Judging Freedom - INTEL Roundtable w/ Johnson & McGovern : Weekly Wrap 27-June

Episode Date: June 27, 2025

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Love thrillers with a paranormal twist? The entire Oracle trilogy is available on Audible. Listen now on Audible. you Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Friday, June 27th, 2025. It's the end of the day, the end of the week. It's our favorite time of the week with the Intelligence Community Roundtable with my longtime friends and collaborators, Larry Johnson and Ray McGovern. Gentlemen, welcome here. Thank you for the double duty. Always a pleasure. Larry, you have given us a rather extraordinary map, which you posted on your site, Sonar 21 of the significant sites in Israel where the Iranians achieved maximum devastation.

How bad in general terms, Chris is going to put up the map, but how bad in general terms was the Iranian retaliation, Larry? Worse than anybody can imagine or wants to acknowledge in the West. In addition, you know, people fail to appreciate how big Iran is. Yes, Israel hit Iran in a number of places. Yes, Israel inflicted damage, but it's like a mosquito biting an elephant. Iran is three times the land size of Ukraine, three times the population size of Ukraine. Israel is so vulnerable on so many fronts. So look at what Iran did in 12 days. They closed down the only two container ports, so no goods were being imported, exported out of those ports at Haifa and Ashdod.

They shut down the two oil refineries at Haifa and Ashdod, so no more diesel was being produced. They shut down the only international airport. But more importantly, they destroyed a string of Western backed investments, businesses that were in the military industry in Israel, those were destroyed. The Weisman Institute had like eight buildings, those were destroyed. Military sites throughout Israel which had been covered by censorship, the Israeli censors will not promote anything on that, they were destroyed. Israel, candidly, Israel probably would have had

to surrender, seek a peace agreement with Iran in two weeks had the United States not intervened and brokered this deal for Israel to stop attacking Iran. Right, before I get to you, I wanna play a clip from somebody who agrees with Larry about the level of devastation. Now, he doesn't always speak the truth and he often exaggerates, but President Trump, Chris, the victory for everybody clip that you and I just viewed.

I think it was just a tremendous victory for everybody, including Iran. Look, you know, they've got a country and they've got oil and they're very smart people and they can come back. Israel got hit very hard, especially the last couple of days. Israel was hit really hard. Those ballistic missiles, boy, they took out a lot of buildings. Ballistic missiles, they took out a lot of buildings. But Ray, the Israeli government is doing its best to hide from the West and from everybody, including Israelis themselves, the nature and extent of the damage that Iran did.

I'm sure you're not surprised that they're doing this. No, how effective they've been, a little surprised. Of course, they did kick out the Reuters and AP to follow Al Jazeera, and there's strict censorship, but that was the information that was missing. And Larry, there's a terrific service in showing a map. People say, well, they only hit people on the coastline, right? Well, that's where anything of consequence exists in Israel, for God's sake. That's where they build all those sensitive facilities,

including in the desert there to the south. So, yeah, it's very, very clear that now that we realize this devastation in Israel, it's clear why Trump was able to so easily say to Netanyahu, look at how about a ceasefire? Yeah, please, that would agree to ceasefire. How they got the, well, how they got Iran to agree to that is another story. I imagine Russia and China weighed in heavily and said, look, agree to it for a while and we'll supply all you need for as long as it, oh, as long as it takes. Yeah, as long as it takes. Larry, did Trump ask Netanyahu for the ceasefire Or did Netanyahu ask Trump did net that yeah, okay Did net you know was crying uncle or doesn't matter who asked whom no even then Yahoo is begging for it

But you know see this was not a Trump plan Trump got You know, he listened to the briefings this this what took place on June 13th had been in the works for several years. And now Israel came in with the propaganda, oh, we've got to go now or else. And they convinced Trump that when we hit, we're going to decapitate the Iranian regime. They will collapse internally. We'll be rid of this Islamic Republic. All you got to do is sign off. This is going gonna happen.

And that's why Trump was so ebullient, the first 12 hours of this. Oh yeah, I knew it. He said, I knew everything, I knew it all. Well, within 12, that was 12 hours, it became apparent that, yeah, Iran got knocked on its rear end. It was down on the floor, picked itself up.

