Judging Freedom - Scott Ritter: Russia Crushing NATO

Episode Date: April 9, 2024

Scott Ritter: Russia Crushing NATO.See 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 Tuesday, April 9th, 2024. Scott Ritter joins us now. Scott, a pleasure, my dear friend. I have a lot of issues to discuss with you. I want to start first with a rather startling statement given to us last Friday by Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, who is of the view that the CIA was integrally involved in the attack on the Crocus concert hall. I'm going to play the clip. It's not that long because I want you to hear it before I ask you to respond to it. This looks a lot like what Nord Stream turned out to be, a U.S. operation. Only the CIA led it. Let's face it, we have done as much to create and to nurture ISIS as anything else on the face of the earth, whether it be Aba Moussa Belzarkawi or any of the instigators of the so-called ISIS consulate in the beginning.

We've used ISIS, and when I say we, I mean that agency called the CIA, the same agency that does so many nefarious things in our name. And they have worked ISIS and worked operatives from ISIS in order to do other things. And I'm hearing, and it makes a lot of sense to me, and I'm watching the behavior and the signals coming from Moscow, which are usually very indicative of the truth when it's something like this. And I think that's what Putin believes. And I think the intelligence community in Russia, whether it's the GRU, the NKVD, the KSB, the FSB, or whatever, they believe it too. And that makes this Ukraine conflict a different conflict as of that killing of that many Russians that close to Putin and blame lying, at least in part, with the people who orchestrated it being the CIA. Are you, from your observations and your knowledge of the way all these things have happened in the past and any sources you may have, able to endorse what Colonel Wilkerson just said? uh i'll go a step further i'm not going to speculate i'm going to tell you right now the cia was uh extensively involved and we know this i mean we know it by a past patterns of behavior

you know the cia is not as clever as it thinks it is and if you take a look at its history of covert action over the years especially dating back to um the the the the operation in Afghanistan, where we created the Mujahideen, which led to Al-Qaeda, armed them for the purposes of creating a Vietnam in Afghanistan that would help bring down the Soviet Union. We view this as a great success. And so we've been using the Afghan model as a template to do other similar actions, such as in Iraq, such as in Syria, where we helped create ISIS for the purpose of bringing down Bashar al-Assad. And I would say that this is the template that we're using in Ukraine. Remember, the CIA has been involved in Ukraine since 2014 on a major level. 12 bases were built, CIA operational bases along the Ukrainian-Russian border to carry out offensive-oriented action against Russia. The people, we know that the CIA Special Activities

Center has been involved in training the Ukrainians. These are the bad boys of rock and roll. These are the ayatollahs of rock and roll. If you go back to Mad Max, these are bad guys. These are the guys that carry out coup d'etats. They do the dirty stuff. These are ground branch. They specialize in irregular and unconventional warfare. And they train the Ukrainians to do this very sort of thing. When I say unconventional warfare, that means sabotage. That means kidnapping. That means murder. That's what other people call terrorism.

And we trained the Ukrainians in this art. And there's nothing the Ukrainians do that we're not aware of. The CIA, especially when you speak of special activities, they're there. And it's not just ground branch. We have a political action part of special activities that's involved and has been involved in Russia for decades trying to take down Vladimir Putin to undermine Russian elections. And this year, we've seen CIA-directed activity to achieve just that. And the Crocus City Hall attack was a confluence of political action and direct action orchestrated by the Center, the Special Activities Center. We know this. We know

they're involved. And so I agree with Colonel Wilkerson. This is CIA fingerprints all over it. Might there have been a whiff of this coming when this person said what she said? With the $60 billion supplemental that the administration has requested of Congress, we can ensure that Ukraine not only survives, but she thrives. With this support, in 2024, we can help ensure Ukraine can continue to fight, to build, to recover, and to reform. With this money, Ukraine will be able to fight back in the east, but it will also be able to accelerate the asymmetric warfare

that has been most effective on the battlefield. And as I said in Kiev three weeks ago, this supplemental funding will ensure Putin faces some nasty surprises on the battlefield this year. Two key phrases from her. Asymmetric warfare and nasty surprises for President Putin. You have told us that and others that she doesn't always retain secrets, and perhaps the CIA would be crazy to have told her what they were up to. But I don't know, is she hinting at that? This is that Congress, because of domestic American politics, was holding Ukrainian funding hostage and that it wasn't going to be released. This was her effort to put pressure on Congress to release that money and also create a perception in

