Judging Freedom - Ukraine_s Suicidal Offensive - Phil Giraldi fmr CIA

Episode Date: May 18, 2023

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Resolve to earn your degree in the new year in the Bay with WGU. With courses available online 24-7 and monthly start dates, WGU offers maximum flexibility so you can focus on your future. Learn more at wgu.edu. Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here with Judging Freedom. Today is Thursday, May 18th, 2023. It's about 3.40 in the afternoon here on the east coast of the United States. Phil Giraldi joins us now.

Phil, always a pleasure. Welcome back to the show. I'm really intrigued and mystified. It's a head scratcher about the CIA putting out an advertisement, a digital advertisement, looking to recruit people. So give us a little bit of background. How difficult is it to recruit operatives from another country, particularly Russia, whether these operatives are employees of the Russian government or just Russian citizens that have unique access to information or data that the CIA wants? Well, there are a number of different answers to that. Sometimes the recruitment of an individual like that takes place totally cold, which means that the Russian or whoever it is, basically is in it for the money and resettlement in the West. This used to be a pattern while the Cold War was going on.

And they would basically walk into you or come into you and volunteer. The other recruitments that I think we're more interested in talking about right now are the ones that require a long, what they call developmental process where the CIA officer meets a Russian socially perhaps at another embassy event or something like that and the two people develop a relationship and the target person that the CIA officer would be interested in, relaxes and learns to trust the CIA officer and eventually submits to a recruitment based on the personal relationship. So there are a couple different ways it works. So if the recruited person, the recruited Russian, is also a Russian intelligence agent or an employee of the Russian government, is that person effectively taking their own life into their hands

by coming into the employee or into the ambit of an American CIA agent? Well, again, there are a couple of ways to look at that. It might well be that the Russian, let's call it a Russian, it could be someone else. But let's say that the Russian is covering his relationship with the CIA or with an American by claiming that he is the aggressor. He is the one trying to establish an intelligence relationship. So that's a possibility, and we've heard of that happening a number of times. So that's one way it works. And of course, if the guy is seriously thinking of defecting or betraying information that

is classified to the American officer, then of course, if he's caught, he would be quite possibly be tortured and then executed. Suppose he's a plant. I mean, suppose the Russian intel wants him to begin working for the CIA so that he can give information back to his Russian bosses and feed misleading or deceptive information to the CIA. I'm sure that that's a feasible situation as well. Sure. And that has happened more than once. It's called like a feeder operation where you're feeding in a source that will be giving you misleading or wrong information and we'll be doing that very deliberately. I'm sure that happens and the defenses against it are several. Obviously, if you start getting information from someone that proves to be unreliable every time, then there's a flag going up. And of course,

agents that are being run by the CIA are polygraphed at regular intervals to see if they're lying about the relationship. We're going to play an excerpt from this ad that the CIA made. It's very Hollywood-like. I don't know if you've seen it. And then I'm going to read some information afterwards, which is basically the script. I can't read the whole script. It's too long. But you'll see the sort of emotional tones that the CIA has used. Our friend and colleague Larry Johnson says the CIA has lost its mind if it thinks that this will work. I don't want to poison your views with Larry's.

I didn't mean poison. I don't want to influence your views with Larry's. But take a watch and take a listen to this. Но посмотрите и послушайте это. Это та жизнь, о которой я мечтал. Центральная интеллигенция выпустила видео на социальной платформе Телеграм. Почему жизни одних людей ценятся больше, чем жизни других? И кто это решает? Кто решает это? And who decides that? The video is part of a semi-public campaign to convince Russians disaffected by the Ukraine war to spy for Washington.

It portrays fictional Russian officials struggling with the decision to reach out to the American spy service. An official said the CIA hopes Russians will share information about the country's economy, foreign policy, and cyber activities. The people around you may not want you to hear the truth. We do. You aren't powerless.

Connect with us securely. There's a little bit more to the dialogue. This is the life I dreamed of, the path I have chosen for myself. Why is the life of some people more valuable than the lives of others? Who decides? This is my Russia. This will always be my Russia.

