Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 12/29/25 Larry Johnson on the Forces Pushing for More War in Ukraine

Episode Date: December 31, 2025

Scott interviews Larry Johnson about Ukraine’s alleged assassination attempt against Putin, why European leaders seem so set on continuing the war in Ukraine, Trump’s naval build up near Venezuela, the risk of a terror attack in the US and more.  Discussed on the show: “Did Ukraine Try to Kill Putin?” (Sonar21) “Why is Susan Miller Doing Media?” (Sonar21) Anatomy of the State by Murray Rothbard Larry C. Johnson is a former CIA officer and intelligence analyst, and a former planner and advisor at the US State Department’s Office of Counter Terrorism. Follow his analysis at Sonar21. Audio cleaned up with the Podsworth app: https://podsworth.com Use code HORTON50 for 50% off your first order at Podsworth.com to clean up your voice recordings, sound like a pro, and also support the Scott Horton Show! For more on Scott's work: Check out The Libertarian Institute: https://www.libertarianinstitute.org Check out Scott's other show, Provoked, with Darryl Cooper https://youtube.com/@Provoked_Show Read Scott's books: Provoked: How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine https://amzn.to/47jMtg7 (The audiobook of Provoked is being published in sections at https://scotthortonshow.com) Enough Already: Time to End the War on Terrorism: https://amzn.to/3tgMCdw Fool’s Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan https://amzn.to/3HRufs0 Follow Scott on X @scotthortonshow And check out Scott’s full interview archives: https://scotthorton.org/all-interviews This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Roberts and Roberts Brokerage Incorporated https://rrbi.co Moon Does Artisan Coffee https://scotthorton.org/coffee; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom https://www.libertyclassroom.com/dap/a/?a=1616 and Dissident Media https://dissidentmedia.com You can also support Scott’s work by making a one-time or recurring donation at https://scotthorton.org/donate/https://scotthortonshow.com or https://patreon.com/scotthortonshow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You ladies and gentlemen of the press have been less than honest. Reporting to the American people what's going on in this country. Because the babies are making this. We're dealing with Hitler Revisited. This is the Scott Horton Show, Libertarian Foreign Policy, mostly. When the president visit, that means that it is not illegal. We're going to take out seven countries in five years. They don't know what the fuck they're doing.

Negotiate now. End this war. And now, here's your host, Scott Horton. Are you guys, introducing Larry Johnson. He used to be a CIA officer, but he's a good dude. And mostly he opposes American foreign policy now. And, well, actually, better. He explains what is really going on with America's horrific foreign policy

and all of its horrible consequences. So welcome back to the show. How are you doing, Larry? I'm well, Scott. Yeah, my policy is, let's keep our hands to ourselves. You know, it's what your mother used to tell you when you're a little kid. You know, don't hit your brother. Don't hit your sister.

Keep your hands to yourself. That, I think, would be a good foreign policy. A bunch of only children in Washington, D.C., I guess. Weren't raised on that one. Yeah, absolutely. That's the problem. All right, sonar21.com is the website with all your great writings. And I see you have some features.

guest writers and things from time to time there now as well. Lots of great stuff. So let's talk about Vladimir Zelensky came to town. Donald Trump talked on the phone to Putin. The 28-point plan became the 20-point plan. It's gone back and forth in the few weeks since we talked about this a little bit. It's been refined this way and that. And then, of course, there's breaking news this morning that Russia alleges that the Ukrainians

attempted to attack Vladimir Putin's vacation home. And so that would then presumably lead to the talks being suspended for now, you know, regardless of where they were on the negotiations before that, whether that's true or not. And I don't know, and I don't know if you know. But go ahead, take it from there. Tell us which thing. Okay. So let's understand when this attack took place.

this attack started, you know, the allegation is this, that there were 91 drones, long-distance drones, fired from Ukraine at the residence, one of the official residents of Vladimir Putin. Now, Putin wasn't there at the time because he hasn't lived in any of those residences for three years at least. He's been living in an apartment inside the Kremlin, number one. So that attack was launched while Zelensky and Trump were meeting in Mar-a-Lago. Because remember, the Russians reported it that it started on the 28th, which was, you know, yesterday, Sunday. And so 4 o'clock Mar-a-Lago time is midnight, Russia time. So that means around 2 p.m. Mar-a-Lago time, 3 p.m.

As Zelensky is showing up and they're sitting down to meet, this attack starts on the resident. of Putin. But Putin's not there. Judging by the reaction of the Russians, you know, there are a couple possibilities. Did the Russians stage this in order to give justification that they're going to completely walk away from the peace agreement or peace negotiations? I don't think so. What I think is more likely is this was an attack launched by Ukraine in order to discredit Zelensky. And it was done with the help, probably the Brits, because you don't get that kind of long-distance attack without intelligence support. And the only ones could provide that kind of intelligence support would be either the U.S.

and or the Brits. And it can't rule out that somebody within the CIA actually was doing this to also try to undermine any negotiations. That occurred to me right away, too, that even if it was true in Ukraine did this, that doesn't necessarily even imply that the president himself ordered it, and it could very well be meant to undermine his position. There are plenty of people in Ukraine who would rather keep the war going. Yeah, yeah.

