Judging Freedom - Ray McGovern: How Stable is the Putin Government?

Episode Date: December 29, 2023

Ray McGovern: How Stable is the Putin Government?#russia #ukraine #USMilitaryHistory #Israel #Gaza #ceasefire #hostages #Ukraine #zelenskyy #Biden #china #IsraelPalestine #MiddleEastConflict #PeaceInTheMiddleEast #GazaUnderAttack #Ceasefire #Jerusalem #prayforpeace #hostages #Israel #Gaza #ceasefire #hostages #Ukraine #zelenskyy #Biden #china #IsraelPalestine #MiddleEastConflict #PeaceInTheMiddleEast #GazaUnderAttack #Ceasefire #Jerusalem #prayforpeace #hostagesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Thank you. Everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Wednesday, December 27th, 2023. We're between Christmas and New Year's. Ray McGovern joins us now. Ray, a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you for joining us. What role, if any, does the CIA play in the slaughter by the IDF in Gaza? The CIA has all kinds of technical information to share with the Israelis.

The Israelis are treated a lot better than the other five, the five eyes, if you will, because they're a close ally, in quotes. The CIA will do whatever Jake Sullivan tells them to do, speaking on behalf of the president. That's the way this is all set up. So you can be sure that not only are those 200 or 2,000 pound bombs being used with the approval of the Pentagon, the intelligence such as it is that the Israelis need, they've got their own, of course, is provided by our intelligence agencies, including the CIA and DIA. You used a phrase, I just want you to explain it to our viewers, the five I's, that's E-Y-E-S, correct?

Right. And what does it mean? Who or what are the five I's? Well, they're all white and they're all English speaking. It's a relic of World War II. We got together real closely with the UK, with Canada, and with Australia, and with New Zealand. a technical cooperation where we share almost everything, almost, of a technical intercept nature or some kind of elant or sigint or whatever, electronic or signals intelligence, with these other four people, and they do the same for us. Now, the Germans have been trying

to get into this exclusive cub forever. They've not been allowed in. The Israelis, they don't have to get in. They get the same treatment. So the Israelis are in receipt of our very best intelligence because Biden told Jake Sullivan to tell Bill Burns, do it. And as Bill Burns, the new cog in the wheel, as he did on sabotaging Nord Stream, he turned to his folks and says, can you do it? Do it. Does the CIA have boots on the ground physically assisting in the slaughter in Gaza? Are there American CIA, either contractors or officers, agents, correct my terminology, physically present in Gaza? I would say almost certainly no,

and that is partly because the Israelis wouldn't want them there. This is an Israeli game. They're going to do these things by themselves. They don't want anybody second-guessing them or reporting back to Washington this or that carnage. So I doubt whether there are any CIA in a Roman Catholic church in Gaza. And I'm wondering what a CIA person, agent, or contractor would have done if they would have been in a position to stop that, report it, do something. It's hard to be indifferent over a slaughter like that. It is. And, of course, that was a sniper gun right between the eyes. OK, proudly killing these people.

So, you know, you don't need the CIA to do that kind of thing. The Israelis have been doing that forever. And I have one fairly good friend in the village of Nabi Saleh in the West Bank who had a rifle shot from a sniper right through the top of his head, killing him instantly. Was he engaged in the violence? No, he was demonstrating before a spring that had been compensated by the settlers. Actually, a delegation from Veterans for Peace was there later at the same spring, and we were attacked by the same settlers. And as we

escaped climbing up the hill back to the little village, I heard shots that I hadn't heard before since 30, 40 years. Those were rifle shots. I said to my younger comrades, Matt Ho and Mike, I said, look, does that sound like this rifle? Yeah, get down, McGovern. For God's sake, get down. So that was the same kind of rifle shot that did this person. And he was the uncle of most of the people in this house that we were staying in. Can the Israelis succeed in wiping out Hamas? You know, Judge, it boggles the mind, doesn't it? I mean, it's not Hamas. It's the Palestinians, 2.3 million of them. Now, there are lots of Hamas interspersed there, but the Israelis can't tell the difference. What they want to get rid of is all 2.3 million, and I can't.

