Ray McGovern and Judge Andrew Napolitano examine Finland's historical sovereignty through neutrality versus Ukraine's current NATO alignment, while McGovern recounts his 2012 Gaza flotilla stop by Greek authorities under Obama pressure. He details the 1967 USS Liberty massacre where 34 sailors died due to U.S. inaction, linking it to broader complicity in Israeli actions and agreeing with Alistair Crook that Zionism has become barbarism. The discussion covers a whistleblower's failed attempt to expose Russiagate intelligence falsification by John Brennan and James Comey to Senator Mark Kelly, before McGovern critiques European leaders like Ursula von der Leyen for delusional support of Ukraine without resources. Ultimately, the episode questions U.S. financial commitment under a potential Trump administration and suggests Western interventionism ignores historical lessons on survival. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
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Judge Andrew Napolitano Intro00:01:10
Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Tuesday, September 2nd, 2025.
The summer's over.
It seems like a Monday here in the U.S., but today is a Tuesday.
Ray McGovern will be with us in just a minute on the significance of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and this interesting comparison.
What can Ukraine learn from the experience of the Finnish government?
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Ray McGovern, welcome here, my dear friend.
Before we get to Ukraine and the Fins, and before we get to your interesting observations on the Shanghai Cooperation Agreement, I want you to take a look.
At this.
This is the beginning of the Armada making its way to Gaza and the tens of thousands of people that turned out to send them off.
This Armada has 50 ships in it, including a lot of media embeds and a lot of Americans.
One would think the United States Navy would protect.
These peace loving, charitable, generous people who just want to deliver food and medical supplies to the Gazans.
But I guess we shouldn't bet on it.
No, we shouldn't.
As you may recall, I was on one of those flotillas in 2011.
And it was made clear to me by sources, not only in the NSC, the National Security Council, but also in the State Department, that Obama would just as soon see.
The Israelis have their way with us.
And if we came home in coffins, well, that would be all right with them because that would help them in the next election.
APAC would really be very, very much friendly to them if that happened.
This I had from two sources.
So, no, the U.S. Navy's got to do anything about this.
The U.S. Navy will probably run interference for the Israelis if they're called to do that.
I mean, do the Israelis, I'm going to guess they do.
I've never heard much about it.
Do the Israelis have a navy?
I mean, will they send ships?
To prevent these generous people, or they do have a navy.
Well, they sent ships to block them from landing.
Yes, that's what they do, and they take them to this little port of Ashtod, and then they put them on trial and they send them home.
The only good thing about this is if you want to, you can get sent home free of charge.
The Israelis will pay for your return flight.
Wow.
What happened with you, with the one you were on?
Did they stop it?
Were you arrested?
Were you prosecuted?
This was the year after the Mavi Mamara, with the Turkish cargo and Turkish people, was blasted almost out of the water, several people killed by Israeli commandos.
This time, we registered our boat.
In the United States, otherwise, it was an American flagship.
We rebuilt it, and there were about 40 of us, including people like Alice Walker and other people who feel really strongly about Gaza.
Well, we were told that, okay, you can sail, but we have to inspect you.
They inspected us.
We were ready to sail.
All of a sudden, they say, no, no, there's something wrong with your air conditioner.
Air conditioner, my God.
Anyhow, they sold us notes of sail.
Well, we got our captain to agree to sail.
Anyway, and we went out the next morning.
We got nine miles out of Piraeus, and then the ninja turtles on the coast guard of Athens there in Greece turned us back.
There was a standoff for an hour.
They were terribly apologetic.
They said, Look, we're just under orders.
What happened was Obama prevailed on Papadreou, said, Look, you want an IMF loan?
You want to bail out your economy?
Don't let that ship out into the Mediterranean.
And so we were prevented.
They impounded the ship.
We never saw the ship again.
Well, we saw it again, but it was not released to us.
It was a lot of money.
We sunk into that thing.
We all had to go home, but we all learned a lesson.
