Judging Freedom - Larry Johnson: NATO Waits In Vain For a Russian Offensive

Episode Date: April 1, 2024

Larry Johnson: NATO Waits In Vain For a Russian OffensiveSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Resolve to earn your degree in the new year in the Bay with WGU. With courses available online 24-7 and monthly start dates, WGU offers maximum flexibility so you can focus on your future. Learn more at wgu.edu. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Monday, April 1st, 2024. Larry Johnson joins us now. Larry, a belated Happy Easter to you and your family. And thank you very much, of course, for joining us today. I keep hearing a phrase used with respect to the attack on the Moscow concert venue the other day. And the phrase is the duty to warn. What does that mean in the intelligence community and to intelligence professionals, Larry?

Well, if you have information that there's going to be a terrorist attack in another country that is going to not necessarily target U.S. citizens, but may threaten U.S. citizens, but you know that you can prevent the deaths of civilians, you consider it your duty to warn that country. Now, the New York Times came out with a story, and we talked about it, I think, last Friday a little bit, claiming that, oh, this started, this was a policy in 2015. No, that's bunk. It started in 1989 as an official policy because I was there at the creation of it. My boss, Ambassador Morris Busby, the then coordinator for counterterrorism, was given the task of saying, okay, what's our policy if we have intelligence information and

have to warn, you know, should we warn the public? Because there had been some controversy that the U.S. government had information about the bombing of Pan Am 103 in advance and didn't warn people. We only told U.S. government officials. Well, that wasn't true. So out of that came the policy that if you have credible intelligence and you're not sure you can prevent it, then you go out with a warning to the public. But regardless of whether you can prevent it or not, you share it with the target government. I do recall one instance in which we had intelligence information

that there was going to be an attack against the U.S. embassy in the Middle East. And yet the CIA was saying, you know, if we go out and alert, this is going to compromise the source. But Buzz said, sorry, we're not going to protect one guy's life and risk the lives of other innocents. And, you know, that information was put out. The terrorist attack was prevented. And I presume that source wound up dead. So that happens. Does this duty to war apply even to adversaries,

to a country with which we were adverse? Well, yes, because unless you've guaranteed that every American citizen has vacated Russia or China, let's just take those as two examples, then the possibility of American citizens being killed could be high. And it is the one of the responsibilities of State Department is to protect American citizens overseas. So even though, you know, if we don't like North Korea or we don't like Russia, if we have understanding there's going to be a terrorist attack on a public gathering where there's likely to be American citizens, we warn. That's simple. Okay. So the duty to warn is grounded in the duty of the State Department to protect American citizens. It's not a courtesy to, for example, Russia to protect Russian citizens.

In this case, it would be a fear that there would be Americans in the audience at this concert. Yeah, yeah, that's exactly it. Okay. Now, at what there's going to be, or would the Americans call up the Russian ambassador, excuse me, would the Americans call up the Russian ambassador in Washington saying there's going to be a concert, we're worried there are Americans there, but you should know people may die? Yeah, so let's separate it into two elements. First, there is the public warning. So the State Department puts out the public warning. But then there's also the actual intelligence that it's based on. And at that point, it depends upon the situation. But normally, two things happen.

One, state, main state, they're on C Street in Washington, D.C. They'll call in the ambassador from Russia to the State Department, and he would be briefed by, it could be even by Secretary Blinken or the Undersecretary for Political Affairs, the job that Victoria Nuland held, as well as the Assistant Secretary for Intelligence and Research. And then they'll always bring along an analyst who actually knows what's going on, who has the actual information. So the ambassador would get briefed, and then he would probably be accompanied by his FSB or SVR counterpart that works at the embassy. They'd go back, they'd write up a cable, send it to Moscow. At the same time, in Moscow, it would be incumbent upon the American ambassador to reach out to the foreign ministry and or to the security services of Russia. You'd also expect that the CIA chief of station

would make a similar effort to pass along, here's what we know. There is this, we see this risk, this potential for this terrorist attack, and you share what you have. You don't hold back critical details, which is, according to the New York Times, exactly what happened. So who warned whom in this case? Was it the moral equivalent of whispering to somebody in a men's room, which is the way Scott Ritter has described it? Or was it an actual formal warning the way you just described it should have been? Well, it should have been a formal warning. Whether the embassy said, okay, well, we'll just send them a copy of this public

