March 9, 2026 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
26:40
Larry Johnson : US Intel Covering Its Backside
Judge Andrew Napolitano and Larry Johnson dissect the U.S.-Israel attack on Iran, highlighting Prime Minister Narendra Modi's alleged betrayal of BRICS member Iran by signing security agreements before the conflict. They analyze Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's reversal on sanctioned Russian oil purchases, which triggered Iranian retaliatory strikes on Bahrain and Kuwait refineries alongside a U.S. tanker attack. The discussion details the destruction of the Fifth Fleet's port and five billion-dollar radar systems, noting insufficient PAC-3 missiles to intercept over 1,000 Iranian projectiles. General C.Q. Brown's leaked warning of an unwinable war and allegations of punished dissenting analysts further suggest internal intelligence failures, while skepticism surrounds claims of a bombed school, predicting catastrophic economic consequences like $10 gasoline. [Automatically generated summary]
Tragically, our government engages in preemptive war, otherwise known as aggression, with no complaints from the American people.
Sadly, we have become accustomed to living with the illegitimate use of force by government.
To develop a truly free society, the issue of initiating force must be understood and rejected.
What if sometimes to love your country, you had to alter or abolish the government?
What if Jefferson was right?
What if that government is best which governs least?
What if it is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong?
What if it is better to perish fighting for freedom than to live as a slave?
What if freedom's greatest hour of danger is now?
Bye, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Monday, March 9th, 2026.
Larry Johnson will be with us in just a moment.
What is U.S. Intel doing to try and cover itself?
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Larry Johnson, good morning.
Good day to you, my dear friend.
Thank you for accommodating my schedule.
As always, I know how much you have been demand in demand.
Oil Shock and India's Betrayal00:15:21
Before we get to the intelligence community leaking, I told you so, What is the latest goings on between Russia and India over India's failure to support one of its principal pillars of BRICS, Iran?
In a very elegant, diplomatic, but firm move, Russia reminded India that when you betray us as a friend, there's a price to be paid.
Prime Minister Modi went to Israel two days before the start of the Israeli-U.S. unlawful, illegal, immoral attack on Iran.
And boy, you talk about bowing and scraping.
Modi had a big case of chapstick with him for all of the rear-end smooching that he was doing.
Oh, my God.
And they signed a number of mutual security agreements and security cooperation.
And, you know, he's referred to India as like the fatherland for Judaism, for at least Indian Jews, and Israel is the motherland.
I mean, if this was sugar, you would have come away in a diabetic coma.
So two days later, then the war starts.
India is 80% dependent on the flow of oil out of the Persian Gulf.
The shutdown of the supply of oil that's coming out has all of it, you know, took oil from $65 a barrel to now $110 a barrel.
That is an economic cost that, and it's not just that the price has gone up.
There is no oil coming out.
We've never experienced anything in history like this.
We've had previous spikes in the price of oil.
When the special military operations started, Russia started with Ukraine.
Oil spike, I think it got up to like $200 a barrel briefly during the aftermath of the Yom Kippur War back in 1973, 74.
But the supply was not suspended.
The supply now is suspended.
So now India is faced with, oh, we got to go find some other oil.
Well, they had been buying, they had been tweaking the United States nose by buying oil from Russia, but they were getting it at a discount.
And basically they told Russia, well, yeah, we'd like to buy your oil, but we're violating sanctions, so we need a sweetener.
So Russia would sell them to them at $55 a barrel instead of the $60 a barrel.
Well, India comes back to Russia and says, Hey, be our friend.
Can you make up the supply?
And Russia's like, No problem.
We got you covered.
But sorry, you know, situations being what it is, you're going to have to pay $5 above the Brent number.
One of the indices that's used.
So, India, you know, India is learning a hard lesson.
If it had not done what it did with Israel, and by really betrayed Iran as a BRICS member, it would have probably had a much better deal coming out of Russia.
But, you know, Russia, Russia's playing hardball with them now.
And India is going to have to work its way back into the good graces of the Kremlin.
Why would India have cut those deals with Israel?
Money.
Money.
I mean, the key support, I'm sure when you trace it back into India, the key supporters of Modi have very close ties with Israel.
And, you know, there's been not a peep out of Modi condemning the unlawful attack by the United States and Israel on Iran.
I mean, this is, you know, we've become, I guess, just insensitive.
