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Feb. 21, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
34:30
INTEL Roundtable w/ Johnson & McGovern : Weekly Wrap
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Thank you, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Friday, February 21st, 2025.
Ray McGovern and Larry Johnson join us here.
It's the end of the week, the end of the day.
Time for our Intelligence Community Roundtable.
Gentlemen, thank you, as always.
Thank you for double duty.
Thank you for this joint appearance.
Larry, to you first.
A little bit of a curveball, but I'm sure you can...
Hit it into the bleachers.
When and how does foreign aid become covert action?
You know, it happened.
I think it really happened sometime during the Bill Clinton administration.
And then it extended under George W. Bush.
Because, you know, I remember, you know, when I worked covert action on the Afghanistan project, the Afghanistan task force.
And was specifically involved with placing articles and information in magazines, newspapers, creating videotapes.
There was never any thought or comment about using anything like USAID or National Endowment for Democracy.
But it's clear that by, clearly by the late 1990s into the 2000s, they'd figured that out.
But there was a way that the United States intelligence community could use those organizations as a way to provoke and promote color revolutions.
And it really became widespread, starting with the Arab Spring and then extending into the Maidan in Ukraine.
And you notice that in those intervening years, there was no growth in USAID's budget from 1990 to 2000.
It started growing under George W. Bush.
It doubled under Barack Obama compared to 2000.
And then it just exploded when Donald Trump was president.
And I don't think Trump actually realized what was going on.
Yeah, I'm going to agree with you on the latter part.
Ray, Alistair Crook tells me, amongst MI6, it is very well known that USAID, he used the word front.
I'll let you choose whatever word you want.
It's a front for the CIA.
Is this well known in the U.S. Intelligence Committee, a community, do your former colleagues know that USAID was either a front or a funding mechanism for the Central Intelligence Agency?
You know, everyone knows, Judge, it's even been in the press.
A slice of the CIA, called the Covert Action Staff, was transferred to the National Endowment for Democracy under Bill Casey because Bill was a little too flagrant in mining harbors in Nicaragua and doing all kinds of crazy things.
They said, oh, the CIA shouldn't be doing that.
We'll let a non-profit National Endowment for Democracy do that.
So that's what the staff went along.
A lot of them went along to work for the NED.
Now, you needed some way to fund that.
And of course, that's where USAID comes in.
Well, were they analysts or were they operations people?
No, they're operations.
Well, they're operations people, but, you know, they worked on this whole business of color revolutions and all that kind of thing.
We have Victoria Nolens herself saying in December.
Larry, do you think that Congress knows that USAID was giving all this cash?
To the CIA?
Cash? Yeah, sure.
Some of them do because they were getting paid in return.
You've got members of Congress right now under this $48 billion that has been traced to the Caribbean.
Part of that money was going back to members of the Congress, both senators and...
House of Representatives.
You mean in donations to their campaign or in corrupt cash in their pockets?
Yes. All of the above.
You know, go check out.
Let me give you a quick example.
Check out Lindsey Graham's net worth when he first went into Congress.
It was $800,000.
His net worth right now is estimated between $42 and $82 million.
Well, how could that possibly be unless he's an investment genius?
Well, he ain't that, that's for sure.
But he's not the only one.
I mean, significant members of Congress, and Nancy Pelosi is a prime example.
Mitch McConnell is another example.
I mean, the corruption on this is enormous.
And so I guarantee you, any member of Congress that's out chilling, like in the case of Ukraine, we've got to have more money for Ukraine.
They've been on the tank.
I've been dollars to donuts on it.
Ray, does the intelligence community regularly bribe members of Congress?
I know they give them information in secret and they're told it's a crime if they reveal it, but do they actually give them cash?
Well, the CIA doesn't know.
The arms manufacturers and the people that profiteer from these kinds of transactions, including USAID transactions, that's the conduit.
Now, I need to kind of put a little pause on this to say that when John Kennedy created AID, they did wonderful work.
