Judging Freedom - Spying that Occurs Round the World w_ LARRY JOHNSON

Episode Date: June 22, 2023

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Thank you for watching. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Thursday, June 22nd, 2023. It's about 3 o'clock in the afternoon here on the east coast of the United States. Larry Johnson will be with us in a minute to talk about the ethics and the culture of spying. My column today, No Warrant, No Problem, catalogs again what the intelligence community is doing to violate federal law and to violate the Constitution in order to get your personal data. And of course, we'll also talk about Ukraine and this absolute blunder of President Biden's regarding China. All of that right after this. When it comes to carrying valuables or even firearms in your vehicle, most people feel they have to choose between safety and convenience. A vehicle break-in occurs every 36 seconds in America. The Headrest Safe gives you the power to store cash, jewelry, medication, and yes, even your concealed carry firearm.

You'll never have to worry about taking your valuables with you again. Keep them safe with the Headrest Safe. Use promo code JUDGENAP and enjoy $50 off for a limited time at theheadrestsafe.com. Larry Johnson joins us now. Larry, thank you very much. Always a pleasure, of course. When you were in the intelligence community, I don't think there was a DNI, a Director of National Intelligence, a human being who purports to be in charge of the whole intelligence community. So let's do a little bit of background before we talk about warrantless spying. How many human beings are in the intelligence community? How many agencies are there? And what does the DNI do? Is she really the boss or is she happens to be a woman under Joe Biden, or is she just

nominally the boss or is she just a PR person? Well, let's start with who actually collects intelligence. We hear that there are 17 intelligence agencies. No, not collectors. Most of those 17 are consumers. So the collectors are CIA is a collector. That means they go out and get human source information. They do some signal intercept, intercepted communications. National Security Agency. It does, it's like an electronic vacuum sweeper, sweeps up information, emails, telephone calls, anything that's sent electronically. It sweeps up. DIA, Defense

Intelligence Agency, they have military attaches overseas. And there are some elements within the military that operate like CIA non-official cover officers. So it's a black compartmented organization. Then you have the, let's call it the overhead satellite collectors, the NRO, National Reconnaissance Office. And then State Department, the messages that come through State Department diplomats. So it's about six different agencies, really, that collect intelligence. The others, Department of Energy and like Department of the Army, they're consumers. They take what these others have gathered. The real change that's taken place in dramatically changed both the content, quality, and volume of information available. It's really remarkable.

It used to be you could send somebody overseas, just give them a new passport, a new identity, and voila, they can get into the country and nobody would know the difference. Now you've got facial recognition software. And just by virtue of being able to detect the iris. So the ability of people to travel under a false name has become more difficult, not easier. At the same time, and as you correctly noted in your recent article, that this growth of information that's out there on social media means that it is easier for private organizations and for government to intrude in your private lives. Privacy really doesn't exist anymore if you're going to carry a cell phone or a credit card. Okay. DNI, the director of national intelligence, real power, real director, PR person, the real boss. What does she do?

No real power. This was set up in the aftermath of the 9-11 attacks. As Washington is wont to do, if you have an intelligence failure, then what you need to do is create more bureaucracy. Right. The DNI is just another layer of bureaucracy because it used to be the head of the intelligence community was the head of central intelligence agency. By definition, central intelligence agency. But there was a lot of resentment from the Pentagon and from the FBI and from National Security Agency. They didn't like being subservient to the CIA. So what has happened, the DNI is now supposed to coordinate all of that. So the activities like the preparation of the presidential daily brief, which used to be handled on the seventh floor at CIA headquarters, been briefed by people like Ray McGovern. Those individuals now work for the Directorate of National Intelligence.

They're in a different building. it, as she did last week, and this is the trigger for my article, No Warrants, No Problem, that the intelligence community has been purchasing from private data collectors that which they constitutionally cannot acquire by subpoena or search warrant example we want to know where larry johnson was on june 21st 2023 or june 21st 2019 uh they find out they go to motor vehicles you have the registration of your car see who the manufacturer was and can get the manufacturer of the car to download the contents of the computer chip in your car to show where your car was. Or it might just be easier for them to know that your cell phone is with you. Chris, the dog's a little excited here.

Your cell phone is usually with you. They'll just download the computer chip in the cell phone from the service provider. All of this doing indirectly what the Constitution, the Fourth Amendment expressly prohibits them from doing directly. If the Fourth Amendment was written for any reason, it was written to bar general warrants, putting out a fishnet to see what comes back. Yeah, no, I mean, this is why Edward Snowden did what he did 10, 11 years ago, because he was seeing those kinds of abuses and the way that the government, people working in the intelligence community, could actually pry into people, the lives of other Americans.