We've lost our nerve endings.
So that when something so horrific, so wrong takes place, and the world sort of sits by and nodes, oh, yeah, that's off.
That's that's too bad, but life goes on.
Well, this life ain't going on after this.
This is fundamentally going to change the world in some cases in a good way, in some cases in a bad way.
Before we jump to the latest in the war and the shenanigans of the intelligence community, here's Treasury Secretary Besant.
I mean, you got to wonder where he comes from.
The United States is giving permission to India to buy Russian oil.
Watch this, Larry.
It's almost as if he knew what you were going to say to me this morning.
Chris number 18.
The Indians had been very good actors.
We had asked them to stop buying sanctioned Russian oil this fall.
They did.
They were going to substitute it with U.S. oil.
But to ease the temporary gap of oil around the world, we have given them permission to accept the Russian oil.
We may unsanction other Russian oil.
The other thing Treasury can do here, Larry, is there are hundreds of millions of sanctioned barrels of sanctioned crude on the water.
And in essence, by unsanctioning them, Treasury can create supply.
It must be tough to go through life being that stupid.
Yeah.
You know, I mean, Besson is an the arrogance about the man, you know, when you're proud of being mediocre, that's not a good sign.
You know, five weeks ago, he's singing a different tune about India better toe the line and not stop buying that Russian oil.
And now, oh, never mind.
Oh, hey, go buy the Russian.
Didn't matter what he says.
India is going to buy the Russian oil because they absolutely need it.
Now, the other thing that's going on here.
So over the weekend, the United States attacked or Israel attacked and destroyed an oil refinery in Iran.
And it caused massive fire.
It was, you know, and massive pollution.
It really created some health risks.
Iran said, okay.
So they now have hit the oil refinery in Bahrain and Kuwait.
So they announced last night, okay, that's how you want to play.
You hit us there.
We're going to hit you there.
And then today, the U.S. hit an Iranian oil tanker.
So Iran said, okay, you know, the United States thinks that we can bully and muscle them, that we can have, we have enough force that we can coerce Iran to surrender to our will.
No, we don't.
And now we're going to learn the hard way because as I said at the outset, we've never had a situation with a complete oil shutdown and no oil coming out of the Persian Gulf.
And it's going to dramatically hurt certain countries.
India was one that was very vulnerable.
Now, Russia is going to save its vacant, but you know what?
It's like when you go to the Godfather to get a loan to get some help to keep the other bad guys off your back.
There's some obligations that come with that.
Philippines, 94% dependent.
Japan, South Korea, very dependent.
Japan's got apparently like 200 days of supply.
And it's not just the petroleum, then it's also the liquid natural gas.
So, you know, two key energy products that no longer are flowing out into the world.
And the economic shock is already being felt.
I don't know.
And, you know, you're in New Jersey.
I'm in Florida.
The price.
What is gasoline in Florida now?
Well, it went up what I pay, 304, which other people said, oh, that's real low.
But a week ago, it was 250.
So it's gone up.
We've gone up 54 cents.
And I predict by the end of this week, it'll be up another 50 cents.
I paid $3.68 a gallon last night, yesterday afternoon in New Jersey.
Wow.
And then the people I buy it from, they own a bunch of gas stations.
They're friends of mine, they said, we can't control this.
If you had a tank, we'd fill it for you now because the next time you come here, it's going to be more, much more.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Let's.
There's so much more I could ask you about India, but I have to jump to Iran.
How is it that the Iranians were able to destroy the port which houses the Fifth Fleet, the vaunted U.S. Fifth Fleet of the United States Navy?
And how significant is it that they don't have a port to go back to?
Yeah.
Well, let's put it into context.
Back in 1987, Iran mined the Persian Gulf.
And I forget what the precipitating incident was, but they were trying to stop the flow of oil out.
And so the Fifth Fleet had a Navy SEAL squadron that went and set up, it was called the Hercules Barge.
It was a floating barge off the coast of Bahrain, and it was an operations base where they were countering the ships.
You know, they were boarding the ships, stopping them from mining the entire waterway.
And they were successful.
And I know about that because the guy who was the commander of it was a dear friend of mine.
Well, we couldn't do that today.
I mean, if he was out there in that barge, that barge would be blown up.
So by shutting down the Fifth Fleet headquarters and attacking the, you know, I'm not sure the exact extent of the damage done to the port itself, but it appears significant.
