Judging Freedom - LtCOL. Karen Kwiatkowski: Did the US Engineer Drone Attacks on Russia?

Episode Date: June 4, 2025

LtCOL. Karen Kwiatkowski: Did the US Engineer Drone Attacks on Russia?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 Wednesday, June 4th, 2025. Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski joins us now. Colonel Karen, a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you for joining us. Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski joins us now. Colonel Karen, a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you for joining us. Did NATO and the United States just accelerate their war against Russia with these drone attacks that happened over the weekend?

I mean, of course they did. This is the opposite of an action you would take if you were interested in peace, an imminent peace, any type of agreement. So yeah, it looks like the same old war. It looks like Biden's war pretty much right now. If the Biden, if President Biden signed a presidential finding authorizing this, which is what would be necessary,

I'm using the technical phrase presidential finding. And if the CIA was behind this, which is what would be necessary. I'm using the technical phrase, presidential finding. And if the CIA was behind this, and I'll ask you about the CIA and MI6 and Mossad in a moment, wouldn't somebody have told President Trump? Yeah, I mean, that is exactly why he has a intelligence. That's why Tulsi Gabbard is there, is his intelligence officer, his advisor. This information should definitely, I mean this is an attack on a nuclear

pier for no reason other than the proxy war, but this is serious business. I mean they attacked the airborne leg of the triad, of Russia's triad. Can you imagine something like that had happened in a couple of our bases here in the heartland. What does the word triad mean? I know what it means literally, but what does it mean in this case? Yeah, well, you know, for the nuclear deterrence idea that that was an old idea, I'm not sure if we still have it. But the idea of nuclear deterrence is no matter what you do, you know not sure if we still have it, but the idea of nuclear deterrence is no matter what you do, you know, mutually assured destruction and it's done through recallable aircraft, bombers, long-range bombers that are armed, nuclear capable bombers, and then

of course your missiles which are ground launched and that's some of which we have in Europe in different places and a lot of them here and those aren't recallable as far as I know. And then you have your submarine-launched nuclear missiles, and those of course, I'm not sure they're recallable, and actually those are the ones that if they go off the war doesn't get stopped. So if you take out the one leg which is the, or attack the one leg which is the aircraft, those are the ones that are piloted by human beings. So they can launch and they don't necessarily have to end up in a nuclear war. They can be recalled. It's kind of maybe the safest fail safe of having it. Much like President Lyndon Johnson ordered American jets recalled when they were about to retaliate for the

Israeli attack on the USS Liberty, they can turn around mid-flight before they attack their target, right? Sure, sure. That's very funny. But yeah, absolutely. You have a pilot, you can get in touch with that pilot and he can change his flight plan. And that's not the same with unmanned capabilities, like the submarine launch to the ground launch.

So yeah, it's a big deal. And Russia, of course, their capability, their nuclear deterrence mirrors in many ways ours. So this is, you know, this submarine land launched and aircraft launched is part of, it's a triad for them just as it is for us. So very similar. Is there any doubt that CIA, MI6 and probably Mossad were behind this?

You know, I don't have the data. I think with high confidence I would say that they were probably involved in it, aware of it, had foreknowledge of it. I mean, you high confidence, I would say that they were probably involved in it, aware of it, had foreknowledge of it. I mean, you know, we could say this also about a lot of things. 9-11, did some agencies of the government and other governments have foreknowledge? Yes, they did. October 7th, did governments have foreknowledge? Egypt warned Israel in advance of October 7th and that was ignored. So foreknowledge is a given. I think there was foreknowledge. Were they involved in making it happen? Probably. Probably. But I don't know how to say it. In this case I believe it's called the SBU, the Ukrainian intel. Aren't they

wedded at the hip almost to the point of subservience to MI6 and CIA? Well, that is pretty much, I mean, I don't think there would be an effective SBU without MI6 and the CIA. And realize too, you know, we're not talking about just since 2020 or 2022, we're talking about since even before 2014, our integration, this idea of adding Ukraine to NATO, preparing them for NATO membership. This has been going on for a long time and that goes along with not just military doctrine but intelligence doctrine. And you know there's some similarities, I wrote about it, it's on your site I think

now or it will be soon, comparing this to some extent to the way the Pager attack was done, you know, Mossad's Pager attack against Hezbollah in Lebanon. That's why I ask about Mossad because this is very, very reminiscent of that Pager attack. I thought of the Pager attack immediately after I had learned that the drones were secreted into Russia, put together there, taken out of the boxes there, and exploded from trucks with retractable roofs. Sounds like Maassad. Yeah.

