Judging Freedom - Ukraine & the CIA, What Games are Being Played w_ Larry Johnson

Episode Date: March 9, 2023

Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Thursday, March 9, 2023. It's about 3.35 or so in the afternoon here on the east coast of the United States. Our guest today is a longtime friend and colleague of mine, Larry Johnson. Larry has had a career in the State Department as a CIA, Larry's had a career in the CIA as an officer and analyst and in the State Department as the Deputy Director of the Counterterrorism Bureau. Larry, it's a pleasure. Welcome to Judging Freedom. Thanks, Judge. Good to be with you. Thank you. I want to talk to you about the destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline.

The 19 or 20 page report compiled by Cy Hirsch, for whom you and I have had some admiration in the past for his prior work. Very, very detailed. He doesn't reveal his sources. Notorious for having three sources for every allegation he makes. You've read the report. You've opined on it. How credible is it to believe that the President of the United States ordered the CIA and Navy SEALs to go down to the bottom of the Baltic and pack the pipeline with explosive materials and then three months later detonate it, all of which in my view is a war crime because it's an attack on another sovereign country, in this case a country that is a supposed ally of ours. So state-sponsored terrorism.

I've known Cy for over 40 years and I've always found him to be very thorough to go on once and telling a story and the story he lays out in his recent Substack publication on the destruction of the North Stream pipeline, it was very clearly that this was an operation that was planned outside of the normal requirement. It was not done by the CIA. The CIA elements played a role in it because it was carried out under the auspices of a classified military unit. Therefore they were able to get it by without briefing the Congress. Now, one of the important facts that

Sai talks about this diving unit that was based in Panama City, Florida. Well, that just happens to be the location of the CIA's maritime branch and the director of operations. So, gee, just a coincidence, I guess. One of the critical things that Cy gets into is that going down 200 feet in the Baltic Sea, it's extremely cold water. So you can't just slap on snorkel gear or scuba gear and go down.

Frankly, if you were scuba diving, you could only go to about 120 feet. So to descend to that full 200 feet below the surface of that sea requires a dry suit, requires some extensive equipment that will keep the pressure such that the diver is not, you know, isn't suffering hypoxia or getting the beds. So, and then you're carrying a lot of weight. So, upwards of 1,000 pounds of explosives. Just because you're in water doesn't mean the sun gets lighter. When CIA officers are asked to do things that are marginally immoral and marginally criminal, do they push back? Do they debate? Or do they respond as if they were army privates told to assault a hill against enemy fire? It depends upon the individual officer. I know, for example, during the wars in Central America in the 1986 to 89 period, the chief of

station in Costa Rica was asked by George, who was in charge of the Directorate of Operations at that time, to do something that was basically illegal. And that officer went ahead, did it, and ended up being prosecuted. Whereas the CIA Chief of Station in El Salvador, Jack McCabin, Jack was asked to do the same thing. He said, fine, put it in writing. Well, he wouldn't put it in writing, and he't put it in writing and he wouldn't do it and still and he didn't get you know he didn't get indicted so yeah there you know there's some that

people in them in the management chain that will pay play fast and loose with the facts and I I bet your buddy Jack Devine will know about that situation with Jack the cabinet and as well as the chief of station down in Costa Rica, because the individual in Costa Rica was really ill-served and unfairly treated. Jack Devine, of course, comes on the show on a regular basis and always mouths the CIA line, the company line, the government line. I'm happy and thrilled to have you and Ray McGovern and Phil Giraldi, people notoriously known for intellectual honesty,

no matter what their bosses want them to do. Last week, President Biden had a secret meeting for an hour with uh german chancellor schultz supposedly no translator schultz speaks perfect english as you know uh and no aids there i've snarkily said that's dangerous because how is joe going to remember what happened but anyway anyway uh within 48 hours of that secret private meeting about which no press was mentioned and nothing mentioned in the press, there's a front page story in The New York Times purported purporting to quote CIA officials that that the Nord Stream pipeline was destroyed by pro-Ukrainian activists. Yeah, the pro-Ukrainian activists were CIA and naval SEALs. But would the CIA be leaking that kind of information or have MI6 leak it just to sort of give Chancellor Scholz some cover, who probably said to Joe Biden, I'm dying a thousand deaths. You attacked us and I don't have any explanation that I can give the public.

It's really embarrassing. The story appeared in New York Times, Washington Post, Die Zeit in Germany, and there was also another publication in London. So I'll tell it basically the same story, that it was a pro-Ukrainian group. Probably say it's embarrassing is so sparse on the details. It does not even provide anywhere near a comprehensive technical explanation of how this could have been carried out. What the DeZyke account offers is what I call the Gilligan Express. You've got Ginger, Marianne, the professor, the skipper, and Gilligan on a yacht sailing into the Baltic Sea. They got a thousand pounds of explosives, which the professor built, and then Marianne and her friends bought them at the explosive. Boom, it blows. I thought at least it was there we took a little more care to come up and try to have a plausible story.

You know, no, it was a lie. But good lies are always based in some measure of truth. This was so absurd and ridiculous. It just is one more piece of evidence I offer of just the complete incompetence and decline in the quality of intelligence services. Here's your former colleague, Jack Devine, on whether or not CIA officers lie. According to Mike Pompeo, the former director, their job is to steal secrets and lie about it. We'll talk about that. Let me, you put a marker down.

