Judging Freedom - How Does China Change the War in Ukraine_ - Larry Johnson

Episode Date: March 23, 2023

Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Thursday, March 23, 2023. It's about 3.30 in the afternoon here on the East Coast of the United States. Larry Johnson joins us now. Larry, always good to have you, my dear friend. I want to prevail on your history and familiarity with surveillance in the United States because as we speak, the chair and CEO and founder of TikTok is being grilled by members of the House of Representatives in a committee hearing. And their argument, of course, is that everything in here can be seized and captured by TikTok once you begin using it. And TikTok is owned by the enemy. And the enemy can download your personal information. They might be interested in yours. They might be interested in mine. They're probably not interested in the average American, but this is the argument that members of Congress are making. I'm making the argument,

and then I'm going to hand this ball off to you, that Congress funds the biggest surveillance state in the history of the country. And that surveillance state, the FBI, the DEA, the BATF, the NSA, the CIA, spy on Americans far more effectively and just as unlawfully as TikTok. Now, we've learned nothing from history. If you recall back in the 1970s with the church committee hearing as a result of reporting by seymour her at the time about massive spying domestic spying by the fbi and with the cia assistance on americans who were opposed to the war in vietnam so out of those hearings ostensibly we got some reforms so now jump ahead to the age of social media, the revelations that have come over the last several weeks through the reporting of Matt

Taibbi and others, that Twitter, Facebook have been used as spying devices against American citizens. It's been used by the U.S. government. And it really shouldn't be surprising to people because Edward Snowden warned about this when he became a whistleblower, you know, more than 12 years ago, and tried recognizing that the capabilities of National Security Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, the those of the fbi were being turned against american citizens that there was not this chinese wall as used to be called separating the the legitimate concerns of the government trying to go after the genuine foreign operatives who were trying to do us harm that it was turned up was turned loose on American citizens. So this hearing today is

sort of the height of hypocrisy. I'd have a lot more confidence in it if they were grilling Mark Zuckerberg as well, just as vehemently. So what do you think caused this transfer of spying tools from the NSA and the CIA and the FBI directly to social media, almost as if the Zuckerbergs of the world, I'm glad you raised his name, are doing a favor for the FBI when they spy for them? Because if they are, what favors are the FBI doing in return for the Zucker when they spy for them? Because if they are, what favors are the FBI doing in return for the Zuckerbergs of the world? Well, part of what makes Zuckerberg effective is us. People will go onto social media and post the most personal information and make it easy for the government to collide just fine. So this, part of it too, is in the past, particularly the intelligence agencies, if you had to be able to intercept an unencrypted communication, if you intercepted encrypted communications, you may or may not be able to break those.

So there were limitations in that regard. The same for the CIA. You had to find a human source that would give you information. Well, now social media is like multiple human sources with people self-reporting. And it allows you to establish networks between individuals. You find out, even in something like LinkedIn, who are your friends? Who are the people saying, hey, I endorse so-and-so? They're great.

Right. Americans really have surrendered their privacy by going into these social media platforms. And believe me, they're very enticing. Am I right in suggesting there must be a quid pro quo that Zuckerberg, and I don't mean to pick on him, but he is the biggest, is not doing this out of the goodness of his heart or because he's late in his taxes. He's getting something in return. Is the FBI looking the other way about something or providing him with some information that he would love to have but can't acquire by lawful means? Well, usually the FBI is not so generous in that regard. One way street, they can coerce and

threaten. Cooperate with us or else, we'll find some problem with you. And that gives Zuckerberg all the incentive in the world. I don't want to have the FBI as a problem for me, so we'll give them whatever they ask for without pushing back, without going to a judge. So it's more a stick than a carrot. Yes. Oh, exactly right. FBI has never been good at carrots. Yeah. These guys are stick people. The only people that I know of the big tech that have gone to a judge and prevailed, excuse me, was Apple. When the FBI wanted secret codes to get into the cell phones of people that the FBI believed had been involved. It wasn't a belief.

It was a certainty because they were dead. Had been involved in mass killings. Right. And Apple said no. And Apple went to court to restrain the FBI and Apple prevailed. Now, the FBI got that information somehow, maybe from their partners in Israel. I don't know. But Apple prev know. But Apple

prevailed. But nobody else goes to court. Everybody else seems to bow down. And I don't think, and you can tell me here, it's not just the FBI. It's the NSA. It's the CIA, which you know better than anybody in the world is prohibited by its charter from engaging in domestic spying or domestic law enforcement, but it does it anyway. Correct. Well, yeah, it finds workarounds. I mean, as you and I discovered, we talked about how the British were spying Donald Trump, but that information is being passed through liaison channels. So it's a way that the CIA can spy on Trump without actually the CIA doing it. They get a foreigner to do it for us.

