Judging Freedom - Weapons All Around the World - Who Feels Threatened? w/Ray McGovern fmr CIA

Episode Date: August 28, 2023

Weapons All Around the World - Who Feels Threatened? w/Ray McGovern fmr CIASponsored by: Lear Capital - https://LearJudgeNap.comIt's time to take control of your financial future and consider investing in gold.Consider adding gold to your portfolio with the company I trust – Lear Capital. Over 25 years of experience, thousands of 5-star reviews, and a 24-hour risk-free purchase guarantee. Give Lear a call today at 800- 511-4620 – the information is Free and there is no obligation to purchase. Get your Gold and Silver wealth protection guides, get your questions answered, and there is zero pressure to buy. Or inquire online @ https://LearJudgeNap.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Thank you. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Monday, August 28, 2023. Ray McGovern joins us now. Ray, always a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you for joining us. You and I have been emailing each other lately over this issue of how would America feel if the level of offensive weaponry purporting to be defensive was at our borders and aimed at us, much as NATO has weaponry aimed at Russia, in an effort to understand President Putin's mindset. And one of the pieces, of course, that you and I talked about was when this actually happened in 1962. And we came just a whisker away from nuclear annihilation. So give us your thoughts, please, on American exceptionalism, that America can do things and get away with it that no other country can, that Washington can tell the rest of the world how to live, and that Putin, in Washington's

view, does not have the right to rid his neighbors of offensive weaponry aimed at him. Judge, thanks for asking this, because I think Americans can relate to this issue. The way it's usually phrased is, what would happen if Russia came and overthrew the government in Mexico City and then started putting intermediate or medium-range ballistic missiles on the border of Texas? What would we do? Well, you don't have to be hypothetical about that. As you just mentioned, Judge, it happened. It happened in 1962. It happened just as I was coming on active duty as an infantry intelligence officer at Fort Benning, Georgia. Why do I mention that?

Because when we arrived, there were no weapons at the Army Infantry Training Center at Fort Benning. They were all down in Key West, ready to go into Cuba. So long story short, Khrushchev, the Soviet leader at the time, thought he'd win one with John Kennedy. He had pretty much embarrassed him at Vienna and thought it was kind of a pushover. So he acquiesced in his general's desire to put offensive missiles in Cuba because Castro asked him, said, here's a place you can do it. Well, long story short, he did. OK, we didn't find out about it. Unfortunately, we blame cloud cover.

But finally, the U-2s were found, and Kennedy was faced with this choice. What does he do? Well, he knew, as I've shown in some maps here, that these medium-range ballistic missiles could reach Washington in about 10 minutes, could reach Omaha in about 12 minutes, Norfolk, you name it, Savannah, could reach all these things within minutes, okay? Seven minutes was pretty much the average. And so he said, you got to take them out, Nikita Khrushchev, you got to take them out. He threatened nuclear war, John Kennedy did. And as I said before, prepared this invasion force to go into Cuba, take over the Castro. What did Khrushchev do? He looked around at his generals.

He said, oh, what are we going to do now, for God's sake? This is not an existential threat that we face. Kennedy has persuaded me that this is an existential threat for him. Let's take those damn things out of there. Well, they made a deal, okay? Bobby Kennedy was instrumental in saying and said okay if you keep quiet about it we'll withdraw these offensive missiles we have in turkey in a couple of months okay and they made good on that promise in other words they were talking to each other the deal was struck and

the u.s which faced an existential threat at the time uh prev because Khrushchev was a sensible person, and he said, I don't want to get involved in a nuclear war, and things look really good the following year. Both of them, having been through this, this Khrushchev, were about to make real peace, and John Kennedy was killed. Now, what's the analogy here? Americans don't know that medium-range ballistic missiles have gone up in Romania and Poland. Now, what we have is capsules that these intermediate and medium-range missiles fit into. Cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, eventually hypersonic missiles, you know, like eight or nine times the speed of sound. They could go into these capsules, which are covered,

so you can't see what's exactly in there, in Romania and Poland now. Now, Putin, on the 21st of December 2021, got up before all his generals and he said, look, this puts me at risk. Seven minutes, seven minutes flying time, five minutes once the U.S. gets hypersonic missiles, which we know they will get eventually, and they will give them to Ukraine. If you look at the map, Ukraine is even closer to Russia than Poland or Romania. So what happened? Next thing you know, Putin calls up Biden.

