Judging Freedom - Ukraine’s Patience v. Russia’s Bluster JACK DEVINE fmr CIA

Episode Date: May 17, 2023

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Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Wednesday, May 17, 2023. It's about 3.15 or 3.20 in the afternoon here on the east coast of the United States. Jack Devine, fan favorite, joins us now. Jack, always a pleasure. Thank you for coming back to the show. Jack, do you believe that Russia can be driven, can militarily be driven from the parts of Ukraine that it now occupies? It would be a real stretch. One of the things I read the other day is, and it was, I think by, that was a Ukrainian, but basically once a retreat starts, you I don't think so. But if they start to run, I mean, that's psychological. They could gain a lot of ground. But I'm not anticipating that. My big thing is they're holding the line. We should tip our hat to that. That's big. If they

can hold them until they have to. When you say that, you mean if the Ukrainians can hold the line? Yes. Then the Russians on other aspects of the operation may take hold and they may have to pull back. But I don't think they can just drive them off the battlefield. Can the West make good on its claims or do you sense impatience on the part of the West, Western Europe and Washington, D.C.? I don't think there's impatience at the leadership level of the existing people and EU and nor in the policy levels, including in our Congress. But there is an isolationist strain in our country. And, you know, it's to be respected. And it served us well up until World War II. So there are people that are focused on returning home. And somehow we can live with an aggressive Russia somehow beating the rest of Europe, the pieces little by little. So I do think there is some pressure.

But I think the leadership is holding steady and I'm proud of that or happy with that. Is the CIA more likely than not on the ground in Ukraine and spying on Ukraine intelligence? That's a tough question, Judge. I would say I hope we're spying on everybody. Now, we have allies. We have the what do we call the CIA spy on the Supreme Court? Oh, absolutely not. Nothing domestic, Judge. Relax. It's not they're not following you. The FBI, maybe, but not the CIA. The CIA is prohibited from anything in the United States. What I was really saying is it's the mission. Take NSA. They're picking up everything around the world. But we do have the five eyes. And I think we adhere to that very conscientiously.

And there's some other allies that it's just politically too risky to be. OK, OK. So here's the point of my question. I asked it in a little snarky way because I I love to goad you because I'm so fond of you. Is there impatience on the part of Germany, Italy? We know there's impatience on the part of France. He said so himself, the president of France, Great Britain. Is there impatience there with, my God, we've got to give them more equipment and they're still not winning. Is that a fair way to assess Western Europe's view of the war as it stands today in mid-May? These are all political countries that are driven by political constituents, right? So it seems to me that the leadership is holding tough. And that means up until now,

they think that they have the majority of their constituents with them. And that's true in the United States as well. But, you know, how long does the war go on? At some point, there is a diminishing return. And Putin's strategy all along was to wear the West down so that we get wobbly knees and leave. And then he can. That's his only chance for victory. The only chance for victory is that we we wobble. OK, and I'm thinking from where I sit, I think we're going to stay the duration. Do you give any credibility to the call by Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, Victoria Nuland, for the Ukrainians to invade Crimea and for the United States to support that invasion? Wouldn't that be suicidal?

First of all, I wouldn't call it an invasion. It's their territory. They're not invading. Now, if you're what we really want to say is, are they going to try and take the Crimea? My view is, if you think it is feasible, if the Ukrainians think it's feasible, I would listen to the Ukrainians. They don't need guidance on what they need to do. They need the support. So I honestly think if we took the Crimea, I mean, I don't know. I think if I were Putin, it would be such egg on his face. But you don't try it just for the heck of, oh, let's see if we can get Crimea. That'll look really good. You have to go with ground troop and the generals that are carrying out the battle and whether it's... Does the CIA recommend various military strategies? In other words, is Bill Burns saying to Joe Biden, you know, send 50,000 troops in there and this will be over in a month?

That's not the role of the CIA director traditionally, but that is, you are to advise. You are not to set policy. That's State Department. Now, I'm not naive in the sense that obviously, okay, you've given your briefing and someone asked, but that is not the CIA's role to do that. What they can say is the opposition is such that if there isn't additional support, then they will collapse. That's an intelligence. That's appropriate for intelligence. But this is something the listeners don't understand, and it's really adhered to in the breach. And that is your job, everyone says it, incites it, not policy.

You're not in policy. But around the edges, the president asks you for your opinion, you give him your opinion. Okay. How difficult is it for the CIA to recruit Russian operatives to become double agents? Well, one of the, I always thought we had, it wasn't easy, but I always thought we had the upper hand. Why? A very high percentage of the Russian agents came to us. They wanted to be on our team. They actually, for some reason, and I can name many of them, they were repressed within their own system and they wanted to be on the West side. They saw opportunity. So they volunteered.

