Judging Freedom - Putin on Prigozhin & Ukraine F-16s w/Phil Giraldi fmr CIA

Episode Date: August 25, 2023

Putin on Prigozhin & Ukraine F-16s w/Phil Giraldi fmr CIASee 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 Friday, August 25th, 2023. Our dear friend Phil Giraldi joins us now. Phil, always a pleasure. Thank you for coming back on the show every week, week after week, as you do so faithfully. Do you believe Yevgeny Prokofiev is dead, and do you believe he was killed? I believe yes to both of those questions. He's dead and he was killed. But of course, the central question is who killed him? And I do not believe that Vladimir Putin, a rather thoughtful politician, among other things, would have killed him in quite this fashion, taking nine other people with him on an airplane. So I know I don't believe that Putin is involved with this. And I think there are other reasons that suggest that he was not or would not have been involved in it. So I'm not buying into the

fact that he would have done it this way. If he were to get rid of the man, he could have done it a hundred different ways that wouldn't have had any of the political resonance that we're seeing now in the world media about this incident. Our friend and ideological opposite, your fellow CIA lifer, Jack Devine, has argued that Putin wasn't confident that he strongman image, Putin resorted to a dramatic act of violence against him. Is there any evidence to support that kind of a wild statement? is coming up with sources that I certainly haven't seen. And I've been watching very closely to see a lot of the wire services and foreign media have been coming up with on this. And there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever about this. Now, bear in mind that this guy did stage what might be described as an insurrection against the Russian state. And Putin did call it treason. And I have no doubt in my mind that he would like to get rid of this guy,

make him go away. But I never saw any evidence that there was any desire to go to a show trial, which would have been ridiculous. This would have publicized all the garbage coming out for a world audience. So that doesn't make any sense. And I think if he had wanted to kill him, he would have killed him in a quiet way. Russian people who somehow are dissidents and get in trouble seem to like to jump out of windows. So maybe that's something he would have done. Your former colleagues in the CIA, their friends in MI6, and I'm assuming, I don't know to be so,

this to be so, their friends in the Israeli Mossad have certainly leaked to the American mainstream media the view that Putin is a thug, Putin is a monster, Putin killed nine people in order to get one, Putin did this to bolster himself as a strongman. And, Bill, the mainstream media has unquestioningly accepted this nonsense and printed it just as they got it. Well, it's because it is the nonsense that's being circulated by governments and the media, all of whom in return do favors for each other. This is how the whole system works now. You don't expect to see the truth or anything even approaching the truth anywhere in the New York Times, Washington Post even worse. And it's just this hellish situation that we've fallen into ever since 9-11, where we are the good guys and we tell the truth and everybody else is the bad guys.

And this perpetrates and percolates through the system. And it is a major element in why we have a Ukraine war at all and why we have turned a friendly Russia into an enemy and are doing the same thing with China right now. This is insanity. So what kind of a favor would the intelligence community do or the Washington Post or the New York Times in return for them printing Intel's version of events? Is the favor the leaking of Intel itself? And don't reporters know that they're being used by just mouthing the party line? I presume they know exactly what they're doing. They get a paycheck every week, don't they? I think the fact is that the favors tend to be giving them information that might be considered sensitive and also withholding information getting out into

the public sector for information that might be considered embarrassing. So it works two ways. Am I right in assuming that if CIA is doing it, MI6 and Mossad are doing it as well? Well, it depends on what exact story we're looking at if we're looking at the uh uh the story of the airplane and who put the bomb on it uh i rather suspect this was a joint venture uh done certainly by mi6 i put them number one on the list. And I would put CIA second on the list. And Ukraine probably supplied the bodies. It has agents operating inside Russia who might have had the capability to do this. And of course, there's always Mossad hanging out in the wings. But if it were CIA or MI6 or Mossad, well, that would be an act of war on Russian soil by the United States or

Great Britain or Israel against Russia. Wouldn't they be risking a catastrophic response? Yes, they would. And this is evidence of the recklessness that all these people are engaged in at the moment, which makes it so dangerous. And I think to answer your question, however, they have to get caught first. And depending on what kind of accomplices they had or how they went about placing the bombs, they might have had accomplices in the Russian ministry or in the Russian military who were annoyed about how the, their comrades were shot down when the tanks were rolling on, on Moscow.

