The Great America Show - THE AUTHOR WHO FORESAW PUTIN’S INVASION OF UKRAINE

00:00:00.000 Hello, everybody. I'm Lou Dobbs. Could we have imagined how bad things could get under President

00:00:06.600 Biden? Could we have imagined Joe Biden could conjure up so many challenges, threats in just

00:00:13.500 over a year in office? Not all of his own making, certainly, but most. The pandemic was raging as

00:00:20.160 he campaigned for the presidency, and he, at every opportunity, stayed at home to campaign.

00:00:25.780 He watched as the summer of 2020 became a season of street violence, protests, riots, arson, and the

00:00:33.720 nation watched it all for six months. George Floyd, Antifa, Black Lives Matter, as riots spread and

00:00:41.380 violence overtook the summer. And while most of the country was captivated by the violence in Milwaukee

00:00:47.820 and Seattle, Louisville, Atlanta, New York City, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Portland, and Kenosha,

00:00:55.240 absentee ballots and mail-in ballots were being printed, ready to do their part in the presidential

00:01:00.540 election of 2020. An election President Trump warned us all was being rigged by the left and

00:01:08.400 influenced by both the COVID virus pandemic and the surge of civil unrest and violence,

00:01:14.000 which, in retrospect, appears to not have been entirely coincidental. Not at all. And it turns

00:01:21.380 out there may have been external forces at work in the vandalism, violence, riots, and arson in the

00:01:27.760 run-up to the election of 2020. All those forces may have originated, in fact, in Russia, not working

00:01:35.580 for Donald Trump, as the Democrats pretended for the previous five years, but working to create more

00:01:41.480 disruption and street violence in an election year, trying to create as much chaos as possible

00:01:47.880 in pursuit of what Putin and Russia were seeking, and still do, a civil war in the United States.

00:01:56.140 That's the view of our guest, former senior intelligence analyst for the CIA and the DIA,

00:02:03.160 Rebecca Koffler. She's the author of the important new book, Putin's Handbook, Russia's Secret Plan

00:02:10.220 to Defeat America. Rebecca has written, in my opinion, a masterful, fascinating book that is

00:02:17.120 timely, and with the crisis in Ukraine, a prescient book as well, which we recommend to you highly.

00:02:24.660 Rebecca Koffler, we are delighted to have you on the show with us. Welcome.

00:02:29.360 Thank you, Lou. It's such a pleasure to be here with you and your audience today.

00:02:34.560 Well, they're a great audience, and they're going to love this book, and they're going to love

00:02:38.600 listening to you today. I want to start with a development today. Roman Abramovich, famous Russian

00:02:48.300 oligarch and entrepreneur, and two of Ukraine's peace negotiators or representatives, suffering

00:02:56.560 suspected poisoning at the very outset of the talks between Russia and Ukraine. Now, that wasn't very

00:03:05.880 nice of someone, was it? Absolutely not, Lou, but it's a standard tradecraft, Russian intelligence 0.51

00:03:14.780 tradecraft, poisonings, assassinations, intimidation. This is a tactic called active measures. It's unique

00:03:25.240 to Russian intelligence, and it includes a really atrocious tactic also called wet affairs, which is

00:03:34.920 actually assassinations and killings. And so there's nothing new. We know Putin authorizes

00:03:41.560 these. It's very consistent with his previous behavior.

00:03:46.820 And Putin seems to have a preference, if you will, for poison as a tool of assassination.

00:03:54.840 Am I incorrect in making that assumption based on just the incidents of assassination and attempted

00:04:00.800 assassinations we've had over the years? You're 100% correct, Lou. Poison has been a centuries-old tactic

00:04:11.480 that the Russians used, even back, you know, during the Tsarist times, but certainly during the times of

00:04:19.220 Red Terror, Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, all the way to Vladimir Putin have used poisonings,

00:04:29.320 but the most recent ones are the poisonings of Julia and Sergei Skripal. Sergei Skripal was a former GRU

00:04:39.800 officer. GRU is a Russian military intelligence, and Skripal at that point was already in Great Britain,

00:04:47.880 right? And the one before that was Alexander Litvinenko. So Skripal got poisoned with a military-grade 0.62

00:04:58.360 nerve agent developed in the Soviet Union called Novichok. And Alexander Litvinenko, the former FSB officer,

00:05:07.320 Russian domestic security. He was poisoned with polonium-2010, a radiological

00:05:17.800 agent. So these are brutal deaths or brutal suffering that this type of stuff causes.