Now you had to put yourself in the right position. You also had to be careful that you weren't getting phony double agents. The Russians had to work for it, particularly as the Cold War went on. What was the Russians selling? All the gulags, all the collective farms. It wasn't viable after about, after the late 30s, it was not a viable option. America, it was always the beacon on the hill, still is. Is there a quota that people like you had for the number of Russians you can turn? More the merrier. Is there a quota, Jack?

No. I do know that know where occasioned. It isn't how I would approach it, where you might be the chief of division. You would say, well, how many people did you recruit this month? And, you know, it doesn't work that way. These come in, you know, they don't come in. I think it was T.S. Elliott said the spies come in waves or whatever. And the truth about it, they come one at a time.

You know, you're lucky if you have, I'm talking high quality. You're lucky if you have 20, I mean. Go with Ames. Ames, when he took them out, not all, he took out 11, and that was devastating. People that were extremely well placed. So quotas, it's artificial. It really is.

You talk about Ames, and, of course, as a result of what he did, the human being suffered horrifically. These people, right, these people who flip and become double agents, they're committing acts of treason against Russia, right? Thank God. Okay. They're with God and country on our side. I understand.

I understand. It's a risky thing. It's a risky thing for them to do. There's no going back if they get caught. Oh, the risks are huge, Judge. So many of them lost their lives. They take great risks. But the other thing they lose, Judge, is their families.

In other words, they leave their families. They can't talk to their family because if they do, then the family will be complicit in it. I want you to watch a CIA recruitment film that your former colleagues just put out last week. I'm going to do a little bit of narrating because there's subtitles on the bottom and some folks listen to this show rather than watch it. So it makes sense for everybody you'll hear my voice. Here we go. It's about a minute. I'm ready for this one. This is going to be good. Это та жизнь, о которой я мечтал? Тот путь, который я себе выбрал? Почему жизни одних людей ценятся больше, чем жизни других? И кто это решает?

Быть героем – это значит выстоять. Но выстоять – это ведь не значит терпеть напрасно. Лучший способ удержать заключенного от побега — сделать так, чтобы он никогда не узнал ее. Я выстою. Моя семья выстоит. Мы будем жить достойно, благодаря моим действиям. We will live worthily thanks to my actions. You ever seen anything like that, Jack? I can't say I have. I think it speaks to the age we're in. The world I grew up in was you really had to see a human being. You had to assess them.

You had to develop a relationship with them. And then you had to orchestrate the relationship to a point where you could ask the difficult question, are you prepared to work with us in carrying out our national objectives? I've seen this. I also believe the FBI had one out around the embassy, the Russian embassy in Washington. I think that's what I read. And it's electronically, and people are doing this today, ransomware, you know, people and people that are undermining in the crypto world and getting recruiting. They're recruiting people to open up their portals, right? So recruiting people through videos and through technology and exchange, I'm sure has some merit.

It doesn't feel – Does this work, Jack? Well, they'll have to see. I don't think they've been doing this for too long. The question I would have if I were sitting there, it says, reach out to us. Now, if I were in Russia, I'd say, wait a minute. Are they going to know that I reached out? You know, you told me securely. So what I found in reading through all of our spy cases, it took Russians, they spent a lot of time trying to figure out how they could approach an American, right? Because they were scared to death. But if nothing else, what I would say is good about the video, if you see it, you say, you know, I hadn't thought about joining the other side. I might not use this approach, but maybe I want to be on the other side because I think there's probably a lot of disillusionment today. I think it's a rich

hunting ground. Does Hollywood work? I mean, these are Hollywood techniques. It's a Hollywood production. Obviously, somebody who has the job you once had is running a paper mill. He's looking for more agents. It's the end of the month. It's time to fill the quota. And they decided to produce a movie. Well, I think a lot of people have creative ideas. You try out different things. Unfortunately, they buried most of my ideas that weren't worth much. But my point is, you know, there is what they do recognize, what the big message is. There are a lot of Russians that are disaffected with the situation with Putin. And if they come our way and they're in the right jobs, it makes a huge difference.

So I think it's worth trying. I think the important thing is to demonstrate to the Russians that we have the right game and the one you want to be with. And I think we're doing that. You recently wrote that Ukraine leaders are patient and Putin and his crew are full of bluster and impatience. What's the evidence for that, Jack? Well, first of all, it doesn't sound like me. But my point is, there's no doubt that the Ukrainians far exceeded.

I don't know any commentator that said the Ukrainians are going to pay the price like they're paying. They're as tough as they are, creative as. I mean, there are so many pluses. On the Russian side, just look at the pre-Goshen mess of the last couple of weeks. You and I have been talking about it for some time now. That is a terrible sign when you're running. You're in a Kremlin and you've got your military fighting among themselves. That is a terrible sign.

