearly the people surrounding him are sycophants whose job is to stroke his ego, not to tell him the truth.
But I think this president is politically savvy enough, and there's enough.
The narcissist wants his legacy to survive, and he's watching his legacy go down in flames right now.
And he recognizes that he needs to stop the damage and pray for some sort of policy based miracle this summer that can reverse the pull when it comes to the support for his policies, which is plummeting.
The Human Intelligence Gap00:02:42
So I personally believe that there isn't going to be a resumption of military action against Iran by the United States because to do so would be the kiss of death for this president.
Interesting.
We just saw attacks on Kashem Island, some drone attacks that were intercepted by Iranian air defenses.
Reporting just a few minutes ago, likely Israeli, I would imagine, to your point.
Which final question, Scott, then, take that Kashem point, but also, you know, is Trump's intelligence apparatus really just being run basically out of Tel Aviv right now?
Yeah.
You know, we've seen this in a lot of areas, especially in the Middle East, especially pertaining to Iran.
You know, the CIA doesn't have a good track record.
We know in the 1980s, Steve Richter, who ran the Near East Directorate, You know, through incompetence, we sacrificed it and the totality of America's human intelligence network in Iran.
We painstakingly have sought to rebuild it.
We sacrificed it about six years ago when a Gmail based communications capability was compromised.
And again, everybody communicating got arrested and killed.
And we attempted to reconstitute it again today.
We don't have a human intelligence capability.
We have totally.
Farmed out human intelligence in Iran to Israel, which means now that whenever somebody's putting together an intelligence assessment to drive all sources, you can sit there and say, I'm looking at this photograph.
This is my assessment.
Photographic intelligence gives you a snapshot.
You can look at it over a sustained period of time and drive some sort of insight.
But at the end of the day, if I'm sitting there telling you what I see based upon several snapshots, In time, and somebody else says, Yeah, but I got a human source close to so and so inside Iran.
Everybody likes the human source.
They like the sexiness.
The same thing with signals intelligence.
Unless you're monitoring the feed full time, you're only getting snippets of conversations.
And so somebody who has the human intelligence can come in and say, I can bring additional context to that communication.
The Israelis right now run the human intelligence out of Iran, and the United States is held hostage to it.
But even worse is that.
The U.S. intelligence community isn't even given a chance to counter what the Israelis say.
The president will meet in private with Prime Minister Netanyahu and the head of the Mossad, who will brief him independent of any U.S. intelligence personnel present.