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Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Friday, October 21st,
2022. It's about 2.05 in the afternoon here on the East Coast of the United States.
My guest today is no stranger to the Judging Freedom audience. Phil Giraldi is a former CIA agent
who famously told the truth to George W. Bush
that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction
and sure thereafter ended his career in the CIA.
He's known for his intellectual honesty
and his willingness to buck the system.
The fact that his name is Giraldi has nothing to
do with my love of him, but I love him and we very much appreciate his insights on this program.
Phil, it's a pleasure. Welcome back to the show. Well, thank you as always. Thank you.
Of course. So a lot has happened since last we spoke. We'll start with President Putin declaring martial law on the four provinces of Ukraine,
which, according to President Putin, have always been a part of Russia and which, according to President Putin, now are a part of Russia.
We'll talk about the Russian military vacating one of those provinces. And we'll talk about the Western media, which makes it sound as if Russia has its back to the wall.
So with those three topics, we'll start with the Ukrainian advance on the ground.
We welcome your thoughts. Well, you know, I always kind of preface my thoughts
with the observation that I don't really know what's going on on the ground there.
I read, I observe and I read a number of commentators that I believe are much better wired in than I am.
Colonel McGregor would be one. I like a number of different websites that offer observations of
what's going on. I would say that, you know, you have to basically look to the sourcing.
If somebody is there, if somebody is knowledgeable, if somebody
is making sense out of what's occurring, then you have to kind of go with that. I find in general
that the people that are arguing that Russia basically is realigning its defensive lines are making a lot of sense. And those who are talking
a lot about major victories on the part of the Ukrainians are not making much sense.
If you look at the casualties, it would appear that the Ukrainians are taking many, many more
casualties than are the Russians, which is certainly one measure of the way things are
going. What do you believe your former colleagues are telling the president? Are they telling him,
as you told us they were telling him months ago, everything is coming up roses, Putin's back is to
the wall, he has no support in Moscow, and his troops are poorly trained? Or are they telling him
what you just said, the Russian military might is destined to overcome the Ukrainian military
weaknesses? Well, I have to believe that at least some analysts in senior positions
in the U.S. intelligence community are at least being objective
about what alternative explanations are.
But the issue becomes,
how does this information process work out
the closer you get to the people
who actually make the decisions,
which would be obviously the President of the United States and his cabinet
and a few other selected individuals. These people might very well be adhering more closely
to what would be a political judgment about what is going on.
Is there no sense of honor and ethics? I mean, if somebody like you were in the field observing or learning first or second hand from reliable sources what the data is, Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction, Saddam Hussein does not have weapons of mass destruction. Somebody like you in the field makes an honest judgment about the state of things.
By what right can someone superior to you put spin on that just to make themselves look
good in the Oval Office?
Do I have this right, Phil?
Yeah, I think you have it right. I mean, the fact is that these people we're talking about are not necessarily trained intelligence officers.
They're people who are politicians.
And essentially, they will ultimately want to be telling the story that the people in charge want to hear.
And I'm afraid that's the way the system works.
And I'm afraid that's what we've been seeing i mean the here we have the secretary of defense saying openly that the objective of all
this fighting and and arming of ukrainians and and money going one way uh is to weaken russia
and to get rid of russia's elected leader uh this is a pretty straight message and this is a political message.
It has nothing to do with U.S. interests.
Why is Putin attacking or why do you think Putin is attacking civilian targets? I don't know that
he's aiming at apartment buildings, but he's certainly close to government buildings in Kyiv.
He seems to be aiming at infrastructure, utilities and transportation lines.
Yeah, well, I think the answer to that is kind of obvious.
He's aiming at primarily, think the right infrastructure and the reason is to make the
lives of the ukrainians who are continuing to use the u.s supplied weapons and and and so on and so
on and money uh to make their lives as miserable as possible to move them closer to a negotiated
settlement which he has repeatedly indicated he's interested in doing.
Will any amount of damage caused by the Russian military, in your view,
temper the enthusiasm of NATO and the West and the globalists and the State Department for their goal of driving Putin from office. I mean, stated differently,
would any amount of Russian victory stop the flow of armaments to Ukraine? And a phone call from
the Chancellor of Germany, I would say the Prime Minister of Great Britain, but that changes every
couple of weeks, or the President of the United States saying, hey, Vladimir,
sit down with the other Vladimir because we're not going to help you anymore? Or
is the determination by Tony Blinken, the Secretary of State, and his friends in Western
Europe so firm that they will deny reality and never stop supplying the Ukrainians?
Well, reality has a way of catching up with you.
I recently, as you know, spent three weeks in Europe,
and I spoke to a lot of Europeans,
and the Europeans are going very wobbly on what's going on in Ukraine.
And there have been demonstrations,
and there's been a lot of agitation to reverse course.
So I think we're going to see some wiggle room there.
And I think that the reality is that we could have, judging from comments that came from some leading Republicans yesterday, we could have some serious wiggle room on Ukraine if the Republicans route the Democrats, which I sincerely hope they will.
You mean if they route the Democrats and take control of one or both houses of Congress in the elections in three weeks?
Yeah, that's exactly what I mean.
I think that the funny thing about this whole Ukraine war business is it's been oversold.
And I think you could even see in the mainstream media now where there is less reporting on it, less stories on it, because basically the whole project is untenable.
And it does nothing for the United States. It does nothing for the American people
who are suffering under inflation, which the president presumes to deny in a recession,
recession, which the president presumes to deny and in an economic situation, which is going to
be very troubling over the next couple of months. And I think voters are going to be looking at that. When you say the Ukraine war has been oversold,
are you pointing fingers at CIA and MI6?
