Judging Freedom - INTEL Roundtable w/ Johnson & McGovern : Weekly Wrap 20-June

Episode Date: June 21, 2025

INTEL Roundtable w/ Johnson & McGovern : Weekly Wrap 20-JuneSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

you Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Friday, June 20th, 2025. It's the end of the day, the end of the week, our favorite time, our favorite program. It's the Intelligence Community Roundtable with Ray McGovern and Larry Johnson. They're both here. But first, this. Hey.

In a dusty land of silence and smoke, seven men row in. Not with guns but truth. They don't shoot. They expose, they don't run. They reveal. Judge Knapp in black robes like a drifter tells the Hill boys, your war's got no scripture. Giraldy, rogue agent turned sage.

Blue to whistle turned the page. McGregor rides quiet, calm in the storm Strategic mind, where new wars are born Scott Ritter, the lone scout on the ridge Called out the lies from Iraq to the bridge They are the seven, not of blood but of honor Truth is their horse, justice their armor They walk where the powers crawl, stand where the towers fall

Larry Johnson, no suit, no spin, Intel goes to won't let the liar win Wilkinson, grizzled, stripped of the chain, but still marching with righteous disdain Matt Garvin, last of the Watchers, still still free Says what no spook's supposed to see All seven dust in their coat, fire in their voice Didn't pick this fight, they had no choice No studio, no stage lights, no script Just men who knew the wires were flipped Truth ain't clean, it limps and bleeds But these seven saw old rebel seeds The Magnificent Seven, no bullets, no kill, just war on the lie and iron will.

Let them ride through the valley, black hat and sun, the war drums fade but their song ain't done. The settle, voices echo, seven ride on Wow. That is the Magnificent Seven by Antonio Valamonte, Valamonte Records. Antonio, we thank you very much for that and we thank you for letting us use it. And Larry, thank you for saying it. Larry, how did you get it? Before we get to the serious stuff, where did you find this? He sent it to me.

So he is communicating with me over the blog. So I was honored. I said, I got to pass this on to the boys It was terrific. We haven't shared it with the others yet But we will do so I wanted to save it for now and sort of play it as a surprise and you can see From the comments what the F is this what's going on? I love Westerns judge. Are you okay? Yes We are well and we're ready to go Judge, are you OK? Yes, we are well, and we're ready to go.

LARRY KOTLIKOFF LARRY, TO YOU FIRST. Is Israel prevailing in its war against Iran as the Western mainstream media would have everybody believe? LARRY KOTLIKOFF Oh, heavens no. They've bit off more than they could chew. In fact, they're having their Baghdad Bob moment. They're claiming, oh, there are no missiles falling. Oh, yeah, we've shot out 95% of the missiles from Iran and the exact opposite is taking place because Iran probably has an excess of 40,000 missiles.

because over the years they've been building them underground and storing them underground and we really don't have the human penetration to get in there and find out exactly how many they have. Meanwhile Israel's put into position of having to fire upwards of 10 to 12 missiles at incoming ballistic missiles fired by Iran. And we know it's like with the FAD, the Theater High Altitude Air Defense System, that those cost each one of those missiles that go by Iran. And we notice like with the FAD, the theater high altitude air defense system, those cost each one of those missiles that go up in the air, they cost 12.9 million dollars. As the missiles Iran's firing, they cost 200,000 to 500,000 to make. So the math on this just doesn't work, not only for Israel, but for the United States. Israel has finite anti-air defense missile systems.

And up to this point, Iran has depleted them. Now Iran's like firing 15 to 25 missiles a day, but they're precisely targeted at intelligence, defense sites, factory sites, ports, and power stations. Israel cannot sustain this for much longer. Ray, does Israel even have an end game, a theory of victory? Is it possible for them to achieve their goal just with their bombs? Oh, sorry, you added just with their bombs. No, just with their bombs, but with us Support they think they can that's the key to all this Israeli intelligence is very very well informed and

Very honest in telling their prime minister, look, if we start this thing, you're not going to be able to finish it unless the US comes in with both feet. Now, did the Israelis know how many missiles, like Larry knows or we think we know? Of course they did. So this is just proof positive.

This isn't about Iranian enrichment or against or about a nuclear bomb. This is about regime change. And this is the last gasp effort by Netanyahu, who, let's remember, has his own really, really serious problems domestically and could end up in jail. A last-chance issue to say, look, Mr. President Trump, now you got to about it, because we can't survive without your help. Larry, you're in either good or bad company, depending on how you want to look at this, because about 15 minutes ago, the Wall Street Journal of all people, the mouthpiece for the CIA and for the Zionists, reports that Israel is running out of missiles. Yeah, look, this is a simple math problem.

