Judging Freedom - Leaked Docs_ Leaker Arrest, Something is Very Wrong - Tony Shaffer

Episode Date: April 14, 2023

Hi everybody, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Friday, April 14, 2023. It's about 2.25 in the afternoon here on the east coast of the United States Lieutenant Colonel Tony Schaefer returns to us for the second time this week Tony, it's a pleasure, thank you for coming back I know the news is hot and heavy and I know you've been very much in demand And we're deeply appreciative I am, my producer Gary, and the many, many people watching you are For your sharing your expertise with us. So let's talk a little bit about the person that the FBI has arrested as the alleged leaker of top secret SCI no foreign.

Yeah. The highest markings there are documents. So the basic question that I think everyone wants answered is how does a 21-year-old Air National Guardsman, we're not talking about a 21-year-old graduate of West Point who's been selected for military intel. We're talking about a kid that didn't go to college who signed up for the Air National Guard, got assigned to a place in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, he gets the highest security clearance. How does that happen? It doesn't. This is something of a red flag that we all have to recognize. People at that level would typically have a secret clearance, something that they

would get on what we call a NAC, National Agencies Check. That's it. A top secret SCI clearance takes years to complete. This kid hasn't been alive basically long enough to get a TS SCI clearance. Look, I was a lieutenant at 20, and I had to go through special vetting, and I only got a secret clearance, and I was an intelligence officer. I mean, that actual operative chasing terrorists factor. So I know for a fact there's something really wrong with this kid having top secret. According to the sources I've seen, he had gamma, he had like the full range of tickets that you don't get until you're at least somewhere in the system beyond the private. What level of security clearance would he have to have had in order to have access to what was released?

Is it the highest? Is it the same level that the Secretary of Defense has and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff? He'd have to have a clearance at least sufficient to the markings on the documents, which, as you said, are top secret and code word. So one of two things are true here, and they're both, they cannot both be true. One is that the things are so lax now that someone with a marginal background like this kid can have access to highly classified, highly detailed operational information. Now, I've heard your other interviews with some of the other folks you always have on, and I agree with some things, disagree with others. But if the Biden administration judge is so compromised that highly classified information like this just is floating around, we have larger problems than this kid.

Just saying. I mean, this is a breakdown of all necessary security. You and I agree on transparency. I agree that we need to get as much out there as possible, but there are some things we should hold sacred. So this kid got a hold of those things, or he was provided breadcrumbs to get to them and put them out there. And I hate to sound conspiratorial, but there's a big missing piece of this. Where did this information come from? And according to the slides, it came from the Chairman of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs or the Joint Staff that's where it originated from so how do we go from the Joint Staff to a kid with with uh with barely any background in Massachusetts there's a huge gap there let me look at the other side of this sure uh according to one of the young men uh in the

gamer group I don't know what yeah I saw this't know if they play video games or what they do. But according to one of the young men that the Washington Post interviewed in the gamer group, he saw these documents in January. It is now April. Shouldn't the DOD have known about this before this stuff became public that Teixeara had circulated among his 30

teenage and early 20s gamer buddies well first off it's from the i think you're talking about the washington post interview and all in shadows first off i'm skeptical of anything i see so i well i don't know if it's true or not that that happened. With that said, DOD, if these documents were out there, has had a huge breach. Judge, when I did this, when you had that level of detail, it was tightly controlled. You would walk in with briefing slides. You would present it to a senior. The senior would acknowledge it and you would leave. You would never leave that level of detail on a thing.

As a matter of fact, I was in with Mike Pompeo, and Jim Woolsey and I had to go in and see Mike Pompeo when CIA had a bunch of their technology compromise. I made the point to Mike because I've been authorized to brief him on some things that we DOD didn't keep things like tools and highly classified information on servers where kids like this could find it.