Just as the sailors on the USS Liberty in 1967 learned a lesson, in their case, the Israelis learned that they could literally get away with murder.
In our case, we learned that the US government was not willing to protect us if the Israelis did.
Did do what they did to the U.S. Liberty crew.
So, you know, if you want proof positive that the Israelis believe that they can get up with murder to include U.S. citizens, well, there are two case histories.
One of the viewers in what we call the chat room writes in and says, Judge, the Israelis do have a Navy.
It's called the United States Navy, which will do whatever they need.
Funny way to put it, but obviously very sad.
The USS Liberty, of course, is one of the great tragedies in modern American history where the Israeli jets attacked the boat, killed 134 sailors, and LBJ and McNamara refused to allow a military response.
Actually, Judge, there were 34 killed, 134 injured.
Correct.
Right.
You got that right.
Correct.
Thank you for correcting me.
It was a terrible, terrible tragedy, terrible behavior by the President of the United States and the Secretary of Defense.
Again, before we get to the other topics, Alistair Crook argued just about an hour and a half ago that Zionism is now barbarism.
Do you agree?
Of course, I agree.
And of course, he knows 10 times more than I do about the subject.
When you have Israeli leaders boastfully saying, we're going to do more genocide, more starvation, and then you have most of the Israeli populace, my God, approving that.
I mean, what?
What further proof is needed?
So, yeah, Alistair, I saw the segment.
Alistair was brilliant as usual, and I think he's right on that score.
Tell me about intelligence officers.
How do intelligence officers with moral qualms about what their government is doing react?
How do they participate in it?
How would an intelligence officer like you, or who thinks like you do, possibly aid the Israeli slaughter?
Intelligence Officers and Genocide Claims00:02:04
Well, it's sort of a fixture.
I mean, Mossad is pretty much an.
Arm of the CIA, or some people say the CIA is simply an arm of Mossad.
Now, that's the reality.
We used to have folks that were pretty objective working on Israel.
They've long since passed on to working in the library or some other place like that.
It's really infectious, this kind of corruption.
But I will say that there are little signs of light.
There is that Deputy National Intelligence Officer.
We don't know her name.
Now, this is about as high as you can get.
It's a national sort of thing.
I happen to be one of those in the 70s, if you can believe it, Deputy National Intelligence Officer.
She couldn't put up with what John Brennan and James Comey were doing and falsifying the information to make believe, make believe, out of whole cloth, no evidence that Putin preferred Trump over Hillary Clinton, the whole Russiagate thing.
Now, she fought tooth and nail.
She went to Inspector General after Inspector General.
And she went to the Senate Intelligence Committee as well.
They wouldn't let her in the door.
Now the whole thing is on the record.
There were email exchanges, very, very copious ones.
What became of her career?
Well, this is not known.
Her name is being withheld for obvious reasons.
There are lots of people out to get her for telling the truth.
And I had a really strange encounter with Senator Mark Kelly.
He was down here in Raleigh over the weekend.
And I asked him, Why did you not see this whistleblower to tell you that Brennan and Comey were lying through their teeth?
She had the evidence right there.
Why did you see her?
And he says, Well, what's her name?
And I said, Oh, I don't know her name.
But you know her name, Senator Kelly.
No, I don't know her name.
Finnish Example and Senator Kelly00:12:20
I said, You can get it.
Yeah, I can get it.
Is he on the Senate Intelligence Committee?
He surely knows her name.
He's got a top secret national security clearance.
Well, this is what he does.
He says, Well, Mr. McGovern, what do you want me to do?
You want me to pull out my cell phone and call her?
That would be a good idea, Senator.
Well, I'm not going to do it now.
I'll do it from the call.
Ray, is there a video of your encounter with Senator Kelly?
There is.
It's up on my website now, raymcgovern.com.
It's six minutes.
I had a friend who knew I was going to try to ask a question.
There were no questions from the floor except mine.
It happened to the last one.
They shut it down after I asked.
I remember a video where you were dragged out.
I hope that or I trust that didn't happen over the weekend.
