Judging Freedom - In Ukraine War Putin also Taking on the U.S. - Larry Johnson fmr CIA

Episode Date: June 20, 2023

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Today is Tuesday, June 20th, 2023. It's about 1130 in the morning here on the East Coast of the United States. In a minute, Larry Johnson will be with us. First question, does the CIA spy on the president? Right after this. When it comes to carrying valuables or even firearms in your vehicle, most people feel they have to choose between safety and convenience. A vehicle break-in occurs every 36 seconds in America. The Headrest Safe gives you the power to store cash, jewelry, medication, and yes, even your concealed carry

firearm. You'll never have to worry about taking your valuables with you again. Keep them safe with the Headrest Safe. Use promo code JUDGENAP and enjoy $50 off for a limited time at theheadrestsafe.com. Larry, always a pleasure and thank you for joining us. We know, of course, that the, before we get into the latest on Ukraine, that the president receives a, if he wants, a daily briefing from the intelligence community every day. Does the intelligence community, CIA, or any other aspect of it, surveil the president and his wife? Not officially. So number one, you would have intercepted communications. Well, every presidential phone call is already recorded, intercepted by the communications, White House communications office. So, you know, that's collected.

What you get is the informal banter based on briefers, what they've seen. They go back and we'll talk about it. But that's not, to my knowledge, that's never been formally written up. What you don't have is actual unicenter investigating saying, okay, let's delve into, in this case, Joe Biden's contacts with these Ukrainians and let's see what we can uncover. We'll get that for me in the course of doing work on Ukraine. They may come across and say, oh, goodness, we've got some uncomfortable ties here, relationships with the president. So if he gets out of bed in the morning and he can't find his slippers

and he asks Jill to help him find his slippers, that's not going to be picked up by CIA surveillance. In the White House, that's not going to be picked up by CIA surveillance. Okay. The White House vote may be included in. Say again? So the White House vote may be included and comment on that, but not the CIA. Okay.

I remember one of my last conversations with President Trump when he was in the White House. We were talking about pardons and he was asking my opinion on people he was about to pardon and and commute sentences for and then i reminded him you know you're leaving in a couple of weeks and we had a small talk and and then i reminded him that he promised the american public and me personally uh in private that he would while still president release the jfk uh files and he said no i can't do it if they had shown you what they showed me you wouldn't release it either either what did they show you who showed it to you now here's the part of the conversation i want to recount to you judge someday when we're together and 15 people aren't listening to our phone call, I'll tell you what they showed me.

Now, what does he mean? It may have been his way of speaking. Maybe it's 20, maybe it's two. But what does he mean, 15 people listening to his phone call? He was calling from the Oval Office. Right. So you remember when the first impeachment of Trump, when Vindman came and the transcript of his conversation, that's what he's talking about. That is recorded by the Department of Defense. They fall under military chain of command. And so every communication is recorded now. It goes back. There was a period, you know, 60, 70 years ago when the conversations weren't recorded, but that's not the case now. Technology has made it available. So they do get all of that

recorded. Okay. How about his cell phone? He used to call me from his cell phone. Would that be recorded? The back of the beast, the presidential limo. That's recorded too? Absolutely. Absolutely. All right. What is the status of the Ukraine offensive as of today, June 20th? If you could compare, it was promised to be delivered like a Hollywood blockbuster. It would set the world on

fire uh it's been a flop a flop at the box office but this is what we're talking about it's it's been a flop because you've got literally uh more than 10 000 ukrainian troops dead and then they've not asked even to the first line of defense so it it's been terrible carnage on the Ukrainian troops. And basically, everybody that the United States and NATO was training in the last three months are probably dead. Is this a political offensive or a military one, by which I mean? Is the so-called offensive, I'm using air quotes, going on because President Zelensky promised it, maybe as a means to gin up more assistance from the West, or is it militarily indicated as feasible and probably victorious for the Ukrainians? And if the latter, who thinks that it's probably victorious

for the Ukrainian military? This is a political hit. This has nothing to do with actual sound military doctrine or strategy. But by having, you know, the problem is not so much the guys that have been trained recently to drive tanks the issue comes at the command level going from colonel to general where at that level to be able to manipulate and maneuver units in a coordinated fashion to use what's called combined arms part of the combined arms means that you can use uh artillery you can use infantry tactics you

can use air assets you can use even satellites so the whole array every every possible weapon and communication system brought together and integrated the problem for Ukraine is they don't have a functioning Air Force so they don't really have any fixed-wing aircraft that can consistently arrive at the front to provide close air support for advancing units. Their helicopter force has been depleted by the Russians. They don't have any effective mobile air defense system that can accompany advancing units. And these units have really been trained in a sort of a hodgepodge manner. They've not received consistent training from one location. They've been trained in over 40 different locations, reportedly in 33 different countries, according to Milley.