And the U.S. troops can't stay there because the risk of getting killed is too high.
And that's what makes this so much, so different from what happened last June, you know, the 12-day war, as we call it.
Because back then, all of the U.S. radars that have now been destroyed were up and operating.
So Israel was getting fair warning of, oh, inbound, you know, the ballistic missiles are coming.
And Iran did not dare attack.
It wasn't looking to engage the United States then.
It thought, you know, they could still deal with the United States.
And in fact, at the end of that 12-day period, there was a behind-the-scenes deal cut between the Trump administration and Iran to bring it into the fighting.
That's not the case now.
Iran realizes it's at war with the United States.
Realizes it's been betrayed twice.
It has trusted the United States twice that, oh, yeah, we're sincere about negotiations.
Come on in, and then bam, sucker punch them.
So they're being sucker punched.
And they're now intent on inflicting as much damage as they can on the United States.
And it is significant.
There are at least five of these major radar systems that cost between $500 million apiece and $1 billion apiece.
And they not only were there to detect early launches of missiles out of Iran, but it also, those radars had a reach that it was being used against Russia in Ukraine in terms of collecting intelligence.
So they're now driving the United States out militarily.
And then on top of it, they are punishing the Gulf Cooperation Council, the Gulf Arabs, for their perfidy in cooperating with the United States to allow the U.S. to attack Iran.
How serious is the depletion of U.S. and Israeli interceptor defensive missiles?
Well, it's really not that important for this reason.
They weren't that effective to start with.
Okay.
I mean, it's not like, you know, oh, we've shot down 90%.
No, you didn't.
Stop saying that.
And they're saying, oh, yeah, look how well our air defense works.
Well, I watched the video of a slow-flying drone crash into one of the billion-dollar radar systems.
But it's true.
They've spent all this money.
You know, as I reported last week, since the PAC-3, it's the missile that's used in the Patriot.
The most up-to-date one began production in 2015.
The United States, at the end of December of 2025, had produced a grand total of 4,620.
And so when you realize that you're going to fire two PAC-3 missiles at any incoming target, it's a system that's really largely irrelevant in the modern world when you consider the fact that already Iran has probably fired over 1,000 missiles.
So if the PAC-3s were used against all those thousand missiles, that's 2,000 PAC-3s.
That's 50% of the total that's been produced since 2015.
Same with Thads, the terminal high-altitude area defense missile.
We produce 79 of those a year, 80, 12 million, 13 million apiece.
Now, the military industrial complex, the Raytheons, the Lockheed Martins, hey, they're laughing all the way to the bank.
They don't get paid according to is it effective?
Now, I would love to say, hey, you know, we're going to cut this deal with you.
You're going to produce this missile.
And you'll get paid if it's effective in bringing the threat down.
If not, you don't get paid.
Trump's Toxic Intelligence Environment00:07:06
When the Washington Post reported, this is about a week before the war started, that General Kane told President Trump that his war is not winnable.
And Trump erupted and put out one of his truth socials saying, this is not true.
This is not true.
Don't believe the Washington Post.
Do you think the Washington Post was accurate?
Do you think the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was privately being intellectually honest with the president and somehow it leaked?
Well, it's not just being intellectually honest.
It's covering his ass.
So 41 years ago, I just entered the career training program on like our second day at CIA, and they brought out the secrets.
And so they brought out all, okay, we're now going to show you some top secret information.
And it was about the Pershing II missile.
Back then, we still hadn't signed the intermediate range ballistic missile treaty.
And they were, U.S. was sending intermediate missiles into Europe to counter the Russians.
I'm reading, oh, this is top secret.
We've got to protect it.
Next day, all the information we were reading that was top secret was on the front page of the Washington Post because there was some, once you got policy differences within the Intel community or between the Intel community and the policy community, the executive, information gets leaked.
So when I saw that from Kane, you know, Kane didn't do it, but it looks like one of the other members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who was basically fired after this leak came out,
had gone and told the Washington Post about it because they're letting him know that we tried to tell Trump, we've given him the facts, and he's not listening, which is just a, this is a classic example of how a narcissist who's not very smart works.
You can get frustrated by thinking you're going to present a logical argument, you're going to show the facts, you're going to reason with them, and they're going to say, oh, now I understand.
No, Because this is their ego's all wrapped up in this.
