Judging Freedom - Putin Will be Taken Down by his Own People - former CIA Jack Devine

Episode Date: March 10, 2022

The Russian president’s hubris and dream of rebuilding the Soviet Union will doom him. Jack Devine is a former acting CIA director of operations. Author of "Spymaster's Prism: The Fight against Russian Aggression"See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hello there everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here with Judging Freedom. Today is Thursday, March 10th, 2022. My guest today is a very unique person and I'm happy to call a friend, Jack Devine. Jack has a 30-year career with the Central Intelligence Agency, was once the acting director of operations for the CIA, and wrote an unbelievable book called Spymaster's Prism, The Fight Against Russian Aggression, a book that if you want to know why we're all watching the war in Afghanistan, you would do well to read. Jack, it's a pleasure. Welcome to Judging Freedom. It's good to be talking to you again, Judge.

Thank you. Thank you. How dangerous is Vladimir Putin? Well, I'll tell you, he's more dangerous than I thought, and I thought it was pretty dangerous. When I wrote the book, it came out last year. If I were a little bit more perdition, I would have waited and had it come out this year, because I did talk about the Ukraine. I talked about how desirous he was of getting hold of the Ukraine, and that he was going to do whatever he could to make that happen. And that for us in the West, we should be looking at the Ukraine much like we looked at Germany

during the Cold War or Berlin and Kiev is the Berlin. So I think I was on the money there. And I thought he would do everything he could to muscle Ukraine to get it into his area. Russia without the Ukraine is a much smaller, weaker country as you know. With it, then

it becomes, you know, it's a powerhouse. The resources and the people, and he wanted, that was his dream. So there are a lot of people talking about NATO, not NATO. He wanted it part of his empire. Did you anticipate that he would be willing to destroy it? That's the difference. That's the difference. This is the conundrum for me.

Look, here's a guy that used plutonium to have a couple people bump up. This is not a sweetheart. In other words, this is a tough guy who, you know, extra legal things are not beyond him. And he's going into Georgia. He's going into the Crimea. You know, violence is not alien to him. But did I think he would go in and carry out a major land war in Ukraine? I'd have to tell you, I thought he was a smart KGB guy that was going to eat at it internally, politically, so that he could coerce it without having to use that kind of force. So when he started to build

up that huge army, you know, I began to reevaluate just how dangerous he was. I said, I do consider him and always have him being the most dangerous man in the world. And the reason is he'll use force. I think he, in the Wall Street Journal, I really nailed, hammered this point. And that is, I think he graded his own demise by going in there. I think he really made a terrible judgment about what he was going to be facing and how the world would be dealing with it. And I think he's got himself in a real box. And I think it's going to lead to his demise.

1,000 days, 5,000 days, I can't tell you, or 400 days. But he has now put himself in a unique category where he can never come back to the dinner table. Without spilling any secrets that you're not allowed to spill, how strong is he as the head of the government? Or stated differently, are there people in his government who are as outraged by the slaughter in Ukraine as we are? Or stated differently, are there people in his government waiting to replace

him? Sometimes with bold acts, you expose yourself more than you intend to. So I would say going into Afghanistan, what I said in the article was five days before he went in, he was very powerful. He could count on unity behind him, fear in the world. I think when he went in and got himself into his arm, he was shown to be much weaker, the strategy poorer. I think his personal stock, even within his elites is diminished. He's the half the man that he was when he went in

and therefore more vulnerable. So I think, you know, he still has his hand on the tiller, but he, I think a lot of people around him that are looking at him with more apprehension. And if I were him, I'd sleep with one eye open at night. So I don't think that's how it's going to play out. My own view is slightly different, but it is quite possible that if this thing keeps going south and the military really gets bogged down and the Russians are suffering. You remember Khrushchev after the missile crisis when not too long thereafter, he went to a meeting and then walked out in chains, right? So it's a very funny system. So I think he's lost market share, and I think he's going to get weaker day by day and not stronger. Did you approve of the Biden administration's drip-by-drip release of what normally would be top-secret intel in the days and weeks building up to the invasion,