It would be one thing if Israel and or the United States as its backer had robust capabilities to replace what's being fired, but we don't. That's what's been exposed in the course of the war that has taken place between Russia and NATO slash Ukraine over the last three years. Right. As Mark Ruda said, right now, Russia produces more missiles in three months or more artillery shells in three months than US and NATO combined can produce in a year. The same problem applies to

these air defense missiles and particularly when you get into things like that at almost 13 million dollars a pop. So Israel's got finite resources compared to Iran which has ample resources and by virtue of being 91, 92 million people, by virtue of being 27 times the size of Israel, it's simply for Israel to try to target anything inside Iran. Yeah, they're making some hits, but they're not devastating, it's not crippling Iran. By contrast, Iran can hit specific targets in Israel. Israel's got three ports, two of them are now knocked out. Eliyat down in the south, now Haifa's been knocked out by these missile strikes.

One airport, international airport, Ben Gurion, knocked out, shut down. Power plant, refinery. Israel doesn't have dozens of these. Iran does. You can knock out two or three refineries in Iran. They still got to refine oil. That is so absurd about this that the hubristic Israelis

thought that they could do this and get away with it. Now they're finding out the truth. Wow. Ray, how desperate is Netanyahu? Does the world now know that the goal of this military escapade was not to destroy the Iranian enrichment facilities, but to bring about regime change? to destroy the Iranian enrichment facilities, but to bring about regime change. And of course, it seems to be having

from what the three of us see and hear the opposite effect. The Iranians are rallying around their government. They're not turning on it. Well, I think anyone watching our show, judge and hundreds of thousands do, do know the real story. Now, part of the real story, which I would emphasize, is not only that the US intelligence community has been saying since 2007 that Iran is not working on a nuclear weapon with

high confidence that judgment and unanimous, but also that the head of the CIA on his way out last October said not only that, I want to remind you about that, Iran is not working on a nuclear weapon, but also if it started, we would find out there start very quickly. So don't worry about it. That's William Burns trying to tell the truth for once. Now that was October. He repeated that pretty much two weeks before he went out of office. So the business isn't about nuclear enrichment, but you know, they can play that game.

Why is Iran enriching up to what? 300, whatever it is percent, okay? It doesn't need that much. What we heard from that professor, Morandi, it's a negotiating point. We got that higher, highly refined uranium. We're willing to give that to Russia that can receive, you know, that stuff.

That's why we did that. We have to have more than just the stuff for our medical reactors to have a decent negotiating point. So yeah, it's so clear that it's for regime change. Now, the last thing I'll just say is nobody ever mentioned that two days before this happened, before it struck, Netanyahu was almost voted out of office by a no-confidence vote. He was able to prevent that by making concessions to some of the even more hardliners that he had. So this plays big into this. Do I think that Netanyahu could be doing this for his own personal reasons to stay out of jail? Yes. Is he doing that? Is doing genocide for the same reason? Yeah. Is he likely to

use his nuclear weapon for God's sake? I can't rule it out because the guy is just as willing to do this kind of thing to prevent himself from going to jail. Ray Alistair Crook is about to come out with a piece in which he believes he knows where Trump and Netanyahu got their argument from that the Ayatollah is preparing a nuclear bomb, even though all the intelligence agencies say no. He's about to say it's from this Zionist organization called Zionist owned organization called Palantir with which the federal government of the United States, thank you Donald Trump, has just entered into a contract for a couple of hundred million to consolidate the data that American spies gather warrantlessly on all of us so that the other spies can have access to it.

Does this make sense to you, Larry Johnson? Yeah, no, absolutely. Look, this is a fabrication. Now, we've got to explain something to the audience that they understand. When Tulsi Gabbard made her statement, she wasn't given her opinion. She hadn't been sitting around having coffee saying,

hey, I got a good idea. Let's say that Iran doesn't have a new This is a result of a coordinated process. That means senior analysts people like ray mcgovern back in the day at cia At the defense intelligence agency at the national security agency at state department's bureau of intelligence and research And at the national geospatial intelligence Agency, those are the five big ones because they're the ones that actually generate raw intelligence. So they're the ones that give the judgments. They all agreed and have agreed over the last almost 20 years that Iran's not doing this.

So that when Tulsi said that, and Trump stupidly, ignorantly said, oh I'm not gonna listen to her, what does she know? She's not speaking for her, Mr. President, she's speaking for intelligence professionals across the board. However, we got a bad sign yesterday that the politicization has started because John Ratcliffe sold out. He went and he's supposedly telling people, oh yeah, Iran's on the one yard line. They're going to have a nuke any minute.

