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Sept. 13, 2024 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
31:06
INTEL Roundtable w/ Johnson & McGovern - Weekly Wrap
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Friday, September 13th, 2024.
It's the end of the day and the end of the week.
Time for the Intelligence Community Roundtable with my dear friends and colleagues always doing double duty for us, Ray McGovern and Larry Johnson.
Guys, welcome here and much appreciated.
The breaking news this afternoon, and Ray, you pointed this out to me.
I don't know if this is intended to be an insult.
to the British Prime Minister or if the Americans are listening to President Putin.
But before the British Prime Minister arrived at the White House in order to discuss whether or not the West was going to collectively allow its missiles to be fired deep into Russia, the United States announced that no such decision would come Friday today.
Theoretically, before Sir Keir Starmer, the British Prime Minister, got there.
I don't know if they agreed to this ahead of time, if they wanted to big foot him, or if the emphasis was today, and maybe the announcement's going to come tomorrow.
What's your read on this, Ray?
Well, I've since learned that the British did announce it about the same time Kirby did.
So, yes, it was before Starmer knocked on the door of Biden, but it was still very embarrassing.
This cut across all the things that we had thought would happen.
Tony Blinken and Sullivan, they were all very much in favor of allowing these missiles to be used.
Now, Putin made it very clear that that would mean that we were at war, NATO-US against Russia.
Kirby's statement, unless you have it there, Chris, I'm going to just read you what Kirby said just two hours ago.
Before you read that, Ray, let's play Putin, and then you can read what Kirby said, because Admiral Kirby obviously saw or heard President Putin before he said what he was going to say.
Chris, cut number five and then back to Ray.
It is not about allowing the Ukrainian regime to strike Russia with these weapons or not.
It is about making a decision about whether NATO countries are directly involved in the military conflict or not.
If the decision is made, it will mean nothing less than the direct participation of NATO countries, the United States, and European countries in the war in Ukraine.
This is their direct participation and this, of course, significantly changes the very essence, the very nature of the conflict.
This will mean that NATO countries, the United States and European countries are fighting Russia.
And if this is so, bearing in mind the change in the very essence of this conflict, we will make appropriate decisions based on the threats that will be created for us.
And clear-headed as you would expect him to be, Ray.
Very direct and, well, very pointed.
Now, I have news for you.
John Kirby and his folks were listening.
And John Kirby said two hours ago, the U.S. is taking seriously Russian President Vladimir Putin's warning.
That he would consider the West directly involved in the conflict if Ukraine fired Western-made long-range missiles into Russia, end quote.
And so what else did John Kirby say?
He said, there is no change in our view on the provision of long-range strike capabilities to Ukraine to use inside Russia.
I would not expect any major announcement on that when Kyrgyz Stama arrives later today.
And of course, Keir Steimer is talking to Biden right now.
What do I make of that?
Finally, the Pentagon talked some sense into Blinken and Sullivan.
Maybe they even got to the president and said, look, this is crazy.
This is really crazy.
We cannot just dust off what Putin says.
If we want war, well, we don't want war because we're not prepared for war.
So please, Mr. President.
Don't do what they want you to do.
And Stommer's place is Stommer's people apparently said the same thing to him.
So it looks like we're getting a little pause here.
We can breathe a little more easy, given the provocation that we would have expected as a result of this visit by the British Prime Minister.
Larry, I think Ray is 100% correct.
Here's Secretary Blinken on Tuesday, just four days ago, not ruling out.
The long-range missiles.
Cut number six.
It's not simply saying, oh, should they have this weapon system or that weapon system?
You lose it, Chris?
Yeah.
What?
That is Secretary Blinken expressing a very different and more bellicose view, though, in his own terms, in his own terminology, Larry.
Well, here's what does make sense.
It's not simply saying, oh, should they have this weapon system or that weapon system?
There are a lot of things that go into it.
Do they know how to use it?
And some of these sophisticated systems take training, and that's one of the other things we've done.
Can they maintain it?
Because if you give them something...
Well, last time I checked, Ukraine has already used those missile systems inside Russia.
They have attacked Crimea with it.
They've attacked places along the border.
So they've already used them, number one.
What Putin said was correct.
The only way Ukraine could use them was with U.S. involvement.
So we've had U.S. involvement now for two years.
What changed this week was what you played earlier on with Putin's statement.
Because prior to that statement, Keir Starmer's group folks were leaking that, yeah, we're going to approve Ukraine striking inside Russia.
And Blinken was doing his business, the Bojangles tap dance, as I call it.
Putin comes out and says, if this happens now, we're going to treat this as an act of war, and we're going to target you, NATO.
You, the United States.
And by implication, the satellite systems that are used to target it.
What do you think he would do, Larry?
