Judging Freedom - Larry Johnson: Ukraine On its Last Legs

Episode Date: October 21, 2024

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Thank you. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Monday, October 21st, 2024. Larry Johnson will be here with us in a moment on how and why Ukraine is on its last legs, and just how significant is this intelligence leak of American documents characterizing what the Israeli plans are. But first this. A divisive presidential election is upon us, and the winner is gold. Let me tell you what I mean. Since 2016, our national debt has grown a staggering 70% and gold has increased by 60%. Do you own gold? I do. I bought my gold in February, 2023, and it has risen 33%. You've heard me talk about Lear Capital, the company I trust. Let me tell you why. Recently, Kevin DeMeritt,

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Was this an attempt to assassinate him or just send a message, we can find you if we want? I think it was more sending a message, hey, we know where you live, we can come visit anytime. And they certainly were able to get at least one drone there. And reportedly, one of the drones actually flew through a particular window. If that was the bathroom or the bedroom, you know, I think Netanyahu got the message. What do these drones do?

I mean, are they packed with explosives? Netanyahu got the message. What do these drones do? I mean, are they packed with explosives? Are they surveillance drones only? No, well, you've got a variety. You can't really pack them with explosives because it's only the more expensive ones like the Predator drones, where you can put on heavy, fairly heavy armament. But you can put an explosive device, you know, like a mortar shell, for example,

a small one, on the front of these, and they when they collide it'll detonate so this has been the real if you will revolution and war that has taken place as a result of this russia's special military operation in ukraine over the last two and a half years this is this has really changed the game because you haven't seen this anywhere in the world on the battlefield like it is now. You know, prior to February 2022, drone warfare was one of the big drones like the Predators flying above and then keeping an eye on somebody and then hitting them with a harm missile. So there was targeted assassination that way. But now it's, hey, everybody can do it. I've said before, I'm just waiting for the day when someone puts up a drone swarm to be sucked into the engines of an aircraft of some world leader and to bring them down.

That's going to happen. It's just, you know, I'm sort of surprised it hasn't happened yet. Very interesting, Larry. And again, before we get to the telegram leak, what is your take on the military or political significance of the assassination of Senwar. I had written before I heard Alistair Crook this morning the same thing, that this was going to create a hero. I likened it in the piece I wrote to when the Jews fought the Romans at the Battle of Masada. All of the Jews ended up dying. Are they forgotten?

Is that an event that Israel looks back on and says, boy, I wish that never happened? No, it's celebrated as a heroic struggle and that's the same and ditto for the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto fighting against the Nazis. Again, they are remembered as heroes, even though they were outgunned, outnumbered.

It was a true David versus Goliath situation in that. Well, it's the same thing for Senwar. They have elevated and made him a hero. He wasn't sitting behind a desk smoking a cigar. He was out on the front lines of the battlefield. And he wasn't cowering and he wasn't pleading for his life he was fighting and that sends a message it really does resonate here's somebody that agrees with you fully uh the president of, cut number three. After my brother Ismail Haniyeh, the last elected Prime Minister of Palestine,

I also pray to God to have mercy on Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, who was martyred recently. Today, I once again salute, with respect to all the leaders and members of the Palestinian resistance, who became legendary not only with exemplary struggle, but also with their martyrdom, and the heroes who watered the lands of Gaza with their blessed blood. Well, this is exactly what you were saying. Of course, the United States government has an entirely different view, even though we're talking about the death of a human being. This is so I think it's important that everyone remember the actual facts, which is that Sinwar was a brutal terrorist that didn't just terrorize the Israeli people, but that ruled Gaza with an iron fist before October 7th,

that brutalized Palestinians in Gaza, that tortured Palestinians in Gaza, and then unleashed a conflict that has been responsible for the death of more than 40,000 Palestinians. So I would hope that anyone that's considering thinking of him in any favorable light at all will look on the actual consequences of his life and the decisions that he made that wreaked such havoc for the Palestinian people. I guess that's what Joe Biden thinks if he thinks anything about this.

