Judging Freedom - Is the Ukraine Narrative by US Officials Changing? - Ray McGovern

Episode Date: May 1, 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 Monday, May 1st, 2023. It's about 11 o'clock in the morning here on the East Coast of the United States. Ray McGovern joins us for his weekly and his Monday interview with us. Ray, always a pleasure. Thank you for joining us. I think over the weekend or maybe sometime in the past few days, you had the opportunity to listen to and be involved with the presentation of an award to one of the great whistleblowers of all time, Daniel Ellsberg, who of course exposed the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times and the Washington Post. And that resulted in a great Supreme Court opinion, which protected the media when they exposed matters of material interest to

the public, no matter how those matters got in the hands of the media. Did Ellsberg have any lesson or advice or theme to what his comments were about the dangers, whistleblowers, or leakers, as the government likes to call them, face today? Yes, Judge. Dan has for a long time emphasized this message, and I quote, don't do what I did. And what Dan says next, of course, is I waited too long. I saw in 1964 that the Vietnam escapade was based on a bunch of lies and was going to get a lot of people killed. I waited until, well, he says 1971 for the Pentagon Papers. papers, but he also wrote in this not so well-known book, Secrets, that his first leak came in 1968 and prevented a widening of the war, his leak and one other, up to the Chinese border. And those of us who are around for Korea remember what happens when you go right up to the Chinese border.

All right. So what was that all about? Well, that appeared in the citation with the award that we, Sam Adams Associates for Integrity, gave to Dan Ellsberg on the 11th of April as private ceremony. Dan's health situation being what it is, up there in the Berkeley Hills. And what Dan said in his own remarks, it was only a half hour or so ceremony. The video comes out to 22 minutes. He said at the end, still very, very sharp. And you could tell he said, don't forget to say this.

Don't forget to say this, Dan. He says, look, my message continues to be, don't do what I did. Don't wait until the bombs start falling. Don't wait until a lot of people get killed. Don't wait until the war gets widened up to the Chinese border. The great man who changed the First Amendment legal landscape of the United States and who exposed

the government's deception almost like never before is humble enough to say I waited too long. I should have done it earlier. If you're in a situation like I was, do it before the killing starts, not after it goes on. Fair summary? Correct. And I just add that, well, Dan and I and Anne Wright and a few others created what we call the truth-telling coalition. This was back in 2004, okay? And we

rallied the ACLU and lots of the folks say, look, we can protect whistleblowers if they only come forward. Little do we know that just six years later, Julian Assange would have found a very clever, very clever, sophisticated way to get the truth up and out and into people's computers. So the whole world changed with, with Julian Assange. He too was an awardee of the Sam Adams prize. And what dad said was very moving. It says,

I'm glad to be put in the company of the previous 21 Sam Adams Award winners. Now, the neocons, of course, think that Julian Assange and Dan Ellsberg are monsters who should either be executed or locked up for the rest of our lives. What brought about the rise of these neocons and how can they if ever be dislodged from power even even trump had neocons working for him i mean john bolton as an example yeah the uh truth is the best disinfectant as you know. That's why I relish being on this program with you. We're really in quite a fix right now. Yes, we are. There are a couple of folks being brought to trial for weaponizing the First Amendment. Now, think back to 71, 72, when Ellsberg forced and a gutsy guy in the New York Times said, look, go ahead, do it, publish these things and see what happens.

Now, the Supreme Court came down on the right side of that, as you say. Now we have, instead of protecting the First Amendment, people are being tried for weaponizing the First Amendment. In other words, saying things that the government doesn't want you to say. That's a hell of a fix, Judge. It's only we that have the opportunity, and really, I would say the requirement to make sure our fellow citizens know how dangerous the situation is. Well, the situation is very dangerous because that attitude, Julian Assange should be published for what he revealed, even though he fits directly within the four corners, if you will, of the Pentagon paper's decision. A media outlet in possession of information about the government, which is of material interest to the public. Isn't it of material interest to the public that the government was engaged in war crimes and the perpetrators of the war crimes were laughing about it.

If you actually watch the tapes that Julian Assange ran, the government will say, well, Assange talked to Bradley Manning about how to get this information to him. Well, Ellsberg must have talked to somebody at the New York Post and at the New York Times. They didn't just drop it off on West 43rd Street. He had to know where to go and how to give it to them. This is all an assault on the First Amendment. You're right, and it's very dangerous. You know, the First Amendment, schoolchildren know what it says.

Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech or of the press. In the midst of the oral argument of the Pentagon Papers case, the great Justice William O. Douglas looks at the lawyer for the government and says, well, let me ask you this. really mean no law? And of course, he couldn't answer. How do we know that that happened during the oral argument? Because the Supreme Court did something it has never done before or since. It put in the middle of the opinion that portion of the oral argument, the Q&A between Justice Douglas and this government lawyer, and how befuddled he was and how he couldn't answer Justice Douglas's question, does no law really mean no law? It obviously doesn't mean no law. It doesn't mean what it says in the minds of government prosecutors if they can prosecute you for speaking. I mean, this takes us to Teixeira. Let's say Teixeira did, the Massachusetts National Guardsman now in jail in Boston. Let's say he did what the government says he did. He published matters of material interest to the public. The government has been killing

people and lying to you about it, and the government itself believes it's a futile cause. The Ukrainians are going to lose. That's the takeaway from these documents. Why isn't he protected? Why should he have to work for the New York Times or the Washington Post? He published them on his own. This is an era of self-publishing. I would argue the Pentagon Papers protections should extend to him. Your thoughts? Well, I think the leak could have a salutary effect.

As you say, it pumped some truth up into the air. And we're likely to see within the next few weeks, whether the fact that the Washington Post and the BBC, and to an extent, the New York Times jumped on this story for that first crucial week and said, no, no, Ukraine can't win. No, no, Russia is not running out of ammunition. The West is running out of ammunition. Oh, no, no, there's not going to be any talks because this will slough on into next year. That's all up and out there now. And to the degree that the media, the mainstream media is now dealing with this, or will have to, in just a couple of weeks when this counteroffensive peters out, when everybody's putting their money on the Ukrainian counteroffensive, it's not going to go anywhere. So what then?

Now, the real fly in the ointment here, in my opinion, Judge, is the topic that Jacob Siegel addresses in his latest piece in The Tablet. It's how the propaganda organs of our government are joined with the mainstream media and the deep state, and I use that term advisedly, to deprive the American people from knowing what the truth is, okay? It's an amazing reconstruction of Russiagate and all the errors and all that has come out with the fact that Twitter had FBI people in it to make sure we didn't know what we should have known with respect to Hunter Biden's laptop, for example. So we'll come to the crucible now. When it turns out that American people have been misled into thinking the Ukrainians could win, I mean, even Obama said, you know, Ukraine is not a core interest for us. It's a core interest for Russia. We ought to

really be careful what we risk getting involved in a war about. Well, wasn't Biden vice president then? I think he was. What happened? Well, you have Tony Blinken and all these guys. Blinken, I think, is about to be thrown under the bus. Certainly, he's going to have to be thrown under the bus when all his assurances, Ukraine can win, NATO can win, when they go bust. And that's going to happen within the next month, mark my words. Here's General Christopher Cavoli, four-star. You've probably seen this, which is why you're smiling.

I have, yeah. It's only a few days old, testifying before the House Armed Services Committee on the relative strength of Russia versus Ukraine. Take a listen. I'd like to underline your comment about the specificity of the degradation of the Russian forces. Much of the Russian military has not been affected negatively by this conflict. Much of the Russian military has not been affected negatively by this conflict. One of those forces is their undersea forces. It's hard to talk in public, as you well know, sir, about undersea warfare and our efforts in that regard. But I can say that the Russians are more active than we've seen them in years. And this is, as you

pointed out, despite all of the efforts that they're undertaking inside Ukraine. Much of the Russian military has not been undermined or degraded. Does he talk to his boss, the Secretary of Defense, who, notwithstanding what he knew were in the Teixeira documents, said the opposite of what General Cavoli said? Or do I just love General Cavoli because his last name is Cavoli? Sorry, I couldn't resist. Well, blood is thicker than politics, Judge. Yeah, you know, it's not that he reports directly to Austin. He reports to Billy, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, or through him to the president. So Austin is way out in La La Land. He was very careful in that earlier interview, you know, when he kept saying,

well, you told us the Ukraine is going to win, right? The representative says, well, I told you that we've given them everything they need to win, and we're just hoping, and we're just hoping to win. So even Austin was sort of wishy-washy on that. They're not going to win. And that's big. And here's Cavalli, who commands all those troops. Here's an interesting thing. Underwater, what does that have to do? I think that has to do with submarines. What do the Russians have now that we don't have? They have incredibly fast hypersonic missiles mounted on submarines patrolling in the Atlantic and the Pacific. You don't hear about this, but these are capabilities that outmatch U.S. capability. It's really interesting that Cavoli, who was interested mostly in Europe, is talking about underwater capability.

