Judging Freedom - Putin, Prigozhin and the Wagner group - Larry Johnson fmr CIA

Episode Date: May 16, 2023

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Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Tuesday, May 16th, 2023. It's about 335 in the afternoon here on the East Coast of the United States. Larry Johnson joins us now for his weekly time with us. Larry, always a pleasure. Thank you for joining us. I want to ask you some questions about depleted uranium and some extraordinary, extraordinary explosions of Ukrainian munition plants. But before we do that, let's go back to Mr. Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner Group. Since we spoke last, the Washington Post, which as we all know has been a mouthpiece for the CIA for 70 years, has claimed that documents released by Jack Teixeira,

which somehow the Washington Post seems to have and keeps drip, drip, dripping, show the prognosis. Right. I know it's absurd, but this is what they want us to believe. Reveal the prognosis at one point, I guess recently, offered to give the Ukrainians information about the location, size and movement of Russian troop strength in return for their leaving Bakhmut. Now, how absurd is this? I would imagine if he made such an offer, he'd be in Siberia by now. He wouldn't even make it that far. He'd be, you know, buried in a sandpit somewhere. You correctly note the first oddity is the Washington Post, unlike any other news organization, seems to have regular access to a trove of classified information that nobody else has seen. I go on the web, I can search, I can't have those documents, but somehow, lo and behold, the Washington Post discusses it and they get the great secret information that Prokofiev is offering to sell out Russia.

It's just utter nonsense. I think that story was generated and fed to the Post by the CIA in order to try to promote division, suspicion within the Russian military, because the United States believes that there's division and suspicion within the Russian military. They believe that there is division between Putin and his generals. They believe that there's public unrest. Now, all of that's nonsense. none of it's based upon actual facts actual intelligence but that willingness that desire on the part of the u.s intelligence community to believe such absurdities leads them into creating a a fable like this one being fed that progosion and remember progosion looks like a windmill in a hurricane

depending upon the time of the day and direction of the wind he's pointing in every single direction and but people fail to understand he's not he did not create the wagner group he's not a military guy he's a front man he was brought in by the people who did create the Wagner Group, which is Russian military intelligence and Russia's version of the FBI, which is known as the Federal Security Service, FSB. Do you think that the Washington Post knows that they're being used? In other words, are they seeing something that appears to be from the Tishara Trove? Or are they just being whispered, hey, we need a favor, get this out there, by their contacts at the CIA? We're talking about the same organization that's carrying celebrated Pulitzer Prizes for its reporting on abject lies about Donald Trump and Russia.

So the fact that they don't even have enough integrity to hand that back makes everything that they do suspect. They're clueless. They don't ask penetrating questions. They just take what they're fed and they run with it without any kind of critical thinking. Does this kind of a headline, I'm going to read it. Wagner chief offered to give Russian troop locations to Ukraine. Leak says the date is May 14.

Two days ago, that was Sunday. Today's Tuesday. What does this tell you about the culpability of Jack Teixeira, the 21-year-old, for all these leaks? Well, let's go back to when he was discovered. He was outed on April 6th and was arrested. He was outed on April 6th and was arrested. He was in custody by April 9th. He had been shown this stuff to his group,

his chat room, since February of 22, 14 months early. Supposedly. So now what we've got is this piece of intelligence that we're reacting to it as if it was just released in the last couple of days. But this stuff is at least two months old, Judge.

It's old intelligence. So if Prokofiev was really doing that, he's done a damn poor job of giving up Russian positions because go back two months ago where the Wagner group was and the Russian troops were, they have continued to move forward. They've not moved backwards. They've not been surrounded and so significantly ambushed that they've had to retreat back across the Russian border, just the opposite. So that's why I said, when you look at this, the timing of it doesn't even make sense. Your first reaction to the so-called to share a leak right here on Judging Freedom was, this is a controlled leak by people north of him. Does this allegation about Prokosian's willingness to commit treason, what it would be, reinforced that view which you initially embraced.

Yeah, absolutely. This is an attempt to do what's called information warfare with Russia and using Prokofiev. Russia has fed an image to the West about Prokofiev, and the West has bought it up, that Prokofiev is in charge of the Wagner Group. That the Wagner Group is largely comprised of criminals drawn from insane asylums and prisons.