And actually, I think that's what happened. Now, look, on the negotiation front, the negotiations aren't going to go anywhere, okay? This process will not move forward. Vladimir Putin, on June 14th, 2024, made it very clear what Russia's conditions were. And he's reiterated those same conditions multiple times as recently as last Saturday. It was Saturday or Friday. So it's unequivocal that the five territories that they have now absorbed into Russia, Crimea, as Apparisia, Harrison, the National Huns, those are,

permanently part of the Russian Federation. Nothing to negotiate there, not going to seed territory, not going to allow Ukraine to retain part of it. No, those are Russian, period. And in fact, Putin said on Saturday, he was in uniform addressing the military commanders who were engaged in the offensive in Ukraine, he said, the talks probably won't even be necessary because we're going to take these territories by force. So you've got that.

You've got the complete removal of all NATO forces out of Ukraine. And yet, what's Donald Trump and Europeans talking about? Oh, security guarantees for Ukraine, which means putting NATO forces in Ukraine. Russia's not going to accept that. I mean, that's completely unacceptable. Allowing Ukraine to have an 800,000-man army. That's not going to happen because when they started the special military operation, in the Ukrainian army was like 300,000, 275,000.

So now they want to expand it to 800,000 after almost three years of war or four years of war that Russia would agree to triple the size of the Ukrainian army almost. Not going to happen. The elections, elections have to be held. And one of the conditions Russia is insisting on is that Ukrainians that had fled into Russia,

they get to vote. So these are not minor items that have to be just, you know, can easily be settled in a talk or two. The territory is not negotiable. And so with that, I don't see how negotiations go forward. Plus, whatever agreement, let's just assume that the Russia and Trump could come to an agreement, I don't see the members of the House or Senate willing to support. such an agreement. In fact, you know, I've recommended that if the Russians get an agreement, that it'd be subject to a treaty and that you've got to get 67 senators that vote in support

of it. Boring that, the Russians got nothing. They just got Trump's word, and that can be easily broken or reversed. So that's why I say all of this dancing around Kabuki theater, I think it's largely meaningless. I think what Russia wants to do is get back into a normal relations with the United States, you know, have normal economic relations, but more importantly to diffuse the possibility of a nuclear war. So is that the purpose of just what they're doing here is essentially they're going through the motions of saying, look, we tried to do it. But then so ultimately Trump can go ahead and try to normalize relations with Russia without having solved Ukraine after. Correct. Correct. Yeah, and see, that's why I don't think Russia staged

this attack during the talks because Russia was easy to disprove. Let me put it that way. They claim 91 drones were fired. The United States, we've got satellite systems

and other aerial systems for recognizing, you know, doing reconnaissance over the area. We could easily say, no, there were no drones fired, not at all. We didn't detect a single one. They could prove that the Russians are lying.

And they don't really need a lie because they can just say, listen, man, we're holding on to that same hard line. Yeah. We don't need a new excuse. We're just telling you. This is it.

Yeah, exactly. So, I mean, they, plus the Russians are winning on the battlefield. Well, now, let me ask you this, because it's been since, I don't know, man,

at least October or September, that there were trial balloons like this and they swore, I know in the journal, they said that this was coming not from the white, I think the first one was the White House said the Kremlin, said. But I think the second one, the journal

said they got from the Kremlin themselves or maybe it was this guy that Wittkoff was talking to who's like, you know, Dmitriyev, to real Dmitriyov, yeah. Yeah, he's sort of a friend of the regime having informal set up talks or whatever. But anyway, they keep leaking

this over and over again, that maybe the Russians would be willing to climb down on more or less the current lines in Ziprosia and Kurson, since they still have so much of that territory left to take. And the case of Kurosan, the third of it they don't control is on the other side of the river, which is a whole new set of problems if they do take that territory.

And it seems like the kind of thing where if Putin is willing to seek compromise an early end to anything here, that that's something that he actually could afford to give up because politically it wouldn't hurt him that bad. He's got his so-called land bridge from the Dombast to Crimea and the guarantee of the freshwater of the Nipa River to the Caribbean Peninsula, which is the previous regime that cut off. That much is done. He's got the whole Azov coast, Militopol and Maripol.

So what the hell? Why not? Or is that just total BS? Like, they never were floating that. It's total BS because it's not, Putin doesn't have the power to do that. Because the action that was after the referendum, the votes that took place in September of 2022,

it was then the Russian Duma, the Russian legislature, then accepted the vote. and those territories were then formally incorporated into the federation. So I've, no, I've had conversations with probably over 20 different members of the Duma in my last two visits. You know, I was there in October and then in November. And there's zero sentiment for seeding anything back, you know, climb down.

In fact, if anything, there's some agitation that they think Putin should be tougher. and less, less merciful, they seem actually as being too kind to figure, which is, you know, I find hilarious in light of the West portrays, you know, Vladimir Putin as some combination of Hitler, Stalin, and Satan. Yeah. He just take him for what he is. He's a pretty strong man for a strong man. You know what I mean?

He's no wilting lily here. No need to exaggerate. He's there. But he's, you know, they tout him as this, you know, mass murderer and killer. And again, I maintain, go back and look at the record. That narrative about Putin started after he opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. Yeah. And so, gee, that's just a coincidence.

