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Aug. 23, 2024 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
27:53
INTEL Roundtable w/ Johnson & McGovern - Weekly Wrap Up
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Friday, August 23rd, 2024, the end of the day, the end of the week, our happy time, our Intelligence Community Roundtable with my dear friends and collaborators, Ray McGovern and Larry Johnson.
Ray and Larry, welcome here, as always.
A lot to talk about.
I want to start with you, Larry.
On this show on Monday, You made the startling comment that because American artillery and weaponry was used, because it was fired by American technicians,
because American ammunition killed Russian soldiers, because American intel authorized and probably planned it, the invasion of Kortsk constituted legally and morally the United States of America.
Invading Russia.
And I have put that question to almost every one of our friends and colleagues on this show, and nobody challenges you.
Everybody says either Larry is right morally or legally, or this is the way it is perceived in the Kremlin.
How do you feel about this a week or five days after you made the statement, Larry?
Yeah, let's just reverse roles.
Okay.
The Russians are supplying Mexican drug cartels with medium-range missiles.
They're supplying them with artillery rounds.
They're supplying them with mortar rounds.
And those Mexican cartels are carrying out attacks in Texas, in Arizona, in New Mexico, and killing American citizens.
Would we view that as an act of war by Russia?
Of course we would.
Of course we would.
Yeah, absolutely.
So, stop with the nonsense.
Stop with the delusional stuff of like, we're some innocent bystander who just happened to give a quarter to some homeless guy who was asking for some money.
No.
We are actively involved in Ukraine, using Ukraine as a proxy to fight.
Russia, and now that we've crossed the border, we have literally crossed a red line, and we will pay a price for that.
Russia is going to do to us what we would do to Russia if Russia was doing the same thing.
Colonel McGregor says that the invaders...
Fuel, food, medical supply, supplies and ammunition.
And the Russians have the military version of a noose around them.
First, Larry, and then we'll segue over to Ray.
Are American human beings, whether they're CIA or contractors or soldiers of fortune or active duty military not wearing their American uniforms, Likely inside that noose, Larry.
Oh yes, absolutely.
And the Russians have made it clear they're not going to get treated as prisoners of war.
So Ukrainian soldiers that are captured, they're going to be treated as prisoners of war.
They'll be available for prisoner swap.
Not the foreigners.
The foreigners are going to be treated as spies.
Which means they can be executed.
They can be executed, or Russia is going to keep them back as bargaining chips.
You never know down the road when you're going to have another reporter or somebody you want to trade for.
But they're going to be treated differently, and that's important to understand.
Ray, what is the role, the likely role, of MI6 and CIA in all of this?
Well, MI6 or the British are pretty much applauding what happened and cheering for it and taking responsibility in a measure.
I'd like to just go back and say that I've been thinking a lot about this.
Why would the Ukrainians do such a thing egged on by NATO?
Right.
I think it has to do with the election in November.
I think there are people in NATO and in Washington.
Who kind of hoping for the worst, the worst to happen to Ukraine, so that there's a chance before the election that Biden will be mousetrapped into doing something even more volatile or even more violent, and so too will Putin.
So the election, I think, is paramount.
Now, Putin is the other paramount factor.
Is there a casus belli here?
Of course there is.
But it really requires Putin to say, okay, we're going to choose this as a cause for war.
Is it safe to conclude, Ray, that the elites in NATO want Vice President Harris to win because of Trump's attitude about who should be paying NATO's bills and who should be fighting NATO's fights?
Well, not only they, but look at the people in Kyiv.
Look at their disparate situation.
Now, what they've done is taken troops off the active line.
There's nothing really to prevent the Russians from going right to the Dnieper River next week, for God's sake.
Now, you have to be an idiot not to realize that.
Why are they still sending them into Kursk, where there's sitting ducks, where they're going to be eliminated?
Well, if you can mousetrap Well, before the election, Biden might be forced to do something like that.
What I'm saying here is that Putin is the guy in charge here.
He's going to choose how he reacts.
And I think what he said, actually, a month ago, nothing really important is going to happen before the election.
And so we'll let this thing play out.
Will he rise to the debate?
I don't think he will.
So whether it's a casus belli or not really depends on the guy in charge.
That's Putin, no matter what kinds of provocations are devised and implemented by NATO and the Australians.
Larry, what kind of a military fool would take their best troops and send them on this errand and have their newest troops or the poorest trained defending the capital city?