00:05:27.240 I was surprised to see this story break today, because it just seems to me that Putin's affinity

00:05:36.200 for poisoning and for disrupting a process before it can even really begin, begins, it's just part of

00:05:45.960 his history. Apparently that these Ukrainian representatives never dreamed that he would poison 1.00

00:05:51.400 them, if indeed that's what happened, or Abramovich, which is an interesting way to find out Abramovich

00:05:57.640 was actually participating in these talks, at least in an ancillary fashion. Are you surprised that

00:06:07.000 their guard was not up more? I am surprised, Lou, but the thing is,

00:06:15.000 the Russians are so highly trained in this type of tradecraft active measures that it is so difficult

00:06:24.120 to spot. And some of these things are super difficult, or most of them actually, are very difficult to

00:06:30.440 diagnose. This is why Litvinenko, Alexander Litvinenko died in Great Britain, because the doctors simply

00:06:40.440 don't have experience with this stuff, since this is military grade developed specifically by the Russian

00:06:46.440 military. And he was just basically ailing and dying over the course of just a few weeks, and nobody knew,

00:06:57.800 you know, what was ailing him. And it took, you know, it was by the time that they actually figured it

00:07:03.160 out way too late. And so, yes, I can't really blame, you know, Abramovich or the Ukrainian

00:07:13.800 negotiators for potentially missing some signs. It's very difficult to spot. Yeah. I want to point

00:07:21.960 out to everybody listening, we're talking with Rebecca Koffler, the author of this tremendous new book,

00:07:27.960 Putin's playbook. It is Russia's secret plan to defeat America. It is revelatory. It is fascinating. 0.86

00:07:37.400 And furthermore, her analysis takes us into the current events. As you read her description of the

00:07:46.840 preference on the part of Putin in dealing with an issue, a political issue like NATO's encroachment,

00:07:56.120 his response. And over some years, coming to the realization, as she said he would,

00:08:02.360 that he would have to do something and strike first. And he did. I have to commend you for that,

00:08:09.480 Rebecca. I mean, it's, this was written well before Ukraine. And you absolutely nailed it. Your thoughts

00:08:17.640 about the analysis, the timing, and the decision by Putin to make you look awfully, awfully smart.

00:08:27.240 Yeah, unfortunately, I'd rather not be smart. But this is what happened. We're now having Putin's

00:08:37.720 playbook unraveling right in front of our eyes. And I wrote this book, when I was writing this book,

00:08:46.840 I knew something like that would happen, because I just saw the writings on the wall. Putin never made it

00:08:52.760 a secret. Every single speech, every single press conference, every strategic planning document,

00:09:01.320 military doctrine, national security strategy,

00:09:05.320 every field manual, if you will, you know, military modernization was pointing to the fact that he was

00:09:14.200 developing what he called an asymmetric strategy. And all we had to do is listen, Lou, but Washington

00:09:21.880 security quote unquote experts completely reject anything that doesn't fit into the mental

00:09:29.880 framework. And so I was warning when I was DIA intelligence officer for Russian doctrine and

00:09:35.720 strategy. I was continuously warning about Putin and what he was planning to do. And those warnings

00:09:43.800 fell on deaf ears. And then I wrote the book to warn my fellow Americans. And DIA and CIA were trying to

00:09:53.160 sabotage the publication of this book. And they redacted a bunch of it. So when I wrote it, I didn't

00:10:01.320 know how soon it actually will happen. I knew it would happen one day. What we're seeing today, I didn't

00:10:07.160 know just how soon it was going to happen. I'm just curious, Rebecca, how long between the time you wrote

00:10:14.280 the book and turned it over to the intelligence auditors, if you will, how long did they have it in

00:10:22.840 their hands? And therefore, how long did they delay publication of the book? So there was supposed to be

00:10:31.960 a promise within 30 days to turn around a manuscript. When I submitted it to them, I spoke with them

00:10:42.760 actually on the phone to confirm. First, they lost it, of course, typical government, even though I sent

00:10:49.880 a priority mail and everything. Oh, I know. It's like, you know, you can't make the stuff up.

00:10:55.160 No. Then they found it and said, oh, we're going to assign the case and we're going to, you know,

00:11:03.160 go through this. And then I didn't hear from them for months. And I sent them emails. I sent them

00:11:11.080 a priority mail, you know, letters, requests. We had to scrap the publication, the first publication

00:11:21.000 date. So eventually, I think it was like six months later, I was basically telling them, look,

00:11:28.680 I have a contract here. I have a book contract. Not that they care because the government lives in

00:11:33.240 the la-la land. They don't care about any kinds of contracts or any laws for that matter. And we've

00:11:39.640 seen that, right? So it was more than six months. Then they came out of the woodwork and claimed they

00:11:48.440 never received any single email from me, okay? Everyone else receives email, including you,

00:11:53.640 Lou, right? Or your producer. But the government did not. And then they started the process. They gave me

00:12:02.280 31 pages worth of redacted text, hoping that I would start negotiating with them because there

00:12:09.240 was some ridiculous, you know, stuff that they claimed was classified. And I wasn't going to

00:12:15.480 negotiate because if I did not honor that publication date, this book would have never, you know, been

00:12:22.200 published. And we were very close. And so my publisher said, okay, we're just going to go with these

00:12:28.200 redactions then because otherwise this book will never see the day of light. And that's what happened.

