Scott Ritter Extra: Ask the Inspector

Ask the Inspector Ep. 173

Scott Ritter answers questions from the audience with host Jeff Norman most Friday nights at 5 PM PT/8 PM ET/1 AM GMT and most Tuesdays at noon PT/3PM ET/8PM GMT.

Submit your question in advance and donate to Waging Peace, Scott's campaign for nuclear disarmament, at https://ScottRitter.com.

Opening music by Ed Kliman https://texasmusicforge.com/, Brian Pothier https://www.facebook.com/pothierproductions and ShortBusMusic https://hearthis.at/shortbusmusic-6e/.

Duration:: 1h 5m
Broadcast on:: 02 Jul 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

[MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] To all units proceed to your post assignment, all units proceed to your post assignment. That study's on fire! [BLANK_AUDIO] >> Yet, maybe it's episode 173 of Ask the Inspector on July 2nd, 2024. Jeff Norman with Scott Ritter, and Scott is going to be appearing July 20th at farmers and chefs in Pecipse, New York. A great opportunity to feed your mind and feed your belly, feed your soul, maybe. A feast for the senses, that's a very good restaurant. That's not like Arby's or something. That's a very upscale high quality restaurant. Is it not Scott? You did an event there previously. >> No, I did an event for this arm at the time of Paris Drake, a very successful event. I think everybody who went there was pleased not only with the book, but maybe even more so with the food. High quality, this is a guy who, you know, takes food from the farm to the table. And he's a very innovative chef, very, again, just the delicious food and a nice restaurant, a nice location. And, you know, it's a chance for the price of the ticket. You get a book. And if you want the book signed, you get to come up to me afterwards and I'll be more than happy to sign the book. But, you know, it was a very successful format. The first time we did it and I anticipate that will be similarly successful. >> It's exactly the kind of event that I love. I wish I were close enough to attend myself. >> Well, but it is a perfect model. And what I would encourage people around the country, if you have a restaurant menu for your restaurant owner, you know a restaurant owner, call John Lecikup and say, hey, how does this work as a business model? Because it's a successful night for him. You know, he sells the tickets. He runs a pre-planned menu. You have, you know, exactly how much food you have to prepare. And you, you know, price it right so you make your money. You run a cash bar. People like to drink when they're listening to authors, and so it's a business model. It's a very successful thing. Plus, you'd be supporting a good cause, which is, you know, ask the inspector, Scott Ritter, Jeff Norman, US tour of duty cause. You know, we're about waiting peace. You know, this isn't frivolous what we're doing. This book isn't a frivolous book. This book is about covering Ukraine. You know, this is about the Ukraine conflict. It's done in a unique fashion based upon the interviews that took place over the course of more than two years by Anya K. And, you know, so this book will educate people about the reality of the Ukraine conflict, the complexity of the Ukraine conflict. And then, of course, there's the question and answer period, which makes asking the inspector come alive. And you can be in the audience, ask the questions, get the answers. I just think that it's something that's good for the restaurant owner, good for the cause, good for me, good for the publisher. It's good to sell books. I mean, people tend to remember that publishing books is not a charity event. I wish it could be. I wish Al I could do his right books for free. I do write books for free. But then the publisher published them for free and you could buy them for free. And it would be wonderful to do that. But that's not the world we live in. You know, authors spend a lot of time writing books. Anya K and I spend a lot of time putting this book together. It's a quality book. Clarity Press took the time to review it, decide they wanted to publish it. They have published it. But in order to make all this work so that the next book can be written, people have to buy this book. It's a good product, buy it. And one way to, you know, promote the purchase, you know, this book is through venues such as what farmers and chefs is doing. It's a, you know, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a nice evening. A lot of fun and it's rewarding for all parties involved. All right. And if you're too far away from Pecipse in New York to attend, you can get an autographed copy of the book at scottritter.com. Only $25, not bad at all for an autograph book. And just so Jeff knows, you see, guys, we, we, we promoted the autographed copy. As I was autographing the first copies of the book, and then I put the first batch in the mail. They're gone already, hot off the press. And so I have sent out the second batch, which is the remainder of the books that I have. And I'm guessing they go quick. We're going to have to order more books. So thank you for buying them. But, you know, keep, keep buying them. This is, this is good. But once you read it, pass it on to a friend, pass it on to a family member. I mean, what's, what's important is what's inside the book. It's, it's information that needs to get out there. Okay. And for those of you who ordered before we have them actually ready to be shipped, thank you for your patient. They were shipped yesterday by our merchandise guru, John. So thanks to John for all his good work. And let's get to questions. Pass it. So great handle. Let's get to the questions from our beloved audience. This is the lightning round. We call it that because Scott answers every question in three minutes or less. As compared to Friday nights version of Ask the Inspector, the loquacious version to glorious hours of world-class geopolitical analysis. It's also world-class analysis today, too, but just in an abbreviated form. Tumbolo from the east coast of the west coast. I'm sure that means something to Tumbolo. I am puzzled. Maybe, I don't know, I can't even think of what part of California is in the eastern part of California, San Bernardino, I guess. Colonel Douglas McGregor has suggested that Israel might attack Hezbollah with tactical nukes. What would be the targets and would a nuke attack eliminate Hezbollah's ability to counterattack? Well, I don't know the basis of Colonel McGregor's assessment, but I don't disagree with it. Israel came out and said that if there's going to be a war with Hezbollah full-scale war, that Israel would use