Well, there's a bright side to what Miller said. The U.S. government has admitted that Israel's killed 40,000 Palestinians. Now, they're trying to blame that on Senwar. Senwar's not out there shooting the Palestinians and bombing the Palestinians and blowing up tents and setting them on fire. That's the Israelis. And up to this point, the U.S. government has maintained,

oh, no, those are grossly exaggerated numbers. Those, no, those are Palestinian numbers. Those aren't the real numbers. Hey, now they accept them. Yeah, great. Either a recognition of reality or a slip of the tongue on his part. Yeah, yeah. These guys think they're so smart, and they are such a bunch of morons, imbeciles. I mean, it's disgusting. It's the type of, if that job draws people like that, look at Admiral Kirby. I don't know what kind of an admiral he was when he was full-time Navy,

but he is almost universally regarded as a fool today. Yeah, he'd had trouble launching a rubber duck in a bathtub. Larry, your own post was about the most lucid explanation of the significance of these two documents that were leaked. Tell us what they were and how you view this. Yeah, so these two documents popped up, was it Friday night, on the Middle East Spectator. And so, you know, when I saw them, I'm initially a little skeptical. One was classified as top secret TK FGI ISR

slash RSAN slash no form. And the other was classified secret. It was a brief. The second one was basically an assessment of Israeli readiness to launch a strike. And the information contained in that I thought was reassuring because basically it said that Israel's, even though they were seen making preparations to try to do something, they're going through the kind of planning and exercise that you normally would expect to see. It was not at a level of intensity and urgency that would suggest that they were getting ready to do something within the next day or two. But the first document is a piece of, it's sort of what I call a classic intelligence report based upon satellite data, imagery, and signals intercept. So when you're talking about information gathered by satellites and information gathered through intercepted communications, that's the most sensitive information in the world. So that whole document with this classification, no foreign, means you don't share it with foreigners. Share it with Israel? Nope. Foreigners, even though we sometimes act as if they are Americans.

So that means nobody gets to see it. However, when you go down further there's a title report summary. And the report summary then has a sort of a different level of classification. So what that tells you is from that point on, everything below follows that particular classification. Larry, let me just stop you. I thought we shared everything with the five eyes. Well, I bet you the five eyes thought that was the case too. And that's where this document goes, whoops. Because this, it's not so much the information that's in the document, it's the fact that when you

look at paragraphs, the classification report summary says F-V-E-Y, 5-I. That's how the security bureaucrats pronounce that. 5-I stands for United States, Great Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand. The five. And they're supposed to, you know, they got together and they share information. Well, there are five paragraphs in this report. Paragraphs, if I remember correctly, one, three, and five are shared with the Five Eyes.

Paragraph two, however, is no form. It's not shared with any of the Five Eyes because it comes from what they call foreign government intelligence. That's what FGI means. That's not some type secret classification that's written into publicly available DOD manuals. And then paragraph four is classified so it's releasable only to USA and Great Britain. Now imagine you're the Canadians or the Aussies or the Kiwis and you're going, hey,

wait a minute. Why aren't they sharing that with me? And then this now is providing clear proof that the United States is picking and choosing what it's going to share with each of its five-eye partners. Would that be startling to MI6 and the other intelligence communities of those other supposedly allied countries? Well, it shouldn't. Let me put it this way.

If it's startling, they're dumber than I thought they were because they should anticipate and expect that the United States is going to lie to you. Look, the first lesson I was taught at CIA was there's no such thing as a friendly intelligence organization. Yeah, but what about the Brits? Repeat, there's no such thing as a friendly intelligence agency. But Israel, there's no such thing as a friendly intelligence agency. But Israel, there's no such thing as a friendly intelligence agency, okay?

Got it. So we have alliances with people that we get along with, but it doesn't mean we share everything with them at all. And guess what? They do the same to us. So we think, oh, yeah, you're're your best friend and they're not sharing that's just you know that's what i call the grown-up world of intelligence does this revelation of what we share with whom impair our relationships with the remaining four eyes sure yeah it's gonna it's

gonna create some it's gonna create some problems some turmoil some distrust beyond what already exists so you know this was i think this is one of the un unanticipated consequences of putting this out um you know if i'm a russian or a chinese intelligence analyst man i'm just having a i just having a good time going over this because, you know, it both allows you as a Russian or Chinese intelligence analyst to compare what you have with what the Americans have. Because the notion that the United States is the only country in the world with satellites that can fly over those military bases in Israel and take photographs and collect information is ludicrous. Russians have it, Chinese have it, I suspect the Indians probably have it as well.

