Judging Freedom - INTEL Roundtable w/ Scott Ritter & Ray McGovern (Larry out this week)

Episode Date: September 12, 2025

INTEL Roundtable w/ Scott Ritter & Ray McGovern (Larry out this week)See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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That's an equivalent to $15 a month. Limited time new customer offer for first three months only. Speeds may slow above 35 gigabytes on unlimited. plan. Taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details. Hi, everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Friday, September 12, 2025. It's the end of the day, the end of the week. Our favorite segment, the Intelligence Community Roundtable, Ray McGovern, is here, as always.

Scott Ritter is filling in for the traveling Larry Johnson. If you missed it, Larry and I did a segment. a few hours ago while he was spending about an hour or two at the Charlotte airport on its way to a speech he's giving. And it was very instructive and most informative on the ballistics involved in the murder of Charlie Kirk. But to talk about the events of the week, Trump's murder of 11 people in a speedboat, it now turns out that the speedboat had turned around and was heading back to

Venezuela, perhaps because they saw what was coming after them, but nevertheless, it was going back home when these 11 people were killed. Do you think the American people give a damn about the significance of this kind of presidentially ordered extrajudicial execution, Ray McGovern? I think the intent was to show that we're very powerful. When we were, when we were, when we We suffer reverses such as was seen to be the case in Beijing over the last two weeks. My God, we have to show that we can do something. And I attribute that mostly to Trump saying to Pete, Pete Hedzick, look, Pete, what can we do? And oh, we could, Venezuela is a good, good opportunity.

Let's get some of those drug smugglers. It was all kind of a diversion from the insults and the, The losses we had at the hands of the rest of the world really and showing us to be no longer the hedgeman, well, if we can be a hedgeman in Latin America. And if this business about Colby, Eldridge Colby, changing his mind about China and going to look into Latin America where we can do things, well, this is part and parcel of us trying to look big, trying to put on big boy pants when the chips are down. Scott, we've been waiting for 10 days for a legal justification from the government. There's 150 lawyers that work for the president personally in the West Wing. There are some of the brightest lawyers in the country who are in what's called the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice. None of them has produced any legal justification.

It's hard for me as a lawyer and a former judge and now a person that monitors these things. for a living, to think of anything worse than the president thinking he can't just kill whoever he wants on his own whim? Well, it's not just the president. I think the originator of this thought process is Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, the former Florida Republican, Cuban-American who has made, you know, Latin America, South America, his own personal stomping ground. And he has been articulating now for, you know, on to six years, policies of violence against Venezuela.

And now that he is dual-hatted as the Secretary of State, the National Security Advisor, there are literally no constitutional checks for what this man can do and what he is doing. And he's the one that has, you know, crafted this policy, not Pete Hankseth. Look, Pete doesn't have the brain on his shoulders to come up with the strategic thinking that, that Rubio has. Rubio has been planning this for some time now. And the proof of the putting is the document that's actually on the newly minted Secretary of Wars desk right now, a draft national security strategy document that sees America pivoting away, not just from Europe and the Middle East, but from China as well, in order to create Fortress America. And a key aspect to this

Fortress America is implementation of a new Monroe Doctrine 2.0 that Marco Rubio has been seeking to foist on America for some time now, and the initiator of this is regime change in Venezuela. This is what's happening here. This is about regime change. So, no, unfortunately, we have a nation because the president feeds off of the vibe he gets from the people. And the president has sold the American people on the notion that we are a nation at war with narco traffickers, that what they have done in terms of shipping fentanyl over the border and the harm that's done to the American people is the equivalent of war. These are

wartime casualties and therefore it requires a wartime response. And Pekad Seth, the perpetual battalion executive officer, is more than happy to deliver, murdering 11 people. Nobody in the Pentagon can justify this. Nobody can produce the intelligence and says that what this was was actually what they said it was. They can't prove that. And even if they could, as you know, Judge, you can't, it's against the law to just go out and murder people and that's what they do. Do we know if anybody in the Pentagon said you can't do this? You have to have some second thoughts. We need some real evidence.

I would have hoped that the trigger puller would have. I mean, I would have hoped that the trigger puller would have questioned this. I would have hoped that the trigger puller's commander would have questioned this. I would have hoped that his commander would have questioned it. I hope that the question was have gone all the way up to somebody who would have said, no, Mr. President. It's against the law. This is unconstitutional. it's an illegal order and unlawful order.