I will stand. My family will stand. We will live with dignity thanks to my actions. I mean, does this appeal to Russians to the point where they're going to knock on the door of the embassy saying, I want a defect or I have some information for you that you don't you don't already have? Well, I mean, that's the expectations, perhaps, as to why this is done. I think this is more an act of desperation on the part of the Central Intelligence Agency and the Biden administration to try to get some Russian defectors in effect, that they will be able to parade and say look even even russians are fed up with this and

and want to come over on the side of the good guys you know it's just kind of thinking i i think it's idiotic uh the the russians though the russian officials know perfectly well what they have to do to defect if they so choose and they're not going to be convinced by watching this film. I think Larry Johnson made the comment, who would want to leave a safe and clean Moscow for what goes on in San Francisco and a lot of American cities right now, where you're neither safe and nor is it clean. Okay, I get Larry's point. Are there quotas for bringing Russians in? I mean, is there some point at the end of the month or the end of the quarter or the end of the year where the chief of station will say, damn it, you folks haven't brought in enough double agents for me. Go out there and get some more. Yeah, I mean, there are sort of two stories there. Yeah, internally, there's always going to be pressure to make recruitments, even if the recruitments are worthless. I'm sure any CIA case officer like myself, who has spent a number of years overseas, has seen many more

worthless recruitments that are produced just to bring up the numbers, because numbers is what everyone goes by in Washington, and that sort of thing. So, you know, it very often is the way it works in the system. Do you think that the CIA would bring in phony or, I shouldn't say phony, useless recruits in order to fulfill a quota? Oh, absolutely. that uh that the the worthless recruits are probably the best ones to have because you have no expectations and it drives the numbers up uh it's it's you know it's a strange business buying is is a is a funny business and uh this kind of thing is not a surprise, I think, to anyone who's ever worked inside the system. Does the CIA spy on the Russian military? For example, when our friend and your former colleague, although I don't think you ever worked together, Jack Devine claims that Ukraine's leaders are patient and Putin is full of bluster and impatience. I mean, would he be getting that from any intel from current CIA?

Well, I don't know exactly who meets with Zelensky, and certainly nobody is meeting with Putin. So all of this is conjecture, or it comes secondhand, probably from sources who have an agenda. So this is how, you know, this is how this stuff gets really confusing. You see basically operations being run for no good objective, just to kind of keep the system going. And there are a lot of judgments that are being made about Russia that are just flat out wrong. There's no question about it.

So Jack is claiming that the Russian military is disillusioned. Would the CIA be in a position to opine on that? Jack doesn't give his sources. It could be the New York Times and the Washington Post. I don't know.

Well, if it's the Washington Post, we know it originated with the CIA more likely than not. And I don't want to demean Jack. He's a friend and he comes on here and he's a contrarian to what you and I believe and virtually all of my viewers do. But when he says the Russian military is disillusioned and he claimed to have concluded that from Intel reports. Stated differently, does American Intel spy, over whatever tools you guys have had, on the Russian military during this conflict with Ukraine?

Oh, absolutely. Both military intelligence and civilian intelligence like CIA would have the Russian military as a high priority target. But I would say to Jack that a lot of these judgments that are being made are snapshots. That means, in effect, that perhaps some Russian colonel got on the phone that was not secure, and he said some things complaining about the general that he works for and stuff like that. So a lot of these judgments come from that kind of insight. And it's not as if you're sitting in the conference room with Putin and his generals, and they're talking frankly about the war. This is kind of stuff that you pick up here and there, and it leads to conclusions that I say are basically difficult to sustain. So I was going to ask you, and you pretty much touched on it, how American intel, whether it's the DEA, Defense Intelligence Agency, or the CIA,

gathers this information. If a Russian colonel calls his wife, or if a Russian colonel calls one of his lieutenants and uses his cell phone, is the CIA going to be able to listen to that conversation? Well, sometimes. If the cell phone is secured, if it's encrypted, they probably wouldn't be able to understand it. But on the other hand, you know, people are lazy. Russians have cell phones just like personal possession cell phones, just like we Americans do. And the soldiers will use their phones. A private will have a phone. He'll call his mother and say some things. So, you know, this is the kind of stuff, as I say, these are snapshots. These are bits and pieces of information, but that don't necessarily mean a whole lot. Is it likely that the CIA knows of Russian war plans in advance and either sends them to your bosses, in your case, former bosses, to Langley or sends them directly to their Ukrainian counterparts?

