Judging Freedom - Ray McGovern (fmr CIA) : From Cold War to Cyber War The Evolving Role of CIA Spying

Episode Date: November 20, 2023

In this episode, we traverse the historical milestones of the Cold War, examining the covert operations and geopolitical maneuvers that defined an era. Ray McGovern provides a firsthand account of the challenges and triumphs of intelligence gathering during this period, shedding light on the motivations and justifications that shaped CIA spying.#RayMcGovern#ColdWarHistory#CovertOperations#GeopoliticalManeuvers#IntelligenceGathering#CIAHistory#HistoricalPerspective#SpyingDuringColdWar#ChallengesAndTriumphs#Motivations#Justifications#Espionage#IntelligenceCommunity#CIAInsights#coldwarera #IsraelEthics#MoralJustifications#ThoughtProvoking#EthicalDebate#IsraelPolitics#HistoricalAnalysis#PoliticalInsights#SocialContext#NuancedExploration#EthicalConsiderations#MoralDilemmas#CriticalThinking#IsraelDebate#globalethics #Israel#Hamas#Gaza#IsraelPalestine#MiddleEastConflict#PeaceInTheMiddleEast#GazaUnderAttack#Ceasefire#Jerusalem#PrayForPeaceSee 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 Monday, November 20th, 2023. In just a moment, Ray McGovern will be here. So the Israelis attacked and destroyed the best hospital in Gaza, expecting to find Hamas in the basement. And they weren't there. But first this. You all know that I am a paid spokesperson for Lear Capital because it's the right thing to do because the government is regulating too much and printing too much money and reducing the value of everything you earn and everything you own. And the best hedge against this is gold and silver. That's what I've done.

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And when you have this conversation with a Lear representative, you'll find out if you can qualify for a $15,000 gold bonus. So call Lear now, 800-511-4620 or learjudgenap.com. Ray McGovern, welcome back to the show. So the IDF announced very, very publicly that it was assaulting the best hospital in Gaza City. And a lot of innocents died and premature babies were rushed to Egypt to keep them alive. And the hospital was assaulted because it was supposedly Hamas headquarters in the tunnel underneath. And the Israelis intimated that you'd see Hamas people coming out with their hands up in public humiliation. It wasn't a headquarters and no Hamas was there. So how could intelligence be so wrong or was this just an excuse to cripple Gaza

beyond human imagining by assaulting a hospital? Well, if Israel was out to show that they're capable of war crimes, collective punishment, ethnic cleansing, and genocide, they really done a great job. How can they continue to do that? I mean, that's the question, isn't it? With the complete support of the United States, which continues to ship weapons that are being used by the Israelis through Cyprus and other ways. They're feeding this thing and shedding crocodile tears. Look at Biden saying, oh, I feel sympathy for the Palestinian children too, I just wish it would stop. He has the power to stop it. Forgive me, Judge, but if I'm a little angry, this is a little too much. He could stop it on today or tomorrow and say, look, that's my birthday.

Stop it. And it would stop. That's the kind of power that the U.S. has. It's joined with Israel to the hip. The only problem is that Israel is the leader in this kind of imbroglio. Your anger is righteous. It needs not to ask for apology. The piece that the president signed, I don't know if he wrote it. It did sound like he wrote it because a lot of it was disjointed. The piece that the president signed in yesterday's Washington Post was reprehensible, complaining about the destruction of Gaza. Nearly every bomb that was dropped and every bullet that was fired came directly or indirectly from the United States. You're right. He could stop it with a phone call.