In theory, this was all supposed to be directed at foreigners. Correct. But it's now this, the technology does not know geographic boundaries. That's part of the problem with this. Haynes sent a report to the Senate revealing that they are purchasing this data from General Motors, Verizon, I don't know that she used these names, but the collectors of information about where we go and how we communicate. Why would she, in your view, have even revealed that? People like you and I, you from your extraordinary knowledge of it, me from my study and observation of it, particularly in my years at Fox, know this,

but the general public doesn't know it. I don't know what Congress knows. Why would she have revealed it? I think it was just in a way to protect herself, to make sure that she was not accused of withholding that because it's the kind of purchase that it involves. It is not necessarily going to be classified. The real difference here between, you know, the intelligence community can get is just about any kind of information at once. In theory, about foreigners, it is not supposed to be collecting and holding information on American citizens. And that's what's so interesting about this revelation from John Durham the other day, that the CIA, who deals with human sources, some human source came to them to tell them about Hillary Clinton, domestic person, collecting and creating an intelligence operation against Donald Trump, a domestic U.S. citizen.

So this is what, you got to step back and go, what in the world is the CIA doing? Right. That kind of information. And why is it, you know, I'm glad he passed it on, but it really gets to the heart of the matter. That's not what CIA, CIA is not there to collect information on domestic political operations. All right. So all of this happens in the following political context. Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which enables the intelligence community to spy on foreigners, either physically in the U.S. or digitally in the U.S. without search warrants, obviously implicates the communications between foreign

persons and Americans with whom they speak. It could be me talking to my cousins in Florence or a bookseller in London, or it could be my next door neighbor talking to a terrorist in the Middle East, whatever it is. When they capture that, and of course we know they go to various degrees, so if it's me talking to my bookseller and then I talk to you, they're going to listen to you. And then you talk to your next door neighbor, they're going to listen to your next door neighbor. That's the way they operate. But when they have indirectly, inadvertently, or knowingly captured the communications of Americans, that gets stored in the database. The FBI has access to that database only with a search warrant issued by

a judge based on probable cause. Correct. Two weeks ago, the FBI revealed that in 2022, last year, it inadvertently, air quotes, accessed the database for 278,000 Americans illegally and unconstitutionally. And they still want this Section 702, which expires in six months, to be reinstated by Congress. So that's the political context in which these revelations come about. The other point I have to make to you, and you're the expert on this, not I, the National Security Act of 1947, signed by President Truman, something he would regret before he died because of what the CIA became, expressly, expressly prohibits the CIA from doing two things, being involved in domestic law enforcement and spying on Americans in America. Question, is the CIA involved in domestic law enforcement and does the CIA spy on Americans in America?

Indirectly on the domestic law enforcement. We know that there were CIA personnel that were assigned to the Joint Terrorism Task Force in places like New York City in order to facilitate the flow of information. So, you know, seemingly an innocuous relationship. But this line about not spying on American citizens, that's been erased. It's been crossed repeatedly. And again, the basic illustration is here's Brennan reporting on activities of Hillary Clinton vis-a-vis Donald Trump. Right, right. It's not in my opinion.

There's a clear fact. Correct. Nobody could, no rational person could dispute that. That's all well documented. You and I have talked about it at length. We're going to take a break. Let me come back a little bit more about the culture of spying and the culture of lawlessness among spies, like what you just told about. The Jack Brennan, of whom you just spoke at the time, was the director of the CIA when he just acted as if it was normal for the CIA to be spying on Donald Trump. And we'll talk about the CIA engaging its overseas colleagues to spy on Americans as well. And more on the latest on Ukraine with Larry. We'll play a tape for you of President Zelensky warning the world that Vladimir Putin is about to

unleash nuclear forces. Not him, not his own people, but President Putin. All of that right after this. You want to feel safe in your vehicle. And for you, that means easy, rapid access to your firearm. But safety also means your items don't fall into the wrong hands. You don't have to choose between safety and convenience. The Headrest Safe keeps your firearm where you can access it, and no one else can. Just order your Headrest Safe, install it yourself when it arrives, and enjoy peace of mind.