Trump's already got himself convinced that he knows what's right.
He's going to do it regardless of what these people say.
So that was an early move by Kane.
You know, he's not refusing to obey orders, but he is, he did get the word out through multiple sources that Trump had been warned, don't do this.
And now, when we saw the next shoe to drop, was the information released about the National Intelligence Council estimate.
Now, the NIC is it falls, it's not under CIA, it falls under Tulsi Gabbard.
And the National Intelligence Council has, you have national intelligence officers, one for Latin America, one for Europe, one for Africa, one for Russia, one for China.
You know, it's you bring, you bring senior people, mostly CIA, but you also get folks from the DIA and from the Bureau of Intelligence and Research at state.
And their job, you know, they bring their expertise for that particular area.
And then when you get questions like this, hey, what are the chances that we're going to achieve regime change in Iran?
And so they provided it.
I'm not, you know, one analyst was selected to be the principal drafter, I'm sure.
And then the NIC reviews it.
They issue it as a NIC project, National Intelligence Council.
And this is their way of saying, hey, we told you so.
We're not going to get blamed for this.
Now, we've got clear examples over the last year of Trump's punishing intelligence analysts for telling him the truth.
Last June, June 25th, after Trump supposedly obliterated Iran's nuclear program, which we now see was a complete lie, the Defense Intelligence Agency was putting out, saying, not so fast now.
No, we didn't.
And it looks like they may have actually taken the material from the areas that we've attacked prior to the attack.
That, you know, DIA came in for some real heavy pressure from the White House.
And I think the head of DIA was removed.
And then three months before that, in March, there was a presidential daily brief that was presented to Trump.
And the CIA was saying, oh, yes, the Russians are going to make concessions.
Yeah, they've laid out that they wouldn't give up any of this territory, but they don't mean it.
And two analysts at the Bureau of Intelligence and Research wrote what's called a dissent.
So, you know, when I used to do this, you'd write your piece and you'd have to get approval.
We called it getting clearance from the analysts at state, the analysts at the Defense Intelligence Agency, the analysts at the NSA, if I used any of their material in my analysis.
So, in this case, the State Department people were saying, no, no, we disagree.
So, if you can't reach an agreement, then they get to write a dissent saying, No, there's another way to look at this, Mr. President, an alternative.
The reports were Trump became enraged that they would dare to not follow this party line.
And apparently, they got punished.
I don't know the exact nature of the punishment, but the point is, Trump has created a toxic environment within the intelligence community that anybody who dares to speak up and tell the truth that doesn't jive with the narrative and storyline that Trump is telling, they get punished.
Wow.
Well, this is going to endure to his detriment, but I wonder who could have told Trump this.
Cut number 10, Chris.
Mr. President, did the United States bomb a girls' elementary school in southern Iran on the first day of the war and kill 175 people?
Based on what I've seen, that was done by Iran.
Is that true, Mr. Hexa?
It was Iran who did that.
We're certainly investigating.
Still investigating.
But the only side that targets civilians is Iran.
We think it was done by Iran.
Can you give us an idea?
They're very inaccurate, as you know, with their munitions.
They have no accuracy whatsoever.
It was done by Iran.
This is really insane, isn't it?
Well, you've got the picture of the missile.
There's a video showing the missile hitting, and you stop the frame.
It's a tomahawk.
Israel's not shooting tomahawks.
Iran's Catastrophic Global Disruption00:01:28
We are.
So we did that.
We murdered 175 students, little girls, 6 to 12, and their teachers.
In fact, there was apparently a mother who was there at the school had her three-month-old baby.
That three-month-old baby died too.
Thank you, Larry.
This is such sad and miserable stuff.
What will it take for the Americans to understand their quick war is not going to be a quick victory?
When we're paying, you know, if you're paying $3 per gallon of gas this week, when you're paying $10 a gallon, then you might start understanding.
And that's where we're headed.
This is not some minor disruption to the global economy.
This is a catastrophic cataclysm that is taking place.
But you've got all these Enablers of Donald Trump trying to cover it up, trying to pretend nothing to see here.
Move along.
Well, thank you, Larry.
All the best, my friend.
We'll look forward to seeing you at the end of the week with the Intelligence Roundtable.
All the best.
I'll be there.
Thanks.
Thank you.
And his compatriot on the intelligence community roundtable, Ray McGovern, will be here at 10 this morning.