They lifted people out of poverty.
They're still feeding people.
I don't know whether it's 50% or 40% of this money appropriated for USAID goes to color revolutions, but I do know that cutting the whole shebang out deprives a lot of people.
Wow. All right.
Let's get to Israel and Ukraine.
Larry, you have written about this.
Bombs in empty buses in a Tel Aviv suburb.
Nazarela's funeral Sunday with a large number of foreign Arabs there.
Dead Israeli Do you see a recipe for the IDF returning to Gaza and resuming its genocide?
Well, they're trying to work up that excuse.
Definitely. But follow the sequence of events.
The bodies of the mother, or they thought it was the body of the mother.
It turns out it was not her genetically.
And her two children, along with an 80-year-old deceased gentleman, those were returned yesterday.
And it got a lot of play in the Israeli press.
All of a sudden, they're telling this story that this is further proof that Hamas is a vicious group, that they killed these children.
There's a video that was out there several months ago of the father of the children, while he was still a hostage, weeping and blaming Netanyahu because it was bombing by the Israeli Air Force that killed them.
And at the time, Hamas offered to return the bodies.
Israel refused.
That was some months ago.
Now this comes out, and there is starting some of the public reaction to that.
Well, lo and behold, All of a sudden, man, terrorist attack!
Those were the headlines.
Oh, Hamas!
The Palestinians have blown up buses.
And I thought, oh my God, what did they?
How many people did they kill?
Well, none.
Because they were empty park buses.
And all I could see in my mind when I was hearing this was that movie with Steve Martin, you know, The Jerk, where he's at a gas station attendant and some guy's trying to kill him.
They keep shooting gas, you know, oil cans.
And Martin goes, They hate the cans!
Stay away from the cans!
So now this is, you know, we're led to believe that the Palestinian terror...
Who put the bombs in the buses?
Israelis? Yeah, my guess is Mossad.
It's a false flag, isn't it?
My guess is Mossad.
Mossad did it.
And on top of it, because they're trying to create this divert public attention, both away from the bodies, you know...
Blame the Palestinians for murdering these children, which the Palestinians did not, as well as on the upcoming funeral of Nasrallah on Sunday.
I mean, our friend and colleague Pepe Escobar is there already.
It's not just Arabs.
It's not just Muslims showing up.
It's others, other dignitaries from around the world.
This can be a big deal.
And that's a punch in the nose to Israel as well.
They had pretended, hey, we wipe out Nasrallah.
We weaken Hezbollah.
They're done.
Hey, they're back.
And you're going to see tens of thousands of Hamas fighters marching in the procession.
If Netanyahu is determined, Ray, to restart the war, and it appears that he still needs the war to stay in power, will or can Trump restrain him?
I think Trump genuinely wants peace, but I don't know if he has the willpower to restrain Netanyahu.
What is your view?
You asked me, will he or can he?
The answer to the latter, he can.
Will he?
That's really an open question.
Some people think that Trump is so devoted or so identified with the ceasefire that he will look askance at Netanyahu and say, bad boy, bad boy, no more arms, if Netanyahu does what I think he'll do.
And just proceed apace and clean out to the extent he can the rest of Gaza.
I don't look at it that way.
The only thing that gives me some extra pause is that Netanyahu may be looking at what's going on in Ukraine right now and say, oh my god, this is an unpredictable guy.
What's he gonna do now?
Now most people with that hypothesis say Well, he'll probably trim his sails and be cautious.
I think it's just the opposite.
He'll strike while the iron is hot.
So I'm convinced that he'll go ahead.
And I'm thinking that although Trump can restrain him, he won't.
He's so tied with Netanyahu that he'll accept whatever loss of faith he gets from Netanyahu violating the ceasefire.
And you'll have to accept it.
And it doesn't really matter to him because he doesn't much care about people being killed.
The term for that, I think, is sociopath.
Is it Netanyahu to whom Trump is tied, Larry?