That the Wagner Group is really at odds with the Russian military and hates the Russian military. So let's feed that division. And this was a very clumsy attempt, in my view, on the part of CIA to feed this narrative to the Post, and the Post just very gullible, took it, ran with it, put it out there, and just pick it apart. Again, from the standpoint, if Teixeira had provided this as the Post alleges, then that means this information had to have come out sometime in March. Well, here we've got all of April.

We're halfway through May, and yet at no point has Russia been betrayed by Prokosy. You know, they've had some very dramatic theatrical moments going on, but no betrayal. Larry, you used to work there. Isn't the CIA more sophisticated than this? No. Okay. I mean, it's not.

I saw it from the very outset. Just before I started my job as an analyst, I noticed all these Xerox Golden Tigers. They were computers. CIA was just getting into the computer age back. This was 1986. And what had happened is when the CIA installed those computers in my branch, the Middle America Caribbean division, nobody had calculated what the electrical load was. So as soon as they flipped them all on, it blew all the electricity, the wiring, and then they had to go out and buy new computers. So yes,

they're not as sophisticated as Hollywood would have you believe. Switching gears, what is depleted uranium? Depleted uranium is not radioactive per se. It's not like you're picking up a real piece of uranium that's throwing off the electrons and such. So it is used in a shell, in a tank ammunition, and because it's so heavy, it has great penetrating powers and then also burns. Now, I've heard from people on both sides of the issue, some that I respect that have expertise in this,

and they're very doubtful or dubious that even if you blew up a bunch of uranium, depleted uranium missile or shells for tanks, tank ammunition, that it would actually pulverize and turn them into dust. You'd need something at a far higher temperature, such as that generated by a nuclear blast. I do not doubt that Russia itself may be the one putting the word out there that, oh, yeah, this explosion has generated this dust and it's contaminating the area in order to, again, put pressure on Britain. The Russians had warned the United Kingdom and NATO about these rounds and they went ahead anyway.

Are they legal under international law or under international treaties? Yeah, they're legal. They've been used. There are people in Iraq and in the former in Serbia argue that the use of those rounds does leave a radioactive residue and has caused health problems. Others dismiss that and say, it, that exists, that is real, and that shouldn't be discounted. The tape that you sent us of the explosion, which we're going to show, there's a couple of views of it in a minute. There it is. Is this of depleted uranium? We don't know. Actually, what we saw was, I think this was the first one at about 5, 10 a.m. Then there were succeeding. That explosion

that just went off there was a secondary explosion caused by the ammunition detonating. There were at least three, maybe four caliber missiles fired at that facility. This is important to understand for all your listeners and people watching this, that this location is more than 200 miles west of Kiev it's it's towards the Polish border so this was not this was not some air strike with a fixed-wing aircraft this was uh let me interrupt you for a minute Gary show it again while Larry and I are talking how much ammunition uh did the ukrainians lose with these explosions? Estimates are $500 million worth. Wow. Almost half a billion dollars.

That's a substantial amount. And understand that while we've got the images of what was going on here at Chemelnitsky, there was other explosions comparable in places like Ternopil. The Russians have been using fixed-wing aircraft with glide bombs, caliber missiles, Iskanders, and drones at multiple sites throughout Ukraine over the last eight days. It has been a sustained, unrelenting bombing campaign by Russia. Western media is not picking up on that and ignoring it.

When you see an explosion like that, I would imagine that a lot of it is secondary and tertiary explosions. The ammunition that was the target is itself exploding. The warhead on the caliber, my understanding, is a 500-kilogram warhead. So that's substantial. That's a big, big blast. But when you look at the photographs of the aftermath, there are some huge craters. There was like two houses or two facilities in this forest.

The forest is gone, and those buildings are gone. So whatever hit them and what they had stored in them was certainly explosive. It did ignite, and you did have significant secondary explosions. But that attack on that facility went on for about an hour and a half. It wasn't just confined to a one-minute, two-minute window. Can Russia ever be driven from eastern Ukraine, no matter what we give them? No, no. We have nothing that could drive them from western Ukraine, including employing our entire military.

We'd be wiped out. Russia has a history of being invaded and fighting off invaders. And the West, for some reason, is ignorant of that history, doesn't pay attention to it. This is Russia. reason is ignorant of that history doesn't pay attention to it um this is uh russia they're not conducting the war like we've conducted wars you know when we went into iraq we were just bombing indiscriminately frankly we didn't care what we hit russia by contrast is taking care they're making sure that they hit military facilities and fuel depots and transportation nodes uh they're not just going after the apartment buildings condos in fact that's the reason advance in baltimore has been so slow is because there are civilians hiding in those bands that are being used as positions by the Ukrainian troops.