Well, it's not without precedent in history.
I mean, you can go back to the Battle of the Bulge.
Hitler thought it was a good idea to try to launch that desperate attack.
In hopes of forcing the West into a negotiation.
So, clearly the people who planned this operation, they probably were not the gold star students at the military academy.
Let me put it that way.
Because it's one thing when you are already at a numerical disadvantage to stretch the line of combat.
Because that means you now have fewer people to put along that line.
It's a math problem.
You've got to be able to do some basic addition and subtraction.
While for the notion that, oh, we're going to force the Russians to pull troops out of the Donbass and send them north, they haven't been paying attention to the fact that Russia has been expanding.
It's doubled the size of its army in the last 18 months.
They're now up around 1.4 million and still growing.
So, you know, the planners behind this just proved that they were incompetent to be polite.
Ray, I want to go back to a question that I asked you and Larry.
The first show that you were on with me seems like 100 years ago.
It was only three years ago.
And that is the truthfulness of Intel making its way.
Back to Langley and ultimately the White House.
Does the White House now know how precarious the Ukraine situation is from CIA?
Or is that intel still being doctored to please the prejudices and political needs of Jake Sullivan and Tony Blinken?
I don't know, Judge.
It seems probable that the latter is the case, but it really doesn't matter.
It's clear.
It's clear to everyone who reads the paper now, even the Financial Times or the New York Times, that Ukraine is losing and losing bad.
I don't really, you know, I don't give a lot of credence to the notion that all these people are.
This has to have a purpose.
The fact that we can't come up with a sensible purpose other than the one I just adduced, namely the worse, the better.
The more defeat that Ukraine suffers now before November, the more likely Biden, Lincoln and Sullivan, for their own personal reasons, are likely to come in big time with joint problems.
Well, that's under discussion now.
Those things have a range we could hit well inside Russia, staying in Ukrainian airspace.
F-16s with parts that can handle nuclear weapons, well, if those things go up, If they don't go up, they'll probably shoot them on their airfields if it's clear that they're so armed.
But that doesn't mean that Russia has to make a war.
Russia can just go as it has, a-tritting, a-tritting, a-tritting, as they say, and wait and see what happens in November.
The Ukrainians can't play told November.
They are very deathly afraid that Trump is going to win or that that Kamala will be just as bad as Biden in terms of indecisive and just kind of she's an unknown certainty.
And, you know, this is the intense period before the election.
Everything depends on how they perceive what the U.S. will do.
If they're losing, they're losing bid time.
And if they lose, they lose the election.
Okay, Biden.
And who comes in?
Well, a fellow who says he can end a thing in one day.
If I were in Kiev, I would think, well, let's do something really, really imaginative.
Let's get the people in the White House and in London to support us.
And there are enough people that would support that kind of risky adventure.
Last thing I'll mention, Sirsky, commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian forces.
He's got a record.
He kept sending tens of thousands of people to be killed in Bakhmut up until July of last year, okay?
He doesn't care how many people get killed, and they're getting killed in major numbers now along the front line in the Donbass.
Larry, where is General Cavalli in all of this, the American four-star who's the commander-in-chief of all NATO forces?
Correct me if I'm wrong.
He's not the commander-in-chief only of American troops in Europe.
He's the commander-in-chief of all NATO forces.
He's basically a successor to Eisenhower when Ike was a general.
Well, he has been one who's at least recognized that Russia is not a pushover, that Russia has some serious capabilities, and that, frankly, are on course to win the war.
The problem we have is the disconnect between the policymakers and the intelligence side.
I just heard a story from one of our VIPs colleagues, John Kiriakou, who was present in a meeting in the Situation Room.
He was a note-taker for George Tenet.
Now, this is back before going into the start of the Gulf War in 2003.
Basically, back then, they were saying that the CIA opposed it, the military opposed going into Iraq, but the Pentagon and the White House wanted to do it.
And so they were ignoring what was coming out on the intelligence.
Well, that's exactly what we're seeing today.
That Cavoli, if asked for his advice, would say don't do it, but...
The decisions are being made by Lloyd Austin, who's, you know, former military, but the guy is now, you know, a slave of Raytheon.
He's on Raytheon's board.
He's their man in Washington.
He just happens to be Secretary of Defense.
It's all about the money, Judge.
Okay, switching gears.