00:12:35.080 Well, it was a great decision by Regnery to do that because the redactions, while it's a fascinating

00:12:43.080 guessing game for any reader, you know, I enjoy trying to figure out what might have been in that

00:12:49.800 context at that moment as you're writing it. But what is unredacted is so revelatory and so crisp

00:13:00.600 in conveying your meaning and the sense of what the Russian intelligence apparatus and culture is all

00:13:08.440 about, as well as, of course, the leadership of Vladimir Putin. It's just a fascinating read. And I just,

00:13:18.520 I can't wait for Regnery to get that book back in stock so people can read it because it's fascinating.

00:13:26.520 I want to turn to a couple of points within the book. And that is, as we watched what happened in

00:13:34.680 in Poland and in Belgium. We, with President Biden over the last four days, I mean, it's just,

00:13:47.320 it's just sickening to see a president of the United States perform as he did. He had at least four,

00:13:54.520 perhaps five mistakes of language, whether it was his ad lib about regime change, which he said that

00:14:03.880 this man cannot remain in power, whether it was his remark to the 82nd Airborne in which he

00:14:10.840 conveyed the impression to those soldiers that they would be dropping into Ukraine at any moment in the

00:14:19.160 next week or so, it seemed. And that had to all, of course, be corrected. He came dangerously close to

00:14:28.120 being, I think, honestly, provocative toward Putin, whom he also called a butcher for crying out loud,

00:14:36.200 hardly presidential. I just can't wait to hear your thoughts about this.

00:14:40.040 Of course. Well, President Biden regretfully has given every signal to Putin that

00:14:51.240 that indicated that the United States is an existential threat to Russia, triggering potentially

00:15:00.840 the use of nuclear weapons that is codified in Russian military doctrine. The reason I say existential 0.96

00:15:09.320 threat, it's because it's because it's one of the requirements about which Dmitry Peskov,

00:15:14.600 Putin's press secretary, recently reminded us, remember when he was asked by Christiana Mampurov of CNN,

00:15:21.640 who was asking him to rule out the use of nuclear weapons, which Peskov didn't. So regime change is

00:15:31.160 what is, what is it if it's not existential threat? And also Sergey Lavrov, the foreign minister of Russia,

00:15:41.640 recently told us that the Russians actually view sanctions as a method of economic warfare

00:15:53.560 by which the United States and the West want to strangle and annihilate Russia. Okay, so 0.52

00:16:04.040 wittingly or unwittingly, Joe Biden has just triggered potentially a nuclear war. And the topic of regime

00:16:13.160 change is really is really nothing new for the Russians, because they've seen this happen in Afghanistan,

00:16:20.920 in Iraq, with Saddam Hussein, and in Libya, with Muammar Gaddafi dying at the hands of their own people.

00:16:30.360 And so they believe that it's simply a Freudian slip by Biden. And they suspected for years that that's

00:16:39.400 was official Washington policy was, and Biden simply confirmed what they already suspected.

00:16:46.680 And, you know, when you project that out to the Middle East, and I'm not talking about just the Arab

00:16:54.280 intelligentsia, if you will, the Arab street is getting bombarded with this stuff

00:17:03.320 about Biden talking, first of all, making it sound like another slip of the tongue, a slip of truth,

00:17:14.280 that an incursion, a minor incursion into Ukraine would be just fine at that press conference a month 0.96

00:17:19.720 or so ago. And you recall that and now you have these so called slips of the tongue, in which he talks

00:17:27.240 about, again, provocatively, our soldiers dropping in, threatening regime change, and the list goes on.

00:17:37.880 This begins to look like a purposeful, deceitful string of intentional statements of truth designed

00:17:51.240 to provoke. I mean, I hate to say it that way, but that could all, I think, legitimately be inferred by

00:17:57.720 by Russian intelligence, do you not?

