Judging Freedom - Is the Biden Team Re-Shuffling_ Phil Giraldi fmr CIA

Episode Date: June 7, 2023

See omny.fm/listener for privacy information.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Wednesday, June 7th, 2023. It's about three o'clock in the afternoon here on the east coast of the United States. Phil Giraldi joins us now. Phil, always a pleasure. Thank you for joining us. You have recently published a fascinating piece asking if a change of course is coming at the State Department. What are the wins or hints of change that you sense might be coming? Well, it's kind of interesting. There are certainly some people within the administration that are rather dubious about what the prospects are in Ukraine.

And I think this is starting to surface a little bit. We have some people that are going to be retiring at State Department who have been key players in the hardline policies. And there are also other people beginning to speak out at certain levels in the Pentagon. So I'm kind of wondering if there's a reality check going in in Washington. It would be very welcome probably by people like us, but whether that's actually happening or not. I mean, do you think that the West in general or the U.S. State Department in particular is getting tired of this war and sees that Ukraine can't win it? Yeah, I'm getting that signal more and more. I have obviously some contacts with people that are still kind of mid-level active in both State Department and the Defense Department and the CIA. And I'm kind of getting that signal. They're not quite, you know, out of the closet yet on it, where they are basically being careful what they say and how they say it. But I'm hearing a bit more of that than I was likely to hear maybe

six months ago. I mean, do CIA, I forget if they're officers or analysts, the people that prepare intel reports that make their way to Langley, that make their way to the White House, often filter in their personal views of the wisdom of the policy that they're being asked to support? It depends how they play it. You know, this stuff is very nuanced and it's very, very carefully looked at in terms of how, see the way the system works, you have your people like me who were the actual spies overseas who spoke with foreigners and then would go back and write up a report. The report would be prepared by a reports officer at the station, and it would go back to the analysts. And when it went back to the analysts, that's where the real melding of information from multiple sources takes place. And then eventually, if it's considered to be verifiable, it would wind up on the desk of people who are policymakers.

What fascinates me, in addition to what you've just described, is the relationship between American intel, which I guess means the CIA, and Russian intel, and Ukrainian intel. So let's take the bombings, fruitless though they were, they were just pinpricks in Moscow. One over the Kremlin, I say one, it was a series of drones. One attack, air quotes, over the Kremlin and one attack in a residential neighborhood not far from President Putin's official residence. A, would the CIA have known about that ahead of time? And B, would they have sent it up the food chain so that the U.S. either approved it or knowingly looked the other way? Well, the answer to that would be if they collected that information, they certainly would have sent it up the food chain. And then the political process kicks in where people decide whether this is a message they want to share or how they want to share it or what the consequences would be of sharing it.

So there are a lot of games that go on when the information gets up to a certain level. There's no question about it. But this stuff would be reported. I have no doubt about that. And just as now we're seeing some new reporting on the North Stream about U.S. prior knowledge of the Ukrainian government being behind the attack, which may be a cover-up for the fact that the United States probably did it. But, you know, it's that kind of thing. There are a number of elements that come into play

at a certain point. Did the U.S. know about the bombing or destruction or explosion, whatever it was, at the dam in Ukraine earlier this week before it happened? Well, that's another good question. I would think if the Ukrainians carried it out, there would have been ways for the U.S. to pick up on that information, and they would have reported it up the food chain. I have no doubt about that, but we'll see. I think this issue might get even more murky. The Turkish government has called for a multilateral investigation to find out who done it. Let me show you a clip from President Zelensky recently. It's in Ukraine. There are subtitles. I'm going to read the subtitles for the benefit of our friends who are

receiving, judging Freedom Audio only. As you watch this, I'd like to know what he says in there. I'd like to know if the CIA knew about this ahead of time. Here he is. In my opinion, as of today, we are ready to do it. We would like to have certain things, but we can't wait for months. We strongly believe we will succeed. I don't know how long it will take. So he's giving an interview, and the question was, is the spring offensive coming? And he's very upbeat and positive about it.