You don't think he would strike Miami or New York, do you?
No, no, I think actually the first option the Russians would exercise would be to take out Starlink and the other satellites, the ISR capability of the United States.
Because that would send a message.
It wouldn't necessarily provoke a nuclear response like taking out a city, but it would definitely impair the capabilities of the United States and NATO to continue.
to provide targeting data to the Ukrainians.
And I think the nature of what was conveyed by Putin, they may have even passed back channels saying, hey, you know, everything's on the table now, guys.
So either cut this out or, you know, the acronym FAFO, fool around, buy now.
Right, right, right.
Yeah.
Ray, what do you think about the Defense Department?
They probably advised against this.
Because the last thing they want are their satellites to be destroyed by Russian military.
Well, also, the last thing they want is to get involved in a war with Russia.
Let's face it.
Russia has the advantage in many of the hypersonic and more sophisticated missilery that they've built over the last seven, eight years.
Putin has advised about that.
We don't have hypersonic missiles.
The U.S. forces do not want to get involved in a war with Russia.
Besides, Russia has all manner of equipment, short of nuclear missiles or nuclear bombs, to retaliate against whatever the U.S. throws up against them.
So that's been proven in Ukraine.
This is kind of a Zelenskyy try.
With Biden and Sullivan to do something really drastic and make sure that something happens before the U.S. election so that the U.S. people will continue to support Ukraine no matter which wins.
Larry, when you and Ray were on on Monday, we played clips for you of Sir Peter Moore, the head of MI6, and Bill Burns, the head of the CIA at a Financial Times public gathering in London.
On the previous Saturday, in which they both praised the Ukrainians for the successful military maneuver into Kursk, and in which Sir Peter actually went so far as to say this war started in February of 2022 and Putin has lost.
This must have degraded the two of them.
In the eyes of the intelligence community around the world, they came across as fools, no?
Yeah, I wish I had the capability where you can create film clips.
So I would show them doing the discussion after the battle at Little Bighorn with Custer saying, you know, General Custer did really well out there today, and we'd just like to give him kudos.
Or, you know, just pick up, or after the fall and collapse of the United States in Vietnam.
In Saigon in April, was it April 75?
Hey, you know, here's Bill Burns and Peter Moore.
We did a really great job here in Saigon, and this is just great.
You know, that's what they're doing.
I mean, it's that kind of delusional stuff.
And at some point, you've got to stand up and say, how could these guys, they're not uneducated.
And I mean, they're not mentally retarded.
Could you imagine the director of the CIA sitting down with MI6 at the same time, in the same place, in the same room, on international television and expressing political opinions like this?
Well, I could imagine them expressing political opinions that were grounded in reality.
I could never imagine this kind of divorce from reality.
Because, again, neither of them are mentally retarded.
I mean, they've got full-functioning brains.
They're not suffering from Alzheimer's or some sort of dementia.
They're both educated men.
I mean, they're both experienced.
There was a time, you know, when I was at State, Bill Burns was a young guy.
You know, this was, you know, 34 years ago.
So he would have been, you know, late 30s.
But here he is now.
Having gone from writing an exceptional cable in 2008 back to the State Department when he was ambassador to Russia saying, hey, don't keep pushing this NATO thing on Ukraine because the Russians are saying no means no.
Nyet means nyet.
And now he's doing this?
I mean, what an embarrassment.
Ray, what is your view of the drone attack on Moscow?
According to the Russians, the Ukrainians unleashed 140 drones and the Russians disabled 139, but the one that got through hit a residential building, killed an innocent civilian woman, and injured six civilians.
Is this a pinprick, an annoyance, or a sign of more to come?
Moscow.
It's the former.
And anything that the Ukraine or the UK or we can do in terms of long-range missiles will be also pinpricks.
Meanwhile, the war in Korsk is going really bad for those invading Ukrainian troops.
There are up to 10,000 already killed in there.
The rest will be surrounded, captured, or killed.
On the Eastern Front, where it really matters, The Russians are going twice as fast as they were before.
Everyone acknowledges that, including the Ukrainians.
And what's Zelensky doing?
He's in Yalta with who?
With whom?
With Boris Johnson.
And he's saying, Boris, you are the best.
And so we have to depend on what you said way back in April of 2022 when you assured us.
That we would have to depend on you and that you will be with us for as long as it takes.
Remember that, Boris?
It all came out in public today.
So it's a desperate attempt by Zelensky to say, oh, shit.
I mean, oh, bummer.
We've been deceived again.
They're leaving us.
We don't get in trouble with when you mention their name.
The folks that host this program, when you say that, we only get in trouble when we say other things about a horrific political party in Germany in the 30s.
Anyway, Larry, I want to get back to Burns and Moore.