It starts at theheadrestsafe.com. Do America's domestic spies, whether NSA authorized by statute or CIA prohibited by statute, give a damn about the Fourth Amendment. Some do, but what you're pointing out is it's all dependent upon leadership. And we have seen a real deterioration in the quality of leadership at CIA really over the last 30 years. They've become much more highly politicized. And I'm not even sure there was a golden era at the CIA. Even back under President Kennedy,

there were times where the agency did not properly brief him. But ultimately, the abuses that the agency and the CIA has been engaged in, have been done with the consent and or encouragement of the political leadership. This notion of the CIA as a rogue elephant off acting on its own, regardless of what the president wants, is a bit of a myth, but we did see that the CIA under Donald Trump was deliberately involved with helping try to sabotage his presidency. So this was, if you will, an across-the-board coup in both the intelligence and military side of the house. Has CIA ever asked its foreign counterparts like MI6, the British intelligence, to spy on Americans for it in behalf of CIA? I've not seen any document like that, but I certainly I have heard, you know, hearsay that that has happened. And particularly when we look at the intelligence operation that was run against Donald Trump, MI6 played a heavy role in that,

as did the British version of the National Security Agency. They were, how else would they have known about George Papadopoulos trying to get a job with the Trump campaign? Well, he was calling from London in August of 2015 back to Corey Lewandowski. Those conversations were intercepted, and then they were passed to U.S. intelligence and found their way into this, let's call it this FBI database. The British entity to which you refer is known by its initials, GCHQ. General Communications Headquarters. And would it not be unlawful for GCHQ to spy on Americans in America? Oh, sure. I mean, we're foreigners. They can they can spy on us to their heart's content.

And here's here's the dirty secret. They then they're co-located in the UK with the National Security Agency. So you've got U.S. personnel side by side with these British personnel, the British collected. And then they can pass it to the Americans as foreign intelligence, and the FBI about the types of things I talked about in my column this morning, which would be the actual purchase, literally knocking on the door of General Motors wanting to purchase the content in my hypothetical, of course, of the computer chip in your motor vehicle or knocking on the door of Chase Manhattan Bank wanting to know what checks you wrote or knocking on the door of Verizon wanting to know how many times you called me. Would there not be qualms about that on the part of intelligence agents? Among some, you know, some with a conscience, but for others,

it's just, hey, the resource exists, grab it and use it. Makes it far easier. I want to switch gears to a piece you wrote recently about President Biden's absurd statement at a fundraiser in California. But before we do that, we'll run a clip. It's short. It's only about 20 seconds. So Secretary of State Antony Blinken at the end of his 36 hours in Beijing, 15 minutes of those 36 hours, not on tape, were spent with President Xi lecturing him on the proper diplomacy. And at the end of that lecture, he made the following statement. We do not support Taiwan independence. We remain opposed to any unilateral changes to the status quo by either side, we continue to expect the peaceful resolution of cross-strait differences. We remain committed to meeting our

responsibilities under the Taiwan Relations Act, including making sure that Taiwan has the ability to defend itself. So I don't know if he was back in the U.S. or somewhere between Beijing and Los Angeles when the president in Los Angeles at a fundraiser referred to President Xi, the president of China, as a dictator. It was a private fundraiser, but obviously the word got out. That's a monumental faux pas. What are your thoughts? Did Tony Blinken's trip do any good? Did Joe Biden totally undo what Tony Blinken attempted to accomplish? Are we better off vis-a-vis the Chinese now than we were a week ago, or are we significantly worse off? Yeah, Biden blew up Blinken's trip, say that fast, three times. There were elements in the Chinese government that advocated to let

Blinken come to make his plea to genuflect, to bow. And what's really odd about this is Blinken was simply restating what has been US policy for 51 years since Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger put it into place, the one China policy, which all along we said we do not recognize Taiwan as an independent country and that it's part of China. Yet in the United States, as you know, the exact opposite message is sent. And most Americans would believe that we're fighting on behalf of the Taiwanese to free them. So here's Blinken. He makes all these assurances, oh yeah, we're going to try to live up to this now. We're not going to take steps like we're putting US military trainers in Taiwan. And then Biden turns around and calls Xi a dictator.

Now, a lot of Americans will say, well, what's wrong with that? That's what we believe. Well, it doesn't matter what we believe. It matters what the Chinese believe. And from the Chinese standpoint, those who advise Xi Jinping, don't let this Blinken character in. The Americans can't be trusted. They're now walking around. They've been vindicated. And those advocated for Blinken, they're eating a lot of crow. They've been humiliated. And humiliation within the Chinese culture, it's losing significant face. Do you think that the Chinese leadership thinks that President Biden said that intentionally, or do you think that they think he is mentally challenged?

They think he said it intentionally. And to add sort of rub salt in the wounds, they thought that they had bought him off, that they had bought a commodity with the previous money deals. And they recognize he is a man completely without honor. Not only is he subject to bribes, but he doesn't even honor his word. What really terrifies me is we are headed towards a war with China. And what Biden said is pushing us closer to that, not moving us farther away. All right. Before we go to Ukraine, I have to explore what you just said. When you say we are headed for a war with China, you mean China will demand some sort of a public reunification with Taiwan. Taiwan will refuse. China will threaten force.