He's doing his Netanyahu impression. This is outrageous. What Trump is doing by, he's not the first president to ignore intelligence, but at least he's the first one to be openly Just disrespecting someone in Tulsi Gabbard's position because she's not speaking as an individual She is representing a community of analysts and he Donald Trump has betrayed them You know

We know this is about regime change and we know this is about pleasing the Zionists, because if they were really concerned about a nuclear weapon, there's another madman on the planet who has a nuclear weapon that can reach Honolulu and maybe even Los Angeles. He happens to be the dictator of North Korea. weapon that can reach Honolulu and maybe even Los Angeles. He happens to be the dictator of North Korea. He's Donald Trump's friend. No effort is being made to destroy his nuclear capabilities and he's certifiably crazy, Ray McGovern.

Well, Judge, I don't agree that he is certifiably crazy. What I do know and what we have divulged on this program two years ago, is that he has an ICBM given to him lock, stock, and barrel by Russia that is there next to the most sophisticated ICBM. It's the Topol M. It can reach not only Honolulu, but Mari Lago for God's sake, or up in Maine, it could reach the whole United States. Now, how do we learn that?

Because Ted Postal did the research on it. Ted Postal wrote an article, and when Jake Sullivan was confronted with the question about this, more than two years ago at a briefing, open briefing in the White House, he said, oh yeah, we know about that. The intelligence community is working on that. Okay.

Well, we haven't heard word once since because it's too damn embarrassing. The Russians have done this. You would think they'd be criticized for it, but no, it's so embarrassing for Jake Sullivan and the rest of them there that they've concealed it. criticized for it but no it's so embarrassing for for Jake Sullivan and the rest of them there that they've concealed it but that's the reality and as you know your North Korea and and Russia have a mutual defense treaty this is of terrific significance because as close as Iran is to Russia they do not have a mutual defense treaty they have something short of that that makes a big difference.

Larry, should Tulsi Gabbard resign because of Trump's summarily dismissing the very, very solid, sound, evidence-based statements she made under oath to the Congress? Probably not yet. She should stay there as a thorn in his side and force him to really be hoisted on his own petard for the one who has blatantly ignored intelligence. Or I think there'll come a moment when she'll have to step out and resign

and just say, you know, he's ignored this. I'm hopeful that we could find some military officers who might be commanded to launch attacks inside Iran, which would, uh, you know, expand this war, but, um, you know, for now, I think, uh, she's better off making sure that not some other obedient toady is going to be put into the job. You've got to at least have somebody who's going to try to stand up. Now she, she's, she is smartly not trying to pick a public fight with Trump, but I think she's also reading the tea leaves. Trump's MAGA base is split down the middle. And I saw this firsthand, I gave a

speech on Wednesday to the Lakewood Ranch Republican Club, which is really Manatee County, one of the reddest Trump-less counties in the United States. state to the Lakewood Ranch Republican Club, which is really Manatee County, one of the reddest Trump-less counties in the United States. And how did that audience receive your comments? The number of people that came up to me afterwards expressing grave concern about Donald Trump, including people who had been, you know, they had had major roles in previous Trump campaigns, made very much concerned and it reflects what you're hearing from Matt Gates Marjorie Taylor green Tucker Carlson even Steve Bannon

Charlie Kirk of Talking Point USA the number are it's significant and Trump if he if he if he launches this attack He he'll be he'll be committing political suicide. We already know he's not gonna be reelected, but it is gonna shatter his base that he won't be able to get anything done in Congress legislatively. Ray, what happens, what do the Russians do

if Trump unleashes an assault on Iran? I think the Russians have made very clear to President Trump, you're not going to do this. This is really crazy. Our friends, the Chinese, already have a couple of new intelligence ships there in the Persian Gulf. We will not stand idly by.

We have this agreement with Iran. It's not a mutual defense treaty, but we're giving them arms as we speak. Israel can't win this darn thing. Pull in your horns. Here's a suggestion, President Trump. Why don't you wait two weeks? That would bring it to right before the 4th of July. And then you can claim, oh, we've got negotiations going. The Iranians will make a deal. They'll give enriched uranium to us, the Russians, for safekeeping.

And you can brag on the 4th of July that you solved the whole thing without bringing the world to a World War III. Larry, who would believe Trump that he's going to wait two weeks? Perhaps this is another ploy, just like the negotiations were on the eve of the Israeli strike. Yeah, that's what he's done. He's destroyed his credibility on this and no one believes him. They're always going to assume the worst.

