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

Episode Date: May 3, 2024

INTEL Roundtable w/ Johnson & McGovern : Weekly Intel Wrap UpSee 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, February 3rd, 2024. It's the end of the day. It's the end of the week. It's time for our Intelligence Community Roundtable with Larry Johnson and Ray McGovern. My dear friends, welcome back to the show. Thank you very much. Since we were together last on Monday, there have been, of course, great conflagrations on college campuses, mainly University of Texas, where the governor, without a request from the president of the university, sent 100 Texas Rangers in on horseback to rough up students. Columbia University, where the mayor, in response to a request from the president of Columbia, sent 1,000 SWAT-clad police, one of whom just discharged his weapon, he claims, by accident, and UCLA,

where Palestinian protesters were attacked by Jewish protesters, and the police, of course, came in and arrested the Palestinian protesters. Let me start with you, Ray. Do you think Intel, whether it's CIA, NSA, or whoever, has anything to do with what's going on in the college campuses today? would consider the distinctive characteristic of these demonstrations as composed with the Vietnam demonstrations, for example, anti-Vietnam demonstrations, is that this time these young people don't have any skin in the game. There's no draft. They're not about to be sent to Vietnam. They don't have to choose between jail and Vietnam. They choose to be there because it's the right thing to do, because genocide should be on the pale of what America should be supporting. And they're not going to stop, really. They're not going to stop until there's a ceasefire, until there's a stop in the genocide. And so people need to be aware

of this. This is an altruistic sort of thing with young people, a joy to behold, having the interests of others halfway around the world as their own. Larry, Professor Sachs and Mearsheimer both made the same observation that there is no draft. These are moral and ideological objections to the concept of war crimes, genocide and slaughter of innocents. to you. Would intel play any role here as far as you can tell? I think I know the answer to this, and I'm going to play a clip which will reveal it, but this is local intel. I'm talking about the NSA or the CIA. Yeah, I don't think NSA or CIA necessarily would be involved, perhaps NSA, trying to identify if there's, quote, outside agitators. But I think clearly FBI intelligence is involved, and I wouldn't be shocked to find out that the FBI has actually planted instigators inside these student groups, individuals just like as we saw on January 6th who were directed to try to create an incident, to create a situation,

to encourage people to engage in illegal acts in order so that they would have a predicate for prosecuting. What happens on the scene if an undercover FBI agent is an instigator and gets arrested by the NYPD and he tells them he's FBI? They're going to say, yeah, pal, there's a bridge in Brooklyn. I'll sell you. You're going to Rikers Island with everybody else. Is there some code word or phrase or mechanism that they can use to communicate with each other, Larry? It doesn't matter. Larry, go ahead. You're ready. Well, yeah, no. There's FBI liaison with the New York City Police Department.

In fact, remember, as Max Blumenthal reported, that one Columbia University professor who's deeply embedded both with the FBI. So they'll have a way to communicate and to identify. You saw the same phenomenon again on January 6th with respect to the Trump supporters. You had this one fellow in particular, Ray Epps, who was a former Marine. And man, he was encouraging people to go into the Capitol and to do violence. And it took months before they decided to make a show arrest of him, but he never really got charged anywhere near like anybody else. So those individuals, they receive protection. Ray, on the false flag agitators.

Well, all they do is they say, call this number. And the police, most of them will recognize that that's a very important number. And they'll leave the guy alone, or they'll cart him off, probably, to make sure that nobody notices that he's exempt from these tough handling. So, you know, it's pretty inbred. And it goes back to George Tenet, when he was head of the CIA, he appointed one of his lieutenants, a fellow named David Cohen, who went up to New York as soon as he retired after 35 years as head of CIA operations, go up and run the NYPD's intelligence unit as commissioner for intelligence, 2002 until 2013. This Columbia adjunct professor, Weiner, I guess is her name, is a direct descendant of this kind of infiltration. She's got a day job, right?

I was an adjunct. The Latin means jumiere, to join and to join to. So you join to the university. You don't have to be a professor. You don't even have to know a lot, but you teach a course or so. Well, her day job, what's her night job? She's running the intelligence operations for NYPD.

And it was she who said to the president of Colombia, look, now's the time. Call them and they'll be all ready. They'll come in a thousand strong. It's pretty bad. The CIA and the FBI and the other, the CIA in particular is not supposed to be involved in this kind of thing. Well, CIA's charter prohibits it from engaging in surveillance in the U.S. We know that's a joke. And it prohibits it from being involved in law enforcement. We know that's a joke. But before we get into that, cut number nine, here's this Professor Weiner. This is not about students

expressing ideas. It is about a change in tactics that presents a concern and a normalization and mainstreaming of rhetoric. And I'm not just talking about language. I'm now talking about tactics. And that's what shifted our response yesterday. But a normalization and mainstreaming of rhetoric associated with terrorism that has now become pretty common on college campuses, right? You see people wearing headbands associated with foreign terrorist organizations. This happened in October when you had a viral TikTok reissuing of Osama bin Laden's 2002 letter to America. So that's a larger concern. It's separate from what happened yesterday.