So, something may have changed dramatically. But I'm just saying that this information was not typical to what we would have on automated servers back when I was serving. So there's something. Okay. I want you to watch a brief clip from Mark Esper, former Secretary of Defense, with my friends and former colleagues Bill Hemmer and Dana Perino on Fox News this morning. It's about a minute long. Sometimes the National Guard units of the National Guard are called up to perform specific missions at a federal level. I think we need to find out whether this happened in this case, but otherwise I just don't see the need

for the Massachusetts National Guard to have access to finished products. Finished products like this should only be for the people at the highest levels of the federal government, our combatant commanders in the theater of operations, things like that, not down to the reserves and the guard and young airmen and young soldiers out there. They just don't have a need to know, and that's the issue. And clearly, again, there's over-distribution and over-access to this highly classified intelligence. What does finished product mean, Tony? So what he's referring to essentially is what is produced by staffs. I was a human guy, spy. You also have signals intelligence. You have imagery from like satellites and airplanes. Finished product is when you put it all together.

It's essentially called all source intelligence. That all source intelligence gives you a comprehensive picture. So what's in these documents is a comprehensive picture of what is known. So I get the former secretary's point is that you do not permit junior folks with a marginal background to have access to it. As a matter of fact, again,

they didn't do this when I was in. You would not have some airmen or private in the middle of a reserve facility, reserve base in Massachusetts have access to any of this. It was tightly controlled. So again, there's something wrong either with the controls or someone gave this to the kid. Either the controls are still there or they're bypassed. That's what I'm saying. All right. So you're one step ahead of me. God bless you. You're so smart. Do you think it is more likely than not that others or another may be involved in this release of this information and that the boy is a dupe rather than a thief? There's a big missing piece here. And the more I see of the way they're explaining it, the more my spidey sense is going off, Judge. Two things I want to mention up front.

When the kid was on the spot, the media was there with their helicopter monitoring it. Someone told them this was going on. The FBI is generally very good about sneaking up on people and grabbing them. The fact they did it on videos tells me a lot. Second thing, Washington Post. The Washington Post releasing that interview with that kid, that kid was rehearsed. That was not the first time

that kid said those words. That was like taking out of a bad episode of 24, for goodness sake. That was orchestrated. Seriously. Come on, you of 24, for goodness sake. I mean, that was orchestrated. Seriously. I mean, come on. You can't kid a kidder. I know.

I've seen this movie before. Let's go back to our friend and colleague, Larry Johnson, who says the whole thing is a charade. Gary's showing the arrest that you're talking about. Now, the question is, where's the picture being taken from? From a media helicopter. WWCVB. That's a CBS station in Boston. But what is a media helicopter? It's like when they went after Roger Stone at 5.30 in the morning, they had a media helicopter there. Okay. Exactly. By the way, that's not Army, that's FBI. Does the FBI dress that way to arrest 21-year-olds?

Judge, that's the hostage rescue team, the HRT. And yes, they do use the Army multicam uniform as their field uniform. So it is what it is, but yes. Back to Larry Johnson, who caused a stir yesterday, and rightly so, suggesting that the whole purpose of this was to provide a softer crash landing for the Biden administration when Ukraine collapses because it has built itself no off-ramp. Stated differently, this is cia propaganda so um larry and i don't agree on everything but i think we agree on this point uh and i saw uh doug mcgregor talking about this with you yesterday as well look um they don't have an off-ramp and and think about this because i think doug said this on the interview too. We kind of know all this. Remember, we, Judge, you've had smart people long before I joined your show talking about this already,

about the numbers being heavily in favor of Russia regarding losses, the fact that there's corruption, the 400 million that Cy Hersh has now put out. I do tend, I believe Cy Hersh's report is accurate. I believe Zelensky and his generals are all on the take. That's being ignored. So look, I think this is all being put out now because nothing that's been put out is not something we've already been talking about. Is there some damage to the relationships? Sure. But the one thing I know about the Biden administration, they are more than willing to use national security as a tool of politics when it suits them, even if it damages national security. So I could see this being done by the Biden White House.