Would the CIA have known of that interview and what he was going to say in it before the interview took place, stated differently, do they surveil every word that comes out of his mouth and every keystroke on his mobile device? Sure, absolutely. And so would the embassy. The embassy would be doing the same thing using its assets and its contacts within the government. And I would bet that after this statement was made, there was what would be referred to in the embassy as a meeting of the country team. That means every element in the embassy would get together to discuss this comment because this comment is fraught with significance in terms of where this is going, whether this is just a ploy to get the U.S. and NATO more heavily engaged or not, they would have to be considering that. So there are a number of elements they would have to be

looking at. All right, you keep saying the embassy. Am I to believe that the diplomats in the embassy are really agents of the Central Intelligence Agency? Well, some of them, of course, are. They're under State Department cover. But the fact is, the embassy has also its political officers who are essentially analysts of the situation on the ground. And when I say they, within the embassy, the intelligence officers certainly share their reports and their information with their State Department counterparts. It's part of the way the job is done. Okay. And when you say embassy, you're talking about the American Embassy in Kiev. Yes, I am. And is it also true that the Russians effectively and thoroughly surveil the American embassy in Kiev? I don't know that for a fact, but I would assume

that that's the case. There are many people within Kiev and even within the Zelensky regime that are presumably reporting to the Russians. So the Russians have a number of assets on the ground in Kiev, and I'm sure they are doing just that. They would also have electronic capabilities. So everybody knows what everybody else is doing before it happens. If Zelensky is going to bomb the dam, the Russians know about it. The U.S. knows about it. If Zelensky is going to tell a Ukrainian television interviewer, we're ready.

We waited long enough. We're ready to go. We're confident the Russians know about it and the Americans know about it. And the Ukrainians know that the Russians and the Americans know about it? Or am I getting ahead of myself here? No, I think you're absolutely correct. But of course, the other assumption that might be made by the Russians and the United States is that Zelensky is lying. So some of this is obviously a charade to throw off adversarial intel. Fairly put? Yeah, it certainly is.

That's called disinformation. And everybody does it. But bear in mind, Zelensky is trying. Zelensky is the weak player in this game. He's the one that's dependent on NATO and the U.S. providing overwhelming assistance to him if he has any chance of winning. The Russians are much more powerful than he is. He knows it. The obvious outcome of this fighting is eventually there has to be some kind of settlement which will divide up what is currently or what was currently or recently Ukraine.

So anyway, there are a lot of complications going on and a lot of games being played at certain levels. The president, President Zelensky recently referred the president to Putin as a cornered animal. So we're going to play this tape for you. And again, I'll read the subtitles for the benefit of those that don't have the audio. And then I want your thoughts on this and the intel potential or likely intel involvement in this. Any of our Western partners, they have to understand what specifically they are afraid to lose. His, Putin's constant Soviet-style threats about nuclear weapons, All of these are signs of a weak man. And that's how we have to act. He is a cornered animal. He is afraid of losing his life. He must be afraid of the strength of the world. Now, what has President Zelensky gained by that? Well, I think what he gains by that is he's heightening the perception

that Putin is reckless and is prepared to use nuclear weapons and that the West will have to do something about this and uh the cornered animal and stuff i you know that's all just uh the verbiage it's about about creating his own the image that he wants to create about putin being on the defensive now many other uh experts experts that I would respect are saying quite the opposite, that the Ukrainian new offensive or counteroffensive is having trouble getting started and will have trouble achieving any objectives at all. And that basically in the long term, there's no way that Ukraine can beat Russia. So it's, again, this is game playing at a high level. And that is what Zelensky is, though not particularly good at it, it's something he does over and over again. Do you think he has oversold the spring offensive? I would say he has, you know, but there are ways to wrap these things when,

if he has some minor successes in certain areas, there is, he and the US and the Western media are all going to inflate it and make it look like it's something that's a lot more significant than it really is. Bear in mind that Joe Biden is running for re-election too, and the Ukraine policy is going to be a big, big marker in terms of how people vote in a little over a year down the road. So there's a lot of game playing coming out of Washington too on this. Here's Secretary of State Blinken with the most recent statement from the administration on Ukraine. It could have been written by Joe Biden's speechwriters. It

could have been written by Victoria Nuland, the Deputy Secretary of State for Political Affairs. It's just about four or five days old when he was in Helsinki. As I've made clear by virtually every measure, President Putin's invasion of Ukraine has been a strategic failure. Yet, while Putin has failed to achieve his aims, he hasn't given up on them. He's convinced that he can simply outlast Ukraine and its supporters, sending more and more Russians to their deaths, inflicting more and more suffering on Ukraine's civilians. He thinks that even if he loses the short game, he can still win the long game. Putin is wrong about this too. The United States, together with our allies and partners, is firmly committed to supporting Ukraine's defense today, tomorrow, for as long as it takes. But this is as reckless and crazy as President Zelensky saying they're ready to start the spring offensive, isn't it?