Ray, why is Iran taking so long to respond to the assassinations that the Israelis have carried out, the most recent of which, of course, was in Tehran itself?
I think it's a combination of factors.
I think that Shoigu, Sergei Shoigu, who used to be the Russian Minister of Defense and now is a top national security official, very close to Putin, I think he urged caution on them.
And he backed that up by saying, you do a little caution, we'll give you a kind of air defense that will prevent the Israelis from wreaking havoc, which they're now able to do on all your sites, okay?
Now, that stuff is pouring in by all accounts on these IL-76s, 96s.
All these wide-bellied aircraft are coming in from Russia and not only giving air defense equipment, but also...
So I think that's important.
I think also that the Iranians realize they don't have to rush here, and they might actually frighten the U.S. and Israel into a kind of deal which they can claim.
I think that's what they're trying to do now.
Somebody has frightened Prime Minister Netanyahu.
I don't know if it's Hezbollah or Iran.
He's been in a bunker for two weeks.
All right.
Well, you know, if that's the case, yeah, they're frightened, and they continue to be frightened, and they continue to be on tenderhooks waiting for the reaction.
What I'm saying is that that...
What Iran, I think, is waiting for, you know, all these negotiations, ceasefire, hostages, and all that stuff, there's a slight chance that the U.S. will be able to browbeat Israel into thinking, well, all right, let's have a ceasefire.
Now, while there's still that chance, and it probably won't have this week after Blinken comes home after all these visits, then and then only would the Israelis say, okay, well, you know, there's nothing much to lose here.
We've got air defense equipment.
We and our axis of, not evil, but axis of resistance will put our plans into shape.
I think they'll hit key Israeli defense installations.
That is, the resistance will hit our troops in Iraq and in Syria.
Larry, Professor Mearsheimer has nicknamed Secretary Blinken Netanyahu's lawyer.
Yeah, I thought that was hysterical.
And our friend and colleague Matt Ho reports from sources.
That the Israelis themselves are mumbling among themselves that Blinken is not believable, that he doesn't tell the truth.
And our friend Chaz Freeman, ambassador of Freeman, says this is the least reputable State Department in the post-World War II era.
Yeah, well, it's all true.
What we need to wrap our minds around is that The Blinken efforts here have nothing to do with achieving actual peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
I would argue that such peace is unattainable.
That this push for negotiations is a chimera.
It's not real.
It's never going to come to pass because as long as the Zionists, these ultra-religious Loons that are settling the West Bank and pushing out Palestinians as long as they remain the dominant force in government with the Ben-Gavirs and the Smotrich.
They have only one objective.
That's exterminate the Palestinians.
They don't care how they exterminate them, whether they physically remove them, exile them, or kill them.
But they're not about to coexist with the Palestinians.
They have no intent to do that.
So all this other window dressing and negotiations, it's just political theater.
Bray, doesn't the whole world, with the possible exception of Blinken, understand that what Larry said is correct?
That the Israelis are not seriously negotiating.
And if Hamas agrees to something on the table, the Israelis will raise the ante.
And whatever the Israelis put on the table, they know Hamas can never agree to.
That this is a charade.
That Netanyahu couldn't care less about the hostages.
Doesn't the whole world, except for Tony Blinken, know that?
Well, most of the world.
I would say maybe Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
And Tony Blinken might be able to pretend to themselves that this charade is believable by a lot of the world.
Meanwhile, it puts off the notion of Israel doing something really dastardly or Iran.
So they're playing for time here.
And as I see it, What are they going to do?
Well, that remains to be seen.
Meanwhile, this hostage and ceasefire dance is really necessary to show that we're trying our best.
And if it goes up in flames, who's to blame?
The Iranians, of course.
And not only the Iranians are doing this kind of thing, but you know what they're doing?
They're trying to affect our election.
That says, so says the National Intelligence Director.
What's her name again?
Averill Haynes, who was prescient enough to realize in January.
Is she a serious intelligence professional who's recognized as such by the rank and file, or is she just a political hack that Biden appointed in this amorphous job that's supposedly in charge of all intelligence?
She's a very serious political hack.
She's a lawyer, right?
And so she approved the drone strikes.
And then she went to be John Brennan's deputy for a while.
And John sang her praises.
And then when John raided the Senate computers, the Senate intelligence community, he got rid of Averill Hayes.
She went to the NSC.
And what did she do?