But unfortunately, I think our military has stopped being apolitical. I think our military now, I mean, just take a look at, you know, Pete Kedek-Seth. You know, Trump comes in, and now they've espowed this new form of American patriotism. And we have people falling over themselves to enlist today. Why? Not because they're enlisting to defend America. They're enlisting because they're in love with Trump. And we have generals now that understand that if you don't kiss up to Trump, you're literally,

fired the next day. Look at the head of the intelligence agency who dared challenge Trump's, you know, statements about what was going on in Iran. He's fired. No general will survive and all generals want to survive because, you know, you don't get far on a general's retirement where you make your money is getting on those board of directors after you become a, you know, retirees in general and you're not going to be on a board of director if the President of the United States fires you. So everybody's just basically falling over themselves to appease this president. Ray, is there any way

I'm switching gears to the Israeli attack? Could I just interject here and add a quick note to it? Sure, go ahead. A couple of things here. Scott didn't mention it, but

just so your viewers know, Venezuela sits on more oil deposits than anywhere else in the world. It's a little hard to get it up and out because it's real heavy. stuff but they could do it okay so that's one aspect here the other is uh yeah the business about this killing of other people including american citizens as a bipartisan affair let's

let's be fair here i mean you take eric holder uh attorney general for obama who explain these uh explain these drone strikes on american citizens as look look look Look what the law says. It says, without due process, that doesn't mean judicial process. We do, do, yeah, we do a process right here in the White House. Thank you very much. So this is a kind of erosion of morality, of law, respect for law, that goes back to Obama and farther back. That doesn't excuse it, of course, but that prepares a way to say, well, Obama did it, you know, as they so often.

Ray, you're 100% correct. I read those memos. They were leaked to NBC news, and somebody at NBC sent it to me at Fox, and Fox let me go on air immediately about it. They were childish, poor role would have flunked any course on constitutional law, but they were delivered over the name of the Attorney General of the United States of the president, which allowed him to kill, in this case, two Americans on where Al-Alocki. Now, just to kind of a footnote to that, I mean, Eric Holder expatiated on this new doctrine about, you need judicial problems.

You need whatever you need, just we do the process here at Northwestern University Law School, one of the finest, okay? And my point is simply this. How did the students react to that? Oh, my God, oh, wow, that's interesting. Take a note on that might be on a final example. So we can do process right in the White House. I mean, it's like Russophobia in the intelligence community. The legal profession has been, well, you know better than I, Judge.

You can supply the adjectives. Chris, play cut number 16, and then, Scott, I'm going to ask you if it is in any way conceivable that Trump did not know about the Israeli attack on Qatar before it happened. The Israelis drank earlier today. Well, I'm not thrilled. I'm not thrilled about it. Do you just talk more about the whole situation? I don't have to do that. I'm just, I'm not thrilled about the whole situation.

It's not a good situation. But I will say this, we want the hostages back. But we are not thrilled about the way that went down today. You don't know how you advance, Mr. President, in this real, how to you advance? No. You were caught by surprise, sir? I'm never surprised by anything.

especially when it comes to the Middle East. I'll be giving a full statement tomorrow, but I would tell you this. I was very unhappy about it, very unhappy about every aspect. And we've got to get the hostages back. But I was very unhappy about the way that went down. I know if the Secretary of Defense or war, whatever he calls himself, really has a job. He seems to be standing like a mannequin behind Trump wherever he isn't. by the way, on the other side of HECSeth, not shown in this film, was the National Security

Advisor, who was also the Secretary of State. Scotty, tell us how we know that the U.S. absolutely, not must have known, but absolutely knew what the Israelis were up to. Well, there's two things. First of all, everybody who watches your show knows that we have hundreds, if not more than a thousand American soldiers on the ground in Syria as we speak with more continuing to operate in Iraq. Flying overhead are combat air patrols. You know, we maintain a constant presence of combat aircraft, drones, etc., flying over both Syria and Iraq. This includes not just the kinetic aircraft, the fighter bombers, etc but also electronic warfare aircraft refueling aircraft um intelligence gathering aircraft a wax uh we always

have an a wax up and running controlling the airspace um and and that's what it's about controlling the airspace that means that nothing enters this airspace without our permission this is why we have what are known as iff identify friend or foe um and you know going back to 1991 in the gulf war you know Israel wanted to send aircraft into Western Iraq to hunt down Iraqi scud missiles because they said the United States wasn't doing a good enough job. And at that time, we looked over deconfliction, what would be required in exchange of IFF code so that when Israeli aircraft entered this airspace, they would squawk as a friend, not as an enemy, and we wouldn't shoot them down. We'd also deconflict the airspace, making sure that our aircraft weren't in the same place the Israelis. In the end of the day, we told the Israelis to pound sand. you don't get to come in here, and they did because they would have been shot down.