It's incredible, but what they'd like to do is push them out. They've said as much, push them out into Egypt, into the Sinai, to be welcomed by Western powers who might give them succor and might give them asylum or give them a new place to live. They want them out of there. They want no Palestinians in Gaza. And you have to believe me for that. Check with Netanyahu and his lieutenants. That's what they're saying. And they're saying, this is not going to happen this month. It's going to take several months. So is the U.S. going to do the right

thing on this? Are we going to cut ties with this genocide or not? That bothers me greatly, as you know, but that's the question here, because they can't do it without us. Might there be American agents that are undercover on the ground in Gaza? There could be, but I doubt it. We don't need them. The Israelis are showing us pretty much everything. Everybody's got an iPhone now. What we would hopefully have are some undisclosed agents in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv with good ties to decision makers. That too is a challenge because we never want to get the Israelis upset with us. So there were restrictions on recruiting people like that. But, you know, it's not necessary to have that.

We know what the game is, and we should stop it, and we should stop it sooner rather than later. You know, before the Egyptians are browbeaten into taking, well, just take a half million of them, and maybe somebody else will take the other two million or whatever. Who's the principal American negotiator or communicator with the Netanyahu government? is that Amos Hochstein, the Israeli-born former member of the IDF, now an American citizen, and high ranking in the U.S. State Department. He's a contributor to the intelligence such as it is, but it's really Blinken, Secretary of State, and Jacob Sullivan who are running this thing. Now, when Netanyahu allowed one of his retinue,

one of the five decision makers, it's his name, Dermer, he was here yesterday. Can he talk to Sullivan? And then he talked to Blinken. I think he may have talked to the president. What came out of it? Zippo, that I can see. The Israelis at the same day indicated, no, we're in this for the duration. It's going to take many months. Don't even think about us creating a ceasefire or a pause. expectation that Joe Biden would either, for political or moral reasons, pick up the phone

and say, Bibi, stop it, or you're not going to get spare parts, you're not going to get 2,000 pound bombs, you're not going to get anything. You know, I hate to say this, Judge, but I don't think moral values enter into this. I think that's all rhetoric. Now, political? Am I naive? These people are human beings. The president claims to be a Roman Catholic. He must understand the natural law. He must respect the right to live. President Biden. Yeah. Well, you know, have this thing here. You get a fancy Jesuit to officiate at the inauguration, and then they slink back into their monasteries or their seminary. They don't say word one about the moral issues here. They should be speaking out and say, Joe, this is wrong. Stop it. And he could

stop it, but they don't. It's the same as in World War II, where the church could not find its voice, whether it was the Catholics or the Lutherans, church could not find its voice, whether it was the Catholics or the Lutherans, they could not find their voice, and they allowed this thing to continue. It's abominable in my view. Okay. Switching gears to Ukraine, because a friend of ours, I won't mention his name until we get to the end of this segment. I've been forewarned. Right, right. Gave an interview to The Sun, which is an Australian newspaper owned by my former boss, Rupert Murdoch, for whom I have a lot of regard. He employed me for 24 years. And this person that we know, a former veteran, a high-ranking veteran of the CIA, said,

the Russian president will be overthrown in a Black Swan Palace coup. Now, I can't imagine that you have spoken to this person, but do you have any idea what he's talking about, a Black Swan Palace coup? He's making it all up, Judge. It wouldn't be so bad if he was just making it all up, but this is mischievous, okay? This gives people who want to hang in there in Ukraine some reason to believe, oh, it's going to be all right because Putin's on his way out. He's going to have a black swan wafting over him and all of a sudden he'd be gone because he has great health problems, did you know? Now, anyone who looks at Putin giving these addresses or watches

him preside over decisions on Ukraine, and he just did two days ago, will know that that's just a bunch of hooey. What you have here is a longstanding chief of the clandestine operation part of the CIA. They don't care much about the truth. They're just propounding these rhetoric things to make sure that, well, if they're in business, their business will continue to collect on these things. I don't say Jack is doing this for pecuniary reasons, but he's not really connected with the real situation. It's sad to see because if it were laughable only, then I'd laugh. But it's mischievous because it gives people the idea that,

oh, he worked for the CIA for 30 years. Oh, maybe he knows something we don't. We don't know anything. What does the phrase black swan mean in intelligence? Well, it goes back to medieval, actually back to the times of Homer. And a black swan was something that was impossible because there weren't any. Okay. Something that was impossible. So if something any, okay? Something that was impossible.

So if something arrived that was just impossible. Now, black swans were discovered in Australia, okay? And then it became, yeah, really, a couple of centuries ago. So that became sort of possible. And then people said, well, a black swan would be something that looked impossible, but it wasn't impossible. And we should have known it all along. So that's what these expressions come to mean today, in my understanding.