It also didn't make sense. He knows what the Netanyahu government position is on the two-state solution, and he keeps claiming that this is reasonable. It's not reasonable. It's not feasible. It's not even possible while the right-wing fanatics are running the government of Israel. Yes, Judge, and even worse, that very unusual, very long op-ed in the Washington Post yesterday. It was very, very instructive. He's still delusional in saying the U.S. must lead, okay? The U.S. has this sacred obligation to be the hegemon. That's what the Greek word means, really, not only to dominate, simply to lead. United States is the essential nation, he says. We rally partners to stand up to aggressors and make progress to a brighter future. The world looks to us to solve

the problems of our time. This is the duty of leadership and America will lead. Totally delusional. He must have dictated that part himself. The rest is a bunch of filler. Makes no sense. But think of the Israelis looking at this. Well, you know, a leading means that means that they're joined with us at the hip. John Mearsheimer has termed this the most unusual alliance in recorded history, where two countries who do not share the same aims in the world are joined at the hip in a way that neither, that no matter what is what John Mearsheimer says, no matter what, no matter what the U.S. is going to suffer because of this, not to speak of the Palestinians, no matter what is the unique situation between these two countries, add AIPAC, add Congress, add the Zionist-dominated Western press, and you've got a really volatile mix. I just hope that it occurs to Joe Biden on his 81st birthday today. Let me put it this way. My dad was a professor of law. He was also chancellor of the Board of Regents. And when he looked around and saw all these superannuated regents, he invented a legal term. He called it statutory senility. He said, look, I'm 65 now, 65, and I've reached the age, look it up in your law journals, the age of statutory senility. I'm after seven years as chancellor.

I'm stepping down. Now, I'd suggest that maybe, yeah, I mean, This might be a good idea for some of the others to think about Guess how many of the others did? Zero When you get at that age You get set in your ways And Joe Biden is not going to come to his senses Anytime soon

Think of people like Netanyahu Think of people like Xi Or people like Putin having to deal with that. It's a very volatile situation because the people advising him are in trouble deep, and they're still very naive in thinking the U.S. must lead. If we asked Joe Biden or Tony Blinken or Jake Sullivan who's to blame for the 11,000 to 13,000 civilian deaths in Gaza? How would they answer that question? Hamas, Hamas, Hamas.

That's why we have to eliminate them. It was Hamas that started this thing. You know, even when Gutierrez, the UN Secretary General, let it slip out that, you know, Hamas' attack didn't happen in a vacuum. The lobby descended on him with incredible power and said, no, this is not possible. It was a vacuum. Hamas just got up one day and said, you know, I think we ought to attack Israel. That ain't what happened. People need to know the real deal.

They won't get it from the mainstream media in our country. That's why I'm so delighted to be able to reach the people, the hundreds of thousands of people that you have in your audience today, Judge. Well, we all know that Hamas was created by the Israelis. Bibi Netanyahu himself encouraged Qatar to fund it. It was encouraged to be a resistance to the PLO. And they continued to encourage its existence and ask foreign governments to fund it.

Be careful what you ask for. Yeah. And besides, okay, Condoleezza Rice got it into her head as she was preparing to leave high level office. Let's have an election. Let's see how the PLO can get the support it needs in Gaza as well.

And the Israelis said, no, no, that's not a good idea. No, no, no. Why not? Oh, Hamas will win. Oh, no, we're going to have a... So they had this election, 2005, I think it was, and Hamas won hands down. Why? Because they were a terrorist organization? No, because they took care of the poor in Gaza. That's why they have hospitals. That's why they had such popularity that they won the election hands down. 2006, the U.S. and Israel tried to dislodge them by

forming a coup. It didn't succeed. They're in position there because they take care of their people. Now, there's an extremist element, of course, there's a terrorist element, but even that doesn't happen in a vacuum. Gutierrez was right, the mainstream media is wrong. So how can Netanyahu decide what to do? Does he want to carpet bomb Gaza back into the Stone Ages, or does he want to rescue the hostages? He can't do both. I don't, this is my view, I don't think he gives a rat's patootie about the hostages. The Israelis have been very, very open in saying, well, what's it? A million plus people have already been dislodged from their homes in the northern part of Gaza and are headed south. And now the Israelis are handing out leaflets saying, now you better get out of the south too. Where are they going to go? Well, the original plan was to browbeat the Egyptians into taking them.

