THE AUTHOR WHO FORESAW PUTIN’S INVASION OF UKRAINE
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Summary
Former CIA analyst and author Rebecca Koffler joins host Lou Dobbs to discuss her new book, Putin's Handbook: Russia's Secret Plan to Defeat America. She explains how Vladimir Putin and the Russian intelligence services use poison as a tool of political destabilization and destabilization.
Transcript
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Hello, everybody. I'm Lou Dobbs. Could we have imagined how bad things could get under President
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Biden? Could we have imagined Joe Biden could conjure up so many challenges, threats in just
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over a year in office? Not all of his own making, certainly, but most. The pandemic was raging as
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he campaigned for the presidency, and he, at every opportunity, stayed at home to campaign.
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He watched as the summer of 2020 became a season of street violence, protests, riots, arson, and the
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nation watched it all for six months. George Floyd, Antifa, Black Lives Matter, as riots spread and
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violence overtook the summer. And while most of the country was captivated by the violence in Milwaukee
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and Seattle, Louisville, Atlanta, New York City, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Portland, and Kenosha,
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absentee ballots and mail-in ballots were being printed, ready to do their part in the presidential
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election of 2020. An election President Trump warned us all was being rigged by the left and
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influenced by both the COVID virus pandemic and the surge of civil unrest and violence,
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which, in retrospect, appears to not have been entirely coincidental. Not at all. And it turns
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out there may have been external forces at work in the vandalism, violence, riots, and arson in the
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run-up to the election of 2020. All those forces may have originated, in fact, in Russia, not working
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for Donald Trump, as the Democrats pretended for the previous five years, but working to create more
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disruption and street violence in an election year, trying to create as much chaos as possible
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in pursuit of what Putin and Russia were seeking, and still do, a civil war in the United States.
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That's the view of our guest, former senior intelligence analyst for the CIA and the DIA,
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Rebecca Koffler. She's the author of the important new book, Putin's Handbook, Russia's Secret Plan
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to Defeat America. Rebecca has written, in my opinion, a masterful, fascinating book that is
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timely, and with the crisis in Ukraine, a prescient book as well, which we recommend to you highly.
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Rebecca Koffler, we are delighted to have you on the show with us. Welcome.
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Thank you, Lou. It's such a pleasure to be here with you and your audience today.
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Well, they're a great audience, and they're going to love this book, and they're going to love
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listening to you today. I want to start with a development today. Roman Abramovich, famous Russian
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oligarch and entrepreneur, and two of Ukraine's peace negotiators or representatives, suffering
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suspected poisoning at the very outset of the talks between Russia and Ukraine. Now, that wasn't very
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nice of someone, was it? Absolutely not, Lou, but it's a standard tradecraft, Russian intelligence
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tradecraft, poisonings, assassinations, intimidation. This is a tactic called active measures. It's unique
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to Russian intelligence, and it includes a really atrocious tactic also called wet affairs, which is
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actually assassinations and killings. And so there's nothing new. We know Putin authorizes
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these. It's very consistent with his previous behavior.
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And Putin seems to have a preference, if you will, for poison as a tool of assassination.
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Am I incorrect in making that assumption based on just the incidents of assassination and attempted
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assassinations we've had over the years? You're 100% correct, Lou. Poison has been a centuries-old tactic
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that the Russians used, even back, you know, during the Tsarist times, but certainly during the times of
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Red Terror, Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, all the way to Vladimir Putin have used poisonings,
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but the most recent ones are the poisonings of Julia and Sergei Skripal. Sergei Skripal was a former GRU
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officer. GRU is a Russian military intelligence, and Skripal at that point was already in Great Britain,
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right? And the one before that was Alexander Litvinenko. So Skripal got poisoned with a military-grade
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nerve agent developed in the Soviet Union called Novichok. And Alexander Litvinenko, the former FSB officer,
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Russian domestic security. He was poisoned with polonium-2010, a radiological
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agent. So these are brutal deaths or brutal suffering that this type of stuff causes.