reporting what the intelligence community found in great detail about his plots and his plans? Well, this is novel novel and this is different. And I think when I looked at the intelligence, and again, I'm not giving up anything that, you know, I have to have the CI people come by and whisk me away. But a lot of it was technical, that the Russians know we know how to take pictures, we know how to collect information technically. I didn't sense in what I read where there was any compromise of human sources. I think what was interesting, and I think again when you go back and look at this, you know this fake news, I mean it's just amazing that even any single Russian would believe

the balarney that they're putting out there. So I think it was really important for the U.S. to get the message out that this guy was going to invade and, you know, that it was going to happen. And I began to worry, well, was it like, you know, the weapons of mass destruction? Are they really sure? But I do think the intelligence community did nail it this time. And I think it's better for getting it out. I doubt that there was anything in that. And trust me, I know lots of my friends would be screaming and there'd be leaks in the press, not for my friends, but their friends. Right.

If there were real sensitive sources that went the belly up. I don't sense that's the case. So it's a bit different. But I think in this case, you know, I'm inclined to say that it was useful because it would have been a really disaster if the community did not categorically say that an invasion was coming. And it came, then I would say, people would say, what are we doing with this billion dollars, billions of dollars for intelligence, and we can't forecast. So i'm not uncomfortable with that judge what what would you tell uh president biden or his senior uh intel people what advice uh would you give them to uh weaken putin to shorten the war to strengthen uh uh ukraine whatever you could give them to help bring this to an end with less slaughter of innocent life. I found over the years that talking one-on-one to people, you can talk to thousands of them to listen to.

You're much better off doing what you're doing, get on a podcast, or write an op-ed. So I sent my message to anybody that wanted to read it, and that is he's finished. We've got to recognize what the real endgame is. We're going to end up somewhere in Ukraine, but he is now an outcast. And as long as he's there with these dangerous tendencies, the world will not be at ease. And he could very well replicate this again. But I'm not promoting covert action against them

and trying to do things in Russia. I think that's a losing proposition. I believe he will be taken down by his own people. So we must be, once some sort of agreements worked out, we can't all walk away and say, well, that's taken care of and let's ease up on the sanctions. We've got to remain strong, tough on the sanctions. We need to support the Ukrainian resistance. If there is one, we need to support the elements that are blocking the subjugation of Ukraine. So I think we have to stay tough for a longer period of time. He has sown the seeds of his own collapse, and we ought to let him sink by himself inside of Russia.

We should not be meddling in there. But externally, wherever we end up at the point of there's some concession, because this won't go on forever, at that point, we need to stay firm. And I worry about that. So that's my message. My message is this is not over if we get a ceasefire. This is not over even if they leave, no matter what deal is cut. We need to recognize him for what he is, and we need to have, that needs to stop.

He can't be brought back for cocktail parties and pictures taken with Putin. It's over. And his own people are going to have to. Is our intel, your former colleagues, good enough so that we know what he's going to do before he does it? It has been rare. I'm going to get in trouble here, Judge. You're getting me in trouble. But I don't get in trouble.

It's rare that we really know what the head of state's next move is. Part of it is because sometimes they don't know. But historically, we have had really good agents penetrating into the Russian system. And I would say they're not amateurs in this business either. They have had and do have and continue to have good sources. So I think we will have a pretty good understanding, but it's not 100% locked. When I look back at all the cases that have been revealed in the public, most of them were really good on where are the missiles, what's the technology, you know,

their moves in foreign countries. But we've rarely had sources in the political arm close to heads of state, and neither have they. Now, in the Cold War, at the very beginning, there were some real disasters in terms of people that were working for the Russians. So it's a rare source that can give you that type of conviction. So that's why you have to vector with all types of information. Understood. How dangerous to American national security or to individual freedom is the Russian intelligence community here in the U.S.?

In the book, I was trying to blow a horn here. I think people get all upset in the 2016 election. I was furious that they interfered in our political election because that was not a Cold War rule. In other words, you couldn't, we had an understanding they wouldn't mess around in our political system, they wouldn't mess around on theirs. And you don't see many examples of it over the Cold War, the entire Cold War. So I was limited. They were messing around and I didn't even believe it at first. So this is so far off of the Cold War formula. But when you start to look at it and you look at the Mueller report, they're running around,

running operations, frantically trying to find sources. And it gives you a sense. And when you start to look at what they really did, they were very, very busy. They were really working the political system. I worry about that today. People are worried about, are they going to bring down the grid? I'm worried that they're going to use that penetration of our political process and the internet and fake news, that they're going to try and undermine our system, and they're going to be more active. On the pure intelligence side, you know, people talk about the Chinese. The Chinese come to it late, right?

