Judging Freedom - Fighting still fierce in Bakhmut - Jack Devine fmr CIA

Episode Date: May 11, 2023

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Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Thursday, May 11th, 2023. It's about 3.15 in the afternoon here on the East Coast of the United States. Jack Devine joins us for his weekly session with us. Jack, always a pleasure. Welcome here. Yesterday, I was able to read on the internet from an open source the Ukrainian plans for their spring offensive. If what I read was accurate, how the devil could something like that be published on open sources? Well, look what happened just a few weeks ago with the National Guard guy up in New York. How can this stuff happen? You know, I grew up in a world, in fact, let me talk about how good the

Russians were years ago. They didn't type anything. The KGB, they would go into a bubble, it's a plastic room like we had. and you'd write it down in pen and ink because they were afraid of leaking it. Today, it seems like we put millions of documents out there to the lowest-ranked officers across the broad spectrum. It wasn't like one document disappears. How do these things leak? I think we've lost that old discipline.

Remember the phrase, need to know? Right, right. I came in the door and I nearly tattooed it on my eyelids. Need to know. Keep your mouth shut. You mentioned the young man whom the government says is the source of these secret documents, documents that the government has not challenged the authenticity or accuracy of. If what the government says is true, 21 years old, top secret security clearance, part-time National Guard, could that have happened in the CIA? CIA, 21 years old, works part-time, have had that level of security. Stated differently, is the security clearance process for CIA personnel more exacting than the security clearance process for military personnel?

And it's true across the board. I think NSA comes closest. And again, we can discuss polygraphs, but I don't know anyone that does lifestyle polygraphs before you go in. And then you're periodically tested on what they call counterintelligence polygraph, although they felt like lifestyle. And the polygraph, the key question is, are you working for any foreign government? All right. So it's a tough thing to know. Meaning, so I get this straight and so the viewers understand this, periodically throughout your work life at the CIA, and I assume with no notice, you'd be polygraphed. And when you walk through the door, before you're signed up, it's about the last thing they do.

Right. And then it's something the last thing they do, right? And then it's something I've never met anybody that enjoyed it. One little human interest story. At the CIA, they have family day. And you come out and you'd show your satellite pictures. All the spies would have to hide. But the polygraphers would have a shop,

and nobody would get in line. There's nothing to visit each other. Nobody wanted to drive them out. But the polygraphers would have a shop and nobody would get in line. Nobody wanted to drive around. None of the men got in line. So everybody has a secret. I'll tell you a story as well. I had myself polygraphed once just to see how it worked. And, you know, it was controlled.

And I intentionally told the truth. And I intentionally lied. And the polygraph did not catch me. So I don't know what that means. A long time ago, it's before I went on the bench when we were deciding whether or not to use a polygraph in a criminal white collar criminal defense case I was working on. But we had to do it together. And the polygrapher said, hey, call me judge. I wasn't a judge yet. Hey, Andrew, do you want to try this? See if you can trick me.

It's a little scary. The reason that didn't work, Judge, is if you're deliberately lying, you're not nervous. None of the things they're testing. Got it. Your heart beats faster when they say hey have you taken any money out of the out of the office box you know you're going to start fluttering you say i'm going to lie and tell that you'll get no reaction got it got it it's interesting when rick ames was the spy inside the cia he went to this kgb handler so this is my polygraphs coming up. What should I do? And they didn't have any

techniques. They said, well, just try, just try not to react or something. They had no advice. Okay. They didn't say, pretend you're Jack Devine. Well, then he would definitely have been interviewed more intensely by the counterintelligence staff. Once they know I'm on this show, I mean, I will probably get some of the most rigorous examination. You know, where they hold the light over your head. Right, right, right. Let's get to Ukraine. Let's get to Ukraine. In the past week, Sergei Prokhorin, the head of the Wagner Group, has publicly attacked the Russian defense minister and the senior commander of all Russian military for not supplying him with enough ammunition. He then backtracked. I guess he got the ammunition he wanted. that Russian brigades, this is full-time Russian regular army, not his people,

have fled from the battle in Bakhmut. Is this a realistic complaint? And do Russian soldiers, many of whom are conscripts, probably don't want to be there, flee from the battle? Well, first of all, Judge, we've been talking about this, you and I, for a few months off and on. But more recently, I told your audience, watch that struggle between the Wagner Group and the National Military. It's unprecedented in my analytical world of looking at instability in a country. You usually see these fights much later. This is not healthy for Mr. Putin.