Wouldn't they be ridiculed by their own people as soon as this program was over?
What are you talking about it started in 2022?
It started in 2014 and maybe in 2004.
What do you mean it was a smart move?
What do you mean Putin has lost?
No?
No, actually, I think it's just the opposite.
I had a chat with Matt Ho the other day, and he was describing a...
When the Afghanistan was just a flaming bag of dog excrement.
That's not the way Ray would characterize it, but go ahead.
But Matt responded, he was talking to these guys about how bad the situation was, and he said to a person, they were all sycophants.
They were so busy sucking up, too, and telling Krista, hey, boss, you're right.
Hey, boss, if you believe that, it must be the right thing.
So that's what's going on here.
You don't have anybody with a stature that can go to Bill Burns and say, yo, hey, Burnsy, man, you're embarrassing yourself here.
You're making yourself look like a complete fool.
Come on, speak up, speak the truth.
We see this over and over.
When the Republicans came out with that report on the evacuation from Afghanistan, there was not one single criticism of the U.S. military in that at all.
They got an order to do something which was incredibly stupid, and nobody in the chain of command threw their stars on the table and said, no, sir, I'm not going to follow that order.
It's going to get people killed.
No, they all went along.
That's Washington.
Burns, he's just become a creature of that environment.
Jumping over to Israel, for the third time, Prime Minister Netanyahu said he ordered the IDF to be ready to invade southern Lebanon, and for the third time it didn't happen, or at least it didn't happen yet.
What do you make of this, Ray?
Well, I think there, too, the military has some say in what happens.
That would be crazy.
The Israeli military are against it.
And why President Biden and Blinken and Sullivan don't realize that they have an ally there if they just say, well, publicly, we won't support an enlargement of the war.
Then the Israeli military would have a cudgel to beat against Netanyahu and say, look, you tell us the U.S. is in their full strength?
They're saying publicly they're not going to support an enlarged war.
Then the Israeli military would be able to have a little bit more sustenance and power, and that's the only hope that I have, that Netanyahu can be restrained because he too has personal interests here that are driving part of his motivation.
Larry, is there any hope that Netanyahu can be restrained from the continuing slaughter in Gaza?
Any?
It's not going to come from Donald Trump.
It's not going to come from Kamala Harris.
Is this slaughter going to continue for as long as Netanyahu is in office and the American government is in an iron grip of the donor class?
The only one who could possibly make a difference right now is Turkey.
Again, cut off the oil.
As long as oil continues to flow into Israel, as long as you've got that lubrication for its economy, they'll continue to be able to do what they're doing.
If that oil is cut off and all of a sudden they're facing a real shortage on that front, a real energy crisis, that's going to pull them up short.
So I don't see any possibility whatsoever the United States taking any action.
Do you think that Erdogan would do this?
To me, it's just a blowhard.
His statements are spectacular and right on point.
He never follows it through.
Yeah, so far he hasn't.
I mean, you know, I entirely agree with your characterization of him.
There's a possibility that the recent murder by the...
I have seen the father has been on television in Turkey speaking very passionately, condemning the inaction of the United States and calling upon the government of Turkey to do something.
We'll see if Erdogan will respond to that.
If he does, you know, I give it the blind pig chance of finding a root.
That can always happen.
There's always a chance that Erdogan might end up doing the right thing in this case.
Is American Intel, Ray, advising Netanyahu not to invade Hezbollah, Lebanon?
American Intel really is not in that position.
It's Tony Blinken who tells them they can do whatever the...
do they form a judgment as to whether it is prudent for the IDF to take Hezbollah on?
Yes, they do.
And they tell the IDF and the IDF pays heed.
And the IDF and the rest of the forces there in their security apparatus Do tell Netanyahu that.
But Netanyahu comes back and says, didn't you watch me before the U.S. Congress?
What was it, 58 standing ovation?
Come on!
They have to come in, especially before an election.
So look, we can do what we want.
We can go after Hezbollah.
The Americans will bail us out.
Now, he may be miscalculating there, but the smart money would, as Larry says, show that whatever they do, the US administration, whichever administration, will support them full throat because of the donor class, because of AIPAC, because of the fact that the election is coming, they can't possibly do anything to appear weak in supporting Israel.
Larry, the American admiral in charge of the Pacific Fleet, such as it is, Attempted to warn or slightly threaten the Chinese general.
Ambassador Freeman explained why a general is in charge of the Chinese Navy.
They don't have the word admiral in Chinese.
I didn't know this.
But anyway, they had words with each other because one of their ships came close to ours.
The Chinese told the American admiral to go pound salt.
There is a dispute as to whether this is international waters or Chinese waters.
Do we even have much of a navy there?