Taiwan will resist. China will use force. And Joe Biden says, I don't know how he's going to do this. Somehow, we're going to send troops and planes and naval vessels to Taiwan to resist the Chinese recapturing their own territory. Well, I think it's going to come about more because we will continue to do some aggressive military moves in and around Taiwan. In China, one of these days, we'll shoot one of our aircraft down, or they'll sink one of our ships. They're going to be very firm and tough about identifying,

just in the same way that we shot down a balloon floating over our territory, they'll do something equivalent, but it may involve an actual aircraft or ship that has living beings on it. So that is a real possibility. And you see that the recommendations from the policy community in Washington, the China experts, is that we need to build up our military deterrence to counter the Chinese. And the Chinese are watching that. All they see is that the United States already has U.S. troops in Taiwan providing training, and they're going to put a stop to that. Can we possibly deliver to Taiwan over a Chinese naval blockade the naval air and ground troops and equipment needed to defend Taiwan? Not really, but I don't think, I don't see China as needing to actually attack Taiwan. They're not

going to risk a military confrontation like that when they're going to be able, I think, to accomplish their goals politically. There is evidence of growing support in Taiwan for reunification with mainland China. And I'm sure that the Chinese intelligence officers, they'll be working to exploit that very actively in the coming months. Last subject, I want to run for you a clip that President Zelensky made to the nation, and if you listen to him, to the world, just yesterday. And it has to do with a warning that the Russians are going to blow up the Ukraine nuclear facility. Of course, that may very well be a prelude to the false flag that a lot of people think President Zelensky himself is planning. It's in Ukrainian.

I'll read the subtitles for the benefit of our friends who are listening to this on audio. Now, concerning Verishny, I remind those who have forgotten the nuclear power plant. Everyone in the world, the IAEA, all countries, all leaders know what's happening there. Russia uses the nuclear power plant as an element in its aggression. It occupies the plant. It uses it to cover the shelling of neighboring cities. It keeps weapons and troops there.

Now our intelligence has received information, but Russia is considering a scenario of a terrorist attack at the nuclear power plant, a terrorist attack with radiation leakage. They have prepared everything for this. Unfortunately, I've repeatedly had to remind that radiation has no state borders, and who it will hit is determined only by the wind direction. We shall share all available information with our partners, with everyone in the world, all the evidence, Europe, America, China, Brazil, India, the Arab world, Africa, all countries. Absolutely everyone should know this. International organizations, absolutely everyone. There should never be any terrorist threat on a nuclear power plant anywhere. This time it could not be like with Kharkov. The world has been warned, so the world can and must act

glory to Ukraine. Now, why would he be saying that, Larry? He's desperate because he's getting his butt kicked in their failed counteroffensive. And they're trying to come up with something that will bring NATO into the battle. It's ridiculous that Russia would blow up Zaporizhia. Why would it need to blow it up? It's there. It occupies it. There is absolutely no rational reason in the world for them to do that, coupled with the fact that they're winning on the ground in terms of grinding up the Ukrainian military and destroying vast amounts of Western-supplied tanks and armored personnel carriers and artillery pieces. Would the Ukrainians consider a false flag on their own nuclear plant in an effort to arouse NATO to send troops?

Absolutely. In the same way that they did with blowing up the dam at Kharkov. So that really worked. That hurt the Russians more than it hurt the Ukrainians. And yet Ukraine, that's why they did it. It is not Russia has zero interest in destroying that kind of infrastructure. If if destroying infrastructure was the plan, they could have started on that 15 months ago when they started a special military operation. They have the cruise missiles. They have the large land-based missile systems. They could have taken out every bridge crossing the Dnieper River, but they haven't.

And part of it is they've limited their strikes on civilian infrastructure to the best extent they could. And frankly, we've got video piece of evidence after video piece of evidence of Ukrainians always occupying hospitals, elementary schools, et cetera, with military forces. They keep accusing the Russians of what they themselves are doing. It's very much like the Democrats accused Trump of everything that they're doing. We see similar parallels. Larry Johnson, always a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you for joining us.

Thank you. If you like what you saw, like, subscribe, share with a friend. More as we get it, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. You want to feel safe in your vehicle. With access to your firearm, that's both secure and convenient. The Headrest Safe keeps your firearm where you can access it and no one else can.

It starts at theheadrestsafe.com. Thank you.