Oh, she investigated.
The CIA invasion of the Senate.
I wonder how that investigation turned out.
Larry, Alistair Crook says that a former director of Mossad, number one in Mossad, has said publicly that Israel under Netanyahu is, quote, a racist and violent state that cannot survive.
Is Netanyahu in danger of a coup?
No, I don't think he's in danger of a coup.
Or if it was launched, I think it's unlikely to succeed because Netanyahu enjoys a majority of support now among the Israeli people, the Zionists, The hardcore.
And they're backing him.
And they're backing him to their own destruction, which is what...
And they want to come up with all sorts of excuses.
"Oh, they're using women and children as human shields, and they're hiding in hospitals." You still haven't beaten them, okay?
We're now almost 11 months into this war, and you haven't defeated what is largely an unarmed guerrilla force, a lightly armed guerrilla force, and you've killed a lot of women, children, elderly, handicapped.
But as far as destroying the military capability of Hamas, not so much.
And so that disconnect was reality.
I'm going to end our roundtable with a fascinating series of clips that is compelling to watch that Chris put together in honor of a great warrior for peace who's in these clips against one of the loudest Blowhards I've ever known and with whom I worked for 24 years.
You both will get a kick out of this.
Cut number 10. We say that her positions are radical, and they are radical.
Let me tell you what's radical.
What's radical is to send more Americans to die in this war, which is a monumental blunder by a president who's swaggered us into it, with, by the way, the at least tacit approval of the Democratic Party.
There's a lot of sin to go around here.
What's radical for you?
Do you want to send more people to this war?
Is that your position?
If we cut and run out of there like you want to do, we would be putting every American in a thousand times more jeopardy than they're in now.
We're going to cut and run anyway, Bill.
Well, that's your opinion.
That's my opinion.
American military leaders have said we're going to draw down beginning next year.
The difference is we've drawn down and cut pictures.
Now listen, listen.
You wouldn't send your children to this war, Bill.
My nephew just enlisted in the army.
You don't know what the hell you're talking about.
Very good.
Very good.
Congratulations.
You ought to just walk away.
How many more young men and women?
Are you going to send to have their arms and legs blown off so that you can be tough and point at people in a kind of cowardly way?
And they knew that, first of all, only Congress can declare war.
Why is that unimportant to you, Billy?
Why can't you become the patriot that your loud voice proclaims to be and stand behind the Constitution and insist that we never go to war again without...
Poorly planned and poorly executed, but Bill O 'Reilly wants to send more kids to fight and die.
We've already had almost 2,000.
Just let me have the last word.
In the last year, two things have doubled.
The number of dead American troops in Iraq have doubled, from over 1,000 to almost 2,000.
You know what else doubled, Billy?
The price of Halliburton stock.
Whoa!
Yeah.
I thought you both would appreciate that.
Ray, you probably knew him.
I knew him.
I mean, I was there in the green room while this was being taped.
Donahue came in.
We hugged each other.
I was next out on set.
I looked at O 'Reilly.
I said, Bill, he just ate your lunch.
Bill tried to throw me out.
Phil was the best, and his story, of course, is indicative of what happens when people tell the truth and insist on continuing to tell the truth.
You get canned, and for obvious reasons, they didn't want any truth to come out about the pre-war.
Now, you get people still on Fox News, like Jack Keane, four-star general.
Who's now saying, you know, we've got to take on, we've got to send more stuff over there to Ukraine before they lose.
And by the way, the Iranians are a major threat, just like the National Intelligence Director just said.
They're trying to influence our election, among other things.
You know, these guys are dominating the airwaves.
I hope that people are listening to us as well.
I applaud you, Judge, for giving us this airtime.
Let me just chime in.
So I was on O 'Reilly's show about 10 times.
And when Roger Ailes sent word down in November of 2002 that I was no longer to be on Fox Network because I had been on the Hannity and Combs show and I said that the United States was not in a position to fight a two-front war.
The only one on the Fox News channel, which still had me on air, was Bill O 'Reilly, to his credit in that.
Wow.
Wow.
All right.
He's gone from Fox.
I'm gone from Fox.
And Phil Donahue's in heaven.
Thank you, gentlemen.
Thank you for a great segment together.
Thank you for all the double duty you both do.
I'll see you both on Monday.
Have a great weekend.
Thank you.
Have a great weekend, everybody.
We have all of your favorites back next week.
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