Judging Freedom - Ray McGovern: Germany caught off-guard by leak of secret Ukraine war talks

Episode Date: March 4, 2024

Ray McGovern: Germany caught off-guard by leak of secret Ukraine war talksSee 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, March 4th, 2024. Ray McGovern is here and will be with us in just a moment. Just what were those German generals talking about when they didn't think anybody was listening? And just what country has boots on the ground in Ukraine? All of that, but first this. How do you really feel about your financial future right now today? Stable or uncertain? Despite all the happy talk that the Fed and the banks want you to buy into, I believe that 2024 is going to be a very unstable year, politically and financially. That's one of the reasons I decided to buy physical gold and silver.

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It's easy to do and it's tax and penalty free. Don't be caught off guard. Experts predict the markets may tank again. You'll be happy if you have protection in place. So call Lear at 800-511-4620, 800-511-4620, or go to learjudgenap.com and tell them your friend the judge sent you. Welcome here, Ray. Always a pleasure, my dear friend. Thanks, Judge. Well, first, what did we learn from this taped conversation of these German generals? And secondly, do we know how it got out

and how we learned it? Well, it's authentic, number one. It seems very clear that it was intercepted conversation, probably by the Russians, but not necessarily so. Could have been the people in Singapore who are very sophisticated, the Japanese, the Chinese. In any case, they gave it to the Russians. OK, and it's been played. Now, we know that we've been played. And what this indicates is that the Germans, well, maybe we call this week giving hypocrisy a bad name. There's lots in here about striking the Kerch Bridge and bombing the hell out of Crimea. And this conversation, by the way, predates Putin's most recent speech. The date of the conversation is the 19th of February.

But there are also some nuggets in here which no one has drawn attention to. Here is the head Air Force person, the Luftwaffe, talking about, what is he talking about? He's talking about the Taurus missiles with long range that could hit Kirchbridge or ammo dumps within Russia. He says, quote, this is not going to change the course of the military. It's perfectly clear. It's all big politics. The next paragraph indicates that the Germans feel the need to keep up with the British and with the French in being real staunch in providing longer-range missiles to Ukraine.

But, again, I repeat, it's not going to change the course of military actions in any sense. Meanwhile, General Kouyat, who used to be the highest military official in NATO, German general, he said, look, we talk about Wunderwaffen, wonder arms, and it's going to work. Wunderwaffen, they're not going to change anything. As a matter of fact, all the dead, here's what Kuyat says, all the dead that have become dead have been killed since early April 2022 when that deal was signed, the deal between Russians and Ukrainians to stop the war, okay? All those people, that's the fault of the people who put the kibosh on that, the UK,

the US, and the other vassals, Germany and France. Last thing I'll say is that Lavrov, in reacting to some of this business, including the German transcript, he says, you know, this is really, really hypocrisy at its worst. We have not only Austen saying strange things now, but we have these Germans saying things now. You know, it reminds me of how the Germans and the French sold us down, pretending that the Minsk Accords, which would have provided some measure of autonomy to the Donetsk provinces, how they were sabotaged and then how they bragged about it. Cynicism galore, and Lavrov, of course, is right on that. All right.

A couple of questions. These Taurus missiles, the ones that if fired in Ukraine would reach into Russia, is there language on these tapes indicating that it's best for German technicians? Technicians doesn't say whether special ops troops or intel. German technicians operate and man these things. Well, they'd very much like the British to do it, clear from the conversation. British are already there. The British have these storm shadow missiles. It's the same sort of thing.

Yeah, let's use the British if we can. Now, the reason behind that, of course, is plausible deniability. There are extreme efforts on the part of these German generals to be very careful not to get directly involved here. They have political people very nervous about this, and they reflect that nervousness. So, yeah, it's very clear they'd like to profit from the British experience in here, the British hookups or what do you call it, the people, the things that you put on the bottom of these planes so they can fire these tourist vessels. And the French as well, you know, the French have their version of the storm shadow. So yeah, they just want to make sure that they keep up with the French and the British, lest they seem to be falling behind in their slavish obedience to what people like Secretary Austin require. We'll play a disturbing clip from Secretary Austin in just a minute. What countries have troops either in uniform or out of uniform on the ground in Ukraine

besides Ukraine itself? Do we know? Well, we don't know for sure. It's not, of course, officially acknowledged. But we know that upwards of 100 French volunteers or French officers were killed in one of the major strikes in Ukraine. We know that there are, we know from the New York Times that there are scads of CIA agents and other people in or out of uniform from the U.S. there. The U.K. is deeply involved in many things, including the naval aspect of these things. So, yeah, it's very clear there are volunteers, so to speak, not formally acknowledged from the U.S.,

from France, from Germany, from Britain. I mean, it's the usual suspects that they are already. The distinction to be made here is the French, for example, have threatened to put in regular troops. We have to introduce maybe troops. And that's where not only the Russians, but the Germans and the British came down hard on what Macron said. No, no, no, no troops, no NATO troops. So this is a red line. NATO troops has units coming in there. And we know that Putin said, that's it.