So you should always, you know, if you're the commander of that base, you should expect somebody's collecting information that's why you you do try to take steps to uh just disguise your activities or or hide them best you can but we live now in an era where it's virtually impossible to hide anything because of the the tremendous isr capabilities that have developed over the last, you know, 20 years. ISR is intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. Let me ask you the flip side of the, thank you, of the question about our relationship with the four remaining eyes. How, if at all, does this impair the relationship between CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency and Mossad and IDF? Or are we so intertwined with them that it won't impair that relationship at all? Well, I think it's going

to create some obstacles potentially for, you know, that's called liaison. And, you know, a significant amount of U.S. intelligence over the last 20 years, if you compare the last 20 years to the preceding 30 years, the last 20 years have relied more and more upon liaison reporting, particularly on the human side. That means information. What does that mean, Larry? That means intelligence that you get from the Brits, from the Israelis, from the Germans, whoever, they give you the intelligence that they've collected, then we pass it off and report it as human intelligence, but acknowledging that it is from a foreign source, its liaison.

So I think it's more, the real question we ought to be looking at though is the purpose of this leak because initially i was i saw it i was you know i i withheld judgment but yeah based upon the reaction the sort of the growing hysterical reaction in washington dc i think it is absolutely legitimate and legitimate. And the purpose was very simple. Stop Israel from attacking Iran. Put it out there. Who is the likely leaker? Not the person, but what does the person do for a living? How many people would have had lawful, legitimate access to this document? How many human beings yeah This was not some low-level snuffy like you know Bradley Chelsea Manning

It was This is someone who is at a senior level I Think I think it's highly unlikely That you know an analyst like me Sitting at the CIA who had this come across their desk would want to take the risk of getting up and getting that information out,

particularly to the Middle East spectator. This, I think this came from an official source. And what do I mean by official source? You got an official like a Blinken, like a Sullivan, somebody that works for them, that's very frustrated that Israel is ignoring U.S. pleas to not escalate, to not strike Iran because they fear the consequences. And yet they can't go directly and leak it to the Washington Post or the New York Times. That'd be too obvious.

So you use a cutout. And then in this case, the cutout was the Middle East Spectator. That way it looks like it was maybe the Iranians because the Middle East Spectator does have a relationship with Iran, or at least an alleged relationship with Iran. I'm sorry, go ahead, Larry, please. No, no, no. So I'm saying in getting it out there, regardless of whether it was a whistleblower,

and I think you could make a case, as Ray has effectively, suggesting that it could be a whistleblower, or that this was, if you will, an unofficial official act of the U.S. government trying to sabotage Israel's ability to move forward. I guess we'll learn if it came from a high-ranking U.S. official for policy reasons if no one is prosecuted. I mean, Ray says maybe 300 human beings had access to these documents. Do you agree with that number, or do you think it's more or less? I don't know. My guess would be it's more.

Let's put it this way. If Ray is correct that, say, only 300 had access to it, then the FBI is going to have a pretty easy time of tracking down and gathering. They get to spy on all these people. They get to pull the phone records and email records. How much of a setback is this for Israel? And why is Prime Minister Netanyahu, as you described him earlier, as have your colleagues on this show, livid? Well, number one, it makes it quite clear that Israel is involved in preparation

and identifies particular kinds of weapons systems that are going to be used and how they would be used. But I, you know, I, I think we should avoid assigning too much importance to these documents in terms of what they reveal about Israel's state of operations. Cause the message I took away after reading them, both of them,

was all this prediction that Israel is going to do it today, it's going to do it tomorrow, it's any day now. No, it's not any day now. They're not, you don't see them rushing around, you don't see them assembling and massing force. They seem to be taking their time. Well, China and Russia have the same information. I mean, to believe that they don't, I think, is foolish.