They know not only do Russian conventional forces outmatch those of NATO in Europe, but hear this, Russian strategic forces built up for the last 10 years outmatch U.S. strategic forces, particularly in the singularly important category of hypersonic missiles that cannot be defended against in any way, shape, or form. I know he's the commander-in-chief of American Armed Forces in Europe, but I was surprised to hear him talk about underwater. First of all, I thought he was going to go to Nord Stream and maybe there was an implication there that he doesn't buy the nonsense about it was a guy and a girl on a sailboat on a Saturday afternoon. I don't think anybody seriously believes that.

But why would a four-star general be talking about naval activities? Should I be reading anything into that, Ray? No, all forces come under his aegis there as Supreme Commander. But, you know, my guess would be he's trying to get some representative or senator interested enough to say, what would you raise that thing about? Tell us about the underwater. We can go into executive session if you like. What is this underwater stuff? Right. You know? Maybe Cavoli is just saying, well, you know, we're outmatched.

Nobody knows that. Congress, you're supposed to have some oversight here. Ask me about it, please. Ask me about it. That's my guess. Have you come to any more of a firm opinion on whether or not Jack Teixeira could possibly have acted alone? Our good friend and colleague, Larry Johnson, who'll be on later today, is now even more firmly convinced than ever that Teixeira was just a pawn, but the government wants to make him a scapegoat because the government knows he's a pawn and the

government wants to protect whoever in the government it was that gave this information to him. What does Ray McGovern think? Well, Larry Johnson has looked at it much more carefully than I have, okay? Larry Johnson knows a lot more about how these SCIFs, these secret compartmented intelligence centers work. So, you know, I agree with him. I think this is much more than just this one airman first class. But again, I think the real relative takeaway here is that the Washington Post and the BBC decided to run with this for the first week when it came up and they decided to publish stories much at variance with what Secretary Austin,

Secretary Blinken, Jacob Sullivan, and all those guys have been telling us about in Ukraine. Now, correct me if you think I'm wrong, but the Washington Post editors don't go to the men's or the ladies' room without asking the White House for permission. I'm not saying the White House gave permission. I'm saying somebody within the White House or somebody within the Langley set up there with the CIA or somebody within the Joint Chiefs of Staff themselves was checked with

and they said, yeah, these are explosive stories. Sullivan and Blinken don't know what the hell they're doing. Get these stories out. Maybe we have a chance to prevent really, really earth-shattering decisions by Biden, not by Biden, but Blinken and Sullivan, which would escalate into nuclear war in Europe. That's big. That's worth giving permission to get these stories out. Now, whether the Congress, it seems, bent just in the other direction will listen or whether anyone else will listen. Well, it depends on how successful we are, Judge, in getting this story out and saying, look, American people, you're being had again. It's the weapons of mass destruction story all over again,

and some of the same players, for God's sake. Think of David Sanger for the New York Times. You know, Ray, this brings us back to where we started this conversation. Don't wait. When you have this information, let it out. Now, of course, the bombs have been dropped and 68 billion with a B, American dollars, have already been spent. That, of course, is more than Ukrainian dollars that have been spent and more than Russian dollars that have been spent. Another story for another time about the waste of American assets. who has the same views of Blinken and Sullivan and Austin that we do, to expose them for the incompetence, E-N-T-S, that they are.

Well, let's hope that we're right on that. The crucial time is coming, and Americans are going to be completely surprised. You mean Ukraine is not winning? How did the Russians get the upper hand here all of a sudden? What are we going to do about that? Well, as I've said before, for Russia, Ukraine is an existential threat, an existential problem. For the United States, Even Obama said explicitly,

it's not a core interest, and we shouldn't put, we shouldn't give arms to Ukraine, because then we will give the Ukrainians the idea that they could win against a far more powerful Russia. Obama said that. So the, the, the, the crux is coming. We're going to have to, you know, the thing that bothers me, Judge, is people being killed, as you and I are discussing this, right? Okay, we can say, oh, just wait a few more weeks. It's going to be very clear where the counteroffensive doesn't work. And people being killed every day, you know, that's unconscionable. So if I feel a little bit emotional about this, it's because the first thing you do is stop the bleeding, for God's sake.

That's why we should go to immediate negotiations and a ceasefire. God love you, Ray. Thank you very much. All the best. Until next week. Thank you. Well, if you like that, and I know you do, it's a great way to start the week and to start your Monday. Like and subscribe, and of course, more as we get it. And Larry Johnson picking up on all of this at 3 o'clock this afternoon, Eastern. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.