And rather than decimate them with these 500-pound bombs, they're a little more discriminant in how they attack and how they take control. I wanted to show you an interview conducted by Patrick Lancaster of a pro-Russian Ukrainian. It's pretty profound what he's saying, but before we do that, do you know Mr. Lancaster or do you know of his reputation? I do not know him personally. I know of his reputation. I've watched his reports over the last year or so. I found him to be a responsible, authentic person. He's not on somebody's payroll just going out and saying what he thinks needs to be said. He's a genuine reporter. And he actually has paid a price. In England, they seized his bank accounts and they're treating him like a pariah for the simple fact of trying to report what was actually going on on the ground in the Donbass.

All right. Here he is interviewing this appears to be a middle-aged, maybe older gentleman in Ukraine. The gentleman is Ukrainian. He is Russian speaking, and he is pro-Russian. He has some very, very strong things to say, and I'd love your analysis. I'm going to read the subtitles so that those who are just listening to Judging Freedom on audio will know what we're talking about. Sure. You've said those were Ukrainian forces that fired at your house. Yes. Why did they do this, in your opinion? That was revenge.

They have so much anger. I don't know why and who made them something bad, but this is revenge. I lived here alone, and smoke was coming out of my chimney. So they fired exactly at the roof of the house so that the civilian goes away, moves away, hides, roughly speaking. I think Western and Central Ukraine revenge Donbass for pro-Russian and pro-Soviet views. They cannot accept it.

So many people died. For what? Ukraine and the West said this territory is Ukrainian. Wait, if there is democracy here, there should be freedom of will expression. But nobody asked me or my city whether we wanted or not. What is the reason for such a huge anger? This is about the Americans and NATO. They try their equipment, ammunition and vehicles on us. They use all their old ammunition in such a way. Ukraine has already bought everything from Western Europe. All old ammunition is to be utilized here for what? What kind of freedom? This is not freedom. They are the occupiers. They are the ones who want to capture the Donbass.

I'm sorry for being too emotional. It's okay. I understand. Do you believe that that is a true and authentic interview by Patrick Lancaster of this pro-Russian Ukrainian gentleman whom he found in the Donbass? Yeah, I think if you had Jack Nicholson trying to play that role, he couldn't do it. That's authentic. That's not acting. What these people have endured over the last nine years in the Donbass was they originally did conceive of themselves as Ukrainian, but they spoke Russian. They had a fondness towards Russia and then suddenly found themselves identified as enemies of the state by the politicians in Kiev. And in identifying them as enemies of the state, it wasn't just verbal. It was, we're going to force you to stop speaking Russian and we're going to attack you with the military. And one of the things the Ukrainian government didn't count on early on was the number of Ukrainian soldiers with affinity for the Donbass who that he's endured over these last nine years, being shot at and watching neighbors be killed.

Ukraine, which claims that the Donbass, that eastern Ukraine is a part of Ukraine, is bombing what it says's its own territory, and particularly targeting the homes of those who are Russian-speaking and pro-Russian, killing what they even admit are fellow Ukrainians. Correct. And if I recall, Zelensky was actually raised in the Donbass, So he comes out of that area too. This has been going on since the end of World War II in terms of the split in that country, where the ones who live west of the Dnieper River have had an affinity more towards Europe. The ones who live to the east have had an affinity towards Russia. And the United States has intervened in this where we've tried to really take control of Ukraine, not because we want to promote democracy and freedom, but instead, Ukraine has some significant resources that we want to get our hands on.

How much longer does this war go on, Larry? I would be surprised if it goes on more than a week, producing new shells, new ammunition, new tanks, new armored vehicles, new planes. It's not happening. We don't have that industrial capability. The UK doesn't have it. France doesn't have it. Germany doesn't have it.

The one country that has it is Russia. So right away in this industrial warfare, Russia has a decided advantage. There's already reports that if Ukraine runs out of money, if the United States doesn't up its funding in June, into June, the war will be over because Ukraine has no means to sustain this on its own. Without the United States sending literally billions of dollars to Ukraine, Ukraine cannot continue the fight. Larry Johnson, always a pleasure no matter what we're talking about. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you, Judge. If you like that, my friends, and I suspect you do, like, subscribe, and tell a friend. More as we get it. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.