press release that we've just done. If they did that, then that just is further demonstration of the lack of professionalism in this and the lack of care. We don't know if the CIA, if the chief of station was tasked with briefing his Russian counterpart. He should have been. So, but, but the point is, once that information is presented in public, that's at a minimum what the Russians were told, but they should have been told some additional information based upon that intelligence because specifically because of the timeframe claiming claiming that this was a 48-hour threat. So there were a number of failures here. The level of warning, the person to whom the warning was given, the person who made the warning wasn't official enough. It wasn't high enough up the food chain. It wasn't specific enough.

And when the threat dissipated because of their perception of too much security that they'd have to breach at the March 7th concert, there was no warning that this thing could still happen in a couple of weeks. Do I have that right? No, no. Let's get this straight. First of all, the warning was issued on March 7th, claiming that it could take place within 48 hours. Well, within 48 hours, that period would end on Sunday, March 9th. And we know that this Russian pop star shaman had concerts scheduled for the 9th, the 10th, and the 11th.

Now, we know that the ambassador in Russia was not notified by State Department. We know that by his own admission. We know that the foreign ministry in Russia was not notified, according to Maria Zakharova, the press spokeswoman for Lavrov. So there was a breakdown there where the United States, oh, well, we told the Russians. They may have told somebody with SVR, perhaps, but they didn't really go through the formal process. The problem, judges, is 48 hours. I've checked with a couple of buddies who are retired CIA chiefs of station, who would be the ones who would ostensibly gather this kind of information, send it back to headquarters where

the reports officers would put it in to a disseminate a report that could be disseminated, and then it would be put out. Not a one has ever seen a piece of intelligence that would say, beware in the next 48 hours. And then when that 48-hour period is up, then what? You're saying that the threat is over? I mean, that's how it comes across. But any intelligence analyst worth their salt would sit there and look at that and go what makes 48 hours magical they said well this shaman was holding a concert on the 9th yeah well he's holding one on the 10th too and one on the 11th so why not 72 hours uh why not 96 out you know so all right so what is what

is your take is what do you think probably happened here uh did did did the people that are supposed to issue the warnings want this thing to happen and so the warnings were tepid and misleading uh i don't know all i can do is speculate at this point one let me give you one one speculative hypothesis that the warnings that were issued on march 7th were bogus and we knew they were bogus that we would we were setting the russians up and so you know the russians responded reacted and then after 48 hours is up it's natural to go either those americans were lying to us or they're just they're just you know uh trying to to mislead us. I mean, really, it would undermine confidence in what the Americans told you.

So you say, okay. And we know that there were repeated attempts by Ukraine and others leading up to the election on the 16th, or when it terminated on the 16th, to attack Russian cities. Belgorod experienced several missile attacks. And then after that, when the actual, you know, they knew the terrorist attack would take place sometime later, and when I say they, people in the West.

So when it happens on the 26th, we come back and go, those Russians, they didn't take our warnings seriously. Well, that's nonsense. That's a lie that they ignored our warnings, that they're incompetent. I think this is all part of, if you will, a covert action, a propaganda operation designed to try to sow dissent within Russia to make the Russian people doubt the competence of Vladimir Putin and the security services. Boy, that's reprehensible because 140 innocent people, mainly young people, died.

We're going to take a break. When we come back, I'm going to ask Larry if the West is even taking seriously the strength and paying attention to the strength that Russia has amassed in Ukraine. But first this. How do you really feel about your financial future right now today? Stable or uncertain? Despite all the happy talk that the Fed and the banks want you to buy into, I believe that 2024 is going to be a very unstable year, politically and financially. That's one of the reasons I decided to buy physical gold and silver. And I suggest you should do the same and do it now. Why?