But I know what it. Mirschimer, I think, is right, too, that because even after that, you had the Obama reset, you know, attempted reset and this kind of thing. And then Mearsheimer says that, you know, what it really was at the final tipping and breaking point in the thing was after the loss of Crimea, after the so-called revolution of dignity there. Yeah. At that point, they needed a narrative for how they had just screwed up so badly that they had lost Crimea. Remember, Newland on the phone call, we got to glue it, we got a midwife it, we got to stick it, we got to make it sale before they can torpedo it and do anything. we got a win before we can before we lose and then it didn't work it blew up right in their face they lost crimea immediately and so then they needed a new story and the story was Vladimir Putin woke up on the wrong side of his bed this morning and decided to take

Crimea and that's the beginning of the rise of the new Stalinism in eastern Europe and this and that never you mind what just happened on the streets of Kiev you know and so I think that was definitely a huge part of it too but all right guys well if you're like me and pretty much everybody else you use amazon.com all the time because what are you going to do they got prime they bring this stuff right your door and all that so that's fine but what you do is make sure and stop by scott horton dot org and click the amazon link in the right hand margin there get yourself a bug assault shotgun for destroying flies trespassing on your property and then also whatever you get from amazon and the scott horton show will get a kickback from amazon's end of this

which is very nice. I really neglected that in my book. I really wish I had spent a day on that looking for different Bush administration official statements about Putin's opposition to Iraq War II because I'm sure that really, I'm sure once you brought that up that like, yeah, and you know, I kind of had that in the back of my mind as I was writing it,

but I was just like, man, do I really want to get into Iraq now? You know what I mean? It's just such a thing. But like, no, I really should have because I wouldn't have to really deal with the war much at all other than just to say his opposition. Bush thought he had a friend and that his friend was going to vote right.

And then when he didn't, boy, he took that personal. That just makes so much sense. You know, and you go back and look at it. It's not like Russia was rebuilding. You know, they were doing the Adolf Hitler thing of the 1930s where they were secretly rebuilding an army. You know, they were trying to rebuild their country that had been completely devastated.

And then, you know, the entire push on NATO with NATO military exercises in Ukraine right next door to Russia and you know to the point you know the Russians aren't fools and you know when you see these military exercises are scripted

there's always there's always an enemy in the exercises even though they didn't name it Russia you knew who it was. Well look if you read you know foreign affairs going back over the time this is the same guys have been in power since the year 2000s. It's the first day of 2000, right? So you go back and read about him all along,

even according to Biden and all the hawks and everybody and all the walks, they all agreed that Putin represented what was called the accommodationist faction. The what now? The accommodationist faction that wanted to do nothing but suck up to the West all day because the way they figured it was what choice do we have? Yeah. And so then there were the Eurasianists who said,

no, we're better off just being the biggest power in Asia. and, you know, working with China and having, you know, these relations there. And Putin said, no, we're part of the West. Even if we're the eastern frontier of the West, essentially we're white, we're Christian, we're European, not a Eurasian civilization, a European one, and we're part of the West, and we have to do what we can to suck up to them. That's been his position all along. And then they say, you know, Dmitri Miedev and his friends have always been to the right of Putin

when it comes to that kind of stuff. that had certainly after being humiliated with the Libya war of 2011 and all that during his short time in office has probably moved even further to the right since then. But there was just no question about what Putin represented in terms of what he thought Russia's relationship with the United States and our European friends should be. And it was always doing what we wanted him to do as much as he could stomach anyway. Yeah, no, he would, I mean, by virtue of his. his tour with the KGB in Germany as a, you know, the German speaker.

He was oriented toward the West, but it was after the Maidan in 2014 that he came around to Sergei Karganov's view about, we need to look east, not west. The West is, it's dead. And I think Putin and really most of Russia is now of that mentality that they see there's no longer a future in the West. And they basically want to be left alone if possible. But, you know, this

notion that Russia secretly harbors wants to go out and conquer Europe. What for? I mean, what does Europe have that Russian needs? Nothing. And so that is there are

a number of younger Russians who are both technical professionals in government. Galushka is one I'm thinking of. And he's just written a book on the Russian economy. And it's like a number one seller in Russia. But his basic point, he says, look, we could build a wall around ourselves and we'd do just fine. He says, we don't need international trade.

But there are benefits that come from it. But we've got to understand our future is in the east, not. Not in the West. And that's where they are. In that Nord Stream pipeline, that was really the last straw. They're like, fine, screw you guys. Because they've got other, there were other people wanting to buy Russian oil and gas and still are. I forgot if we talked about this before, I might have brought this up in speaking with you

because you're the kind of guy who would be, you know, hit to this anecdote. The War Nerd, John Dolan, aka Gary Brecher, aka the War Nerd, wrote this thing back in 2014 about how, oh, look out, the Russians got a brand new natural gas pipeline, or I guess it was an oil pipeline and soon paired natural gas pipeline to China. And you know what that means? That means game over Europe. It means that you don't have a card to play anymore. It means that the Russians are not your bitch. Those days are over. It's done. And your goose is cooked. And you might think that it ain't, but it is. And they don't care what you say because now they got their new pipeline. Welcome to the new world order, pal.