That's how I know, because here, in order to accept what the Israelis did, they took 15 aircraft off from Israel, flew over Syria, flew over Iraq, through airspace controlled by the United States military, and then they entered an attack profile against Qatar, home of the largest, most strategically important American air base in the Middle East. And to say that we didn't know about this, the deconfliction takes place well in advance of the action that requires deconfliction. It's not something to do spontaneously. What does deconfliction mean?

Again, deconfliction means that when Israeli aircraft enters airspace controlled by the United States, we deconflict. We make sure that we not only recognize them as friends, which requires us to exchange IFF codes, but we also move out of their way. We don't interfere with their operations. We make sure that our aircraft aren't flying in the sitting air. airspace. Is it conceivable that Trump himself didn't know, whether it's from Netanyahu, whether it's from some official in the Israeli government, whether it's from Hegzeth, whether it's from Rubio? No. He's the commander-in-chief of the United States military. The military would not engage in

an action of this sort without getting clearance from the White House or from the Secretary of Defense. and the Secretary of Defense wouldn't give clearance without getting authority from the National Security Advisor, who's not in the chain of command, by the way, but who advises the President, and that means that the President of the United States has to be informed. I don't like calling people liars, but I'm straight up telling you right now, Donald Trump is lying through his teeth. He knew about this in advance, and he gave the green light to Israel to do this, and he ordered the American military to stand aside and let it happen. Ray, wouldn't the CIA have known about this? Wouldn't John Ratcliffe and Tulsi Gabbard have known about this in advance? They should have, but not necessarily, Judge.

You keep things like this very close hole. There was no doubt somebody in Mossad that shared that with somebody in the CIA. Whether it got very far up to Ratcliffe or even to Tulsi, it's really, they do these things extracurricularly, and they do things. without coordinating. So it's not a safe bet that they coordinated this with the intelligents folk. Can I just, can I add just a comment on that? When it comes to Israel, though, things are different. If you remember Muganea, whose name I'm butchering right now, but he was the Hezbollah operative who blew up the, you know, the Marine barracks in 1980s. In the 1980s.

Yeah. And then he was, he was subsequent. assassinated in Damascus by Israel, but it was a joint intelligence operation. The CIA was wired into this operation, and the CIA actually had to de-conflict at the end because we couldn't give permission to kill him. We had to turn it over to the Israelis who had eyes on target, and they were sharing these eyes on target with the United States. And the reason why I'm bringing this up is when the president cleared Hamas to be killed, that means that the CIA's Directorate of Operations that is closely linked with the Israeli intelligence action teams. There were Israeli eyes on target. They were monitoring the movement of these people,

monitoring their cell phones, monitoring their location, because Israel isn't going to fire six missiles into Doha by accident. They have to know that the target's there, and they have to ensure that the airspace is clear. Remember, there's an active international airport in Doha. Nobody issued a no-tams. These airplanes were still flying. And this, again, requires a level of coordination that's unprecedented and very complex. And the United States was involved. This goes beyond the military. This goes into, I believe, the CIA, the Director of Operations, who were knee-deep in this. And while they may not have greenlit the firing of the missiles, they are aware of everything the Israelis did because we jointly target Hamas, Hezbollah, the Iranians,

terrorists. The Israelis don't operate unilaterally on targets outside of Israel without getting the Americans plugged in. In the case of Mugania and Damascus proves that. The same thing. Remember, Soleimani. Soleimani was a joint Israeli-American operation up until the last second when the Israelis backed out, leaving Donald Trump hanging on his own. But the Israelis were the one that were tracking Soleimani from Damascus into Baghdad, providing the airplane number. You had control of the assets on the ground that they turned over to the United States to report the movement. It was the joint Israeli-American assassination of Soleimani that the Israelis pulled out at the last time. Wow. Can I ask a question here of Scott?

Back in 1983, during the Marine barracks devastation, 141 Marines killed, I seem to recollect that there was good information that the Israelis knew about it beforehand and did not tell us. Am I imagining that, Scott, or is that your impression as well? No, there's, I mean, I have to be careful here, but there's information that suggests this. that the Israelis, remember, there was some friction between the Marines and the Israelis. An incident where a Marine captain forced Israeli tanks to back away at gunpoint because he said, you're not crossing through my lines. And the United States was impeding Israel's goal and objective of eliminating the Palestinian Liberation Organization and its leader, Yasser Arafat.