And if we do, what are they doing there?
Well, we have now ordered the USS Theodore Roosevelt that was sailing around the Arabian Sea, the Persian Gulf, to be prepared to thwart an Iranian retaliation against Israel.
It has now been ordered out of the area.
It's headed back over towards China, Japan.
But, you know, again, this is the United States looking for trouble.
We live with this fantasy that there are no such thing as drones, that there are no such thing as hypersonic cruise missiles, that we, the United States, have an invulnerable fleet that can't be touched.
And so we continue to go out and to insult and finger poke the Chinese in the chest and do everything possible to try to get them to react and to respond.
And up to this point, you know, the Chinese have been pretty measured in their response.
If we turn the tables, if China was doing off the coast of California or in the Gulf of Mexico, What we're doing in the China Sea, we would view that as an act of war.
And yet, in our arrogance and in our hubris, we continue to behave this way around the world.
And the rest of the world, frankly, I think a growing number around the world are just getting sick and tired of our pretentiousness and our sanctimonious behavior.
This audacity that we think we can go out and command whoever to do whatever that we tell them to do.
They're not going to put up with it.
And so we haven't come to grips with that reality yet.
Ray, we began our conversation 25 minutes ago with a little bit of optimism that sanity had prevailed in the White House or the State Department or Jake Sullivan or whoever's making the decisions.
Not to authorize the Ukrainians to use weapons, ours or anyone from the West, to strike deep into Russia.
And we end with Larry's very articulate soliloquy that we are still of the belief that we can control the world, that we can go within 15 miles of China with a battleship.
But if a Chinese battleship showed up in the middle of the Caribbean, we'd be going bonkers.
Is there hope for change or no?
Well, there is.
And that's like today's experience where Biden and Stromer avoided doing something really stupid and explicitly heeded.
John Kirby announced that we took seriously what Putin was saying just the day before.
The problem is that there are people in our administration who would like to have a war with Russia.
Don't blink before the prospect of nuclear weapons being used and would like to egg this thing on.
They're not going to disappear.
or they're around.
And so the question is, today I think the senior – I think those are the ones in the Pentagon, as I said before.
But Blinken and Sullivan, this is a major defeat for them.
If you look at what they're saying just two days ago in Kiev and elsewhere, they wanted these things to be approved.
if not been approved, and so there is some hope here of more sanity before the election.
The Ukrainians are still gonna And those equities, of course, can be spelled out by the Pentagon.
And finally, maybe they're making their voice heard.
Larry, if Prime Minister Starmer and President Biden change their minds for some reason.
Who do the odds favor in a war between Russia and NATO?
Oh, Russia.
Look, when George W. Bush walked away from the anti-ballistic missile treaty, Russia seized that to build up an anti-ballistic missile defense system.
That means it has a defense system, air defense system in place that can defeat any enemy.
Not 100%.
They don't have, but they've got a reasonable chance of shooting down most of such missiles that fired at us.
We're asked.
Neither the United States, the United Kingdom, or anybody in Europe has a single defense system capable of stopping anything that the Russians would fire at them.
And I'm suggesting that I'm sure there are some military planners sitting in the Stavka and among the Russian military that know they've done the calculations, they've done the math.
They could win a nuclear war.
They don't want to, but they could win one if it comes to that.
The West hasn't run those calculations.
The West persists in this delusion that we are the best, that we got the strongest military in the world.
And yet, we couldn't stop the Houthis, okay?
We couldn't stop the Houthis.
Guys wearing sandals and curved knives and running around in the desert.
But yet, we're going to stop the Russia and the Chinese?
Please.
We need to get a grip on reality.
George, I'd like to just add that there is still mutual assured destruction.
However well the Russians are prepared to defend by their air defense, some of those missiles are sure to get through.
And I think that the Russians have developed weapons So I don't really think that anyone can conceive of a situation where mutual assured destruction is no longer in play.
The Russian air defense system is.
We have all this sea launch ballistic missiles and others that they can't possibly think that they could escape a retaliatory strike.
So even though the ABM treaty is out of there, even though the INF treaty is out of there, there's still some sensible minds in the militaries of both countries that would shy away.
And I think they shied away just today or yesterday from that prospect.
Gentlemen, this has been a terrific, terrific conversation.
Producer Chris tells me this is the largest live audience that we have ever had for the Intelligence Community Roundtable, which means the streaming audience will be huge as well.
The two of you do yeoman work, and I can't thank you enough.
And I already look forward to...
Maybe Blinken will change Starmer and Biden's mind over cocktails tonight.
Who knows?
I hope not.
But gentlemen, thank you.
Have a great weekend and all the best.
We'll see you Monday.
Thanks, Judge.
Thank you, Judge.
Thank you.
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