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I was surprised to see this story break today, because it just seems to me that Putin's affinity
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for poisoning and for disrupting a process before it can even really begin, begins, it's just part of
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his history. Apparently that these Ukrainian representatives never dreamed that he would poison
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them, if indeed that's what happened, or Abramovich, which is an interesting way to find out Abramovich
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was actually participating in these talks, at least in an ancillary fashion. Are you surprised that
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their guard was not up more? I am surprised, Lou, but the thing is,
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the Russians are so highly trained in this type of tradecraft active measures that it is so difficult
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to spot. And some of these things are super difficult, or most of them actually, are very difficult to
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diagnose. This is why Litvinenko, Alexander Litvinenko died in Great Britain, because the doctors simply
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don't have experience with this stuff, since this is military grade developed specifically by the Russian
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military. And he was just basically ailing and dying over the course of just a few weeks, and nobody knew,
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you know, what was ailing him. And it took, you know, it was by the time that they actually figured it
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out way too late. And so, yes, I can't really blame, you know, Abramovich or the Ukrainian
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negotiators for potentially missing some signs. It's very difficult to spot. Yeah. I want to point
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out to everybody listening, we're talking with Rebecca Koffler, the author of this tremendous new book,
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Putin's playbook. It is Russia's secret plan to defeat America. It is revelatory. It is fascinating.
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And furthermore, her analysis takes us into the current events. As you read her description of the
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preference on the part of Putin in dealing with an issue, a political issue like NATO's encroachment,
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his response. And over some years, coming to the realization, as she said he would,
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that he would have to do something and strike first. And he did. I have to commend you for that,
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Rebecca. I mean, it's, this was written well before Ukraine. And you absolutely nailed it. Your thoughts
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about the analysis, the timing, and the decision by Putin to make you look awfully, awfully smart.
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Yeah, unfortunately, I'd rather not be smart. But this is what happened. We're now having Putin's
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playbook unraveling right in front of our eyes. And I wrote this book, when I was writing this book,
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I knew something like that would happen, because I just saw the writings on the wall. Putin never made it
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a secret. Every single speech, every single press conference, every strategic planning document,
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every field manual, if you will, you know, military modernization was pointing to the fact that he was
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developing what he called an asymmetric strategy. And all we had to do is listen, Lou, but Washington
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security quote unquote experts completely reject anything that doesn't fit into the mental
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framework. And so I was warning when I was DIA intelligence officer for Russian doctrine and
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strategy. I was continuously warning about Putin and what he was planning to do. And those warnings
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fell on deaf ears. And then I wrote the book to warn my fellow Americans. And DIA and CIA were trying to
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sabotage the publication of this book. And they redacted a bunch of it. So when I wrote it, I didn't
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know how soon it actually will happen. I knew it would happen one day. What we're seeing today, I didn't
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know just how soon it was going to happen. I'm just curious, Rebecca, how long between the time you wrote
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the book and turned it over to the intelligence auditors, if you will, how long did they have it in
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their hands? And therefore, how long did they delay publication of the book? So there was supposed to be
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a promise within 30 days to turn around a manuscript. When I submitted it to them, I spoke with them
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actually on the phone to confirm. First, they lost it, of course, typical government, even though I sent
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a priority mail and everything. Oh, I know. It's like, you know, you can't make the stuff up.
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No. Then they found it and said, oh, we're going to assign the case and we're going to, you know,
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go through this. And then I didn't hear from them for months. And I sent them emails. I sent them
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a priority mail, you know, letters, requests. We had to scrap the publication, the first publication
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date. So eventually, I think it was like six months later, I was basically telling them, look,
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I have a contract here. I have a book contract. Not that they care because the government lives in
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the la-la land. They don't care about any kinds of contracts or any laws for that matter. And we've
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seen that, right? So it was more than six months. Then they came out of the woodwork and claimed they
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never received any single email from me, okay? Everyone else receives email, including you,
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Lou, right? Or your producer. But the government did not. And then they started the process. They gave me
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31 pages worth of redacted text, hoping that I would start negotiating with them because there
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was some ridiculous, you know, stuff that they claimed was classified. And I wasn't going to
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negotiate because if I did not honor that publication date, this book would have never, you know, been
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published. And we were very close. And so my publisher said, okay, we're just going to go with these
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redactions then because otherwise this book will never see the day of light. And that's what happened.
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Well, it was a great decision by Regnery to do that because the redactions, while it's a fascinating
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guessing game for any reader, you know, I enjoy trying to figure out what might have been in that
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context at that moment as you're writing it. But what is unredacted is so revelatory and so crisp
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in conveying your meaning and the sense of what the Russian intelligence apparatus and culture is all
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about, as well as, of course, the leadership of Vladimir Putin. It's just a fascinating read. And I just,
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I can't wait for Regnery to get that book back in stock so people can read it because it's fascinating.