Or is it the donor class in America, Mrs. Adelson and company, to whom Trump is tied?
Well, you know, actually, I got a slightly different take on this.
Okay, let's hear it.
The donor class really has no pressure over Trump right now.
Why? He's not up for a re-election.
What are they going to do?
If you don't do what we say, we're not giving you any more money.
He doesn't need the money.
He's a billionaire.
He doesn't need their damn money.
And he doesn't need their money for an election campaign.
So, actually, Trump's got some freedom now.
And, you know, Alistair has written some terrific pieces this week detailing the kind of real trouble.
The Netanyahu is in internally with members of his office have been taking money from the Qataris.
There's some corruption allegations.
Shin Bet's going after him.
And Netanyahu wants to fire the head of Shin Bet in order to reduce the effectiveness of the investigation of its own staff.
Yeah, yeah.
So, you know, if this was pre-election, you know, of November 2024, yeah, you could make, I think, a pretty good case that the Israeli lobby's got some...
They've got some hooks into Trump.
Not now.
He does not need their money.
What Trump is looking at is he wants to have a reputation that goes down in history as a peacemaker.
And is he going to surrender himself to Netanyahu and lose that?
I don't think so.
Good argument, Larry.
I'm sorry, you were going to say more.
Go ahead.
No, no, I think that's one of the reasons that...
Ray's exactly right that if Netanyahu's left to his own devices, man, he'd be out there killing the Palestinians right and left.
But he's not doing it.
And part of the reason he's not doing it is I think Witkoff has told him, don't test us.
Don't try.
Well, that's a good surmise.
And let a hundred flowers bloom.
But on Truth Social, the president, President Trump, has said, After Gaza is all cleaned out and pacified, that's when we'll do this deal about me owning Gaza.
So, you know, it's not hard to read that as to say, well, we're going to let the Israelis do what they really want to do, and that is complete genocide in Gaza, and then we'll figure out what our role will be.
To Larry's point, it would kill Trump emotionally.
If he were known as Genocide Donald the way Joe is known as Genocide Joe.
Don't you both agree with that?
Well, no.
No, I don't.
I don't think it's water off a duck's back.
Trump has been accused of a hundred million things.
I think he's pretty much he's got a kind of a Velcro or kind of a vest on him where This stuff bounces off him.
I don't think he's terribly concerned about that.
Yeah, but let's be clear about, you know, Trump is not going to put Americans in to clean out Gaza.
He's made that clear.
No boots on the ground.
We're not going to pay for it.
That's exactly right.
Israel can't do it.
Israel has tried to do it for 15 months.
They failed.
There is other information out.
That the Israeli military has been lying about their casualties.
It's not 800 or 900 KIA on the Israeli side.
It's closer to 5,000.
That is a significant number for a military as small as theirs.
Yeah, exactly.
Again, I use the example of New York City metropolitan area, which is about the same size as the entire population of Israel.
Can you imagine how the people of New York City would react if 800, just let's go with the lower number, if 800 police had been murdered, killed in one year?
I mean, they'd be chaos.
So Israel's demonstrated that it is military.
Yes, it's vicious.
It's killed a lot of civilians.
But it's militarily incompetent and capable of defeating Hamas.
Hamas is still standing stronger today, I would argue, than they were on October 7th.
Larry, I didn't say they're going to win.
I didn't say they're going to win.
I'm going to say they're going to keep trying.
Oh, yes.
You and I agree on that.
The government doesn't really have any other option other than to keep trying.
And complete the genocide.
They're trying to extinguish a whole people.
They've made a pretty good dent in that already.
And who knows how many British or American troops will, on the QT, support this kind of thing.
What about those 2,000-pounder, 1,000-pound bombs?
This is not meant to discourage Netanyahu.
This is meant to enable him should he want to do it.
That's my view.
Trump is looking the other way at the IDF killing children in the West Bank, Larry.
Well, right, but he said, okay, let's take the 2,000-pound bombs.