That was what it was, just right there, that Russia is no longer dependent on those German euros. They can do business with others. Thank you very much. And they've only expanded those pipelines since then. And that was back 11 years ago, he wrote that. Yeah, and the other aspect to that, though, is in that period, Russia's become less dependent on oil exports and oil and gas. exports. It used to be something like 25% of the economy of GDP. Now it's down to like 12%. So it's important, but it's not critical. And that's one of the failures that have been in the West. Our intelligence community have made these assumptions that Russia is so terribly vulnerable there. All we had to do is put a little pressure and they'd crumble. Well, not only have they

not crumbled, the ruble now is one of the strongest currencies in the world, which is pretty hilarious after Biden talked about turning the ruble into rubble. Yeah. Well, the good news there is he's so senile. He doesn't remember that. I mean, he has no consciousness of the results of his actions whatsoever. It's pretty convenient for him. All right.

You know, I'm so old. I'm going to have to stop writing my notes and my spiral notebooks anymore because I can't read my writing anymore without my glasses on. What was I going to ask you? I know. I wanted to ask you about what is going on in Paris and Berlin in London. And are they just being as obstructionist as they can here? They know that they're not fielding any army there.

But I don't know. Maybe I need to start watching the BBC again or something. But it just seems so foolish on the face of it that they're saying, listen, we'll buy American weapons for you this time. But next time we'll fight for you. We swear to God we got your back if Russia attacks you again in a few years. but we're not willing to do what it takes to help you drive them out of your country now.

What are we crazy? But you, so what is even the point of that? Nobody believes that. That's completely stupid. They're not joining NATO. They're not getting anything like an Article 5 guarantee from the Germans or anybody else. So what is even, why are they even talking?

What are they even doing? I think it's money that is driving this. Overtly, we don't know how much if, you know, Many say that Black Rock doesn't have much exposure in Ukraine, but I understand that they actually do have significant exposure, which is one of the reasons that Mertz, Friedrich Mertz of Germany, a former Black Rock employee, he's so avid about carrying the water. I think there are some potential, very serious financial exposures for U.K., France, and Germany in particular. if they, you know, keep Ukraine afloat. Because when it loses and Russia takes over, they're going to be deprived. Now, the other thing to recognize here is they keep treating Zelensky like he's Winston Churchill, you know, this, you know, Churchill, whatever you think of him, he was, he was smart, he was an accomplished scholar.

He did a lot of writing. He was a political force. He helped shape ideas. What is Zelensky? Zelensky is a guy best known for playing a piano with his penis. So, you know, he was not some big thought guy, and he was selected to occupy a position. And that's why I call him the highest paid actor in the world today,

maybe in history. But his job, be a pretty face, sympathetic face. get the other countries to give you money. And he's been pretty effective with that up till now. What we saw, I think, yes, you know, on Sunday afternoon, which was Sunday night in Russia with the attempted or the so-called attack on Putin, is I think the Brits were involved. And I think this was a deliberate effort to basically, if you will, embarrass Zelensky,

but also send a message that Zelensky is not in charge of this problem. process. Because the amount of money, I know at a minimum, there's $48 billion that have been siphoned off of the $360 billion the U.S. has provided. There are other sources that indicate that number may be as high as $108 billion. So a lot of people have gotten paid out of this and gotten paid very well, very handsomely. So that's where I think this is not a conventional political power play. This is about preserving keeping the money pipeline flowing

for those who have got financial interests at stake. I don't know who all those are, though, right now. No, look, even Kamala Harris could tell you, Russia is a bigger country, and they're right next door, and they're going to win this war. Right. The question is, when?

And we're having this conversation at the end of 2025. Bet you didn't think we would be. I didn't. And so as inevitable, as the outcome of the war has been, seemingly, the timetable sure has not been. And I wonder, and, you know, I try to watch Willie OAM and some of the other guys. You know, he's the best, I think,

but him and some of the other guys on the YouTube there analyzing the battle maps every day and seeing how things are going for both sides there. And, you know, there's some rapid advances here and there, but mostly it's this perpetual grind. Tactics changing, you know, with smaller and smaller units doing the fighting, you know, up and down the line and this kind of thing. There are reports of, I don't know, on the Russian side, but I guess many fewer since there are more volunteers.

But on the Ukrainian side, I know there have been many, you know, absent without leave into the hundreds of things. thousands fleeing, you know, conscription. But so anyway, the question is, when we say Russia's winning the war, but they're winning us slowly, just how slowly and how much more fight, well, how many more fighting age males does the Ukrainian government have to conscript out west? It's not that small of a country. It's a country of, it was 25 million people or something like that before the war, right?

So there are presumably still tens or hundreds of thousands or more even fighting-aged males available to be conscripted and sent to the front as long as the Fed is printing dollars or as long as American weapons companies are willing to ship for the European Central Bank, printing euros or whatever to send those weapons going. Obviously manpower is everything, but how much longer can the West keep Ukraine in the field? And the second part of that question would be when, Presumably, everything goes from very slow to very quickly, and the Ukrainian army finally is broken and routed

and is in full retreat whenever that day does come. The Russians then decide to go ahead and take everything east of the river, including all of Harkev and the rest. Yeah. De Nebrouper Basque and all that. I think they're actually on that, that process is now unfolding. What I, you know, what I failed to understand with respect to the special military operation was it was a manpower issue.