weapons that have never before been used of unprecedented strength. We can interpret that anyway. We want to. Some people imply that it'll be some sort of EMP, electromagnetic pulse generating system designed to fry the electronics of Hezbollah's precision-guided munitions. That presumes that Hezbollah hasn't taken any effort to shield its stores or scatter its stores. Nuclear weapons are very powerful. There's no doubt about that, but if you have your weapons underground and you've taken any effort to shield them, EMP pulses aren't going to take them out. And to use a tactical nuke, I mean, we're talking, you know, weapons of five kilotons, ten kilotons, basically a quarter or half the kilotonage of the weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. You'll do damage, but you're not going to destroy everything. And it's a hell of a thing for Israel to use nuclear weapons because it sort of therefore opens the door for Israel to be hit by nuclear weapons in return. And I would say that if Israel uses nuclear weapons, it's inevitable that a nuclear weapon will be used against Israel sometime in the future. Where that weapons come from is just a matter of speculation, but it's open season on Israel at that point in time, and they have to know that. And Israel's so small, and its economy is so fragile that, you know, a nuclear weapon over Tel Aviv ends Israel. Israel no longer exists over Taifa, cripples Israel. So, we'll see. We'll see what Israel's planning on doing. I'm not saying that it's impossible. As I said, there's information that suggests that Colonel McGregor may be on to something that this is, in fact, something that Israel is considering. But to actually pull the trigger on that, it will put Israel, even if they survive this, in an impossible position with the United States and the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. The United States simply can't stand it. The world won't stand by it. It's the end of Israel. So, I'm not disagreeing with his assessment. I'm saying that I think there might be people in Israel talking about this potential, but the consequences of this upfront far outweigh any benefit Israel could imagine getting from using tactical nuclear weapons. Okay, who's watching on Facebook, has wished us a happy independence day. That's Thursday, I guess. So this is our last show before the fourth of July. And if you would like to talk to us, please turn down your computer. You're on with our favorite weapons inspector. What's your question? Hello. Hello. Mark Roggles, Mark Paxmark. I'd like to know if what took over the place of the extremely most frequency basis for first strike capability for us. We were taken out in the '90s, dismantled. What took over it? Thank you much. Take care. Love you. Love you more. I think what he's talking about is where the United States, to be honest, I don't know exactly what he's talking about, so I'm making an assumption here. So forgive me if I get it wrong. But when the United States de-targeted, it's nuclear capability. Basically, we have up until then during the Cold War, we had bombers on strip alert. Sometimes we had bombers in the air 24/7. Each one of those bombers had targets affiliated with the weapons it was carrying. The targets were in a sealed envelope. If they received the orders, they'd go, get to their fails pipeline, they commit, they break it open, and that's what they're going to bomb. The missiles in the silos, each had targets assigned to them. So each missile, each one of the warheads on the missile, basically had targets. The same thing on submarines. What we did in the '90s, because of arms control, because the lessening of tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union and Russia, is we took the standby forces off of, we de-targeted them. We took the targets out. While they were still there and on the bombers, we just stopped flying them 24/7. We had bombers out there. They could take off, but then we reduced the number of ballistic missile submarines on patrol, and we reduced the number of missiles in silos. We were heading the right direction, so to speak. But this way, if there was ever going to be a crisis worth of a nuclear conflict, a decision would have to be made to re-target, to designate weapons and give them targets. And this buys time, this makes people think it's not on automatic anymore. And so that's the direction we headed. I don't know if we're still there. I don't know. My understanding is that we probably have put some weapons on the operational standby that have some targeting built into them, but I don't know. I'm not a nuclear targeter. I'm not in the system anymore. So it's speculation. But I do know that at one time in the 90s, the glorious moment when we took the targets out of the systems and the world could sleep easy at night knowing that there wasn't going to be some accidental nuclear launch that ends the world. All right. Somebody said that guy sounded like he was listening on the radio. What flashed in my mind was Neil Armstrong landing on the moon. That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind, which makes no sense, but anyway. Yeah, I'm trying to figure out where you're going with that one, Jeff. You might want to check the contents of the bottle you've been sipping from because it may have been spiked with some hallucinogenic. I forgot that echo effect. We could work. Yeah, I can't imitate. I can't imitate it, but it did sound like that. I know you're talking about you. I know you're talking about the static. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. John in Michigan, I remember Scott mentioning that Israel may face an existential threat if they go to war with Hezbollah on the northern front. However, if a cease fire occurs and political changes are made within Israel, can the state recover from the consequences of the conflict, or will they still face an existential threat? My assessment of the situation that Israel is already on a path to its inevitable demise, that the damage that's been done to Israel diplomatically around the world, the isolation that Israel is suffering from. The economic harm that's been brought about the Israel because of this isolation and because of, you know, the impact of, for instance, the de facto embargo, shipping embargo, the blockade against Israel run by on Sralah. That the Israeli economy is an irrecoverable decline. It may stabilize, but it will never fully recover. And the key to Israel's long-term viability is the notion of being the land of milk and honey, the place where Jews can go and live in peace and comfort and have good jobs and good prospects for the future. Right now, Israel is a place that people are fleeing. 