Judging Freedom - Scott Ritter - Ukraine-Russia War Longer than Expected

Episode Date: December 7, 2022

Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here with Judging Freedom. Today is Wednesday, December 7th, 2022. It's about 2.35 in the afternoon here on the east coast of the United States, my next guest, of course, is our audience favorite, one of our audience's two favorites, the inimitable Scott Ritter, whose name, of course, Scott, was mentioned just a few minutes ago out of the lips of Jack Devine, that career CIA official who told our audience that the CIA steals secrets and keeps secrets, but it doesn't tell lies. Would anybody else in the CIA agree with that? They'll agree with his duty and responsibility to make that statement. Because one of the jobs of the CIA is to lie about what they do. What is a cover story? It's a lie. When you work in a covered position, your life is a lie. Everything about it is a lie. If you're asked a question about your life is a lie. Everything about it is a lie. If you're asked a question about your job, you lie. And that is something that carries on for your entire life. So he's telling the truth that he's lying about not being able to lie.

So their job is to lie about lying. Their job is to make sure that anybody who doesn't have a need to know about the CIA doesn't know about the CIA all right Jack also uh argued uh that uh Russia is losing that this is Putin's folly and that his relationship to the rest of the Russian government and to the Russian people will never be the same because of the mistakes he made entering Ukraine. And before you answer that, Putin himself, within the past couple of minutes, said the war is taking longer. He didn't use the word war. The special military operation is taking longer than we thought. So I just put those two entrees out there for you. You're Aaron Judge. I just threw the pitch.

You hit it out. Well, I mean, what is victory? I've said all along that the war is an extension of politics by other means. And we've talked about the economic aspects of this conflict, the political aspects of this conflict, and the military aspects of this conflict. If Jack Devine wants to sit here and make the argument that Ukrainians are winning militarily, I would say that he probably needs to go touch base with some military experts because that just isn't happening, Jack. The Russians have stabilized the battlefield, neutralized whatever advantages Ukraine had accrued in September, October, and are in the process of finalizing the massing of their military forces. There is a new dynamic. Just today, I had an interview with Konstantin

Sivkov, who's a retired Navy captain, very prominent voice in Russia, closely linked to the inner circle of Putin. And he said something that was fascinating to me. He said that the Russians are very concerned right now about escalation management, that their concern is that if they go too fast on the battlefield, because now all the advantages, he agrees with me, every advantage is Russia's, every advantage on the ground is Russia's. But he said, if we go too fast, we may provoke NATO to intervene. And Russia doesn't want to provoke NATO to intervene. So Russia's in the business of escalation management right now. And I said, well, does that mean you're changing your definition of victory about denazification, demilitarization?

And he, in effect, said yes. He says, well, that's still on the books. He says there's different ways to assess this. And one of the interesting things he said is that Russia can already claim a major victory. And this is something Putin said in his address. By the absorption of the territories that they already have, Russia can already claim a victory. And this is where, here's where Jack, here's where Jack claims the Ukrainians have an advantage. And you and I have talked about this and you've fought in wars. You understand this better than anybody. Russia is filled with conscripts and with people who really either were misled about the purpose of and the reception they would receive

by entering into Ukraine, or they don't give a damn. Ukraine forces will fight to the last drop of blood. It's a matter of honor. They're defending their homeland. And that is a value that Ukraine has that Russia will never have. Well, obviously he doesn't know anything about Russian history and he doesn't know anything about the Russian military. To call the Russian military a conscript military is a falsehood. Fully 70, 75 percent of their military are professional soldiers. We call them volunteers in the United States. There they call them contract soldiers.