Do you think China and Russia are sharing it with Iran? Absolutely. But what this does is Iran, the Russians, and the Chinese intelligence services are now able to compare what their assessment was with what the U.S. assessment is and say, okay, this is where we agree, this is where we disagree. That kind of information becomes very important, as well as helping to identify the kinds of weapon systems

and missile defense systems that you're going to want to have in place to defeat these air-launched ballistic missiles. Because Israel is going to launch those. They're not going to fly into Iran and launch them inside Iran. They'll make that aircraft very vulnerable. They'll get up outside of Iran to fire them. But again, then that gives the Iranians a leg up in preparing defenses. Could this be part of an Israeli-American plot to mislead the Iranians, or do you think this is a real, legitimate breach of serious Israeli planning,

now a setback for the Israelis? Yeah, no, I think it's legit. Just, again, from nothing else, the fact that you've got a paragraph of the intel where there's only sharing it with the U.S. and the Brits and the other three members of the Five Eyes group are shut out, that's going to create some problems. I don't think you would deliberately create, it's like say, hey, i'm gonna i'm gonna fake that

i'm cheating on my wife but as part of cheating on my wife i'm gonna take a photograph of my bed of myself in bed with you know wait a second that that that's the doesn't fly too well so yeah i think this i think this message was damaging because that second paragraph is based on foreign government intelligence ISR, which is the foreign government. Was that Israel that shared that information with the United States and the United States put it out? Or was it some other foreign government that shared it? Regardless, I think it's that second paragraph that's got Israel so miffed because it talks specifically about two particular weapon systems, one of which initially I couldn't find any reference on throughout the Internet to it. It was called Golden Horizon.

Now someone else has suggested it's supposed to be Golden Dawn, but the point is it got written into that intelligence piece as Golden Horizon now someone else has suggested it's supposed to be Golden Dawn but the point is it got written into that intelligence piece is Golden Horizon so that that initially raised my suspicion that it could be a fabrication but uh since then no let's switch gears larry uh before we conclude how desperate is ukraine at this moment mid to late october 2024. it's getting darker every day there so some videos have surfaced out of curse for example where you see a line of about a hundred ukrain Ukrainian soldiers fleeing across the field. And some are getting hit with drones as they're running away. The point is, they don't have vehicles. They don't have tanks.

They don't have armored personnel characters. They're having to bug out on foot. And then across that main line of combat, it stretches about 900 miles north to south, the Russians are advancing rapidly. There was a hilarious troll done by the Russians today. So they took this one area, and normally they'll hoist their flag. Well, they hoisted their flag in a North Korean flag. Now, there weren't any North Koreans there,

but it just, oh my gosh, it set off the Ukrainians. See, see, the North Koreans are there. We've all been predicting that North Korea has been in its last legs for a while. Do you believe this time is true? It's not going to collapse before Election Day, but is it going to make it until Christmas? You mean Ukraine? Is Ukraine going to make it to Christmas?

Ukraine, yes. I'm sorry. Yeah, yeah. They may hold out. I've been wrong in the past trying to set a date on when they'll collapse. All we can see, though, is more and more senior Ukrainian officials are coming out and admitting that they don't have enough manpower. That's the problem, the lack of manpower. And then on top of it, you had General Zeluzhny, now Ukraine's ambassador to the United Kingdom, he's saying that, hey, we need to be ready to make some

concessions on territory in order to bring an end to the fighting. Now, that has been a non-negotiable position for Zelensky as recently as two days ago. But now, here's Zenskyy who enjoys more popular support. So I think one thing we could be seeing is the beginnings of they're going to replace Zelenskyy with Zelenskyy, and he might be in a position to actually negotiate with the Russians.

Interesting observations. Thank you, Larry. Thanks very much for your time. Please get back to us if and when, I'm sure it'll be when, you discover more about the origins of these two leaked documents, and we'll address it right away. Otherwise, we'll see you with the youngster on Friday. I'll be there. Thank you. Thank you, Larry. All the best. The youngster, of course, is Ray McGovern when he and Larry join me at the end of the day on Friday afternoon. Joining me this afternoon at 1.30 on all of these topics, Scott Ritter. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. freedom. you