Judging Freedom - CIA Failure in Ukraine w/ Larry Johnson & Ray McGovern - Both fmr CIA

Episode Date: August 11, 2023

CIA Failure in Ukraine w/ Larry Johnson & Ray McGovern - Both fmr CIASee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Thank you. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Friday, August 11th, 2023. Ray McGovern and Larry Johnson join us today for a special edition of Judging Freedom, sort of a roundtable amongst friends in which we will have conversations about the nature and extent of the intelligence community today in the United States and in the world. Let me start with you, Larry. How pervasive is U.S. government spying today on the American public without warrants, without suspicion, just broad sweeping spying? And if you're able to say how pervasive it is, who's doing it? Well, there are literally almost no restraints preventing the federal government from being able to do it, and it would be done ways that legally the U.S. government's not supposed to do it. But as we saw in the case of Donald Trump, they literally were finding the loopholes. One of the loopholes that you and I know very well is that the Brits could intercept communications,

pass those communications to the National Security Agency or to the CIA, and then CIA and NSA could say, well, we didn't collect it. We're just reporting on, you know. So they've got workaround. So the reality is because the more you rely upon a cell phone and a computer, the more vulnerable you are to being spied upon by your government. Just recognize they're looking under your kimono. Ray, does the CIA itself, which is prohibited by its charter from being involved in domestic

law enforcement or domestic surveillance, does the CIA itself, as distinguished in the NSA, the FBI, the DEA, all the other three and four letter acronym agencies out there. Does the CIA itself spy on Americans in America? It can. In extremists, it does. But when you have the FBI and the NSA feeding out of the same data bank and getting the same take from all our emails, all our telephone calls. Give me a break. I asked Bill Binney, who is a technical director of NSA at one point. I said, Bill, come on. They're not collecting everything. He says, Ray, trust me, they are. And I said, well, how come? He said, because they can, Ray. They're not reading everything. They're not listening to everything.

But they can, and they do. They had a little human aspect to this. After Ed Snowden came out, we gave him the Sam Adams Award for Integrity and Intelligence. We met a fellow from the Stasi, from the East German Security Service. His name was Wolfgang Schmidt, if you can believe it. And we asked him, Wolfgang, you had a great thing going with your surveillance. What do you think about now? He says, I would be in heaven now.

And we said, well, what do you say to people that say, I have nothing to hide. No problem with me. He says, this is incredibly naive. You don't get to decide what they do with this information. The only way to prevent it from being used against you is to prevent it from being collected in the first place. And that's when the Fourth Amendment was supposed to protect us all. Well, he's right. The three of us know, and the audience should know as well,

about a monstrosity called parallel construction, sometimes called parallel reconstruction. That's where the FBI has gotten information either by an illegal surveillance or from the CIA or NSA, an illegal surveillance, and they've given it to a federal prosecutor who needs to use it in a courtroom. The prosecutor says, how did you get it? And they can't tell the prosecutor the truth because it would be suppressed by a federal judge. So they come up with some trickery to delude the prosecutor. He doesn't know. The prosecutor is not lying to the federal judge. The prosecutor is believing the agents who do this. And they have a number of agents in a row

so that Agent D doesn't know what Agent A knows and Agent G doesn't know what Agent D knows. And what started out as an unlawful search and seizure, just a plain old spying on somebody without a warrant, without suspicion, without probable cause, ends up with a concocted means to introduce it in court. I want to run a clip of General Hayden, probably one of the worst people in the modern era. You both know him personally in terms of civil liberties. General Hayden once made the mistake of challenging me to a debate on the Fourth Amendment, not on the mechanisms of spying, which is his field, but on the Fourth Amendment. It was before 10,000 people at CPAC about 10 years ago when it used to be held right outside of Washington,

D.C. The crowd was about 95% in my camp. I don't know why he did this, but he did. But here he is yet again after that debate showing his ignorance of the Fourth Amendment. This is at the National Press Club, and a reporter, not a lawyer, is questioning the general, not a lawyer, on the Constitution. The general doesn't know what he's talking about. The FISA court will not give you a warrant based on reasonable belief. You have to show probable cause. Could you respond to that, please? Sure. I didn't craft the authorization.