So this is really a disaster. It is not sound military doctrine, and it's being driven entirely by politics is uh a general zaluzhny uh injured to the point where he's incapacitated and as someone else uh making excuse me these senior military command decisions it sort of reminds you that the game world up you know so now we're doing the ukraine version but it's like where's the loose knee where's budenoff uh the the head of uh their intelligence organization men are missing in action and at the at the height of this most important military operation ostensibly the most important military operation of the entire war in ukraine its outset. Zaluzhny's missing, as is the number two guy, Sersky.

So it is, you know, there's something really, I think what we're seeing are the effects of Russia's decision-target, decision-making centers. And the consequences of that is they have killed or wounded some top-level Ukrainian officials. You, I think, have told us that in order to conduct an effective offensive, and now I'm talking about classroom and by the book, you have to have at least a two- or three-to- one advantage over the defenders. Colonel Davis tells us that not only is it not three to one, it's one to ten. It's like one Ukrainian for every ten Russians.

So how can they possibly make a military decision that's counterindicated by basic military science 101. Do I have that right? Yeah, well, they could have adjusted to that. Remember when the special military operation started, Russia was actually at a disadvantage size-wise relative to the Ukrainian army. But Russia countered that size disadvantage by the effective use of artillery to provide covering fire. And what Russia had that Ukraine does not have is ample supplies of artillery and artillery ammunition. So that is one way to counter if you're numerically inferior, if you can bring more firepower from combination of artillery, fixed-wing aircraft, missiles, cruise missiles, as well as the heavier kind that are launched from the ground,

then you may not need as large of a force because you can bring firepower to those defensive positions. Otherwise, you would have to rely upon ground troops to provide. We're going to take a break. When we come back, we're going to talk about Russian nuclear weapons in Belarus, President Putin's justification for them, and Larry's analysis of it right after this. The headrest safe is quick and easy to use. Some may even call it a game changer. The Headrest Safe acts as a safety net, protecting your belongings while keeping them out of sight and out of bounds of others.

Serving us security while also keeping your valuables in bounds. That's what the Headrest Safe provides for me. Game, set, match. Before we get to the issue of nukes in Belarus and President Putin's attitude about them, which is a remarkable attitude in my view, but we'll play the tape for you. Can I raise your blood pressure just a little bit, Larry? Sure, go ahead. All right. We have a tape of General Petraeus predicting Ukraine victory in the offensive. Take a listen.

I think that the Ukrainians are very much ready for this. They'll be very distinctive because they will be using, employ replaced, equipment replaced and repaired, and then doing training before they go back. They just get individual replacements to fill the gap. They're not well-trained. They're not well-equipped. They're not well-led. And I think that these Ukrainian forces, which are well-trained, are well-equipped, are going to break through. And then you might see a real dynamism to the battlefield that could give real opportunities to the Ukrainians to exploit. Does he know what the hell he's talking about?

No. The good news here, Judge, is thank God he's no longer in active duty to cause more harm to our military than is already being caused. Now, what he's presenting, he said this on June 6th. So clearly, he had been briefed about what the plan was and what the expectations, this is the most important part, what the expectations of NATO generals were, that they really did sincerely believe that Russia was a brittle force and that these Ukrainian tanks would sweep through and just wipe the floor. Well, that didn't happen. Just the opposite. The Russians stopped it cold and destroyed vast numbers of the tanks

and armored personnel carriers, the Bradley fighting vehicles. So I'd be curious to see what Petraeus is saying now, because everything he said about the Russian army actually applies to the Ukrainian army. The Russian army is not brittle. The Russian army is not dealing with forced conscripts. And the Russian army, most importantly, has taken the people that were recalled to active duty, they recalled reservists, have had at least four to five months of training before they're now put out onto defensive positions along the line. So Petraeus, you know, maybe he should become a stock picker,

have him pick a stock, and then you do the exact opposite. He'd be good in that regard. Here he is again extolling, wait till the very end of the clip, it's a little shorter than the one we just ran, extolling the advantage to the

Ukrainian military of F-16s. Of course, we all know, I don't want to steal your thunder, but we all know how long it's going to take, A, before they get there, and B, before there are human beings trained to fly them. But here's, on the same day, June 6th, General Petraeus. But there should be a very solid path to NATO membership that's provided at the Villnius summit on 11 July. But in the meantime, the focus should be on enabling Ukraine to the greatest extent that we possibly can, so that the Ukrainians can prove to Putin that the Russians will not be able to out-suffer the Ukrainians. And also, we prove they won't be able to out-suffer the Europeans and the Americans as well.