I've got to tell you. So let's come to the case. Prigozhin is a scary guy, I'll just tell you that much. But he also put 500 bodies. 500 of his people were shown killed. He's testifying, hey, listen, I don't have it because it's not here. Now, what your audience may not know is virtually all of his conscripts are ex-prisoners, right? So, you know, they get out of jail and there are opportunities to go fight.

So it may not be the most cordial group you'd ever want to find, but they have been doing well. And, you know, he's frustrated with not getting the arms. When the regular arm, can you imagine this happened in the United States where one of these mercenary groups started attacking the military? It would be like Eric Prince, the head of Blackwater, attacking Donald Rumsfeld and General Petraeus. Right. The difference, right, and it's in that level,

but the one that was fighting in the city, now, we've been talking. You've had some, quote, experts on who said that 300,000-man army is coming and they're going to roll right. We've been doing this for a long time, roll right across. They couldn't even hold Bakhmut without, you know, now they're starting to slip. Okay. Now. So, Jack, who controls Bakhmut as we speak today, May 11th, 2023?

Who or what controls Bakhmut? Well, no, the Russians still have it. But remember, they were supposed to have taken it. Now I understand there's a three-mile area now controlled in the last couple days in the southern part by the ukrainians i mean we're talking one city you're supposed to take over a country you're going to go to kiev i mean so you're we're talking for months with your audience about this one place i think they have a serious problem and an armament and i think the big offense turned out to be a dud i mean i don't matter how you cut it it was a dud okay i want you to play all the tapes of everybody that challenged me on this

and see what they said and how it really turned out okay first i'm going to play a tape of what you said in january uh about the concept of victory here you are what do you mean by prevail well i think when the push comes that they'll be able to hold the Russians off. They're not going to push the Russians out of Eastern Ukraine and they're certainly not going to push them out of Crimea. No, they're going to hold so that the Russian, what it'll be is when you and I can say, well, the Russians didn't win that one. It's not that the Ukrainians won. They will prevail by just holding them off. That'll be a failure in most Russians'

mind. If he doesn't demonstrate that he's beaten the Ukrainians, he'll win a battle, win a battle, win a battle, not going to prevail, as long as we're in it. Okay. That was Jack Devine today. If you talk to me today, the only thing is I would say, you should have had that guy comb his hair. Where was the hairdresser that was around? He looked like some wild man. Now I want to play one of our people who's an academic. He's not a former intelligence agent like you, giving a different view. This is Scott Horton of Antiwar.com, who has a lot of affection for you, even though you guys don't agree on anything, even the time of day and the hair. Here we go.

A lot of people I don't agree with. One of them is a judge. I don't know if you've ever met hair. There we go. People I don't agree with. One of them is a judge. I don't know if you've ever met him. Here we go. They clearly think that they're getting the better end of this, that they're bogging Russia down and bleeding them to bankruptcy. But of course, we're spending north of $100 billion on this effort ourselves. But they've said all along that what they want to do is just keep the war going as long as possible. And in fact, if you go back to the beginning of the war, everybody assumed, even the Ukrainian military assumed, the American spies and everyone else assumed that the Russians were going to roll

right over their army and that we were going to be backing an Afghan style insurgency all along. That was plan A. So plan B was, oh, great. The military is able to continue to stand and fend the Russians off for all this time. We'll continue to pour all the weapons we can into them to keep that going as long as possible. But then that raises the real question is if and when the Russians are able to essentially completely smash and route the Ukrainian military, it's still a land the size of Texas. And I don't think they want to take the Western half of it. But then if they don't, that leaves a rump Ukrainian state led by right wing nationalists allied with NATO and armed to the teeth that I presume that that is NATO's plan. That even if let's say the Ukrainian