They sign a contract with the government just like our guys do. They get paid for their job. They're professional. soldiers. We call them volunteers in the United States. There, they call them contract soldiers. They sign a contract with the government, just like our guys do. They get paid for their job. They're professional. The people that have been mobilized aren't conscripts. They're all people with prior military experience. They're reservists who have been mobilized, just like we mobilized the National Guard, et cetera. Do they want to be there? I'm certain that if you take a poll, I remember during the Gulf War when they mobilized the reserves and the National Guard and all the boys and girls that thought they were getting a free ride in college by joining the reserves suddenly went, what, we're going to be deployed for six months, go to the Gulf War? And they were reminded, yeah, that's what you do. And a lot of them were unhappy. A lot of them, a bunch of them didn't go so if you pull russians will you find some russians who say i'm not happy about of course you will but the vast majority of the russians um i believe are akin to the american soldiers mobilized during world war ii who

realized the quickest way home was by jamming a bayonet through the heart of the nazi soldier and the quickest way home for these russian troops to destroy the Ukrainian nationalists, and they are committed to it. But, Jack, you know, we're going to find out real soon, Jack. I mean, the proof is in the pudding. And we got 175,000 more Russian troops ready to arrive on the battlefield. And when they happen, there's none left. Putin said, we're not mobilizing anymore. This is it. And when they come, they ain't sitting on their butts. Do the Russian troops have the esprit de corps, the spirit, the passion that the Ukraine troops have? And more.

Ukrainian troops are good at doing one thing right now, dying. They're dying in large numbers. You know, the people that are doing the fight, let's just be frank about this. The people that did the initial breaches of the Russian lines in September and October were not Ukrainians. They were mercenaries. Ukrainians don't have troops left capable of doing that. The people that exploited it were largely mercenary forces, Polish forces. There are some Ukrainian forces that have motivated. there's the nationalist troops who are very good at sitting behind the troops and shooting the territorials who try to run away from the battlefield but the notion that the Ukrainian army is full of a spree to court

dead people are have no pride they're dead and the Ukrainians have a lot of dead people so I don't know where you get the notion of, are they willing to die for their country? You know, not too many people in combat say, hey, right now is the time I decide to take the bullet in the head. Go ahead and shoot me. Most people in combat are going, damn, I want to, darn, I want to get out of here. Remember, this is George C. Scott as George Patton.

So I don't know if Patton ever actually said this. Nobody ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making some other poor dumb bastard die for his country. For his country. Well, Patton said that. George's got that famous speech at the beginning of the movie, I believe it was actually an amalgam of speeches that Patton

had given over time. But they were his words. I mean, he said it. So in the past two days, and this can't be a coincidence, and it's just liberal Western media, Time magazine. I didn't even know the Time magazine was still around. Scott named Vladimir Zelensky as Zelensky man of the year. The Financial Times, which I respect and which I read every day, that salmon colored paper, not only named him man of the year, but here's the sub-headline. I want your thoughts on this. And I'm quoting,

Ukraine's Vladimir Zelensky has embodied the resilience of his people. He has ensured Western unity and has become a standard bearer for liberal democracy in the contest with authoritarianism. You say that he's an authoritarian and many of the people that fight for him, with him, or under him are Nazis. These people are trying to make him out as a paradigm of liberal democracy. Well, what does the Western media think they gain by this other than mouthing what the CIA wants them to say? But that's all they've been doing for some time now. We know, I mean, the National Security Council spokesperson a while ago said, hey, in America, we declassify secrets and we release it to the media, even though we know it's wrong. Because not every

secret that's classified is correct. It's a lot of it's bad information. What's secret about is the source of the methods used to acquire it. So they release bad information to the press as if it's fact so that the press publishes as if it's fact to shape public opinion. We have the head of the National Security Agency admitting that he does this. We have the National Security Council admitting they do this. And we have the media admitting that they receive it and they publish it. CNN was named by the director of the NSA saying, I purposely declassified bad stuff, give it to CNN. They run with it that night to shape perception. That's the arrangement we have. So there's no doubt in my mind that MI6 handed Financial Times a nice little write-up and said, here, make a man of the year.

