Judging Freedom - What Can & Will Putin do Next? w/ fmr CIA Jack Devine

Episode Date: April 5, 2022

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My guest today for a return appearance is Jack Devine. Jack is a former acting CIA director of operations. He's today the president of something called the Arkin Group. He is one of the foremost authorities in the world on the nature of the intelligence community, particularly in the area of the world that we're very interested in. Jack's great book, great book is called The Spy Master's Prism. I don't think there's any national security secrets revealed in that book, but there's a lot revealed in that book that will fascinate the reader about the nature of intelligence and Jack's life when he was active in that community. Jack, my dear friend, thanks for coming back on Judging Freedom.

It's a pleasure to be on. Thank you for noting the book. You're absolutely right. I had to go through a rigorous review. But in the preparation of the book, I actually found out a lot of things that were in the public record that I didn't dream were in there. So it turned out to be quite interesting. That's good, because if it's in the public record, obviously you can cite it. What can you tell us about the current American intelligence assessment of the plans of Vladimir Putin? I mean, does he plan to obliterate Ukraine? Is he going to pull back to the Donbass region in the east? Is this a war to the bitter end? Is it still popular in Russia? Is it popular at all in Russia? Can you address these issues, Jack?

Yeah. So I think, first of all, I think the intelligence community was spot on in terms of predicting. And I think even President Zelensky wasn't convinced they were going to invade until right the night before. So I think the intelligence community really nailed that. And that's one of the things that gets paid for, is early warning on an attack. So I give them high marks. Now, there you have multiple means of collecting intelligence, signals intelligence, communications, movement, overhead pictures. When you talk about what's in Putin's mind, now it gets really tricky and really hard.

So having been in those positions, I don't envy the job where satellites don't help you and intercepts are largely helpful. So what's in Putin's mind? And he has a much more restricted contained world than most national leaders. I mean, whether or not he was... What do you mean by that? What do you mean by he has a more restricted and contained world than most national leaders? I think COVID, I think he took COVID to heart, so to speak, and he limited his, and you can see with his briefings, I mean, they're hard to imagine in an American setting where the president of the United States has people 25 feet away from him, right? Or at the end of the table, two generals in the COVID world.

So I think he's limited his mobility, his friends. I think it's a narrower world. Although I do think the pundits, and I would include in there, you know, intelligence pundits and so on, may seem a little more restricted down to a handful of people. I think it's more than that. But I think he does it. I think he has his own counsel. I think he has people that he's trusted. You know, when you're a dictator, and that's what we have, an autocrat, we'll put a nicer spin on it. Is he getting an accurate picture of what's going on on the ground in Ukraine? Are we getting an accurate picture of what's going on in Ukraine?

I'm not worried about us. I mean, we really, our military is trained to provide accurate information. I'm not saying there isn't a glitch here or there. The coordination process, democracies do, this is one of the strengths of democracy, is that you have an exchange of views. The views are spread out over a broader range. When we don't do it, that's when we have political flaps, spy flaps is when you don't do the coordination. In autocratic systems,

there's a genuine fear of telling the boss what he doesn't want to hear. So I think he is more prone to getting yes, sir, that's a great idea, why not invade. And I do think that on the ground there's a fear that the report back that you're losing, right? Because bad things can happen to you if you lose in a tough, in that tough environment. So I don't think, I think their assessment was off. And I would say it could have been honestly off. In other words, they weren't yes-manning. They all believed that somehow the Ukrainians were going to roll over and that it would be a cakewalk. And there is some case to be made for that, but clearly the determination of the Ukrainians to fight, they missed that. Then they decided and they came up with a strategy, and this is the part where

the war fighters, and I would defer to them, they had a grandiose strategy with an army that was far less effective than Putin, I think, or anyone else realized. I'm surprised at how poor its logistics, its planning, even the discipline within its troops, and I guess we'll get to atrocities somewhere. So I think he spent a lot of money on high-end technology weapons, and they didn't do enough on blocking and tackling and the training and logistics. I ran the program to get the Russians out of Afghanistan for the CIA at one point. And the real heroes are the logistics people. How do you make things move on time? And you better pay a lot of attention. You don't get big awards. You don't get on the front page of a magazine. But, you know, Ulysses S.