But they're related. We do not want ideas. We do not want campuses, which are where people are supposed to be learning and being in a conducive environment for all of the things that we do in schools, being turned into places where people are committing vandalism, property damage, and committing crimes. This despicable human being was a spy on her own students. I can't imagine she's still an adjunct at Columbia after coming out. Listen to what she objects to. Rhetoric, ideas, posting of a speech by Osama bin Laden on TikTok. All of that in her mind justifies the type of overwhelming violent assault, Larry, that the NYPD, dressed in their SWAT team garb, visited on these kids. Yeah, no, there's an enormous amount of propaganda driving this to shape people's public perception.

And it includes with the word, you know, Hamas, this international terrorist organization. Well, the fact of the matter is it isn't. And it's not me saying that. It's the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Israel, by their own data, that demonstrates that. Hamas is not in the same category as ISIS or Al-Qaeda. And I noted how Weiner conflates Osama bin Laden with Hamas, because Hamas was not this totally Sunni, Salafist-directed organization. They're not an arm of the Muslim Brothers, as is Palestinian Islamic Jihad. And yet, they're lumped together. And when you actually look at the

terrorist attacks they've carried out, you find that 50% of them were directly against people wearing uniforms and carrying guns. Well, that's not terrorism. That's called war. It's insurgency. My ancestors did the same thing to Brits, you know, 250 years ago. So, you know, don't tell me that that's terrorism. And then the significant number of the other attacks were against settlers in the West Bank who were stealing Palestinian land. So the situation is a

lot more complex, but we use the terrorist label to immediately discredit without it trying to understand what's at the foundation of this violence. If it truly was, oh, they just hate Jews for being Jews. Well, that's not what's going on because we have Jews who are protesting the extremist policies of the Zionists. Quite a difference between Jews and Zionists. Professor Mearsheimer, Ray, says that the protesters at the University of Chicago are themselves overwhelmingly Jewish. Is the Israeli government trying to suppress free speech in the United States using its acolytes like AIPAC? I think the answer to that is obvious, but I'll let you run with that ball, Larry.

Ray, excuse me. We actually saw Netanyahu on one of those clips just a couple of days ago saying that this is unconscionable and you have to stop it interfering in our affairs. Osama bin Laden. Whoa. our affairs. Osama bin Laden. Whoa. A tape about Osama bin Laden? Larry mentioned the fundamentals of why this stuff happens, why terrorists act like terrorists. Well, Osama bin Laden explained why.

This may be the tape. I think it probably is, where he said, you know, there was a camel being beaten terribly by this man, just being beaten to a pulp, and another camel came up and knocked him over and trampled him to death. That's the metaphor for what's happening to Palestine at the hands of the Jewish people who are bringing them to death. And that's why there's going to be real trouble. Now, if Osama bin Laden is given that chance to air that kind of thing, well, to the degree it's true, and it is largely true, this is a reaction to what the state of Israel has been imposing upon the Palestinians since 1948. Chris, can you post the AIPAC list? Congressman Biggs was on with us yesterday. You'll see him up there in the middle list at the top. These are members of the Senate. It's an interesting group,

Larry and Ray, Blackburn, Barrasso, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Bob Menendez, who voted against aid to Israel. The list in the House is those who opposed aid to Israel, the most recent aid. The ones in the House also voted against the resolution purporting to define anti-Semitism and purporting to declare, I don't think the Senate's going to pass this, that anybody engaged in anti-Semitism on a college campus can trigger the withdrawal of federal funds for the college. But if you see their names, like look under Marsha Blackburn on the upper left, or look under Ralph Norman on the upper right. You see that's white, it's blank there. There used to be boxes that you could click on,

which would automatically debit your credit card and send donations directly to those candidates through APEC. The Haaretz is up there because they published this list, but now these people, because they voted in favor of the Constitution, have been deplatformed. Are you surprised, Larry Johnson? Oh, no. Hey, these guys are playing hardball. AIPAC says, hey, this is the best Congress money can buy. We paid for it. By God, you guys better pony up and do what we paid you for. And so it was good. I was glad to see Congressman Biggs yesterday, you know, acknowledge that, hey, there are certain principles I'm not going to prostitute myself for.

