Judging Freedom - INTEL Roundtable w/ Johnson & McGovern : Weekly Wrap 5-Dec

Episode Date: December 5, 2025

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Discover why there's more to imagine when you listen at audible.com slash best of the year. Hi, everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Friday, December 5th, 2025. It's the end of the week, the end of the day, our favorite time, our favorite show here at Judging Freedom, the Intelligence Community Roundtable with my dear friends and collaborators doing, as always, their double duty. Larry Johnson and Ray McGovern. Larry, Ray, welcome here. Thank you for accommodating my schedule. I thought we would start with the hot news of the week. I was surprised at all the publicity that my comments got, characterizing the Secretary of Defense as a war criminal.

But I would argue that the killing of these two survivors as harassed, as that was, can't be used to divert scrutiny to the entire program, which is unconstitutional and criminal. Ray? That's exactly right. There was a teacher at Cardoso Law School who points that out. This is the danger, and it might be even intentional. The first strike was illegal, an act of war, for God's sake. And everybody who has a modicum of knowledge of the rules of war, or, you know, the need for evidence before you use lethal force knows that. So, you know, whether HECSeth gets away with this or not depends on whether Congress can grow a couple or grow a backbone. And I'm tired of predicting that. Hegseth is clearly a war criminal, and I think anybody who knows anything about it would affirm that.

And I'm glad you said. I had missed that. I'm glad you said it, Judge. Larry, in my opinion, Admiral Bradley should have been marched out of the Capitol building and handcuffs of shackles and taken right to the nearest military prison. You are a veteran of the military, so is Ray. Don't they teach early on that you disobey or disregard? McGregor says you don't defy your superior. You just say, okay, okay, okay.

And then you go on and don't comply with it. When it orders you to kill somebody, that is a non-combatant. Well, let's just clarify that I was not in the military. I was in the CIA. And I did work with U.S. military special operations forces for almost a quarter of a century. okay and was involved with scripting exercises about guns i always assumed you were in the military no no no but i yeah i did learn how to shoot look this uh let's remember what happened is george h w bush in world war two he's flying against japanese he's trying to kill japanese he takes

offensive actions he gets shot down floats around in the water before he's recovered if the Japanese had happened upon him and had killed him while he was floating in the water that we would have said that's a war crime so what that's the standard once you know if somebody

shooting at you you can shoot back but in the case of these boats they're not even shooting back and I think it was a point that was made on one of your conversations yesterday either with Mirschimer or I don't recall who else but that

You know, the Coast Guard has reported to the Congress the number of interdictions it's done. And not a single one of those did they have to use lethal force. They stopped the boats. They detained the people. They inspected the boats. And in many cases, like I thought it was like 30%, maybe more. There were no actual, they thought there were drugs on board. They had what they thought was good intelligence.

But it turned out there weren't drugs on board. so they had to let the people go. In those cases where there were drugs on board, they arrested the individuals, took the drugs into possession. What Donald Trump is doing, though, the foundation for this was laid by George W. Bush

when he got permission from DOJ to torture people. Now, that's illegal. But we got used to it. Anyway, they're terrorists. As long as we call them terrorists, we can kill them. And yet, unless somebody's got a gun point it at you or threatening your life or to cause serious bodily harm, if you're a civilian, you would not be allowed to defend yourself

just by thinking, well, I think that guy wants to hurt me. I think he's a bad guy, so I can shoot and kill him. So this is disgusting. But see, the problem is not just Trump. And the problem is not just Hankseth. The problem goes to the chain of command with Bradley and any other officer below him that went along with this and said, well, they said it's okay. so we're not going to question it.

You know, this is, when you're taking human life, you better absolutely be damn sure that you ask questions about it. Do we know, and I'll ask this to either of you, how human life was taken? In other words, where was Bradley? I can't imagine he was on a ship. I mean, was he comfortably in D.C. making decisions?

