Judging Freedom - INTEL Roundtable w/ John & McGovern - Weekly Wrap March 27

Episode Date: March 27, 2026

INTEL Roundtable w/ John & McGovern - Weekly Wrap March 27See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Undeclared wars are commonplace. Pragically, our government engages in preemptive war, otherwise known as aggression, with no complaints from the American people. Sadly, we have become accustomed to living with the illegitimate use of force by government. To develop a truly free society, the issue of initiating force must be understood and rejected. What if sometimes to love your country you had to alter or abolish the government? the government? What if Jefferson was right? What if that government is best, which governs least?

What if it is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong? What if it is better to perish fighting for freedom than to live as a slave? What if freedom's greatest hour of danger is now? Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Friday, March 27th, 2006. It's our favorite time. It's the end of the day, the end of the week. It's the Intelligence Community Roundtable with my dear friends and longtime collaborators. Ray McGovern and Larry Johnson. Ray, Larry, a pleasure, guys. Hi there. Welcome here. Thank you. Neither of you is home. Ray, you're in the bowels of the or the belly of the beast in or outside D.C. Larry, you're in Calgary, Canada with a lot of

our friends. Larry, to you first. Give us an assessment of where the war stands today, one month, almost to the day, after the Israeli and U.S. attacks and as a consequence of the Iranian retaliations. Yeah, the war certainly hasn't gone as the United States has anticipated. Trump is looking for an exit ramp and can't find it. And the major obstacle in the exit ramp is Israel. I just literally got a text message about 15 minutes ago. Trump is, he is trying to get a negotiated exit. And Iran made the announcement that because Israel has just struck

two nuclear sites and a power plant. Now, Ron has warned previously any attacks on those are going to result in immediate and significant retaliation. And the note I received from a friend who's involved with the operations just said, he said, we can't control the Israelis. The Israelis are out of control. And I reminded him, well, we could. You just cut them off with every single dime and don't send another damn bomb to them. That might get their attention. But again, Trump is, he's held hostage to the Zion.

this cabal and as a result he's not going to get out of this the iranians did announce they're going to allow some humanitarian aid to traverse the strait of hermuse but but other than that they're preventing any movement of oil that's not being purchased with the chinese yuan and no movement of oil to people that are supporting the united states war against the one do we know that negotiations are actually going on? Or is this one of those things where A talks to B and B talks to C and C talks to D and D talks to E? That's telephone. There's no direct. There is no direct negotiation. It's the Pakistanis have been apparently the primary intermediary for carrying messages back and forth. And again, you know, you listen to Trump's version of the events, bad things are going great. We're having talks.

and I love the memes that have popped up on social media. It shows Donald Trump laid out on a psychiatrist couch, and the psychiatrist is saying, now, are those Iranians that you're talking to? Are they here in the room with us now? Yes, we've seen that. Chris may even have it and can pop it up on the screen. Ray has the administration yet to offer any militarily achievable goal.

Oh, that's an easy one, Judge. The answer is no. I'd like to pick up on something Larry said, yes, the Israelis are the fly in the ointment, right? But hello, there are always the fly in the ornament, and they were the initiator of this war. I'm thinking back to 1974 when I was the National Intelligence Officer for Western Europe, and the Turks invaded Cyprus, right? using our weapons. Long story short, the Congress cut off weapons to Turkey because it's against the law to use our weapons in that kind of way. And I naively at the State Department, acting for the director of Central Intelligence, now look, there might be a silver lining here. Maybe the next time the Israelis want to take off and attack another country with our weaponry, maybe they'll think twice about it. I got this kind of reaction. What? What?

In other words, it was just dawned on me how stupid that thing was to say that when we were ever cut off arms of supply to Israel no matter what they did. Now, I'm sorry to say you're probably right. As rationalist Larry's statement was, it's not going to happen. Well, that's it. And, you know, it's not only that the Israelis are the fly in the ornament now. I mean, this is a unique situation where when everybody says, I am so confused, there are no objects, just they have no plans. Nobody says, why?