He sent them bombs that their planes can't carry.
Right. No, that's not right about the MOABs.
That's not right.
There are only about five or six MOABs in the whole world, okay?
So we're talking about 2,000-pound bombs, not MOABs.
So, molabs, they can't carry.
2,000-pound bombs, they can.
Right. That's right.
But we've noticed, since the ceasefire has gone in place, they haven't been dropping them on Gaza.
Okay. Nor have they been dropping them.
I want to transition to Ukraine.
Ray, what is the effect on the intelligence community of Trump's posting on Truth Social Zelensky is a dictator.
He's out of office.
He canceled elections.
He's stealing money.
What is the CIA, which has told Joe Biden the opposite of all of that for three years, what is the effect on them when Trump says things like that?
Played Joe Biden like a fiddle.
Well, if he played Joe Biden like a fiddle, it's because of what the CIA told Joe Biden, right?
That's exactly right.
They played Bill Burns like a fiddle.
When Bill Burns, in early July 2023, went to Helsinki and told the president, look, you can say Russia has already lost.
Their military has been exposed as ineffectual.
And Biden got up in Helsinki and said Russia has already lost.
Well, where did...
Where did Bill Burns get that?
Well, I did a little research.
You know where he was 10 days before?
Kyiv. He had a lot of contact with Zelensky, and he has Zelensky.
How's it going?
He said, oh, don't worry about it.
Tell the president.
We got it.
We got it all settled here.
Russia has already lost.
And Bill Burns said, oh, wow.
And he checked with his people.
What do you think about that?
Now, his people are totally corrupt.
They say, oh, well, if Zelensky says so, that's where we're getting our own information.
It must be good.
So tell the president.
That's how bad it is.
Okay, I'm not talking about the CIA folks on the ground who are truly reporting what they believe is accurate information.
I'm talking about the people around Bill Burns who perverted that so they could tell Joe Biden what they thought he wanted to hear.
How did they react when Donald Trump has virtually exposed them as frauds by the statements Trump...
Well, Judge, you're making a distinction that I'm not sure is there.
The whole place has been corrupted.
How are you going to get people to work for people like Bill Burns, a windsock, if there ever was one, without you or yourself being a windsock?
Tainting this or at least presenting what the president wants to hear, which of course is the case, I'm not sure there are any honest analysts left of any consequence that know the real story and that will report it.
So when Ratcliffe comes in and Tulsi Gabbard over him, they're going to have to clean house completely.
And all these people that have been windsocks, they're going to have to go.
Question is, who are you going to replace him with?
Because even academe has been totally corrupted by this notion that Putin is Stalin or Hitler or the devil himself, and the Russians are to be feared not to be negotiated with.
All right, Larry, the same question.
Does the intelligence community feel Trump now sees the games they played with Joe Biden?
I don't know.
What I do know is that we now have reports that USAID was funding to the tune of $140 million a month this information operation to portray Russia is evil,
Putin is dying.
$140 million a month?
Yeah. Taxpayer dollars.
Yes, yes.
So the propaganda blowback, it was going both ways.
It was going around the world.
It was hitting back in the United States.
It was being told to the president.
I mean, this was an enormous effort.
Now, it looks like what has happened since Trump took down USAID is that it's cut off that flow of money.
So that's stopped.
And it's noteworthy that not just...
We're not hearing quite the propaganda screeds that we were before, like North Koreans and Kursk and all that nonsense.
But we're seeing the reality on the ground, the word about what's actually happening to the Ukrainian soldiers, that's actually starting to filter out now.
I want to play a clip from today, actually.
An interview of Secretary of State Marco Rubio by my friend and former colleague Catherine Herridge, who started her own podcast, and this is the maiden interview of it.
Now, this is a minute and a half long, but it's rather telling.
She starts out by asking Rubio...
How the statement that Zelensky is a dictator plays out.
He then goes on and on and on.
But his on and on and on is very interesting.