12, 12 servicemen were killed in that, weren't they? Yes, that's right. There could have been people really pissed off about that. So this could have been a false flag type operation. According to Larry Johnson, it was 12 Russian military Air Force guys. It was a fixed wing aircraft that they took down and a helicopter that they took down. All on this aborted march to Russia, according to Scott, to Moscow. According to Scott Ritter, when Putin met with them three days later, he basically said, get the hell out of here. Wagner guys, go back to your command.

And you have Jenny, get out of Russia. And he didn't. And he continued to meddle in foreign affairs. Now, who knows, maybe, again, this is Ritter and Johnson and McGovern, our friends and colleagues. Somebody did this thinking that that's what Putin wanted, but it does seem to me awfully severe that President Putin himself would have ordered something this disastrous and using this scattershot of killing nine other people as well. I would really like to know where Scott Ritter got that information, because it wasn't in the public sector. Well, look, you guys thrive on getting information that's not in the public sector. That's what you did, what you did for a living.

Let's talk big picture for a minute. President of the United States famously or infamously said a month ago, Russia is losing. Putin has already lost the war. Putin has already lost the war. His national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, said last weekend, we can't predict the outcome. We're not handicapping this. Are they recognizing the obvious or does Jake not realize that he works for old Joe? That's a good question. I might also throw into the hopper the fact that the New York Times last week was reporting that CIA had tipped off the administration to the fact that the war was not

going well and that could not be won. So there are a number of voices in government, the more honest voices I dare say. Sorry, so before you get into Sullivan versus Biden, and we can run the tapes if you want, you may have seen them. Would the CIA suddenly start telling the White House the truth, or would elements in the CIA, angered that what the White House hears is doctored intel, have gone to the New York Times and leaked the truth? What's your best guess, having been in this game, and I don't mean to demean it by calling it a game, but having this for many years it definitely looks like a leak to me uh and and i say that because the director himself is pretty much towing the party line and he's the guy who runs the organization and so you're not

hearing that from him you're not hearing that from jake sullivan who also is online with the organization and saying what they want to hear to a large extent. So I suspect it's a leak. Gary, play President Biden in Helsinki juxtaposed by Jake Sullivan last weekend at Camp David. What agreement is ultimately reached depends upon Putin. There is no possibility of him winning the war in Ukraine. He's already lost that war. Imagine if even if anyway, he's already lost that war. I will say that over the course of the past two years, there have been a lot of analyses

of how this war would unfold coming from a lot of quarters. And we've seen numerous changes in those analyses over time as dynamic battlefield conditions change. So what we have said from multiple podiums and multiple briefings remains the same, which is we're doing everything we can to support Ukraine in its counteroffensive. We're not going to handicap the outcome. We're not going to predict what's going to happen because this war has been inherently unpredictable. What we did this week is formalize through a letter from Secretary Blinken to his counterparts in Europe that upon the completion of that training, the United States would be prepared in consultation with Congress to approve third-party transfer of F-16 aircraft to Ukraine. There have, for reasons I don't fully understand,

been questions about whether we were actually going to do that. So to put all of those questions to rest, that in fact, the training will be followed by the transfer as we work with Congress to effectuate that and with our allies. All right. Now, this is the prince of the neocons, at least amongst influential people in the government, theoretically has the president's ear every day saying we're not gonna handicap the war and we're not gonna make predictions. That's diametrically counter to what President Biden said, slip of the tongue or a recognition of reality?

Well, I think it's buying time. The central issue that we're not really looking at in a serious enough way is that we're a little over one year away from elections. I think this is a case where they would like to be able to have this drag on and have some kind of formula where come next summer, Joe Biden and his accomplices will be able to declare victory. And that would be a big step towards getting Joe Biden reelected, I think, because this Ukraine war is just hanging over everybody like a black cloud. But I have a certain suspicion that we are playing for time here to have some kind of solution, which everybody, I think, agrees there is going to be some kind of solution,

but make it on the timing that the White House would like to see, which means let's drag it on for another year. Let's take a couple of steps back from all of this and look at a big picture. The intelligence community, your former colleagues, grossly underestimated the strength and discipline of the Russian army, grossly overestimated the strength and discipline of the Russian army, grossly overestimated the strength and wherewithal of the Ukrainian army. Ukraine is getting beaten severely, the so-called spring offensive and summer offensive, notwithstanding General Petraeus and his buddy Frederick Kagan in today's Washington Post. They're not even

approaching the first line of Russian defense, much less breached it. The sanctions that were imposed by the United States on the Russians have not only failed to cripple the Russian economy, the Russian economy is flourishing. And if anything, the West is suffering. NATO is being exposed for its weaknesses. And now we have BRICS, BRICS meeting in such a way that countries want to join it. And it may very well come up with a new world currency of record, which would be backed by gold. OK, there's a lot to unpack in there. But I know you, because you're so smart, like to look at big picture.

