Judging Freedom - Col. Karen Kwiatkowski: Not All Prisoners Die Equally

Episode Date: February 20, 2024

Col. Karen Kwiatkowski: Not All Prisoners Die EquallySee 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 Tuesday, February 20th, 2024. Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski joins us now. Karen, always a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you very much for joining us. You have a very interesting piece out this morning or yesterday and posted at judsnap.com and elsewhere, comparing and contrasting the deaths in prison of the American journalist Gonzalo Lira and the Russian political activist Alexei Navalny. Your comparison is not so much to the manner of their death, but to the reaction by Western governments to their deaths. Take it from there. Yeah, I mean, it's shocking how differently, particularly the

Americans, but also the Europeans, but just in terms of our government, and we have an American citizen who was taken prisoner in Kiev for basically criticizing or criticizing the Zelensky's government, speaking honestly about what he was seeing regarding the war there and how it was going, which of course, this is Gonzalo Lira. And, you know, even at that time, he was picked on, even when he was reporting here in Western newspapers and by the United States government, they poo-pooed him and they kept calling him, I think, a Chilean American. Well, he was born in California, so pretty much he's an American. He's also married, or was, he passed now. This is the whole point. He died in prison without any help from the State Department and with basically no comment and no sadness

and no anything from the United States government. You can, whether it's State Department, the president, any of them, the media, just poo-pooed the whole thing as if this didn't matter because he was on the wrong side of Washington, D.C.'s narrative. And then, of course, you have Navalny, who is on the right side of D.C.'s narrative vis-a-vis Russia for a number of years now. And, you know, yes, he was in prison, but he actually had a trial. He was convicted earlier of crimes, and then they convicted, you know, there were some other things.

But he had a trial. Now that's contrary just in that point to what Gonzalo Lira had, which was no trial. He was pretty much taken and thrown in prison and there was nothing. We didn't even have a date of a trial. Anyway, Navalny, of course, as we know, because the Western media is filled with the reports, died in his prison. He recently moved to a Siberian prison and he was on a walk, outdoors actually, which is interesting because I don't think Gonzalo Lira was allowed to walk around outside. But in any case, he passed. They don't know the circumstances. Of course, anytime someone dies in prison, you know, Epstein didn't hang himself. You know, there's always this

wondering, how did a person die in the custody of the state? How does this happen? We always have questions. But the West, in the case of Navalny, has immediately said, oh, Putin killed him. Personally made the order. It's dead. It's a done deal.

Without any evidence other than the traditional suspect of government. Certainly, we suspect the state when a prisoner dies. That's natural. I get that. But, you know, it's just the hypocrisy of the whole thing. But again, Navalny not only worked with the West, was helped, funded by the West, he supported the Western narrative. And of course, Gonzalo Lira challenged that Western narrative. And that's the difference. And so I tried to just point that out in my article. What, if anything, did the American State Department do for Gonzalo Lira, who was born in the United States of America?

Yeah, well, I think he had a couple of visits. He was arrested for the final time sometime in May. He had been harassed before then. He had been picked up and disappeared for a week sometime in early 2023, I believe it was. So he had been in prison since May of last year. And I think he had two, maybe three visits by the State Department. But those, we don't know, I don't know that for sure, at least he had one, but they didn't do anything. You know, it was just like, well, you know, we can help you, but we can't do anything. And of course, you know, we own the Ukrainian government. We are funding their war. We are paying every civil servant salary in Ukraine and have been doing that for several years now. I think if we wanted to get an American

citizen out of the jail, even if it was to deport him back to the United States, whatever, that could have happened in the blink of an eye, and it wouldn't have needed even the president's involvement. You know, I mean, when we talk about prisoner exchanges between us and Russia or, you know, major countries, that is a top level decision. It has to be negotiated by the State Department, by the, even sometimes the legislatures of these countries. This would not have been required with Gonzalo Lira. The State Department could have worked this whole thing out. We own the Ukrainian government. So here what we have with Gonzalo Lira was we actually, the United States government actually put him in prison, wanted him in prison, didn't give him medical care, and he died in prison.