You know, we have ways to respond. Now, people have said, oh, is he threatening nuclear war? Well, that's two stages beyond where he is. The Russians have hypersonic missiles that pack the same kind of punch that a small mini-nuke has. They don't have to use nuclear weapons. They're threatening to hit the bases from which these aircraft would fly with these new missiles, the Storm Shadow or the Taurus. And, you know, if I were France or Britain or Germany, I would be very leery of taking the chance of doing that and trying to hit Russian bases, ammo dumps, or the Kirch Bridge with those kinds of weapons. I've asked our colleagues, Alistair Crook and Larry Johnson, if NATO is at war with Russia,

they both gave the same answer. Is it? Not officially, but in reality, in reality, of course it is. And that's why Putin addresses NATO and says, look, NATO's got to stop this. The US, of course, is NATO. And we haven't declared war on Russia. We've done just about everything short of that. But there is a big divide between an official declaration of war, which, as you know, has not been done since World War II, an official commitment of U.S. or French or German or British troops, and what they have now and what they have had for almost two years now. Has the Wall Street Journal recently gotten its hands on a document which purports to be a summary of the agreement in Turkey between Russia and Ukraine.

We're now back in March and April of 22, the one which President Putin went like this, showing his fingers about an inch apart, that it was a substantial inch-thick document when he was talking to Tucker Carlson. Interesting. Go ahead. The interesting thing there, Judge, is the timing. We've all known about not only the agreement, early April 2022, six or seven weeks after the war began, an agreement between Ukrainian negotiators, some of whom have confirmed exactly the agreement and the terms that were reached, and Russian negotiators. They met first in Belarus, then in Turkey, and we have all kinds of people, including, as I say, the Ukrainian negotiators

attesting to the fact that they did a deal, a deal that was put up, put the kibosh on by the U.S. and by the U.K. The deal has been out there. Ukraine will be neutral. Crimea will be dealt with later. You'll leave that, and so forth and so on. The big thing is why the Wall Street Journal is coming out with this now as though it were news. Well, you know, it's a straw in the wind, but the wind is blowing in the right direction in this case. People need to know, even the muckety-mucks that read the Wall Street Journal need to know that they could have ended the stamp thing as Harold Kuyat, the German general I referenced before, said. We could have ended it in the beginning of April 2022,

and all the people who are dead since then are the result of the 12 um cia bases or stations whatever they call them in ukraine uh articulated and that cia leaked puff piece in the near 10 000 word piece in the new york times last week uh was hit by a russian artillery and some some CIA officers were killed. Will the United States ever acknowledge this? Why is the CIA still there? If the bases are mentioned in the New York Times, surely Russian intel knows about them. Well, these things will go on.

Whether they're publicly acknowledged or not is very doubtful. That's what you do when you work for a secret intelligence organization, which in a misguided way gets involved in little and sometimes bigger wars. Now, I don't know whether I hadn't talked to Larry about this. It's not surprising that this would be struck. It's not at all surprising that the Russian intelligence would know where each one of these so-called 12 bases are located, just a matter of time before they get the rest of them.

Is the CIA in the process of leaving Ukraine because it recognizes that it's on life support and that support is about to be, the plug's about to be pulled, so to speak? Judge, the CIA does what Jacob Sullivan tells it to do, and Jacob Sullivan tells the president what should happen. So right now, the president is, he's got hardened arteries, okay? He's so intent on hanging in there. And if he gets the $60 billion more, in other words, if Mike Johnson caves, then they're okay, maybe up to the election. And that's all they give a rat's patootie about. Get us through the election without an obvious defeat in Ukraine, and we're good, or at least we have a chance to win the

election. But this American involvement in Ukraine has to rank not in the number of deaths, of course, but in the colossal misjudgments and waste of assets. It has to rank up there with Vietnam and Afghanistan. I mean, there's no way they could salvage this rationally as having been justified. Well, there are differences. For example, Vietnam I know well. We suffered 58,000 casualties killed there, not to mention the 3 million Vietnamese.