Grant won the war against Lee by being a logistics expert. Right, right. It's simplifying, but my point is, you know, there was a lot of poor preparation for this. Now, they look like they're on their back heels. They really took a suffer to defeat. There's no way you can say that the first phase of this war was not a defeat for the Russians. They're stunned. They're frustrated. They're angry at themselves, you know, and everybody else that walks near them. But now they're regrouping, and I am concerned. They've now decided on a different strategy, which I think probably makes more sense. In other words, go concentrate your effort in the east. So I don't think this war is over.

And I think there's going to be a really tough fight down there. And it's a different fight than in Kiev. Does the imposition of American sanctions affect Putin's strategy at all? I think there's two issues. One, I think it's painful over a period of time it's going to really grind down the Russians. I don't think it impacts on his strategy at all. In other words, I think he, and this often happens in American political decisions in the White House and elsewhere, that is people talk about oil and the important, but really

often it's just straight politics and political he wanted the ukraine as to make russia great again and to add all the stands and everything else around it one of the points we miss is the reason you want it is the real enemy is us i mean this is really a 1950 mindset so he wanted it and he wants it at almost any price. And that's what I think we need to realize, that as good as the sanctions are and you make them better, he is going to hang tough. He's going to hang tough on the sanctions, try and find every way to evade it. So sanctions are not going to change the negotiations. What will change negotiations, I'm sorry, Judge, is the fighting on the ground. That's the only thing that is going to change the negotiations. What do we do about the atrocities? Let's assume that they're real. That picture that's been all over the world. I don't know if it's a man or a woman. You can't see the face with hands tied

behind the back and a bullet in the brain. And many more like it. It's gut-wrenching. So what's being said widely now is that it's not just in one isolated place. It's more general. If that turns out to be the case, then what you have is what I alluded to earlier, an army that isn't disciplined and trained. And, you know, were orders given? Probably not. But was the lack of training, understanding of how you occupy areas, because what you have are troops that are so frustrated, so angry,

and they're in a defeat mode, that they do extreme measures and they're not thinking about the consequences. And the consequences are huge. Because once you commit atrocities, it puts you in a unique category of countries. And you become a genuine untouchable, right? In other words, how do you have Putin at dinner if he's responsible or Russian, the Russian generals? So I think the world will be tremendously repulsed if this, and I think they already are.

I mean, I think it's changed the dynamic about fighting to save the Ukrainians to this is a really evil you know, evil government, if you will, if it is government sponsored. But I think it's really government shortcomings in the sense that there weren't any checks and balances on this, you know, and their approach to war and looking at Ukrainians, you don't do this unless you really hate Ukrainians. All right, so does he think that he captures Ukraine, those wheat fields, they're not destroyed, become his,

Zelensky flees to Geneva. Does he think he can, and you just said you don't think so, return to the international scene? Never. He shrunk the day his army walked into Ukraine. In other words, he was viewed as a political force in the world, a powerful guy. Now he'll be a shrunken, desperate criminal who nobody's going to want to deal with.

I mean, he is now in a very weakened position. Having said that, you know, don't write his obituary because despots can hang on. Look how long Castro hung in, or, you know, Chavez and Madero or Assad. You know, we're always predicting they're going in, you Chavez and Madero or Assad. We're always predicting they're going in 24 hours or whatever. But he is a much weakened leader who could never, how can he go to Versailles in a tuxedo and have champagne

with a G20 or something? So I think he's finished. There's no comeback. He can hold on and grind Russia down and subjugate it to the horrible repression. MR. Grind Ukraine down.