Was somebody in front of a computer screen pressing a button, dispatching a drone or a missile at the ship? How does that work? Well, this is very interesting. Larry will know more particular objects. But be aware that Bradley

was working with Sealed Team 6. Port of Socom, Special Apparitions Command, not subservient to Southcom, the head of whom, the head of which quit about a month ago, okay? So we have parallel structures here.

One is completely disregardless of the law. It operates very closely with CIA. That's the chain of command that Bradley was working in, and now he is chief of, guess what? Socom. So you have what I think is a principled admiral. He's an African-American. American three-star.

Holsey, I think his name is H-O-L-S-E-Y. Exactly, he quit about three months ago. No, about six weeks ago, Mike. So, you know, let's, when he retires, I think it's just another week or so. Let's get him up before Congress and ask him, now why did you do that when you've only been in place as SOTCOM as SOTCOM commander for a year? And then you'll have to say, well, you know, my daughter was in a pageant for Christmas, and I thought I'd like to do that and just take home leave for the agreement.

You have to make something up. So, you know, this is where it comes to a head. He quit, and he quit, I believe, on principle. And it's so nice to see not only an admiral, but a rare in the Navy African-American admiral, taking a stand for the rule of law. Larry, how does it? Yeah, how does the feeling occur? Well, yeah, actually, let me explain how, you know, who is watching what?

Socom headquarters is up the road from me at McDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida. They have an operation center. And in this operation center, you know, you've got row up on row of desks. They're usually, you know, inclined. So as you step up, it's like being in a small auditorium. And in the front, you got massive television screens. So Bradley would have been sitting in the commander's chair. there and would have been on what's called a civets, a secure video teleconference, with the

commander of J-Sox. So J-Socs based up and the Joint Special Operations Command falls under Socom. Joint Special Operations Command deals directly with the Tier 1 units. And that commander there, as well, who's, I think they're now a two-star general, they'll be in communication with Bradley. They're talking. They can see each other on the screen. And there's a drone or some other platform, maybe an RC 135 aircraft flying overhead that's providing new visual. So they got real-time live feed. And I mean, I saw this good Lord, 23 years ago. It was active then. So you've got a real time and they can see exactly what's going on. And it's

recorded. And so, you know, when they, when they fired, I guess it's probably a hellfire missile, though you get an explosion, blows up the boat, and then they can, you can see people still floating in the water, a la George H.W. Bush. And if the Japanese would have killed him, war crime. Let's just use the same standard. Let me add here that I hope members of Congress are watching this program. Because the security restrictions, the bigot list, the reality that Socom and Team 6, whatever, the Navy, they have a completely different, and you know probably more than that that I do about this, Larry, communications system, and guess what, Congress is not cleared for this.

So Congress is not privy to the information that Larry Johnson just gave out. They ought to look into it, and they ought to ask the president, is he cleared for these communications? And the answer will, no, we haven't read him in yet. He's not on the bigot list. Well, read him in, and he should take formal responsibility for what HECSeth has done. Here's Congressman Jim Hymes, H.I.M.E.S. Democrat of Connecticut. I don't think this is an act at all. He was visibly shaken as he left this briefing room

where Admiral Bradley attempted to defend himself and showed these movies. We don't, these videos. Larry, we don't know which ones he showed. But here's Congressman Himes, Chris, cut number 19. Admiral Bradley has a storied career, and he has my respect and he should have the respect of all of us. But what I saw in that room was one of the most troubling things

I've seen in my time in public service, you have two individuals in clear distress without any means of locomotion with a destroyed vessel who are killed by the United States. Can you wait? Can you tell us a little bit more about exactly what was so troubling? What were some of the things that come up with? Under the DOD Manual for Abiding by the Laws of Armed Conflict, the specific example given of an impermissible action is attacking a shipwreck. Any American who sees the video that I saw will see the United States military attacking shipwrecked sailors. Bad guys, bad guys, but attacking shipwrecked sailors. Now there's a whole set of contextual items that the Admiral,

Yes, they were carrying drugs. They were not in the position to continue their mission in any way. We don't, we don't, people will someday see this video and they will see that that video shows if you don't have the broader context, an attack on shipwreck sailors. Who ordered that? The last thing I'm going to say, the last thing I'm going to say is that the Admiral confirmed that there had not been a kill-them-all-order and that there had not been a kill-them-all-order and that there was not in order to grant no quarter. So does it exonerate accept? That's all I got there. Do you think the video should be released publicly?