I am responding to a lawful order, all right? The attorney general has averred to the lawfulness of the order. Just to be very clear, okay, and believe me, if there's any amendment to the Constitution that employees of the National Security Agency are familiar with, it's the fourth, right? And it is a reasonable standard in the Fourth Amendment. And so what you've raised to me, and I'm not a lawyer and don't want to become one, but what you've raised to me is, in terms of quoting the Fourth Amendment is an issue of the Constitution. The constitutional standard

is reasonable. And we believe, I am convinced that we're lawful because what it is we're doing is reasonable. It is an absolute crime that the head of the NSA, a four-star general, would so totally pervert the Fourth Amendment. The Fourth Amendment has the most specific language in the Constitution, and it requires probable cause of crime be presented under oath to a judge before the judge can sign the search warrant. And the search warrant must specifically describe the place to be searched and the person or thing to be seized. Larry, you and I once looked at a search warrant issued by the FISA court for all customers of Verizon. That's 115 million people. How does that specifically describe the place to be searched or the person or thing? My point is this, Larry, first to you and then to Ray, is the FISA court just a placebo? Because these guys spy on everybody all the time without going to the FISA court. So this

mechanism of the FISA court, Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, it's a farce. Yeah, let's draw the distinction between spying and between collecting information that can be used as evidence in a criminal trial. So from the CIA standpoint or the NSA standpoint, their collection upon all communications or any communications they can get a hold of of American citizens, while prohibited by law, they can still gather it. They just can't use it in court. The abuse, the real gross abuse we've seen over the last seven years with the FBI is where they lied on the FISA application and lied in order to be able to pursue a criminal investigation of Donald Trump and others connected to him. And nobody's been held accountable for that. Nobody's been punished.

Jim Comey in particular. And, you know, this is this is partly the fault of the judges, the judges. And that's in the FISA court. They let this pass. All they've done is simply given a green light for this kind of behavior going forward. They prosecuted Ray knows this, a wet behind the ears,

right out of law school, assistant deputy lawyer for the FBI named Kevin Clinesmith. The feds wanted him to go to jail so that they could prove they were tough on their own. The judge realized he's a kid. He just did what they told him to do six months in the base. He may have lost his license to practice law. I don't know.

Ray, you know about this case. Yeah, he was given no time. And, you know, the supreme irony here, Judge and Larry, is that there is no accountability, not even by the people who pretend to really run roughshod over this. The people who are supposed to protect us from this kind of thing, according to the Constitution, I mean the Department of Justice. Now, when Clinesmith got a tap on the wrist, no time in jail, Senator Grassley, who's been watching very closely all this stuff for decades,

tweeted. He did a little tweet all by himself. Somebody helped him. He said, well, this is very rare. It's very rare that the Department of just us, says Grassley, would recommend jail time for one of their own. But Clinesmith, the former FBI attorney who falsified paperwork to spy on Trump, he got no prison time. Isn't that interesting? It really is the department of just us. Now it result in a single change in procedure or expose, Larry? We all know the answer to that. No, not really. And remember, Clinesmith initially lost his law license,

got it back, so he can practice law. So, I mean, it sends a message loud and clear. You can fault the Constitution, you can break the law. You and I, this is well documented, you know, I got in trouble at Fox and you and I documented all this. But how frequently do foreign intelligence agencies spy on Americans? Mossad? All the time. MI6?

All the time. Any foreign intelligence service worth its salt is spying on us and collecting intelligence. The Brits have probably the most robust system after the Russians for gathering our electronic communications. Ray, does the Mossad spy on the White House? So when Bibi Netanyahu meets Joe Biden around Labor Day, will Bibi know exactly what Joe is going to say to him ahead of time? Of course they will. But he'll know from other sources as well. People who are authorized to tell him in the National Security Council, in the White House. Bibi's got friends all over the place, and Bibi is on the record of saying,