When the answer is out there right in front of us, it's from the State Department head, Marco Rubio, who happens to also be the National Security Advisor, in other words, the funnel to which all intelligence and other information flows. What did Rubio said? He said the day after they attacked, he said, well, the Israelis told us that they were going to attack. And we thought, oh, my God, the Iranians were probably retaliated against us, as well as the Israelis. And so to preempt that or to lessen the effects of their attack on us, we attacked them. In other words, Israel made us do it. And if we needed proof in the pudding, you had Joe Kent saying the next day, look, there were no imminent threats. We did it because of Israel and it's supporters on both sides of the Atlantic.

So we just had a big national press club thing simply saying, why? You're interested in why? It will tell you. And we'll tell you the results, what's going to happen for military experts that just won't quit. Larry, you wrote today about the plans to introduce boots on the ground. Is it realistic? Is it a subterfuge? Is it a ploy?

What's your take on this? Well, right now it's postponed. And the original indications and, you know, the signs that were hearing through chatter among, you know, people involved with the special operations units was they, fully expected to be employed, if not, you know, like by right now, by sometime tomorrow. But two things have happened. One, weather. And two, Trump is decided to wait for the arrival of the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit in theater.

Now, the 31st is in, I'll call it in theater, but it's at Diego Garcia. So it's in, you know, Iran's in no danger of being attacked by it. But what we have seen that started on March 12th was the movement of the special operations forces and not just one or two elements, the whole kit and caboodle. How many human beings is that? It'd probably be around 2,000 to 3,000. But it would be, you know, for example, CEL Team 6 could be used or Delta Force could be used to attack, to go after. the missile city that's on Kyrshireham Island, right there in the Strait of Hormuz. Now, this is not enough force to, quote, open the strait.

In fact, I don't care if we put 50,000 troops on each island to, quote, open the strait. That doesn't deal with all the other things that Iran has its disposal to close the strait. But this is the kind of operation that has been envisioned. you've got at least two battalions of the 75th Ranger Regiment deployed along with this. And they, so those are, you know, those come in about 800 apiece. You've got the 82nd airborne. So this, in theory, based upon what Donald Trump said yesterday, it's delayed till next week, 10 days. He's given 10 days for these negotiations to work.

But they're not going to work because Israel keeps sabotaging it. And Iran has made its demands very, very clear. They're not going to go back to having their ballistic missiles reduced in size. No, they're not going to give up the right to stop enriching uranium. They're going to do everything that they may have been willing to make a deal on in the past. That's dead and done. So if the United States is foolish enough to put troops on the ground in Iran, it is going to suck us dry.

Is Trump so desperate, Ray, for an off-ramp because this was prepared so poorly, or because the original decision to go in was a colossal error in judgment? I think it's both, Judge. You know that I got it wrong. I said it would be crazy. It would be crazy to do anything other than to threaten or rattle this, you know, to send all these weaponry, all this weaponry down there. It would be crazy because they would close the straight of hormones, by God's sake.

Can they do I make for you and see? Well, he did it. So, you know, the logic is he's crazy. So now I'm tempted to say, I'll be crazy to put ground troops in the Marines, what? It would be crazy. And, you know, hello, I remember. That's what I said last time.

So, you know, there's no viable military objective that can be achieved here. And this thing is run by an Air Force general that no, no, his rear end from his elbow. And he thinks he can bomb Iran to smithereens. And if I'm not mistaken, we're running out of bombs and missiles, and so is Israel. That's why the Iranians are standing fast. And that's why the Israelis are getting pretty good. Yes, Rick. Larry Ray brings me to my next question. How depleted is American ammo? I'm talking about defensive ammo as well as offensive. Well, on the defensive side, the air defense, Pac-3s and Thads,

if they're not fully depleted, they are close to being depleted. You just, you know, we knew what the numbers were maximum possible without making any assumptions about how many had been. used in the past. And Iran already has fired more missiles than we would have, if we had used every one of our pack, three Patriot missiles, to intercept those missiles, Iran has exceeded that. That as well as what the THAA can do. Now, we're getting reports where Israel's report, oh, we shot this down, we shot that down. I've heard actually what's going on is some of the, some of the Iranian missiles are just misfiring. You know, they're not effective.