500,000 Israelis have fled already, and that number will undoubtedly climb going forward. When life in Israel is hell on earth, remember, we're not in the day of the day and age of the kibbutz, where hardened people went over there to try and, you know, take a life out of the desert, people were willing to make sacrifice, etc. We're in the day of, you know, the digital era where people want easy life, easy living, everything done for them. That's not going to come to Israel again. And so even if there's a ceasefire and this war comes to an end, Israel's not going to recover because there will forever be the loaded gun at their head called Hezbollah. There will forever be Hamas. The loaded gun. Israel is the occupier and the occupied no longer want to be occupied. The resistance will continue. So it's either going to be a, you know, sort of a decline that's going to spread out over the course of a decade or more, or Israel can invade Hezbollah and then it's going to happen very quickly because of death and destruction that will come pouring down on Israel's head from Hezbollah, from Iran. It may be elsewhere. We never know what Arab state sitting there will jump on the dying body like a jack or Egypt is hovering there really irritated Israel for the illegal occupation of the Philadelphia corridor and what Israel is doing in Gaza. Egypt could jump in the fight. Syria could jump in the fight. But the bottom line is it's all over for Israel in my opinion. I mean, people could disagree with me and I'd be maybe proven wrong. But even if there's a ceasefire, it's not going to solve the fundamental issues that Israel's confronting going forward. Israel has to resolve issues internally. I mean, the two state solution is the minimum deal being put on the table by the world. How's Israel going to do that with West illegal settlements in West Bank? The mere process of getting rid of the West Bank settlers is going to create a civil war in Israel. It's got difficulty. I'm mute. All right, Scott's going to mute himself until the ruckus subsides. This is probably an Amazon or UPS caused ruckus. That does happen. Why don't you still need to give it mute? It's got to play you a voicemail message from Phil. Hello, Newman. All right, this is Phil. Scott, Ukraine refused to be neutral and that led to the invasion of Ukraine by Russian Federation. But now Finland is agreeing to 15 US bases and that's a threat to the Russian Federation. What are they going to do about it? Nothing. Finland's not a threat to the Russian Federation and open it up 15 bases. Let's look where Finland is located. There was an exercise run in the spring that extended into early summer. Big NATO exercises. One of the things that they were testing is, you see, Finland was neutral. They didn't have to worry about anything. Life was good. But now they've become part of NATO and the fence continued to have a very weak military and a very weak position so that if there was a general war between NATO and Russia, the odds are that Finland by itself isn't capable of holding off Russia and they'd be in deep trouble. So NATO said, "Well, now that Finland's part of NATO, how do we reinforce?" They looked at the map and they said, "Holy cow, we've got problems." So they realized they're going to have to move forces from a port of debarkation in Norway over the Norwegian mountains and to Sweden down through the breadth of Sweden up into Finland. Very long, circuitous route. It takes a lot of time, by the way. And they also realized at the time that just moving 600 guys, which is what they tried to move to test it, it wasn't working. It was too complicated. So now they have to build the equivalent of super highway connecting the port with Finland. And so now these troops are going to come in. Where do they go in Finland? And so, again, if you're going to go to war, the first time you go to war, you don't want the guys to show up and be unfamiliar with the terrain, unfamiliar with the people they're supposed to fight with, et cetera. So Finland's opening up bases where there will be a training relationship, let's say, that units that will be scheduled to reinforce Finland in times of war will go up there, meet their counterparts, train with them, get familiar with the terrain, get familiar with the operational characteristics of Finland, get Finland aligned with NATO standards, maybe preposition some equipment. And then go back. And then in time of war, they're going to start offloading at a Norwegian port, which will disappear while they're offloading. But the survivors can then try to make her way over a mountain. But the tunnels will disappear. And then those who make it come down through the road, but the bridges will be knocked out. And by the time they crawl into the Finnish camps, it'll be occupied by Russian soldiers who will be saying, "Ruki Verk, put your hands up or you're going to die." That's the way it's going to work for Finland. Finland sucks. And they just made themselves suck even more. The stupidity of the fence, they should stay neutral. Okay, the next question comes from Concerned Citizen Dan in upstate New York, maybe your neighbor. With the advent of drones as a weapons platform being attached to small unit teams in the SMO, would you adjust the U.S. Marines force plan for 2030 to include organic anti-drone weapons and their own FPV drone systems at the level of the marine rifles? Well, the answer is yes. I get the Marine Corps to totally relook drone warfare. If a squad doesn't have an anti-drone electronic warfare gun, the purpose of that, of course, is to take control of the drone and bring it to the ground or cause it to lose control and crash. And if you don't have organic anti-drone weapons like shotguns, they should become very popular. Now, maybe a training event in the Marine Corps should become skeet shooting. I would advise it. Shoot from the various angles. Learn how to hit a moving target accurately because the failure to hit it means you die. But if you don't have anti-drone capability at the rifle squad level, then the rifle squad will be eliminated by drones. The drone has become a fire support system, too. So there's no reason why a rifle squad going forward can't have a drone gunner with a drone in his backpack. And when the time comes, they get in the situation to flip over, release the drone, put on the goggles, fly the drone out, and it can be used for reconnaissance. Probably put a weapon on it, too. We can't find the plane, take out the pillbox, and then advance forward. If