Well, it certainly comes across that way. I think the problem with Blinken is that he's locked into the idea, or for, I think, propaganda reasons, that there was any intention right in the beginning on the part of Russia to take over Ukraine. That would have been taking over 50 million people who would be fighting a guerrilla war for the next 20 years. What Putin, it seems to me, intended to do is what he's done pretty much already. He's occupied most of Donbass.

He's created a bridge to Crimea, and he still has Crimea. So I think this is a point where, you know, you decide what time in this game do you give up, and you decide there has to be an exchange of territory. And this is the solution out of it. And but Blinken, of course, is is talking for his president. And he's basically saying win it forever because this is the right thing to do. And he'll throw the word democracy around a lot. But the fact is that the United States never had a real stake in this war, never had a reason to let it start like it

did when negotiations were certainly vile. And the administration is just playing a game for political reasons, for political ends. And that's the way I would see it. So instead of a ceasefire today, there'll be a ceasefire a year from now after another 100,000 human beings have died and another 100 billion, I'm just estimating and rounding, 100 billion American dollars have been spent. Sure, and American soldiers will wind up dying too. You better believe it. Recently, there were reports, not in the mainstream media, I think Cy Hirsch reported this, of an underground bunker attacked by the Russians in which NATO officers were seriously injured. And shortly

thereafter, American planes were seen flying people to Wiesbaden, where the U.S. has a major medical center, Wiesbaden, Germany. Do your sources give you any information as to whether any Americans were injured or even killed when this bunker was hit? Well, yeah, that story has been going around for some time, and there have been variations of it, depending on who the source is or what the source is, about who was killed there. The initial stories were that as many as 200 senior officers from NATO, including Americans, were killed. Since then, they've kind of gone down on the numbers and diminished the importance of what took place. But I believe, yeah, sure, the Russians are going to target intelligence centers

because the intelligence centers are being used to target Russians. And when this happens, they're going to kill NATO officers. Wouldn't we know if Americans had been killed? I mean, is there a way for American bodies, dead bodies, to come from Ukraine back to the U.S. without the press knowing about it, without somebody in the CIA saying, hey, the public has to know about this. This general was just killed, or this lieutenant was just killed. Well, there are probably ways to cover it up. If you declared that an American soldier was killed and it took place actually in Ukraine and you claim it happened on maneuvers in Wiesbaden or something like that, or Grafenwoehr, then you kind of, you fudge the

death certificate, you fudge this, you fudge that. They're capable of doing all this. And the question is, how long can they sustain it? I would say sooner or later, somebody's going to speak up. Is the Israeli Mossad present in Ukraine, spying on Ukraine, Russia, and the U.S.? Well, I have certainly heard that they are. And in fact, if you follow the Israeli media, there have been suggestions that Mossad is active ostensibly in support of the Ukrainian government, but also engaged in other activities. I mean, what benefit to Israel would it be to have their spies and security agents running around Ukraine in wartime? Well, I think the benefit that comes out of it is that the Ukrainian war is going to be a major

marker in the next six months to a year in terms of how a lot of other political developments shake out. And the Israelis operate globally. And I think that it benefits them to know how the major players that they're involved with, which mean not only the United States, but also Russia. Remember that Israel maintains very good, generally very good relations with Russia. So they see themselves as players in this. Do allies take offense when allies spy on them? In other words, is the American intelligence community, diplomatic corps, senior diplomats offended that their own allies, the Brits, the Israelis are spying on them? They expect to be spied on by the Russians. So they expect to be spied on by the Brits, the Israelis are spying on them. They expect to be spied on by the Russians.

So they expect to be spied on by the Brits and the Israelis. Yeah, I think everyone expects to be spied on by allies to a certain level. The level would be intentions, like what is the United States actually going to do in Ukraine would be something very valuable for the British and the Germans to know about. And so it's that kind of information that foreign intelligence services focus on a lot because it's the kind of thing that is extremely hard to get at. And once you get at it, you have the keys to the kingdom do your intelligence sources have a pretty good good idea of who blew up the dam uh i'm not hearing much yet uh obviously the the ones who are the biggest gainers from it are the ukrainians um the russians would in a sense, it would be not exactly suicidal, but counter

effective for the Russians to blow up the dam, which provides water for their installations in Crimea, and so on and so forth. So I think the Ukrainians are the likely suspects. Bill Giraldi, always a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you very much for joining us. Well, thank you for having me on again. Of course. More as we get it. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.