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Experts predict the markets may tank again. You'll be happy if you have protection in place. So call Lear at 800-511-4620, 800-511-4620, or go to learjudgenap.com and tell them your friend the judge sent you. Larry, is the West paying careful attention to what Russia is doing in Ukraine? Starting to, yeah. It is, it's not, you know, today's April 1st, normally April Fool's Day, but this is not an April Fool's joke. The number of messages that are starting to come across recognizing that Ukraine may not last through June as a country, because the Russians now have embarked upon this strategy of taking out all the power plants, thermal power plants, hydroelectric power plants,

principally, and coal-fired power plants. And as a result, massive swaths of Ukraine are without power. And so with people unable to turn on lights, light gas stoves, do other things that with electricity as required, they'll start abandoning those. They'll start moving as refugees to other places, other locations. I think the next step in this will be Russia will start taking out the bridges. These fab 3,000-kilogram bombs are such that they can actually destroy these bridges. And when you take out a bridge, you're going to cut off the ability of the Ukrainian military leadership to supply troops

that are east of the Dnieper River. So in a way, it's like surrounding the Ukrainian army without actually having to use military force with a direct confrontation. So how bad numerically have the Ukrainian troop losses become in recent months? And how difficult has it been for logistics, for Ukrainian military to get food and supplies to these troops that have survived and are still there fighting? Now, the logistics issue has become more severe, and the reports are that the death toll has probably doubled what it was last year in terms of on a monthly, daily basis. So, I mean, they're suffering very, very serious casualties. And part of it's caused by, again, the shift in the Russian tactics.

They're using more drones they started to use robots you know shades of the movie uh Terminator and then uh they're using these fabs that range in size from 500 1500 and and 3 000 kilograms so they just monstrous bombs that blow holes in defensive emplacements. So no longer can the Ukrainians just hunker down in a trench or a bunker and try to wait out the Russians. These bombs are, you know, it is literally a game changer. Is the Crocus attack, the concert attack, a game changer or a returning point as Alistair Crook seems to believe? I think it may be only to the extent that it is so fully enraged the Russian people. But

let's recall that the Ukraine's been carrying out attacks on civilians that would constitute terrorist attacks for, you know, the last 10 years. The missile launches into Belgorod, into Kursk, that are in Russian territory, that hit civilian areas. There was, I think in December, there were people gathered in Donetsk City for a concert and boom, a Ukrainian missile hit right in the middle of that concert. It was in a theater and, you know, killed the performer and killed several of the audience members. So but, you know, that I guess up to that point, that was considered sort of the cost of being at war. But now it's, you know, now Crocus changed that because it was in Moscow. It was such a high profile event. And, you know,

the Russians have shown in the past when they when they faced this Chechen war from, you know, 1999 and it terminated in 2009, there were several massive mass casualty events in Moscow carried out by these Chechen terrorists. And the Russians ultimately ended up killing them and crushing that insurgency. So Russia's had experience with it. Vladimir Putin is the one that carried that out. You know, the old saying, if he's done it before and he can do it again. Why is Ukraine's top general, General Sersky, claiming that he's pushing the Russians backwards? Is there any evidence to this at all?

I think he's been spending too much time with President Zelensky and they're sampling the cocaine, you know, they're doing that or vodka shots, something like that. No, I mean, it is delusional. You've got even Ukrainian sources now saying, what is he talking about? All along the Donetsk, particularly in Donetsk, but all along the line of conflict, which goes about 600, 700 miles from north to south, Russia's moving forward, Ukraine's moving backwards.

That's it. It's that simple. And Ukraine does not have an answer for it because, again, we've gone over this repeatedly. They lack manpower. They lack air defense. They lack air cover. They lack air defense. They lack air cover. They lack artillery. And they lack artillery shells to put in the artillery.

Other than that, it's looking really good. I want to go back to the concert and the duty to warn. Is this an FSB failure? Is this a Russian internal intelligence failure? No, no. I mean, it's just, you know, look, the reality is if a group is going to carry out a terrorist attack, you know, mount an attack on a public place, odds that they can get it, carry it out without authorities knowing about it is 99%, 99.5%.

Look at us. Oklahoma City bombing. Did we prevent that? No. First World Trade Center bombing, 1993. Did we prevent that? No. 2001, bombing of the Pentagon and the World Trade Center with the planes.