I do. Who knows if we'll ever see it, Larry? Well, let me add that in addition, so, you know, Bradley's in his command chair of McDill. Bradley's not far from where you are now when you're making these decisions. Yeah, 45 minutes up the road. The commander of J-Soc right now,

I'm not sure who that is, but they're sitting in Fort Bragg. And then, no, Bradley's so calm. I'm sorry, yeah. Yeah, and then you've got the chairman, Dan Kane. I guarantee you, Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff was sitting on that civets, that secure video teleconference. And Secretary of War, Pete Higset, was sitting on that television.

So they're all watching. You know, we used, when I worked with J-Soc, it was called Kill TV because there was constant drone footage up of and then you know word would come down hey they're getting ready to hit a target and so everybody would you know jump on to the high side computer and there's a whole channel several channels devoted to the different drone footage so you know we've had this capability good lord for 20 plus years and so everybody knew there's nobody sitting there that's uninformed and so you've got to go back listen when this mission was when these forces were deployed they were given rules of engagement

ROEs, because the deployment order contains the ROE. And when they get an execute order, the order to execute the operation that the ROE rule of engagements are reiterated. Now, I can say I never saw a single ROE in 23 years that said, if you think somebody's doing something bad, like moving drugs, you can kill them. Never. So this is, we've crossed into territory. and they're using this BS excuse that, oh, they're narco-terrorists.

As long as we put the label on terrorism on them, we can do any damn thing we want. And it's wrong. Here's what the Secretary of Defense thinks of rules of engagement. Chris, number seven. We unleash overwhelming and punishing violence on the enemy. We also don't fight with stupid rules of engagement. We untie the hands of our warfighters. intimidate, demoralize, hunt, and kill the enemies of our country.

No more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement. Just common sense, maximum lethality, and authority for warfighters. That's all I ever wanted as a platoon leader. And it's all my E6 squad leaders ever wanted, back to that E6 rule. We let our leaders fight their formations, and then we have their back. It's very simple, yet incredibly powerful. trailing against the concept of rules of engagement since he was a platoon leader during his years at Fox. And now in these sad 11 months, while he's been the Secretary of Defense, he calls himself the Secretary of War, aren't rules of engagement the law of the land in the military, Larry?

Yes. I mean, it lays out what you can and cannot do. It's very simple. And, you know, I know some of the frustration that existed in Afghanistan, but the fact of the matter is in Afghanistan, you know, we're actually fighting civilians. And in a lot of cases, when civilians come out of, they're surrounded by U.S. military personnel, they come out of their home with a gun. Well, hell, Americans would come out of their home with a gun of some foreign military. showed up on our shores. Right. Ray, does it pay to make the moral argument here? I know you and I and Larry are repulsed morally, but what happened. But does it pay to make that argument, or is the legal argument the stronger one? Well, I inclined to set aside the moral considerations, just consider the law in these instances. Now, I made a note about what Congress.

Hymn's said. At the end, he said, now, wait a second, you know, you have to know the broader context. Well, that wonderful clip that Chris just showed is the broader context. Right. So, so the Secretary of Defense was in the chain of command saying rules of engagement don't matter. Now, another question is, and Larry will probably know more about this, but how about So calm. How about SEAL seam six? How about this separate command that was set up to avoid the rules, to avoid anything that would mean they could be held accountable? Are they, have they been told, look, what rules of engagement for the regular command structures? That's one thing. We could do what the hell we want because CIA has authorized our thing. And the CIA can do whatever the president tells them to do. Is that what I've come to, Larry? Well, actually, I'd say it's quite different for even, you know, even the special operations units.