You know, there's still a possibility, I suppose, that will work. But when Blinken raised that with Al-Sisi, he was given the back of his hand. So what are they going to do? They're just going to ethnically cleanse these things. It's called genocide. It's a textbook case, for God's sake. Don't take it from me. Take it from Richard Falk, who just recently gave a very, very terrific talk at the

American University in Cairo and spelled out exactly how it's genocide, how under international law, these people could be convicted, prosecuted, just as people in the old Yugoslavia were when two successful cases of genocide were offered, prosecuted, and people convicted. But what is the value of international law, the essence of which is here in wartime, thou shalt not intentionally kill civilians if there's not going to be any accountability or any prosecution. Does anybody realistically think that Bibi Netanyahu is going to be in the dock in the International Criminal Court because he unleashed such unfathomable cruelty upon the Gazans? Well, Judge, one thing is that stranger things have happened.

After all, Pinochet was successfully hunted down and put under house arrest. But for immediate purposes, no, it's not going to happen as long as the U.S. supplies weapons and moral and political support to Israel. So, you know, for all these crocodile tears, what, the deputy national security spokesman saying, oh, you know, it's really terrible what's happening. My God, that just sickens me. You can stop it today. Stop it. And you can stop it in Ukraine, too. In his little thing here, in his big thing, his op-ed, he says, you know, that conviction, namely that America must lead, is at the root of my approach to Ukraine. Get this. We're keeping American troops out of this war. We're supporting the brave Ukrainians defending their freedom. We are

providing them with weapons and economic assistance to stop Putin's drive for conquest before that conflict spreads further. Father. No. Does he really believe that Putin is going to seize Poland or the Baltic states? You know, I think he may. He's delusional. But the idea here is keeping U.S. troops out of the fray, depending on Ukrainian troops with the weapons. They ain't. They have a couple of weapons. They don't have any shells for those weapons.

And they are running out of troops. You know, this famous thing, we'll fight to the last Ukrainian. Well, we're approaching the point where we're almost, well, if you count the women, I guess I suppose there are a couple thousand more women now and people my age, but we're running out of Ukrainians. So fighting to the last Ukrainian, keeping U.S. troops up. How hypocritical is that? If we're for freedom, you know, we'll defend every inch of NATO territory.

Well, Ukraine isn't part of NATO, is it? So we're, you know, this big boast. It's just, it sickens me. And it, you know, it's the reality that Biden really believes this stuff and so insists that this dribble be included in any op-ed bearing his name. It's sickening in a physical sense. Yeah. It was poorly written. It was rambling. But I guess it's the essence of what he believes, even though a lot of it is unrealistic. Haven't some of the neocons even begun to whisper, well, look, the spring offensive, whatever offensive, whatever you want to term it, however you want to characterize it, spring, summer, was a failure. They're either at a standstill or the Russians are on the march. The Russians have captured a lot more territory. Where are we going with this?

There are some neocons that are beginning to say that. They still think we should be in the fight, but they acknowledge that Ukraine is getting the tar shellacked out of them thus far. Yeah, there have been a lot of articles in the press becoming a little bit more realistic about how the spring offensive or summer offensive sputtered out. But, you know, the real neocons that are running this thing, I'm talking Blinken, Sullivan, Nolan and the president himself. They have a personal stake in this. I've said this before, and that is they can't possibly appear to have lost this war. That's why Biden was prompted to say two months ago that Russia has already lost. B.S., okay, that's drivel. So why do they have a personal stake?

Because if they lose the war, they'll lose the election. If they lose the election, they might, well, lose their freedom. Good point. Let's get back to Israel and Hamas and Gaza. How many deaths are too many deaths? Well, if we're talking genocide here, and again, it's not McGovern, it's Professor Richard Falk, then the law is very clear. You don't have to kill all of an ethnic group. You have to kill a substantial amount of them before it becomes characterized as genocide. Now, six million Jews in the Holocaust.

