Judging Freedom - INTEL Roundtable w/ Johnson & McGovern : Weekly Intel Wrap

Episode Date: June 28, 2024

INTEL Roundtable w/ Johnson & McGovern : Weekly Intel WrapSee 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 Friday, June 28th, 2024. It's the end of the day. It's the end of the week. It's the end of the month. How better to get together on this than with my two buddies, longtime collaborators, my intelligence community experts, Ray McGovern and Larry Johnson. Thank you, gentlemen. Thanks for your time here. Thanks for the double duty you do every week. The audience is very appreciative. You know that your numbers are terrific. And this particular show on Friday afternoon has a lot of people waiting for it and draws a substantial crowd. Ray, to you first, does the attack on the Sevastopol beach, however it happened, changed the relationship between Russia and the United States in a meaningful way. It almost did. In other words, the good sign is that someone told Lloyd Austin, our Secretary of Defense, to call his opposite number, Balo Usoov, and get back in contact where military seniors can talk about what's going on.

That's the first time since the Ides of March last year, 15th of March, last time that Shoigu, the Russian defense minister, talked with his opposite number, Lloyd Austin. So that's a ray of hope. It looks like Austin and his military colleagues are thinking, well, do we really want to get into a hostility, an open hostility with Russia? What do they mean when they say that that strike on Sevastopol will not go unanswered? So that's the good news. That's why I say almost. There are other signs that are just cutting in the other direction, indicating that there's a lot of friction, a lot of difference within the U.S. Biden team as well. We have the announcement

that U.S. contractors now will be openly sent to Ukraine. That looks like it's going to happen. That will be a problem, even though they looks like it's going to happen. That will be a problem, even though they don't have the kind of boots on the ground that a uniform is on top of. So, Larry, when the Foreign Minister Lavrov says to the U.S. ambassador in Moscow, we are no longer at peace. I mean, what is that? Is that diplomat speak for we're at war? Almost.

And let's get some, there's some new detail out about the Austin Belasov phone call. Please. The Minister of Defense informed Lloyd Austin, any American drone that comes into the Baltic, the Black Sea is going to be shot down. He said that issue was issued yesterday, late in the day. That's exactly what Belosov told him. And this is as a result of what happened last Sunday on the beach. Yes, yes. You know, we had speculated before the possibility of the Russians imposing a no-fly zone.

And, you know, I know that there were some out in the punditry community that said, oh, they don't think Russia go that far. Well, they went that far yesterday. Belosov issued orders to the military, basically, take out the drones. He didn't say shoot them down. He just said we've got to stop them from operating in this area. Suppose an American manned jet is over the Black Sea. Does it get taken down? Possibly.

So the Russians aren't playing. And I think the way it was communicated to Austin was in such a way that he understood what this dovetails with Lavrov telling, you know, Ambassador Tracy, we're no longer at peace. OK, and then this is followed up. I don't know what motivated Austin. He may have realized that, hey, you know, the United States, we may have some trouble. Maybe they maybe they did not deliberately target the beach. But you know what?

It doesn't matter. That woman in Virginia, whose six-year-old kid went to school, shot the teacher. It didn't matter whether the mother told the kid, hey, go to school and shoot the teacher. She put the gun, a loaded gun in the kid's hands and the kid was able to act. The United States put a loaded gun in the hands of the Ukrainians and they attacked Russian civilians on a beach. That's the bottom line. So Ray, how far up the food chain was the decision made to give cluster bombs to the Ukrainians, and who authorized American personnel to download data from the satellite, top secret data, and configure it on the computer so that the cluster bomb would go off over the beach. Judge, our military takes its orders from our

civilians like Blinken and Sullivan. Those are the people who authorized all this. The attack don't make any sense without surveillance information and from targeting information from U.S. satellites. That's why the Russians made a very big thing of this. Whether that one thing was a mistake or not, the Russians had a choice. They interpreted it as, as Larry said, rank incompetence, rank brinksmanship. Now, in my view, it's clear that Belausuf called or someone in the Kremlin said, hey, we want to talk to somebody. We don't want to talk to Blinken, for God's sake. Lavrov has finished with him. Let us talk to your defense minister. Would he please call? And as I understand it, Austin called Belausuf, and Larry's information is new to me. What's not so new is something I picked up

yesterday, and it has to do with two warships declared one week ago to the Turkish authorities on their way through the Dardanelles and the Bosporus toward the Black Sea. Larry, perhaps you've heard about that, but nobody's mentioned that in any... These are American warships or Turkish warships? American warships. Now, Larry, have you heard about that? No, I have not. Well, here's Ryabkov talking about what's going to happen.