00:18:01.480 Absolutely. The Russians are culturally predisposed to worst case scenario, right? Every single action 1.00

00:18:09.240 taken by us, even if it's defensive, they interpret it as offensive, because they place it in the context

00:18:17.160 of what happened previously, what the United States has done, and also in the context of what happened

00:18:24.920 in Russia. So Russia history is full of wars. It's a war-torn history with turmoil. They sacrificed 20

00:18:36.120 million people in World War II alone, and they watched the United States for the past 20 years conduct

00:18:45.240 military operations in Iraq, in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Kosovo. Kosovo was the first one that

00:18:53.160 shook Putin. And therefore, they have concluded that the U.S. is what they call a high-risk actor,

00:19:02.920 right? And because we have superior military, we engage in conflict relatively easily, or pretty easily,

00:19:12.360 according to Russian intelligence. And therefore, they have concluded that sooner or later, a war

00:19:19.400 between Russia and the United States is inevitable, because our interests are on the collision course 0.92

00:19:27.560 between the two countries, right? We're fighting over the same territory, the post-Soviet space

00:19:33.640 in Eurasia. Countries like Ukraine, Georgia, Belarus, that Putin believes belong to his sphere influence,

00:19:42.920 and he seeks to enforce his version of the Monroe Doctrine over these countries. And Washington believes

00:19:53.640 that these areas belong to us, and we should, quote-unquote, democratize them. And there's an official,

00:20:02.680 long-term, bipartisan policy that used to be highly classified that we will do everything

00:20:11.960 to prevent Russia from emerging as a dominant power in Eurasia. And the Russians know it, and when they 0.99

00:20:19.560 know that or they believe that the war is inevitable, they interpret every single action through that

00:20:26.680 prism. And so a war, an actual shooting war is right now very, very probable based on potentially miscalculation

00:20:40.680 or misinterpretation by either Washington or Moscow of each other's moves, intentions, and, you know,

00:20:49.560 upcoming activities. I truly believe that President Biden has escalated that probability. I think it

00:20:58.760 existed irrespective of the language that he used in Europe in his recent trip, but he escalated

00:21:05.960 with his language, I think, the probability significantly. I'll put it that way. I can't

00:21:12.840 imagine it being otherwise. And I talked with several military analysts, as you would expect on this show.

00:21:21.000 And amongst them, Colonel Doug McGregor, who was a former chief of staff at the Defense Department,

00:21:28.840 is also General Keith Kellogg, both men have a very, I think, real politic view of the world,

00:21:40.440 and were discussing and trying, and this is my inference. It isn't necessarily what they said,

00:21:45.480 but it's what I inferred from what they said. They were trying to get a certain audience in Washington,

00:21:51.720 D.C. to understand that the analog to this situation would be if we were watching this happen

00:21:59.480 in Mexico or Cuba ourselves, and how would we react with that level of proximity and contiguous

00:22:09.480 relationship to an unfriendly government, that is, Ukraine, because they are trying to move toward

00:22:15.640 NATO. Do you think that's a reasonable way to look at it?

00:22:19.560 D.C. 100%. Look, what we right now are not getting from the mainstream media is the primary driver

00:22:30.280 for Putin's actions in Ukraine, which is a purely military calculation. Imagine this,

00:22:37.720 the distance between St. Petersburg, which is the second largest city in Russia, and NATO forces back

00:22:46.840 during the Cold War, was 1,000 miles. And today, with NATO's acceptance of the Baltics, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia,

00:22:58.520 that distance has reduced to 100 miles. That's a shorter distance than between Washington and New York.

00:23:06.760 No military leader would accept that type of proximity between rivals or even adversaries. I mean, remember,

00:23:18.040 the Russians declared in their military doctrine that the United States and NATO are security threat number one

00:23:25.480 for them. And NATO was originally created with the sole purpose of neutralizing, you know, the Soviet threat,

00:23:34.360 right? So they don't believe this whole rhetoric about democracy and all these things because they know if we

00:23:42.360 did, you know, care about democracy, we would have made sure that our country remains democratic and that

00:23:49.400 today there are all kinds of signs, you know, for someone like me who came from undemocratic country,

00:23:56.120 you know, the USSR from the Soviet Union, uh, it's very clear that our freedom of speech is no longer 0.75

00:24:03.400 given and all these other signs, right? So that's why Moscow does not buy this whole democracy thing.

00:24:10.440 And, um, and that's why, uh, Putin having drawn a red line on Ukraine with regard to NATO, um,

00:24:19.880 he decided to actually enforce it and, uh, he decided to sort of give Washington the taste of its own

00:24:27.880 medicine, if you will, in terms of the, uh, Monroe, uh, doctrine, uh, enforcement.