army falls apart tomorrow, they'll go back to plan A and try to keep this thing going until Putin has to resign in disgrace. Does NATO and the U.S. want the war to go on and on? Go ahead, Jack. Does NATO... He should go on to a state job. That's all I'm saying. The beginning of it, there's pieces of it. I agree a little bit in the middle, but he said that everybody thought the Russians were going to roll right over. Well, we all thought that. But where his logic comes down is somehow they're going to do it later. They're going to get better. Somehow their army is going to get stronger, better led.

There is no military expert I know that I take seriously that believes that. So his argument sort of falls apart at the end. How about this part of his argument, that the goal of the neocons, of which you are not one, but the folks in the intelligence and political military community, the Victoria Newlands, is to keep the war going on and on and on and on and on in order to degrade the Russian military and wear down President Putin. Is that a goal?

Look, if you're in the war business, I don't know serious generals. They don't want wars to go on. They don't want their men and women to die. I'm not talking about generals. I'm talking about the politicians that control the generals. We can talk about the politicians. I'm talking about war fighting here. And what I'm saying is generals aren't going to sign up to look. the politicians that control the generals. We can talk about the politicians. I'm talking about war fighting here.

And what I'm saying is generals aren't going to sign up to look. Let's fight indefinitely. Let's wear them down. You know, what I think is really interesting, I think you ran the clip. It was what we were talking about earlier. I really feel good what I've said on this show. And I have an audience that is tracking this carefully, and they know this.

So what we're looking at is David and Goliath and then you're going to say, wait a minute, Jack, Goliath hit him with that stone and killed him. And I said, well, it's David and Goliath in a battlefield and little David is holding Goliath, or at least the perceived sense of Goliath, at bay. That is a major success that we have to realize, unpredicted by the intelligence community, unpredicted by the media, unpredicted by all your guests. So we have to look at it. It's not... Did the intelligence community, your former colleagues and your present friends, predict the quick Russian victory? Well, I think, no, excuse me. Remember, the official thing that was done the day that the evasion started was they offered Zelensky a ticket.

We're going to fly out. You don't need to say more than that. Let me tell you, though, Judge, one thing. You can confuse what I would consider more sophisticated thinking than just let's wear them down until they collapse. I'm on record, in writing, in the Wall Street Journal, you know, not in my memoir written by my bed, saying there's a bigger game. Putin has to go. We need to support the Ukrainians. Putin will fall of his own weight. It's not to bleed them down until they collapse. He's a failure in the system. That's a different argument. And I'm telling you what I predicted is what I continue to predict. If he walks out of there in September

and still hasn't made any progress and goes to his people and says, let's form another 300,000-man army. Let's take a lot of our treasure, and we're going to go back and win. I'm telling you that Wagner military stuff going on is going to be amplified in ways that will lead to his removal. So that's different than you fight until they bleed. And that's all nonsense. It's by people who really don't, they've never, never been responsible for life and death and military. Here's a clip of, here's a clip of President Zelensky, Jack, on the likely coming victory. It's very stylized, very well produced.

It's almost Hollywood-like. It's maybe 45 seconds long. We fight now so that no one ever again enslaves other nations and destroys other countries. And all those old evils that modern Russia is bringing back will be defeated just as Nazism was defeated. We will not lose what we have gained. We will return everything captured by the enemy.

We will rebuild what was destroyed, and together we will protect it all. We do not yet know the date of our victory, but we know that it will be a holiday for all of Ukraine, for all of Europe, for all of the entire free world we will return everything captured by the enemy realistic jack let's let me come back to what i said just two weeks ago right and what i said is everyone's talking about the big offensive for the ukrainians they must show success or we shouldn't continue funding him. And I said to him, look, the guy held them off. That's a victory.