A bunch of senior military officers killed, they were replaced. Nuclear scientists murdered, probably thanks to the IAEA. They got missiles out, they started fighting back. Within 36 hours, Donald Trump is doing his Sergeant Schultz invitation from Hogan Hero. I know nothing. I see nothing. I heard nothing, man.

This is, this is all news to me. And they began to realize Israel was losing despite, you know, all the PR and all the spin. Israel was taking a beating that it could not recover from if it was allowed to continue. Ray, how and by whom was Trump manipulated? Well, let me just pick up on Larry said here. So we were right. We were right that if Israel tried this and even if the US helped them it wouldn't work right because Iran had a deterrent. Now did that deterrent work? Well no because

the Israelis didn't realize the power that Iran had or anyhow they thought they could play it so that the US would come in with two feet. The US only only came in with one foot and then said, look, you know, it's just not a good deal. Let's have a ceasefire. So again, your question, Judd, I thought I'd just finish up what Larry had said. How and by whom do you believe Trump was manipulated? It must have been Bibi and the Mossad, right? Well, yeah, but you realize that maybe the Messiah had the right agents right within Trump's Russian. You know, I mean, I wouldn't really let anyone I wouldn't rule out Rubio, who wanted to

maybe be a little crafty, a little sneaky, and gave a wink to this and said, Look, when we take the president down at 730 hours in the evening on Thursday, it was 12th, are we gonna have a really good show? Oh yeah, because we suppressed, we have this special gizmo we use to suppress the AAA and the anti-aircraft missiles that we thought that the Iranians had. Now that only lasted eight hours, okay?

So Larry's to reconstruct that is quite right. So who manipulated whom? Well, Netanyahu thought that, you know, given his internal domestic situation, this was his last chance to get Trump in. Trump got in up until he realized this is not a good idea. And they got quickly out proposing the ceasefire Which by then Israel realized that it was really didn't have much choice if it wanted to avoid complete destruction Larry what happened that Chelsea Gabbard? She decided I know I think she's been paid off She decided to play, play along, play the game.

She, you know, if you, if you go to Roges, the Saurus, there is a new synonym, new word in there for cow towel. It's called Mark Ruta. Okay. You know, who's your daddy? So, you know, Tulsi is doing her own version of who's your daddy? So, you know, Tulsi is doing her own version of who's your daddy. She was get to tell on to tell town to Trump.

Before we get to a NATO and the Kabuki kowtow that we watched this week, I never thought I'd be asking this question. And I'll ask you both. Ray first. Is the director of central intelligence a Mossad asset? He doesn't have to be a judge. He follows what the people in the lobby want. He'll do whatever he thinks Trump needs. John Radcliffe, I mean, Congress from Texas, what does he know about intelligence? So Tulsi Gabbard, if she had any real guts, would have fired Radcliffe as soon as he told those untruths about a nuclear weapons development. They again,

let's not upskate. There was enrichment on the one hand, that's what all the bombing was about. And then there's work on a weapon, a weapon that could deliver a nuclear warhead. There is no change in any of the information available to anybody, including Ted Postol, who's written about this now, that they have come anywhere near a nuclear weapon. Now, some people think they could do that rather quickly, but there's no evidence, and the intelligence community has been really strong on that for the last, well, since 2007. So, if you focus on the enrichment, okay, you can,

but then you negate or you simply prescind from the real problem, which is the weapon. Now, can they get a weapon? Yeah. But even the pharmacy I had, uh, what was his name? William Byrd said, you know, if they start to get a weapon, we will know very, very quickly. So don't worry about it.

We got it covered. Why do you say that? Probably because it was true. And he had one last chance to reverse his falsehoods of the past. Yeah. I'll say this true. This is two weeks before I leave office. I'll tell the truth a little bit and that'll make me feel good.