00:24:35.400 It's, it's interesting that the Obama administration, uh, and I want to say it was in 2011,

00:24:43.560 basically unilaterally and without discussion, uh, at least a public discussion at all,

00:24:50.360 unequivocally dropped the Monroe doctrine, uh, and, and walked away from it. Uh, when I,

00:24:56.360 and at the very same time that Russia was making greater inroads into Venezuela, uh, also into Cuba,

00:25:04.360 uh, and there is this peculiar imbalance of information between what is happening,

00:25:10.840 what is happening in the course of our own, uh, news outlets, corporate news outlets, mainstream

00:25:16.680 media, if you will, uh, and what our government is saying. We are bombarded by disinformation from our

00:25:24.600 own government, uh, for partisan purposes, uh, and for the purpose of the purposes of the permanent

00:25:32.280 bureaucracy or deep state, if you will. Uh, am I incorrect in that, uh, in that judgment?

00:25:37.800 Oh, you're 100% correct. Uh, look, my own book, you know, Putin's playbook, uh, Russia's secret plan

00:25:44.520 to defeat America was, uh, banned from being advertised by Regnery, my publisher on Amazon. And, uh, there was a

00:25:54.360 very ridiculous explanation that was given by Amazon to my publisher. It was something that, uh, like, uh,

00:26:03.480 books that, um, are about natural disasters or wars or something like that are not allowed to be

00:26:11.800 advertised. It was so absurd, you know? Um, so I was the target of censorship myself, but then also remember,

00:26:20.440 um, recently we had books canceled like, um, Dr. Seuss's books, right? And, uh, a whole bunch of

00:26:30.360 other, you know, authors who served, you know, previously in the former President Trump's administration

00:26:37.560 were not even, uh, able to find, uh, book contracts. They were precluded by mainstream publishers

00:26:47.000 from working with them. And so, um, and, you know, Joe Rogan, remember what happened with Joe Rogan?

00:26:55.000 He simply had Dr. Malone, you know, uh, being hosted on the podcast and Dr. Malone is not some charlatan.

00:27:04.040 He's a medical doctor, right? And a genius to boot. Exactly. And it's simply,

00:27:11.960 his views did not align with the group thing or with what I call the party line, which is what we

00:27:17.960 had back in the Soviet Union. And so censorship is now an unfortunate reality in, uh, my adopted

00:27:25.800 homeland, uh, which I completely just, you know, I don't understand. And I fear very much because I

00:27:33.400 came here for freedom, not to be, you know, again, ruled by another big brother, which is the, uh,

00:27:40.680 big tech right now that the Soviets could only dream of such capabilities.

00:27:46.360 Too many Americans think of the distinction between totalitarianism and an American, uh,

00:27:53.480 constitutional republic is really just a matter of geography, uh, some sort of coincident in the time,

00:28:00.360 space-time continuum, uh, almost accidental, uh, when in fact there is a cultural, societal,

00:28:07.640 uh, historic imperative, uh, uh, uh, and arc, uh, that, uh, drives both to their, to their realization.

00:28:17.880 Uh, and I really think, and it's a shame, it's almost as though that's being taught

00:28:23.000 through some form of indoctrination in our country. I'm fully aware of the Marxist bent in, uh,

00:28:29.720 indoctrination in our public schools and our universities and colleges, but it, it strikes me

00:28:36.520 as odd that, uh, people don't have a higher regard, uh, for the liberties we have. I always get a little,

00:28:44.600 uh, anxious, I guess, when people start talking to me about universal rights,

00:28:49.640 when they talk about human rights, uh, because our constitution, our rights in this country are not

00:28:55.400 about being universal. They're not about being human. They are hard fought, hard won rights

00:29:03.160 for the American people, uh, and embodied, codified in the constitution, which is unique in all the

00:29:10.760 world. And there are so many people teaching history, teaching government, political science,

00:29:16.680 even philosophy, who real will not acknowledge that reality. Uh, what is your reaction?

00:29:22.760 I am, you know, in such, so much in love with American constitution and the bill of rights,

00:29:30.280 you know, it's just such a delight to know that, and it's probably like the only, the only document

00:29:36.920 in the entire world that guarantees the, uh, its citizens, the right to pursue happiness. I mean,

00:29:43.480 it's just like, think about that. Like, I, I always just marvel at that fact. And, um, and so we must do

00:29:51.240 everything to preserve, you know, freedom of speech is, is, is the sort of the, the, the cornerstone

00:29:59.560 of everything of democracy, right. And the plurality of opinion, because once you eliminate plurality of

00:30:07.000 opinion, you arrive at party line. Um, and you basically, if you eliminate certain things from

00:30:14.760 language through political correctness, which is what's going on right now, or if you change the