you're not doing this, you're going to lose the next battle against a drone equipped enemy. So, yeah, the Marine Corps needs to be doing this. I'd strongly advise the Marine Corps to become very, very proactive on this because the whole world is watching what's going on in Ukraine and the smart militaries are making the adaptation. The stupid militaries are the ones who think, "Well, that's primitive. We've got the technological advantage." And then you're going to die. Drone warfare is, for the moment, the revolution in military affairs. It's what is going to redefine the battlefield until something different comes along. But, yeah, if you're not integrating drones, and remember, if we're taking it to the squad level, then we need platoon-level drones. We need company-level fire support. We need battalion-level drones. We need drone support battalions that are operating in direct support and general support of drones. It becomes sort of the new artillery, not to replace artillery, but to supplement artillery. C. King in Colorado, I would like to get your perspective on Russian and Belarusian athletes having to compete at the upcoming Olympic Games as, quote, "individual neutral athletes." I think it's a disgrace. The Olympics are supposed to be politically neutral. It's a place where nations come together to participate in peaceful athletic competitions. This is an absolute disgrace. It's an embarrassment. It shows that the International Olympic Committee is a politicized entity under the thumb of the United States and Europe. I feel sorry for these athletes. They train their whole lives to get into participate in the games of this caliber, of this notoriety, I guess, or fame. It's a dream to be an Olympic athlete. Now, they're being denied the opportunity to participate in the Olympics under the flag of their country. This is a disgrace. The United States get banned from the Olympics when we illegally invaded and occupied Iraq and violation of international law, making us the greatest war criminal nation in the world at the time. We didn't, because we own the IOC. The IOC is not going to do anything about it. Russia had every legal reason to go into Ukraine and suddenly they're being banned. This is a disgrace. An absolute embarrassment. I'm ashamed of the IOC. I'm ashamed of my country. On the one hand, I would be tempted, if I were Russian, to say, well, we ain't going to participate and maybe see if you can form an alternative games. They did that in 1984, I guess, after the US boycott of the Moscow Olympics, the Russians boycotted the Los Angeles Olympics and they held their own friendship games and maybe something like that can happen. But again, you know, Olympics has the name recognition. It's what people train for. And it's just a damn shame that the United States has politicized what's supposed to be a neutral appreciation of athletic capability. Have you noticed that Angel first Lee's son is almost as prolific a commenter as his dad was? I did, I think, and greatly for it. Yeah, he says you're complicated and complex. Sounds like a good wine. That's right, he does with a nice finish. Scott, there's a nice finish to Scott as well in a bouquet. There's a nice bouquet to Scott. We could use all the wine adjectives. Steppen in Salzburg. Why do CIA criminals do what they do? Politicians are corrupt and sanely rich, some of them. What about CIA agents? Why would they coup a government? Why would they murder globally? Are they mentally ill or something? Are any of the millionaires? If not money, then what makes them tick? I understand that the CIA operates within, I mean, here's the irony of it. It's an organization that by definition operates outside the framework of law, but when it comes to United States, they operate within the framework of law. If you go to the founding documents of the Central Intelligence Agency and you take a look at the CIA was tasked with creating a special missions capability whose job it is to launch coups and do illegal activities at the direction of the President, but sometimes in a way that was so deniable as to not be able to link back to the President, which means you give them a lot of autonomy. The business of intelligence collection requires you to be able to break the law of other nations. That's the whole job. If I'm going in to find something that you don't want me to get, I'm going to do what is necessary to get it. I can break into your building. If people have done that, I will recruit people by using various nefarious means to break them, to get them to come over to the dark side, bribe people. The CIA is tasked with removing governments that are deemed to be hostile to the United States or whose removal will benefit the National Security of the United States. This is the mission of the CIA. When you apply to the CIA, especially in the operations directorate, you are briefed upfront about it. I have applied to the CIA in the operations directorate. I know the questions they ask. Am I a criminal? Are you going to accuse me of that? You have every right to accuse me of that. I deem myself to be a patriot. I deem myself somebody who, had I been employed by the CIA, would have pursued my jobs with the intent of fulfilling the national security objectives of the United States. I was pretty naive back then. Once I saw the CIA in action, once I saw the consequences of their actions, when I was recruited by the CIA, a very senior operations officer who's experienced went back to Vietnam, Africa, Honduras, and then the Middle East. He said, "Look, we like you. We think you're great. You have integrity." He said, "The problem might be that you have too much integrity because you do understand that if you work for us, you're going to have to lie and you're going to have to lie a lot. You're going to have to do things that appear to be a lie and do things that violate what you claim to stand for. And you're either ready to do that or you're not. We like your skillset. We like what you're doing. But you need to know that upfront. And at the time, I went, "Oh, yeah, I'm ready to do that. I'm ready to do that." But then later on, I watched these guys in action and watched what they did to corrupt the work of the United Nations Special Commission in Iraq. And I realized that it wasn't just about helping Americans about undermining international peace and security. It takes a special kind of dedicated person to apply for a job in the CIA. But I think it takes a totally different mindset for a person to continue on as the CIA is a career, because there's a difference between security and reality. If I may ask a