Because Russia did not adopt a war footing, which meant mass mobilization, they did a very small mobilization in September of 2022 of reservists, 320,000 of them. After that, they devoted themselves to recruitment through both conscription and then bonuses that were getting people signed up. What we've learned in the last month is that that bonus sign-up program, they're starting to get rid of that because they've got too many recruits. They've actually reached a stage where they've got more people wanting to sign up and join the military than they have military bases to do the training. And so what we witnessed over the course of 2023, 2024, was that gradual buildup because the Russians, they weren't panicked, they weren't mobilizing for war. or right now only 6% of their GDP can be attributed to spending on the war.

During the Great Patriotic War, that number is like 45, 50%, the same here in the United States. So what at the start at 2025, Russia finally got to a state where they had set. Because remember, initially they went into Ukraine with about 150,000 troops in February of 2022. Well, by February or January of 2025, the number is up around 700,000. And that's not just the Russian Ministry of Defense saying that. That's also General Sierskyy of Ukraine saying that, that the Russians have now got 700,000 plus soldiers on the ground in Ukraine. That now gives them the ability to launch these operations, these offensive,

which they are. They're moving, you know, in the previous years, 2023, 2024, maximum, they could push along two axes. More often, it was just one axis focus. Now, this year, they're doing eight simultaneously. And we now have a clear data set of the casualties, at least, the number of dead bodies, dead Russian soldiers that are returned to the Russians, and the number of dead Ukrainians that are returned to Ukraine.

And since January, we've got the numbers recorded, for every dead Russian, you get 35 dead Ukrainians returned. Now, the excuse incomes, I'm saying, well, that's just because the Russians are advancing and the Ukrainians don't have time to recover their dead. Exactly. That's the point. Because if some of the propaganda claiming, oh, yeah, the Ukrainians are counter-attacked, and they've taken this territory, okay, where are the bodies?

Where are the Russian bodies? They don't have them. And so that metric alone tells you which way this thing is headed. And what we've got now is, you know, in 2022, they took Mariupil. The Russians did. In 2023, they captured one major city, Bakhmut. In 2024, one major city, Avdivka. Now they've done at least a...

The most recent ones are Pachrovsk and Mnigrad. And they're in the process of sealing up Kupiansk. And they've taken this Waiopil, which is in Nipropetrovs, in Zaporizia regions. They're starting to move rapidly towards east. So this is what Putin meant on Saturday when he spoke to the military. This is the last, this offer that's on the table right now, let's call it, you know, Istanbul Plus.

where you recognize the five territories, you hold elections, you get NATO out of Ukraine, and then we'll withdraw forces from Nipro-Pethras, we'll draw withdrawal from Potava, from Kharki, from Sumi. But he said, if you don't take that deal, the next deal is going to be harder. The next deal will be, we're going to take those territories. They're going to have a vote, give the people a chance to decide if they want to be part of, of Russia or not. And the odds are they'll all vote to go with Russia. So Russia will end up owning the entire eastern half of Ukraine, everything that's east of the Nieper River. Hey guys, Scott here from Moondos artisan coffees. It's the Scott Horton show flavored coffee

breakfast blend. It's part Ethiopian, part Sumatra. It's really good. All you do is go to Scott Horton.org slash coffee and they'll forge you on there to Moondos artisan coffees. get it. They hate Starbucks because they represent the war party, of course. And so they're Moondos, and they support peace. And guess what? Scott Horton's Show Coffee is the number one bestselling coffee at Moondos Artisan Coffees right now. Just go again to Scott Horton.org slash coffee.

Yeah, I think that's right. If only because if they stop where they are, then they're leaving still predominantly Russian-speaking people. Right. east of the river but west of the Dombas and therefore outside of their so-called protection and left to the tender mercies of the very anti-Russian

you know, a western right-wing government whoever replaces Zelensky and his people will be even worse presumably so then you just worked the logic out from Moscow's point of view well we have to protect everyone east of the river you know, as long as we've gone this far we have to keep going. Which then, you know, I don't know.

People disagree about this and it's still just speculation on my part, but it seems to me that once they get there, and I'm sorry, I got Joe Biden brain myself, I don't remember anymore who I talked with this about. I talked about this with. Seems to me like once they take the whole West, then they're going to find themselves facing a rump,

Ukraine that's now really an enemy, where the only people who ever liked Russia in Ukraine have all now been removed out of Ukraine and the new Russian border drawn around them. Yeah. Then you're going to have a government led by Andrew Belletsky, the white ruler, the author of, you know, I'm sorry, his big speech was racial, social nationalism. I forgot his book. It's like the words of the white ruler or whatever, Andrew Boleski, the head of the third army Corps, him and his buddies are going to be running the new regime,

the big war heroes from this time around if he doesn't die in the thing and he hadn't yet. Oleg Teneybach and his son are out there fighting on the front with the National Guard and Yevin Karras from C-14 and all these social national party guys are all out there. So from Moscow's

point of view, now they're going to have an even worse kind of, you know, rump Ukraine. to deal with a permanent enemy on their border there. Helen, those are Boleski's words, the permanent enemy. And then so how do you deal with that other than trying to go ahead and conquer that territory too? Drive those ruckingers into Hungary and Poland, you know? Well, they've got, they've actually, you know, Russia's got some experience with this.