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I want to turn to a couple of points within the book. And that is, as we watched what happened in
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in Poland and in Belgium. We, with President Biden over the last four days, I mean, it's just,
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it's just sickening to see a president of the United States perform as he did. He had at least four,
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perhaps five mistakes of language, whether it was his ad lib about regime change, which he said that
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this man cannot remain in power, whether it was his remark to the 82nd Airborne in which he
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conveyed the impression to those soldiers that they would be dropping into Ukraine at any moment in the
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next week or so, it seemed. And that had to all, of course, be corrected. He came dangerously close to
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being, I think, honestly, provocative toward Putin, whom he also called a butcher for crying out loud,
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hardly presidential. I just can't wait to hear your thoughts about this.
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Of course. Well, President Biden regretfully has given every signal to Putin that
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that indicated that the United States is an existential threat to Russia, triggering potentially
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the use of nuclear weapons that is codified in Russian military doctrine. The reason I say existential
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threat, it's because it's because it's one of the requirements about which Dmitry Peskov,
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Putin's press secretary, recently reminded us, remember when he was asked by Christiana Mampurov of CNN,
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who was asking him to rule out the use of nuclear weapons, which Peskov didn't. So regime change is
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what is, what is it if it's not existential threat? And also Sergey Lavrov, the foreign minister of Russia,
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recently told us that the Russians actually view sanctions as a method of economic warfare
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by which the United States and the West want to strangle and annihilate Russia. Okay, so
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wittingly or unwittingly, Joe Biden has just triggered potentially a nuclear war. And the topic of regime
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change is really is really nothing new for the Russians, because they've seen this happen in Afghanistan,
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in Iraq, with Saddam Hussein, and in Libya, with Muammar Gaddafi dying at the hands of their own people.
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And so they believe that it's simply a Freudian slip by Biden. And they suspected for years that that's
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was official Washington policy was, and Biden simply confirmed what they already suspected.
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And, you know, when you project that out to the Middle East, and I'm not talking about just the Arab
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intelligentsia, if you will, the Arab street is getting bombarded with this stuff
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about Biden talking, first of all, making it sound like another slip of the tongue, a slip of truth,
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that an incursion, a minor incursion into Ukraine would be just fine at that press conference a month
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or so ago. And you recall that and now you have these so called slips of the tongue, in which he talks
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about, again, provocatively, our soldiers dropping in, threatening regime change, and the list goes on.
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This begins to look like a purposeful, deceitful string of intentional statements of truth designed
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to provoke. I mean, I hate to say it that way, but that could all, I think, legitimately be inferred by
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Absolutely. The Russians are culturally predisposed to worst case scenario, right? Every single action
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taken by us, even if it's defensive, they interpret it as offensive, because they place it in the context
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of what happened previously, what the United States has done, and also in the context of what happened
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in Russia. So Russia history is full of wars. It's a war-torn history with turmoil. They sacrificed 20
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million people in World War II alone, and they watched the United States for the past 20 years conduct
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military operations in Iraq, in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Kosovo. Kosovo was the first one that
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shook Putin. And therefore, they have concluded that the U.S. is what they call a high-risk actor,
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right? And because we have superior military, we engage in conflict relatively easily, or pretty easily,
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according to Russian intelligence. And therefore, they have concluded that sooner or later, a war
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between Russia and the United States is inevitable, because our interests are on the collision course
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between the two countries, right? We're fighting over the same territory, the post-Soviet space
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in Eurasia. Countries like Ukraine, Georgia, Belarus, that Putin believes belong to his sphere influence,
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and he seeks to enforce his version of the Monroe Doctrine over these countries. And Washington believes
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that these areas belong to us, and we should, quote-unquote, democratize them. And there's an official,
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long-term, bipartisan policy that used to be highly classified that we will do everything
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to prevent Russia from emerging as a dominant power in Eurasia. And the Russians know it, and when they
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know that or they believe that the war is inevitable, they interpret every single action through that
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prism. And so a war, an actual shooting war is right now very, very probable based on potentially miscalculation
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or misinterpretation by either Washington or Moscow of each other's moves, intentions, and, you know,
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upcoming activities. I truly believe that President Biden has escalated that probability. I think it
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existed irrespective of the language that he used in Europe in his recent trip, but he escalated
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with his language, I think, the probability significantly. I'll put it that way. I can't
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imagine it being otherwise. And I talked with several military analysts, as you would expect on this show.