SECRETARY BLINKEN No, Russia. No, don't even misspeak. I think he's going to have a bigger problem in Ukraine than he'll have over the long run in Russia. But in Ukraine, I think he's, if its generals are talking, they're going to say, look, occupying it and controlling the whole country is probably beyond the pale. But maybe we can, it reminds me of Afghanistan. We'll take a couple of the big cities and we'll hold it. But, you know, we're going to have an insurgency and it'll be hit and run and it'll go on. How exposed is Putin to being removed from office by either the intelligence community, which you told me has its own little army, he must know about that, he's a former member of the intelligence community, or by his senior military people? A lot of autocrats are walked

out the door, right? I mean, taken to the chopping box. But I think that's less likely here. I think the people may be unhappy, but in order to remove a leader, if you're going to have a conspiracy, it requires multiple people. And they're hard to organize. And I think he's got a grip on his own institutions. In other words, there's enough fear in there that if Billy tries to reach Harry and if someone finds out they're dead, they're gone, they disappear. So I think the classical coup is not likely at all. And I think what is more likely, my view is that the system, let's say after some settlement, let's hope it's one that is not positive for Putin.

Once his army leaves and Russia still has to live with the aftermath of it. And I think the citizenry gets less happy. The government disgruntled people get happy. But the ability to organize a coup, I think, is probably limited. What I would predict more likely is that someday there's a demonstration that gets

bigger and out of hand sooner, and the military and the police just in an uncoordinated way decided they're not going to suppress it. And the next thing you have a changing government. So I think it's longer. Those that are waiting for palace coup. Now I could wake up tomorrow morning.

I would not be surprised if he was taken out tomorrow. Right. But I don't really feel that that's what's going to happen or that there's a group of generals so disgusted. But the country, once the country is considered to be, you know, a lame country,

you think the Chinese want to be in bed with them forever? Who's going to be their ally? It'll be strictly commercial ties. It'll be everybody in that country will be looked upon as, you know, a second, second, third rate person. And eventually it grinds on the society. We haven't really had a dictator who's waged a war like this in Europe since Hitler. He had no moral compass. Putin obviously

has no moral compass. To whom can he turn? What can he say to a crowd to get them to cheer that will justify what he's done to capture some plots of dirt in Ukraine. One thing that surprises me is that given the world we live in the social media, I would have predicted that everybody in Russia knew the full story, right? And that he would try disinformation,

but it would only be effective around the corner. But every indication that I can see is that there's a large number of Russians that actually believe it's disinformation. You know, the atrocities are a Ukrainian plot. And so, you know, the disinformation part of this. He might be able, I don't know how it's possible, but he might be able to convince a significant number of the Russian people that he was put upon and that it was the Americans were behind it and so on. All I'm saying to the judges, that wears down over time.

You know, they had demonstrations in Berlin, so and so, I said, well, that's a paid demonstration, right? In other words, it's one that's organized and, you know, it's not spontaneous. I mean, I don't know how you can sit and look at objective any form of Western media and not come to the conclusion that what happened is evil. The fact that he invaded, saying that Ukraine was going to pick on him and invade and he went into, how can you say that with a straight face? But he did, and a lot of people in his own country seem to have signed up to it amazingly. I don't think it's so much in the urban areas as it is in the countryside, but even there, they get the numbers that they

say. A number of people in the cities have to think that Russia is not the instigator, but I think no matter any objective view of this thing, it has to look at Putin as basically having undertaken an evil

enterprise here. Is there a view in the State Department or the American intelligence community that they want to bring about or use this in an effort to to oust putin to bring about regime change was was president biden speaking out of school or just was that just some loose thought in his head when he said regime change this guy can't be allowed to stay in office well some of my libertarian friends you know that i'm one, and some of your former colleagues say that the State Department has been manipulating for regime change since this guy took over in the year 2000. So on 2 March, I had an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, and I said, Putin has sowed the seeds of his own demise, right? Let him fall of his own weight.

Keep the pressure, maximum pressure on him, but do not meddle inside because the chances of it getting cocked up and turned upside down where people are saying, here are the Americans interfering regime change in our country. And I question the ability. I mean, listen, you're talking to a practitioner.