They are governed by rules of engagement that are signed off on by the Secretary of Defense or now Secretary of War, as well as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. So even though they're in the world of special operations, there's still a chain of command and oversight. You don't get the same thing at CIA. CIA likes to pretend to be a military-type organization, but within the Special Activities Division, they have a lot more, let's call it, flexibility, where they can kill who they want, and there's not necessarily the kind of oversight

that is actually there on the military side. And we saw a little bit, you know, some of that with the deaths, if you remember back in the early days of the war in Afghanistan, Pat Tillman, a former football player for the Arizona Cardinals. He was killed, was killed by friendly fire. Right. And General Stan McChrystal and Bill McRaven, you know, they did a lot of, you know, tap dancing and cover

up to initially not point out the fact that he, someone was killed by friendly fire. And so, you know, and admittedly, when you get into the heat of war and you start using firearms and shooting, yeah, accidents can happen. But the real, the real problem here is these people and boats, even though they're carrying illegal narcotics, or we think, we think they're carrying illegal narcotics. We don't have absolute proof or proof that would stand up in a court. And if they were in the streets of Baltimore or the streets of Philadelphia, police officers or drug enforcement agents would have to seize the narcotics and then be able to

present it as evidence in court. They certainly couldn't shoot the guy's dead in the street. We know that. Chris has put together a fascinating montage of Hegg Seth. It's 59 seconds. The first part is him in 2016 saying, well, we don't obey illegal orders. The second is him on Fox and Friends, the day after all this happened, and you'll see how confident he is that he saw everything happen. The third is him sitting next to President Trump two days ago saying, well, I left the room.

I'm not sure everything that happened because of the fog of war. Chris, number 16. There are some guys at Leavenworth who made really bad choices on the battlefield. And I do think there have to be consequences for abject war crimes. If you're doing something that is just completely unlawful and ruthless, then there is a consequence for that. That's why the military said it won't follow unlawful orders from their commander-in-chief. There's a standard.

There's an ethos. There's a belief that we are above what so many things that our enemies or others would do. I watched it live. We knew exactly who was in that boat. We knew exactly what they were doing, and we knew exactly who they represented. I watched that first strike lot. As you can imagine, at the Department of War, we got a lot of things to do. So I didn't stick around for the hour and two hours, whatever, where all the sensitive site exploitation digitally occurs. So I moved on to my next meeting. I did not personally see survivors, but I stand, because the thing was on fire. It was exploded in fire or smoke. You can't see anything. You got digital. This is called the fog of war.

Kerr looked at Hegg Seth and said, it's the fog of fear. He's terrified of the truth. Judge, let me make a point here that has relevance to today. It goes back to Pat Tillman. He was a very high-profile fighter, having given up his pro football career. My God, he was a page. and he was killed by friendly fire. Now, was it an accident? I don't think so. Tillman was going wobbly on the war. We know that. We know that from some correspondent. So when Larry says

McRaven and McChrystal covered it up in such a way that the Congress didn't have any gumption to really pursue it, he's talking about special operations people, team six of the Navy, the SEAL Team 6, if you will, all these people that are pretty much out of accountability area. And so this is really important, seems to me. If it was Socom and the CIA, you have ambiguity here as to who's in charge. The CIA is you can do anything the president tells you to do. And so this is kind of an example of what happens.

And when you get Congress, that won't even look into Pat Tooman's cover up by McChrystal and McRaven, you know, that's what we're in for now. And we need to hold our Congresspeople's feet to the fire. I want to jump to President Putin before we go. This has been a fascinating conversation, but this statement that I'm going to play, the Chris is going to play of President Putin, was after the three of us were on each of your appearances on Monday.

This statement was made on Tuesday. I don't know if you've seen it, but we haven't discussed it directly or as a group. Watch this. This is right before he spends five hours with Jared Kushner and Steve Whitkoff. Chris, cut number 12. We are not planning to go to war with Europe. I've said that a hundred times already. But if Europe suddenly wants to go to war with us and starts it, we are ready right now.