And that's what I think a lot in the West forget. The second Chechen War lasted 10, 11 years. And it was a bloody affair. And they were dealing, you know, as ardent as these neo-Nazis are with their supremacist beliefs, do you think they're any less passionate than the Sunni Muslims that the U.S. was funding? And stop me before I ask you to tell me everything you know about Bill Clinton and George W. Bush's support for the Chechen terrorists and the Second Chechen War, too, because I know there was some. Oh, yeah, absolutely.

I mean, it was a legacy of the war in Afghanistan. So the same, you know, and in fact, I think you wrote about this and your first, you know, about the never-ending war on terrorism. Yep. It's improvoked, too, where even they brought Gubeldin Hechemichyar to come and fight in Azerbaijan against Armenia there for a little while. Yeah. Before then using his men to go and fight with the bin Ladenites in Chechnya, too.

Well, and if you saw this recent CIA officer who is on Afshin Rattansi's show going undergrad, Susan Miller. I saw a little bit of that. I know. And I saw that you wrote a thing about that. Go ahead. Yeah. Well, Susan was in, she was in my career trainee class. There were 53 of us. She was just a 22-year-old kid, fresh out of college. And when she started at the agency, she was doing an analytical track, but she wasn't an analyst on a front-line account. She was doing, you know, bios. They had a section of CIA that their job was to update the biographies of presidents and prime minister. That's what she was. And then she shifted and moved to the Directorate of Operations and, you know, rose through the ranks. What is what I found astonishing was she admitted in a July 2025 interview on CNN that she was the author. She led the team that wrote the 2017 intelligence assessment about Russian meddling in the U.S. presidential election. she's got no experience with Russia.

She was chief of station in Tel Aviv. You know, so the fact that John Brennan put her in charge of that tells me everything, you know, she sort of lost her soul along the way of my view. But she admitted the United States, the CIA was working with al-Qaeda and ISIS. She admitted it. You know, I saw a clip of that where that was kind of the caption, but then it was poorly edited, the clip that I saw, and it sounded more like she was answering that,

yeah, we talked to Al-Qaeda, like, you know, because you have to talk to everybody kind of thing. But she did not seem to be confirming, oh, yeah, let me tell you all about Timber-Sicamore and that kind of deal. Yeah, she wasn't doing that. No. But the fact that she even went there,

look, you got to ask, why is she now showing up on television doing these kinds of hits? Well, you know what? Let me ask you then, as long as we're talking about blonde CIA ladies, who say things, there's this Sarah Adams who's coming around now and saying, oh man, it's the Taliban

and Heckmachar and Hakkani and al-Qaeda and ISIS and hell, Hezbollah and Iran and they're all in on it together against us, man, the Shiites too. And I kind of like some of that because I'm really paranoid about bin Ladenite attacks in this country, especially as revenge

for what Israel's been doing in Palestine. We saw what happened in Australia the other day. This is the kind of thing that I expect to happen at any time, right? But then we need to tell me, like, oh, yeah, and Heckmachar and Hakani are in on it, and the Taliban's in on it. Oh, and with the Shiites, okay, you definitely lost me now. At the same time, though, like, I don't know.

I'm very paranoid about Bin Ladenites hitting soft targets in this country, man. I just, I'm so concerned about it. I want to pay at least some attention to what she's saying there, you know what I mean? But there's always these kinds of people on the right pushing this, has Bala and Venezuela type narrative, you know? Oh, yeah, well, look, I know I've done extensive work on the presence of both Sunni and Shia Muslims in Central and South America. They are merchants. They are commercial folks. You know, when I did product counterfeiting investigations in the Cologne Free Trade Zone. And what you discover is these are family networks. They're first and foremost businessmen. They're not religious.

ideologues by any stretch, not at all. But they're in the Cologne Free Trade Zone in Panama. They're on Isla Magarita, which is off the coast of Venezuela. They're in Maikau, Colombia. They're in Ciudad de Leste, which is in the tri-border area of Paraguay, Brazil, Argentina. And they're in Akiki. Those are the major centers. And they are involved with selling every good you can imagine. cigarettes, liquor, shoes, electronics, household domestic items, vacuum cleaners, rice cookers, you know. And so they keep trotting out this Hezbollah

carrying out these terrorist attacks thing. There was indications of Hezbollah involvement in the attack on the Jewish, on the Israeli embassy in Argentina back in 92. two. Two or four? Huh? Two or four?

Well, there was one attack on the embassy and then there was an attack on the community center. Oh, that's right. Okay. Okay. And so I led an interagency team to focus on aviation security down in the aftermath of the first attack on the embassy. And when we got to the embassy in Buenos Aires and met with the chief of station, a guy named Bill, I asked him because of my background, I knew that the collection plans,

every station has a collection plan. And you are evaluated as like the cheapest station at the end of the year on how well did you collect information, gather intelligence that met each of those items on the collection plan. So I said, hey, Bill, where is Hezbollah on your collection plan?

