Judging Freedom - More US Intel Errors - Intel Roundtable w/Larry Johnson & Ray McGovern

Episode Date: September 15, 2023

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Thank you. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Friday, September 15th, 2023. It's Friday afternoon here on the East Coast of the United States, so you know what that means. It's time for our intelligence roundtable with Ray McGovern and Larry Johnson. My dear friends, thank you for coming back to the show. You each have been on separately earlier in the week, as is our custom. Larry, you sent me some interesting things to read in the past 24 hours, arguing that Ukraine again has a serious manpower shortage. How serious is it? And what are they doing about it? Are they grabbing 16-year-olds and 60-year-olds? Well, they've been doing that. So that's not new. What they were trying to do was to enlist Poland, Germany, Hungary, Romania, all the other European countries where there are literally hundreds of thousands of military-aged Ukrainian men hiding out

to get those countries to round them up, send them back, so that Ukraine could then forcibly enlist them. And many of those countries are not cooperating. They're saying that they won't do it. So this means that going forward— These are NATO countries. Correct. Which are either directly through military aid or tacitly supporting Ukraine,

and they're not going to round up Ukrainian migrants who have come to those countries for shelter so they wouldn't be grabbed by the uh by the corrupt Ukrainian recruiters right so you know we've heard for a long time about the great unity of NATO and every man NATO we're with you Ukraine we're with you to the end well I guess we're at the end uh because they're with their with themness is disappearing. They're starting to distance themselves. The ability to provide new weapon systems, even the Germans with Annalena Barabak, has been a little hesitant to grant the promises that they're going to spell out with the weapon systems.

And now this, that they're not going to enforce the Ukrainian request to extradite. How serious is the manpower problem? The numbers that the three of us have seen and that no one has disputed shows about 450,000 deaths, about 380,000 Ukrainian military and the rest, you know, volunteers, soldiers of fortune, foreigners fighting for Ukraine. Yeah, it's higher. I think it's higher now. I think it's well over 500,000.

So what they're experiencing, and you've seen it, if you watch some of the other news channels like Sky News, for a while there last year, you know, you'd get a Ukrainian update every, you know, every half hour. Boy, here's what Ukraine's doing. They're saying nothing. They are saying zero. It's dead silence. If things were going well for Ukraine, they'd be talking about it. There'd be parades or be bands.

You know, confetti would be falling none of that's happening and the reason it's not happening is because the the Ukrainian forces are getting slaughtered um Ray when when these people run from uh Ukraine to other countries does Ukrainian Intel or American Intel know where they are and report on their whereabouts, or does intel have more pressing matters to surveil than the location of people escaping the draft? I think in the midst of war, Judge, that they have more pressing things to look at. I don't doubt that they would try to track these people, but I think it would be impossible to do that given the millions, that's with an M, right, of refugees that have gone abroad to other countries. Is the U.S. military spreading rumors that there's low morale in the Russian military?

And if that is true, why would the U.S. military be doing that, Larry? Well, I asked a friend who's had access to the briefings that Lloyd Austin's getting, that Mark Milley's getting. And it's really a dual, I guess, a double-edged picture. On the one hand, DIA is the, you know, the analysts, average analysts at the Defense Intelligence Agency. They are accurately reporting how bad things are going. So that it is, it's not, you know, they're not being given a rosy scenario. But that said, I then said, well, okay, so how's the chain of command? Is the chain of command accepting this?

And my friend came back and said, you know, the general spin that continues to be out there is that Russian morale is falling through the floorboards. And that the Ukrainians are making very slow gains, and the front's going to eventually collapse. They're putting a lot of money on the front's going to collapse. When they say the front is going to collapse, what do they mean? The Russians are going to collapse? Yeah, Russians are going to fall on a fainting couch and break out in a cold sweat.