It's the 30th of December. Now, we don't have anything but a readout from that. And the readout says, Mr. Biden said that Washington has no intention of putting offensive strike missiles in Ukraine, period, end quote. Whoa! Next day, New Year's Eve was a big celebration in the Kremlin. The Russians were saying, my God, they're taking us seriously. They're taking our concerns seriously. And the negotiations in Geneva are off to a great start. Finish up here. Well, our negotiators got to Geneva and said, we don't know anything about this. Forget about it. Six weeks later, on the 12th of February 2002 now, just what, 12 days before the invasion of Ukraine, Putin and Biden talked again. The readout from that said, Mr. Biden would not discuss his former

undertaking that there would be no offensive strike missiles in Ukraine. This was not discussed, not able to be discussed. So 12 days later. Now, I'm not saying that these intermediate or these medium and intermediate range ballistic missiles were the only reason. We also know that there was a geometric increase in shelling from the Ukrainian army into these Russian speaking areas of Donbass. it peaked right around February 22nd, 23rd. It peaked before that, started up February 16th. So that too was one reason why a preemptive move was decided upon by the Kremlin. So the human analogies should speak to it. Most Americans don't know this history as you've just outlined it.

I mean, they generally know what happened in 1962 with the Cuban Missile Crisis. But with respect to the communications between Putin and Biden, I don't think most Americans know that. The mainstream media doesn't report that the Ukrainians were shelling Russian-speaking Ukraine in early February of 21. They just don't talk about that. Was there the outline of a peace agreement on the table in Geneva, which Washington instructed Kiev to reject? The Russians had given us and NATO a draft of what they call their treaty for the new arrangement in Europe. They gave it to us on December 17th in both places.

Five of the eight major provisions of that treaty had to do with medium-range ballistic missiles. Five of the eight, okay? That's why Putin's advisors could say on New Year's Eve, my God, they're taking us seriously. They're willing to talk about this threat. So yes, this was proposed by Biden. It was not negotiated. Ask Wendy Sherman, for God's sake. She was the negotiator. Why were you told not to discuss this when Biden told Putin personally on the phone on the 30th of December that he had no intention, Washington had no intention of

putting offensive strike missiles in Ukraine. That was a big deal. And it completely fell off the, it didn't appear in the press at all. And only the Russians had the readout and told us about it. You know, readouts are readout. Never have we had readouts that haven't been actually confirmed or affirmed by both parties. We're going to take a break for a commercial announcement from our sponsor. When we come back, the CIA and its culture of lying with Ray McGovern right after this. Hi, everyone. Judge Napolitano here. and the verdict is in. Everywhere I go, people are complaining how expensive things are and how their stomachs turn every time

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You see it on the screen. 800-511-4620. 800-511-4620, or use the internet as I do, learjudgenap.com, and get your free gold investment guide and learn how to take control of your financial future. Now, listen to this. My friends at Lear are offering to Judging Freedom customers only a $15,000 bonus in gold. Call today and see if you qualify for it. 800-511-46 learjudgenapp.com. Before we get into the CIA and the culture of lying, somehow the American government wants us to believe that NATO and the West encirclement of Russia and China is defensive only, even though these, of course, are offensive weapons aimed at the mainland of both countries. Have they encircled the U.S.? Are there weapons aimed at the U.S. now that arguably are controlled by the Chinese or the Russians?

No, no, they're not allowed. Judge, the Monroe Doctrine doesn't allow them. It's really quite interesting, isn't it? We have John Kirby getting up at the White House and saying, we are very concerned about China and China's activities in the East and South China Seas and the Taiwan Straits. We're worried about what they're doing in their hemisphere. See, the Chinese say, well, hello, what about what you call our hemisphere, which is what John Kirby says. They're actually interfering now in our hemisphere.

Well, that must be the rules-based international order that no one can find in Wikipedia. What we say in our hemisphere goes. So the answer to your question, no, the Russians tried one time, didn't come out very well for them. Nobody really tried since then. And the missiles that Bobby and Jack Kennedy negotiated to be removed from Turkey and Italy, they're back, right? Not the same ones, but more sophisticated, more modern, more effective ones are back. Yeah, you know, in the major speech that Putin gave three days before the invasion, he pointed out that these things were back, that they were very, very fast, very quick reaction time for him, and that they were already in there.

And that, as he put it, Ukraine is going to get them from the U.S. Now, hello, if Cuba got them from the U.S., well, that was not allowed because of our strength there that we could prevent it. But, you know, if you look at it, John F. Kennedy did some illegal things. You know, blockade, that's illegal. He called it quarantine, but that makes it not less illegal. Assembling an invasion force opposite Cuba, and then threatening nuclear war. You're not supposed to do that under the UN Charter.

Nobody said then, Judge, that, wait a second, Fidel Castro is a free sovereign country. He has the right to choose his own allies and to invite people in to give him defense equipment. Nobody said that, you know. Nobody said, but JFK, you're doing illegal things, for God's sake, don't do these illegal, no, everybody clap your hands. Weapons that NATO has surrounding Russia, are they aimed at civilian population or are they aimed at Russian military facilities?