Ukraine and around that this money was forthcoming. I mean, if you told Ukrainians in February that there was no more funding, that your ship was sunk, maybe the Ukrainian intelligence service would have pulled the plug on the nasty surprise that lined up. And remember, Victoria Nuland is the person who is sitting at the head of either the deputies committee or the principals committee in the National Security Council, where she is directing this operation. It isn't necessarily a CIA operation in isolation. It's part of a concerted policy direction by the United States to achieve well-defined policy objectives. In this case, the objective is to undermine Vladimir Putin as the leader of Russia, to at the same time diminish his standing amongst the Russian people

by showing that he's not the perfect leader, that there is no perfect security, that a horrible action like this could take place in Russia, and to time it in correlation with the Russian election so that you suppress voter outcome and maybe diminish the percentage of support. For a result, there was a foregone conclusion. Putin was going to win, but we didn't want him winning with 88% support and 77% turnout. So, Nuland was letting the cat out of the bag, so to speak, to create a perception. And I think one of the reasons why she was fired as precipitously as she was is that speech, because many people in the Biden administration went, we're not committing to this policy line

anymore. Is it fair to say that where the CIA goes, particularly in this part of the world, MI6 goes with it? Absolutely. With Russia, definitely. The CIA works hand in glove with MI6. They've done so from the very beginning. MI6 has some, because of the extensive Russian expat presence in London that is heavily linked to oligarchs, both those who have fled Russia and those who are still in Russia. The London station of MI6 and the London station of CIA is very close and they coordinate very closely on all matters pertaining to Russia. Okay. So here's David Cameron, the British foreign minister, making an absolutely dreadful argument about this in this is just an hour ago Scott an investment in security on Ukraine the best thing we can do this

year is to help keep the ukrainians in this fight they're fighting so bravely they're not going to lose for want of morale uh the danger is we don't give them the support that they need and I make that argument to anyone who will listen to me. I argue that it is extremely good value for money for the United States and for others. Perhaps for about 5 or 10 percent of your defense budget, almost half of Russia's pre-war military equipment has been destroyed without the loss of a single American life. This is an investment in United States security. Let him have it, Scott. Again, I just say any American who believes that our national security needs to hinge upon

other people dying for what's supposed to be our cause. We're Americans. It's put up or shut up time. If this is a cause that's worthy of American taxpayer money to be poured into it because it's it's put up or shut up time if it's if this is a cause that's worthy of an american taxpayer money to be poured into it because it's existential in nature that taxpayer money needs to be backed by american blood but it's not we're letting 500 000 ukrainians die and hundreds of thousands more are going to die because this is the most cowardly thing i've ever heard in my life david cameron is a coward he's a man who doesn't know what it means to stand up and fight for a cause he's going to sit there and simp for the United States on the global stage and make it sound as though we're doing something noble by letting the Ukrainians die for a cause

that we know they're not going to win. Ukraine isn't going to lose this war through a lack of morale. Have you been to the front line, David Cameron? Have you talked to the Ukrainian soldiers? Even the Azov regiment now is saying, we ain't got people backing us up. People don't want to fight. We don't have the people. The population is against us. That's the reality, David Cameron. And yet you want to continue this conflict. For what reason? So you can feel better. So you can win a by-election coming up in May, stay in power. This is about your political future, then you're the scum of the earth. You're the typical politician who should be flushed down the toilet of life. The moment you