I agree with you. This pre-Goshen fellow, I can't put my hands around it. The Washington Post, which you know has been an outlet for the CIA. They would die if they thought that was true. Whatever. The Washington Post recently reported that Prokosian himself offered to deliver information about the location, size, and movement of Russian troops to Ukrainian intel, if they would guarantee a withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from Bakhmut. Now, even if that were true, I don't think it's true. Give me your opinion. That would be insane. He'd end up in Siberia if he did that.

I agree. First of all, my guess is that what the Washington Post really said is we didn't collect this information. This is information that someone else is reporting that this is what they did. Now, I would say it sounds like good disinformation if you wanted to make life difficult for Boghossian because there's some number of Russians in the power structure are going to believe that story. But I just think it stretches my sense of credibility. I think he would be dead if they caught him. Why would he trust the Ukrainians? He's trying to kill them. It just doesn't pass the smell test. But maybe I'm wrong.

If I were in command, I would take this with a big grain of salt. Let me ask you about his ranting and raving. Yeah, amazing. I mean, he publicly attacked by name the Minister of Defense. He publicly attacked by name the Chief of the General Staff. This would be like Eric Prince of Blackwater back in your day, publicly attacking Secretary Rumsfeld and General Petraeus and getting away with it? I think it's much worse because he has been supported by the Kremlin. I mean, he's directly, in other words, this isn't a private sector guy

who doesn't have deep policy relationships all through Africa. He's not doing that on his own on a government contract like we have. So it's an in-house dispute. That's the difference here. Princeton knows other contractors. That's not in-house. That's an outside. This is why it's so much more dangerous. Is the Russian army disillusioned with what you say is their lack of movement West? I think they should be disillusioned about everything. The army that they fielded, the strategy. Not should they be, are they from your intel sources? Well, I would never comment on my intel sources, but I would say I would find it highly unlikely that there isn't. Let me give you one tidbit that's better.

My understanding at the beginning, at least one-third of the hierarchy was reluctant, thought it was a bad idea. One-third at the very beginning. Another half were, let's go along with it. When you say one-third, you're talking about senior military leadership. My crystal ball suggested that. So I think there was disillusion at the beginning. If you're sitting down, you're responsible for sending men and women into combat. And you know, you're not sending them with the equipment, you know they're outclassed

in terms of strategy, it's very painful. You really have to be tough as nails to let your own people, not tough as nails, that's not right. You really have to be almost a sociopath to allow that to happen. So I think there's a lot of military. We got to get back to the way we really should be and develop a new army and let's learn a lesson. But they don't know how to leave. In the American intelligence community, is there respect for the Russian intelligence community, respect for its professionalism?

Well, I've always said, and I've said it on this wonderful show with all of my followers, enthusiastic followers, is that the intelligence community, the Russian experts, in my view, have overestimated, you know, and it was true. They nailed it. They nailed the invasion. But the official analysis was, you know, you don't go offer Zelensky an airplane ticket if you think the Russians are not going to be able to do well. Everyone thought the Russians were going to roll over. They thought they were better than they were. I've learned the hard way that they, in Afghanistan, that they were much weaker. All right. Well, that's American intel misjudging Russian military, right? Well, they're doubly responsible.

They should be able to assess their own. They don't have to collect secrets to evaluate their own military. Does the American intel community, your buddies at the CIA, your former colleagues, have respect for the Russian military leadership as professional military leaders? Tough question. I think the, I mean, there's probably high quality people and well-trained. I'm not, I don't want to demean this, but I think there's, there's a time warp. In other words, you can be good, but you're in a time warp. And I think they're stuck in this time warp of an old war where our generals have been fighting

and our troops have been fighting for 20 years nonstop. And they have the best techniques, the best strategies. They know the modern warfare. So it's not that they don't have the caliber of people. They built the wrong army for the wrong time and have the wrong strategy. Outside of that, I give them credit. They're tough soldiers, right? You can't make fun of them, but

it takes more than being tough and good. You have to have a strategy. You have to have the right equipment, and it's not working out. I mean, I find it amazing, actually, where they are. Jack Devine, always a pleasure, my dear friend. Well, pleasure always to be in touch with your audience.

Thank you. My audience loves you. They love you for a variety of reasons, but they love you. Well, thank you, Your Honor. All the best. We'll see you again. Thank you, Jack. Bye.

All right, my dear friends, more as we get it. Judge Napolitano, that means more of. Thank you, Jack. Bye. All right, my dear friends. More as we get it. Judge Napolitano. That means more of Jack Devine, too. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.