Let me make one other comment about Russia, what's important to recognize. This week, I had always assumed that it was maybe Russia that didn't want to make the decision on a defense pact. But in fact, President Putin said in comments to a group of foreign dignitaries, where they were asking all sorts of questions and he was given the answers, he said Russia actually offered that to the given the answers. He said Russia actually offered that to the Iranians. The Iranians didn't want the defense pact because they wanted to keep open the possibility of restoring relations with Washington DC and the West. Now I think they realize they've been had and they were naively foolish and Pazheshkin

Is as Putin said the other day? Hey What have they asked for they're gonna get and notice that is Ray mentioned The arrival of those Chinese ships in the Persian Gulf Sets up a possibility for a false flag attack of some sort, or I think Reyes commented about the possibility of a USS Liberty replay where the West attacks a Chinese ship and all of a sudden the Chinese could be brought into the fray. But Xi and Putin talked about this yesterday and they gave them an extensive readout and they made it very, very clear that what Israel has done is an illegal

act and that they are firmly backing Iran and it's also there's been reports that the senior defense minister made a trip to Iran as well so there are movements afoot China and Russia are making it known. They got Iran's back. And in that context as well with China, Pakistan is weighed in. China is another sort of, let's call it a client state of China. Ray, Sy Hirsch, for whom we all have a great deal of respect, is out with a piece based upon his sources claiming the two week period that

Trump talked about as a charade and that the attack will begin tonight and proceed in earnest over the weekend. What do you think about that? Judge, Saia is a good friend of mine. I'm not going to comment on his latest because I disagree with it greatly. Let me go back just for a second to this business about Trump very, very cleverly, very, very cleverly cooperating with the Israelis in a gross deception to make Iran put its defenses down so that they could, it was terribly cynical. I don't buy that.

My evidence is, if you follow the chronology, that Trump was surprised by what happened. His associates took him down to the White House Situation Room, said, look, Thursday night, Thursday night, last Thursday, watch this, and the Israelis attacked without any opposition because we had defeated the air defenses of the Iranians. They said, look, Mr. Trump, we've won this thing. And next thing,

you know, Trump is out there saying, oh, excellent. We won. I know about it. I know everything. He changed his tune within hours as soon as he realized that the Iranians, clever as they are, put their evidences back up. So I think it was a surprise to Trump. I think it was not a surprise to some of his NAO-Con allies. And I think that he can believe that this two-week thing, I think the evidence is very clear that he has virtually no support, except maybe from Ted Cruz, who can't find Iran on the map.

How can Ted show his face again after that disastrous job he did in a fabulous surgical interview by our friend Tucker Carlson. Larry, what would happen if the Ayatollah is assassinated by the Israelis or if they resume murdering the Iranian negotiators? Well, he's not the only cleric in Iran. In fact, you know, while Iran is predominantly Persian,

the Azeris are like the second largest ethnic group. And apparently the Ayatollah Khamenei is a Nazarene. And so there's always been this notion, oh you can't, if you're a Nazarene, you're a second-class citizen. Well, you know, it looks like that second-class citizen sort of running the top of the heap. But they assassinate him, they turn him into a martyr, and he'll be replaced. You know, this whole thing about Iran, the myth, the mythology that dominates the Western narrative about it ignores the fact that we've had Alistair Crook and his wife, Max Blumenthal and his wife, Pepe Escobar has been there,

Glenn Deason, whom you've interviewed, has been there. And they all came back with the same story of, you know, it's an open society, this notion that they're beating women for not wearing head cover, it's not true. They saw young couples, you know, teenage kids making out on the subway, you know, doing what teenage kids sometimes do,

not being beat up by the religious police. And we actually have prima facie evidence of how weak the intelligence capabilities of Iran is by the fact that Mossad was just able to run circles around him and setting up all these assassinations. So gentlemen, gentlemen, this has been Ray, anything else to say because I need to sign off, but this has been a great conversation. Yeah, just a thing on Khamenei. Please. I think Larry is right, he can be replaced, but I don't think that the Iranian authorities would be able to restrain those Muslims in Iraq or in

Syria or elsewhere. I think they would storm US facilities. And that would be a major problem. And maybe that's what Netanyahu would like, because that would be the tripwire. Now, Mr. Trump, they've killed Americans, for God's sake. Now you have to jump in with both feet. Wow. We'll be watching, guys. We look forward to seeing you both at your usual times

on Monday morning. Thank you very much for your time Thank you for tolerating the Magnificent Seven which was Most enjoyable and have a great weekend. All right. Thanks so much, of course and Coming up at 430 this afternoon if you're watching us live two minutes from now Professor John Mearsheimer just Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. You