Judging Freedom - Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer: Can Ukraine Still Win?

Episode Date: April 11, 2024

Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer: Can Ukraine Still Win?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Thank you. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Thursday, April 11th, 2024. Lieutenant Colonel Tony Schaefer joins us now. Tony, a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Good to us now. Tony, a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Good to be here. Thanks, Judge. Yeah, always nice to join you. Late last week in an interview that I had with your former colleague, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson,

he made a rather startling statement that in his view and from the intelligence he has seen, he's convinced, and I'm going to say this charitably, but then I'll run the tape so you can hear it for yourself, that the CIA's fingerprints are all over the Crocus concert hall attack in Moscow. So in fairness to you and him, here's what he said. This looks a lot like what Nord Stream turned out to be, a U.S. operation. Only the CIA led it. Let's face it. We have done as much to create and to nurture ISIS as anything else on the face of the earth, whether it be Aba Musab al-Zarqawi or any of the instigators of the so-called ISIS consulate in the beginning. We've used ISIS. And when I say we, I mean that agency called the CIA, the same agency that does so many nefarious things in our name.

And they have worked ISIS and worked operatives from ISIS in order to do other things. And I'm hearing, and it makes a lot of sense to me, and I'm watching the behavior and the signals coming from Moscow, which are usually very indicative of the, whether it's the GRU, the NKVD, the KSB, the FSB or whatever, they believe it too. And that makes this Ukraine conflict a different conflict as of that killing of that many Russians that close to Putin and blame lying, at least in part, with the people who orchestrated it being the CIA. Tony, you have a lifetime of experience in American intelligence. What's your take on this? So I agree with Larry on his fundamentals.

I look at it a bit differently because of just the nature of my work versus his work during our time in service. So I see the shadows of what I would term to be a large government-driven effort. One of the things, Judge, I've said already publicly several times to include on the network, on Newsmax, is that there was something behind this group, something of a nation-state level support. You don't move weapons and that many people that effectively with that precision without some level of outside support. ISIS-K is not the GRU, and yet somehow ISIS, we're supposed to believe ISIS-K is not the GRU. And yet somehow, we're supposed to believe ISIS-K now has become a sophisticated

James Bond-level villain organization that can just do things. These guys are running around in the desert, in the mountains, with AK-47s and Toyota Surfs, 4x4. So it's like, I don't see how you go from mountains and running around being essentially fundamentalist terrorists to mounting sophisticated operations against the first world nation.

It's like it's there's a there's a big gap. So let's unpack this a little more. If we could, the colonel made an unusual statement or or struck me as unusual, in that clip that we ran. This was a half an hour interview. We extracted the parts that addressed this. He said, signals from Moscow are indicative of the truth. How effective is Russian intel? And if you tell me it's good, why didn't they catch this before it happened?

Well, the nature of clandestine operations, Judge, is to maintain, you know, covert operations until they are ready to be executed. The Russians, I think, are very good. I think they've done a great job of penetrating the Ukrainian military and intelligence apparatus. I think they're generally one step ahead but if you again have a nation-state involved trying to essentially mask and and promote and move things it's it's difficult to to uh to detect um i think the russians right now are moving in a direction which supports larry commentary just yesterday, and I'm stating from Barron's, this is an incredible news source, the Russians have opened a financial investigation into

Burisma, there's a name from the past, examining what they believe to be, you know, financially, evidence of financial support to terrorist organizations that is this attack. So my point being, it's a long way of getting to it. If you've got a sophisticated partner doing things to promote an operation and a peer to the Russians, yeah, the chances are pretty good that you will understand how the Russians operate. I did this during the Cold War. We figured out how the Russians operated. We figured out how to manipulate their thinking. We figured out how to move information around so that they would get a certain perception. I'm a Reagan guy. I mean, I was just talking to Ambassador Hank Cooper

the other day about some of the Reagan bluffs they were using to get Gorbachev to think things that weren't true. And we were plugging it into the Russian intelligence system for them to pick it up as if they found it accidentally. So yeah, I think there could have been a deception or a masking of an operation if ISIS-K had a partner to help them. So, Larry Johnson, your colleague and mine, a regular on this show, said in his podcast last night, and we'll say again later today when we have our Intelligence Community Roundtable with Larry and Ray McGovern, that the evidence of Burisma's involvement, this does not involve Hunter Biden. Not that we know of.

Not that we know of, right. But the level, the evidence of Burisma's involvement is substantial. Yes. In large measure, because you'll know this name, you probably know him personally, of Kofor Black, the former head of clandestine services at the CIA, now on the board of Burisma. Why would Burisma want the former head of clandestine services for the CIA on its board unless they wanted a little internal guidance as to how to do this kind of stuff number one number two is that the Ukraine um uh intelligence totally subservient to mi6 and CIA so the the latter first yes absolutely um much of the the targeting data that has been provided to the Ukrainians for purposes of attacking Russia has come through the United States and MI6.

