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June 10, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
23:03
AMB. Charles Freeman : Israel Destroying Itself.
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Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Tuesday, June 10th, 2025.
Ambassador Charles Friedman will be with us in just a moment on who really controls American foreign policy and is Israel slowly destroying itself?
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Ambassador Freeman, welcome here, my dear friend.
Good day to you, and thank you for joining us and accommodating my schedule.
As I look at the events of the past week and the finger-pointing and the denials, I'm speaking, of course, of the drone attacks on four Russian air bases and some civilian sites.
As well, I want to ask you, before we get into is Israel destroying itself, who controls American foreign policy?
Who calls the shots?
It's not entirely clear.
One of the conclusions you might draw from this recent series of events, attacks on Russia that violate the norm against attacking the elements of the nuclear deterrent of a great power, is that
A covert program probably hatched by MI6 with the Ukrainians, undoubtedly approved by the CIA during the Biden administration.
Probably Rishi Sunak in Britain, who knows, just carried over into the Trump administration.
And there is no evidence that the Trump administration was, in fact, informed of this program or that if it was, it was able to make its own decision about whether it should go forward or not.
And in fact...
And of course, those talks have now been essentially reduced to dealing with technical issues like the exchange of the dead and the exchange of wounded women.
who are in the two countries.
So peace talks, which the president very much wanted, have been set aside.
Do you think that the Kremlin believes, and do you, Ambassador Charles Freeman, find credible Donald Trump, Well, the United States certainly did know about it, but whether President Trump knew or not is another question.
I think it's entirely plausible, given the messy confrontational nature of the transition between the outgoing Biden regime and the Trump administration, that, in fact, knowledge of this operation was not passed on.
So I think it's entirely possible that the head of the U.S. government elected to defend the Constitution and implement the faithfully execute the laws of the country.
He was ignorant.
He did not know.
And this says something very bad about the reliability of the United States as a partner for anyone if, in effect, the head of state, the head of government, the president, is trying to do one thing and programs set in motion by his predecessor continue to do something else.
Right.
I would think CIA Director Ratcliffe would fire whoever in the agency did this and didn't inform him.
I would also think, given his propensity for these public firings, the president might fire Ratcliffe because he ought to have known.
I mean, the CIA is a paramilitary organization, and they have an obligation to inform their superiors of what they're up to.
Here's what...
But here's Foreign Minister Lavrov.
Chris, cut number eight.
the Ukrainian side is doing everything possible but it would be absolutely helpless without the support I was tempted to say Anglo-Saxons but probably without Saxons just without the support of the British although you never know probably by inertia some US special forces would be involved in that but the British actually are behind all those things I'm 100% sure Well,
he has access to a very sophisticated intelligence from one of the world's great and successful intelligence services, the Russian FSB, and he's saying he's 100% sure the British were behind it and probably the Americans as well.
Do you agree?
I think he's probably right.
But I think, you know, one of the issues here is going back to the question of the role of the CIA.
Obviously, we have liaison relationships with foreign intelligence services, the Ukrainians, for example.
We also have a very intense relationship with MI6 in Great Britain.
Part of the liaison relationship should be to inform the CIA, or if the CIA is not informed, for it to ascertain through its own efforts.
What other foreign intelligence services are up to and from foreign militaries?
Ukraine has said it did not inform the United States of what it did in these attacks.
That suggests that the US-Ukrainian intelligence liaison relationship is not what it should be.
But more important, MI6 has a relationship with CIA, which goes back to...
So we should know about these things.
And the fact that we didn't is pretty dismaying.
Yesterday, when I was talking with Alistair Crook, Who's experienced in many of these things.
I asked him who he thought was calling the shots in American foreign policy.
He was bemoaning the presence of Senators Lindsey Graham and Richard Blumenthal in Kiev, patting President Zelensky on the back and encouraging him and making all sorts of promises, one of which is this bizarre boost.
that they both were making, though mainly Senator Graham, that they have legislation co-signed by 80 senators, veto proof if they can get the same proportion in the House, to force the president's hand and compel him to impose secondary sanctions on Russia, meaning that any country who bought products from Russia or sold products to Russia would also be sanctioned.
And Alistair was bemoaning that this is an improper interference in foreign policy, which under the Constitution devolves on the president.
And then I asked him the same question I asked you.
Who is running American foreign policy?
And here's the answer he gave.
Opposed either to the Iran deal or to his deal normalization with Russia and want an escalation.
This is very dangerous.
So who's in charge of foreign policy?
The Russians may be asking himself.
Well, not President Trump, but it will be split up between the deep state, the Congress and Israel.
Deep state, the Congress and Israel.
I suspect you agree.
I do.
I think if I were a foreign ambassador, a diplomat, Well, I was an ambassador for the United States.
But if I were a foreign ambassador in Washington, asked to analyze that question, I would make a number of comments.
First, I think the United States is in a pre-revolutionary situation.
There's widespread dissatisfaction.
The laws are being broken.
The legitimacy of the government is in question.
The operation of the federal system is broken.
The policy process is chaotic.
And as Alistair indicated, well, you go back to the Federalist Papers, one of them, I think, written by Alexander Hamilton, argues very cogently that the legislature,
This should be a matter of discretion primarily for the president.
And the Constitution does give the president primary authority in foreign affairs.
It's his decision whether to recognize a country or not, whether to receive foreign emissaries or not.
To appoint ambassadors subject to the advice and consent of the Senate.
And our constitutional system is not functioning on many, many levels.
So, of course, everybody abroad is confused.
Right, right.
Were you surprised that Alistair added in the last two words, which had not been the subject of our conversation, and Israel?