And, you know, you don't have to explain it if you're Jack Devine and have several decades of clandestine experience. You know, this points up the fact that, you know, it's the clandestine people who are running the show here. It has to be people like Jack that's been telling Bill Burns, oh, the Russians. Well, he says it in this article. The Russians are really taking it on the chin. They're really losing. Hello. No responsible analyst, even if he was lying, could a a decent case that the Russians are losing

in Ukraine quote and now the the piece that I have is from the New York Post which is an article about the article in the Sun uh but it does quote our friend, quote, Putin could disappear tomorrow and I wouldn't be surprised if some element in the government had decided they were going to take some executive action. Is there any known evidence to support that claim? No, there's no evidence to support that claim at all. When you mentioned that this started in Australia, this is a textbook case. It's an Australia paper, and then you tell the New York Post, oh, hey, look at this story, and the New York Post, because of its own interest, publishes it. In other words, you're not supposed to do propaganda in this country, and that's what Jack is doing.

You do it outside the country. It comes back, and oh, wow, the poster's picked up. Nobody looks at where it came from. Australia, it's a big story. And, you know, the poster's not very reliable on these things. Quote, Putin has become increasingly unpredictable and dangerous. Is there any evidence to support that? No evidence at all. As a matter of fact, he'd become very predictable. As you know, Judge, a lot of us were wondering whether he's going to go all the way to the

Dnieper River, seas even more than those provinces. And it was an open question. Now he's made it a closed question. He's going to a-trit and a-trit and a-trit some more. He's in no big hurry, even though he himself acknowledged that his military people said, why don't you go ahead? Why don't you go home? Get ahead, Vladimir. He's going to go slowly. Even Odessa, which he made a big point of saying is a Russian city, everybody knows

that, we know that, even that, in my view, is up for negotiation. Because I don't think Putin wants a real hostile nation just to the other side of the Dnieper River. I think he wants to have a Ukraine that's reasonably, doesn't have this revanchist sort of thing and has an outlet to the sea, okay? Because without Odessa, it's a landlocked farm for the rest of Europe. That's what Ukraine becomes. So even though he mentioned Odessa, he's done that before as a signal, I think, that, look, we could talk about this sort of thing. And, you know, we could talk about Adesa as well. I don't think he has any strict plan to take Adesa. It will take several months before that comes into play. One or two more questions about the comments in this article in The Sun, and then I want to talk

big picture with you. The Russian president is continuing to throw his troops into a meat grinder you know according to McGregor and Ritter and Larry Johnson it's the other way around it's the Ukrainians that have been in the meat grinder uh and our friend believes the tyrants the tyrant the ty's popularity will continue to drop as the war goes on. The last poll had them between 82% and 86%. Well, it could drop to 80%. And a meat grinder. Well, Jack has heard that. Meat grinder.

Doesn't matter which side it applies to. Let's use it. I mean, this is in the area of public propaganda, sort of trying to blend in with the indigenous neocons in our government. And, you know, Jack runs his own consulting thing. I wouldn't rule out the fact that he gets a lot of business from people who would like to see a continuation of this war. So, yeah, it's kind of difficult to say that, but a lot of guys do this kind of thing. Jack is a smart guy, but he's smart on clandestine things that have nothing to do with analysis or evidence. Do you think the American neocon leadership has recognized that their project in Ukraine has been a dismal failure? And might this kind of a statement from

our friend have been intended to divert attention from that failure to their perception of Putin as a monster? I think that could be part of it. In answer to the first part of your question, I think they have to understand that they have lost, that the troops that are being decimated are the Ukrainians, that there's great dissension in Ukrainian government as to whether they should try to raise 500,000 other troops or whether they should do something different. But there's an election coming up, Judge. That means everything

in Washington. What's the best thing to protect us from being seen to have lost this war in Ukraine? Well, we'll do whatever that takes. Now, as I mentioned before, it's worth mentioning again, there's going to be some idiot in the Pentagon or in the White House who'll say, look, Mr. President, the only way we can show Russia that we need business is to use one of these little mini nukes. Now, they're only about a tenth of the size of what we did in Hiroshima. So let's do that, and then they'll stop, and then we won't absolutely lose the election, and then we can deal with the rest of it. I fear that that's likely to happen and likely. Just by saying it puts bristles up the back of my neck, but that's the only solution they have to prevent