But there's been a long standing relationship both between the intelligence community and law enforcement with even phone companies, all the cellular phone companies where the US law enforcement can go in and get information and be able to pull up who's calling whom and, you know, use it to develop leads. So the privacy is, you know, the phones are great convenience, but they also provide a key that opens the door to your private

life to eyes that you've not been permissioned to look. I am sure that if you went into one of the AT&T buildings in lower Manhattan or in San Francisco, there's probably a whole floor there of NSA agents. It's not a matter of the NSA tapping into lines. It's a matter of the FBI, excuse me, the AT&T, the telecoms accommodating the American surveillance state by literally giving them office space. Yeah, well, they're vacuuming up. If you think about all the cellular transmission that takes place in conversations, those go across an enormous amount of data that is collected. This is a vacuum cleaner sucking it up. The same with emails. So this has really created a completely new world, one that did not exist 30 years ago. And Congress, of course, could stop this. Well, I don't know if they could, Larry. Can they? If they enact legislation to prohibit it, will the three-letter entities, NSA, FBI, DEA, etc., will they comply with that legislation? Ray and company just find cash from another budget to move it over. Stated differently,

is it even possible for Congress to put the genie back in the bottle? No, I don't think this, because even if Congress passed such legislation and the president signed it and became law, there's still ways to offshore the activity to other countries that do not have those restrictions. So those other countries can do the dirty work for us and then pass that information. Unless there is a complete prohibition of receiving information from foreign governments, which that would never pass because that's seen as a critical source of intelligence. Okay. I want to move to Ukraine because this week President Xi Jinping of China had a very public and ostentatious visit to the Kremlin.

He spent three days with President Putin. In President Putin's presence, he suggested a ceasefire in Ukraine. He's not going to make a suggestion like that without President Putin's people approving it, his intel people talking to Putin's intel people, et cetera. Am I right in assuming that? Well, partially. What's really going on here is something more dramatic. It's historical. It has never happened in history. What is that? You know, Russia, the Union of Russia and China. It's a de facto, it's actually a de jure union right now, given the various agreements that were signed in Moscow.

Prior to this, Moscow and Russia never were marching in sync with each other. In fact, they have a history of conflict. They had no relations at all prior to 1689. And since 1689, they've been back and forth, but they've never had a formal arrangement. And the U.S. policy, as Richard Nixon went to China in 1972, was to prevent Russia and China from ever uniting. We always wanted to drive a wedge between them to keep them separate. Why? China represents the greatest industrial power in the world. Russia represents the greatest supplier of commodities and rare earth minerals in the world, not to mention its military weapons.

So what has now been created is a union between going to China and he did succeed. I mean, now we're back into the late 60s, early 70s, a long time ago, even for people like you and me, he did succeed in driving that wedge. Oh, absolutely. In fact, what the United States gave up in exchange for that was we agreed to recognize Taiwan as a province of China, except the one China policy. But again, the Nixon and the successors thought that they could play around the edges on that. Literally, our policy was, up until Joe Biden came into office, keeping Russia and China separate. Now, Biden's match to unite the two is something that is, like I said, there is no precedent for this in history. Right, so this unification of interests, supplier, manufacturer, former communist, whatever you want to call Russia today, currently communist, whatever you want to call Beijing today.

I don't know. Maybe it's a lowercase c in communist. I don't know what they are. It's totalitarian. There's a lot of capital. There's a lot of capital. Tremendous amount of capital. Okay. This was, this unification did not come about by anything that Bill Clinton or George W. or George H.W. or Barack Obama did.

This happened in the past two years under Joe Biden via Ukraine. Is that what you're saying, Larry? Yeah. via Ukraine. Is that what you're saying, Larry? Yeah, Ukraine was sort of the pin point for it, where the United States is declaring, openly talking about China as an enemy. Russia is clearly an enemy that we're going to destroy, we're going to get rid of Putin. So, you know, these countries are not deaf, not blind. They see and hear what we're doing. And just like if you had somebody living next door to you that was threatening to come over and kill you, you wouldn't sit there and go, oh, he's just... No, you'd take measures to protect yourself. Well, surprise, surprise.