They're falling out of the sky on their own. And Israel's taking credit for it. I guarantee you that if there was actual evidence of Israel intercepting these missiles, shooting them down, we'd be seeing it on the highlight reels. Donald Trump would get to watch it in the White House and convince him, oh, yeah, Israel's winning. But Iran continues to launch missiles and not just Iran, Hezbollah in coordination with Iran. And Hezbollah is doing enormous damage to the Israeli military right now as we speak. They've destroyed probably over 20 Merkava tanks in the last week and a half.

They ambushed a significant column of those tanks just two days ago. And so Israel, they're now at the place of trying to call up 400,000 new reservists. Remember, they'd already called up 300,000. And but the chief of staff of the Army has reportedly said, hey, the lights are flashing red. We can't do it. We are breaking our army. So Israel's got some real difficulties in the interior. And as far as our offensive weaponry goes, I think we still got a pretty adequate supply of what are called jasms that are launched from Eric Kraf and can travel about four or five hundred miles in.

the J-dams, those were in short supply. So those are not easily replaced. But the big problems, the supply chain. Because remember, one of the elements that goes into some of these weapons are called computer chips. Well, the helium that comes out of the Persian Gulf frozen up. So no more helium, no more computer chips. Wow, but this was planned by a superstar. What was that word?

What was that word you use? He just put out a piece about himself. The Secretary of War, watch this. We see ourselves as part of this negotiation as well. We negotiate with bombs. Brought to you by Pentagon Productions at the expense of the U.S. taxpayer. Ray, what a disgrace. I wish that were funny, Judge.

We were at the Pentagon this morning. My Catholic worker friends and I was singing Lenton songs like, were you there when you crucified my lord? Were you there when you killed 175 little girls in Nabab? You know, we had good exposure. We got right to the front entrance for the people coming into work. Some of them seem to have their consciences a little awake. But that's what's happening there.

And Hexeth is just the opposite of the way our country used to work. Giving no quarter, showing no mercy. Well, that's going to come to a no good end because we don't have the wherewithal to bail Israel out this time. And what worries me is Israel an extremist will, in my view, likely use nuclear weapons to prevent themselves from being demolished by Iranian missiles and bombs. Is Israel close to extremists, Larry?

Yeah, yeah, they're certainly heading in that direction. I mean, let's remind ourselves that they've been fighting Hamas for two and a half years and have failed, failed to defeat Hamas, even though they had them, they've got them confined in a five-mile by 25-mile concentration camp. But yet the Israelis are too fearful, too cowardly to go in and try to confront Hamas, because Hamas is going to fight back and kill a number of Israelis. So the Israelis just want to kill the Palestinians. They don't want to risk their own blood.

But that's what's happening. And now they've extended the war to Hezbollah and southern Lebanon. So they are stretched beyond their capability. They can for now continue to try to carry out these attacks in Iran. But at some point, I'm hopeful personally that Iran is able to destroy the airfields they're operating from so it'll put an end to that watch the grilling of the undersecretary of state about whether or not Israel has a nuclear has nuclear weapons cut number 19 Chris what is Israel's nuclear capability in terms of weapons I can't

comment on on on on on that specific question you'd have to refer to the Israelis on that Does Israel have nuclear weapons? I'm not prepared to comment on that. You're not prepared to comment on it? It's a very basic question. We are with an ally conducting a war against Iran. This war continues to escalate. Tell us something as Congress, as the oversight body,

what is Israel's nuclear capability in terms of weapons? I can't comment on that specific question. question you'd have to refer to the Israelis on that. Does that mean you don't know? I can't comment on that, sir. You're the main person in charge of knowing this and understanding it. Will you not give us an answer? I don't understand why this issue is so taboo when it's a basic question and we're in a war alongside Israel against Iran. We're dealing with the potential for nuclear fallout. And you won't answer this basic question. Well, again, it would be outside of my purview as the arms control and nonproliferation under Secretary to discuss that specific question.