And that's what we're really talking about here. This is political prostitution in its grandest form. And it should be illegal. But boy, it's rampant in Washington, D.C. Because these people getting paid is all about getting elected. I mean, it's a money deal. I saw that firsthand from Rahm Emanuel, of all people. Before we get into him, if it's worth getting into him,

Chris, can you run the clip from Congressman Biggs, please? Chris, do we have it? All right. I guess we don't. Let's get to the current state of affairs in Israel. What will happen, Ray, if Netanyahu invades Rafah and slaughters another 30,000 civilians. Those young people will never leave the campuses. Biden will be faced with something totally unexpected. A whole bunch of people who care about other people.

Okay. That's countercultural in Washington. Okay. A lot of people don't like the fact that our country is enabling, arming, permitting genocide. I mean, what could be clearer? And so what Biden's going to face is the kind of situation where if Bibi Netanyahu goes into Rafa as he threatens he's going to do and decimates that population. Well, what's Biden going to do? Is he going to say, well, I told Tony Blinken to tell him not to do that,

and Blinken went over there seven times. I guess it's his country, so to speak. It's going to be very embarrassing, particularly in an election year where however much impact it can give to Biden and to his associates, I'm not sure it'll be enough this time to counter the very moral feelings of most of the American population. And it's good to see the young people representing that. Larry, I've been asking this all week. If the IDF goes into Rafah and slaughters 30,000, and there's 1,250,000 civilians jammed in there, will this be enough to cause any state actor in the region, or for that matter, anywhere on the planet, to enter the fray to resist the Israeli military? Probably not. But what we have seen is Turkey already has reversed its position

where Erdogan was talking tough but doing nothing. Now they've cut off and they're suspending trade, and it could lead also to suspending oil shipments. I think what we're seeing, though, Judge, is a complete narrative flip. You and I and Ray, our generations, we grew up with the Leon Uris, Dalton Trumbo, Exodus with Paul Newman and Eva Marie Saint. And that portrayed Israel as this valiant little David fighting against this nasty big Goliath, the nasty Arabs. They even engrave, you know, the end of the movie of Exodus,

the nice little blonde girl gets raped and murdered. And that's those nasty Arabs. So that, you know, that's been sort of the dominant theme and Apex played off of it. But now this current generation with TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, they're not beholden to that. And so Israel is no longer the little David. Israel's the Goliath. Israel's the rapist. Israel's the murderer. Israel's the killer of children. That's what they're seeing on their social media platforms, which completely counters what has been the dominant presentation by AIPAC in this country over the last 60 years.

And so the reality for Israel right now is another five to 10 years, they're not going to have the kind of position they've had in the United States. It is flipping. And that's because this generation currently, as they grow older, their children, the brothers and sisters behind them, they're going to see this entirely in a different light. There's no way to hide the murder of these Palestinian children that has been going on. Chris, do we have the clip from Congressman Biggs? Okay, run it, please. I have to ask sort of a personal question. You have received campaign contributions from AIPAC.

Will you suffer now because of your vote against the aid to Ukraine, Taiwan, and Israel? I believe so, yes. Let me just tell you, before I took the vote on the aid, I had a donor who's a friend, and he's a donor. He called, and he was bent out of shape. And so we all face that. I mean, this is the reality.

We face that. This is a money town. This is a company town. This is a cartel in Washington, D.C. And when you step outside of the cartel and you try and, which is, by the way, that's what largely with the Freedom Caucus is largely what Thomas wants to do. So many of us are outside of that cartel to try to restore what we think are the proper bounds of government, which is the Constitution. You suffer a price. We've got people who joined me who are now facing people that have been promised $3 million to run campaigns against them. I've seen the ad buys that have come out against some of my colleagues who have taken these stands with me. Member of Congress referring to the unholy alliance between AIPAC and the Congress as a cartel, Ray McGovern. Money speaks. That's how you get elected. That's why you

appropriate still more money for the military industrial complex and 3.8 billion every year for Israel. I mean, that's the state of affairs. Now, I think Larry is right. It's changing, and that's a good sign. And these students are sort of the embodiment of this change. The other thing I'll make, the other point I'll make is the widespread disappointment, especially among the Palestinians, with the cowardice, and that's the word, the cowardice of Arab governments not to come to their aid, to suppress the Palestinians that live in their countries and not allow any freedom of dissent or anything like that.