Not this time.
Well, there were Raleigh policemen there, but they happened to be friends of mine.
All right.
You and I have emailed over the weekend and you have educated me on the Finnish experience, the experience that the Finns have had.
With the Russians, which went from bad to good to very good.
Now, who knows where it is there in NATO?
Give us your brief, briefly, your understanding of this and how this could be a model for Ukraine.
Well, this was raised in the Oval Office when the president of Finland said something about, hey, Finnish neutrality, and it's a pretty good thing.
And this was all in the context of Ukraine.
How might there be an ausgang, an exit for us in Ukraine?
And Jeffrey Roberts, my good friend, a historian, who, yeah, Historian emeritus at University College Cork, he wrote this wonderful article about instances where Finland was faced with the situation that Ukraine faces now a no win.
They couldn't win.
Okay, so what did they do?
They appeased.
They said, Look, let's do a deal.
Okay, and in each case, Stalin, both of these cases, said, Okay, we'll do a deal.
You do reparations.
We won't invade you.
You're neutral.
You're neutral.
You got that?
You're going to be neutral.
Okay, well, that held until just last two years ago when Finland decided to visit NATO.
Now, the Russians were pretty clever, even Stalin.
Now, whatever you say about Stalin, it's pretty clever.
Here's a little thing that Jeff Roberts sent me about Stalin.
Where is it?
Here it is.
Yeah.
So the Finns were a little bit late in paying reparations after the war, okay?
And so Stalin said, all right, well, we'll postpone it for a year or two.
And the Finns said, Look, that's very generous.
And get this, Stalin, it's not generosity, it's a calculation.
When we treat others well, they're nice to us.
Our generosity makes up for a policy of Tsarist autocracy.
Its policy towards Finland, Romania, Bulgaria made their peoples enemies of Russia.
We want neighboring countries and peoples to have a good attitude toward us.
It's not niceness, it's not generosity, it's simply calculation.
So, let's tell it now.
The point here is the Finns were on their back, they had a chance to fight to the last Finn, right?
Uh, to lose another hundred thousand troops, they they fought bravely for a while, but anyhow, in their case, the Swedes and the US and Britain encouraged the Finns look, please, just do neutral, be neutral, and this will be really good for us as well, the allies, okay.
In this case, with respect to Ukraine, the Ukrainians are not getting any help from the coalition of the brain dead, as I call them, from Stommer, from Matz, from Macron.
They don't seem to, they're delusionary if they think that they're doing the Ukrainians a favor by saying, okay, no problem, we'll buy U.S. arms with what money I would ask.
And which arms?
There aren't any arms available for sale, okay?
And then we'll give them to the Ukrainians, but the Ukrainians don't have any soldiers to man them.
Other than that, this is a really good solution.
So it's a no good solution.
What Jeff Roberts is suggesting, and The Economist picked up on this in its most recent, The Economist magazine picked up on this in its most recent issue and says pretty much the same thing that Jeff Roberts says.
Look, look at the Finnish example.
It worked beautifully.
And what happened?
Finland kept their sovereignty, they kept their independence, and they prospered as few other countries in Western Europe prospered during those Cold War years.
So, why not try it?
And I think it's a really good idea.
I hope it gets around in Washington circles.
Most people in Washington read The Economist.
I read it just when I have to.
I read it as well.
I love it.
There's no publication like it, it's jam packed every week.
But back to the Finnish experience they were sovereign, they were independent, they were prosperous, they were happy, they were peaceful.
And then they joined NATO.
Why the hell did they join NATO?
Oh, I was afraid you're going to ask me that, Judge.
I don't have a.
Keine Ahnung, as the Germans have.
Any idea?
There's this craziness that has enveloped European leaders, such as they are, bubbling up to the top.
So you've got this Kaya Kallas, you've got Ursula von der Leyen, you've got Macron Mouths and these people.
I don't know, but they're delusionary.
Daddy, you recall that the new head of NATO, Rute, at the last NATO summit, he said, Oh, Daddy's here.
