Judging Freedom - Tales from the Frontlines: An Examination of US Foreign Policy with Colonel Wilkerson

Starting point is 00:00:00 Thank you. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Thursday, November 16th, 2023. Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson joins us now. The great Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson joins us now. The great Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson. I say great because I've admired his career for many years and have longed for the opportunity to interview him. I know many of you have been waiting for this. He is one of the preeminent military thinkers, maybe the most moral preeminent military thinker in our day today. And it's a pleasure to have him on the show. Colonel, welcome to Judging Freedom. Thank you. And let me just say that my old mentor and hero, Admiral James Stockdale, would love what you just said. Thank you. I hope that your former boss who's in heaven, Secretary of State Colin Powell, would love what I said as well. As the audience knows, Colonel Wilkerson was an aide to General Powell when he was the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but became his chief of staff when General Powell became Secretary of State. Colonel, I would like to take you back in history a bit

Starting point is 00:01:47 to the years in which you personally observed behavior of government officials, and then we'll bring ourselves up to Ukraine and Israel today. Were George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld complicit in torture during the George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld complicit in torture during the George W. Bush administration? Absolutely, they were. Did they commit war crimes? Absolutely, they did. Was it the first time in American history we tortured people? Absolutely not. We did in the Philippines. We did in Vietnam. But it was the very first time in our history as a entity of Britain or as a national entity that we sanctioned torture of other people at the presidential level. That is to say we made it national policy to torture people. And the policy, of course, was never disclosed to the

Starting point is 00:02:39 American public. I think Cheney, the vice president, came up with a phrase, correct me if I'm wrong, enhanced interrogation. Those of us who monitor these things from the journalistic and legal end or from the military and policymaking end know exactly what he was talking about. Did President Bush pardon or immunize the actual torturers? I mean, torture as a war crime, aegis. It also had a portion of it. This was the legislation that essentially Powell wanted that got the military out of the torture business where Rumsfeld had put them. It essentially had to get out of jail free card for all those, quote, who had tortured in the past, unquote. So that was the congressional statement that we don't like what you did, but all of you who did it, there'll be no accountability.

Starting point is 00:03:50 Did they give a damn about the concept of human rights, about natural law, about civil liberties, about the first eight amendments to the Constitution, about the values that underlie everything from the Declaration of Independence to the Constitution itself? I'm sure they did lip service-wise. I heard it enough. But their actions belied that, and their actions actually abrogated a lot of that as far as I'm concerned. And, you know, we really haven't recovered from it. We still have a Senate Intelligence Committee, for example, that will not let the American people look at the full report, 6,000 pages plus, that they did. And since I have seen excerpts of it and I've read the executive summary, I know it's fairly accurate, on the CIA's Rendition Detention Interrogation Program, RDI. And I'll tell you that the American people don't know the extent of what we did, and they're hiding it still. I read the executive summary as well. I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, Colonel,

Starting point is 00:05:00 that Senator Feinstein of California, against the wishes of President Obama, who was in office at the time, went to the Senate floor and deposited the executive summary in the hopper, which of course immunized her behavior because she can't be prosecuted or sued or reprimanded in any way for what she does on the floor of the Senate because of the speech and debate clause in the Constitution. Is that what we read, the executive summary? Or did she put in that hopper all 6,000 pages? As I understand it, it was the executive summary. It was quite extensive itself, over 500 pages. Yes. Let me just make a comment about that wonderful woman. I have a lot of respect for her, and I think she did a fairly good job when she was chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, but she was political, as most of these animals are, and she got the briefings. She knew what was going on.

Starting point is 00:05:56 She saw a politically opportune moment to take a different tack. Thank God she did, and this is often what motivates our Congress people. And so she took that tack and she did some positive things, which came out in the movie called The Report, which you may have seen, which is relatively accurate, except for that one dimension. She knew what was going on before she actually took action to do something about it. Could she have stopped it in some way? That's a pretty powerful committee. If that committee were to stand up,

Starting point is 00:06:30 even in its chairmanship alone, but in a majority fashion, at least say half the committee and the chairman, and say to the president, this has got to stop, it would probably stop. Interesting. Wasn't her committee hacked by the CIA in an effort to find out what the committee, this is unbelievable, hacking government, no surprise today, although this wasn't today, this was probably seven or

Starting point is 00:07:00 eight, 10 years ago. Wasn't her committee hacked by the CIA? Yes, and so was the UN Security Council. I remember having a session with my boss saying, you know, remember the old days when I think it was the Secretary of War for Franklin Roosevelt who said at one point, gentlemen don't read other gentlemen's mails. Yes, yes, he did say that.