One of the takeaways from the documents is that Russia's commando units have been gutted by Ukraine. Something called, you'll know this word, Spetsnaz forces. So what is Spetsnaz? And is it even within the realm of belief, of fantasy, that Spetsnaz, which I guess is like Navy SEALs, you correct me, has been decimated by Ukrainian forces? Spetsnaz is generally the kind of the special naval warfare forces, much like the Navy SEALs. And it could be true, but let me give it a caveat of why it might be. During both our incursion into Afghanistan and into Iraq, those forces which were most attrited, that is, had the highest losses,

were Special Operations Force, because, Judge, they're on the front. So it could, in fact, be true that the majority of the casualties that the Russians have suffered have been special operations forces. That's what we found. We found special operations forces had very high attrition rates because they're on the front lines. They're the ones fighting more aggressively. But again, that doesn't mean they're attriting. That means that they're the ones on the front lines doing what their job is. So it could be true, but I don't think it's significant. It's like, yeah, maybe, but so what? All right. Another takeaway purports to show broad infighting amongst Russian officials, particularly domestic security services, this would be like our NSA, arguing that more Russians have been killed than the Russian defense ministry wants to acknowledge. And Putin is having difficulty managing the power play and the personalities between whoever is equivalent of the FBI versus whoever is the equivalent of the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Do you buy that?

I do. Look, any large bureaucracy is going to have inherent competition of leadership for both power, prestige, and recognition, or to hide the bad news. So one of the, the reason I cite this is I've been doing an extensive review of Stalingrad, the Battle of Stalingrad, and Russian leadership during World War II. Judge, it was a mess. Stalin was constantly trying to put up with Zhukov and all these other guys trying to gain advantage. So I don't think it's anything new. But again, it's like, so what? This happens in modern bureaucracies. I don't see the significance of how this should be. If I was a general being briefed on this by some staffer, it's like,, and what are you trying to say? This is typical of any large bureaucracy. I wouldn't take it as an indicator of anything at all,

other than business as usual. How bad politically within the Pentagon is the revelation of these documents? Stated differently, will Mark Milley, the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, whose personal staff prepared these, suffer because of this? Well, there's two things, again, or three things. First is, again, how do these documents leave the Joint Staff and get to this sermon? There's a huge, you know, there's a gap there. There's a huge gap. We've got to figure that out. And I think we're going to come to find who's really behind on this, what's really going on. Secondly, Mark Milley and Lloyd Austen are caught in massive lies. And apparently they were under oath when they lied.

I'm one who believes, Judge, you know, I've had to testify multiple times. I've testified open and closed hearings. My belief was my obligation. It's because of some of your testimony that you and I became friends, but yes, I know this. Go ahead. Yes, sir. And so my obligation was, and the Army said, do two things. Tell them what they want to know and tell the truth. That's pretty clear guidance to me. So if you tell the truth, you're supposed to be under oath to do it. I think there's issues with Mark Milley and Lloyd Austin lying under oath, which need to be examined because these documents are direct. Lloyd Austin told Senator Roger Wicker of the Senate Armed Services Committee, you've seen this clip, viewers have seen this, that the DOD, the American DOD, expects Ukraine to do well this spring and in the winter.

How could he possibly say that in light of what's in these documents unless the documents are frauds? Maybe he meant the leadership being bribed would do well because that's what's going on here. The leadership is doing very well because they're being bribed. Maybe he should have made it clear on his answers. Like, yeah, they're going to be doing very well. They're going to make a lot of money, you know.

All right, I get it. I get it. I'm sorry. No, no, they're going to be doing very well. They're going to make a lot of money, you know. All right. I get it. I get it. I'm sorry. No, no, I understand. This is the theme of the Observed, Judge. And humor works. My patron saint, St. Thomas More, joked with his own executioner. Humor works. John Jordan, who's an economist, a lawyer, teaches at and is on the board of the Hoover Institute and his former Navy intel, expressed some pretty serious criticisms of

the American intelligence community just a few minutes ago on judging freedom. I'd like you to look at this clip and tell me what you think. The intelligence community, which I've been a part, has been wrong about the Russians for 40 years. Think back to the late 80s, when even under President Reagan, we thought the Russians were 10 feet tall. We were building weapon systems to counter things that we thought the Russians had, but they never actually had. The intelligence community thought the Russians would storm through Kiev just like Putin thought, the Russian intelligence services thought. So, I mean, the idea of the intelligence being wrong is not new.