So American senior military, that's what they want us to believe. Well, in fact, and you heard it from last week, you played a clip of General David Petraeus. That's what he was saying. So Petraeus is not just making up his own view. That is generous being widely sort of presented among some of his former colleagues who are still active duty. Ray, when you were advising the White House on the state of affairs from the intelligence community, did you and your colleagues take into account the Defense Intelligence Agency? And if you did, were they likely to be more

consistent with truthful observations than the CIA? Well, we did take them into account. We didn't really have to because we had a direct channel to the president. But if there were an issue at dispute that meant something and DIA disagreed with, let's say, CIA or NSA people, we would try to resolve that in an honest way. And sometimes in the president's daily brief itself, we will put a little dissent saying DIA does not agree with this. Now, when you're at war, we have a syndrome where the intelligence agencies defer to the military. The cardinal example of this was when we proved to Director

Richard Helms in 1967 that there were twice as many Viet Cong under arms as General Westmoreland would allow to be counted. He said it had to be no more than 299,000, right? We knew that it was twice that. Then came Tet, okay? Now, when Tet realized that the VC could attack every hamlet, village, town, and city in South Vietnam, we knew and LBJ knew that the military was lying, that Westmoreland and the Army intelligence was lying through its teeth. So what happened? This is really instructive. In March of 1968, after Tet, Tet was in late January, early February, the military and the civilian people came to LBJ and said, okay, here's the truth. We've lost.

It's outrageous. And you know what? You better not try to run for president again because you're not going to win. Bobby Kennedy and others are gaining on you. And the next thing you know, LBJ gets up on the TV on March 31st, 1968, says, I'm not going to run again. And that was the end of Vietnam for all intents and purposes. Now, it dragged on for a long time. You both have educated the listening audience and me on the phenomenon of true and accurate data being acquired by officers. But by the time it makes its way up the food chain, it has political spin on it so that the recipient of it,

whether it's the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff or the Secretary of State or the President of the United States, is pleased so that the people informing the ultimate authority tell him what they think he wants to hear. Does the military, does the DIA have more of a reputation for being truthful and honest and consistent with the observation of its agents on the ground than the CIA does? Larry? war in syria back in 2012 2013 the dia then under mike flynn was actually doing a better job than the cia of accurately and reporting on what was going on around because you get a lot of media reports and stuff really from the cia that syria was on you know the bashir assad the leader of syria was gone. He was weak.

He was going to collapse, going to go any minute, and that the rebels were winning. And yet DIA was reporting exactly the opposite. During the war in Central America, when I was the Honduran analyst, it was just the opposite. DIA was more of a cheerleader. So I think it really depends on the issue and it depends on who's managing personalities actually will play an important role who's managing that particular section and are they demanding uh objectivity from the analysts or political correctness okay um we're going to go back to uk Ukraine because I want to play a clip from Jack Devine a few hours ago. And then I want to spend some time talking about North Korea

and its relationship with Russia. And Jake Sullivan saying Vladimir Putin went to Kim Jong-il begging for military supplies, forgetting, of course, that we have gone to South Korea asking for the same thing. But first, here's Jack just a few minutes ago on what needs to be done in order for the fighting in Ukraine to stop. What we have to do to get Putin to stop is you need to keep the fighting going for six more months. You have to keep this going so that he is convinced that, no, it's not realistic, and therefore I have to join the Ukrainians in a more realistic solution. He's not going to sit down with Zelensky. There's going to have to be people to talk about. There will be nothing public. This thing will just wind down with some ground rules that will be unwritten.

So I think we're going to stick with it. And God forbid we pull back because then Putin will think I can continue this for another year. Right. He has to be convinced that in any way he's going to be convinced the next few months. And I think he's heading there. You know, Rogozhin is a real wake upup call for him that this thing has to end or his own political stability is at risk. Ray, is this a classic example of the American mindset vis-a-vis the war in Ukraine? Well, Judge, I think I've said before there are operators and there are analysts at the CIA. Jack Devine, wonderful operator, but he shouldn't claim to know much about substantive intelligence.

What he says is ridiculous on its face. Ukraine is losing badly. The question will be whether NATO decides to put footprints or troops on the ground there before it's a complete loss. The decision that exists in Washington, what they have to grapple with is a total loss in Ukraine and whether they try to compensate for that by attack them type missiles which have a range of 190 miles like 300 kilometers and they just can escalate up the kazoo whereas the the Russians as President Obama said in one of his most sober moments have escalatory dominance means look at the map and the Russians can do what they want and they will do what they want. So, you know, Jack shouldn't pretend to have a crystal ball.