00:30:20.840 meanings of the word, such as man, woman, marriage, then you eliminate certain concepts, even from the

00:30:28.920 thought. And this is what the Soviets did, uh, Lou. They banned books, they banned 1984, anything by George 0.58

00:30:37.960 Orwell. They banned Dr. Zhivago because they didn't want people to know an alternative view,

00:30:45.320 and only to see the world through the prism, through the eyes of the communist party. And this is what

00:30:53.800 led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. And just to see that the same trend is happening right now,

00:31:00.680 that we are completely like, you know, turned into, turned this country into like some lunacy land by,

00:31:08.520 look, uh, the, uh, the Supreme Court nominee could not explain what a woman was. I mean, you can't,

00:31:14.680 how do you even like this? Like I can't, I'm stunned. It's so we are going into a completely wrong direction.

00:31:23.800 And, uh, unlike me, you know, um, and some other, uh, Soviet Russian immigrants, we have nowhere else 0.57

00:31:31.560 to go. This is still the best country in the world. And if the leftists ruin this country,

00:31:37.640 I don't know where else. Well, there's nowhere to go. Well, we're the right in this country,

00:31:44.440 the conservatives in this country, the working men and woman and their families, uh, are middle-class,

00:31:52.520 small business people have to understand this is now war. Uh, it is a disinformation war. It's a

00:32:00.120 psychological operations war, uh, but it is a war with our very institutions, whether it be,

00:32:05.800 as I said, the permanent bureaucracy within our government, uh, whether it be rhinos, uh, Democrats,

00:32:12.680 radicals, uh, Marxists, socialists, uh, all aligned against the fundamental, uh, institutions that made

00:32:20.280 this country great. Uh, our legal system is absolutely corrupt. Uh, it is dysfunctional.

00:32:28.120 Uh, and our judges, uh, to the Supreme court even are not functioning as they should. And, uh, it is a

00:32:36.200 very difficult time. Uh, the Republican party itself is its weight to what is supposed to be a

00:32:42.840 two-party political system renders it really a one-party political system because the rhinos 1.00

00:32:48.680 certainly are more than a countervailing influence against, uh, legitimate conservatives and middle-of-the-road

00:32:54.920 traditional Republicans. It's a very difficult thing to watch. And you've had the perspective of being

00:33:00.680 born and raised in the Soviet Union, uh, coming to this country, immigrating to this country, and

00:33:06.040 ending up being a very prominent, uh, uh, official in our intelligence, uh, community. Uh, it's, I've got to,

00:33:14.840 I've got to invite you to do this, and I don't know if anyone has, but I would like for you to do an

00:33:19.480 intelligence and assessment, um, top of the line, if you will, without a lot of rigor, uh, I guess.

00:33:25.800 And, uh, but I'd like to get just an assessment from you, uh, from the standpoint of a Russian

00:33:33.400 intelligence officer, looking at what we're witnessing in this country, the division, the

00:33:38.120 polarization, uh, the, uh, the forces of the left that are attacking our institutions, dividing the

00:33:46.680 country, and a president, a president, uh, while his party controls all three, uh, major elements of our

00:33:55.160 our government, a president who is, uh, impaired. That's the word I will use because I can't be

00:34:01.960 clinical about it, uh, but he makes too many mistakes not to be impaired. I just, your assessment.

00:34:08.360 Yes, well, in fact, I can simply repeat the assessment that the Russians, uh, made about 10 years ago,

00:34:15.880 um, they predicted, or one of the, uh, Russian intelligence, um, analysts predicted a civil war

00:34:24.280 in the United States within 20 years, I believe. And that's because, uh, the Russians saw all of 0.99

00:34:32.280 these various trends, uh, pointing to polarization and, um, you know, divisions along racial lines,

00:34:40.600 along immigration status, along, you know, uh, against the police. And, uh, all of these divisions were

00:34:48.600 spurred by, you know, the BLM and all kinds of leftists and people unwittingly, like, useful 1.00

00:34:56.920 idiots. People on the left were supporting all these fraudulent groups, you know, like the BLM, 1.00

00:35:03.000 which is the most racist organization out there. And it's a, it's a Marxist type organization. And so,

00:35:11.080 and the Russians, once they noticed that, they started, uh, advocating for these trends and amplifying

00:35:20.760 them through disinformation on social media. And this is what happened during the 2016 election

00:35:29.080 interference by the Russians. Um, they were working both sides, right? They were amplifying these 0.94

00:35:36.520 divisions, trying to throw Washington into political dysfunction and cause social unrest, uh, foment

00:35:44.360 disorder, disagreements, which they achieved. And ironically, the corrupt intelligence, uh,

00:35:53.240 officials in the Obama administration, uh, John Brennan, the former CIA director, James Clapper,

00:36:01.240 former DNI director of national intelligence and James Comey, former FBI director, they produced, uh, or

00:36:10.520 orchestrated rather, they chose the, uh, analyst whom they could manipulate and they orchestrated a

00:36:18.040 fraudulent election, uh, intelligence community assessment that concluded that the Russians interfered

00:36:25.960 in the election to help Trump win presidency and harm Hillary Clinton. Well, that was science fiction.