That's what the Chinese and Russians are now doing. The United States is falsely claiming that China is going to supply weapons to Russia. Russia doesn't need the Chinese weapons. China needs Russia's weapons, particularly the hypersonic missiles. That's what China needs to be able to fend off U.S. carrier battle groups in the event it comes to that. Okay. Admiral Kirby, now the chief spokesperson for the National Security Council, was interviewed by an English-speaking correspondent for a Chinese television station. Now, bear in mind, this was recorded before President Xi made his statement requesting a ceasefire. Take a listen.

We'd be concerned if coming out of this meeting, there was some sort of call for a ceasefire, because right now, while ceasefire sounds good, it actually ratifies Russia's gains on the ground. It actually serves Russia's purpose for a ceasefire to basically call a stop right now without any acknowledgement that Russia is illegally inside Ukraine. So United States will be against the ceasefire because this principle issue or because it was proposed by China? I think I've been very clear. It's about the principle of a ceasefire called for right now, which would essentially just ratify Russia's gains. So let me get this straight. Let's just suppose President Putin obviously approved. It is laughable. It absolutely is. It's absurd

that that person or those words or those ideas should be the official policy of the United States. But let's suppose President Putin wants the ceasefire, either because of domestic reasons or because enough is enough, and he now controls as much of Ukraine as he intended to, whatever. And President Xi's request was made knowing that President Putin wants that. And let's say Vladimir Zelensky comes to his senses. Is Joe Biden going to object to the ceasefire? I mean, that would be unheard of. Well, what the Chinese and Russians are doing is exposing to the world the hypocrisy of the United States. United States, we're always talking about this rules-based international order, but that order really consists of this. It is, hey, judge, all the money you have in your bank account, that belongs to me.

And I want the keys to the car and the keys to your house. You want anything from me? Too bad. It's a one-way street. That is the so-called rules-based international order right now that the Chinese and Russians are pushing back against. And by doing this, by China taking the high roads, willing to broker ceasefire. They haven't even laid out a very specific peace plan yet, but they're just offering up a lawful, nonviolent way to solve this. And the Russians went, hey, sure, we'll go along with that.

Exposing the United States is the only one who's engaged in belligerence, who's going to fund the fight. We're going to keep that fight going no matter how badly the Ukrainians are bleeding and dying in the process. And it really, it is immoral. It's ungodly in my view. Do you have a feel from your sources as to how much longer the uh conflagration in ukraine will go on before president zielinski says enough uh no um again as i i've made several predictions that have come and gone and you know wrong uh what is clear is the advantage is clearly with Russia. And they are bleeding out the Ukrainians. What remains to be seen is how long the West will continue to fund this. There is supposedly a big offensive in the offering by the Ukrainians, but they don't really have what it takes.

All they have is a ground force. They don't have an air force. They don't have the sufficient missiles and rockets to back them up. So they'll launch. It'll be like Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg. They'll get mowed down. And that could become a decisive moment in which other European nations go, wait a second. We cannot continue to pour money into this black hole.

The United States is in a different situation. We're going to continue to try to create the mayhem there, but we really don't have any good options to counteract that. So that's what's astonishing. We have not looked at this strategically. I recently interviewed your former Central Intelligence Agency colleague, Jack Devine. It's kind of funny to call him a colleague because the two of you might as well be from different worlds with your attitude about human freedom and the proper role of the United States in the current geopolitical system. But here's Jack attempting to say why he thinks Putin can't win. He fails. Why? Because he didn't bomb enough houses, because he didn't kill enough people that he didn't put his best. No, the next person isn't going to have new armies. So the next person

is doomed to fail. I'm working on when Putin goes, they're going to sit around the table. Hey, enough of this stuff. Let's get an air gap. So I do not think they can't be more hostile. There's no more hostile play. It's not like Putin's laying back and being nice to us. Jack embodies everything that was wrong with the Central Intelligence Agency, a lack of understanding of history, very shallow thing. The reality is this. If you get rid of Putin, you've got more strident people waiting in the wings to take over. But the government is not a one-man show. This is a government. This is an organized structure of people and networks. Putin is a leader of that system, but he is not the end-all

be-all. And this really betrays one of the real faults of the CIA, particularly people like Jack Devine. They always try to personalize it. If we just get rid of the Shah, if we just get rid of Castro, if we just get rid of Doriega, you know, come up with the list. Saddam Hussein, he goes, the world's peaceful. Oh, Muammar Gaddafi, let's get rid of him. Bashar Assad, let's get rid of him. You know, this is not firing the people and then all of a sudden you get utopia. So Jack couldn't be more wrong. But, you know, he did have a history of that.