Well, we have Turkey now cutting off trade. We also have Hezbollah. We also have the Houthis. And I would expect if you're looking for a military, a violent reaction to what the Israelis seem bent on doing to the rest of the Palestinians in Rafah, look north to Hezbollah and look to the Houthis to cause even more trouble with shipping in the Red Sea and elsewhere. Do you see, Larry, a regional conflagration coming just because the cowardly Arab leadership, as Ray quite properly characterizes it, will not be able to keep down the anger and the passion

of their peoples, particularly if another 30,000 are slaughtered in Rafah? Actually, I think the risk of that is now diminishing for this reason. Not that there's that level of anger that you correctly note, but the capability. We've not really said much about what's happening to Israel's economy. They're in a freefall. The imports through shipping lanes have been cut off, at least up through the Red Sea. They've got a significant number of their labor force that are involved with military activities. They've got significant portions of the northern parts of Israel that they're uninhabitable now by them because Hezbollah has taken effective control of them. So Israel is not functioning as normal.

And so, yeah, they've got the anger, but they don't have the manpower and logistics depth to expand this conflict. Because if they do, I mean, if they decide to go in and invade southern Lebanon, they've been talking about that now for five months, and it hasn't happened. Ditto with Rafah. Yeah, we're going to go get Rafah. Yeah, we're going to go get months, and it hasn't happened. Ditto with RAFA.

Yeah, we're going to go get RAFA. Yeah, we're going to go get RAFA. Hasn't happened yet. And I think what they're coming up against is, despite all the logistical support of the West, they're still, they run into some of their own difficulties in sustaining efforts, sustaining combat operations. And so I think that may be what's giving them pause. Ray, one of the right-wing fanatics in the Prime Minister Netanyahu's government,

Itamar Ben-Gavir, who has the job that is the rough equivalent of the head of the FBI for Israel, I'm not sure what his job is called, has complained that Israeli jails are packed to the gills with Palestinian prisoners and has suggested in order to make more room for new prisoners that the prisoners there be taken out and shot. I couldn't imagine as crazy and unaware of the Constitution as Chris Wray is, I couldn't imagine him making a statement like that and keeping his job. Is this guy serious? Well, he's serious, and that seriously reflects the degree or the tenor of things in Tel Aviv or West Jerusalem, whatever you want to call it. The guys are berserk. And despite the International Court of Justice calling them out on these

statements, they continue to make them. And I would add, not only in West Jerusalem, but in the Senate of the United States, where Senator Time Cotton is saying, look, these demonstrators, if they inconvenience you, stop their car. If it's on a highway, a bridge, throw them over the bridge. If they continue to impede you and they have glued their hands to the pavement, it's going to hurt. But cut that glue off. Yeah, it will hurt, and make sure you deal with them. That's the way we would handle it in Arkansas. So it's getting pretty bad, Judge, and I think that these kids, to the degree they could keep their composure and act in the best traditions of Dr. King and the others nonviolently.

I think that's the best hope right now, and I applaud them. Larry, I don't think Ray exaggerated one iota. I think he quoted Senator Cotton verbatim. It's hate speech, and it's speech that commands violence. It's absolutely protected speech. But if the students had said what Senator Cotton had said, the administrators would call in the police, just as Professor Undercover Cop Spy Weiner wants them to do. Yeah, hypocrisy is one of the great currencies of Capitol Hill and of being in the Senate. You mentioned Itamar Ben-Gavir, you know, the guy who ran a stoplight in Israel and his car got flipped and I think he got a couple of broken ribs out of it. So his policymaking skills are about as good as his driving skills.

And I've said he's in contention for the Rudolf Hoerst Humanitarian Award. Rudolf Hoerst, for those that are not familiar with him, he was the commandant of Auschwitz-Birkenau and oversaw the murder of about 2 million Jews. So it's in that great tradition that Itamar Ben-Gavir is proposing shooting unarmed Palestinians. It's just it's so despicable and disgusting. You can't make this up. I mean, this this is like something out of a bad Hollywood script. And yet here they are, living, breathing human beings, advocating things that no decent person ever would advocate. Gentlemen, thank you very much. Thank you for your time. I am off to Italy on Tuesday next week,

but all of our superstars are on on Monday. We have 10 shows, and of course, the two of you are on at your usual times. I don't know what my voice will be like at the end of the day. Poor Chris and Sonia will be exhausted as well. We're trying to cram nearly a full week's worth in on one day. Except for the Colonel who gets his usual time on

Tuesday right before I take off for JFK. I'm glad that he's able to join us. Thank you, gentlemen. Have a great weekend. We'll see you at your usual times on Monday. All the best. Thanks, Judge. So we do have a show remaining for you, which is me. I'm going to give a brief lecture, a brief history, philosophical, historical, and legal on the freedom of speech in America. And then your questions on Ask the Judge, 5.30 Eastern today. We'll see you then. Judge

Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thanks for watching!