follow-up question, what about when they lie to the U.S. people and then to get back to one of the questions, the questioner asked, are they making money just from their salaries or is there dirty money often involved too? Now, a CIA officer is only supposed to make the money that is on his salary. If you go back to the experience of Aldrich Ames, he was receiving money from the Soviets. And he was living a lifestyle that was ostentatious for the equivalent salary you were supposed to make at the CIA. There's a red flag that nobody picked up on. But maybe some CIA people come in with independent sources of money. But the bottom line is your finances are closely scrutinized. You're only supposed to live off of legitimate resources. And none of your income generation is supposed to be of such that causes you to have split loyalties, meaning that you're not going to do something because you're going to screw up an investment or something like that. They're not a bunch of cocaine, drugs smuggling people, living in mansions because of their illegal lifestyle. That's a red flag, counterintelligence, a pick up on that, et cetera. The mission is everything. And the mission is covert. Covert means nobody's supposed to know anything about it. So oftentimes when you do a covert, I was told when I applied that my wife would have to get a security clearance and she would be allowed to know who I worked for, but she would never be allowed to know what I did. And if I couldn't handle that and I couldn't live up to that, then that would be problematic. Your entire existence is a lie. You lie to even CIA people. What do you do for a living? I do. I'm an analyst or I do this, that other thing. You never say, no, I'm with the Iraq Operations Group and I'm running covert operations in Iraq for the purpose of assassinating Saddam Hussein. No, you don't talk about it. You don't talk about what you do. Now I'm involved in setting up a front company, a bank designed to corrupt bankers who have financial affiliation with Saudi banks who have a connection into Moscow that we might be able to use to recruit a guy close to Vladimir Putin. No, you don't talk about that. You don't talk about anything. You make it all. You have a cover story. Oftentimes you live a cover story. You wake up in the morning and you go to work. You go to a place, a building. Your wife thinks she drops you off. You're there. She calls the phone or secretary answers. The secretary knows everything about you. She calls. She wants to speak to your boss. The boss calls. There's company picnics where the family comes and they meet everybody from there. It's all fake. It's all a freaking lie. It's called a cover story designed to create an artificial impression of reality to disguise what you're really doing. And ladies and gentlemen, if you expect me to sit here and condemn that, you're wrong. We live in a very dangerous world, a very dangerous world. There's a lot of people out there trying to do bad stuff to America. And you need people to, how did Larry and Reagan, because they're good people. The CIA is not 100% bad people. If you think that, you don't know what you're talking about. I have worked with CIA officers. They are honorable people. They are braver than I have ever been. They have done things that amaze me, the courage that's involved and the capacity. But the CIA as an institution is corrupt because you can't have an institution that operates beyond the reach of the Congress of the United States. You see, we live in a democratic republic. And the key thing is the Constitution and the rule of law. And you can't empower an institution like the CIA and expect it not to become corrupt. The CIA has become its own standalone entity that basically does what it wants to do. It doesn't obey the orders because it thinks it knows better. And the case officers. Again, that's what I wanted to be. I wanted to be the guy that operates in a foreign country that recruits people. I wanted to be the guy that runs the black bag operation into an embassy stealing their codes. I wanted to be the guy that did X, Y and Z because there's a need for that. We live in a dangerous world. And things will bad things will happen to us if we don't have people out there collecting the intelligence necessary to inform our leadership about the threats that exist so we can come up with the proper means to apply them. But you can't fix the CIA by staffing it with good people because the problem with good people is that they are corrupt. A lot of CIA case officers, here's the thing. If you're going to recruit human beings, it's one of the most difficult things imaginable. First of all, you have to condition yourself to ruin a human being. And people who say, "Well, that's easy. It's not. It's really not. You're trying to corrupt somebody. You're trying to get them to betray their family, their friends, their country for the benefit of your mission." And so you get hardened on that. Once you get hardened on that, you get hardened on everything. You start treating your own family like shit because it's hard not to bring that over. And as your family life falls apart, you start to drink. So many of the case officers out there, especially the mid to senior level, are just flaming alcoholics, flaming alcoholics. If not alcoholics, they're drug addicts, or they're both. And then what happens to is there's a lot of pressure because it is after all an organization that you want to work your way up. If you're a case officer, the metric that's applied against you is recruitment. How many recruitment have you made? Now, recruiting the right person is a very difficult thing to do. And oftentimes, it requires you to be thinking out in terms of years. How do I get somebody positioned to do that? Well, you start by getting them at this age, you get them into college, you get them to university, they do low-level jobs, and you work them up the system until they're in a position to where they can make the jump necessary, where maybe you give them extra money so they can dress nicely and get in the right parties and people catch their eyes and then they get invited in. And it all looks so natural because, of course, counter intelligence is going to be looking at it saying, "How did this person get there? You got to make it that takes time, that takes effort." And it takes the dedicated work of a single person. But if you spent your entire career positioning one person to get recruited way up here, and you got another guy who comes in, swings in through the embassy and says, "Yeah, I recruited 20 guys last year." The manager sitting there going, "20 