It is what it is. And the Ukrainian intelligence service has been focused more on being a dirty tricks organization, an organization that's focused on destabilizing Russia by doing what we would consider acts of terror. I'm not accusing them of being terrorists, just so we're clear. But I'm saying that their job is to be in the covert operations business. And gee, Kofor Black was in the covert operations business. Gee, I don't know, is there a relationship or not? And so I think it's notable. And look, that's why they've, you know, they've warned Judge Ukraine to back off attacking Russian refinement facilities in Russia. Don't, don't raise gas prices. You know, we got, we got Biden to reelect. So

we control a lot of that, no doubt. And so it's, it's kind of a very thin fig leaf of what that is. So on the, on the, on the first part about, you know, what's going on with, with Kofor and, and Burisma and, and the larger picture, it's like, there's something called the Woonsocki syndrome that we get taught when we go through spy school judge. It basically, the premise is this. If you meet with someone in an open location and you have a cover that says, oh, I'm really a business guy and I should not, you know, nobody should be alarmed by seeing me and this other guy together, but everybody knows you're a spook and you're

meeting with someone who you don't know who they are, but geez, if you're a spook and you're meeting with someone who you don't know who they are. But geez, if you're a spook and you're meeting with someone, that person is probably involved. So the idea is perception is reality. No matter how great your cover is or how great your reason is. Oh, I'm really a businessman now. I'm just here to be a businessman on the board. Nobody buys it. And I think the same can be said

here. Your feel for the intelligence community in general, of which you were a part for a number of years, could they be, excuse me, so reckless, cruel, and indifferent to human life, innocent human life, as to have orchestrated or facilitated or knew about and looked the other way, wherever you want to put it along that spectrum. The slaughter of 144 young people at a concert, not a legitimate military target at all. So have you asked your CIA friend that is off and on with you, by the way? Yes, yes. Anyway. I'm asking one of them right now. so um have you asked your cia friend that is off and on with you by the way yes yes anyway i'm asking one of them right now well look i i i'm not gonna lie i it's not that i didn't kill people

for a living but i'd like to believe i killed the right people for the right reasons and in my judgment i mean i was a military guy we we focus on military targets we do things that are focused on obtaining and supporting specific military objectives. And we did some pretty nasty things, but never in my view would we, the United States Army Special Operations Community, would we do something focused on civilians. With that said, we're not CIA. CIA and their corporate actions group, all that stuff,

they have a completely different philosophy of the world. That's one of the reasons I've never gotten along with those guys. That's why I'm not CIA judge. I mean, everybody says, oh, you're CIA. It's like, I'm not CIA. I was trained by them and I learned a lot about how they operate. I've been in joint operations. All right. So, Mayor Culpa, Mayor Culpa, Mayor maya culpa, maya culpa, maya maxima culpa.

Forgive me for accusing you of being CIA. I know you weren't CIA, and I fell into the trap of putting all intel in the scene. No, and I get it. Which you're not. Okay. So just for the audience to understand, there is a division. There are divisions within the intelligence community.

Now, we- There are divisions in the intelligence community that would kill innocents? Yes. There are. I think that CIA and some of their whiz kids would consider doing this. I mean, we actually call...

It's pretty much open now. Our nickname for CIA operatives were Klingons. If you use the Star Trek lexicon of the universe, you know, we're the federation. We're the you know, we're the guys actually try to keep things going. They're the Klingons out to disrupt and destroy all the time. That was our view of CIA. And I don't think it's changed that much. I have a very dim view still of CIA, even though when Mike Pompeo was a CIA, it was one of his advisors. Mike had to

oversee the CIA, go through a number of really stupid things. I don't want to get into them here, but I'm just saying that I think that there are people at the political level, especially at the Biden White House, who would be more than happy to think that somehow killing Russians, even innocent Russians, is a good thing. They keep saying this. David Cameron just said this, Judge. Oh, it's great that you guys are funding the killing of Russians. Why is that great?

I don't understand how that's even a thing at this point. But that seems to be a predicate driving Cameron, Biden, and all the other knuckleheads who are the neocons wanting to go. If CIA and MI6 were involved in the planning of this, or if they knew about it and did nothing to stop it, is this an act of war by the West against Russia? I think Russia has been very restrained considering what I see going on, that I think if the Russians chose to be a bit more public about it, they would be rattling the war saber. I don't think Russia wants war. I don't. I really don't. But to your point, I think that in certain circles, the actions that have been taken,

plus if the Crocus attack can be proven to be ukrainian in origin yeah that's that's that's that's walking up to world war three and a lot of us don't want to see world war three here's uh the comment to which you referred from david cameron the british foreign minister just two days ago he's standing next to tony blinken in my opinion he's off the wall but i'll let you listen and express your own view on Ukraine the best thing we can do this year is to help keep the ukrainians in this fight they're fighting so bravely they're not going to lose for want of morale uh the danger is we don't give them the support that they need and I make that argument to anyone who will um listen to me I argue that

it is extremely good value for money for the United States and for others. Perhaps for about 5 or 10 percent of your defense budget, almost half of Russia's pre-war military equipment has been destroyed without the loss of a single American life. This is an investment in United States security. That's the exact comment you were talking about, right? Yeah. And he's lying. So first off, American lives have been lost. They just haven't been reported. We've had sustainers and retainers over there helping out.

