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Feb. 23, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
25:08
Ray McGovern : Can Musk & Co. Audit the CIA?
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Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Monday, February 24th, 2025.
Ray McGovern will be here with us in a moment.
Can Elon Musk and company actually audit the CIA?
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Seems like a few minutes ago, you and Larry and I just finished our Friday afternoon roundtable, but thank you very much, as always, for your double duty and for these solos with me on Happy Monday mornings.
Does the CIA keep its books in one place?
I mean, is it even feasible that...
Elon Musk and company could possibly audit the American intelligence community?
It would be very difficult, very, very difficult, Judge, because of the way things are structured.
Possible? Yes, it is possible.
Now, if you take 100 of these whiz kids that work for Elon Musk and put them to work looking at all these budgets.
And you unravel things from, let's say, USAID and how much money was there and what programs they really funded.
You can draw the thread and come to logical conclusions as to where the money is hidden or what it was used for.
But it could take a long time to do that.
And it would require, if possible, the cooperation with people who have made a career out of hiding this stuff.
I say it's possible.
I say it would take a long time.
I think it's doable.
And I think that with Ratcliffe and Tulsi Gabbard in place, the fellows in the CIA are going to have to come to and say, well, you know, this is a come to Jesus moment.
I'm going to have to do it.
Are there even records of...
Efforts to overthrow government and what foreign officials were bribed and how much they were bribed and where the cash came from?
It's a matter of years, Judge.
30 years from now, we'll know a lot of those details on various coups that have happened within the last 30 years.
You don't know them right away unless there is congressional testimony.
And as you know, CIA directors have been known to lie under oath to Congress.
Like Richard Helms did in saying that the CIA had nothing at all to do with the other 9-11, the coup in Santiago, Chile in 1973.
So yeah, it's going to be tough, but people can get to the bottom of these things and sooner rather than later.
If Trump says, look, freedom of information applications must be honored to the letter, that is, you have six months for this, two months for that, and so forth, it's possible, and it's going to happen unless, well, unless Trump is,
well, I won't even say it, unless Trump meets the fate that John F. Kennedy met trying to harness in a deep state.
If Musk's people are making progress on auditing, let's just say the intelligence community or we can say the CIA, that is also going to expose behavior not heretofore exposed.
You know, if we find out, if Musk finds out how much money was spent...
To kill Salvatore Allende, then we're going to know that the CIA was behind that, and they pulled the trigger, but they got the guns there and they financed it.
Fair to say?
Yes, Judge, but as I said before, this is just a matter of timing.
All that information is known now, virtually down to the letter.
There's a group at George Washington University which keeps archives of all this and has been very, very successful.
And freedom of information requests and then publishing them, you know, publish them very broadly as soon as they're received.
So, yeah, we know what happened in Chile.
We know what happened in lots of other places.
The details, like how much money it took to get rid of, let's say, Mossadegh in Iran in 1953.
Well, that's a nice incidental to know, but we know who did it, the British, and we did it, and now we're paying the price.
I wonder if we'll find out, and Mosaddegh is an interesting and fascinating example, if we will find out if President Eisenhower authorized or even knew about it.
You know, this was early on in 1953, and he had just been inaugurated, and suddenly, out of nowhere, came the Shah, and he was the head of the state.
Even though Mossadegh had been popularly elected and was popular at the time of his overthrow, he wasn't playing ball with the Brits and oil.
Do I have that right, Professor McGovern?
Well, you have that right, of course.
Mossadegh was a real upstart.
For God's sake, he thought that the Iranian people should share more of the wealth that comes from the oil that happened to be underground that the British pretty much claimed.
And so when that happened, the British took the fledgling CIA by the shoulder, talked to Kermit Roosevelt, and said, look, this is what you do in an upstart like that.
It does the kinds of things or threatens to do them.
And the coup was arranged.
Now, that was the first popularly elected prime minister of Iran in three millennia.
Persian Empire was like, a long time, okay?
The hope was there.
And that's what we did.
And we're reaping the results of that now.
The hostage-taking was almost inevitable.
When the Shah got into trouble, they didn't want the U.S. Embassy doing the same things they did in 1953.
And so I don't defend this, but it's completely understandable.
Why they went in there, destroyed all those records, or scooped them up, and then took the hostages, which you can't, I don't defend, but one can understand those things, and why indeed Khomeini came in.
Let's go back to Elon Musk.
We don't know exactly who is doing the auditing, do we?
These are supposedly young computer whizzes that work for Elon Musk, but for example, over the weekend...
Musk sent out, over his own name, a directive to all civilian employees of the executive branch of the federal government.
I understand some people in the judiciary got it.
He can't audit the judiciary.
It's a different branch of government, another issue for another time.
Saying that, tell me in five bullet points what you did last week, your silence will be considered your resignation.
Now, if that was done over Donald Trump's signature, okay, he's the head of the executive branch and he can hire and he can fire.
But if that was done over Elon Musk's signature, he supposedly is just an advisor without hiring and firing authority.
He would need to be confirmed by the Senate for him to have hiring and firing authority.
Do you have any insight from your friends in the intelligence community, current or retired, who is doing the auditing?