losing next year during the election. Don't they foresee what that would start? I don't know. You have these admirals and these generals saying, you know, it's an arrow in our quiver. We could use it. It doesn't necessarily mean things will escalate out of control. I mean, you have to get into the mind of these military leaders who have been trained that we have to use this on occasion and we may have to use it. They don't look at things in a dispassionate way. And I dare say with the politics involved, Jacob Sullivan and Tony Blinken have a lot to protect. They have a huge personal stake in not losing this election and not being susceptible to being prosecuted by the guy who comes in. The chief of the military, General Zelensky, had a press conference over the weekend,

over Christmas weekend, and said, we need, he used the number a few moments ago, we need 500,000 more troops. They've lost 500,000 troops, dead or disabled. And President Zelensky backed it up and said, by the way, we need 13 billion to feed, clothe, arm, and train these troops. This is fanciful. Where on earth are they going to get 500,000 people and $13 billion? Well, Judge, what's really interesting, and I've seen these interviews over the weekend, is that it was Zelensky that said we need 500,000 more troops. Zelensky said, I didn't mention any number. We need some more troops.

But I, you know, recruiting, that's going to be 500. I didn't say that. Okay. Now, there's a big battle royale going on between these Ukrainian leaders now. So who said what? But Zelensky and Zelensky were at odds on this very important issue right from the beginning two days ago. God knows where they'd be today. But you're right, 500,000, even if they start recruiting at age, where they say 22 now and 17-year-olds are eligible,

I don't see where they would get green troops that would make any difference. Putin is deliberately attriting and attriting and attriting. As you probably know, Marinka has now fallen to the Russians. He has pretty much clean, well, not clean sway to go to the emperor, but if he wanted to, he could. His generals probably want him to, but I think probably he's going to hold to this attrition and see what the spring brings. Here we go, seeking up the

Right, right, that came out over the Christmas holiday. Do you foresee any kind of a false flag that would result in American troops being on the ground in Ukraine. I mean, we're already seeing that in Iraq, where American troops are present illegally and against the will of the Iraqi government. And every time they get attacked by anybody,

the U.S. attacks somebody else in Iran. Do you see the same thing happening in Ukraine The U.S. attacks somebody else in Iran. Do you see the same thing happening in Ukraine? So as to justify Sullivan and Blinken saying to old Joe, you've got to send troops there. You'll win the war. You'll beat Putin and you'll get reelected. I think this is all crazy, but this is the way they think. Judge, I've always been very concerned that that nuclear power plant there in Zaporozhye was vulnerable. Now it's hardened, but it's got this great big pool of contaminated stuff, okay? Some kind of missile would have to hit that and the whole area would be affected. Now, I have a

special guess here. And my guess is that when Zelensky was ordered to come to Washington, it was partly for a one-on-one with the president and with Blinken and with Sullivan, and that their message to him was, don't blow that nuclear power station. Don't blow it. We don't want any black swans. We don't want any false flags. You got that? Because we're not going to defend you if you do that. I think that finally it's sinking in in Washington. This guy is completely unpredictable, that he might just do that. And of course, they have the capability of doing that. The Russians can't protect from all of the drones and other missiles that the Ukrainians could throw at that Zaporozhye Nuclear Power

Center. So that was my major concern. I don't think that the people in the White House are so crazy as to allow that. And I think the one reason why they wanted him one-on-one with no messages or no telephones, tell him, look, we'll be sure to support you, but don't try any of these black swans or false flag attacks. We're on to that. Don't do it. Got it. Ray McGovern, a pleasure, my dear friend. I know it's a short week.

If we have time for the Intelligence Roundtable on Friday with Larry, it's always a fan favorite, and hopefully you'll be available. Thank you. Okay. All the best, my friend. Thank you. So even though this is a short week, we have a lot of your favorites coming up tomorrow at eight in the morning, Eastern Tony Schaefer at nine in the morning, Eastern Matt Ho at 11 in the morning Eastern. Professor Jeffrey Sachs at 2 in the afternoon Eastern. Scott Horton at 3 in the afternoon Eastern. Karen Kwiatkowski at 5 in the afternoon Friday Eastern.

The inimitable Max Blumenthal. Judge Napolitano, more as we get it, of course, there's an old one-liner. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Thank you.