He says, it's not on the plan, which means we were collecting absolutely nothing about it. Now, I'm the one that I came back to D.C. I wrote it up as a collection item. And so the first, the earliest time that anybody in the U.S. government from a CIA standpoint,

at least in South America, would have started collecting on Hezbollah would have been 1994. Prior to that, nothing. Yeah. But again, if I say to you, listen, man, what, you know, Al-Qaeda under bin Laden's stepson or whoever runs the thing nowadays,

they've healed all their riffs and they've expanded. They have this huge network now, permanent alliance with the Taliban, with Hakani, with his be Islami, and with the Shiites too. You just scoff and say the dumbest damn thing

you ever heard? Or would you be worried about something like that? No, I wouldn't worry. I worry about us in the United States, what we're doing. Yeah. We've got a much higher death toll than killing people than Hamas,

Hezbollah, Al-Qaeda, ISIS, all combined. In fact, we've been, as somebody wrote a book called Provoked, I think it's back here somewhere, out there it is. We've been provoking all of this. And a lot of this is our reactions. Notice the Taliban, they're doing just fine. And, you know, John Kiriakou had the experience when he was working up on the Hill, Capitol Hill,

after he left CIA, where he met with one of the farmers that was growing poppies, and the guy told him directly, hey, the CIA wants us to keep Drew growing this because the CIA wanted to run the drugs into Iran and into Russia in order to destroy those societies. So, you know, and as Susan Miller admitted the other day, we talked to these bad guys when we think it's convenient for us.

when we've got an angle we want to work. Yep. So it's just, the comedian Eddie Griffin had a whole bit about that years ago, about you think it's just, and he's just comedian, right? Like, you know, kind of ghetto black guy conspiracy theory stuff. And so he's just speculating, but it's like, hey, man,

why do you think they're there? And look at the map. They're funneling all that heroin into China and Russia to destroy those countries, man. That's what they're doing. And so then you look at China's role in the fentanyl crisis in the United States right now, and you're like, oh, man, payback is a son of a bitch. And it's hitting all the W. Bush voting districts, the hardest, too.

Oh, man. Yeah, yeah, no, that, I think there's a lot of truth to that. And unfortunately, you know, we keep projecting onto these other countries, the imperial ambitions when we're the only one, we're the only one with 700 plus bases around the world. Russia and China combined, I think, between the two of them, have maybe a total of six overseas basis, if that? Six compared to 700? Who's the imperialist? Man, if you have any money, you should be buying gold with it.

Central banks are hoarding it up. And if you need some, you should go to rrbi.co. That's Roberts and Roberts Brokerage, Inc. It's my buddy, Tim Fri. He's a really great guy, him in this business, they've been over there for a very, very, very long time, and they will help you get your medals, and they will always do you right. That's Roberts and Roberts, Brokerage, Inc. at R-RBI.co. So that's why I'm so concerned about the bin Ladenites, and that includes like ISIS

types, whoever they are. And I know that they can be under the control of various national governments at various times. It's very hard for me to tell. When a bunch of kooks shoot up a theater or, you know, an arena in Moscow, I don't know who made them do that. I just don't You know what I mean? Maybe nobody. Maybe some guy I've never heard of. Maybe the Ukrainians or the CIA. I really, you know, I don't know.

But I do know that this country is lousy with soft targets. And I know that any guy with two or three of his friends who take semi-automatic rifles and do just absolute damage beyond imagination at an elementary school, at a mall, at a ballgame, at an airport. How about everybody on this side of the security line? Standing there like sitting ducks to be slaughtered. I mean, something like that could be done with, virtually zero effort.

All you need is motive. The means and the opportunity are everywhere. And so, you know, our government does nothing but provoke this kind of violence. And then they do nothing to protect us from it. And so I just, if you told me, like during this interview,

it turned out that there was another Omar Mateen type slaughter that had happened to innocent Americans in this country as blowback from American foreign policy here. I would not be surprised one bit. I'm terrified of it. And I'm terrified of the consequence after it, because you know that the Lakud is going to blame Iran, no matter what, and that Trump's going to believe them. Yeah, well, as, you know, having followed terrorism now for 40 years, I have now come to the point of understanding that I don't want to say it's artificial. It is real, but more often than not, it's created, managed, directed by government agencies for nefarious purposes.

just like with the creation of Hamas that where Israel played a heavy role in funding Hamas for what purpose? They wanted a group of people that would help discredit the Palestinian cause and would fight against the Palestinian Authority so that there could not be a Palestinian state. And then in the course of it,

groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, they start becoming responsible governors. You know, they're not this, you know, this reputation of being these crazed fanatical terrorists. Well, I've gone back and counter the actual incidents and looked them up. And the truth of the matter is the Israelis have killed far, far more Palestinians than Hamas, Hezbollah combined. And the Israelis have killed more in one year than Hamas and Hezbollah have over 30 years. I mean, that's just the reality. But we don't like to deal with real things.

we like to create these narratives where we can justify you use the threat of terrorism to take everybody's civil liberties away. Right. And if you read your Murray Rothbard, anatomy of the state, every state government,

every national government, is the terrorist group that won and stayed in power and declared itself the security force protecting you from any of the other terrorist groups. That's what the government of Israel is. It's the Haganah and the Irrigan. Right?