Well, as you say, it's these whiz kids.
Now, they're doing it.
They're in those institutions now.
This last little order over Musk's signature is causing great disarray in all these agencies.
Who the hell does he think he is asking us to justify our jobs?
I think that's not going to wash.
I think people are not going to comply with that, and I don't think they should.
Well, certain jobs, like the one you had, are required to be kept secret by federal statutes.
Well, not mine.
In other words, the analysis part of the CIA was clearly issued in statute, and so was the covert action.
They're all authorized under appropriate law.
It's the devil's in the details, of course.
And, you know, Musk will be looking into these things if Ratcliffe, the head of the CIA, and Tulsi Gabbard, head of the National Intelligence Setup, allow him to do that.
And I think they probably will.
They need all the help they can get to rein in the deep state.
So what do you think the 60,000 employees, most of them outside contractors, Well,
I don't know what they thought, but the system is so automated, Judge, that you only need a few people to be able to retrieve all this information that's collected on you and on me.
And as that famous Wolfgang Schultz From the Stasi, the East German Secret Service, said the only way to prevent this information from being used against you is to prevent it from being collected in the first place.
That's the rub there.
It's all collected.
Everything is collected.
It's filed under your name and mine.
Doesn't require a whole lot of people to dig those files out and to use them as they see fit.
Now, that's a danger.
That's very close to giving autocratic powers to the president, to whom the Secretary of Defense is accountable.
And of course, it's the Secretary of Defense that runs the National Security Agency, NSA.
It's all a profound violation of the Fourth Amendment.
You and I both know that.
Goes back to the George W. Bush era.
When this mass, universal, warrantless surveillance began, ostensibly in response to 9-11, Bush argued that what he does as commander-in-chief is not subject to the Constitution.
That, of course, is hogwash, and the courts have actually never addressed that specific issue, but they have ruled countless times that the president is subject to the Constitution.
Lincoln was subject to the Constitution during the Civil War.
Of course, the court didn't rule on that until after the war was over and Lincoln was dead.
Over the weekend and two occasions, President Zelensky offered to resign if that would bring about Ukrainian membership in NATO or a cessation of violence in Ukraine.
You think that's serious?
No. He knows damn well.
That Ukraine is never going into NATO.
For God's sake, the president himself has said so.
So, you know, he's on some sort of upper, some sort of drug.
He's incoherent.
And so, I might add, are his European allies, all of whom are descending on Washington this week for what?
To show that they're incoherent and they're actually delusional.
Thinking that there's some way to save themselves and to save Zelensky.
Actually, before I ask you what we think President Macron and Prime Minister Starmer are going to say to the President, here's Zelensky with this I will resign for peace statement, which was made yesterday.
Chris, cut number one.
If it's about peace in Ukraine, and you really want me to leave my position, I am ready to do that in exchange for peace.
Secondly, I can exchange it for NATO membership if there is such an opportunity.
I'll do it immediately without a long conversation about it.
I am focused on Ukraine's security today and not in 20 years.
I don't plan to be in power for decades.
See, I think a statement like that actually weakens him with President Trump because it is so irrational.
Judge, he hasn't been rational for months and months, and now he's doubly incoherent.
And, you know, if it weren't for the fact that he's supported by people like Sir Keith Starmer, Macron, and other people who can't face up to reality, then, you know, it would be funny.
It's not funny.
People continue to die here.
Now, when Starmer comes here on Thursday...
My God!
He doesn't realize what the real score is, you know?
Churchill had an expression.
He says, you know, the Americans can always be dependent upon to do the right thing once they've exhausted all the alternatives.
Well, Trump came in and realized that all the alternatives were exhausted, that there was no threat from Russia, that there was a very Beautiful ocean, as he puts it, between us and Europe.
And so he's going to cut his ties with these Europeans, let them fend for themselves, and the British still don't get that.
So it's delusional.
This peacekeeping force, which has already been said, the Russians have said they're going to count them as belligerents, never going to happen.
So what Starmer has in mind, I don't really know, but he's a British Prime Minister that's not even as smart as Churchill.
So Alistair Crook says that Prime Minister Starmer will tell the president that the British will raise their defense spending from 2% to 2.3%.
The president suggests that it should be around 5%.
So that number is not going to move him.
And are you ready for this?
The king wants to have dinner with you.
Does Starmer, do the MI6 people that advise him really think that those two statements are enough to change Trump's mind on whether or not he should negotiate directly with the Russians, excluding Zelensky and the Europeans?
Well, I don't know what the MI6 is telling Starmer, but as I say, he's not dealing with...
The real world.
None of the Europeans have been able to since that Munich conference when Vice President Vance read them the riot act.
They are loose cannons now and the hope is that once reality sets in and that Trump shows that he's serious about engaging the Russians, that he doesn't think the Russians are a big threat to the United States,
and so the U.S. are disengaging from Europe for the first time in 80 years.
Once they get that through their thick heads, they might say, well, is Russia a threat to us?
Are they going to attack Poland or the Baltic states?
And the answer will be, no, we don't think so.
Okay, so why don't we develop our own rapprochement?
With Moscow.
