Judging Freedom - Ray McGovern: Ritter’s Courage, Israel’s Moral Crisis

Episode Date: August 12, 2024

Ray McGovern: Ritter’s Courage, Israel’s Moral CrisisSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Save $80 with code SPACE80 at Talkspace.com. You won. Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Monday, August 12th, 2024. Ray McGovern is here with us on Scott Ritter and personal courage and Israel and morality. But first this. You all know that I am a paid spokesperson for Lear Capital, but I'm also a customer, a very satisfied customer. About a year ago, I bought gold and it's now increased in value 23%. So $100 invested in gold a year ago is now worth $123. You have $100 in the bank. It still shows $100, but $100 in the bank is now worth 24% less. Inflation has reduced all of your savings, all of your buying power and mine by 24%.

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Learjudgenap.com. Tell them the judge sent you. Ray McGovern, welcome here, my dear friend. Thank you very much. Obviously, our friend and colleague, Scott Ritter, has been very much in the news, a little bit in the mainstream media, but in the alternative media where we live very extensively because he's a hero to many millions of people. And his home was the subject of the execution of a vast search warrant by the FBI last week. I had asked you if you thought that Scott was courageous and you responded yes. And then I saw you do an interview elsewhere with some really moving and

articulate comments about Scott. Talk to us, please, about the personal courage you have observed in this man and whether you think the federal government will succeed in keeping him from criticizing them. Well, on the latter point, Judge, there's no chance that the federal government will keep Scott from telling the truth. And if that's criticizing the federal government so be it. I think his very sharp criticism of Netanyahu was something that really turned people off and may

have been the proximate cause of something that they've been prepared to do for a long time. They also noted in passing that many of our veteran intelligence professionals for sanity have had their houses raided, ransacked, and never got back their tapes or their computers. Four of the last ones, the ones that signed our last VIPS memo, I had that happen to them. I count about seven altogether at VIPS. So this is new for Bill, new for Benny, new for Scott, correction, but not new for VIPS. What I said about Scott was that, you know, something I learned way back studying philosophy, Aristotle, Aquinas, and that is that when you look at virtue, there's one that stands out that's the root of all virtue, and that is courage. Courage, just the right amount of courage, okay? Courage, in Medio Res, the virtue is in the middle.

Courage is what enables people to direct their anger, which is also a virtue. According to Aquinas, you have just enough anger. Not being always ticked off, not being sort of timid. So Scott has the combination of those two, which enables him to speak out in a way that most people don't have the courage, okay? Courage is a word that talks about heart, deep in heart. What kind of resistance did he meet when he was the chief UN weapons inspector in the 90s. That's when I met him. In those days, he was welcomed at Fox, and that's how he and I became friends.

And then eventually, this is no secret, Fox was not happy with what he was saying. But what kind of resistance did he meet in those days? Well, lots of resistance. You know, he supervised as head of that inspection team under the UN the destruction of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. You know, their chemical, biological, their missile program and what they had with respect to a nuclear program. So he verified they were destroyed. And when he saw that the CIA and DIA and all the other so-called intelligence community, which really just a bunch of fiefdoms, okay,

where they're all saying that Saddam has weapons of mass destruction again, and we have to start a war because of that. Well, the virtue of anger and the virtue of courage kicked in, right? And Scott came down to Washington, tried to see his senator. Her name was Hillary Clinton, right? He tried to see Joe Biden. He couldn't get past the door. Tony Blinken stood in the door saying, they had a bunch of hacks testify and the war began. Now before the war, this is a little vignette that may be applicable here. Before the war began, I noticed that Newsweek had a little item on the web on the 24th of February. Remember now the war started three, four weeks later in March.

And it said, whoops, wait a second, there may not be weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. We have the text of the debriefing report of Saddam Hussein's son-in-law. His name was Hussein Kamel. And he says that they were all destroyed. And he says he ran those programs. So, my God, what are we going to do? So Newsweek prints that. And then they go up to the CIA and the PR guys, Bill Harlow,

says, no, no, this is untrue, false, inaccurate, and just bogus. Okay? So all the press goes back and says, oh, my God. Whew, thanks, Bill. And we were going to publish stories about that. After all, we're going to go for a war. Anyhow, I happened to be with Scott about five years ago. And I said, Scott, you know, tell me if you know anything about this. That gutsy person who leaked to Newsweek the unclassified U.N. report on the debriefing of Saddam Hussein's son-in-law,

in which he said there were no weapons of marriage. Do you know who did that? And he looked at me like, was I putting him on? And he said, Ray, I did it. And he said, Ray, that's only half the story. I said, yeah. He said, I just went as a last resort to Newsweek. I had gone to CNN weeks before, after Colin Powell told that bunch of lies.