Well, this, again, is an issue that requires a little more discussion. The thing is that the CIA certainly picks up certain things. DIA certainly picks up certain things. NSA, we haven't discussed them. They certainly pick up probably a lot more. NSA operates in Ukraine or just in the U.S.? NSA operates everywhere. They have a section in most embassies, and that's exactly what they do. They intercept communications, and that's their main job. So anyway, this kind of stuff is, if it is collected and appears

credible, or even if it's not credible, it might be sent along the channel to Washington, and people there who are analysts can figure out what it means or doesn't mean. But this is not a sure thing. This is not exactly as if you push a button or you pick up a phone and suddenly you know the war plans of Russia. When you have various agencies, NSA, CIA, DIA, do they work together? Do they compete with each other? Is one the boss of the others? How does it work? Well, they all cooperate at a certain level, which means they talk to each other. They may have a monthly meeting together. The COS of the CIA station will meet with the head of the DIA and the head of the NSA, and they'll talk about things. But there's still a lot of secrets within their systems. They're not exactly a conduit that goes from one organization to the other.

They have different ways of doing things, different methodologies, and they have their own kind of internal secrets that they like to keep secret. And do they all work for the DNI, for the Director of National Intelligence? Theoretically, I suppose she's the boss of all of them, even though she's a civilian and many of these people are in the military. Yeah, I mean, theoretically, the channels all go up through her and then eventually, of course, to the White House and the National Security Advisor. So, yeah, in theory, it all kind of flows in a certain direction and winds up at a certain place but i wouldn't go too far with that there are certainly a lot of secrets within the organizations in terms of how they work and how they manage their information flows so uh we know that the american cia is trying to recruit

russians i would imagine that the fB, whatever they call themselves now, try and recruit Americans as well. Look at Audra James. Yeah, well, of course, that's the name of the game. It works two ways. When I'm developing that Russian case officer in Rome, he's developing me, you it's, it depends who, who makes the more convincing argument, shall we say, that ultimately will succeed, or nobody succeeds. Most often, these contacts don't essentially be in any kind of recruitment, they result in, you know, in a bit of back and forth, back and forth. And that's how it works. Tell me about the CIA and the American media and how it feeds its version of events to the

American media so that suddenly we just see this drumbeat in the Washington Post and the New York Times about how well Ukraine is doing, how crazy Prokosian is, how upset Putin is, how Putin may be sick, there's a blemish on his face, all this stuff. This has got to come from some intelligence sources releasing information, true or false, spin on it or no spin, to their favorite journalists? Well, again, this gets complicated. The CIA is not supposed to influence the media in the United States. I never worked with U.S.-based journalists when I was in Europe and the Middle East. I don't know anyone who did.

We worked on European journalists. And we often placed stories that then would be picked up in the United States. But we were definitely not allowed to go straight after an American journalist. I believe that most of American journalists who get instructions from the United States government are dealing with State Department press officers and people like that who operate, and Pentagon officers who operate largely overtly and openly. And once these journalists know that there'll be a quid pro quo with the United States, where they will be getting good information and also

advice on how to use that information, they're going to go for it. You and I talked last, and it was a great piece that you wrote about the difference between secrets and lies. I suppose I would be naive if I didn't think that the CIA will plant lies in order to influence a political outcome. Oh, absolutely. The CIA will construct stories. But again, how exactly it places the story becomes a little complicated. And it's often done by misdirection. It's given to somebody who's not a logical source for this information, but who will use it.

And once that information is used and out there, it gets picked up by other people. If people in the CIA happen to be against the American involvement in Ukraine and wanted to embarrass the administration by exposing documents which showed that the administration itself believed that Ukraine couldn't prevail in the war. Would they have any difficulty getting these documents into the hands of a naive young kid like the one in Boston who's now facing 25 years in jail, Jack Teixeira, for releasing this stuff? That's an exceptional case, obviously. But no, I don't think they would have any problem in getting it to him, maybe indirectly, but nevertheless getting it to him. Bill Giraldi, always a pleasure, my dear friend. Even when we talk about spy craft,

thank you for your intellectual honesty and your wealth of knowledge. We'll see you again soon. Thank you. Okay. You like that? There's more coming. Thank you very much for watching. Please share with your friends about judging freedom. We'll see you tomorrow at 9 a.m. Eastern time for a live report on the ground in Ukraine. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. accredited university that specializes in personalized learning. With courses available 24-7 and monthly start dates, you can earn your degree on your schedule. You may even be able to graduate sooner than you think by demonstrating mastery of the material you know. Make 2025 the year you focus on your future. Learn more at wgu.edu.