Your Russian military friend, you told us about the conversation a few minutes ago, indicated a need for restraint understood by Putin and by his senior commanders lest NATO enter. Do the Russians really think that NATO would enter the war and put troops on the ground? I mean, the minute some Polish or German soldier gets killed, what happens? Does the 101st Airborne enter the field of battle? I mean, do they really think that that would happen? No, he actually differentiated. He said that he thought that the American people, he differentiated between politicized rhetoric, which happens everywhere, and the

professional judgment. And he said that the Americans, in his opinion, are pragmatic, are realists who understand that any conflict between NATO and Russia will inevitably lead to a nuclear exchange that kills everybody. But his feeling is that, for instance, he believes right now that Russia has the ability to wipe clean of the Ukrainian military and make a dash towards the Ukrainian-Polish border. That's his assessment, not mine. And he believes that they do this, that that could prompt the Poles to intervene, and then that might suck NATO in. And he's also concerned about if they make too big of a move towards Odessa to Moldova, that the Romanians might come in. So his issue is... He's talking about the Americans. There are 40,000 American

troops in Poland. Yeah, the Americans really aren't going to enter Poland on their own volition, meaning. You mean Ukraine on their own volition. Correct. Yeah, enter Ukraine on their own volition. But if the Poles get stuck in a stand up, knock down fight with the Russians right there on the border, you know, the United States may have to do something to salvage the, you know, the Polish troops that are there. The point is, you don't know. No plan survives initial contact with the enemy. And what the Russians don't want to do is inject uncertainty into this act. So I believe what he said. But here's the other thing he said. He said, pretty much what I've been telling you. He said this military campaign will be wrapped up by the end of summer.

All right. Since the last time we spoke, the Ukrainians have used drones to reach well into Russia, one of them 150 miles from Moscow. I was kind of startled when that happened. So a couple of questions. Is it more likely than not that the CIA knew about this before it happened and therefore the West Wing and the Oval Office knew about it? And if that's the case, did they sign off on it or did they look the other way? How could something like this happen? And why hasn't there been a response from President Putin that's been draconian that the Ukrainians used military explosive lethal hardware to enter Russian territory and destroy Russian assets and kill Russian people?

Yeah, the devices used are Tupolev 141. They're target drones. They were designed to be fired and then for air defense to track and practice shooting down. They're not meant to be in a surface-to-surface role. So these have been modified by the Ukrainians. And the question is, what did they use? Did they use – do you remember – I don't know if you remember this, but you could get the old remote-controlled airplanes with the disks, and you could put out the disks and put it in it in there and the disk would tell it to turn.

Did they do that with it and basically launch it? Because here's the thing, that they flown a straight line at a constant altitude that had been shot down a long time ago. These penetrated Russian air defense, which tells me they had very accurate intelligence about the Russian air defense layout, the radars, when they're going to be on, when they're going to be off, what potential gaps are. And they threaded that needle. And you only get that with assistance from the United States. So I believe that this attack was known to the United States and they assisted in it. Also, how did it guide onto the site? Now, the Russians say they shot

it down and what hit the airfield was actually a drone that crashed after being shot down. That appears to be the case, but nonetheless, how did it get that far and what was its terminal guidance going to be? Because it doesn't have it. Does it have GPS? The Russians can jam it. Here's the kicker. One of the stories said that there was a deep reconnaissance group, a diversionary reconnaissance group of Ukrainian soldiers near the airfield in question. And the only reason for that to be is that they were doing terminal guidance with a laser designator that this this drone had been equipped with a laser. Let me make sure I understand you. You're talking about Ukrainian soldiers or intel on the ground in Russia, guiding the Ukrainian drone towards its Russian target? Is that what you're saying?

According to the New York Times, that's a claim that was made by the Ukrainians. The only reason for it to be that close is for terminal guidance. So, yeah. If that's the case, then somebody in Russia has a lot to answer for because... Okay, what about somebody in the United States? How far up the food chain would this have gone? Did Secretary Austin know about it? Did Secretary Blinken know about it?