Sir, that is a dereliction of duty. The answer he gave, I would suggest to you, his perjury. He was under oath. How could it be outside of his purview? That's his job, nonproliferation of nuclear weapons, race. McGovern? Well, there are some things that are taboo, judge, and that's one of them. That was pretty ridiculous, wasn't it? But it shows. It shows what a hold, what a whole state of Israel, as on our policymakers. That's a very senior official in charge of these things, and he can't

admit what everybody knows. And what some statesmen from the U.S. have admitted in the past, Of course, nuclear weapons are in what are in Israel's possession. Some 200 of the most people think. And my God, if you can't admit that now, and Israel thinks that it needs to use them, what kind of impression does Israel get from that? The U.S. will cover for us no matter what. Larry, let me just chime in that, you know,

we're seeing a theme here. We saw it with Tulsi Gabbard. Oh, it's not my job to say there's an imminent threat. I don't know nothing about that. That's for the president to determine. No, that was exactly her job. And here's another example of a guy, this is his job, and he won't do his damn job.

Man, you talk about public welfare. We got all these high-paid government officials that don't do their job. They just get to draw a paycheck. Somebody ought to buy him a comb, I think, before he testified next time. No, no. That was a Boris Johnson hairstyle, though.

Let's not insult or bring. Here's Pat Buchanan in 2012. Not afraid to say what Israel has and how much of it they have. Chris, cut number 15. There are many Americans who genuinely believe that if Iran, they believe Iran is moving toward a weapon. And if it is, they would favor military action to prevent it. There are a number of people that want a war. But is there really a vital thing?

threat coming from Iran as you see it? I don't know. I don't look. Iran is not, Iran, I mean, during the Cold War, with due respect, Soviet Union had thousands of weapons. They could have destroyed us in an afternoon. And we could have done the same thing. I was around during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

That was genuinely terrifying. But Iran doesn't frighten me, and I don't think it should frighten the American people. They don't have a bomb. They don't have, they haven't made a decision to bill one. didn't have the means to deliver one, and the Israelis have 300 atomic bombs. I mean, who presents the existential threat to whom? Iran, they got the Ayatollah, and they got Amadi Najad, and he will always help out the hawks with some insane statement every couple of months. He's going to destroy somebody or other, and then the Americans say we have to get him. What is the danger

of such rhetoric? The danger of such rhetoric is that it leads to another war in the Middle East, which I think would be a disaster for my country. And I think it would be a disaster for the world economy. And I think it would be a disaster for the world. I don't think we can, you can't replicate the Middle West in the Middle East. So who is an existential threat to whom? The most profound thing he said right there. That was 2012.

Nothing has changed. Well, I was around for the Cuban Missile Crisis, too, okay? And I remember I was a second lieutenant at Fort Benning, and all the weapons that we were going to train on were down in Key West. That's how close we came. Now, I remember President Kennedy, eight months later, after he had ducked this nuclear confrontation with Khushchev by adroit diplomacy and personal intervention,

he made a speech, and he said, The main thing now we have to avoid is to prevent any nuclear power to create the kind of threat to another nuclear power that would face that other person, that other nuclear power, with a choice between humiliating defeat and using nuclear weapons. Since then, up until it now, we've had people with nuclear weapons being discreet and being wealth short of the threshold of even threatening to use. them, much less using them. This is new. This is a sea change. Israel has them. We don't admit that they have them. What kind of impression does Israel get from this? They have court blanche. They know it. I'm afraid. If Trump is close to some sort of a deal, and I don't know what it could be, Larry, because you just indicated that the Iranians will not surrender the three points that he wants. regime change, nuclear enrichment for civilian purposes, and ballistic missiles to their

hearts content. So I don't know how there could be a deal. But if we are close to a deal, what would the Israelis do to sabotage the deal? If Trump is about to find an off-ramp, what is Netanyahu going to do? Yeah, they're going to continue to launch attacks against Israel and try maybe including false flags to try to compel us to retaliate and get involved further in this war, which frankly, we cannot, you know, people don't like to hear this, but we cannot win this. So let's take an example. We said, what, we want to all open the straight of four moves. Okay, how do we do that?