Larry, same question to you. John Ratcliffe, the director of CIA and Mossad asset. Well, he's a willing collaborator. Let's call him that. He will pass on Israeli intelligence unvarnished. And what they've really created, the Trump administration's really created a very dangerous situation for itself because those members of the intelligence community

who tried to accurately report what was in the intelligence. And let's recognize one of the most likely sources of intelligence about what was going on in Iran was from the IAEA. Now, IAEA would share, you know, there was information that they shared, let's call it overtly, but I guarantee you that whether it was CIA, Mossad, the French, the Germans, the Brits, or maybe all of them

had recruited assets inside the IAEA inspectors and were getting information from them. That's one of the reasons I think in the past the CIA was so confident that Iran was not building a nuke. What we're faced with now, a very likely scenario, is with Iran cutting off access to the IAEA, kicking them out, and maybe withdrawing from the non-proliferation treaty, all of a sudden our intelligence community is going to be blind and not be able to offer the same level of confidence that they have in the past. Thank you, Donald Trump, for that. Yeah.

Wow. Ray, did General Kaine or Secretary Hegseth succeed in convincing anyone other than the president's most ardent supporters that we bombed empty tunnels? That's really hard to judge, Judge. Obviously, there is his base and a lot of people want to hear what he said. But I had a full briefing from Professor Ted Postel just 20 minutes ago. And I said at the end of it, now Ted, I can pretend I know something about that, the bombing. And he said, well, you're at well ahead of HexSeth. And I said, thanks a lot. Thanks

a lot. Damn it was a great surprise. What did he tell you? Well, one of the things he told me, which he really hasn't focused on yet, one of the things he told me, which he really hasn't focused on yet, was we have all manner of satellites, right? We have people that take pictures, we have radar, discoveries, we have multi-spectral, which is really interesting, and was new when I was on duty,

but we also have infrared. Now, infrared is capable of taking what I used to call movie pictures Okay, they call them video now and they're broadband as such that they can capture Everything that happens and they were already pre crap pre program to do that Now what they captured in terms of the plumes arising but does not indicate that anything got really through 20 Sensitive degree under Fordow. That's big. The other thing he says is those highly or 60% uranium enriched cylinders were almost certainly moved before the attacks, because the Iranians are not stupid.

The attacks were warned about beforehand, and we had all those, we had the New York Times had pictures of 16 trucks lining up to pick them up. So last thing he said, if they were picking that stuff, they were also delivering concrete slabs, the like of which you have never seen before, because the Israelis have made concrete slabs

almost impenetrable. They were putting them on the entrances to Fordow. So, you know, this business is cat and this dog and pony show by the general in the blue suit and Hexseth. I mean, for Ted to say to me, now you know more than Hegseth, I said to him before, I said, you know, that's damning with faint praise, but thanks anyway, Ted.

I'm gonna talk about Hegseth in a minute. Here's Senator Chris Murphy. I rarely agree with what he says, but I agree with him on this. He's the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee. The essence of what he says is they got caught in a lie and they tried to cover up Larry Chris, 18 and then immediately 19.

The initial assessment of DIA of the photographic evidence is that they did not fundamentally destroy those assets. And what we also know is that the Iranians were successful in moving a lot of the enriched uranium out of Fordow. And that maybe is the most important fact. If we didn't destroy the 60% enriched uranium, they frankly don't need that many centrifuges in order to continue to enrich up to nuclear grade. So listen, they're mad, they're furious.

You can see it in their voice, because they got caught in a lie. They got caught in a lie. They went out there and said that they, that the nuclear capacity of Iran was obliterated, that we'd set back the program at least a year. They knew they were lying when they said it. They got caught in the lie. That's super embarrassing. And they're trying to cover up that lie with this righteous indignation, blaming everybody but themselves for the fact that they did the really unforgivable sin of national security communication.

They fudged intelligence. They fudged intelligence about our national security. You can't do that because, as we've seen over and over again over the course of our history, that's what gets us into unnecessary wars of choice. That's what gets not dozens or hundreds of Americans killed, but thousands of Americans killed. They're angry because they got caught lying this weekend.

Larry Johnson. Yeah, yeah, no, this, everybody should go watch on YouTube. There's a movie documentary called zero days It was about the Stuxnet virus attack. The reason I bring it up. We've got the same parallel Then at that time the intelligence community had convinced that first told Bush and then they told Obama man We're gonna knock out that Iranian centrifuge program because we're sending in this virus, it's going to shake the centrifuges, they'll break themselves, they'll be done. Iran's program will be set back years.