It's on the United States government entirely. I don't even blame the Ukrainians. question American involvement to Ukraine and Ukraine's willingness to fight a war that all rational observers know it has lost already. Yeah. And he, you know, Gonzalo, his imparting of information, you know, very opinionated, okay, something I know a little bit about. He was very opinionated. And he would give his opinion, but he was also one of the few Americans in Ukraine not being harbored or protected by the Ukrainian government or the military, not, you know, cowering in Kiev. He was in the country. He was married to a Ukrainian woman. He had two children, which are now fatherless because of the situation, who have Ukrainian citizenship.

And they're Ukrainians. They're half Ukrainians. They were born there. So this whole thing is just insane. But I don't think he criticized like, hey, I'm Gonzalo Lira. The United States is dead wrong. That wasn't his approach. His approach was an approach of journalism. He would see things and he would say things. In fact, isn't that what the Department of Homeland Defense wants us to do, see something, say something? But apparently they don't. It's only they want you to agree with the state narrative and obey it. And Gonzalo didn't do that. He's now dead. And no one in this country, except for the people that pay attention to news on both sides of the aisle, even are halfway aware of what happened to him.

Was Navalny a CIA or MI6 asset? And you can add in that answer, since you probably don't know precisely whether he was receiving assistance for his activism from the CIA or the MI6. Was the American government in any way, probably indirectly, financing his efforts to destabilize President Putin's presidency? I think that they were, not in a direct way. And I think the CIA was certainly involved in supporting and helping him do the work that he was doing, Navalny, you know, as a lawyer, as a political activist, as a candidate within Russia, because I think he ran at one point, attempted to run against Putin in one of their elections. So he's been around for a while.

I will say this, there's a video, of course, which I linked in the article of Navalny discussing color revolution in Russia with an MI6 agent. So that would be the UK's version of the CIA. Some people have argued that that is not Navalny, that it's his chief of staff or a colleague of his, but not him. Oh, well, could be. But I think the people that we hang around with, why would the CIA care about talking to his chief of staff? Why would MI6 care about that? Well, they care about it because the West and its anti-Putin in particular, anti-Russia and anti-Putin, in this anti-Putin narrative, Putin as dictator, Putin as whatever, all the things that they say.

Russians is just basically an expansionist evil power. All of these things, this message is assisted if you have a person like Navalny, who is, you know, this fighting this freedom fight kind of thing. And Americans love freedom fighters, and he fits into that part of it. Now, when we look at what the CIA does, and I thought it was funny, not funny, I thought it was interesting in the Tucker Carlson interview of Putin, I guess a week or so ago, Putin mentioned CIA assets, and he pointed out that Tucker Carlson's father had worked in the CIA, which Tucker did not respond to. But this sense that the Russians have of the massive infiltration of the CIA into just about everything in Europe and around the world, wherever there's a revolution, the color revolution, the fact that they feel that way about it is, I think, interesting.

And it made me think, I wonder if he's right or wrong. I mean, are they overreacting to the CIA? And then I come to find out, like I shouldn't already, but I didn't, how many think tanks here in the United States and in Europe, and how many organizations like the Aspen Institute and the Atlantic Council, how many of these organizations really get funding through the U.S. government? And, you know, military, active duty military in uniform cannot really participate in that. But how many retired CIA directors are on their boards? and how many other folks with CIA ties are participating here in the managing of messaging? Because we're supposed to be a democracy. Who knows if we are? They say it, you know, I'd like to think it's a republic, but

if we are a democracy and it depends on what people think is who will become elected, who, how policies will be made is what the average person thinks. Then narrative management domestically is so and so, it's very important. So the CIA has a big role. We also know the CIA has a huge black budget. I wonder if Putin knows what it is because Americans don't know what it is. It's certainly humongous. I mean, we've got a trillion dollars to the Pentagon, but we don't know what we're actually spending on the CIA and the parts of the government the CIA controls and manages. So it's a big organization. I don't have the evidence that says he's a CIA asset,

but we do know that the CIA likes him. We know Biden and the administration like him. They like a Navalny. They like anybody like a Navalny. Another thing we can look at, Navalny's widow, and, you know, my condolences to her, of course, but when he passed a couple, three days ago, you know, she was a featured speaker at the Munich Military Conference, which is a World Economic Affairs counterpart. They kind of advertise themselves like that, you know, a global military strategy meeting, which has gone on for many, many decades. And so you have to ask yourself, why would Navalny's widow, I'm not saying that she's not qualified. She may well be very qualified,