versus none. This guy gets promoted. I'm sorry, Ritter. You keep working that little project that you're working on there." And so what happens is people need recruitments. And so they like is recruiting people as hard, very hard. So they recruit prostitutes, they recruit taxi drivers, they recruit bar tenders, they recruit drug dealers, they recruit the scum of the earth. Watch the tailor of Panama. It's a movie. It's a book, but the book was written by Jean LeCare, who knows the thing or two about fabricated intelligence. And you see what happens when a case officer, in this case played by Pierce Morgan, I think his name is, just starts making shit up. A rock is browsing. But we go to war because of the lies that he tells. That's the problem, is that we don't have quality control. It gives you a pure example of this. During the Obama administration, the Russians, they had a guy working at the embassy. He was a disgruntled Foreign Service officer, their equivalent thereof. He sort of sucked at what he did, but he essentially put him in charge of the Russian American Friendship Association or something like that. And he cheated on his wife and he got drunk and it's just a red flag all over the place. And the FBI and the CIA competed and the CIA got ahold of them. And they turned. Now, first thing I understand is he's cheating on his wife, and he's now alcoholic at the Russian embassy in Washington, D.C. And he's left there. Normally, if you're cheating on your wife and your alcoholic, the Russians are going to know about that. They're going to send you home. Why? Because you're imminently recruitable at this point in time. But the CIA got him. And now he gets fed back into Moscow. Where? Oh, my God. He starts working for Ushikov, who is Vladimir Putin's foreign policy guy. So here's a drunk in a philanderer. He's suddenly working for Ushikov. And this is supposed to send a red flag up the CIA. I'm just telling you guys, I know what I'm talking about here. When that happens, the first thing you do when a source suddenly comes into access with information, you say, "How the hell did this happen?" Full-scale review. Bring him in. Plus, if his yours, polygraph is asked. Get him on the box. Box the bastard. They didn't do any of that. They just let it run because my God, he's in there. We don't want to do anything. And then he works his way up, up, up, up. And finally, he's sending back reports that are talking about the inner circle meetings of Vladimir Putin as he's plotting to take down America. All made up shit. I'm not allowed to do that word. All made up stuff. Manufactured. You see, the CIA thinks they control him. But it's the Russians that are controlling the CIA. They're feeding it back. This guy's a double agent. And so he's feeding it back. And it's pure crap. It's really bad stuff. But the Russians know, because now what happens is, again, in other violations, they start sending the guy questions. And say, "This is what we need to know." Now, if you want to know how bad an enemy or an adversary's intelligence is, wait until they start asking you questions to fill in the blanks. Because you can reverse engineer the question and go, "They don't know anything about what's going on here or here, so we can just make stuff up and feed it in there." So the Russians started making stuff up. And suddenly, John Brennan, the director of the CIA takes a look at this stuff. And he goes, "Oh my God." And he goes running off to Obama, bypassing everything. Meanwhile, counterintelligence is going, "Bots, you can't use that intelligence." We think it's crap. We think this guy's a controlled resource. We don't want to use that. But he's running. He goes to Obama, feeds it in there. Obama takes action. All the action to target the Russians and everything is basically based upon fake information fed to the CIA by this agent. And then the guy becomes no use. Once he does that, Obama over extends himself and gets all that, the Russians retire him. Now, remember, if he's a CIA guy doing all this work, why would the Russians retire him? They would kill him. But no, they just retire and say, "Get the hell out of here. Go retire." And then they let him keep his passport and they let him travel. And so he traveled to, I forget where it was, Montenegro or Macedonia or someplace like that. And the CIA runs an extra case in operation. I mean, this is as dramatic as it gets. They send in guys on a boat who get him and get him out, take him to another country, and they fly him to America and all that stuff. And actually, you know, he's supposed to go disappear. But CIA being stupid and sloppy because, again, when you're run by alcoholics, you make mistakes. Everybody knows his name. Now, he's supposed to disappear. He goes into the equivalent of the Witness Protection Program, which the CIA runs and they basically set you up. Now, he'd been receiving money from the CIA for the time that he ended up in a bank account. He buys a home in Northern Virginia using his real name. And it appears on the database. And the Russians are like, "Well, there he is." And then the media picks up on it. So everybody knows who he is, knows his name, etc. It just shows you how screwed up this is. But that's how the CIA is so corrupt today. It's even the director of the CIA doesn't know how to run a human operation anymore. The CIA is just, if you take a look at the history of human operations out of the Moscow station, they've been rolled multiple times by the Russians, where the Russians have rolled up almost the entire staff of the CIA's group. And then replacing them is very hard to do. How do you get an asset into the embassy? Now, you're under a diplomatic cover, but there's only so many diplomatic spots. And so they roll a guy, and now his replacement comes in, and it's like, "Well, either the CIA or..." But now let's say he's not, because nobody's going to be stupid enough, or maybe the CIA is, to roll in a replacement to the billet of a CIA officer who just got rolled. So you're going to put in a real diplomat there. So now you've got to wait until somebody else leaves, or something, and then you bring in that guy and you bring him in. The Russians have monitored it. I'm not going to give away the secrets of how to detect these guys, but the Russians know how to do it, and they've done it. They've been watching these guys from the moment they transition. The moment they go dark, or they go into the State Department under their cover assignment, the Russians know all this. They're following all this. It's just, we don't know how to do it right. And then what happens is the CIA is