Well, they got the, you know, Israel launched the thing against the wishes of the United States and it shut down, I believe, the Iranian centrifuge program for about a month. Now in this case, Trump painted himself into a corner and for the life of me, it just was the U.S. military was going to and each one could carry two of these GBU 57s, the bunker busters. It appears that we hit the target. We're not sure yet what the full damage is. We need to do a thorough assessment. You know, he could have said something mature and sensible like that, but oh no, we obliterated, we wiped it out. It's not there. And then when they, when even I know for a fact that the Intel apart from the DIA thing But I have heard from others that the intelligence community already

Reported on the movement of the enriched uranium for God's sake and now here's Trump said, oh no, we destroyed all that That was too heavy to move. They couldn't, he's locked himself in. Cause you know what? And they're now coming up and saying, well, when we negotiate with Iran, they're gonna have to turn over that enriched uranium. And if I hope there's some Iranians who are as big a smart ass as I am, they'll say, well, gee, Mr. Witkoff,

how can we turn over to you what you guys obliterated? You just obliterated, it's all gone. LARRY KOTLIKOFF Excellent, Larry, excellent. Before we go, how absurd was the NATO butt kissing of Donald Trump this week and how unrealistic is it that any of those countries could devote five percent of GDP to defense and that the Germans can spend a trillion dollars? Ray McGovern where on earth are they gonna get it from? Well, they'll borrow it they'll use up what Russian assets are still left, but you're right. It's crazy They're not gonna do it, but they have ten years not to do it. Where will Trump be then? I mean, it was really sort of a sad spectacle.

Okay, Trump says, okay, you reach for five, I can claim one victory. I can claim that victory. Now, what was missing in that communique? Am I the only one to notice that the former communique in Washington a year ago said that the advance of Ukraine into NATO was irresistible or irreversible. That was the word, irreversible. Ukraine was mentioned 850 times in that communique. Well, I exaggerate, about 26 times. This time, Ukraine has mentioned three times, and there's absolutely not a word

about whether Ukraine will be given a path, an irreversible path, that's the word, into NATO. So that's big. That means that Trump said, all right, you can promise me 5,000. But look, don't even think about more Ukraine help. If you guys want to do that, you go ahead. I want to have one other thing. It has to do with imagery intelligence. Larry knows this, but most people don't. In 1996, for his own political reasons, the CIA director, John

Deutsch, gave an independent and imagery analysis unit 900 specialists strong to the Pentagon. Why? Well, he wanted to be defense secretary. He thought that's a pretty good idea. It was in the... These are the people who found the missiles in Cuba. What does that mean? That means that the imagery analysis as well as the overhead operations with the satellites is controlled by the Pentagon. Now, what will happen to DIA? Well, let me make a prediction. DIA stood up. Somebody in DIA said, you know, Congress or the Wall Street, they should know this, this is really, really bad. Could have another war.

And what's gonna happen now? Well, now the National Geospace Intelligence Agency, which is what the National Photographic Interpretation Center used to be when it was independent and monitored by, controlled by CIA, they'll say whatever the Pentagon wants them to say. Do I have proof of that? Yes.

James Clapper. James Clapper was the head of that agency before Iraq. And when he was asked, where were those weapons of mass destruction? He said, actually, he wrote in his book, I quote, Cheney and the others were putting so much political pressure on us that we identified 162 suspect sites, but we couldn't find a WMD. So I take part responsibility in finding things that weren't really there. They weren't really there. Larry, we only have about a minute left before I have another commitment. Is the United States still supplying military gear to Ukraine?

Yes. Yeah, it's still going in. But what's more worrisome is British, French, Polish, Australian troops are now entering Odessa, taking up positions in Odessa. Expect the Russians will be killing a bunch of them within the next week or two. I think you're probably right. Gentlemen, thank you very much. Thanks for your time. It's been a dynamic week. We've had a series of them.

Thank you for all the time you've given us. We'll look forward to seeing you at your usual slots on Monday morning. Have a great weekend. Thanks, Judge. Thank you. And coming up, of course, on Monday at eight in the morning, Alistair Crook, Ray at 10, and Larry at 11.30.

Thank you for watching. Have a great weekend. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. You