No, not at all.
I think the Zionist lobby effectively controls our policies toward West Asia.
I think it's coming to the point where support for Israel's actions, Israel itself, is becoming unconscionable.
The world, other than the United States and some parts of Western Europe, We see Israel as a force for evil, implacable, determined, resolute in its cruelty, and yet we support it.
So what happens as Israel loses all credibility and support abroad and generates hatred?
We are suffering from contagion, from Israel's collapse.
Is Israel on the verge of domestic collapse?
Due to the Netanyahu regime?
The trends certainly seem to be in that direction.
There's no national consensus on a variety of issues anymore.
Netanyahu continues to be a formidably effective politician, but widely disliked and opposed, not just in society at large, but within the Israeli government.
The intelligence agencies oppose many of his beliefs and contradict them.
The military just don't like his military strategies.
The hostage families regard him as duplicitous and uninterested in the well-being of their family members.
The ultra-Orthodox are ill at ease with the attempt to draw them into the military.
Israelis who are liberal or democratic and who have remained in Israel, of course, many of them have emigrated, are upset by the effort to stifle the independence of the judiciary.
And by the undemocratic nature of, increasingly undemocratic nature of, And Israelis who are not religious fanatics, secular Israelis, are dismayed by the presence in the cabinet of religious fanatics who are not just that, but fascist.
So I think we have a country that, quite aside from the fact that its economy is suffering terribly from the ongoing efforts to conquer.
Gaza, displaced Palestinians from the West Bank, devastate Syria and control Lebanon.
You know, all of this is taking its toll.
Startups, which were the glory of Israeli science and technology and the Israeli economy, are moving abroad.
Bankruptcies are increasing.
Many, many people have gone abroad.
We don't know whether they'll go back or not.
There are increasing doubts among Israelis about the future of their country.
And so if we listen to thoughtful Israelis, I think the answer to your question is yes, Israel is on a path to self-destruction.
Iranian officials are claiming they have Israel's nuclear secrets, and Prime Minister Netanyahu has been mysteriously silent on this claim.
The claim is now 48 hours old as we are recording this segment.
What does this mean, that they have Israel's nuclear secrets?
Well, we don't know the content that they have acquired.
But we do know that one of the strange phenomena in the controversy over the Iranian nuclear program is that Israel's actual acquisition by clandestine means of a formidable nuclear arsenal is never discussed.
So, we have, you know, Israel discussing the Israeli nuclear programs, which were conducted behind the back of the United States in the face of assurances to us that they did not exist.
President Kennedy in particular was adamant on this subject and he was deceived.
These Israeli programs are never mentioned.
So we have a double standard which is apparent to the entire world outside the United States.
Let's get back to, before we finish, let's get back to the Ukrainian attack on Russia.
Do you share the view of Western media that 40 or so multi-multi-million dollar nuclear arms capable jets were destroyed?
Or are you more in the Alistair Crook, Larry Johnson school of thought that it was no more than half a dozen?
No, I think Larry and Alistair are correct on that.
There was damage done to the Russian nuclear bomber fleet, for sure.
There's also a train derailed and civilian casualties as a result of action against that train, which if the intent was to create civilian casualties, probably is correctly classified.
As an act of terrorism.
But I don't think the damage was that substantial.
It's the precedent of this set that is the real problem.
So the Russians are now rebranding the special military operation as a war against terrorism, which, of course, unleashes them under their own rules to seek to eliminate President Zelensky and his senior people.
Do you see that happening?
And if so, does that expand this?
I think the decision to proclaim that this is a war of counterterrorism not only has important domestic effects in Russia, because it basically puts Russia under a form of martial law, which suspends those restraints on the government that existed, not that they were that great.
So the repression in Russia connected to the war, the surveillance, the silencing of any dissent is bound to increase.
But you're also right.
You know, I think what the Special Military Operation designation was intended to signal that this was a limited war, limited not only in its dealings with the backers of Ukraine,
but with Ukrainian factions that have a history of tracing back to the German Nazi SS, which, you know, this is Stepan Bandera's heritage.
And the question of denazification, which the Russians raised, was nothing they were directly pursuing.
But I think you're right.
I think they now have expanded the attacks.
To include political figures who are in this ultranationalist Ukrainian camp.
And so I think the war has indeed escalated.
Yesterday was the, well, excuse me, Sunday was the anniversary of the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty.
We all know what happened.
In your years in the State Department and in the Defense Department, Was there ever any talk or scuttlebutt?
Why did LBJ turn the jets around?
Why did he let American sailor boys be slaughtered like that?
Well, I think during the period I was in government, which ended quite a while ago, end of 1994, so now 30 years, this was never discussed, really.
I mean, the cover-up was effective.
The taboo enforced by the Zionist lobby politically operated effectively.
What's happened is that more recently, I think as a result of Israel's bad behavior, its ability to silence discussion of this horrifying incident has lessened, and we do hear more about it.
Those who were involved in the Liberty incident on the American side have come forth with their own stories, which they were instructed by LBJ and the government at the time to not reveal.
I mean, they were told on pain of punishment that they should keep their mouths shut.
And they're now speaking out, which is good.
Right.
The truth has a way of coming out, even if it's 50 or 60 years later.
Ambassador Freeman, thank you very much for your time.
Always a pleasure.
My dear friend, we look forward to seeing you next week.
Keep well.
Thank you.
You too.
Coming up later today on all of this at 11 o 'clock this morning, Scott Ritter at 3 o 'clock this afternoon, Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski at 3.30 this afternoon, live from Moscow.
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