The use of, well, I use the word booby-trapped, and that is actually a word that the UN regulations on how war is supposed to be fought, you know, they don't like booby traps, some types of booby traps are illegal in international law and it's kind of in that category of a booby trap but it's also leveraging normal modern trade and marketplace activity because you know the way the Mossad did their pager attack, they took over an LLC or post as one to insert themselves into the supply chain. These trucks with the drones on them that made their way to these various bases deep inside of Russia, these were commercial trucks.

I mean, these were truckers saying, hey, put my load on, I'll hook my rig up to it and I'll take it wherever it needs to go. They leveraged normality in many ways. That's very scary because if they can do it in war, they can do it anytime and they can do it anywhere. There's a kind of a UN discouragement of this kind of thing, and certainly it doesn't seem 100% fair.

It is effective, though. It's very effective, at least one time. It's effective one time. Right, right. Right before we went on air, you and I, literally minutes before we went on air, President Trump posted on his own website, Truth Social. Chris has turned it into a full screen, and I will read it. I just finished speaking by telephone with President Vladimir Putin of Russia.

The call lasted approximately one hour and 15 minutes. We discussed the attack on Russia's docked airplanes by Ukraine and also various other attacks that have been taking place by both sides. It was a good conversation but not a conversation that will lead to immediate peace. Now this part is in red. I don't know if he put it in red or somehow he emphasized it. President Putin did say, Chris put it in red, okay. President Putin did say and very strongly that he will have to respond to the recent attacks on the airfields. We also discussed Iran and the fact that time is running out on Iran's decision pertaining to nuclear weapons, which must be made quickly. I stated to President

Putin that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon and on this I believe we were in agreement. So the news is A, they talked, B, Putin's gonna do something. Of course Putin's gonna do something. Could you imagine if this happened here in the United States? We would have been all over the place by now. Yep. Yeah, we do not have any leaders that have the statesman, statesmen capability or the patience of Putin. We just don't have that. I mean, he's a, you know, he thinks about his role and he aspires to fill the role in the best way he knows how. That is not how we get presidents in this country. Our presidents are political showmen, and that's what they're good at, not at handling war, which is good, which is good that they talked, because we don't want to be blamed.

What do you think the Russian response will be? He must be under tremendous pressure, Karen, to do something dramatic, not PR, because that's not the way he operates. Colonel McGregor calls this thing a Zelinsky PR stunt. But if Putin does it, it'll be substantive. Do you agree? Oh, yeah.

Yeah, he does have. I mean, imagine how we would feel in this country. I mean, you could consider the right half the country would be demanding we nuclear. We turned somebody into a bargain lot over something like this. There was a lot of investment lost in those aircraft, multiple billions of dollars worth of aircraft,

certainly not the embarrassment so much, but it is real damage, it is real war damage, not I think what Ukraine is advertising, but it was effective. So he's definitely going to have to have something that is on par with the value that was lost and with the prestige that was also lost, even though we're not hearing Russia point fingers at each other. But you can imagine what's going on behind closed doors. This was not just a big attack, effective attack, it was an embarrassing attack.

And so the retaliation is going to have to compensate for the physical or financial losses, the strategic capability losses, and the public face losses. Okay, there's three types of losses, and I think he's going to take all those out of Ukraine's back. And that means, I would think, attacks on Kiev and some of the major cities, and I think he's not going to hold back. And I don't think he should because not only did Zelensky encourage

and support and do this thing and then brag about it, he also has been extremely uncooperative. He's not willing to cede political power. He's not willing to have elections. He's not willing to face the reality on the ground, which is that Russia will not return land that is filled with Russian people, that has become part of the Russian state.

They're not gonna do that. And yet he is crying about, I need this, I need that. I want Crimea back. I mean, the guy is off his rocker and so he needs something to wake Zelensky up and to some extent the Europeans who talk big but they have empty pocketbooks, European military capability, NATO military capability, they can't sustain this much longer and they need to realize reality as well. So I think that's the response will be. Here's the president, so you won't like this,

but here's president Zelensky boasting about all this. Chris cut number 10. Europe together with America has better weapons than Russia. We also have stronger tactical solutions. Our operation spider web yesterday proved that Russia must feel what its losses mean. That is what will push it toward diplomacy. And when Russia takes losses in this war, it's obvious to everyone that Ukraine is the one holding the line, not just for itself, but for all of Europe.

I mean, does he really think how could a rational person think that a series of attacks like this will have a beneficial diplomatic result? This is going to have a catastrophic military result. Does he not understand the Russian mind after two and a half years of war against them? Yeah, he is he has his own angry nationalist Nazi crowd behind him and they will remove him if they need to. And they will not just remove him, they will retaliate against him if he fails. So, you know, here's a guy who really was a comedian, possibly a politician, but certainly not a leader of his country,

certainly no kind of particular patriot for Ukraine. And he's willing, because he is not a Ukrainian patriot, he's willing to throw what's left of his country away. He's willing to do that, and that's what's going to happen. He complained at Istanbul, the one-hour meeting that they had earlier this week, he complained that, oh, the one hour meeting that they had earlier this week, he complained that the Russians were so arrogant. If that's not projecting, I don't know.