Does this include F-16 jets? Oh, absolutely. We should have made the decision to transition to Western aircraft long ago. Again, this was inevitable. Because I see two crazy statements. Ukraine should be in NATO equals World War III. And we should have sent F-16s a year and a half ago. Your thoughts?

Well, already we've seen Joe Biden even back away from removing any restrictions for Ukraine to get into NATO. He just basically said Ukraine would have to jump through all the hoops, and they're not going to make it easy for them. So the Biden administration is already backing away from that. This obsession with the F-16, Judge, that plane is almost as old as you and me, and it's never actually been flown in a combat environment against a peer. In other words, it's never been flying against Russian aircraft or Chinese fighter aircraft that are of comparable capabilities. So this wonder weapon mentality that infests people like Petraeus is just astonishing because the one thing that will be learned

is that the F-16 will be shot down by Russian air defense systems, the S-300, S-400, maybe even the S-500. It will be destroyed. And if there are U.S. pilots in the seat, they'll be either killed or captured. Did he use F-16s in Iraq? Yeah, I'm sure he did. But what was he flying against? The Iraqi Air Force didn't exist at that point. And Iraq had no effective air defense.

The key to your phrase is the F-16s have never been used effectively by the American military against a peer. Correct. A military of equal. Yeah. You know, when you're flying the aircraft against a bunch of goat herders or guys riding camels, you know, those camels and goats can't do much to you if you're up at, you know, 20,000 feet, 10,000. Got it. Here's President Putin again in that same interviewer with the female voice translating into English about the appropriate use and placement of nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons have been created to ensure our security in the widest sense of this word, and the existence of the Russian state. But firstly, there's no need for that. And, you know, all these discussions and considerations,

they reduce the level, the threshold for using such weapons. And secondly, we have more such weapons than the Western countries. And that is why they move us towards beginning these discussions. No way. Sounds pretty rational to me, Larry. Yeah, and that phrase he used, no way, is actually in Russian it's the drawn from the word horseradish but the the the term is it's somewhat of a vulgar term because if you look at a full horseradish root it looks it has a phallic imagery i'll say and so when he he was really sort of basically saying you tell the americans they could shove it. Now, Putin's concern is this.

You've got two missile batteries that have come off the Aegis ships, and these are capable of carrying nuclear warheads. They're now on the ground in Poland and Romania. And Russia has no confidence and no assurance from the West that those missile systems are not carrying nuclear-tipped warheads. The United States, in fact, has deployed nuclear warheads throughout the European theater. Also, some of the F-16s that are being proposed are also capable of carrying a nuclear missile. So Russia, by taking this step, is upping the ante, but also showing that it is taking very seriously this lack of prudence on the part of the United States and NATO. Larry, do we know what nuclear weapons, what type of nuclear weapons the Russians recently sent to Belarus?

I'm sure the intelligence folks do know that. They're able to look at the imagery. I don't think the Russians hit it any. But, you know, it's missiles that are capable of reaching anywhere in Europe, for starters. These are designed more for the threat of NATO expansion because the United States with NATO has continued to talk about spreading nuclear weapons through that threat in Russia. General Ben Hodges, who's the four-star retired former commander-in-chief of all American troops in Europe, said over the weekend, quote, I'm going to have to read what he said, as absurd as it is, Ukraine can liberate Crimea, close quote. This makes Petraeus sound rational.

Yeah. Hodges is in competition with Petraeus for the dumbest former military pundit on air? You know, this notion. Now, actually, there is concern coming out today. I've heard that Shogun, they're basically the Secretary of Defense on the Russian side, has warned against what they've got intelligence indicating that HIMARS and other missile systems may be used against Crimea, that these would be used, the Storm Shadow, the British cruise missile. And if this happens, that Russia is going to view this as the United States is attacking Russian territory.

Can you repeat what you just said? The transmission broke up a little bit. Going back to the Russian defense minister said. Yeah, the Russian defense minister, Shoigu, said that they've got intelligence indicating that the United States and the United Kingdom via the HIMARS and Storm Shadow cruise missile will be launching attacks on Crimea, which is Russian territory, at least as Russians view it. And they will view that as an attack by the United States and the United Kingdom on Russia. So this has the potential to start escalating and escalating quickly. Larry Johnson, no matter what we talk about,

your insight is so valuable and so much appreciated by the folks that watch this show regularly. Growing number when you're on, and of course by me. Thank you very much for joining us. Thank you, Judge. More as we get it, my friends. Judge Napolitanoolitano hope you like what you hear and i know you do like subscribe and if you've already liked and subscribed share with a friend judge napolitano for judging freedom you want to feel safe in your vehicle with access to your firearm that's both secure and convenient the headrest safe keeps your firearm where you can access it and no one else can. It starts at theheadrestsafe.com. Thank you.