Did Jake Sullivan, the National Security Advisor, know about it? Did the president know about it before it happened? Well, let me let me put it this way that drone struck a base where russia's uh nuclear capable bomber deterrent is um the russian nuclear release doctrine says that if somebody seeks to attack russia's nuclear infrastructure in a manner that diminishes russia's ability to respond then r Russia can use nuclear weapons in retaliation. Somebody attacked Russia's nuclear deterrence. That's a green light for Russia to use nuclear weapons. Now, they're not. They're not. They're showing restraint. But I'm just here to tell you

right now that if this attack was done with American connivance and the President of the United States wasn't briefed, if I were the president of the United States, I'd have the head of whoever did this on a plate delivered to me now because we're talking nuclear war potential. Escalation management operates on both sides of this game. The Russians are seeking to do it, but the United States has as well. And it's grossly irresponsible. And I don't believe the president could have given this order because the president's job is to avoid nuclear conflict, not score a point. Having a drone come in and damage three things, kill three Russians,

and you're going to risk total global annihilation over that. If an American was involved, and I believe they were, their heads should roll. This is unacceptable. And every American citizen, anybody watching this show, should be outraged. Because let me tell you what just happened. When you read that headline about the Ukrainian drone striking the airfield, it could have meant the end of your life. Is the glowing portrait of Vladimir Zelensky as a latter-day Thomas Jefferson in any way true, or

is he a crook and a thug and a corrupt authoritarian? He's an incompetent comedian-turned-politician whose approval rating prior to this conflict was below 25%. He's a man so desperate

to hold on to power that before this conflict, he suppressed all opposition media, closed down newspapers, closed down TV stations. And once the war started, he banned opposing parties, except the Nazi parties. He allowed them to stay in place. This is a man who has embraced the identity of Ukraine through the eyes of Stepan Bandera, a neo-Nazi supporter of Adolf Hitler. We just saw the portrait of Zelensky's general, Zeluzhny, taking a selfie with Bandera's portrait in his background. OK, so they openly identify as Nazis. And so this is Mr. Democracy. There is no democracy in Ukraine today, none whatsoever. And the other thing we need to understand is from the very beginning of this war, his image has been shaped by the CIA and MI6 through their information warfare, their connections with media. And this time magazine, Man of the Year, is just a furtherance

of that. This is the last person in the world that should be man of the year. He is a disaster for Ukraine. He is a disaster for Europe. He's a disaster for the United States. Not that anybody cares about or even reads Time magazine anymore, but in its heyday, didn't it once name Adolf Hitler as man of the year? It named Adolf Hitler in 1939, I believe, as man of the year. But here's the thing about man of the year. It named Adolf Hitler in 1939, I believe, as man of the year. But here's the thing

about man of the year. I have no problem, to be honest, I have no problem making Zelensky man of the year because it's about influence. And this guy, whether he's directed by others or not, his name is everywhere. I mean, he is calling Congress. He is calling the parliament. He's calling the Pope. He's doing everything. He's getting a vogue magazine shoot he's everywhere so when you want to talk about individuals who have had an impact on the world that's him but when you start calling him a darling of democracy when you start saying that he's the man responsible for the unity of europe you're 180 degrees out he is not a darling of democracy he is a tool of autocracy dictatorship and the worst kind of neo-Nazi ideology imaginable. Man of the Year, meaning his name's everywhere? Sure. Man of the Year because he's a good guy? No.

Scott Ritter, like it is, my dear friend, thank you very much for joining us. I hope we can get another segment in before Christmas and the holidays are upon us. My dear friends, I remind you about Scott's great book, which I was privileged to read, Disarmament in the Time of Perestroika. There it is. It's his personal journal. It's filled with acts, he won't tell you this, but I will, of his personal courage. And it's also filled with his extraordinary understanding of disarmament in the time of Perestroika. You can get it at Amazon or wherever you buy your books. Gary, thanks for putting it up. Scott, thank you very much for joining us. Always a pleasure, my dear friend. Thanks for having me, and happy holidays if I don't talk to you before then.

You got it. Right back at you. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.