Ryabkov, of course, is a deputy foreign minister, and he's been doing a lot of the spade work for Lavrov. He says, look, there's nothing, absolutely nothing for American warships to be doing near our shores. There's a high risk of unspecified incidents here. We warn the United States, this is a quote, we warn the United States, it would be really better for them to stay away from Crimea and our Black Sea coast, end quote. It would be for their own good, end quote again. Now, unless I'm reading something from two years ago, that's big, because this happened before. And what I'm referring to is when Biden called up Putin on the 13th of April, 2021, okay? And he said, look, you know, we're worried about all these troop formations in Ukraine. And Putin said, yeah, we're worried about Zelensky talking about open war to get back Crimea and everything else. And besides that,

we're worried, Mr. President, about you sending two warships into the Black Sea. Don't do it. Biden said, oh, well, I'll talk to my Navy. But oh, by the way, let's have a summit. Now, that's when the idea of a summit came up. That's the first and only in-person summit that Putin and Biden had on June 16th. So that was April 13th. Now, what did Biden do? He called the Navy and said, hey, it would be better to tell those ships to go to Greece and have a nice R&R. The beaches are nicer in Greece than they are in the Black Sea. That's what happened. We're going to have to see what happens this time. Larry, is this American crowd, whether it's Blinken, Austin, Biden, put aside his personal mental deficiencies, do they understand that the Russians don't bluff? No, no, absolutely not.

But it does appear, you know, there's some sort of a dawning realization of how much trouble they're in in Ukraine. I don't know if you saw the latest video from our friend Volodymyr Zelensky. Oh, we did. Yeah. Let me play it for you now, because he does show lament and regret and sadness and recognizes how degraded his military is. Chris, we have that shot. We have to find and to prepare this plan and to put this plan on the table during months. We don't have too much time because we have a lot of, you know, a lot of wounded and dead people on the battlefield and through civilians. That's why we don't want to have this war during years. So that's why we want to prepare this joint plan, put it on the table to the

second summit, second peace summit. Put aside that what he's going to put on the table as a non-starter, is the fact that he's talking like that significant of anything. Oh, absolutely. We don't have much time. Really? Huh, there's a new tune. And we have a lot of wounded and dead people on the battlefield.

Okay, you're finally, instead of pushing out his traditional propaganda, that it's the Russians who got all these dead and wounded on the battlefield. He's admitting they don't. And when you look at the expression on his face, he is a frightened man. He realizes he's in trouble. The clock is ticking. He's got limited time. That's why he said, we don't have much time.

He didn't, he wasn't saying, man, we are beating those Russians. They are on the run. We're doing so well. Things are great, as he has in the past. This was a both-fuss, an about turn.

I guess as Annalena Baerbach calls it, a 360. Yeah. 180. Right. It's supposed to be 180, but in her mind it's a 360. Ray, what is American Intel reporting to their superiors now, whether it goes to Langley and is filtered and spun before it goes to the White House or whether it goes directly to the White House? What are they reporting? Well, American intel in the old analysis shop where I work,

the political strategic intelligence, has been suborned by people, put in by people like Fiona Hill, people like Angela Stent, they were the chief national intelligence officers for the USSR and for Russia, okay? And that's what, so the people that were recruited then worked for them. What's important here is who does the military analysis? Now, Austin's people have to be telling him, look, if you send those destroyers into the Black Sea, there's going to be trouble. I mean, we can't vouch for what the Russians are going to do anymore. And if you send drones, no matter how sophisticated, if they're unmanned, they're likely to be shut down right now because we have that warning. So they'll tell him that. Now, these people that talk about we will prevail, take Fiona Hill.

End of January 2021, Putin is trying to push us out of Europe. He wants to tell us, get out of here and don't let the door hit you behind as you go out. And there's this picture in the New York Times of these six cowering US presidents and Putin shutting the door. Okay. Now, three months later, I'm going to send and Fiona Hill find out that the Russians agreed not to go farther. The Russians agreed with the Ukrainians, and we have the chief negotiator for Ukraine admitting this, not to go any farther, so long as Ukraine agrees not to be part of NATO, okay? That deal was signed, that was initialed, and what happened, we know, Boris Johnson came in on behalf of the US and the UK and put the kibosh on that. The problem is American people don't know that.