say that your political career or your national security depends on other people fighting and dying for a cause and not allowing your soldiers to fight and die, you are useless, not only to me, but to the world. You're a coward. And that's what he is. He's a coward. And if he was standing on the stage anywhere in the vicinity of an American politician who echoed what he had to say, that person was a coward too. Well, he was standing next to Tony Blinken. We'll run that clip in just a minute because Blinken's comments are about Israel and Gaza, which we'll get to shortly. If Colonel Wilkerson and you know that the CIA was involved in the Crocus massacre, surely Vladimir Putin and Russian intel know it. What are they likely to do about it?

Well, they've known that the CIA, I mean, none of this is secret. I mean, the CIA wants to keep it secret, secret only to the American people. I mean, how many Americans know about the Special Activities Center? How many people know about the 1948 law that gives a special, that created the Special Activities Center and gives it the ability to run covert policy? And it describes what covert policy is. It's policy where the American people will be lied to about every aspect of it, that it's policy designed to be deniable. And so everybody gets lied to from the president on down.

The CIA gets a tremendous amount of discretion to do whatever it wants to do, and it gets to lie about it. How many American people know that? Because that's the most un-American thing I can possibly imagine, and yet the CIA is doing that. But they're not as good as they think they are. I only point people to, you know, one of the many failures of the CIA. But I think in 2002, in Italy, they kidnapped an Egyptian cleric who was wrongly accused of being Al Qaeda. And in kidnapping him in violation of Italian laws, left behind enough fingerprints and clues that the Italians were able to identify all 20 CIA officers involved by name, including the station chief, and put out arrest warrants for them. That's how bad the CIA is.

The Russians are pretty damn good. So they know almost everything the CIA is doing. They've got the SBU, the Ukrainian SBU, wired. So when the CIA comes in and knocks on the SBU door and say, hey, we're here to visit and help you, a memorandum of that makes it back to the Russians. That's how well-wired they are. So they know this, but there's a difference between listening to guys talk about, you know, doing X, Y, and Z and carrying out an attack on Moscow.

This crossed the line. This is unacceptable. And, you know, the Russians will have every right to view this as a betrayal of whatever understanding we had about red lines. And the one thing I know about the Russians is that while they are well measured and they don't like to fly off at the handle, they don't forgive, especially a crime of this magnitude. And somewhere, somehow, somebody who is involved, responsible for this will pay the ultimate price. Is this crime of this magnitude, we're talking about 144 people dead, mainly young people, not a single one of them at a legitimate military target, an act of war by the United States against Russia? Absolutely. We view it as an act of war. If somebody came to the United States and did it, we'd view it as an act of war. This is an act of war. It's carried out by the CIA using proxies in response to a presidential finding signed by Joe Biden authorizing them to do this. It's an act of war, straight up. Switching gears, were you

surprised to read and learn recently from this Israeli journalist about the use of AI by the Israeli military, and they're virtual blaming it on their computer systems called Lavender. These other two names are Despicable, Where's My Daddy, and Gospel, as in the the new testament those are the names as i understand that of their three ai systems that they use for slaughtering innocents programmed so that once a person is identified and each person has a number of somebody who's affiliated with somebody who's affiliated knows somebody that's in Hamas. The number goes from one to a hundred to indicate to the computer operators how important it is to kill that person. They wait for the person to be with family, friends, relatives, religious, hospital.