but why would she be a speaker at that conference? Well, she's a speaker at that conference because the leadership of the West and of Europe, the United States and Europe, they like her. They need her. She serves a purpose that they want to promote and so it's not just alexei navalny who has passed but but the name navalny it it's it is an operation whether the cia is behind it uh 100 or just partially you know i can't be sure but um certainly uh the reality and the reaction of the west to navalny's death was over the top. It was almost canned. It was like watching, it was like watching that video of all of the news media saying the exact same thing. I mean, that's what we saw really hours after his death was reported. Putin

killed him, Putin killed him, Putin killed him, planned the murder. Everything is around that one canned reaction. And that's very indicative of narrative control. And in this country, narrative control is especially well done. And we rely heavily on the CIA to do it. That's my opinion. We have a clip, Chris. Forgive me, I don't have the number of it. It's where the reporter says to President Biden, you once said in Geneva, if anything happened to Navalny in prison, the Russians would have to pay for it. And President Biden responds. Here's that cut, Karen. Reports of his death, if they're true, and I have no reason to believe it or not,

Russian authorities are going to tell their own story. But make no mistake, make no mistake, Putin is responsible for Navalny's death. Putin is responsible. What has happened to Navalny is yet more proof of Putin's responsible. What has happened to Navalny is yet more proof of Putin's brutality. You warned Vladimir Putin when you were in Geneva of devastating consequences if Navalny died in Russian custody. What consequences should he and Russia face? That was three years ago. In the meantime, they faced a hell of a lot of consequences. They've lost and or had wounded over 350,000 Russian soldiers. They've made them to a position where they've been subjected to great sanctions across the board, and we're contemplating what else could be done. But

what we were talking about at the time, there were no actions being taken against Russia. And look, all this transpired since then. Why would the president of the United States in Geneva three years ago, pardon me, Karen, have made such a statement, but for his intelligence community telling him this guy is one of ours and we either have to protect him or get him out? Yeah, I mean, that's very interesting that I did not realize that he also equated what's happened in the last three years as kind of the punishment that Russia was receiving. He connected that to Navalny's death, even though, you know, maybe he's connecting it to Navalny's imprisonment. But clearly, you know, you remember when we had the guy for Venezuela,

I don't know if I can't remember his name, we had a guy that was going to take over Venezuela forest. He was a few years back. And he wasn't popular in Venezuela at all. But we and he, you know, we we worked it up. And he was we recognized him as the government in absentia, I think, not so long ago. And that was clearly with the influence of our intelligence community saying, hey, this is how we can change the government there. We've got a guy. We've got a guy. We've got a guy. We can change your government. That's a CIA story from 60 years old. I mean, you pick your decade. We've got lots of examples where we've got a guy and we're going to change your government so it isn't surprising

that they would have seen three years ago that navalny had a real shot first off our human intelligence in russia is pitiable pitiable i should say it's pitiful and it's not very good so an average person who looks at it would say navalny that doesn't make any sense there's no chance but people inside the Beltway could have very well have thought Navalny had a chance, and then this would have been a great color revolution. And that color revolution, as we saw in 2014, also in Ukraine, which ultimately has served as the launching point of this war, proxy war against Russia, they are all connected. And, you know, for all of Biden's confusion, I think he actually made that connection in that commentary.

Has the American CIA infiltrated the Kremlin better than the Russians? I guess they call themselves FSB today rather than KGB, have infiltrated the U.S.? That's a good question. I don't think our intelligence is very good, but I don't know how much they really know and what's simply being told to the American people by way of domestic propaganda, domestic anti-Putin, anti-Russian propaganda. So it's hard to say how much we truly know. I'll give you an example of how poor it might be. Michael McCaul, who used to be, he's a congressman from Texas,

and he used to be the head of our, our representative, our head diplomat in Moscow. He is extremely anti-Putin and extremely anti-Russia, wants to break it up, have a, have a color revolution there, wants to fight Russia every way he can, loves sanctions, greatly supports the Ukraine battle, you know, best money that, you know, that our taxpayers have ever spent. He adheres to that. And he spent time in Russia. I presume he speaks Russian. He obviously must have contacts there even to this day. And he's extremely ill informed. He's in Congress. He probably has access, I'm sure, to whatever intelligence he would like to have from the CIA, from the DIA, from wherever regarding Russia. So he has no