Like, this is exactly who they are. They became the state of Israel. So for Hezbollah was nothing but a militia, and then Hezbo became a kind of proto-state there, right? Yeah, yeah. So it's, you know, I knew back when I was the state, the deputy director for the Anti-Terrorism Assistance Training Program, at least on the policy side,

we were doing training in Israel for both Israeli police and Palestinian police. And invariably, the trainers always came back and said, the most professional, the most diligent, the most trustworthy people were the Palestinians. The Israelis weren't. The Israelis were just the opposite. And those arrogance, attitude, you know, he couldn't teach him anything.

Palestinians were very, very good and quite professional. So that's where, you know, I come to see these narratives are usually driven more to manipulate public opinion. Yeah. All right, let me switch back to Venezuela here for a minute. So there's a story today in El Pais that says Trump apparently blabbed in a radio interview the other day that America struck a land target in Venezuela. He said it was manufacturing drugs of some kind. So we've had strikes on the drug boats, which we talked about last time you're on the show.

Since then, he's now seized three oil tankers. And now allegedly, I think this is not. confirm. We don't have like reporting from inside Venezuela saying, yes, this is where the strike took place. But apparently Trump said himself, we hit that the other day or something very close to that. I have it here, actually. Let me see. As long as I'm going to quote it, I might as well actually quote it. He says, they have a big plant or a big facility where the ships come from two nights ago. We knocked that out. He said. So I don't know exactly the whatever, But anyway, that's what we had there.

So broad question. What in the hell is America's current policy toward Venezuela? Is it simply Maduro must go, as Obama might say? And then to what lengths is the administration willing to go to see that through? Well, that's the problem that got because we don't have the, there's no easy way to remove Maduro and then to install a government that will be stable. And Venezuela is too big a country, three times the size of Vietnam. And, you know, we try to take it out by bombing from the air.

That's never worked. It has never worked. Didn't work in Iraq. Didn't work in Afghanistan. It's not going to work in Venezuela. And the problem we've got is get rid of Maduro. So we got rid of Saddam, who's not. saying. Did that end the problem in Iraq? No. And Maduro's got a lot of followers. I know there are a lot

in the United States that want to get rid of Maduro. I don't argue he's some Jeffersonian character, but it's really should be none of our business. We should stay out of it and let the Venezuelan people sort it out internally, however. But instead, you know, we're constantly meddling and trying to recruit and fund people that will do things the way we want. And it's just, you know, it's not going to end well. Because remember, we went into Vietnam with 543,000 troops in April of 1969. And with all those troops, we weren't able to control Vietnam. Venezuela's three times larger, and it's got terrain as difficult, if not more difficult

and challenging than anything in Vietnam. Oh, Larry, do they have a plan? I mean, I don't, okay, if we go back to 03, W. Bush spent 02 building up a massive land army in Kuwait, and they hoped Turkey, but that ended up not working out, but they built up a massive land army in Kuwait, and there was no way that they were going to sail those boys home without giving them their war first.

You know what I mean? That was inevitable at that point, right? In this case, though, we got, I don't know, a third of the Navy or whatever is floating offshore. And I get the idea that Trump could just change his mind and say, well, Rubio, you said it was going to, something was going to happen, and he would leave office and something, something, yada, and the yada didn't happen. So Navy ships go about your business, sail in the seven seas or whatever it is you do out there. And I could see him just changing his mind. I mean, when they tried this the last two times in his first term with the Wang Guido coup and then the chef boy Ardiku there at the end, it didn't go anywhere.

Or that was in 2019. It didn't go anywhere. So anyway, I wonder whether you think they know what they're doing or whether they've already failed to achieve their ends with their means. And now they're just figuring out how to back down or what in the world is it? No, I guarantee you they have no plan. And this will have to be my final comment because I've got to have to jump here in a bit. Oh, sure.

I'm sorry at the clock. No, no, that's all right. But in 2003, remember when Jay Garner was sent in. to be the initial guy in charge, and they replaced him with Jerry Bremer, L. Paul Bremer. Jerry Bremer was a friend of mine. I had lunch with him two days before he got named to that task. But when I offered Brimmer assistance to put him in touch with the leading U.S. expert on Iraq, the fellow who had been the chief of the Middle East Division at DIA, the fellow who had set up the Arabic program at West Point, the fellow who had been the defense

attaché in Saudi Arabia and Yemen, Bremer said, no, I don't need to talk to him. And they didn't have a damn plan. Not at all. And so I guarantee you, for this right now, you got nothing. Yeah. What was the name of that DIA guy? Uh, Pat Lang, Walter. Oh, yeah. Of course. Yeah. So, all right. Well, um, yeah, rest in peace, Pat. Um, thank you, Larry. Really appreciate your time and expertise on the show as always, man. It's been good. Hey, thanks, Scott, for the invitation. It's always an honor to be with you, man. All right, thanks for all the good work you do. Ah, thank you. Uh, you guys, that's Larry Johnson. He says sonar21.com. Okay, take care.

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