And I think that's inevitable, but probably take months for reality to set in.
Does the CIA know in advance, and if so, can they tell Director Radcliffe or Director Gabbard or both, what Starmer has in his briefcase, I don't mean literally in his briefcase,
what his plans are, what he plans to say to the president when they speak on Thursday?
I can tell you that the CIA has a very senior representative that takes part in all the MI6 and other intelligence agencies when they convene in London.
They do that every week.
So we're well plugged in.
Now whether MI6 knows what Stromer is going to do, I don't know.
But it doesn't seem to me that any logical person would be urging him to be pushing this peacekeeping force when Britain, number one, doesn't have enough troops, and number two is facing being killed, those troops, by Russians right off the bat.
I don't know who's advising him.
He's got a, as my grandmother would say, he's got a screw loose.
He's got a screw loose somewhere up in his head, and it's not a worm this time, it's a screw.
What do we think or know President Macron is going to use as leverage with President Trump when he visits, I believe, in the next hour or so?
I think he's visiting for lunch today.
Pâté de foie gras, okay?
That's all he has to offer.
He's got real good French cooking.
Maybe he brought his cook with him.
The French have no leverage.
The British have no leverage.
The Germans have no leverage.
It's over.
NATO will be falling apart.
This was predictable.
No one expected it to happen this quickly.
But Trump has said, look, goodbye, Europe.
You're on your own.
If you want to keep fighting in Ukraine, that's your business.
We're not going to have any more killed on our account.
The minerals in the earth in Ukraine, do we know where they are?
That is, are they in the sections of Ukraine now controlled by the Russian military and probably never to be returned to Ukraine?
Or are they in the West where Kyiv is?
The best guess is they're about equally divided.
Most people say that there's a little edge toward Russia controlling.
Those precious minerals and what do they call them?
Deep Earth things.
I don't know, but it's all kind of a charade, Judge.
It was Zelensky that raised this in the first place.
It's never going to happen.
But those very clever Trump people said, okay, we're going to hoist him on his own petard here.
And we're going to say, well, yeah, I would like a share of your precious minerals because you owe us about $350 billion.
And, you know, it's good that you'll be able to repay it.
That will never happen, of course.
It'll never happen.
But this would be Macron, I think.
Oh, there he is.
Yeah, arrives at the White House.
Well, oh, gosh, that looked like Jill Biden, but no, no, she's gone.
Somebody else, all right?
I think that's the head of protocol.
Oh, okay.
Greeting President Macron at the White House.
There he is, and he walks in.
Well, his game is just to be received at the White House, you know?
And he's going to tell Trump what he thinks should be done, but Trump is not going to listen.
Trump is going to say, hey, Emmanuel, you've got no leverage anymore.
You're not going to suggest to me what to do.
I've decided what to do.
Make your own peace with Russia.
They are no threat to you, much less Poland, much less Lithuania, much less anything.
Deal with the new world.
We recognize it now.
It's a little late, but there it is.
Here's President Zelensky yesterday saying we don't owe the U.S. anything.
It was a grant.
It wasn't a debt.
Cut number three, Chris.
I know that we had 100, and that's a fact.
I am not going to recognize 500.
No matter what anyone says, no matter how we communicate, with all due respect, again, with all due respect to the partners, I am standing firm because this is a true situation.
We are absolutely right.
In the second situation, to be honest, even 100 billion, I'm not ready to fix.
Let me explain why.
Let me explain why.
Because we should not recognize grants as debts.
You know, the United States Congress authorized $265 billion.
Joe Biden spent nearly all of it there.
And he says he doesn't know how much money it was.
He doesn't know if it was $100 billion.
He doesn't know if it was $500 billion.
I guess all these rumors about graft are true.
Well, Trump says they're true.
I see no evidence that they're not true.
And Trump makes the big point that the Europeans gave these things as loan.
The Europeans gave about half as much as we did, according to Trump.
But there were loans.
They're going to be paid back.
What kind of deal did Biden and his associates do in just giving this money without any prospect of repayment?
And so to highlight that situation, Trump very adroitly says, well, now you have those precious minerals.
You owe us big time, like $350 billion.
Let's start...
Paying us back for those grants, which could have been loans.
Here he is in 2023 saying, give us credit and we'll pay you back.
Cut number two.
If you can't give us some financial support, okay.
Okay, please.
Give us a credit and we will give you back, Mark.
There you go.
His credit is not very good, Judge.
Let's face it.
And even now, it's, you know, he...
His checks are coming back.
They're all bouncing.
You know, if people weren't being killed every day in Ukraine because of this charade and this clown that we helped install and empower and arm, it would be funny.
It's not funny anymore.
And the sooner that Trump can read the riot act to his European partners and tell them, number one, you ain't got the wherewithal.
Just support this guy.
And you don't have the leverage with us for us to give them the wherewithal.
It's over.
The Russians have won.
Deal with it.
Ray McGovern, a pleasure, my dear friend.
Look forward to seeing you at the end of the week with Larry Johnson.
Thank you for your time, as always.
Most welcome.
And the aforementioned Larry Johnson will be here at 11.30 this morning and at 2 this afternoon.
Scott Ritter, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.
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