There are 200 Palestinians plus in Gaza. Does it have to be six million to be genocide? No, it doesn't. The law is very clear. You destroy or you drive out or you do what the Israelis are doing with our help in Palestine, and you do that to a sizable portion of that 2 million plus, and that's genocide. Now, I never thought that the United States of America, the country I still love, and that I defended as a second lieutenant in the infantry, that I would see them supporting this kind of genocide. It happened

before, of course, during my lifetime. World War II is what it's called. Now, I don't think you need six million. Two million is quite excessive in my view. What already has happened is genocide. And the worst of it is, or the most, the blatant it is, is that the Israeli people, the Israeli leaders have said, look, we're going to deprive these guys of water, of food, of fuel. We're going to do genocide just to teach them a lesson. My God, that's against all manner of law. And, you know, you say, well, maybe Netanyahu will never be brought before the court. I like to leave that open because there is a threat there. And there are lawsuits now before the International Criminal Court charging him with genocide and other clear crimes. So the fact that my country, your country, is supporting this, it's just really painful. And I think we all being done with the military equipment and ammunition that we send them. And I don't get the president. I don't

know how he can say full-throated, we're wedded at the hip to Israel. We support them 100%. Ah, but don't kill too many Palestinians. Use smaller bombs. Stop for four hours and then go back to the killing. This is just, oh, and by the way, hours, and then go back to the killing. This is just, oh, and by the way, a two-state solution. This is nonsense. There can be no two-state solution while Netanyahu is in power. Now, maybe he won't be in power forever. He wants to, well, he certainly won't be in power forever.

Maybe he won't be in power much longer. He wants to extend the war because he has reason to believe that he stays in office in power and a free man while the war is being waged. And when the war is over, he will not be in power and he may no longer be a free man. Well, that's true. And, you know, if you look at what Biden is facing in the mental condition that he happens to be, three wars or three possible hostilities, Ukraine, Gaza, and China. How is he going to cope with this? We have Austin going to Kiev. He's there today. What's he telling them?

He's telling them, look, you know, I'm sorry about not having any shells for your artillery. And I'm sorry about the fact that Congress is not going to give you any more money. So maybe you ought to draw the correct conclusions and maybe sort of change your leaders and deal, maybe? Well, that would be a sensible thing. Last Friday, President Key received David Cameron, the former British Prime Minister and brand spanking new British Defence Minister, first official act as British Defence Minister to fly to Kiev and say, we'll give you what we need. Now, I don't know what he said, but he couldn't possibly have said, we'll give you what you need, because what they need, the Brits don't have, unless they're going

to put their own troops on the ground, because Kiev's biggest need, as you pointed out earlier on in this conversation, is human beings, soldiers, fighters, military personnel, which they simply don't have. They have run out. Well, right, Judge. When I think of Cameron, I think of Boris Johnson going to spike the accord that had been made between the Russians and Zelensky in late March, early April 2022. Okay. And I remember my Irish grandfather says, Raymond, do you know why the sun never sets on the British Empire? And I say, I know.

You don't know. The sun never sets on the British Empire because the good Lord would never trust the British in the dark. Well. There you go. There you go, Cameron Johnson, just doing the bidding of the elite that they represent and the hegemon, the United States, the slowly crumbling hegemon. I just think we're very lucky to have people as perspicacious as Xi Jinping and Putin in Moscow, in Beijing, that they're not going to force this thing.

They're just going to watch it crumble. And hopefully nobody on our side will think of trying to prevent it from further crumbling by using the ace in the hole. And I refer, of course, to tactical nuclear weapons. Ray, you're a diamond in the rough. You're priceless. Thank you for your analysis and your gift of the Irish sense of humor. God love you.

We have a short week, but I know we're going to squeeze in an Intel roundtable because it's such a joy for the three of us to do it and for our fans to watch it. Thank you, Judge. Of course. All the best, my friend. We still have a lot coming for you today. Larry Johnson at 11 this morning, Colonel McGregor this afternoon, and Professor Sachs this afternoon. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Thank you.