Starting point is 00:07:22 You know, for us to be listening in on Security Council deliberations was a little bit beyond the pale for me. Yes. Now, torture as a war crime is a war crime pursuant to several treaties that we've signed. The UN Charter, which we wrote. The Treaty Against Torture, which the U.S. wrote, the Geneva Conventions, which the U.S. wrote. We are not a member of the International Criminal

Starting point is 00:07:54 Court, but torture has no statute of limitations under the International Criminal Court. So George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were still living. Donald Rumsfeld has passed away, could be indicted, charged and prosecuted directly if they stepped foot in the wrong country or in absentia if the court wanted to do it. That's one reason why we said at the State Department as I was preparing to leave in January and then later throughout 2005, President Bush was very circumspect about where he traveled. I would imagine he's circumspect today. There was an indictment by a Spanish magistrate, I believe it's still valid, which means he could be arrested anywhere in the EU. And I think that was not for torture. That was for what I want to talk to you about next, Colonel, leading the government into a war under false pretenses. Did Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Bush lead us into Iraq and Afghanistan? Let's separate them. Iraq under false pretenses.

Starting point is 00:09:06 I have to, after many, many times listening to people, experts and others, and being there myself, of course, and listening to all my students at William & Mary and the George Washington University do case studies on this, I have to conclude that, at least in the case of the vice president, he knew that many of the things he was saying weren't true. And based on what he had said when he was secretary of defense, remember, I was with Powell when he was chairman too, which was in essence, we're not going to Baghdad because it isn't worth it. We'll lose a lot of people. We'll break the coalition up. We had about 625,000 people then, French, Syrians, Egyptians. And then finding 12, 13 years

Starting point is 00:09:48 later that he was fully willing to go to Baghdad. He was either nuts, his steroids or whatever he was taking for his hearts were affecting his brain, or he had changed so dramatically that I didn't even recognize him anymore. He knew, he knew strategically, he knew that if we took out Saddam Hussein, and this was the big argument in the first Gulf War, if we took him out, there'd be no balancer for Tehran. Therefore, we would have to stay in the area in great numbers in order to be the balancer against Iran. What's happened? Our largest troop lay down on the face of the earth today, despite what Biden says.

Starting point is 00:10:31 Our largest expenditure of money, despite what Biden says, is in the Middle East. It's not in Japan versus China or Korea versus China. It's not in Europe. It's in the Middle East. That's where our focus is. And that is a terrible strategic focus. To this day, Colonel,

Starting point is 00:10:50 to this day, our focus and our expenditures are larger in the Middle East than anywhere else. Am I understanding you correctly? And they would be gargantuanly so if it weren't for the fact that Al-Yadid, the Air Force Base, largest base in the world that's in Qatar, weren't totally funded by the Qataris. It is so powerful a relationship that when Saudi Arabia was boycotting Qatar, along with other Gulf states, and wanted us to back it, we did initially. But then the Pentagon weighed in with the White House and talked the White House out of backing Saudi Arabia and going over to Qatar's side because we were afraid we'd lose that base. Did you ever have occasion to tell George W. Bush something in the Oval Office and his response was, don't tell anybody else or don't say it in public or don't tell anybody you told me? No, I only met him several times in a sort of, well, the first time was when he was welcoming

Starting point is 00:11:49 me as chief of staff. He did that for all the departmental chiefs of staff. The second time was when he told us about the meeting of evangelicals to quell his rage in the Oval Office. And then the third time, I think, was when Powell and I were together and we were meeting on something with regard to Iraq. So only in my memory, only three times that I ever was, you know, met him personally. I'm going to run a clip. It's a very, very famous clip of your former boss. I'm sure you remember it. And then I'll ask you a few questions about it. Secretary Powell at the United Nations. First, you will recall that it took UNSCOM four long and frustrating years to pry, to pry an admission out of Iraq that admitted having these weapons in 1995, the quantities were vast. Less than a teaspoon of dry anthrax, a little bit about this amount.

Starting point is 00:12:53 This is just about the amount of a teaspoon. Less than a teaspoonful of dry anthrax in an envelope shut down the United States Senate in the fall of 2001. This forced several hundred people to undergo emergency medical treatment and killed two postal workers just from an amount just about this quantity that was inside of an envelope. Iraq declared 8,500 liters of anthrax. But UNSCOM estimates that Saddam Hussein could have produced 25,000 liters. If concentrated into this dry form, this amount would be enough to

Starting point is 00:13:34 fill tens upon tens upon tens of thousands of teaspoons. And Saddam Hussein has not verifiably accounted for even one teaspoon full of this deadly material. You get to the consequences of the war in Iraq, to which you've alluded already, Colonel, where we led into that war under false pretenses. I'm sorry, I didn't get your question. Oh, before we get to the consequences of the war in Iraq, to which you've alluded already, where we led, was the U.S. led into that war under false pretenses?