00:36:32.600 It was not just incompetence. It was a blatant lie to the American people. What the Russians were trying 0.99

00:36:38.680 to do is cause all of this disruption, right? That, that you described and I just, um, uh, followed up. Um, and so

00:36:49.080 this is incredible. That is the assessments that the Russians made and they continue their actions 0.80

00:36:56.360 to tear, to help tear our country apart in order to, uh, make the civil war that they predicted a reality.

00:37:06.520 And unfortunately, certain elements within our society are helping them, you know, look, Joe Biden himself,

00:37:13.720 like he wanted to elect, uh, the Soulya Amarova, the former, you know, Soviet born Soviet trained, uh, Marxist.

00:37:23.640 He wanted to put her in charge, you know, of policy of banking regulation policy. She would have appended

00:37:31.240 our banking system as we know it. I mean, she is a, um, communist sympathizer and all of a sudden we have

00:37:39.720 people like that, you know, like Bernie Sanders, like AOC and all these other radicals, uh, in our, uh,

00:37:48.520 government that are taking our country on a fatal path.

00:37:52.840 Yes. Yeah. And, uh, to that point, uh, she was not the first, uh, communist sympathizer that

00:38:00.760 that President Biden has put forth. He also has done the same thing, uh, with his, uh, appointment,

00:38:06.680 his, uh, nomination, uh, of, uh, Ketanji Brown, uh, Jackson. Uh, she is without question,

00:38:15.240 a hardcore leftist, uh, who is supposedly going to be on the Supreme court will likely be for crying out

00:38:23.160 loud. Uh, but she has, she's as far from mainstream. If there is such a thing anymore in American 1.00

00:38:29.240 politics as you can get, it's outrageous, uh, to see what we, we continue, uh, to tolerate in this

00:38:37.400 country as a, as a high government official. It's, it's, it's sobering, if not downright frightening.

00:38:44.280 Uh, I want to turn to the issue also, uh, of, of that disinformation campaign, uh, the, the role

00:38:54.680 of, uh, our media. Is there an awareness in our intelligence apparatus of just how corrupt

00:39:04.120 the national corporate owned media is? And, and, and to what degree do they exploit that, uh, that fact?

00:39:14.280 If, if they are. I am not sure, um, Lou, because the, the target of U.S. intelligence is red, so to speak,

00:39:27.080 the adversaries. So the intelligence community follows Russian, Chinese, and other, you know, uh,

00:39:35.960 disinformation, if you will, uh, trying to make assessments of what's true and what's not.

00:39:42.520 They are not really following closely the U.S. information space. And in fact, when there were

00:39:51.320 signs of, uh, the Russians interfering in 2016 election and the intelligence, um, agencies or

00:39:59.960 some of them were trying to reach out to the big tech, uh, Facebook and, uh, other social media

00:40:08.040 basically told them to, you know, go pound sand that, uh, they didn't believe, they didn't believe

00:40:13.640 anything. And so the, um, I don't believe there's awareness, uh, that there's a single party line,

00:40:22.600 uh, storyline that's dominating right now, mass media. And, uh, if you really have to learn something,

00:40:30.280 um, and everybody must, um, like you, you have to go to, uh, do your own research to go to multiple

00:40:38.440 sources and authoritative sources, like, you know, like your podcast, like Dinesh D'Souza has one,

00:40:46.920 you know, uh, Fox News is pretty good. Um, there, there are, there are sources, but they are not,

00:40:55.000 you know, mass media sources that, um, that have straightforward down the middle analytic line

00:41:04.520 and straight reporting because journalism has changed. It's no longer, you know, unbiased, uh,

00:41:11.800 reporting the news. It's basically presenting the analysis and the bias of the journalist that's

00:41:20.360 writing that news. Rebecca, I, I have been fascinated, uh, talking with you today. I hope you will come back

00:41:28.040 soon and we can continue our conversation. It is our tradition on this podcast. We always give our

00:41:35.640 guests the, the last word, uh, and if I could ask you to include within that last word of yours, uh,