He doesn't. And he's been rather consistently on the cheerleading side. But that's the role of the operators there. We're supporting the war, for God's sake. How can you say anything other than Putin is about to fall apart? All right. So even though Larry Jack is no longer on active duty, he still mouths that line. But the line that he articulated, I mean, is this generally believed believed by leadership in the intel and military communities in the West, the way to stop the war

is to keep fighting it? Yeah, I mean, a few at the top, we're not talking lower level people, we're talking folks who are in decision-making positions, have persuaded themselves that Russia is weak.

The troops poorly led, poorly fed, poorly supplied. They are suffering from a morale standpoint and that Putin is on the ropes. We just need to keep applying a little bit of pressure and then he's going to collapse. You know, I keep you referring to it, but it's an apt metaphor. It's the Christopher Walken, more cowbell scenario. You know, when he did that Saturday Night Live skit, and every time the band would stop playing or playing along, he'd come out and say, we need more cowbell. That's what these guys are doing.

We just keep doing the same thing that has not worked over the last 18 months, and by God, eventually it's going to work. This is what a degenerate gambler does when they continue to lose at blackjack. Right. Okay. Jack, DIA works for the Pentagon.

The Secretary of Defense is an old general that has a record on falsifying intelligence, in his case, as CENTCOM commander on Syria. Okay, so he is the recipient of data from the DIA, and he falsifies it either to the public, to his colleagues, or to his superiors? Well, it was either DIA or his forces, his intelligence unit down there in Tampa on Dissent.com. Larry knows about this. What happened, of course, is they said, you know, Syria is crazy. You shouldn't be funding al-Nusra and al-Qaeda, and it's not going to be good. It's just to help Israel have disarray in Syria. Now, what did Austin do with that? He changed it. How does people change it? And more than 50, this is unprecedented, Judge, more than 50 intelligence analysts, not only from his own command, but from DIA, went to the Pentagon inspector general and said, look, this is what's happening.

An inquiry ensued. And, of course, Austin had four stars. The general doing the inquiry only had two stars. So you know what that means. Now, DIA has stood up. And I want to say one thing good about DIA because it really deserves to be emphasized. After the coup that we arranged in Kiev, right? After that coup, a year later, the yearly briefing of the threat report by the intelligence community was due, and DIA did its own congressionally ordered

assessment. And this is how it read. The Kremlin is convinced that the United States is laying the groundwork for regime change in Russia, a conviction further reinforced by events in Ukraine. Moscow views the United States as the critical driver behind the crisis in Ukraine and believes that the overthrow of former Ukrainian President Yeltsin is the latest move in a long-established pattern of U.S. orchestrated regime change efforts, period, end quote. Lieutenant General Vincent Stewart, Director, DIA. He was a Marine general. He told it like it is. I don't know where he is

now, but he didn't get any medals for that. Wow. I was going to say that statement is right in the mark. Let me play you. We're going to switch to North Korea as promised. I have a lot to talk about with Ukraine, but we're running out of time. Here's Jake Sullivan over the weekend at Camp David, commenting obviously negatively about the meeting, which has since taken place between Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin. We are concerned about the relationship, including the technology and security relationship between Russia and the DPRK. In terms of the specific report you're referring to about Russian missile technology and North Korean missiles, I don't have anything to

add to that today. I will say it's something our intelligence community is taking a hard look at. And this is also a dynamic picture because as we have seen, Russia has been seeking to get materiel for its war effort in Ukraine from Pyongyang, from North Korea. Don't we get materiel from Seoul, from South Korea, Larry? Yeah, we went through our beggar's cup and got a bunch of 155-millimeter artillery shells to send to Ukraine because we could no longer make them, or we couldn't make them fast enough. So this, look, what these guys refuse to accept and acknowledge is Russia's moves with North Korea. I think it was Doug McGregor that used the phrase horizontal escalation so what what russia is doing is expanding the

threat environment that the united states is going to have to worry about so now north korea is added to the mix plus north korea that they can send plenty of workers to work in factories in russia that russia does not necessarily have all the personnel they need to fill those factories. So, you know, this is a win-win for both sides. And if the United States wants to foolishly convince itself that this is a sign of Russian weakness, go ahead and believe that.