So I want you just to take this ball and run with it as you see it, Phil. The mistakes of Intel, the mistakes of government, the devastating fingerprints of the neocons, and now the non-Western reaction to that called BRICS. Right. And I would like to start by observing that Vladimir Putin was addressing the BRICS summit that was taking place in Johannesburg, South Africa, on the same day, allegedly, when this downing of the airplane took place. Now, Putin is a smart guy. And this is the big game, what's going on in South Africa and where it leads in terms of eventually maybe a whole new currency.

But in the meanwhile, it's also going to mean that the U.S. dollar monopoly in the world in terms of energy supplies and other things is going to be shattered. So this was much bigger for Putin than worrying about this guy in the airplane. So to me, that's another reason why we should be dubious about him being behind it. But anyway, yeah, this is a serious reaction by a large part of the third world and including many energy producers, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Iran, Russia itself, Brazil, China. And you have all these people lined up to say, look, we want a pluralistic, a multipolar world where people can buy things and sell things and make agreements and deals without having to use U.S. dollars. This will have a devastating impact on the U.S. economy.

So this was the big game going on. And the globalists in Western Europe that are acting like American poodles, talking about France, Germany, Great Britain, could not have imagined the reaction by the Third World to the slavish behavior of NATO to the political whims of the neocons and the American State Department. And yet they may all pay a price for it. Am I overstating this case? Or do you agree with me? NATO is weaker. The West is weaker. The concept of using Ukraine as a battering ram against Russia is catastrophic and doomed to fail. You know, I agree with you, absolutely. And I think that's the message that the developing world is receiving from all this. There was a final statement at the BRICS meeting in Africa, where where among other things, they specifically, or rather kind of indirectly cited the United States for its heavy use of sanctions on all these

developing countries to punish them when they don't go along with policies that are dictated by the US, the Western Europeans, and by NATO. And so I think this has had a negative result. And the negative result is going to be, I think, growing over the next couple of years. And we are going to see a much different world economic lineup in terms of the way things happen. And the control by the IMF and the World Bank, run by Europe and the United States, is going to be at an end. How did the West fail to foresee this? How did either American intel let down the West Wing and the Oval Office, or the West Wing and the Oval Office is deaf, dumb, and blind to what they don't want to hear. How could they possibly have thought that Ukraine would throw the Russians out within a couple of months? How can Mrs. Nuland say,

we're going to help them get Crimea back? I mean, this is just crazy. You talk about malpractice. It's malfeasance in office. It's so bad. It's almost criminal. Well, this is what we used to in CIA call circular reporting. You get the narrative that you want, and you spin it around, and the media picks it up, and it copies what you're saying, and you keep spinning it and spinning it and spinning it. And it's all that the public sees, and it's also all that a lot of policymakers see. I'm astonished at some of the things that congressmen come out of. What are they doing when they're sitting in that chamber and people are addressing them about what's going on in the world? They're not listening.

And even when the truth is being told, they don't seem to get it. Bill Giraldi, always a pleasure, my dear friend, no matter what we're talking about. Thank you so much for your analysis. I know it's a Friday and it's the middle of the summer and people are thinking about more relaxing and happy things to do, but your big brain is so much desired

by the viewers of my show, and they and I are deeply grateful. Well, thank you for that. I appreciate it. Of course, of course. More as we get it, as you know. And of course, I'm beating the drum for subscriptions. That's a goal that we have to break 200,000 by Labor Day. We're getting there. We're almost up at 189,000. Like, subscribe, tell a friend, tell your friends at church, at wherever you're going to be this weekend at a baseball game. Hey, Judge Napolitano, he's talking about stuff he never even used to talk about when he was on Fox News. And it's pretty good. And nobody tells him what to say. And these ex-CIA guys that nobody else wants to put on, you got to listen to them.

Of course, Morris, we get it. Because at Judging Freedom, we are looking out for your liberty. So