There can be no doubt. about that the only question is in what way if europe suddenly starts a war with us i think it will be over very quickly this isn't ukraine with ukraine we're acting in a surgical careful manner right so that well you get it right did you see his level of self-confidence but aside from that in the looks on his face what did he mean larry it will be over very quickly if europe at to access. Number one, they've been doing, let's say, mass production of the Erushnik missile, a missile that has, let's call it, the destructive capability of a nuclear weapon without the radioactivity, but it can actually be used with great precision. Russia also has been

building up its forces to, you know, at the start of the special military operation in February of 2022, total ground forces are about 300,000. Now they're well over 1.5 million. So they've increase their ground forces by a factor of five. And they've been building tanks and other missiles, the Ashgander, the Calibir. So they are, the general staff is planning for the worst case. The worst case is that NATO's not going to back off. NATO's going to attack Russia and Russia will retaliate. And what Putin was pointing out is that part of the slowness within the

Russian assault on the Ukrainian forces has been a deliberate policy to minimize civilian casualties and minimize the casualties on the Russian side. And it's worth noting simply compare the total number of civilians that have been killed, both whether by Ukrainian or Russian side over the last eight years. No, heavens, we're going back to 2014, 11 years. Compare that with the death toll of the Palestinians in Gaza over the last two years. The Israelis have killed more in Gaza in two years by a factor of four than have been killed civilians in a prolonged war in Ukraine. Ray, do you think the Europeans are crazy enough to attack Russia? I think they're crazy enough to try another false flag.

I don't think it's going to work. They've been trying that for the last several weeks. What's really important here is that Putin is brandishing the stick, right? He's waving a stick, but then he gets into these conversations just an hour or two later with Whitkoff and Kushner, and there comes the carrot. Now, two days after the interview that Chris just showed, he was interviewed by Indian journalists. And the Indian journalist says, well, tell us what happened. And he says, no, that would be indiscreet. I'm not going to do that.

But I'll tell you, five hours is too long. I got really tired, but it was very useful. Because what we did, and this is a quote, we had to go through practically every point on this new proposal from the U.S. And that's why it took five hours. So it was a, quote, meaningful, highly specific, and substantive conversation, end quote. One other quote from this same interview.

Again, it was Thursday just yesterday. What about points of disagreement is the question? Well, yeah, there were points, but this is a complex task. I'm quoting Putin now, and it's a challenging mission for the president. He took upon himself, President Trump did. I say because achieving consensus among conflicting parties is no easy task. But President Trump, truly, I believe, he sincerely tries to do this. Okay, now we've been saying this for quite some time, at least I have, that Trump is really,

that Putin is really interested in working with Trump. Now he's saying, yeah, he's facing all kinds of conflicting. no consensus, just conflict if you, and he's taking this on anyway. So my point is simply that, look, the discussions went really well. Yeah, there was this stick before them, but the carrot means a lot. And now people in the foreign ministry of Russia have been tasked with preparing, if possible, for the next summit, which hopefully will convene in Buddhist past or wherever within the next couple of months. I wonder if at that summit, and I have to run,

but Larry, quickly, if Sergei Lavrov and Marco Rubio would be there. Well, if we will know that the formal negotiations are underway if Lavrov is there with Rubio, because that's what Putin said. Correct. Putin said it last week very clearly. So if Lavrov and Rubio shows up,

then they've made a decision to actually proceed with formal negotiations. If they're not there, they're still trying to figure You're not going tociate. Guys, thank you very much. Thank you for your time, as always, and thanks for your candor on these unpleasant subjects. Great conversation. Have a great weekend.

We'll see you both at your usual times on Monday morning. Roger that. Thanks, Judge. Thank you. And Monday, of course, we will have Alster Crook, Larry Johnson, Ray McGovern, and probably one or two others in the afternoon. And we may have a surprise for you next week,

not telling you who it is, you'll be thrilled to observe me, interview a former colleague of mine. Thank you for watching. Have a great weekend. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Thank you. Thank you.