And so I think what happened is the Israelis were aware of. I'm not saying they planned it, but there is sufficient evidence that exists that suggests the Israelis were aware of this attack, and they didn't warn the United States because they wanted this attack to occur because they wanted the United States to withdraw from southern Lebanon. That's as bad as the liberty, isn't it? It is as bad as the liberty. Yeah. They're not all friends. I mean, again, I just want to highlight this point.

Israel's not our friends. They're not our allies. They don't do anything for our benefit. People need to understand that. They have the blood of hundreds of Americans on their hands. Many people on this show from the academics, Mir Schimer and Sachs, to the two of you and Larry and Colonel McGregor and Colonel Wilkerson have made the same argument very, very compellingly. Ray, does the CIA know if the drones, the Russian drones that were shot down over Poland were sent by Moscow or were diverted by Ukraine or were an innocent, honest accident? I'm not sure if the CIA knows. What I am sure of is that the Russians have been very open about this, say, let's get together with you, Polish. people to figure out what happened i think there's great uncertainty as to what happened what we do know is that these drones were in earth no explosives in them maybe they were decoys how they got how they got into poland then we have the yellow russians warning the polls up a bunch of the

bunch of the drones are coming your way watch out i mean the whole thing cries out for a a investigation. And it's interesting. Will the polls accept the invitation to kind of get through to figure out what the bottom line is or what really happened? Was it a mistake? You can be sure that if the Russians were trying to start a war, they would pick other ways to do this. Scotty, what is your understanding of the incident of which we speak and who was responsible for it? Well, my understanding is that the Belarusians, when they warned the polls, and I just want to remind everybody that the Belarusians warned the polls, and the Belarusian military operates in a command center that's co-located with the Russians. So the Russians were aware of the warning and actually approved it. Now, why would Russia approve Belarus warning Poland if Russia was trying to attack Poland?

I mean, the logic falls apart immediately. But they said it's coming in. They said, we don't know how this happened. We don't know that these are deliberately targeted, but there is evidence of significant electronic warfare taking place because the Russians were sending drones in to attack targets in Western Ukraine at this time. And they said they could be diverted by electronic warfare. It turns out that none of these drones were actually attacked drones, that all of them were styrofoam decoy drones that the Russians flood the zone with in order to activate Ukrainian air defense. defense, et cetera. These things are disposable. They're one way. They don't come home. And the Ukrainians have retrieved significant numbers of them. And what appears to have happened is that the Ukrainians

took these drones and they sent them on into Poland, that this was a Ukrainian attack designed to do what? Look, Ukraine's won on this one. Now you have NATO starting to surge air defense capability into Poland with the idea of extending that into Western Ukraine. This is what the Poland wanted all along. Are there 40,000 Polish troops amassing at the Polish-Russian border, as has been reported earlier today? Scott. Not Russian border.

The Polish-Belorussian border. Yeah, 40,000, 10,000 originally, 30,000 coming up. It's nothing. It's literally a nothing burger. They're not combat troops. They're not prepared to carry out offensive operations, and they would be killed in place if they actually tried to do something. But it's just part of the overall posturing that's taking place right now, which is what Ukraine wanted.

You see, last week, remember Europe was saying, we can't send any troops in. We don't have, we're not going to do this. No, no, no. Now, because of what Poland did, or what Ukraine did, now you have Europe standing tall. They're not going into Western Ukraine. They're not peacekeepers, but they're surging capability in. and it's compelling Europe to take a look at air defense, because think about it. 18 styrofoam dummy drones penetrated Polish airspace, and they only shot down two of them.

If this was the real deal, Poland would be eviscerated. It's an embarrassment for Poland. It's an embarrassment for NATO. This is what Ukraine wanted. This is actually a strategic victory for Ukraine. I don't know how it's going to ultimately manifest itself, but they wanted NATO to become activist, and now NATO is activist. All right. So NATO's activist, here's Secretary General, I think that's his title, Ruta, sounding absolutely absurd. This is about 42 seconds long. Listen to how he refers to Vladimir Putin in the last line of this clip.

This will give you both heartburn, even though it's ridiculous. Chris, cut number six. Yes, but why are we interested in what Russia thinks about troops in? Ukraine. It's a sovereign country. It's not for them to decide. I'm really amazed. I'm not criticizing you, but I hear this question, of course, more often, so thank you for asking the question. But I'm really amazed. Russia has nothing to do with this. It's the same like Finland then should have had a sort of a not a yes from Russia to join NATO. No, of course not. In Sweden, no. In the past, the fact that we founded NATO, we are sovereign nations. Ukraine is a sovereign nation. If Ukraine wants to have security guarantee forces in Ukraine

to support a peace, it's up to them. Nobody else can decide about it. And I think we really have to stop making Putin too powerful. He is the governor of Texas, not more. So is that an insult to George W. Bush, or is it consistent with, with his deranged thinking about whether or not a sovereign country should or should not be concerned about an adversary at its border, Ray McGovern. Can I handle that one? Yes.