CIA, MI6, and FBI have all had major roles in terms of supporting.
You know, the FBI just keeps getting its nose in all kinds of things.
What, under the name of God, does the FBI have to do with a war in Ukraine?
Well, the FBI, I think, de facto has become a political player over the last 10 years, certainly.
And that's what we're seeing.
But anyway, who are the ones that are pushing this thing?
Well, the simple answer, of course, is always to say the defense industries.
Defense industries have money.
Money elects politicians.
Politicians are aware of who got them elected, and I was saying to her, how the hell did Joe Biden make enough money to be worth $15 million now when his whole life he was a politician and his wife was a schoolteacher?
You have to ask yourself these things, and every once in a while the answer will be unpleasant. When the bridge to Crimea was partially destroyed,
did you come to any conclusion about who was behind that? Because one of your colleagues,
a person you and I respect and have been in his presence, said it had the earmarks of MI6.
Yeah, I think the U.S. and British intelligence primarily are playing a major role in these so-called
offensives by the Ukrainians and the various sabotage-type actions that they've succeeded in doing. So I think, yeah, it smelled like MI6,
just like the Nord Stream undersea pipeline absolutely smelled like the United States Navy.
Wow. So you have intimated, we haven't really discussed this in detail, that the nature of that type of sabotage
could only have been done by a government. So it was probably Navy SEALs doing that.
And if so, would something of that magnitude, which is an act of war on Russia,
could only have happened if the President of the United States
had signed off on it, Phil. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this was a major escalation,
and particularly the feeble attempt made afterwards to blame it on the Russians. The
Russians destroyed their own property, apparently, to punish us. Yeah,
that makes a lot of sense. And, you know, this is the kind of crap that we've been hearing
ever since the fighting started in February. The president had to approve this kind of action.
It's an act of war, very definitely an act of war, and a major escalation in a conflict in which, unfortunately, both sides are talking nuclear.
Now, that's what really scares me. When I was in Europe and I heard that Biden had made a speech
the day before and he was talking about Armageddon, is this man tightly wrapped? Is the policy something that anyone with an IQ above 16 has actually considered?
One of the things he said while you were away, and I'm sure you grasped this knowing you, you devour the news from a variety of sources, you told us, was a threat to China that we would defend Taiwan. I mean, Taiwan is an island. We
have maybe a dozen troops there that are acknowledged. I don't know how we would get
the materials there needed. We'd have to get it through the Chinese Navy and beyond the Chinese
Air Force. And I can't imagine a will on the part of the American people to shed a drop of American blood or spend a dollar
of American borrowed cash to defend Taiwan. But yet in the midst of this conflagration with
Ukraine, Biden has chosen to raise that issue and to take a stand that sounded a bit more like
Donald Trump than JFK. Yeah, well, I have to believe that this is a, shall we say,
a three-week policy. They are throwing every card on the table to show how tough, resolved,
determined, and powerful the United States is. He also made some comment about how strong the U.S.
economy is. Well, you know,
that contradicts everything else that's being said by every economist.
And this stuff is being thrown on the table in hopes that when the election comes in November,
that the Democrats will be able to hold on. But we'll see how that's going to play out. Getting back to the blowing up of the bridge
to Crimea or from Crimea, whichever direction you're going, would the president have had to
sign off on that since if the CIA or the SEALs were involved, that too was an act of war,
just like the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline?
I would suspect that if the U.S. were directly involved, he would have to do so.
So how does that work? Does some senior CIA management person go to the White House with a
team of analysts there or whoever and say, Mr. President, we want to work with the Brits to blow up this bridge.
Mr. President, we want to work with the Navy to blow up this pipeline. And Joe listens,
and he signs a piece of paper authorizing it. Is that the way it works?
Well, I think in this case, obviously, since it was a military operation,
it more likely would be the Secretary of Defense or a national security advisor that would actually go to the president
and say, we need your authorization, we need your consent to do this. And I don't know if anything,
if it amounts to signing a piece of paper or not, but I think it is a solid commitment
that the president has to make to do this sort of thing because it's
it's again an act of war let me ask you what i have been asking uh colonel mcgregor
uh and scott ritter very simple one sentence question can russia lose this war?
Well, of course, winning and losing is a very subjective sort of thing.
I think Russia.
Only somebody with a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.
And I say that with the greatest of respect.
Started out that way because you can imagine McGregor said, no, they can't lose.
Ritter said, no, they can't lose. Ritter said, no, they can't lose.
And I'm thinking, I got to ask Phil.
I would say there are ways to win and lose. You can win basically on the battlefield where I believe Russia has no chance of losing,
although it may not have quite the capability to accomplish everything it initially wanted to set out.
So is that a loss?
No, I don't think so.
I think Russia will basically accomplish most of what it sought.
But losing is basically the drubbing that Russia and Putin have been taking from the
international media, which is being orchestrated primarily by the
united states and britain so they're they're making russia look bad uh no matter what russia
does or what it succeeds in doing but i think in terms of the uh objectives the uh maintenance of
of crimea as part of russia and the uh the other provinces that are primarily Russian eventually
becoming part of Russia. They are part of Russia as far as they're concerned right now.
I think Russia will accomplish those things. Phil Giraldi, always a pleasure. Thank you very
much for joining us. We hope you come back again soon. Sure will. Thank you very much.
Of course. Justin Politano for Judging Freedom.