Starting point is 00:14:14 Unquestionably so. I don't think I know. I've been with him almost 12 years at that point. I know that Colin Powell didn't know that. And I know that he thought the October 2002 national intelligence estimate, a very unique estimate done in a very, very hurried time, was a solid intelligence estimate. He told George Tenet when we went out to the CIA to get ready for the UN presentation, I'm not going to use this script that came from the White House, written by Scooter Libby, the chief of staff to Dick Cheney. I'm not using it. You're going to make me a presentation based on the October 2002 National Intelligence Assessment. And Tenet

Starting point is 00:14:57 agreed, and that's what we worked for him. Unfortunately, with regard to the major pillars of his presentation, those things that constituted the greatest threat, they were false. And I have real animosity towards John McLaughlin and George Tenet, because I think John in particular, the intelligence professional, but George, too, more political than intel professional, both knew that much of what they were giving Powell in the National Intelligence Testament, which the DCI, George Tenet, had been responsible for ultimately, was not accurate or was so circumstantial that it was nothing to go to war over. So your argument is that Colin Powell believed he was stating the truth.

Starting point is 00:15:45 It was not a knowing deception, but the people who gave him the information engaged in knowing deceptions. Let me give you a concrete example. Three days into the seven we had, three days he was really getting angry. He had never personally accosted me before. He picked me up by the stacking swivel, as we say in the military, and shoved me into an empty room in the National Intelligence Council spaces out at Langley. And he looked, he shut the door, slammed it. And he looked around and he said, we're alone in here, right? And I said, rather quippingly, I said, well, it is the CIA boss. He looked at me like I was nuts. And he said, sat down himself. And he said, I'm sick and tired of all this Genesis stuff. I said, Genesis stuff? He said,

Starting point is 00:16:34 yeah, you know, Ahab, Beget, Arab, Beget, Nabu-Hidal, Beget, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. I'm sick and tired of it. I said, I don't like it either. It's bogus stuff. It was connecting Saddam Hussein with 9-11 is what it was doing. And so he said, good. You got to look at relief on his face because I think he thought I was going to fight him over it. No, no. I said, I'll take it all out. And I proceeded to tell the person putting it together five minutes later to take it all out. But I didn't see John McLaughlin leaning against the doorframe until the last minute. He overheard everything I said to the person at the computer preparing the presentation. Stupid me.

Starting point is 00:17:17 I should have followed John out and seen where he went. But instead, I went back into the DCI conference room in order to resume rehearsal with Powell. I was sitting to Powell's left. Condi Rice was across the National Security Advisor, was across the table. Rich Armitage was to my left. George Tennant was to Powell's right. George got up and left as Powell was preparing and made me really angry because I told him, you will be here all the time when Powell is here getting ready for this presentation. And he left. He left for about 15 minutes. I was getting ready to go find him. He comes back in the room and he sits down beside Powell. And I remember the words verbatim. He says to Powell, we have just learned from the interrogation of a high level al Qaeda operative of substantial contacts between the Muqamarat,

Starting point is 00:18:07 that's the Iraqi secret police, and al-Qaeda, to include, he said with some force, training in the use of chemical and biological weapons. Powell turned to me and said, put it back in, LW. So that most potent with the American people, part of that presentation, Saddam Hussein's connection with the American people, part of that presentation, Saddam Hussein's connection with 9-11, went back into the presentation. And it was false.

Starting point is 00:18:31 It's false. We found out in August when George finally owned up, we found out in August that it was the Libyan Sheikh al-Libi. He was tortured in Egypt. He recanted two weeks after the torture. There were no U.S. personnel present, and the Defense Intelligence Agency had put a burn notice out on that intelligence. When I asked George later how come I didn't see that burn notice, he said it was a computer glitch. What's a burn notice, Colonel? Get rid of the intelligence. It's not trustworthy.

Starting point is 00:19:07 The DOD. I might add that that Sheik al-Libi was somehow mysteriously killed in a Libyan prison a few months later. Does the CIA murder people, Colonel? You bet. You can't ask a military professional that without getting a positive answer, if he's honest or she's honest. Why did the Department of Defense hold people in Guantanamo Bay that it knew were factually innocent or that it knew it had insufficient evidence to convict and held them anyway? Because it would have been political dynamite that Donald Rumsfeld, and probably for the president too, had to admit that those 740 or so people we sent to Guantanamo in the opening days had not had any vetting whatsoever, had no combat review status tribunals in country in Afghanistan, and that most of them were probably innocent. It would have devastated the administration if they'd had to admit that.