And we had a whole program ready to go. It was a long program and exposed this whole thing on the basis of the documents that I had and I showed them. And the evening before the program was to run, CNN got a call from the CIA, said Scott, and they were told to knock it off. And that's what I went to this week. I was encouraged that thisweek would not be able to

avoid publishing it, but of course, the whole thing that put the kibosh on it. Now, there's lots of lessons to be learned from that. But one lesson, of course, is that Scott moved everything he possibly could to get the word out that, look, this is an unnecessary war. And he was terribly disappointed that, you know, the CNN thing caved and Newsweek was persuaded by the spokesperson for the CIA not to pursue this story. That's a mark of the man. And the fact that he never told me about that before, I had to ask him in a naive kind of way, I should have figured out. Yeah. Now, one little codicil here, those documents from the UN have been purloined by the FBI when they raided Scott's house. Now, they don't have anything to do with electronic equipment, which I believe, which I'm told that the warrant specifies. So they're taking all these things that he had a draft book written about.

And, you know, that's the kind of thing they do. It's happened to many veteran intelligence professionals for sanity, as I mentioned before. So I just hope that enough people get enough courage and enough anger at this that they'll help scott get through this tough period yeah well thank you for that uh a thoughtful thoughtful analysis uh of him listen i have signed search warrants myself i know when i was on the bench obviously i know how these things work they always take more than what the warrant authorizes them to do. Why they had to, and I will ask him when he's on with me at 4 o'clock this afternoon Eastern, why they felt they had to take the draft of a book

and why they felt they had to take notes from his work as the chief UN weapons inspector is beyond me. Often the people that are dispatched to do the actual search know very, very little about the person they're searching, whose property they're searching, or even the case. They're just told, grab what you can, do it as peacefully and quickly as you can. And then, of course, unlike when they took his passport at JFK Airport, they will. He may have gotten it already. I don't know. They will give him a receipt for everything they have.

I doubt if they've had time to go through everything they have. But once they do, then they're required to give you a receipt and your lawyer is in a position to demand that that which is not covered by the search warrant be returned. And then your lawyer is in a position to demand to see the affidavit that was given to the magistrate judge who signed the search warrant to confirm the accuracy and authenticity of that. Unfortunately, these things take time, and during the time that they take, you do not have what they seized from you. You only get it back at the end of this if you happen to be before a judge that believes that the Fourth Amendment means what it says. Judge, let me add one thing.

One thing here about the other VIPs, people who have been subjected to this. One is Bill Binney. Oh, God. Binney was yanked out of a shower at 530 in the morning, wasn't he? At gunpoint. At drawn gunpoint. They were told that Bin Benny had a gun. And so they went at this place with his wife and I think his daughter there.

Anyhow, that was a simultaneous thing. They did four of them that day. Benny, Kurt Wiebe, Diane Roark, who was a HPSI, a House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, a staffer who saw what NSA was doing. And then later they got the Ed Loomis. Oh, it was simultaneous. And what Bill said is, look, they took lots of my stuff. And we said, well, we're going to get it back.

We learned that the law says you got to get it back in 60 days or else. Well, the courts have to tell you what they're going to keep in 60 days. And what they're not going to keep, you get back by law. So maybe a 60-day period is something we can look forward to, to at least see how much of Scott's unclassified UN documents are returned. Right, right. Oh boy. I am concerned about the chilling effect on the freedom of speech, not of Scott Ritter, because as you say, he is the personification of personal courage, but on other people who might fear our reprisal, start looking over their shoulder

and refrain from expressing their opinions as they truly embrace them. Well, I felt a little about that myself. As soon as I saw the pictures of them raiding his car and everything, I said, I'm going to call Scott right away. And I said, boom. So I went through five minutes of saying, well, should I call? Well, of course I called him.

I called him twice on both numbers that I have from him, but the FBI was on the other end of the phone. So they got an earful from me, but you know, that's, that's an example of how people who will be shy. I mean, I have very little to lose. I've had a really good life, right? Younger people have much more to lose. So yeah, it does have an intimidating effect. Of course, that's one of the major reasons. I'm switching gears now. Does the government of the state of Israel have any concept of natural law, natural rights, and basic morality, basic right and wrong that we all know from our hearts? It's hard to say, Judge, because innate in every human being is presumably those qualities. But when you're so set on vengeance, as most of the Israeli populace as well as their government is, it sort of disappears.

It takes a backseat. And so you have people doing horrendous things like genocide. Now, Scott, of course, made a big thing Bushnell, the Air Force 25-year-old who self-immolated, he wrote a Facebook thing the day before he burned himself up. And he said, look, he says, people ask, what would I have done if I knew that genocide was going on? Well, the way I answer that is, well, what you would have done is what you're doing now. Okay, you got that? It's what you're doing now.

And so Scott, you know, is the fulfillment of that. He's doing now what he should because genocide is actually going on. And Bushnell didn't even use the subjunctive mood, for God's sake. He said, if genocide was being implemented in Gaza, and of course it is, and if we don't feel a tad angry, and if we don't have the courage to move on that anger, especially since one of the people who is putting all this out now has been raided well then we know we know the answer from our own hearts to aaron bushnell's challenge uh what will we do well what

would we do is what we're doing now and if we're sitting on the couch or if we're just saying oh isn't that terrible that's enough that's an indictment of us, in my view. Does the Netanyahu government, this is a series of questions, so feel free to answer wherever you see fit, obviously, Ray. Does the Netanyahu government want a ceasefire? Are their negotiators serious? Can you expect the people on the opposite side of the table to negotiate with you with sincerity when they have just killed your chief negotiator? I was hoping you'd add that. It looks pretty silly on the face of it, doesn't it? Okay, we're going to negotiate. Your negotiator is gone because we killed him. There are more conditioned pylon every time Netanyahu says he's willing to negotiate.