People have been killed incidental to being there. Just saying. We're not involved in combat ops. People have been killed. So I was like, okay, David, go back to England and have some more Yorkshire pudding because you don't really know what you're saying. Secondly, I did not know it was our policy as the United States to, quote unquote, kill Russians and give money for people to do that. Did you know that, Judge? I had no idea that that was a U.S. policy. No, I've never heard the Congress articulate that. And Joe Biden is in his most confident and bellicose. You can imagine him the same at once.

Never said that. I'm a Reagan guy. And it's like, all right, what are we trying to do here exactly? Why are we saying that we want to kill Russians? Is it killing Russians or trying to resolve the conflict? Which is it? Because the two are not necessarily related. Have the neocons recognized yet

depending upon when you think the war started i think it started in 2000 the ukraine russian war i think it started in 2014 when it orchestrated a deadly coup the neocon yes victoria newland that crowd think it started two years ago but But whenever you think it started, here we are in April of 2024. Do the neocons recognize yet that they have not succeeded in using Ukraine as a battering ram with which to drive Vladimir Putin from office? And they will not succeed this time around. Judge, these people are political sociopaths. No, they don't care.

They don't care. They don't care. This is something I've learned in dealing with the, I don't want to say names because I'll get in trouble and I'll get you in trouble. I'll just be polite. From dealing with people who have obvious neocon friends and tendencies, it's all about this projection of what they believe to be the correct and right thing regarding U.S. democracy. They always use this word democracy as their justification for what they're doing.

Oh, we're trying to bring democracy to that or democracy to this. You think they're trying to deliver the latest iPhone to people in the jungle, for God's sake, the way they, oh, we want to proselytize. And they never take the time to understand history, culture, friends, and personalities. Again, I've been brought up, I've been mentored by the Reagan guys, and it was not beaten into me, that's the wrong word, but it was reinforced vigorously. President Reagan always played the circumstance based on what he understood of the

history, what he understood of the culture, and most importantly, what he understood of the man he's facing regarding the leader. They always understood nuance. Neocons see the world where everything is a nail and they want to use a hammer, period. It doesn't matter what the circumstance are so you are correctly uh uh identifying 2014 the maidan revolution this idea that uh that the neocons had victoria newland i can say that name because it's obvious right she she under obama pushed this whole thing in as as a as a construct of two things first ukraine would become a an asset and resource for the EU. That included everything from oil and gas to wheat. And the idea was they will become a partner and a resource,

and they will be ours. Secondly, the removal of Ukraine from the sphere of Russian influence would have the effect of collapsing Russia, collapsing Putin. And they sold that to the West saying, oh, we can do this. It'll be easy. Nobody likes Putin. He's a thug. And he is a thug, but he's still like, people like him.

So I'm not, who am I to judge? So it's their system. The system of Russian, the Republic seems to work for them. God bless them. Go with God. Do what you need to do. But they thought to all this, Jed. They really had this idea that it was a fantasy. It was a fantasy based on

projection of their internal goals of damaging Putin. Oh, Russia. Russians are bad. And trying to make the EU believe that, oh, you're going to get this. You're going to get bright, shiny Ukraine all ready for you guys to use. And oh, by the way, if there's a conflict, we'll let you come in and rebuild. There'll be plenty of money to go around.

So on all accounts, they've been wrong. And they've never been wronger than they are 10 years out. Here's Senator Tommy Tuberville two days ago asking Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, you'll get a kick out of this, if Ukraine can win, cut number 10. General, can Ukraine win? Yes, yes. What does that look like? Well, what we've said all along is we want to see Ukraine remain a sovereign, independent, democratic state that has the ability to defend its sovereign territory and deter aggression. And that's been our aim from the very beginning, and it remains our aim.