it's really easy, really easy to stream the Americans along. They don't know what they're doing. We can manipulate them to a fare they will. Let me add a thing here. It just occurs to me. We talked about Comey, of course, guilty as charged. How about his predecessor, Mueller? Now, I had a unique opportunity to challenge Mueller precisely on this issue of parallel construction. It was one-on-one with 300 other intelligence analysts around at Georgetown University. I said, Mr. Mueller, what about this? He had just retired, just been replaced by Comey. I said, Mr. Mueller, what about this? He had just retired. Okay. Just been replaced by Comey. I said, what are your feelings about this detour around the Constitution where you collect

things illegally for prosecution purposes, then you use it to put people in jail. What are your feelings from the legal aspects of that? You know what he says? He says, Mr. McGovern, after 9-11, we were given special authorities, special authorities. And all my former friends said, yeah, yeah, yeah, right. See, special authorities. Well, you can't have special authorities if you're gonna protect the right of the people to be secure

in that person's places, papers, and effects from unreasonable search and seizure. I once had the opportunity to interrogate Justice Scalia at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. It wasn't a Fox production. It was Brooklyn Law School. I was on the faculty there for four years and 2,500 people there. And he, of course, argued for a narrow interpretation of the Fourth Amendment, persons, houses, papers, and effects. And I took my iPhone out of my pocket and I said, Justice Scalia, inside this iPhone is a computer chip. Is the computer chip an effect? He looked at me and he said, I better not answer that.

Of course it's an effect. Obviously, it wasn't in James Madison's mind. These things were inconceivable at the time. But of course, of course, it's in effect. Does the United States spy on Vladimir Putin himself, the Prime Minister of Great Britain, the Prime Minister of Israel, and major adversaries and allies? Larry? Well, you'd think that they should. I mean, my attitude towards intelligence is you want as much information, not only about your perceived adversaries, but also your friends. You want to know what everybody's up to because it puts you in a stronger bargaining position. The problem the CIA has had is it has shifted from being able to recruit human sources. I mean, they've gotten so pathetic that they're running an ad on Telegram

encouraging Russians, hey, come give us a call on Telegram to join up, that we rely upon foreign intelligence services to give us information they have collected, which is always suspect. And then we act on that. So I think everyone should, you know, put on big boy, big girl pants and recognize that in the modern world, the goal of any country is to collect information about other countries it is dealing with or perceives potential threat from. That's just the name of the game. There are federal statutes, Ray, that prohibit foreign

intelligence agencies from operating in the United States. The FBI must know about this. They must look the other way because one hand washes the other, right? Well, the FBI, of course, doesn't have to worry about foreign stuff coming in. They use it as they can, and that's illegal, as you say. It's the CIA and NSA that are pointed outward. And as Larry said, that's all fair and love and war. That's what intelligence services are supposed to do. The other thing to remember is that there is no such thing as a friendly intelligence service.

And that goes even for the Brits. And the Israelis. It goes to the Israelis. It goes for the five I's. Of course. Refresh me, Larry. Great Britain, Australia, Canada, New Zealand. Australia. Australia. Okay.

How pervasive is the attitude of Jack Devine? We can Russia, get Putin at all costs in the CIA today? And what is the origin of that attitude, Ray? Well, I can speak to the origin because he used to work for me. Because you were around at the origin. Kidding, kidding. Yeah, a fellow named Bobby Gates worked for me when I was running the Soviet foreign policy branch of the CIA.

I promoted him and I gave him a spot on the SALT delegation so he could brief the SALT delegues. And that eventuated in the ABM Treaty, which is the most important arms control treaty ever. OK, now he got really good vibes from people that were very important long story short bill casey comes in when ronald reagan becomes president and he looks around and he says i see three i see three soviets under that rock what do you see and everybody says oh yeah there's three and bobby gates says, Mr. Casey, there are five Soviets under that rock. Okay, Gates, you can run my substantive intelligence. So that's where it went wrong.