Look, the ability to have orchestrating that type of regime change in a major state, I would really counsel that this is unwise, that you strengthen all of the economic issues, you make the Ukrainian fight as strong as you can on their side. But just keep them boxed in, and his own people will bring an end to the Putin era. Jack, are we fighting? We will fail, and it will backfire. Are we fighting a proxy war right now? This isn't one of our choosing. I mean, this is really Putin decided to go in. There is no, I see no indication that, you know, we wanted to have a proxy war.

But at this point, I don't see where we have much of a choice that, you know, he goes in and takes over Ukraine. He then becomes a more dangerous threat to us. So I think we have to be in there. Why is he a dangerous threat to us, to the United States of America, if he succeeds in Ukraine? Well, this is a little bit, you know, even beyond the book, you know, I was pretty tough on him. But I didn't see him as intrinsically evil. I thought he was just a hard-nosed intelligence operator. And I think at the core, there's something fundamentally evil in his But the second thing is I didn't realize how intense. I really believe, and I've warned everybody in the book,

that he was trying to rebuild the Soviet Union. But I kept saying we need to reset with him, and now I realize we're the real enemy. Now, there was a guy who defected. They called him Comrade J. And I think 2004, I could be off a little bit on the year. But Commander J, when he joined the KGB, they asked him, what was the number one target?

U.S., NATO, and China, in that order. So when he joined in the 80s, that's what the target was. What was the ranking priority for the KGB in 2004? And he said, well, it was the U.S., NATO, and China. Now China has changed a bit. But what I'm saying is his overall, and it's hard to realize this where we sit, he really believes the United States is out to get him. I mean, and that he has to fight like

Stalin. So that's why it's not about Ukraine. It's about us. How are we harmed if he takes over Ukraine? Well, the question is, will he stay there? In other i've been successful why don't i take the the baldics why don't i you know look poland you know what's wrong with paul and i might be able to you know there's a lot of russians in poland um so i i i think he becomes first of all the gdp let's be practical gdp russia is like spain or. All through history, people said if you have Ukraine, now you become a player. So I think he wants to strengthen Russia becomes, you know, his nuclear weapons. If you took them away, it'd be a second-rate country. But with the Ukraine, he'd have to be in the league with the big boys. And that's why he wants that. So

if he wasn't aggressive towards what's the problem but i'm saying he really wants to have a fight with us and i think it's been i've been slow to coming to the conviction that it's not just making himself strong he really thinks that you know we need to be we need to be uh taught a lesson if his uh tank commanders misread their GPS devices and send projectiles across the border into Poland and they destroy American military equipment, there may be even harm some American personnel. What do we do? I think we fire right back. This is, when I was doing the Afghan war, there was a discussion about the stinger. If you put it in, it would start World War III. And very senior people in the intelligence world believed that.

I didn't believe that. I thought, look, what are they going to do? And I feel that way. I've been vacillating at least the beginning on the MiGs. But, you know, now we're putting tanks in and we should. Now I believe we should have put the MiGs in, okay, because what was he going to do? So here's the question. If he does that in any NATO country or hits any American, we must respond. And what is he going to do? I mean, you have to ask it.

You say, well, he's not going to use nuclear. You got to punch him back. And he does not have an army to match what he's now demonstrating. He does not have an army that matched Western armies. It's not sophisticated enough. It's communications, it's coordination. So if he wants to try that, he is getting the worst advice

the head of state can get to think that he can do that and walk away. It won't happen. Jack Devine, former acting CIA director of operations. It's always a pleasure to hear from you, Jack. I hope you'll come back again soon. Always glad to, Judge. Thank you for the opportunity.

Judge Napolitano, thank you Thank you, Judge Napolitano. Thank you, Jack. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. This podcast is sponsored by Talkspace. You know when you're really stressed or not feeling so great about your life or about yourself? Talking to someone who understands can really help. But who is that person? How do you find them? Where do you even start? Talkspace.

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