To support what you just said, former and probably future Russian President Dmitry Medvedev earlier today expressed a public view about the comments of the German Minister of Justice, who said if Vladimir Putin sets foot in Germany, he'll be arrested. And President Medvedev said, what are they, crazy? That would be an act of war on the Russian Federation. We would send our missiles directly to the Bundestag and to the Chancellor's home and office. There's your World War III right there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, this, the, I heard a different version of it. They said if Putin ever comes to Germany, they said, well, if Putin comes to Germany, it will be because Russia has conquered Germany and Putin is taking a tour. So there was no any danger of being arrested. I want to run another clip from Jack while you're on a roll about him. In a similar vein, I was talking to him about the relative strength of the Russian forces. Nobody knows Afghanistan the way you do, Jack, but that was the death throes of the

Soviet Union. That was not Putin with a modern army. Well, first of all, I dispute he has a modern army. He's now demonstrating to the world he doesn't have a modern army. He has a lot of modern weapons. Well, he has a more modern army now than Gorbachev had in the Afghan days. Yeah, but look at what Afghanis had, AK-47s. Look at what technology has done for the Ukrainians and all the sophisticated technology from drones to cyber intelligence. His army is not showing itself very well. It's a surprise to all of us, although this is the second time I've been surprised because when I went in to do the Afghan program, I was assured they were 10 feet tall and then every day they shrunk a

quarter of an inch. So I think what's showing here, and I think it's the big story, he has paramilitary functioning as his cutting edge because his own army. Now they're fighting. Remember, Judge, you and I talked about dissent and how the things crumble when you start to lose. Watch the dynamic between the Wagner group and the military. What the devil is he talking about as you start to lose and the dynamic between the Wagner Group and the military? Isn't the Wagner Group a terrific fighting force that works hand-in-hand with the Russian military

and is subject to military command? Yeah, they're fully integrated into the Russian chain of command, so they're not out there operating as, say, Blackwater did during our invasion of Iraq. they're fully integrated into the russian chain of command so they're not out there operating as say blackwater did uh during our invasion of iran what's funny about jack is again this this illustrates it is he arguing that because the united states got driven out of afghanistan by those same guys with the ak-47s. We, the most supposedly the best military in the world,

we got chased out. Look at how Russia withdrew. Russia started its withdrawal and it carried it out over an eight month period in 1989. And in the course of that, when they left, they left an intact government, an intact military, which continued to operate and function for the ensuing three years so this this arrogance on the part of jack the dismissing the russian

military is competent well tell you what the united states has not won a war since the end of world war ii and we haven't we've got the most expensive military in the world. We failed in Vietnam. We failed in Iraq. We failed in Afghanistan. We're failing in Syria. We're failing, you know, it goes across the board. So we need to wake up from this fantasy, this self-absorbed fantasy,

the fairest and bestest of them all, and dismissing other countries. Well, you know, we say that Russia is all just so inadequate, it's first rate. Which country is having to rely upon Russia to send its astronauts to the space station because we can't build rockets? Oh, that's right. It's the United States. We have to rely now on Elon Musk or the Russians. So enough of this American exceptionalism. I'm all in favor of American exceptionalism if you talk the talk and walk the walk. But when you call the talking, but don't do

the delivery, then as Jack just illustrated, oh, we beat the Afghans. The Russians have enough sense to pull out and to do so in a smart way. Look at the chaos and mayhem that we caused when we left and the human suffering that attended that. That's what really irritates me about Jack's position. He has no care for the human beings, the human lives lost in this mayhem. Is Jack's attitude typical of the CIA today? Of parts of the CIA, yes. You could line up. You'll find that there are a lot of officers like myself who disagree.

You've seen it with Ray McGovern. You've seen it with Phil Giraldi. We may differ on some issues, but a general attitude of how intelligence should be done. And then you've got the ones like Jack Devine. Jack Devine is not an exception to that. He is actually somewhat common, which helps account for the various intelligence failures by the CIA over the years. That kind of errors and shallow thinking just, you know, they set themselves up for failure. Larry Johnson, my dear friend, always a pleasure. Thank you for telling it exactly as it is.

I can tell you that you have many, many fans amongst the Judging Freedom viewers, and they're deeply grateful, as am I, for the time you gave us today. All the best, my friend. Thank you so much. I'm very gratified. Of course. If you like what you saw, like and subscribe. More as we get it.

Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.