Starting point is 00:20:11 Truth as an instrument of devastation. How have the neocons captured and ruined American foreign policy. They're not a new strain in American foreign policy, certainly not in security policy since World War II. But they've always been kept in check, at least partially so, if not completely so. But they came out of the woodwork big time with regard to this incredibly inexperienced president and this incredibly experienced vice president. Richard Osborne once called him a bureaucratic entrepreneur par excellence. You're speaking of Bush and Cheney.

Starting point is 00:20:59 Yeah. So you had this incredibly inexperienced president and you had this incredibly experienced national security expert as vice president. So guess who ran national security for the first four years? Dick Cheney. And he had this agenda. And the strange thing to me and my students are mystified by this sometimes, too, when they look at the case studies. Cheney's not a neoconservative. He's what one of my students called, and I think accurately so, a hyper-nationalist. America first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and oh, by the way, as long as I'm attached to America, I'll be powerful. So I am going to keep it that way. I don't care who I have to kill, who I have to lie to, I'm going to keep it that way. That's Cheney. But that fit right into the neocon agenda.

Starting point is 00:21:45 That is their mantra as well, isn't it? Yep. Especially, I found out once I saw that Douglas Spite, the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, the number three in the Defense Department, once I saw his office was surrounded daily by Mossad agents, Powell told President Bush when he did his out call in January of 2005, Mr. President, do you know your number three man in the Defense Department is a card-carrying member of the Likud party? And Bush, according to Powell, when he came back and debriefed me, Bush was taken aback and said, you don't mean if I pulled his wallet out?

Starting point is 00:22:21 And Powell said, no, no, no. What I mean is he's working for Israel. How damaging has the neocon influence been in the war in Ukraine? I mean, we've given the Ukrainians $113 billion, destroyed a generation of young Ukrainian men, fought a fruitless war that numerically couldn't possibly have been won, destroyed a third of the country, paid for the government, ran the government. Now, all of a sudden, from and after October 7th, there's no more interest in Ukraine. You only left out one major consideration there, and that is that Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, and a whole lot of other people have made billions off of Ukraine. Yes, yes.

Starting point is 00:23:11 Yeah, the neocons in Victoria Nuland, of course, who might even be a future Secretary of State, God forbid, they were very present. They were present in the beginning. In the beginning, I was there. I was dealing with Yatushchenko and Tymoshenko and other Ukrainians. And my conclusion about Ukraine in 2003 and 2004 was that it was a kleptocracy. Like Albania, it ran on criminal activity. And most of its politicians, Russian, Ukrainian, whatever they might be, were criminals too. I was stunned when I discovered the same thing about Yuriy Tymoshenko because I thought she would be a breath of fresh air.

Starting point is 00:23:53 Turned out she was just another variety of criminal. So I knew in the very beginning of this conflict that we were dealing not with the Jeffersonian democracy, far from it, nor a country that had any prospects of being such. But it did seem to have stumbled upon a comedian who used to, in Russian, tell jokes on stages in Moscow, Zelensky. It did seem to run into a leader who was interested in Ukraine and not necessarily his own pocketbook. So I was curious to see what would develop there. But I realized immediately we had CIA agents all over the place. We had special operators all over the place. And we were preparing something that didn't look too good to me, strategically speaking, in the heart of

Starting point is 00:24:38 Europe. And totally violative of all the promises that we, George H.W. Bush, Edward Chabernadze being president, Mikhail Gorbachev being president, and Jim Baker, Bush's Secretary of State, had made in the early 90s when we told them if they allowed Journey to reunite and allowed it to remain as a key member of NATO, that we wouldn't move NATO one inch further east. Everybody says that was apocryphal. That wasn't apocryphal. I had debriefings from the man who was there in St. Catherine's Palace with Gorbachev when he was National Security Advisor to Ronald Reagan and later as chairman when he dealt with General Moiseyev and Gorbachov personally. We violated all of that. And we started very early undermining any prospect Ukraine had to be an independent and basically neutral country in the heart of Europe. We did it. I'm not excusing Putin for invading, but I understand the conversation. Did George H.W. and Jim Baker deceive President Gorbachev, or did these events occur after they left office? I've heard that argument, too. And I will admit that H.W. was turning a little bit against Gorbachev toward the end of his administration.