And there was supposed to be a new session on Thursday. Hamas this time said, look, you know, with what's going on here, what's already happened, we're not going to negotiate with these clowns. And, you know, that makes sense from Hamas's point of view, despite the PR problems with that. The Israelis talk a good game. The answer to your first question is no. They don't care much about the hostages that they have. They certainly don't care about the Palestinian hostages.

And they will only keep this thing going forever. They're trying to rope the US in now in a Hail Mary kind of way. And if Iran retaliates, as I believe it will, perhaps as early as this week, Israel is going to have to think long and hard about whether Biden and Kamala, as well as Blinken and Sullivan, will authorize the kind of involvement that will get the U.S. involved in the Middle East militarily, as well as in Ukraine. Here is a full screen from Belazir Smotrich, the Israeli finance minister, it's in Hebrew, but the headline has been translated saying that a ceasefire is effectively a surrender deal. This he posted himself on a website. It might have been X, I'm not sure, on August 9th, just two days ago.

And then Baghdad Bob Kirby responded. The views being taken against this agreement, the views expressed by Mr. Smortridge specifically, would in fact sacrifice the lives of Israeli hostages, his own countrymen. Well, for once, I agree with Kirby. It was surprising to hear him say that. Now, he didn't say that in front of a camera. We added images of him speaking the very word, so it looked like it was coming out of his mouth. He said that in a hallway in the West Wing somewhere with American reporters, journalists physically present, and one of them recorded him. I don't know. Is it possible that the Biden administration has had enough with Netanyahu and his deception? There's no indication of that, Judge. Every time one of his compatriots, that is Netanyahu's,

in Tel Aviv or West Jerusalem, if you will, says, you know, are you sure that the U.S. is going to support you if we get in a major war with Hezbollah as well as Iran and Hamas? And his answer is, look at the tape of my speech there before Congress. Can't you believe your own eyes? Of course, they'll support us full bore. So, you know, people are saying, well, Netanyahu is not so smart. Well, I say he's sly as a fox, because what he's counting on is if he retaliates for whatever the Iranians do to Israel now,

he's counting on the U.S. jumping in with both feet. And I dare say he's probably right in an election year. Biden blinked. What does that mean with both feet? Does that mean aircraft carrier groups, which is an aircraft carrier surrounded by other naval ships? Does that mean submarines? Does that mean jets? Or does it mean 5,000 Marines on the ground?

Well, you know, if they're really stupid, they'll do the latter. They'll put Marines on the ground. I don't rule it out because they are really stupid. For the nonce, we have aircraft carriers, as you say. We have a new cruise missile submarine that Austin just announced is being deployed to the area. So we're in a position to threaten, to bomb, to shell, just like Reagan was back in 83, for God's sake. He had World War II battleships across from Lebanon beating the hell out of the Bekaa Valley. Yeah, but can we turn the tide without actually putting Marines in there? I don't know.

Even if we put Marines in there, which would be extremely foolish. I'm not sure they'd be up to repairing the damage that the Iranians are quite capable of doing now, not only to places in Israel, and I think they'll limit themselves to military installations, but also to the U.S. presence in the area in Syria, where the U.S. is not invited, where it's again been asked to leave. In Iraq, same thing, 1,500 people as troops still in Iraq. So those are U.S. equities that are easy to shoot. One thinks that maybe some of the neocons want to leave them there expressly for that reason. Once U.S. people are killed, it's a lot easier to step up to escalate responses.

How dangerous is it for the IDF to be attacking military bases in Syria and potentially killing Russian troops? Well, it depends on which Russian troops. A lot of Russian mercenaries, or the Wagner Group, were in Syria and have been killed. I think the Russians' presence in Syria is giving Israel and of course the United States pause. And I would point out that in 2015, when Obama summoned the courage, when Putin went to Obama at the UN and said, look, we're coming in big time in Syria. We don't agree that Bashar al-Assad has to go. We're sending aircraft and other support. We're not going to let you overthrow Bashar al-Assad. That's the first time the Russians felt up to saying that kind of thing.

And it worked. Bashar al-Assad is still there. He's widely recognized by people who've spurned him before in the area. Ray McGovern, thank you, my dear friend. Fascinating, fascinating conversation. I expect there will be developments in almost everything we've discussed between now and Friday when you and Larry are back here for the Intelligence Community Roundtable, one of my happiest episodes of the week. But thank you, my dear friend. All the best to you. Most welcome, Judge.

And the aforementioned Larry, of course, is Larry Johnson, who will be here with us shortly at 11 o'clock a.m. Eastern time today and at four o'clock this afternoon. The aforementioned Scott Ritter for his first conversation on this show since the FBI raided his home. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. MUSIC