If he can find one mosque, if there's one still standing, home if the house is still standing, and then they bomb it. Look, we knew Israel was using AI to facilitate targeting at the start of this. One of the problems that Israel had with October 7th was the amount of reliance they put on AI to do their analytical work. But we knew that since 2014, Israel has been building an AI system to target Palestinians, to target Hamas. And what they've done is take the gloves off. When Benjamin Netanyahu invokes Amalek, which is a biblical reference to genocide, and then encourages his soldiers to act upon it, let this be understood they did act upon this is the key this is the heart of the international court of justice's case about genocide against israel is you have a political decision that is articulated as genocide and then

acted upon by the military this ai program is basically computerized genocide. And it doesn't surprise me. I was aware of it. And it's disgusting. Of course, the Israelis are denying it. But everything they do is a lie. I think there's another well-known American out there. In fact, I think it was Wilkerson himself who recently said that the Israelis lie about everything. And I'm here to back it up. They lie about everything. He did say that. Here's a question put to Secretary Blinken just an hour ago. He's standing next to David Cameron when Foreign Minister Cameron made those comments that you so nicely swatted down. I think you'll feel similarly. It's a good question put to him. The answer will put acid into your stomach. Where was the outrage then? And why then didn't you offer to reshape American policy if necessary? Why only now? Is it just the passports of these seven held? It remains astounding to me that the world is almost deafeningly silent when it comes to Hamas. We would not be where we are had they not chosen to engage in one of the most horrific acts of brutality and terrorism on October 7th, and had they then, having done that,

not refused these many, many months to get out of the way of civilians, to stop hiding behind them, to put down their arms, to release the hostages, to surrender, where's the outrage there? Having said that,

I'll repeat what I've said incessantly from day one. Despite that, Israel has obligations. It has responsibilities that are moral, that are strategic, and that are legal to do everything it can to protect civilians and to get assistance to the many who need it. The hand-wringing and the deception and the absence of moral clarity is almost overwhelming, Scott. Let's just be very clear here. The questioner who asked the question is right. The United States is taking action now because six white people died. There were six aid workers doing very important work. They were feeding Palestinians. The Israelis do not want Palestinians fed. Remember, the Israelis call the Palestinians

human animals, and they have articulated policies, whether it be the Minister of Defense, the Commander, the Chief of Staff of the military on down uh using human animals literally saying this that say we will starve them you know we will they will die of thirst they will die of disease um that's genocide uh that is the policy of israel uh the only reason why the united states is speaking out now is because those names and 200 aid workers died before these seven died uh because one of the seven was Palestinian. The 200 that died prior to that were almost all Palestinian. Where was Tony Blinken then?

Where was the hand-wringing then? Where was the insistence of law then? No, because they were brown. We didn't care about them. But six white people died, a Pole, a Canadian-American, an American. That's why he's hand-wringing his hand. Three Brits, an Australian. You know, this is why he's paying, they're paying attention. And what he's saying about October 7th,

let's just be clear about this. October 7th was a military action. The vast majority of the people who died on October 7th were military combatants on the part of Israel. And those who didn't die, the civilians, the vast majority of them were killed by the Israelis in their response to this attack. We're now learning more and more and more, you know, that great, that rave that was, that took place in the desert. You know, that was a rendezvous for Hamas forces coming in by paraglider, motorcycle, et cetera, who were coming in and they had follow on attack plans to attack Damona and an air base nearby. But they didn't because that rave was there. They didn't know about it. When they landed there, the people were evacuated from that rave prior to Hamas arriving. But they were stopped at a

roadblock set up by the Israeli army, who were scanning the vehicles to see if there were Hamas people in it. And then when Hamas landed, these people all got caught in a crossfire where the vast majority were killed, slaughtered by the Israeli military. The same thing with the citizens inside the kibbutzes. So Blinken's absolutely wrong. And I want to remind Tony Blinken that October 7th wouldn't have happened if it weren't for October 6th, 5th, 4th, 5th, and 75 years of Israeli occupation of Palestine. He tends to have forgotten that aspect of it too. And guess what, Tony? A few hundred dead Israeli civilians, most of whom were killed by the Israeli military,

does not equate to 33,000 dead Palestinians, 15,000 of whom are children. So Tony Blinken can pound sand. Sorry. No, no, no, no need to be sorry. It's eye-opening to hear you as eloquent and passionate as you are. My eyes were opened earlier today. I don't remember who said it, if it was Jeff Sachs or Matt Ho or Colonel McGregor, that among the items that the Israelis have embargoed into Gaza are anesthesia and diapers.