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And amongst them, Colonel Doug McGregor, who was a former chief of staff at the Defense Department,
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is also General Keith Kellogg, both men have a very, I think, real politic view of the world,
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and were discussing and trying, and this is my inference. It isn't necessarily what they said,
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but it's what I inferred from what they said. They were trying to get a certain audience in Washington,
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D.C. to understand that the analog to this situation would be if we were watching this happen
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in Mexico or Cuba ourselves, and how would we react with that level of proximity and contiguous
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relationship to an unfriendly government, that is, Ukraine, because they are trying to move toward
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NATO. Do you think that's a reasonable way to look at it?
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D.C. 100%. Look, what we right now are not getting from the mainstream media is the primary driver
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for Putin's actions in Ukraine, which is a purely military calculation. Imagine this,
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the distance between St. Petersburg, which is the second largest city in Russia, and NATO forces back
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during the Cold War, was 1,000 miles. And today, with NATO's acceptance of the Baltics, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia,
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that distance has reduced to 100 miles. That's a shorter distance than between Washington and New York.
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No military leader would accept that type of proximity between rivals or even adversaries. I mean, remember,
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the Russians declared in their military doctrine that the United States and NATO are security threat number one
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for them. And NATO was originally created with the sole purpose of neutralizing, you know, the Soviet threat,
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right? So they don't believe this whole rhetoric about democracy and all these things because they know if we
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did, you know, care about democracy, we would have made sure that our country remains democratic and that
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today there are all kinds of signs, you know, for someone like me who came from undemocratic country,
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you know, the USSR from the Soviet Union, uh, it's very clear that our freedom of speech is no longer
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given and all these other signs, right? So that's why Moscow does not buy this whole democracy thing.
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And, um, and that's why, uh, Putin having drawn a red line on Ukraine with regard to NATO, um,
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he decided to actually enforce it and, uh, he decided to sort of give Washington the taste of its own
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medicine, if you will, in terms of the, uh, Monroe, uh, doctrine, uh, enforcement.
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It's, it's interesting that the Obama administration, uh, and I want to say it was in 2011,
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basically unilaterally and without discussion, uh, at least a public discussion at all,
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unequivocally dropped the Monroe doctrine, uh, and, and walked away from it. Uh, when I,
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and at the very same time that Russia was making greater inroads into Venezuela, uh, also into Cuba,
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uh, and there is this peculiar imbalance of information between what is happening,
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what is happening in the course of our own, uh, news outlets, corporate news outlets, mainstream
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media, if you will, uh, and what our government is saying. We are bombarded by disinformation from our
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own government, uh, for partisan purposes, uh, and for the purpose of the purposes of the permanent
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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
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to defeat America was, uh, banned from being advertised by Regnery, my publisher on Amazon. And, uh, there was a
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very ridiculous explanation that was given by Amazon to my publisher. It was something that, uh, like, uh,
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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
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other, you know, authors who served, you know, previously in the former President Trump's administration
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were not even, uh, able to find, uh, book contracts. They were precluded by mainstream publishers
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from working with them. And so, um, and, you know, Joe Rogan, remember what happened with Joe Rogan?
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He simply had Dr. Malone, you know, uh, being hosted on the podcast and Dr. Malone is not some charlatan.
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He's a medical doctor, right? And a genius to boot. Exactly. And it's simply,
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his views did not align with the group thing or with what I call the party line, which is what we
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had back in the Soviet Union. And so censorship is now an unfortunate reality in, uh, my adopted
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homeland, uh, which I completely just, you know, I don't understand. And I fear very much because I
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came here for freedom, not to be, you know, again, ruled by another big brother, which is the, uh,
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big tech right now that the Soviets could only dream of such capabilities.
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Too many Americans think of the distinction between totalitarianism and an American, uh,
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constitutional republic is really just a matter of geography, uh, some sort of coincident in the time,
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space-time continuum, uh, almost accidental, uh, when in fact there is a cultural, societal,
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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
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through some form of indoctrination in our country. I'm fully aware of the Marxist bent in, uh,
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indoctrination in our public schools and our universities and colleges, but it, it strikes me
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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,
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when they talk about human rights, uh, because our constitution, our rights in this country are not
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about being universal. They're not about being human. They are hard fought, hard won rights
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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?
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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,
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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
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meanings of the word, such as man, woman, marriage, then you eliminate certain concepts, even from the
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thought. And this is what the Soviets did, uh, Lou. They banned books, they banned 1984, anything by George
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Orwell. They banned Dr. Zhivago because they didn't want people to know an alternative view,
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and only to see the world through the prism, through the eyes of the communist party. And this is what
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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.
00:47:14.200
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00:47:22.200
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00:47:28.600
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