I don't know what is. You wrote an interesting piece called, Not Slouching, but Sneaking into World War III. Even Colonel or General Kellogg, of whom I'm not a fan and with whom you and I rarely agree, warned that this level of attacks throughout Russia could accelerate the war into something far more dastardly than anybody ever expected. What do you mean we are sneaking into World War III? Well, fundamentally, no rational person on the planet, certainly not in the US, in Europe, or in Russia, wants World War III. Nobody wants a nuclear war.

But the elites do. The elites do. And they have, you know, war saves them in many ways. It saves them the trouble of dealing with unhappy populations. It saves them from dealing with their debt. You know, one of the easiest ways to wipe out your debt is war. This is how they do it. I mean, they accumulate more debt, but the old debt gets wiped away very often. So the elites believe that a nuclear war can be conducted. And I say the elites, many in Washington, including in the Rand Corporation, you know, they've proposed fight. How do you fight and win a nuclear war? And this is not how we used to talk 30 years ago, but it is how they talk now.

Survivable nuclear war, limited nuclear war. This is what's on their minds. This is what they think. And so they're willing to do that and they're working very hard to do it because as the popular opinion and certainly in the West, certainly in Europe and in the United States increasingly moves to nationalism, populism, peaceful,

peaceniks, I guess you could say. I mean, we, people want peace and that voice is finding a place in these countries and the elites can't stand it. I mean, look at the NATO reaction to, you know, to what's going on. They, they say, oh, we're going to fight Russia. And if we don't, we're going to have to, even if we can't, so we've got to do all these things. And nobody in Europe wants to pay for any of that. I mean, they don't want to pay for it. They don't want to be in the military for it, they don't want to deal with it, they'd like their quality of life to go back to what it was, you know, four or five years ago. That's what they want. But the elites don't want that. They don't have the same problems as the actual people. So

they're willing and they also don't need us, you know, they're willing to sacrifice the resources in the humanity and the environment that a nuclear conflict would do. They're willing to sacrifice the resources in the humanity and the environment that a nuclear conflict would do. They're willing to do that. Most people are not. And I don't trust them. And I think they're very diligently sneaking us into a really terrible war. And honestly, Zelensky may have a point.

It was a very bold attack, this Operation Spiderweb, to directly attack deep in territory a leg of the nuclear triad. That has not been done in a long, long time and there's a reason. Because smart people know that's not smart. Okay? Zelensky's not smart and they're gambling with Ukrainian lives, European lives and even American lives and not to mention, you know, the rest of the world. I just don't really think that Trump should fire. If he didn't know about this, he should fire Gabbard and he should fire, um, Hague, Seth or, uh, John Ratcliffe, whoever in his inner national rat cliff, whoever in his international security circle, even Marco Rubio knew about

this and didn't tell him. Yeah, yeah, those folks need to go. And also, it's very likely that the neocons and the Zionists in the administration did have some awareness of it. It's very likely Massad also did because they pay attention to these kinds of things. And of course, the CIA. So I think people in our administration, in Trump's administration, did know. And I think he needs to dig down and get them.

Now, you remember a couple, three, four weeks ago, Seggs had fired some of his advisors and they were people that wanted an America First Defense policy. And they got, I mean, to a man, three barriers to war were let go under basically fraudulent, it looks like it is actually a made up of charges, fraudulent charges. And that tells you there's some stuff going on in there. There's all kinds of, there's just...

Here's somebody that rarely you and I agree with, but he agrees with everything you just said. There are some aggressive attacks on Senator Graham in this, well deserved, but he fears slouching toward World War III of all people. It's Steve Bannon on uh News Nation with my friend and former colleague Chris Cuomo, uh our Chris, cut number eight. We can't have people over there start taking that telling the Ukrainians that we're going to back more. What we're trying to do is calm this down. What President Trump is trying to say is like, look, we can't have Lindsey Graham and particularly Zelensky leading us into a third world war with a deep strike

into Russia. And Putin came back today and said, hey, we're going to get to the bottom of this, and we're going to see who's accountable in Ukraine and beyond. And that was a message to the United States. What he's doing over there right now is stirring it up. He's giving Ukrainians false hope that we're there to support them on engaging Russia in a kinetic conflict and we are not. Two things ought to happen, either cancel his passport and don't let him back in the country or put him in jail if he comes back. And people better wake up to the fact that we're getting sucked into this war. If the intelligence community actually did this, this is an act of war against Russia. the American people vote to go to war with the Russian people?