And why would anybody do that other than for maximum cruelty and pain and misery? Diapers for babies, anesthesia for people that need surgery to save their lives. Because you want pain and you want to eliminate the seed of Amalek. The seed of Amalek is the children of Amalek. You want to eliminate all of them. This is genocide. Again, people need to start to wake up and understand that the Israeli government, from the prime minister on down, is carrying out a policy of genocide.

There was somebody who said, well, how can you say genocide? I mean, 33,000 dead out of a population of around 2 million. I mean, that doesn't equate to genocide. Well, you know, the Nazis held a conference in World War II, the Swansea Conference, where they talked about the final solution. And my question there is, when did the final solution become genocide? When it was articulated at Swansea or when 6 million died? What if only 100,000 Jews had died? Is that genocide? They've articulated a policy, but they've only acted on it in a way that only 100,000 died. When did the murder of Jews become genocide?

And I say it became genocide the moment a directive was issued and somebody paid the price. That's what's happening in Israel right now. An order has been given, and the people of Palestine are paying the price. Is Maverick trying to calm you down? He is. Maverick's upset at me right now. I apologize. Scott, you're very much on a roll. Big picture here. understand the patience of the Russian mentality and of President Putin in particular? The answer is no. We mistake the patience for weakness. We mistake the Russian willingness to

appraise themselves of all the facts. One you know, one of the things about the Russians, there's an old saying about the Russians, which is slow to harness, quick to ride. It takes a lot of time to get the Russians harnessed up to something. They just don't want to put that harness on. They want to consider things. But once they get harnessed up, they're off to the races and they're very difficult, if not impossible to stop. But part of the harnessing process for the Russian government is to consider all the facts, all the details, all the consequences, things that we don't do here in the United States with our USA, USA, USA approach to knee-jerk policy reactions. Something happens, the crowd comes out, shouts outside the White House, the president makes a decision to make people happy. Case in point, Donald Trump, when the photographs came out of the Syrians being gassed in Douma,

he said, oh my God, those images caused me to cry. We're going to bomb Syria. It turns out the images were faked by the White Helmets working for the CIA at Everett. And Trump was lured into an attack that was provoked by the White Helmets to get him to attack. He didn't take the time to just sit back, take a deep breath and say, what do we got going on here? Who's in charge of this data? How does it play out? What's really going on? Let's make a decision that we won't regret the next day.

And the America regretted the next day when it became clear that there was no chemical weapons used in Douma. The Russians won't get caught in that trap. They're very, very patient, but we view their patience as weakness. Is the Russian military superior to all of NATO combined? You know, the numbers of NATO are misleading because you can have large numbers of people who are not prepared to, I got all the dogs going right now, not capable of fighting, you know, sustained high intensity conflict in Europe. The Russian army today is fully capable of carrying out this kind of conflict. They may be smaller in total numbers, but their experience and their capabilities are such that they can wipe any NATO force out anytime they may come.

Here's the problem with NATO. You have, what are we up to, 36 nations now? They each have their own armies. Not all those armies can come together in one fist. Russia, on the other hand, is one army. It comes together in the fist anytime Russia wants it to. What's more powerful, five fingers or one fist? And the answer is one fist.

Thank you, Scott. You're fabulous all the time. You're extraordinary when you're passionate. You're out of sight when Maverick approves you as well or feels he needs to calm you down. Thank you, my dear friend. We'll see you soon. Wow. Over the top, as Scott always is, but exceptionally passionate today.

I'm just looking at my calendar, if you'll bear with me for a moment here. Tomorrow, 3 o' here tomorrow, three. Yes. At three o'clock in the afternoon, uh, Phil Giraldi and at four o'clock in the afternoon, all times Eastern Aaron Matei, judge the Paul Tano for judging freedom. Thanks for watching!