We didn't prevent that. How about the nightclub in Orlando? Didn't prevent that. How about the nightclub in Orlando? Didn't prevent that. So we can go down the list, and it says this is a childish game that U.S. authorities and, frankly, European authorities are playing and trying to say, oh, the FSB sucks because they didn't prevent this. And we gave them all the information they needed. Well, we didn't give them all the information they needed. That's a lie. That's the big lie, number one. And number two, by the New York Times admission, if we're to believe the New York Times, intelligence officials held back key details. Well, maybe those details might have been important and preventing it. But this, you know, that's why I view this, this Crocus City Hall

attack is, it's part of some larger covert action operation. And I suspect the ones primarily behind it are the Brits with the Ukrainians, but the Americans had some knowledge. And did that knowledge come because intelligence was passed to us by Israel or by the Brits? Or did we come up with it on our own? The nature of this attack, do you characterize it as acts of terrorism or asymmetric warfare from the West? Yeah. Or is that a $64,000 question? Yeah, it's both.

Let's deal with what we know from a factual standpoint. The four attackers were not well trained. They exhibited careless handling of firearms. They didn't move with any kind of military precision. They muzzle swept. That's where you ended up pointing the end of the gun at one another. And then their escape plan was hop in a car and drive as fast as they could to Ukraine. And they were going to Ukraine.

They could have gone someplace else, but they chose to go to Ukraine. And that tells us that based upon other news releases, they had communications with somebody in Ukraine that was promising to get them across the border and get them their final payment. You know, they would do additional attacks on civilians, either as an act of desperation or because this is what Emmanuel Macron and NATO want? There will be more. And, you know, the FSB, SVR, they're all stepping up their activities, and they're going now more aggressively at some of these people. But let's recall, you know, the attempt to murder Alexander Dugan and instead murdering his daughter with a car ball. This war correspondent, Tartarski, who received a bust, a head bust, a statue from some fangirls, supposedly, that exploded and killed him and wounded some others.

So the SBU in Ukraine has been carrying out terrorist attacks. And the head of the SBU, this man, Malyuk, he's been bragging about oh yeah we did crimea bridge we've done this and you know yeah we blew up you know we killed tertoski you know the russians are gonna i think what's gonna happen now is up to this point they had promised given assurances we will not kill zelinski that promise is moot, off the table. Zelensky is a dead man walking and everybody else in his government. Including the general. He's relatively young for a general,

but the general who's the head of the Ukrainian intelligence. Yeah, you mean Budanov? Yes. Yeah, he's, yes. They're all, I guess I wouldn't be making long-term investments if I was there. All right. It's April. It's April 1st.

You indicated earlier on in our conversation that Ukraine, more likely than not, will collapse as a country, as a government, in June. What causes you to come to that conclusion, Larry? Just the acceleration of what we see as the chaos. The other day, Zelensky fired, got rid of about five or six different people that were his close buddies, got rid of them out of the government. Now, we don't know what the reason for that was. Did these people quit saying, good God, we're on a sinking ship. We're heading for the lifeboat? Were they giving Zelensky unwelcome but good advice?

Hey, look, this thing's lost. You better cut your losses and figure out a way out. We don't know. But when you have that kind of chaos at the top, coupled with the loss of power, I mean, these were not one or two day outages where somebody shows up and says, okay, I got the breaker.

Let's put it in the panel. No, power's back on. No, it's not coming back on. They've destroyed the ability to produce the thermal power and the hydroelectric power. So that's going to continue to accelerate over time. And so with a complete collapse of power, factories aren't running, people aren't able to work. You're going to have breakdowns in the food chain, in the food supply.

You can't go to a bank and access an ATM machine. Right, right. And worst of all, they can't watch Judge Napolitano. With Larry Johnson and Ray McGovern and all the others. Larry, thank you very much, my dear friend. I appreciate your time and your analysis. We'll see you on Friday with that youngster McGovern. Great. Thanks.

All the best. Coming up later today at three o'clock this afternoon, Anya Parampal on Netanyahu's dangerous gambles. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. on Netanyahu's dangerous gambles. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Thank you.