Well, it depends on what kind are in there. In a briefing I gave four months ago, I showed how these capsules were originally designed to be fit into ships, okay? Now they're upstanding, standing up in bases in Poland and Romania. Problem is, on the top of the capsule, it's closed, so you can't see what's in there. The size of the capsule accommodates cruise missiles, eventually hypersonic missiles, so the Russians don't know what's in there. Most likely, they're targeted on major command centers like Moscow, but also the Russian ICBM fleet in the European part of Russia are also in range. So they can't be sure. All they know is that these installations are already there. Even if they're peopled by what

they originally called anti-ballistic missiles, they can't be sure of that. And even if they are, you slip a little CD in there. You don't even need a DVD for guys. You put a CD in the program and you change it for an offensive tomahawk or even worse, hypersonic missile. Can it be done overnight? Yes, it can be done overnight. Do you need a big derrick to put the new missiles in? No, you don't. It can be done very subtly.

Everyone agrees with that. That is everyone who I trust in the U.S. government, and that includes people like Ted Postol, who worked on these issues forever and is very conversant in what the physics of this is. He's a physics professor at MIT. And everything you've just told us, obviously Russian intelligence and President Putin knows. Yeah, they know what they know and they know what they don't know. And what they don't know is just as worrying

as what they know. Tell me about, tell us about the CIA and lying. Now, I know that you were an analyst. You took raw data and analyzed it and presented it to the White House. You were not one of these people on the ground co-opting spies, lying, lying to superiors, lying to colleagues, lying to adversaries, lying when they do this, whenever they can, to the press directly or indirectly. Well, Judge, all I can speak for is when I was there, it was a couple of decades ago. When you talk about the ethos in the CIA, there were two, okay? We were paid and we were able to tell the truth to the president. I was able to tell the president what I thought Khrushchev or Brezhnev or whoever was in charge in Russia, what they were actually trying to do,

whether we could have arms agreements with them or whatever, okay? Now, the other part, which was behind turnstiles, physical turnstiles, if you will, on every floor of the CIA headquarters building were the guys that did the operations. Now, some of those are really smart, clever guys, and they cultivated and got spies. Not very many Russian spies, but enough to help, okay? The other guys were involved in covert action. Now, covert action, ipso facto, lies don't enter the equation. It's all fair in the love and war. You do what you have to to achieve the mission, and it means blowing up the Nord Stream pipeline.

You salute and you say, yeah, we can do that. We'll get the Navy to help us in the Norwegians. We can do that. Just give us a couple of months. Problem is the people on the analyst side don't get any say over these cockamamie schemes that the director always is sort of co-opted by the operations side, and they go ahead without any review, without anybody saying,

okay, what are you going to do the next month? Is it almost as if there are two CIAs, the operations side, which does dirty deeds, and the analyst side, which takes raw data and makes sense of it and presents it to the White House. That's the way it was. That's the way it's supposed to be. Did you say there are literally turnstiles?

Why are there turnstiles in the CIA headquarters? To bar certain people from going on certain floors? Analysts, well, this is on every floor, okay? Analysts could not go to where the operations people were plotting whatever covert action or even clandestine collection, okay? And operatives could not go to the analyst side. Now we had secure phones and we used them plentifully and, you know, so we did stay in touch.

But the difference between the culture then andifully. And, you know, so we did stay in touch. But the difference between the culture then and now is very, very different, Judge. Right now, the answer is, no, they're all kind of scrunched up together. The analysts are targeteers for drone strikes, and the analysts are very much in the war. So, you know, an objective view of the war is not easy to come by, especially if we want to have a career in CIA, regrettably. Now, we've been through this before, but those on the ground gathering raw data, how do they know that that data is making its way to the White House? How do they know it hasn't been adulterated with politics? Or do they just assume, because this is the way the government works,

that it is adulterated with politics? Well, now, they're good soldiers. I have to say that they follow orders, okay? Whatever they're trying to collect, they collect and they send it back for the most part without any real treatment, as Truman used to call what he didn't want, treatment. And what happens when it gets to call what he didn't want, treatment. And what happens when it gets to headquarters, that's a whole different story. The malleable managers that were put into place starting in the 80s, for God's sake, under Bill Casey and Bobby Gates, they appointed in turn other malleable managers. And if you say to one of these new malleable managers, we want to make a war on Iraq,

or maybe this time we're going to make a war on Russia, for God's sake, most of them are in the mode, in this malleable mode. They say, well, how can we help? How can we gin up some WMD-type information to justify this war? It's that bad. Ray McGovern, always a pleasure, my man. Thank you very much for sharing the depth and breadth of your knowledge in this area. We all appreciate it.

Well, I hope I have a happier story to tell Sunday. I hope so, too. We'll see you at the end of the week in what is now one of our more popular segments with you and Larry Johnson, hopefully on Friday afternoon, but very much appreciated. Thank you. Thank you, Judge. Oh, if you like that, my dear friends, like, subscribe, tell a friend. We're up to 190,000, one, nine, zero, 190,000 subscribers. Our goal is 200,000 by Labor Day, which is a week from today. Unless there's crazy breaking news in this end of the world, we will be off on Labor

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