Even the New York Times that has published a whole bunch of stuff on this has disguised the fact that it wasn't near completion. It was completed until the US and the UK put the kibosh on it. Larry, how far up the food chain would the decision have been made, A, to authorize American contractors on the ground armed in Ukraine, and B, to use cluster bombs toward a beach on a Sunday afternoon in Sevastopol? Well, with respect to the contractors, the news report is saying that Biden's got to sign off on this. I view that story with a lot of skepticism because I call it intelligence with a purpose. We've had contractors there for over two and a half years.

They have been CIA contractors. They've been classified under classified status. So they've not been openly disclosed. So I think the reason that the Biden administration is now wanting to openly and issue unclassified contracts to defense contractors is because either there have been, or they know that there will be casualties among these people and they won't be able to hide it.

So, you know, this is, this is a little bit of political. So, you know, this is a little bit of political theater, because, you know, it's not like they're going to be- Can some general just go out and sign a contract with Blackwater, or does it have to be approved by the Secretary of Defense? Well, again, they've got to get Biden to sign off on it, saying that it's okay to do it. And then after that point, yeah, they'll be able to sign up these contracts.

It'll probably be handled through UCOM. Okay. Now, how about the cluster bombs on a Sunday afternoon over a beach? Yeah, that's down from you've got intel analysts, military analysts who are receiving the satellite and ISR data, the intelligence surveillance reconnaissance data. They're transmitting that to either the Ukrainians or to other Americans working with the Ukrainians

that are inputting that into the guidance systems. Then at that point, it's the Ukrainian decision to launch. So whether, again, it doesn't matter. People try to say, well, you know, the United States didn't necessarily give that order. It does not matter. Just as, you know, the mother that allowed her six-year-old son to go to school with a loaded handgun. Right, right, right. You know, it didn't matter whether she told him to do it or not.

She allowed it to happen. We're allowing this to happen. Well, I would argue that it's more than allowing, Larry, because of the necessity for an American with a top secret security clearance to download codes from a satellite. Right. Right. Yeah. So, I mean, it's even a step beyond, sure, negligence. This is active complicity. We are accessories to a crime. Go ahead. Go ahead, Ray.

Yeah, I think we need to step back here and put this in context. When that terrible incident at that concert happened a couple of months ago. The Russians threatened retaliation, and the head of Russian intelligence accused the U.S. of being involved with the Ukrainians, okay? Now, what happened? There was retaliation in the form of bigger bombs and louder bombs and more bombs in Ukraine. Ukraine is where the Russians have the upper hand. And now we talked about these 2,000-pound bombs going to Israel, right? Well, would you believe 6,000 three-ton bombs going to Ukraine, like down on Ukraine? That's what's happening now.

And their energy system, their electrical supply system is being decimated. It looks like maybe 60, 70% so far. So this kind of retaliation is what the Russians prefer. And as things go along here with the attrition, attrition, attrition, the Russians are welcoming Ukrainian troops to fight against and decimate. And the Russians are, to my mind, suffering very few casualties. They're prepared to wait this out. They have the option of going farther, but there's no point in a big arrow offensive right now. Wait until Biden either doesn't run

or they see who else is coming. They'll make that calculation when it's necessary. Chris, play cut number 10 and then right after it, cut number 11. This is the Russian ambassador to the UN condemning what happened on Sevastopol and stating affirmatively and clearly, we know the involvement of the Americans. 10 and then 11. Kiev regime supported by the USA and carried out a heinous attack against civilians in the Russian city of Sevastopol in Crimea. Ukraine launched five US supplied attack MS missiles armed with cluster munitions. An American Global Hawk UAV was patrolling the airspace over the Crimean Peninsula.

There will be measures in response. The Russian Federation will continue to protect its people and its national security until no threat is posed by the neo-Nazi regime in Kyiv that was breeded, raised and financed by the West. Recent actions by the West when they permitted Kiev to attack targets inside the Russian territory, their missions, their personnel, including military personnel, that is helping and directing Ukrainians in operating their weapon systems that they supply. These are steps that definitely lead to the escalation.

We do not deliberately target any civilian infrastructure in Ukraine. Only that infrastructure that relates to the military-industrial complex of Ukraine. We do not bomb cities. We do not bomb cities. We do not bomb civilians. So that's it. We are not doing what Israel is doing in Gaza. Sounds like you know, sounds like the Russians know exactly what's going on.

The FSB knows exactly where the American drones were and when they were activated and what drones were used and how they downloaded data from the satellite. So anybody like Larry's analogy with the woman giving the gun to her child, anybody that seriously claims the United States is not responsible for what happened on the beach in Sevastopol is grossly negligent in their understanding of what happened. Correct me if I'm wrong. The response by the U.S., by a Charlie, a major Charlie Dietz from the Pentagon, that we don't, you know, we're not responsible for targeting these things. The Ukrainians do this all by themselves. Well, that was so outlandish, okay? So outlandish that that, I think, required this overture to Defense Secretary Austin. Look, we need to talk to you, not some major who's saying things that aren't really believable. Now, on the other side, the diplomatic side, Lavrov was asked a day before this, well, what about these backdoor, what about these black, these blackdoor negotiations that are going on, that Cy Hersh says are going on underneath?