desperate, because now the Russians have rolled their CIA station so many times that everybody's known to the Russians, and they know that. So how do you do business? If you guys know, and the moment he leaves the embassy, he's followed, tracked, etc. So your human networks is dry up, but now you have critical information like caliber missiles. This is essential because it makes a decision. The president is the president going to give more money to Ukraine. What kind of money do we get? What kind of aid do we get? The caliber missile that's a ship lost cruise missile is causing havoc in Ukraine. But can the Russians sustain this? If we can put pressure on Russia, can they expend all of their caliber missiles, and then they're at a disadvantage? How do we know that? Well, we got to get somebody inside the factory to tell us what the production rate of calibers are right now. And, well, I don't know, Roger, I shouldn't have said that word, so I apologize for that. But the point is, so then the CIA does the ultimate act of stupidity. They bring in a non-official cover guy. Well, call him Evan Gershowitz. And maybe we'll call him a journalist. That was his cover, working for the Wall Street Journal. And Evan goes in and writes a bunch of series of just puffed pieces, just crap about sanctions. 100% crap. He didn't even write it. The fact is, other people wrote it because he's not a real journalist. He's a spy. And then Evan, meanwhile, starts making contacts. And he finds somebody, but he's stupid because he doesn't know Moscow. He wasn't trained in Moscow rules. This isn't the 1970s and '80s where we actually have professionals. And Evan's out there making connectivity. And he finds somebody, but that person's controlled by the Russians, because they know what Evan's looking for. And he says, "Hey, I'm going to travel to Ekaterimburg. That's the city where the factory is that produces the calibers." And I want to meet, and I need this, that, and the other thing. And the guy says, "Got him." So they go. He goes and he sits down at the restaurant. And the guy hands the envelope over. And inside the envelope are the documents, secret documents pertaining to caliber production that Evan was looking for. And they are talking. It's being recorded because they have all the directional microphones. And they have everybody around taking the photographs of this entire event. And then Evan's arrested, holding the documents in his head. Now, they call him a journalist today. He's not. He's a spy. Why would we do that? Because we suck at spying right now. We suck at doing, we don't do human intelligence very well. And in Russia, we do it awfully. And this is the end result. We get desperate. We send people in who aren't trained. He didn't know anything about Moscow rules. If he did, he wouldn't have been arrested. He didn't know anything about operating. But now he's in jail, and it's an embarrassment for the United States. He's guilty as hell. We're trying to spread the word that he's innocent. He's not. He's guilty as hell. And hopefully for his sake, because again, he's an American doing his job. I mean, you know, from the American perspective, I guess we should wish that he had succeeded, but he didn't. Hopefully he gets exchanged and hopefully he comes home. And that's the end of his espionage career. He can write a book. They can make a movie about him. And then he can move on to an academic career or something like that. All right. Well, that's what you say, but I wonder if Larry Johnson would back you up on that. I mean, I agree with Scott. Okay. Well, now we know. Now we know. All right, let's get back to the questions. Nicole in Michigan, a friend in Lebanon recently sent me Israeli drone footage of the Beirut port explosion. That happens in 2020 that had a message in Hebrew. Whoever understands will understand as a veiled threat. Do you think this could have been a tactical nuke from Israel? I have friends who felt the blast in the southern part of the country and even in Cyprus. No, it wasn't a tactical nuke. We know it wasn't a tactical nuke. It's not as a tactical nukes had never been tested before. We know what the signature is of a tactical nuke. We know what the seismic signature is. We know what the radioactive signature is. There would be evidence out there. No, it's not a tactical nuke. Just erase that from your mind. I don't know about the drone footage and I don't know about the Israeli morning. I don't know any of that stuff. What I do know is that the warehouse had ammonium nitrate or whatever fertilizer is there, stored illegally and properly. What's set off the fireworks explosions next to it. I don't know. Was it an accident, poorly stored fireworks deliberately, but the fireworks set off and you can just see it. Look, I'm a firefighter. I've studied this fire behavior and you just see the off gas and you can see it. You can say that you know what's going to happen because now it's off gas. It's created a layer of highly inflammable vapors and then the vapor of ammonium nitrate. Thank you. The vapor goes off. Boom. You see their color red. That's the unexploded nitric acid or nitric oxide that is generated from that explosion. And that's what it does. There's a cool little school in the Socorro, New Mexico that the Department of Homeland Security runs for firefighters that are trained as hazmat technicians and hazmat specialists. That's what I was and it teaches you how to make car bombs so that if you arrive to a car bomb situation, you know what you're seeing. You're able to reverse engineer the explosion or if it hasn't exploded yet, you're able to do an assessment about what it is. We get to make car bombs and the car bomb that I got to make was one where you fill up the trunk of the car with bags of ammonium nitrate fertilizer and diesel fuel. And then you blow it up and you get to watch it. So I think I'm pretty educated on this topic and what I saw in Beirut is consistent with a fertilizer-based explosion as opposed to a tactical nuclear weapon. Average Joe in the USA. How does an inertial guidance system work? Joe, I'm glad you asked that question. Just a second. Well, the clock is ticking. Oh, my goodness. He turned off his camera. Not mine. Did you turn off your camera on purpose? Well, I did because I shocked Yelena last time I stood up wearing shorts and I didn't want to shock the crowd. Just so everybody understands it's a hot day and I am wearing gym shorts, but I didn't want you to see my legs. This here is a gyroscope. It doesn't work. It's demilitarized, but it's a gyroscope. This here is an accelerometer. Again, demilitarized