Hi, Daddy.
Come on in.
Trump had just arrived.
See?
Now, what they have to realize and what cold reality will finally dawn on them is Daddy is a deadbeat.
Okay?
Daddy's not going to pay child support.
Okay?
He's not going to pay alimony.
Daddy is gone, and his vice president has said, Said, We're done with Ukraine.
We gave them all the money.
We're not going to give them any more.
We're done with Ukraine.
So, how long is it going to take to sink into these coalitions of the brain dead?
I would think in weeks, but I'm not sure because they're meeting today in Paris and Zelensky will be there and they'll be slapping it.
Oh, they'll be hugging them.
There's a lot of hugs now these days.
But my God, they're crazy because if they persuade Zelensky that they can help him, they don't have any basis on which to promise that.
And Zelensky is quite.
Able and willing to fight until the last Ukrainian.
And it's going to come down to that within the next couple of months, if not weeks, because the Russians are moving inexorably to the west toward the Dnieper River.
Chris found something that you'll find very interesting.
Chris?
And that if Trump said, let's go into Ukraine, we probably wouldn't support it because Ukraine was.
My question is this There was a national intelligence officer.
I was a national intelligence.
It's just about as high as you can get.
She tried to whistle blow and she came to your committee and said, Look, these guys are lying through their teeth about Russiagate and you wouldn't see her and neither would anyone on your team.
You know the name.
I don't know the name, but you know the name.
Why do you have the power to find the name?
Can I comment?
And, sir, hold on.
Light down, folks.
I just want to make a comment on what you said, sir.
Sit down for a second.
Sure.
So, I do have the power to find out who that person is.
Why haven't you?
Why haven't you?
Well, I don't know what you're talking about.
So, let me just say this on the whole.
Who's the one that pushed you?
Well, he's the head of the Democrats in the Raleigh area.
He's not a bad guy.
He's airborne, 82nd airborne, all the way.
But, you know, he's a political functionary and he was trying to protect the good senator.
And, you know, I have to say that two women came up and tried manfully to protect him after.
Because I went up to him and I said, Now, Senator Kelly, I also want to register my beef against your slandering, my good friend, Professor Ted Postle, emeritus of MIT.
He says, Who's that?
Who's that?
I said, Well, go look at your footage at the Tulsi Gabbard hearing.
You slandered him.
He said, I don't even know who he is.
I said, Well, look it up because you owe him an apology.
I told Ted that last night.
He said, Oh, really?
That's good.
So, anyhow, if you look that up, you'll see that, what's his name?
Kelly was, Senator Kelly was reading from a script that they gave him.
And the script required him to denigrate Professor Postal, whom we all know, in favor of some crackheads who were saying, Look, oh yeah, Bashar al Assad did that chemical attack, even though he was winning, and even though he didn't have that kind of say, Oh, yeah, he did it.
And so, Senator, you know, I have something that somebody sent me.
Just this would just take one more second here if I can find it.
It has to do with a remark I got from someone who read the thing that you just said.
Here it is.
Now, what he said was look, John Kennedy in his profiles of courage talked about the Senate.
He knew whereof he was speaking.
He was a senator, are you?
And he said, look, You know, you have people there that are not real smart, that are rich, and that's how they get their position or they're beholden to the military industrial complex.
It's not a real good group to be with.
I'd rather be president.
So he sent me this thing.
He said, Look, keep fighting on, McGovern, even though the odds are against you.
Keep fighting on, McGovern.
You always have a place here in which to do it.
Thank you very much, Ray.
I had a lot of other things to ask you about, but time marches on, and I'll hold them till we're together with Larry Johnson on Friday.
Thank you, my dear friend.
You're most welcome.
Very, very, very courageous man, as all of you who watch this program know.
And the aforementioned Larry Johnson will be here at 11 30 this morning, at 1 30 this afternoon.
Professor Jeffrey Sachs at 3 o'clock this afternoon.
Scott Ritter, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.