And I will ask each of you to comment on it if you'll be a little patient with the length of it.
Chris, cut number seven.
When President Trump posts that President Zelensky is a dictator without elections, what are you thinking?
I think President Trump is very upset.
President Zelensky, in some cases, and rightfully so.
Look, number one, Joe Biden had frustrations with Zelensky.
People shouldn't forget it.
There are newspaper articles out there about how he cursed at him in a phone call because Zelensky, instead of saying, thank you for all your help, is immediately out there messaging what we're not doing or what he's not getting.
I think the second thing is, frankly, I was personally very upset because we had a conversation with President Zelensky, the vice president and I, the two, three of us.
And we discussed this issue about the mineral rights.
And we explained to them, look, we want to be a joint venture with you, not because we're trying to steal from your country, but because we think that's actually a security guarantee.
If we're your partner in an important economic endeavor, we get to get paid back some of the money the taxpayers have given, close to $200 billion.
And it also, now we have a vested interest in the security of Ukraine.
And he said, sure, we want to do this deal.
It makes all the sense in the world.
The only thing is, I need to run it through my legislative process.
They have to approve it.
I read two days later that Zelensky is out there saying, I rejected the deal.
I told him no way that we're not doing that.
Well, that's not what happened in that meeting.
So you start to get upset by somebody.
We're trying to help these guys.
One of the points the president made in his messaging is not that we don't care about Ukraine, but Ukraine is on another continent.
You know, it doesn't directly impact the daily lives of Americans.
We care about it because it has implications for our allies and ultimately for the world.
There should be some level of gratitude here about this.
And when you don't see it and you see him out there accusing the president of living in a world of disinformation, that's highly, very counterproductive.
Larry, to you first.
I'm a little befuddled by this.
Is it not true, correct me if I'm wrong, that the areas of Ukraine, which have all these mineral deposits that Trump is interested in, are the Russian areas of Ukraine?
Correct, yeah.
So how is Zelensky going to give that to Trump or the State Department or anybody?
Hey, he's going to cut him a deal.
He's going to throw in the Brooklyn Bridge for free, you know?
It would make about the same amount of sense.
Yes, I mean, let's call this the Brooklyn Bridge deal of Ukraine.
That's what this is.
Ray, does Marco Rubio know what he's talking about in that interview with Catherine Herridge?
He sure as hell does.
You know, this business about the mineral wealth in Ukraine, that was raised first by Zelensky.
And Trump's people were clever enough to say, well, we can exploit this.
We'll play dumb and we'll say, yeah, I would really like to have a share of that to repay ourselves for all the billions and billions that we put into your country.
It was really a propaganda, a real benefit here.
The real deal here is that they're preparing to let Zelensky down.
Whether there can be elections before they let him down, I'm not so sure.
I think he's on his way out within the next couple of months, if not weeks.
And what Lavrov reported to the Russian parliament at Duma just yesterday was really magnificent when he was asked about this Ukraine thing.
And I said, what do you think about Ukraine?
And he said, well, I just got back from Saudi Arabia.
And, you know, we're going to evaluate what the Americans say by we're going to compare that with what they do.
But we think that the whole business about drawing Ukraine into NATO, that even the president realizes that that's a no winner, okay?
And so we're going to see that as a signal.
To continue these negotiations, we think that the artificial obstacles that were introduced by Obama and Biden can easily be resolved.
But we have to wait and see.
It's a step-by-step process.
One last comment here.
That's an annual briefing that the Secretary of State equivalent, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, gives to the Duma, the Russian parliament.
He's required to do that.
He comes back from Riyadh, takes a shower.
He goes before the Duma and says this.
You ought to watch his performance.
Q&A and everything else.
He has it down pat, and he said some really interesting things about China and about North Korea to boot.
So these guys are serious.
Larry Lavrov is the best in the business, and he's at the top of his game.
Last question.
Why is the Biden pipeline of military aid?