Let me respond to that one. Go ahead. That is true outside of the U.S. and outside of the U.S. judicial system. I had a lawyer, a professional lawyer at my elbow for the last 15 years of my career, and I wasn't unique. What is he talking about, Larry? Well, I have first-hand experience seeing how CIA officers, particularly on the Directorate of Operations, lied. In one case, there was an individual, he was responsible for the military oversight in the Central American Task Force.

He sent out every day a report. He would send orders down to the countries, written out what they were supposed to carry out. Then he'd wait an hour or two, and he would release it as actual intelligence, claiming that that activity that he had ordered had actually been carried out when it hadn't. So, you know, the definite, they, they sort of like Bill Clinton trying to define what sex is, you know, there's, well, what do you mean by lying? You know, we're going to. Right. So, so Mike Pompeo, Mike Pompeo, the former director of the CIA, West Point guy, former secretary of state, and now perhaps a Republican,

a candidate for the Republican nomination for president in an unguarded moment, but with an open mic famously said, laughing and joking, we were taught to steal secrets and lie about it. I would assume that that's basically true. Yeah, well, it's sort of a buffoonery thing to say. Look, the reality is the act of spying, where you take your personnel and try to recruit people from other countries to give you information they're not supposed to give you. Yes, that is an element where you're going to not tell everybody who your source is. Now, is that lying or is that, you know, source protection? I draw a distinction between that and where you actually misrepresent facts about what's going on on the ground or facts about what the nature of the true relationship is.

I know one fellow who became a very senior CIA officer. He fabricated sources. And a friend of mine got a cash award for uncovering his fabricated sources. And yet, do you think the CIA fired him? Oh, no, he got promoted. So that lack of accountability in the CIA, it's been longstanding for 30 or 40 years. And it's just, that's part of the reason our intelligence services is so poor right now. Is the CIA on the ground in Ukraine, providing intel to their bosses in Langley, who are putting spin on it and then telling the Oval Office what they think the Oval Office wants to hear? All I can do is draw up on my prior experience in Central America, what I saw when we had case officers on the ground in Honduras.

And a couple of us analysts went down to Honduras, and these operations officers accosted us and said, why aren't you telling the truth? And it turned out they were sending truthful information back, but the people at headquarters on the Central American Task Force, people like Jack Devine, were quashing that information and not putting it out. So it is possible that there are CIA personnel on the ground in Ukraine that are sending back truthful information, but there are also those who are taking the party line, telling them what the Ukrainians are telling them. And the truth may not be actually getting up to the president. There's no incentive. Do the preparers of the president's daily briefing or whatever they call it today often put spin in there in order to please the president?

Usually not. They have to go with what they're given by the analysts or the material that comes up. I actually had not nearly the experience that Ray McGovern did, but I did work for a stint on the PDB in terms of editing pieces that would come up. And so it's based upon the raw intelligence that the analysts put together and then they write the piece up. We're usually not in a position to receive additional information to beef it up or to change it. Is it likely that American CIA have recruited agents from Russian intelligence services through whom they're gaining information about Russian military plans and are passing it on to the Ukrainians? Or would

American intel not trust Ukrainian intel? State it differently. Is Ukrainian intel trustworthy and professional or just political? Ukrainian intel is political, completely political. I think the U.S. ability to recruit Russian assets is history. The Russians, there was a period where America was really Ronald Reagan's city on a hill, a light for the world, seen as a beacon of freedom, seen as some place where truth was valued, where justice was meted out equitably. But the Russians are looking at the United States, and we're looking like the old Soviet Union. We're locking up people that are political opponents.

The judicial system is corrupt. We've got a media that's acting like the worst of Profita in the old Soviet days, where they try to drown out anybody that dares speak a truth that doesn't go along with the popular narrative. So the incentive to recruit Russians is very difficult. If anything, I think the Russians are having a field day recruiting U.S. intelligence assets. Wow. Why do you think that the media, which of course was fiercely against the Vietnam War in that era, and we're talking 50 or 60 years ago, why do you think the media today is either cowed by or in bed with the government? Does the CIA pass on to the media versions of events that the White House or Langley wants out there,

whether those versions are connected to the truth or not? The real problem is that the concentration, the court concentration and control over the media has, there was an era 40 years ago where there was competition and there was a actually a strong incentive for the washington post to try to beat out the new york times but now with the vast corporate control over them there's little incentive for these different media entities to put something that could potentially anger the government because the government in its regulatory capacity can hurt them not just through the FCC, but also through the SEC because these are corporate entities and they have potential vulnerabilities. Plus, those corporations are pouring lots of money into these political parties in order to have influence. So there's really no incentive in the system right now to tell the

truth. Can I add a small parenthetical phrase to what you just said? And the CIA knows all this and knows how to exploit it. Yes. Wow. Larry Johnson, go ahead. I'm just going to say, think of the CIA as a bored sheepdog that wants to be taken out for a walk. They'll do anything to please their masters. Larry, as candid and intellectually honest as you have always been in my professional career, and I hope you'll come back and join us on a regular basis. I would be honored to do so, Judge. Always good to see you. Thank you, my dear friend.

Judge Napolitano, more as we get it for judging freedom.