Now, that response of his was after I had commented that the leaked documents made the intelligence committee look like it had deeply penetrated Russia? So the Intelligence Committee is bifurcated into two pieces, the political piece and the operational piece. Now you sound like Devine, but go ahead. Well, because a lot of us know what's going on. It's just that when we report, it's politicized going up.

Again, going back to my testimony. At the operational level, we knew that al-Qaeda was operating within the United States and bad things were about to happen. We knew that. But somehow, by the time it got to Clinton or Bush, it was heavily marginal. Our comments, our observations were heavily marginal. So it's the policy that comes from the intelligence processing, not the knowledge. So I do take exception of what he's saying. We generally know what's going on. It's just that the people above us are politicians in uniform who take that and either deny it,

hide it, or use it in a way that's not appropriate to obtain a certain political objective. So your former Intel community colleagues who, like you, are happily now regulars on judging freedom, Phil Giraldi, Ray McGovern, Larry Johnson, say the same thing. The raw Intel, the raw Intel gathered by people like you who risk their lives to get it, often is doctored, watered down, put through the spinmeister machine before it makes its way to the Oval Office. Absolutely. And on this point real quick, because to support the idea that the intelligence community is wrong, it's wrong at the analytical level. The analysts. It's wrong at the end.

It's not wrong at the intake. Right. The intake is where, you know, we've done great work and I think we continue, but it's wrong at the end. It's not wrong at the intake. Right. The intake is where, you know, we've done great work and I think we continue, but it's how it's used. And the other thing too, remember Bob Gates, former secretary, former CIA director, Bob Gates was a senior Russian analyst during the Reagan years. Bob Gates, right before the wall said, a year before the wall fell, and you may want to ask uh uh your friend that your former CIA friend about this because this is how wrong they were Bob Gates went on the record and said the Russians are impenetrable to any effect by the West they will go on for at

least another 15 or 20 years he said that exactly I think six months before the wall fell but the CIA the CIA was yeah I'll see if I can find the citation. I wonder if Jack Devine wrote that one. Ask Jack about Bob Gates' prediction of the Soviet Union not falling for at least 15 years before the wall fell. One more area I want to go into with, because of some strong opinions expressed again by John Jordan on this. I asked him, I'll let you listen to his answer first before I ask you your view. I asked him about which is the better fighting force today, regular Russian

army or Wagner group? Take a listen. Is the Wagner group a better fighting force than Russia's best full military troops? Right now, no. Prokofin is down to, obviously, he's cleaning out prisons, getting the lowest common denominators of Russian society, and they're using him as cannon fodder. The Wagner Group was kind of a paper tiger. They had a few former Special Forces Spitznaz guys, and they were fighting in Africa. But in the West, we often confuse brutality with competence.

And right now, the Grupo Wagnero is largely people that are impressed into service with no training and are used in a meat grinder, horrible sort of way. And they're inflicting all kinds of horrible casualties and absorbing a lot of casualties. And they're running out of people. What do you think? Who's doing the fighting, regular Russian army or Wagner? No. So Wagner, their job is like Blackwater. I mean, I know that Eric Prince gets upset every time I make this comparison, but anyway, Blackwater for us used to go do things which the U.S. government did not want to do because of illegality or inconvenience. Some things that they just didn't want to admit to. Wagner does that for Putin. They are very

brutal, but I would argue they're very effective because they can do things, Judge, that the regular Russian army cannot do. They are extra legal in their actions. So Putin with a straight face can say our military forces follows Russian law, but they have little organizations like Wagner, which do not follow Russian law because they're outside the law. And Wagner does get resources when it needs them. So do they take the criminals and use them? Absolutely. They'll use whatever they can get, but they have a very specific mission, which has to do with doing politically inconvenient things that the Russians don't want to admit that they have to do. So that's why I

think they are very effective, unfortunately. Lieutenant Colonel Tony Schaefer, I know you've had an exhausting week. This is your second tour of duty. Yes, sir. Always great to join you, though. It's a pleasure, and all of our fans and viewers appreciate it. Have a great weekend, Tony. We'll see you next week. Thank you, sir.

More as we get it. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.