Starting point is 00:26:03 But there were two real powerful reasons for that. One, Bush was increasingly aware of the fact he was probably going to lose the election. There's an interesting point, too, because Israel had a lot to do with Bush losing the election because Bush was the one who kind of forced them to go toward the Oslo process. And he also was concerned with Somalia. Somalia had started out as a humanitarian operation, and it was looking very much like it was going to wind up being a big mess. And of course, for Bill Clinton, it was a big mess. President Putin has said that his predecessor, President Gorbachev, whose funeral he famously declined to attend,

Starting point is 00:26:47 was naive to have accepted the words of President George H.W. Bush and Jim Baker. Is President Putin correct? Well, I lay many of the sins of the empire, America, since they began so astronomically fast after 9-11 to Bill Clinton. His eight years were probably, and my students, I think, would back this up, his eight years were probably some of the worst, if not the worst years in the post-Cold War era, because again, you had an inexperienced president, but here you had one with no morals, no ethics, nothing. Here's a man who bombed innocent civilians, if you will, kind of like what's going on right now in the Levant, in the Balkans for 78 straight days. And only when Milosevic finally caved in as we introduced the prospect of ground forces coming, did that end.

Starting point is 00:27:51 And you want to say immediately, well, Milosevic needed to be gotten rid of. But there lies a tale, too, in all the things that were happening in the Balkans post-Soviet meltdown, and the contributions that we made to them either by neglect or by commission. So it wasn't a good time. And Clinton was just not a very good president. Back to Putin's comments about Gorbachev. Should Gorbachev not have accepted the word of the American president and secretary of state about we won't move NATO one inch eastward? I don't know how you do diplomacy in the world, except as we do it today incompetently, with that sort of interpretation of exchanges between foreign ministers, secretaries of state, and heads of

Starting point is 00:28:46 state. If that's the way you're going to operate, you might as well just have chaos. Colonel, do the neocons have an off-ramp for Ukraine? I mean, it's a disaster. Ukraine is lost. Zelensky is delusional. I'm not making this up. I'm quoting people right around him. No, you're right. What would Victoria Nuland say if she were seated right there? She'd never come on the show. I think she'd say what she's probably said. Over to you, Germany.

Starting point is 00:29:17 I don't know if you've noticed what they're doing, but they're trying to pick up the pieces because they understand we're leaving. And so Germany's voting all manner of money now and arms are going and Germany's going to take the position that we were taking. At least that's what the chancellor was saying. And why would Chancellor Scholz do that? Although this is the guy who stood next to President Biden when President Biden said, we're going to destroy your principal means of natural gas and just sort of smiled.

Starting point is 00:29:49 Yep. And then it was destroyed. Germany party, most of which comes from East Germany, which is looking from time to time a lot like a party in the 1930s did. So it's an interesting development. Here's NATO falling apart, totally falling apart. The southern flank, anchored by the strongest land army in Europe. You heard me correctly. We are not the strongest land army in Europe. Turkey's is. It's extraordinarily powerful. That's falling apart. Everyone is now making statements like he might march down through Lebanon and take on Israel.

Starting point is 00:30:39 And Israel would be short shrift if he did, unless we weighed in. That's falling apart. Then you've got Germany, the linchpin in the center of NATO, that we are treating like a pariah, really. I mean, we're the ones who caused this energy situation to exist, whether we blessed Ukraine's doing it or did it ourselves. And I think the latter is what happened. We caused it to start. Gas is more expensive. It's dirtier. And as a consequence, lots of industry is leaving Germany.

Starting point is 00:31:11 When industry leaves Germany, Germany looks askance. It says, what do we do now? So they're looking for alternatives and we've put them in this situation. Colonel, will you come back and we'll discuss, uh, come back to the show again and we'll discuss Israel and Hamas and how, uh, all that came about. Absolutely.

Starting point is 00:31:33 That's, uh, we just have our focus in the wrong place. We do. Mirshana. Mirshana. Colonel, uh,

Starting point is 00:31:40 it's been a pleasure. I can tell from the comments that, uh, the audience, uh, appreciates you. I appreciate you. My team appreciates you. I hope you can come back soon. Thank you so much for your time, so much for your insight. Thank you for your career. Thank you for your personal courage. Thank you for having me. Of course. Of course. Matthew Ho, coming up at two o'clock and at three o'clock, Professor Michael Rechtenwald,

Starting point is 00:32:06 Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. I'm

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Judging Freedom - Tales from the Frontlines: An Examination of US Foreign Policy with Colonel Wilkerson

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