But yes, they can be successful. Under oath, he says twice Ukraine can win. They can't win. Look, I know Lloyd Austin. I was in combat with him. I'm disappointed in the general for saying what he did. It's a departure of reality severe enough that most people who say that level of insanity would be considered for mental treatment. David Cameron said that 50% of all the Russian weapons that existed before they

started the incursion are gone. They've been replaced. The Russians have replaced all their old gear. Did they suffer some failures? Russia? Of course. But all the old stuff's been kicked into combat, and now they're literally outproducing the West. The U.S. and your EU could not outproduce the Russians at this point regarding military hard work. 21st century, not 20th century, just if Joe Biden is listening, 21st century military hard work. If he's listening, he might be listening listening just to remind him he wasn't sure of this century and that wasn't sure but i'm sure i'm sure but my point judge i'm sorry i'm distracting here but my point being is that no the russians the russians have been

effective in demilitarizing nato not ukraine nato all of the different things we've given them judge the 300 billion dollars of hard work that's not even counting the eu stuff they've just shuffled through it here's russians are now using ukraine as a as a battlefield experimentation uh presentation they're just going through and like oh let's try this now that's how bad it is is that there's somebody worried about winning. Here's somebody in the Biden administration who agrees with you on the retooling of the Russian military. He happens to be the number two person in the State Department. The second half of what he says is political propaganda.

But the first half, Deputy Secretary Kurt Campbell is right on what you just said, Tony. Russia has almost completely reconstituted militarily. And after the initial setbacks on the battlefield delivered to them by a brave and hardy group in Ukraine, with the support of China, in particular, dual use capabilities, a variety of other efforts, industrial and commercial, Russia has retooled. There you go. Thank you, Biden administration, for recognizing that. And I'm sure I'm going to get all sorts of in trouble for saying what we've been talking about because somehow if we say

it, we're the ones, oh, you're just saying things to be provocative. Well, there you go. From the PhD who really runs the DOD, speaking candidly, here's another Q&A for you.

First, a little clip of Secretary of State Blinken about whether or not he thinks that Ukraine will really join NATO. And then Senator Tuberville again asking Secretary Austin if he agrees. Watch this. Ukraine will become a member of NATO. Our purpose at the summit is to help build a bridge to that membership. I heard Secretary Blinken say last week in Brussels that Ukraine will soon be a NATO. You agree with that? That's the goal of the NATO members is to at some, bring Ukraine into NATO. And that's certainly something that Ukraine wants to see. If you're Russia, would you want that?

I'm just asking. I mean, we're playing games with Russia right now. I just want to understand why we would do that. Certainly, if I was Russia, I would not want that, Senator. I would also not want Finland and Sweden to be a part of NATO, and they are. And the reason that they are is because Putin invaded his neighbor, and without provocation, without justification, and so that's why we are where we are. And instead of making things better for himself, he had the effect of enlarging NATO, which obviously creates worse conditions for him. What do you think? Enlarging NATO that is

less lethal means nothing. That's like, okay, you've widened the responsibility without widening the capability. Like, boy, I don't know who's advising Austin and how he gets told these points. It's like, really? People like me are going to look at him and say, you are a knucklehead. When the world recognizes that Ukraine has been defeated, can a legitimate argument be made that Russia has defeated NATO?

No, no, I don't think you can go that far. But let me go take a step back to the question regarding NATO and Ukraine. Go ahead. The reason they're saying this right now remember remember uh ted stevens senator stevens and the bridge to nowhere in alaska i saw it and it is a bridge to nowhere that's what that bridge is that blinken's talking about they don't want they're not going to give ukraine nato even all the nato states have to vote on it you got to get uh you get us here on our side to approve it.

This is a MacGuffin, Judge. MacGuffin's a Hollywood term for the Maltese falcon. You're going through and always watching the falcon. In this case, the falcon is NATO. Oh, you want NATO? They're not going to give NATO to the Ukrainians. This is Joe Biden through Tony Blinken. nato oh you want nato they're not going to give nato to the ukrainians if this is trying this is joe biden through tony blinken uh trying to get the ukrainians to just hold on keep fighting keep

fighting bravely until after november 20 2024 then you do whatever you want this is all about like everything else the biden administration, domestic politics. This is putting off the inevitable. It's already public, but only a few of us are talking about it. They're trying to put off this public display of failure brought on by Victoria Nuland and Tony Blinken and the other knuckleheads until after November. That's all they're trying to do is keep that little carrot out there in front of the Ukrainians to keep them hoping for NATO membership. That's all this is. It's a cruel joke. A cruel joke. Tony, thank you very much. A great, great interview. I appreciate your candor. I also appreciate the secrets that you hold that you can't reveal publicly. But thanks a million, my dear friend. I hope you'll come back again soon. Oh, of course. Thanks, Judge. Good to be here.

Okay. We do have a very interesting day coming up for you today. Just bear with me for a second while I get my electronic calendar out here. Yes, at two o'clock, Mike Benz on the assaults on free speech by the government. You don't want to miss that. At three o'clock, Professor Mearsheimer. At four o'clock, the inimitable Max Blumenthal. And at five o'clock, all times Eastern, even though today is Thursday and not Friday, the Intelligence Community Roundtable. Justin Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Altyazı M.K.