I mean, you know, I've learned that when people get off on these crazy tangents, no amount of fact or reason can shift their minds. The only thing that will teach them is the hardness of life. Ray. The bizarre aspect of this is that Russia has given, already has given North Korea its Tupel-M ICBM intercontinental ballistic missile. Now, we know that because Ted Postol has analyzed that,

and the specific report that Sullivan is referring to is that report. Now, unless you suggest that there was a 3D copier or something that went to the Topol and made it into a North Korean thing with different markings, it's the same missile. So how long will the US, will the White House be able to keep this report down? Because it shows what has done, what Ukraine has done in terms of engendering a much closer relationship not only with China, but with North Korea. And it surprised all of us, but that is a Soviet, I'm sorry, that is a Russian missile there that was tested in April.

There's no denying that fact. So Sullivan's having real trouble with that, and I expect he'll continue to have that problem. Gary, run the clip of the comparison between American high-end missiles and Russian. So which is American and which is Russian, Larry? Which is the superior of the two? Yeah, yeah. I had not seen that before. So the Russian one, the hypersonic, can evade radar, and it obviously gets to the target before the blue one. I'm not sure what it's called, the ballistic, which is the ones that we have.

Are Russian offensive missiles superior to Americans' offensive missiles. Yes, yes. I mean, just the simple fact that the Russians have already solved the hypersonic problem and the United States is still in the process of trying to test a functional missile that can be deployed. And I mean, I know firsthand from an individual that's one of the directors of that program that, you know, they're looking to try to do that in November, December of this year. So there's still months away. So Russia, Russia is far ahead of us in this regard. And Putin just as recently come out and indicated they've got some other surprises that they're going to be unveiling in the next month or two.

Ray, the missile on the bottom in that chart, Gary, you can run it again. It's from the Wall Street Journal, by the way. The one on the bottom, the red one, the one that's faster, the hypersonic. Is that what North Korea received from Russia? No, no, it's a ballistic missile, the one on the top. But it's a very modern ballistic missile. It has many warheads and many decoys and it needs to be tested, but it's there in North Korea. The point about the hypersonic missiles, the ones at the bottom line that go eight or nine times the speed of sound, there's no defense against them. None other than President Biden has admitted that there's no defense against them. They are being tested and used in Ukraine.

Now the US does not have an equivalent. Now, once the U.S. has an equivalent, it's probably a matter of two or three years, those might be put in those missile installations in Romania and in Poland, and that's what the Russians really worry about, because that gives them five minutes launch to target before it hits Moscow or some of the ICBMs are raid in the European part of Russia. So there's a real problem. The Russians have the edge right now. And it's really quite amazing to me that the US can try to build all these f-35s and all that stuff and can't develop can't develop a uh our defense budget larry is 10 times literally 10 times the defense budget of the russian government right our our secretary of defense is a former board member, executive investor, cheerleader for Raytheon.

And we still don't have the defenses we need. Yeah. Well, and part of it, you know, again, this goes back to George W. Bush when he withdrew from the anti-ballistic missile treaty. And at the time, this was right before 9-11, the planning was that the United States was going to work on developing a missile defense system. 9-11 happened. They diverted all the resources to the so-called global war on terrorism. And the United States just never really made much progress on that while the Russians said, okay, if that's how you want it,

boom. They were off to the races. They developed multiple missile systems that can operate as both at the hypersonic level and they developed missile defense systems, the S-500, S-550, which are capable of shooting down U.S. intercontinental ballistic missiles. Ray, can you sleep at night knowing all this? Sure, yeah. I have great faith in the way things are going to come out. They'll come out all right. It's just that you and Larry and I and others need to get this word out to the American people

because we have an election coming up and we can make this truth stick if we get it to enough people. That's why I can sleep at night. God bless you. Gentlemen, thank you very much. A great conversation and much appreciated by the fans who are watching and who have been writing in during it.

These Friday afternoon sessions are a fan favorite, and I'm deeply grateful for all the time you've given us. Thank you very much. Thank you. We'll see you both next week. There you have it, my friends, Judging Freedom. At the outset of the show, we had 199,481 subscriptions. We're going to break 200,000 by tonight. Thanks to you. Another wonderful week of our work. I hope you think it's wonderful, is coming up next week. We do our best for you.

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