Well, that means we have to eliminate Iranian submarines and torpedoes. We have to destroy all of these speedboats, the mosquito boats, I call them, that are buried in the cliffs and in caves that come off of the water where we can't destroy those. That we destroy all of their underwater drones. We destroy their above ground drones. And we destroy their missiles, which are in missile cities underground. Now, we can't do that. Or we could. The way to do that, you have to have like a four or five million man army.

You have to physically invade Iran and risk million plus casualties on our side, not to mention the economic cost in multiple trillions of dollars that would be expended. So, yeah, we could ultimately do that, but at what cost? That's the point. Some things are impossible to do once you realize that the cost is too much. Ray, how does the Kremlin view this war? With great worry, Iran has always been the soft underbelly that Russia fears, the entrance of terrorists, of all manner of threats.

The ironic thing, of course, is that it was through Iran. Iran that we sent billions in billions of two and a half ton trucks and other things during World War II to help Russia win the war. Now Iran has always been a very critical country to make sure that they were not turned into a threat against Russia. So Russia is very concerned. Now, the good news is that concern makes them prepared to act as a middle person with unique contacts with both sides, with the Iranians and with the Israelis. Putin has been careful

to maintain a discreet, a respectable, to the degree it can be respectable with Netanyahu, a link to the Israelis. There are two million Russians in Israel and Iran. Now, the Trump called Putin three weeks ago and said, hey, can you help us out? That's a good sign, because it's going to take that kind of deus ex machina, some miraculous event where somebody with sense, and I would include Vladimir Putin in that, coming in and say, okay, little kids, let's wise up here. There's no profit in continuing this quarrel, stop beating each other. Larry, do you have reason to believe that Putin himself or the Kremlin itself is determined to play some intermediary role? Yeah, there's something happening behind the scenes.

I mean, I know that you and I were supposed to be in Russia with the International Unity Club in mid-April. I know one of our other friends, Pepe Escobar was getting involved with that. And that whole event has been canceled, I'm told. Right. Well, I've been, you know, so, hey, it's off now. And it's off because of the Kremlin's involvement now with respect to the war in Iran. Now, what that means, I don't know. I'm, you know, one, we can come up with a variety, speculated what a variety of outcomes are,

but just to reinforce Ray's point that Iran is very, Russia has a lot of equities on the table with respect to Iran. And I do not believe that Russia is going to stand by and let Iran be destroyed. It doesn't necessarily mean that Russia is going to rush into war. But, you know, the Russians and Chinese, they're recognizing we're at a transition point in history now, much like what happened at the end of World War II. You know, those institutions that came into being, including the United Nations. Most people don't realize that the League of Nations had continued to exist through World War II. It was just irrelevant.

Well, guess what? The United Nations is no longer relevant because the Trump administration has declared, we don't respect international law. There's no such thing as international law. So I think Russia and China are looking actually towards the future where we're going to need a new infrastructure, a new economic infrastructure where the United States can't hold countries hostage, a new international law infrastructure that's actually going to have some teeth to it to prevent nuclear-powered countries like the United States and Israel from attacking a country that doesn't have nuclear weapons.

Here's the rare British general making a lot of sense. The last clip will play. Chris, cut number two. Trump faces two choices. He either doubles down, escalates, and launches an operation to topple the regime. And you're not going to do that without an extraordinary, massive land force marching on Tehran, which I think is inconceivable. The other alternative is Trump says, I've declared victory.

I'm going to walk away from this. But that's not going to fool anyone. Trump will be humiliated in doing so. There you go. He summarized it up very nicely. Gentlemen, thank you very much for your time. I know you're both traveling, and I appreciate deeply you're taking this time out late in the day on Friday afternoon. We'll look forward to seeing you both in your usual spot.

So there's that cartoon you mentioned, Larry. For those of you who are taking this show audio only, it's Trump on the couch and the shrink says, the Iranians you've been talking to for the past two days. Are they in the room with us now? Have a great weekend, guys. Thank you very much. All the best. Thank you, Jim.

Thank you. Coming up on Monday, Alster Crook, Larry Johnson, Ray McGovern, and probably in the afternoon, if we can find him, Jeff's professor Jeffrey Sachs. Thank you for watching. Have a great weekend. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.