excuse not to be well informed. Of all the people in this country, we expect him, we should expect him to be extremely well informed. And yet the things that he says seem illogical, irrational, and poorly informed. So it's very possible that our intelligence in Russia is really at a nadir. It's really poor right now. It's possible. But I don't know how to gauge that because I don't know how much our government tells us is true and how much they tell us just so we'll support whatever spending programs that they want to advocate. So I can't tell for sure, but it seems like some of the smartest people that understand what's

going on in Russia are not working in the U.S. government and they're not in Congress. So your average guy, your average businessman, I mean, Elon Musk has a better sense of what's going on there than most of the Congress people. And I don't think Elon Musk is getting direct CIA daily briefings. You know, the Congress has this crazy Congress within a Congress known locally on Capitol Hill as the Gang of Eight. And it is the chair and ranking members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees and the leaders of the Republicans and Democrats in the House

and in the Senate. Those eight folks often receive classified briefings from the intelligence community. They can discuss it among themselves in the SCIF, the secure windowless room in the basement of the Capitol where they meet, but they're not allowed to tell their constituents who sent them there. They're not allowed to tell the press, which under the First Amendment is the eyes and ears of the public. They're not even allowed to tell their colleagues in the Congress. I don't know if Mike McCaul is in that group. I have heard him say things on Fox News, which struck me as odd and ill-informed. This is consistent with what you're saying.

I don't remember exactly what they were, but I remember hearing it at the time and thinking, geez, that's odd. He should know better than that, because at the time he was in the gang of eight and he was getting these secret reports. I don't know if he's still in there now. I don't I don't think he is. I think the chairman of the or the chair of the House Intelligence Committee is this guy, Mike Turner, who tried to scare everybody two weeks ago by saying he had top secret information and the Congress needed to know about it. This was just a stunt to get them to vote to reenact Section 702 of the Patriot Act, which allows the intelligence community to spy without warrants. And I think even those in favor of 702 saw right through what Mike Turner did. But I mean, it's a mess. You refer to the American

government as the post-Republic, non-democratic government. That is right on the mark in my view. But what do you mean by that, Lieutenant Colonel Kwiatkowski? Well, I mean, you know, you grow up being taught that we have a republic with a representative democracy system that is very cleanly and clearly outlined by the Constitution. And it's supposed to function in a certain way. And it has a certain purpose. That's the Constitution. And people study it. People swear to uphold it. Military people and judges and all kinds. People swear to uphold it. You know, military people and judges and all kinds of people swear to uphold this. So this is what we believe. But when you open your eyes and start looking at how it operates and how it functions

and the things that it does and how it avoids adherence to the Constitution, not just in the big things, but in every little thing too. So it's a lawless government. That's the republic part. It's gone. There's no republic. The democracy part is becoming more and more clear to people as we see how elections are manipulated, how popular opinion is manipulated. We're learning a lot about it, and we have been for some time. How government, the security state, spies on its own people, and why would it do that? Why would it buy data from our, of our actions, and why would it be so interested in what we're looking and doing in social media? Why would it care? Well, it cares because it is attempting to shape the outcomes of our democratic process. So it's

post-republic because it doesn't follow the law and it's post-democratic because our democracy is heavily manipulated by our very government and its media arm, which is legacy media for the most part, and then some of the modern media, even AI. I mean, is, you know, AI, if you have some of the, what is it that you say, write me a paper, they'll write you a paper. And the perspective of the paper from AI will very much be consistent with the federal government's current narrative. So it's everywhere and it's manipulating our democracy. And so we don't really have one. And when we wake up as people and people are starting to be frustrated with this, and as we wake up to this reality, we will change it. And I hope we'll change it peacefully, but it will be changed when people wake up because nobody wants to be a useful tool for a government that could care less about them.

As Jefferson said in the Declaration of Independence, when the government ceases to protect our liberties or actively assaults them at his time, we have the right and the duty to alter and abolish it. Karen, it's always a pleasure, my dear friend, no matter what we talk about, whether it's death in prison or death of liberty. Thank you for your insight. Please come back next week. Same time, same day. Of course. Of course. Thank you, Judge. Of course. All the best. and coming to us in just an hour at 4.30 Eastern,

Scott Ritter, was Navalny a traitor as well as to Russia because he was an American asset? We'll get into all that. Also the latest happenings in Rafah in Gaza and the latest happenings in Donetsk in, well, is it Ukraine or is it Russia? We'll hear from Scott on all this. We're approaching 300,000 on our subscriptions. Help us meet that number.

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