I agree with everything he said. I'm not so sure about arresting Senator Graham, but if the intelligence community did this, it's inconceivable that they didn't either do it or know about it. If they didn't do it and didn't know about it, they should be fired. That's right. They are burned either way. But if they knew about it and did not inform the president, that's bad enough, but didn't

let their counterparts know. This could have been a tipping point into a nuclear conflict of some sort. Um, you know in the old days if your nuclear Capability was attacked that was war. That's enough. That's war against another nuclear state So this is what this is what Zolensky did and also I do agree with him on Both I forget the the Democrats Congress senator that went over with Graham, but both of those guys. Blumenthal, Senator Blumenthal. Yeah, Blumenthal. It's very interesting that in a time where we are, where the president in particular

is pushing for peace there, he's trying to disentangle ourselves and face reality, push for a peace that's honorable between all parties. At the time that he's doing that, he would send Blumenthal, he didn't send them, but Blumenthal and Graham do not reflect Trump's America First ideas and never have suggested that they do. So for them to go over there and speak to Zelensky, especially when, I don't know about Blumenthal, but Graham is certainly a friend of Zelensky, a personal friend. They've had many, many meetings before. For that to happen underneath, I mean, isn't

that like making foreign policy? And I thought that was the executive response. You know, there used to be laws that were once enforced against members of Congress making their own foreign policy. Here is the aforementioned, this will aggravate your stomach, Karen. Here comes, apologies, ahead of time. Here is the aforementioned — let's all aggravate your stomach, Karen — apologies, ahead of time — here is the aforementioned Senator Richard Blumenthal on June 1st, Chris Cutt No. 3. Putin is playing President Trump. He's taking him for a sucker.

He is, in effect, stalling and stonewalling, prolonging the conversation so that he can mount this offensive and take control of more territory on the ground. If I were President Trump, I'd be insulted and offended by this affront personally, as well as to the United States of America. And America should be angry, deeply angry. Senator Graham, in the same interview, the same conversation, Chris cut number two. We saw credible evidence of a summer, early fall invasion,

a new offensive by Putin. He's playing the game at the peace table. He's preparing for more war. And I think the Senate is fed up with Putin. The American people see Putin as unreasonable. They see Ukraine as trying. President Trump has made that distinction real. So the Senate and the House of Representatives in the next two weeks will be moving forward

with a sanction bill that's bone crushing. Okay, first off, bone crushing, really? Okay, that tells you right there he's off his, he understands nothing, nothing about foreign policy or global economics. Bone crushing, that's a joke. But his, this view of Putin not being serious, I mean, his team in the second round of talks in Istanbul, they've had two meetings, has been extremely well prepared. They have laid out very detailed documents that could actually lead to an agreement. They are ready to go. They're not playing. If Zelensky signed or even dealt with and talked about the proposals that Russia has, the peace would happen.

Now, Zelensky is like living in a fantasy world. He hasn't lost the war. The U.S. will continue to support him. He can wait Trump out and get a Democrat in and then everything will be happy for him again. You know, meanwhile, the reality on the ground is Ukraine is shrinking. It is shrinking and shrinking and shrinking. It has already been mostly sold off to BlackRock and the big investment firms. You know, their wealth, their future has been wasted. Their children have been wasted. Their folks that left, the refugees, or folks that went to Europe and American Canada

and other places are not returning to rebuild Ukraine. All of this is reality. So it's Zelensky for him not to address this, not be willing to have peace, and then to whisper in idiot brain Graham and Blumenthal's ears, who obviously haven't learned a thing in 30 or 40 years in the Senate, it's just insane. It's just absolutely insane. So I don't buy it. Luckily, most people don't watch mainstream television. Most people are not going to hear that they should be outraged and angry at Putin, ready to go at it for World War III for nothing. Most people aren't going to pay attention to what those guys are saying, and that's good, but I think they deserve a little smackdown from the executive branch.

I mean, you cannot, you know, if an American person tried to make foreign policy, that you're not supposed to do that, right? This is against the law, and certainly the Senate should be similarly constrained. And I think there must be something that can be done about it. Well, that's if you care about peace. If you wanna care about war, then we can send these to every country. Karen Kwiatkowski, thank you very much.

Thank you for your time. Thank you for your peach, your peace, not slouching, but sneaking into World War III, which is at judgenap.com and elsewhere. Great writing as always. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for accommodating my schedule today. It's not your usual time.

And we'll talk to you again next week. All the best. Super, thanks Judge. Of course. Coming up at three o'clock this afternoon on all of this, a little bit more about Gaza. Phil Giroldi, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. You