His predecessor, Jens Stoltenberg, two years ago, got up before the EU parliament and said, the Russians said that if you try to get Ukraine and NATO, we will have to invade invade Ukraine. And so we said, no. And so they invaded Ukraine. But we got NATO enlargement. Anyhow, Finland and Sweden. My God. By that time, over a million young Ukrainians and Russians killed because of this idiot policy of that saying, okay, we'll stop trying to get Ukraine into NATO.

He even mentions the same Fiddling and Sweden, like Fidlin and Sweden, enlarging NATO. That's a black mark. You get Russia, give me a break. Ukraine is essential, is a quintessential factor in Russian planning. Obama knew that. That's why he wouldn't send offensive missiles, because as he put it, the worst thing we could do for the Ukrainians would be to give them the idea that they could prevail. the much stronger Russia.

And now, and now Trump has said precisely the same thing. The Ukrainians have fought very hard, but they're not strong enough. Russia is much stronger. So the earliest we can get this damn thing stopped. And I think Putin and Trump both want to do that. The earliest we can get the thing stopped, the better killing, stopping the killing should be appealing to most people. people accepted like detain yahoo but the argument is compelling this is biden's war uh let's stop the

killing and i think it will take a couple more months but i think there will be some sort of cover for the russian victory it depends on how much lipstick that puttie will be able to supply so they put it on the on the pig of defeat that will emerge from this war for nato for russia for NATO, for Ukraine, and for the U.S. Scotti, Ruta's argument is really absurd, but unfortunately, it appears to be shared by the three leaders of countries whose governments are about to collapse, France, Great Britain, and Germany. Well, you know, the only person that's weaker in Europe than underline, you know, who recently was reminded by nations like Poland and France, that she commanded,

nothing. She can talk about defense spending and this. She has no say. And the only person weaker than her is Mark Ruta. He may be the Secretary General of NATO, but he has no authority. You know, he can't pick up a phone and order divisions to move. He can't order aircraft to move. He has no power. Zero. So for him to sit there and say things as if he's some sort of big man is laughable. And the Russians laugh at this too. Because if what he said was true, then why doesn't he order NATO troops into Ukraine because he doesn't have the authority to order him. And even if he did, the sovereign states of Europe would say, no, France has already said, no, we're not sending troops.

Germany. Nope, we're not sending troops. England, we don't have any troops to send. This is just, I mean, we're literally watching bad theater play out before us. The good news is that the United States isn't buying into any, because I understand, every European nation that speaks about this intervention, they always say, but we need American backstop. And Trump has said, no, no. It's funny, too, Ruthie. Russia has no veto over a sovereign state. America apparently does, right, Mark? Are you going to tell Trump to pound sand?

I dare you to tell Trump to pound sand, because then you'll be out of a job. You'll be fired in a week or in a day. So the stupidity of NATO, the stupidity of the NATO leadership is on display right now. But the reality is Russia just doesn't care. Russia's got a winning strategy and they're implementing this winning strategy and there's nothing Mark Ruta, NATO, Poland, the EU of underlying. Nobody. There's nothing anybody can do to stop them. Let me go back always, if I may, and just put a codicel for that. I was around when Shof could have said the same thing that Ruta has just said. Cuba has the absolute right to invite any kind of weaponry, any kind of alliances that it wants.

And so we're going to keep those medium-range ballistic missiles in there. So shove it there, Kennedy. But Koshav was a realist. And he realized that even though that may be literally so, when there's an existential threat and a great power can do what's necessary, to meet that threat that Kennedy could and did. And so Khrusha part of vessels back. Okay, now what's happened here?

Putin's got into Ukraine. It was not unprovoked. It wasn't a large scale. It wasn't even illegal in my view. But he went in there and he's not going to go out because it's just a matter of what great powers do when they feel threatened by, by little powers that can't really contend with them in the final analysis.

Gentlemen, thank you very much. Much appreciated. You're both doing a double duty for us, and we'll see you both early next week. All the best. Have a great weekend. Thanks. Yeah. Thank you. And coming up next week, of course, on Monday at 8 in the morning, Alistair Crook at 10 in the morning, Ray McGovern. Larry Johnson at 5.30 in the afternoon, probably Scott Ritter at some time in the afternoon. We, of course, will let you know well in advance. Thank you for watching. Have a great weekend.

Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Thank you. Thank you.