Where do we get 3 million from Defense Secretary McNamara? 3 million Vietnamese. Is that tantamount to a genocide? I'll leave that to your imagination. Does it have to be six million? Or could it be two million in Gaza? So that's one big difference. In Ukraine, we let others do our fighting for us. You know, our casualties are not acknowledged when they come. And, you know, this is a very good business deal because our arms manufacturers are making plenty of dough. It's that cynical. Here's Congressman Mike Turner. This is part of the full court press. And then we'll talk about

what he had to say. I have very little respect for him, and I'll tell you why in a minute. But here he is on one of the talk shows with that Joe Biden argument, you know, Putin could take Ukraine and we can't let him do it. Speaker Johnson now has the leeway and the flexibility to work through Congress and the Appropriations Committee. I think it's going to be moving quickly. We're going to get our appropriations in April. They're not completely out of ammunitions. I've been to I was in Kiev last month and met with Zelensky also at the Munich Security Conference and certainly spoke to our military and they are rationing, but

they are not out. This is critical. We have to support them now or they will lose. And I think the speaker sees that emergency. Hakeem Jeffrey sees that emergency. And I think we're going to see bills hit the floor. Well, I mean, this is the guy who claimed he had a secret and he wanted to tell the rest of the Congress. And the secret was that Vladimir Putin had nuclear weapons and satellites and was going to attack our satellites. And we better do something about it soon. And the thing he wanted to do about it soon was to reenact section 702 of the Patriot Act or excuse me of the Pfizer law which allows warrantless spying and innocent

Americans okay warrantless spying and innocent Americans that's going to save us from Vladimir Putin's nukes that's the logic uh uh of this guy uh just as um reprehensible is almost a general. Secretary of Defense Austin, here he is on Friday. We know that if Putin is successful here, he will not stop. He will continue to take more aggressive action in the region. And other leaders around the world, other autocrats around the world will look at this, and they'll be encouraged by the fact that, you know, this happened, and we failed to support a democracy. And so if you're a Baltic state, you're really worried about, you know,

whether or not you're next. And so they know Putin. They know what he's capable of. And quite frankly, if Ukraine falls, I really believe that NATO will be in a fight with Russia. If Ukraine falls, NATO will be in a fight with Russia. Okay, NATO is already in a fight with Russia, as you indicated earlier, just not officially, just not publicly recognized. Scare tactics before the Congress in an effort to get Speaker Johnson and the Republicans to waste another $60 billion borrowed in the taxpayers' names.

Yeah. If Ukraine loses, he must know, or he must have been told, maybe by somebody outside his own military command that Ukraine has lost, okay? There's no fixing that. The trajectory is down for Ukraine. So for him to be saying so irresponsibly that this will mean that NATO will be at war with Russia, my God, that's extraordinary. As a matter of fact, two days later, Lavrov, he was in Turkey, he took note of what Austin said. Let me just read you what Lavrov said here. This is the Russian foreign minister. Yeah, yeah.

Well, let's see. Do I have it here? Here it is. The situation clearly indicates that the war camp in Europe is still very strong, if anybody had any doubts about that. The latest statements of Macron, namely, option has to be open to put troops in there and into Ukraine. The conversation between the German generals and Austin's own comments suggest that the war party still wants to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia on the battlefield. Well, I mean, how else can he reason? That is obviously the logical conclusion there.

So if the war party still wants to do that, what is Putin going to do? He's going to be on high alert. And he doesn't have to use nuclear weapons, as I said before. They have hypersonic missiles that can pack just as much a wallop as a mini nuke. or German aircraft or even British aircraft take off with these longer-range missiles and hit Russia, what's going to happen to the airfields from which these aircraft fly? I don't know, but I wouldn't want to be there after they fly. Did the U.S. Army Chief of Staff, the highest ranking general in the Army, recently commented on the Russian defense industry and Russian military preparedness. It was very weird.

What's his name? General Randy George, the highest U.S. Army official chief of staff for the Army. He's in Washington three days ago, and this wasn't publicized for obvious reasons, but he says, you know, it's a real bad idea. It's a mistake to underestimate the Russians. They have incredible industrial capability. They're not going to stop. It would be really bad to underestimate what the Russians can do. Now, that's sort of a playback to Madeleine Albright saying to Chief of Staff Colin Powell, hey, you've got this great army, for God's sake, why don't you use it?

And she persuaded that to happen in the Balkans, okay? Well, here are people in the White House, never wore a uniform, don't know from Shinola what war is like, and they're going to tell the army chief of staff what to do in Ukraine? I think this is another straw in the wind blowing in the right direction where the head of the army is saying, look, you guys, don't underestimate Russia or don't misunderstand Russia, if you will, to coin a phrase from George W. Bush. Ray, a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you for your insight. Thank you for your time. We'll see you again soon. All the best.

Most welcome. Thank you. Coming up at the top of the hour, that's 11 o'clock Eastern, Colonel Douglas McGregor. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thanks for watching!