He's not going to push them out. And don't over-inflate what the offensive is going to be. And now today what you're reading is, and I agree with him, military people when they see, you know, you get political pressure, you don't put an army in prematurely. I think you're smart. I'm betting they're getting good advice from people I know, I'm guessing, on the timing of things. But I'm really impressed that they're holding Goliath off. And people ought to recognize what

that means and the potential for changing the balance of power, which is different than grinding Russians down. Let me quote Reagan from my personal experience. In 1985, the world thought the Mujahideen was done, finished. Reagan said, look, and his top advisors who were high-quality, Schultz cap wide wonder. But they said, you know, we can't just keep bleeding the Russians. You know, people can't do it. So he said, look, we're going to make one more big push. I thought the Russians knew this, but apparently they didn't yet get the message. And there was a big deliberate push. We're going to try one more time. If it doesn't work, we're going to start winding down. That's the right mentality as opposed to let's have an unending war.

I mean, people don't understand war up close when they talk like that. I can't tell you how much disdain for I have that kind of language. Here's President Zelensky yesterday being interviewed on the BBC about the, where is it, the spring offensive. Are you ready for this counteroffensive? Mentally, we're ready. In terms of how motivated our military are, we're ready. In terms of enough personnel in our brigades, we're ready. In terms of equipment, not everything hasades, we're ready. In terms of equipment, not everything has arrived yet. That's my answer. So you're still waiting for weapons and for the

kind of military equipment that have been promised to arrive? Yes, we're still expecting some things. They will reinforce our counter-offensive. And most importantly, they will protect our people. We're expecting armoured vehicles. They arrive in batches. We can advance with what we've got and I think we can be successful. But we will lose a lot of people. I think that is unacceptable. We need to wait. We need a bit more time. What is the value of telegraphing to the enemy that you're not ready to take him on.

I think what he was doing was talking to the audience in the United States and the people there that are saying, you have to have an immediate success. I think he was responding to that. The other thing is, I don't think it's a big secret. I mean, I think Russians, I think they've been, you know, way off on this this adventure of theirs but I suspect they know that the offensive is waiting for those weapons

there is it's not like one TV oh now we get it but you know let me just go to the tape I think he looks so much better natural they really shouldn't try and stage it me so much more you know, projects more than that picture. So if they're listening, let him go back and be himself. He's really very dynamic. Have we reached a level of sophistication in the various competing intelligence communities where the Russians already know that he doesn't have the equipment he needs, so that what he said to the BBC was not news to the Russians. It was not news to the Russians.

Not news. But, you know, what are they going to do? They know the weapons are coming. So the problem is when the Russians have an army, they cannot modernize it. I mean, they're in the midst of just trying to make the shells go there. And this is what I keep saying. If he doesn't do hard to go back and say, I'm going to build a new army and it's going to be better.

They're going to learn new techniques. What they don't realize, a lot of people don't realize this. And this is not because I'm an American, although every time I have a chance to tell Americanism, I do. We were fighting a war for 20. We had the best techniques, the best soldiers, the best training. I mean, it is technologically a new age of warfare. And the Russians, when they started this, it was 1940 over again, right?

So I think, and we're sharing those training capabilities. So I think, you know, it's not just how many weapons, it's the quality of it, the quality of training that is so far off with the Russians. And I thought they were not as big as they said, but they even showed themselves to be smaller than my best estimates. Jack, one of the best conversations we've had. Thank you so much, my dear friend. Always a great pleasure. And I'm hoping your audience is tracking me Yes they are I will tell you

I will tell you this I won't use the language They've used but they're saying Judge please invite him Again especially when the war is over You'll be back next week I hope I hope I don't come back I hope the war ends next week You'll be back either week, I hope. I hope I don't come back. I hope the war ends next week.

You'll be back either way. Nothing would make me happier. As long as the right team wins. Thank you, Jack. More as we get it. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.