He says there aren't any. There are no contacts at all. A day later, Austin gets a call. Well, let's have contacts. So the good news is the contacts, the bad news is a lot of guys in Washington who just as soon push up until we're involved in some kind of armed conflict with Russia. Yeah. All right, Larry, I want to switch gears. How dangerous and reckless is it for Netanyahu

and the IDF to be threatening Hezbollah? Colonel McGovern reports that the Israelis are sending out messages on the internet, we're going to destroy you, we're going to destroy your homes, we're going to level you. And Gallant was quoted as saying, we're going to bring them back into the Stone Age.

Yeah, well, hey, they've been unable to do that to Hamas, and Hamas did not have, actually, an organized army like Hezbollah does. Hamas does not have the array of weaponry, both missiles, rockets,

medium-term, long-range that Hezbollah has. And Israel hasn't been able to defeat them by the own admission of the Israeli commander-in-chief of the army. And I view Netanyahu as he's a suicide bomber wearing a suit. And from the standpoint of being a suicide bomber, he's going to blow up Israel in his quest to, quote, defeat Hezbollah. You know, he's absolutely delusional.

And, you know, whenever you see a bully who's actually being very abusive and hurting so many other people, there's always that part of you that likes to see the bully get his comeuppance. Yeah. And, you know, there's that part of me, I, you know, candidly admit that I don't want to see the number of people in southern Lebanon killed. But if Israel dares to go in there, Israel is going to get more than a bloody nose. I think the very existence of the state of Israel could be put in jeopardy because of the

devastating defeat that they will suffer and the damage that'll be inflicted throughout Israel because Hezbollah, they're not this group of this ragtag band of guys wearing a green headband, running around in sandals and carrying a curved knife like the Houthis. These guys are some formidable fighters, expensive combat experience, well-equipped, well-trained. And candidly, Israel has never fought a force like this in its entire history. Just like to add a little wrinkle to what Larry said about Hezbollah, I think he's absolutely right in terms of the way they're armed now and how they're a more formidable force than when they beat Israel the last time in 2006. Delusional? I don't know. Crazy? Crazy like a fox. Tell me what American intel is either advising Langley or advising the Mossad. Is American

intel saying what Larry said, you guys are crazy to take on Hezbollah, or is American intel tailoring their intel to please the purchaser of it? I can't be sure, but my experience is that it's the latter, okay? The people analyzing Israel are carefully chosen to be pro-Israeli and to mouth what they're told by Mossad and others. The point that I was trying to make here is that, you know, as I see Netanyahu, he's crazy like a fox. OK, what he anticipates is he goes against Hezbollah and it's a bad experience. Who is going to help? Who has incentive to help? The U.S. It's an election year. The way Netanyahu gauges it, the U.S. can't not help if Biden or whoever the Democratic nominee is, they expect to win. So the U.S US will be forced to come in and maybe the US will even be forced to

hit out against Iran. Now, who's negotiating all this? A fellow named Amos Hochstein. We know who he is, yeah. Well, unlike Blinken and Sullivan, he wore a uniform. He was in the army, right? It's just that it was too early. Rarely early. So he's the honest broker here. And what he's been telling the Lebanese is, look, we don't control what the Israelis do. So, you know, if they do this big offense, don't blame us. That's crazy. That's disingenuous.

And Hezbollah, of of course is on to all this hezbollah can can respond respond in a very measured way or a very overwhelming way that's the difference between now and a decade ago wow gentlemen i'll let you go thank you very much we have a short week next week because uh thursday is the fourth of of July and we're off on Friday as well. But we'll look forward to getting you on in times that are convenient for you and for our team. The audience loves you. I love you. Thank you very much for all your time. Have a great weekend. Great. See you Monday. Thank you. Thank you. All the best. A short week next week, but we will bring you all of our first three guests Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.

Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. We'll be right back. Resolve to earn your degree in the new year in the Bay with WGU. WGU is an online accredited university that specializes in personalized learning. With courses available 24-7 and monthly start dates, you can earn your degree on your schedule. You may even be able to graduate sooner than you think by demonstrating mastery of the material you know. Make 2025 the year you focus on your future. Learn more at wgu.edu.