The Great America Show - March 30, 2022


THE AUTHOR WHO FORESAW PUTIN’S INVASION OF UKRAINE


Episode Stats

Length

47 minutes

Words per Minute

129.59502

Word Count

6,193

Sentence Count

315

Hate Speech Sentences

20


Summary


Transcript

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