I think it's primarily bureaucratic inertia, but let's also be clear that Trump could stop it with a phone call.
I'm not sure he could stop it with a phone call because it's just like a big rock rolling down the mountain.
Once it starts moving, it's tough to stop.
But we have had reports that the Ukrainians are complaining that they are not getting what they thought they were going to get.
So there has actually been a slowdown in the deliveries, if not an actual halt on some of them.
So this is, you know, it sure looks like the Trump folks have decided to bail out, put an end to this, and turn it all over to the Europeans.
Here, you can take this.
Enjoy it.
And we're going to walk away.
They made it clear, you know, Trump's made it clear, hey, you want Ukraine needs some more weapons?
Fine. You buy them from us and then you can sell it to the Ukrainians.
Ray Ritter and Colonel McGregor both agree, independent of each other, that Zelensky's days are numbered and they're down to weeks.
Do you agree?
I do.
Yeah, I said months just a moment ago.
If they say weeks, they're closer to the situation on the ground.
Certainly, the Russians can move to the Dnieper.
In weeks.
And, you know, that would be the coup de grace.
But my caution is this.
Putin doesn't necessarily have to move all the way to the Dnieper.
He can deal.
There are things that he can award Trump so that Trump is let down more easily.
But the Russians have won.
Trump, very importantly, realizes that.
And this notion that Ukraine can get into NATO is bankrupt.
The West Europeans are going crazy.
We're going to know more tomorrow after the results of the German elections come in.
Right. I know I said last question, but now another one.
That's okay.
It's your show.
It's your show.
All right.
Another one just popped into my head.
How much does the intelligence community recognize And now tell Tulsi Gabbard the unstable state of the Ukrainian military and the Ukrainian government.
Larry? I think they're strongly incentivized now to do it because anybody with a brain can see that this party is over and they don't want to be the last one in the game of musical chairs standing up.
They don't want to be the one saying, oh yeah, everything's swell.
Ukraine's going to win.
I think you'll see a pretty quick turnaround or a vote fast as they actually now start dishing some truth.
Plus, I think Tulsi's demanding it and going to be a little...
They know that they can't get by with just...
You know, going with the public relations material that they have up to this point.
So, Ray, I know we're getting back to basics, but can Ratcliffe go directly to the president, or does he have to go through Tulsi?
He can go directly.
Ratcliffe is from the George W. Bush end of the world.
He can go directly, but, you know, the ideal is a cordial relationship where he will call up Tulsi and say, look, I need to discuss this with the president.
Would you like to come along or I'll just go at 10 o'clock tomorrow morning?
That's the kind of way it should work.
Now, what I would say about what kind of advice Tulsi is getting, she's getting really good advice, okay?
And she's giving that to Trump.
Now, is it from the people that inhabit the CIA or the earlier NID?
No, it isn't.
It's from Other people.
Now, I know this because trusted people say that she's got really good people advising her.
Now, I know the sensible conclusions that she's making, and who told President Trump that he ought to understand how Russia feels about Ukraine armed to the teeth with NATO weaponry right on its border?
Trump said, yeah, I understand that.
Well, that's 80% of the victory there to get a suitable arrangement.
They can deal now, and they will, it seems to me, in the next few weeks.
We're going to have more momentum even than we've seen in the last week, and that's one hell of a lot of momentum.
Gentlemen, thank you so much.
A good, long, in my view, fruitful, fulfilling conversation across the board on these hot-button issues, as well as education to me and to the viewers about the way the intelligence community works.
We'll look forward to seeing you at your usual times on Monday.
Thank you for this.
Thank you for the double duty.
Have a great weekend.
Thank you, Judge.
You too, George.
Thank you, guys.
And on Monday, of course, we will have our regulars for you.
Alistair Crook at 8 in the morning, Ray McGovern at 10, Larry Johnson at 11.30, and probably one or two others not yet booked, but they'll be here on Monday afternoon.
Have a great weekend, my friends.
Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.
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