And they don't also, they're not as aggressive in terms of trying to have you use it. But my own sense is the Russians are deeply embedded in our cyber world. And I think we, and I'm sure my colleagues in the FBI and so on are concerned about this. And I, again, I'm not looking for them to bring down the grid, but I'm looking for them to continue to steal secrets, but also to mess around in our political process. And that is going to be a real challenge for whatever administration has to deal with it when it becomes public.

We can't let them do it. How dangerous is he, Putin, if he's cornered? I mean, might he turn around and bomb Los Angeles? Or is that unrealistic? Are all of his efforts now concentrated on Ukraine? I think there's a thing that really is turning me off. There's a trend now. We got to give him an off ramp. We have to help this guy out because he has been so nasty. He's created such a mess that we need to make an exit. He's like a tiger wrapped in a cage, and you've got to let him escape out the back door.

Well, no one ever tells the end of the story. The tiger goes out and eats all the sheep. You know, if you go to any sports arena, you've got the guys on the ropes. You don't say, well, wait a minute, if I hit him one more time, he's going to get really mad. You take him out, right? So I'm not too worried about him getting into the corner. I think we put that pressure on that his own people decide that he's around his tenure. I do not believe that, I mean, I think he's sufficiently sane that he's not going to fire a nuclear weapon

because he knows we'll all be fried potato chips in the next hour, right? So I don't think he's going there. I don't think he's deranged. As I said, I think he's going to try and, you know, most importantly, he'll be concentrating on protecting himself inside and it'll be really hard. And where it breaks down, this is a key point, where you know he's in trouble is when the demonstrations start to become faster and deeper, and the military and the police are not prepared to push down on their people. As long as the military and the police stand by him, he will stay in power. And this could happen overnight and that the military decides, you know, we're not going to do this and he's out. So I know he's lost, he's lost two of his leading generals already. Right. And I, I wonder about those, you know, those photos of him with

his active duty generals, the chiefs 40 feet away. They wish they were in any other place on the face of the earth other than that room. And his security counsel, I think he has developed a very strange management style. In fact, I would say, you know, he asked me whether he was more dangerous. I think there's a darker side to Putin than I realize. There's a side that permits him to have the type of barbaric activities taking place in the bombings. And so I think he's, there's a darker side than I anticipated because I think at the stage down, the things that are taking place, this is beyond the pale for most political leaders historically,

that he's prepared to let these tragedies take place to correct the political mistake, the political and military mistake he made. So I do think there's a dark side. I don't think it's self-destruction, though. But I'm not a psychiatrist. What happens if a Russian tank commander misreads his GPS and fires into Poland, where he destroys Polish jets and American jets that are at an airport just a few miles over the Ukraine-Poland border? Does NATO come in?

Does the U.S. come in as World War III started? This is where intelligence plays a huge role historically. When something like that happens, you have to have the instantaneous capability to determine that's a one-off. Now, we've had a couple of these. We don't talk a lot about them, but they're in writing, where we almost had incidents like that on both sides where we were practicing and doing exercises and there was

one of their generals gets convinced and we one of ours was convinced the other side a different occasion it reaches that point your best preventative is to make sure you have the intelligence to answer is this a full-bl blown attack or is there something to write? And fortunately in history, instead of hitting the red button, both the Russian and the American in different occasions decided they were gonna double check. So I think if it could be misread

and immediately start firing, but that's why you have a red line. That's why you pick up the phone. That's why the head of the agency and the head of the KGB, you have to have communications to say, whoa, that's one off. We'll fix it. We'll make reparations. We'll do whatever it is. So that could happen, Judge. But I think, I think that would be capped off, I would hope it will be capped off because you have a lot of technical

collection that will ascertain really fast, whether or not there's coordinated units and other it's not a single person. So I don't think that will kick off World War Three, it'll be a mess. It'll be a mess for sure. But I don't think that's kick off World War III. It'll be a mess. It'll be a mess for sure. But I don't think that's how World War III starts. Jack Devine, 30 years in the CIA. It's a pleasure to be with you again. Thank you for all of your answers. Thanks for joining us.

And thank you for the opportunity to chat with you again, John. Of course. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.