He and Casey, on our biggest target, missed the boat when Garebyshev came in. I was briefing very, very important people downtown. When Gorbachev came in, Casey and Gates told Reagan, ah, he's just a clever commie. Don't believe a word he says. He's just clever. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union will never, ever, ever give up power without a terrible struggle. And I'm talking to Secretary Shultz at that time, and he says to me,

I do agree with what your uppers are saying, Gates and Casey. And I'm saying, Mr. Shultz, you know that I have my own opinion on those things. He says, well, what is that? And I felt free to give him my own opinion. God bless you. It's the real deal. Larry, Ray's talking about the old Soviet Union. Today we're talking about Russia,

a modern economic powerhouse. So how pervasive amongst CIA agents is the Jack Devine attitude of let's weaken this modern economic powerhouse, and if we can, let's get rid of their president. That's the problem. What Ray is describing that was 40 years ago is still prevalent in the CIA. They haven't caught up to the fact that Russia is no longer a communist state. They still are repeating this lie that the Russians and Putin is intent on recreating the Soviet empire, which sounds pretty ominous, except when you step back and realize the Soviets never went out and conquered other countries, except those they took in the aftermath of World War II

or during World War II. Once that was done, they weren't out conducting various military operations on the same scale that the United States was. They were countering our operations. But yet, Jack Devine is not the only one. I've seen other

senior, now retired, but not recently, but recently retired, they still say the same nonsense. That Putin is Stalin, only he looks better with his shirt off, you know. Well, here's Jack yesterday boasting that the tide has turned in the war because Ukraine is now attacking Russia.

Who thought this would ever happen? Take a listen, then I have a couple of more questions before we call it quits for the afternoon. What is the new strategy, Jackson? They're clearly now taking the battle inside Russian territory. Okay. This is a change of strategy in the last couple of months and it's getting bigger. Now I've mixed feelings about it. And one is I understand why they're doing it. I think they have to do it, but they must do it very carefully. They cannot hit civilian targets. In other words, this can backfire. But this is strange that they're attacking Russia on the motherland. Who thought that the day Putin went into Ukraine, that the Ukrainians would be attacking their ships in the harbor, flying drones in front of the Kremlin. I mean, who thought that that's where we would be?

So the drones of which he speaks, you know, broke over the roof of the Kremlin, and one of them hit a bank on the 40th floor of the bank at 4 o'clock in the morning on a Sunday. The bankers were back there by work time on Monday. What is he talking about, Larry? Jack is, I think, indulging with some senior moments. He clearly hasn't remembered that some of these so-called attacks took place two months ago and meant absolutely nothing. They've been launched by Ukraine at the behest and encouragement

of the United States and the United Kingdom because we are desperate to figure out a way to try to, quote, weaken Putin. And again, it goes back to this law that if only we will strike in Moscow, it will undermine support for Putin and they'll throw him out. And nobody's thinking through the other question. If you get rid of Putin, who comes next? For God's sake. So, Ray, you and Larry and I are having a calm and informative conversation.

And I can tell from the number of people watching it from the comments, it's well appreciated. The two of you are fan favorites, but it's a normal conversation. It's almost as if we're in the same room. Yet when I ask Jack questions like this, does Mossad spy on the president? He hesitates, he laughs, or he changes the subject. Question, does the CIA spy on Jack Devine? That's my Friday afternoon finger. Well, you know, the collection applies to everyone, but I think Jack is probably low on the priority level there. I think they know Jack and know what he's doing. And the key here, Judge, is that he's an

operator, okay? He doesn't come out of the analysis division like Larry and I do. And so it's really hard to separate out the propaganda for which the operations people are responsible and the war for which they're partly responsible. I mean, how can you expect a straight answer from somebody who's not an analyst, but who is pushing these lines? I forgive him for that. People should not take him to be a real analyst, an all-source analyst, the way Larry and I were, and are still. So, Larry, last question. Jack is not the exception. Jack is the standard. Yeah, really. I mean, I first met Jack when I was a career trainee in the Latin America office of the DO. And Jack was, he was at the time, I think he was deputy director of Latin America. Jerry Gruner was the director. And Vince Shields was chief of

station in Honduras. And they kept rotating positions. But Jack was highly respected back then. But what he's saying now is just, I mean, he's in an alternate universe that has no basis in reality. The Judging Freedom fans love to watch him because they love to hate him. Larry Johnson, Ray McGovern, always a pleasure, my friends. It's late on a Friday afternoon in the middle of summer. I can't thank you enough, and the fans can't thank you enough. Have a great weekend.

We'll see you both next week. Judge Napolitano. Thank you, guys. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Looking out for your liberties. Thanks for watching!