00:41:43.000 some suggestions as to how you think Ukraine will play out. Sure. Well, the first, um, 0.72

00:41:51.880 I want to mention that the United States has two types of threats right now. One is the

00:41:57.960 external threat and that is presented by authoritarians like, uh, Xi Jinping, you know,

00:42:06.600 the Chinese leader, uh, Vladimir Putin. They're not exactly directly, um, trying to present the

00:42:15.720 military threat to the U S you know, not like they're going to attack us or anything, but they're

00:42:21.640 trying to present, um, um, a threat by challenging our interests, challenging and, um, um, um, our allies,

00:42:30.920 security, uh, parameters. And so they're also trying to stir a revolution, if you will, or a social unrest

00:42:42.360 through various means and, uh, in our country and transform our society from a, um, capitalist free

00:42:52.680 society into a socialist, you know, government control nightmare that they themselves represent.

00:43:00.280 So, uh, and then the second threat, so that those threats come from, from outside, but this second one

00:43:07.320 is internal threat and that is a threat of socialism. That's a horrific system that I fled, I lived through

00:43:18.040 and fled, and it's not all about the free stuff. Um, there's a lot of misunderstanding about this system

00:43:25.000 in, um, America, particularly among the young people who no longer learn history in public schools.

00:43:32.360 And, um, they are enamored with this, um, with the system, which they don't understand. It's a, it's a total

00:43:40.520 government control, uh, everyone is equal except people who are in the government. They have everything, uh,

00:43:48.440 the rest of the people have, uh, nothing. This is what that system is all about. And, uh, that's kind of my, uh,

00:43:58.280 closing line at the big picture, the geopolitical, uh, picture with regard to Ukraine. What I envision

00:44:06.440 happening is that, uh, because Putin cannot really win this war decisively, unlike what he was hoping,

00:44:15.880 and unlike what his military intelligence, uh, was briefing them, he cannot achieve his primary goal,

00:44:25.080 and that was toppling Ukraine and decapitating the Zelensky government very quickly. So that's not

00:44:31.720 going to happen as long as we help Ukraine. So I see this, uh, dragging on as a, uh, grinding,

00:44:38.680 protracted conflict, uh, where many more lives are lost. And unfortunately, this type of goal suits Putin,

00:44:49.800 because if there's no territorial integrity and sovereignty in Ukraine, then they cannot

00:44:56.120 not become NATO member. And that is Putin's goal is to prevent Ukraine from joining the West and

00:45:03.320 joining NATO. So that's my unfortunate pessimistic, um, um, outcome of this, uh, conflict right now of

00:45:13.080 this war by Putin on Ukraine. Well, we thank you for that assessment. And, uh, we also understand,

00:45:20.920 uh, that it is a, uh, a war that, uh, on that basis would not evolve into a larger conflict,

00:45:29.000 but which, uh, means there is at least, uh, some, some political and rational impetus for both sides in

00:45:35.800 this to, uh, uh, pursue a status quo that's well repugnant to both sides, I suppose is the way to

00:45:43.720 put it. Uh, Rebecca, I've enjoyed talking with you. As I said, please come back soon. Her book is

00:45:50.200 Putin's playbook, Russia's secret plan to defeat America. I urge you to read this book. It is, it is

00:45:58.840 fascinating. Uh, it is prescient. And as I said, revelatory and, uh, spot on for the times in which

00:46:07.000 unfortunately, uh, uh, we have to contend with all of these issues that Rebecca has laid out in it.

00:46:12.920 Uh, Rebecca Koffler, thanks so much for being with us. We will continue to, uh, recommend your book

00:46:19.560 highly and, uh, look forward to our next discussion. Rebecca Koffler, her book is Putin's playbook,

00:46:25.960 Russia's secret plan to defeat America available at Barnes and Noble and Regnery.com. That's 0.94

00:46:33.560 Regnery.com, R-E-G-N-E-R-Y.com, Regnery.com, a remarkable book. And I want to let you know,

00:46:43.320 we'll have a special guest for you next week. We're delighted to tell you, President Donald Trump will

00:46:48.200 be back with us next week, next Tuesday. That's April 5th for President Trump right here on the

00:46:54.600 Great America Show. Please be with us. And please be with us tomorrow when we'll be talking with

00:46:59.960 Congressman Troy Nels of Texas, an America first Great American. You'll enjoy hearing from him,

00:47:07.160 I assure you. We want to invite you to sign up for our Great America Show advisory and newsletter.

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00:47:43.800 Thanks. God bless you, and God bless America.

The Great America Show - March 30, 2022

THE AUTHOR WHO FORESAW PUTIN’S INVASION OF UKRAINE

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