doesn't work, but the gyroscope you will run on an XY axis. And this accelerometer is measuring the acceleration. How does an inertial guidance system work? We have a known location from where you launch and the gyroscope is spinning as you accelerate the accelerometer is measuring the acceleration. And the gyroscope is measuring deviation from course. So as you move, it's measuring deviation. It sends a signal for correction to and then the system corrects back. The idea with a ballistic missile is that you're guiding to a point in the sky based upon heading and speed. When you get to that point in the sky, port your engines or the engine is stopped from firing. So you stop the acceleration. You now have a known speed, a known direction. And because of the weight and characteristics of the system, known performance. And then it will drop down. Now, the inertial guidance system, if it's good, will stay and measure. And again, if the wind blows it off, the idea is that it's going to measure that deviation and direct you back. You have veins that can guide it in and that's an inertial guidance system. Okay, I think you have concluded your assessment. Except we didn't get to see the visuals we really wanted to see, but something to hope for at a future date. Scott's legs. Aurelius in Norway. Isn't there a danger that if Russia moves too slowly to win to preserve Russian soldiers' lives that more lives will be lost overall, especially if other countries unofficially start sending in infantry and begin ramping up arms production? I guess there's a danger of that. Who's going to stand in other countries? Who? Who? What have those got? Norway? Is Norway going to send in their vaunted Norwegian army? I know Estonia has threatened to send in six troops. You know, France was going to, but they can't anymore because the chrome got thrashed in the election. The German army, you get those schnitzel-leading beer-drinking fat boys out of their couch. I don't think so. What army? There isn't one, is there? NATO doesn't have an army capable of deploying, like you say. You know, they've already done it. You do understand that over 10,000 Western-trained mercenaries have gone in. Are you talking about 10,000 more? They die. That's what they do. And that's what would happen to these people. You know, just because you're a Western-trained soldier doesn't make you God, doesn't make you one of the first of all, none of the Western-trained soldiers have combat experience like what is necessary to survive in Ukraine. At best, they did a couple tours in Afghanistan or Iraq killing villagers and murdering innocent civilians, kicking down doors to homes. They'd be getting a firefight with the Taliban, which they would have lost, by the way, if they couldn't call in close air support. Think about that. You know, the American Special Forces. Every one of the stories you read is how they sat there and were getting slaughtered in an ambush by the Taliban until they called in the helicopters or the close air support. What kind of military gets beat by a bunch of villagers with light weapons and swearing sandals? Not a very good one. We're not that good at what we do. I mean, we could be good, but we have to change things. I had an earlier question about the changes to the rifle squad to bring in drone technology. That would have to happen. We're not doing that. But no, I didn't want to tell me that Western defense industry is going to get kicked up. How? Again, I just want to say how Western European. You know what the production expenses are going to be right now with gas prices the way they are? You can't. Germany's already said they can't build tanks anymore because they don't have the ability to build the steel. They don't have to buy the steel elsewhere. They can't afford the gas to come in to keep the forges operating. How are you going to build those tanks? The same thing with France. And what quantities? What expense? I think their budgets are all in trouble because I mean, Germany is an economic freefall. And the French are in the process of economic freefall. So I just don't think this is a problem that Russia is worried about. You know, Russia is doing okay. Russia has this war under control. It's a war of attrition. And I'll tell you what, if the Western forces want to send their troops into die in Ukraine, you know, they'll die at a rate of five to one, ten to one. That's a war of attrition that Russia wins. So as long as the West wants to keep feeding the meat grinder, Russia is not opposed to that. Russia would prefer that Ukraine recognized the end of the outcome and negotiate. I'm not sad. You've just cut me off, didn't you? Well, aren't I supposed to, isn't it? I know you're supposed to, but I hate that. For once I was answering the question without looking at the clock as I was trying to give a good answer. But all right. Well, would you like an extension? Nope. Nope. Nope. The rules are the rules. This is the three minute clock. It's so uncomfortable being the discipline area and with major rhetoric. All right. Yaki and Japan, what is your view on the illegal abduction and incarceration of Reiner fumik? I think that's how it's pronounced. Do you know? Are you familiar with that such question? I have no idea who he is. Therefore, I have no view. I guess I have to study it and come up with the asterisk answer. All right. Helen in Australia with Julian Assange now silenced, what hope does Australia have? Where do we stand in the big picture now? What threats do we face and from where? The greatest threat to Australia's existence is United States of America because only because of your relationship with us are you in danger of getting involved in an existential conflict with China that will terminate your nation. You know, economically, militarily, in terms of societal viability. Australia needs to take a long, hard reflection on where it is in the world, who does business with and what it needs to do to continue to survive. Is the key to Australia's survival, the ability to continue mining and quantity sufficient to turn a profit? If so, you need a market for that mining and China is the market. They're willing to buy whatever you mind. The United States isn't. Remember, we dump wheat on the market. We screw your farmers that way. We're your good friends. But we want you to buy nuclear submarines. You can't afford it. And you can't maintain. You can't operate. We just want you to do it to irritate the Chinese. You know, Australia needs to realize that this isn't the second world war. The Japanese aren't over the horizon and America's income is a view. America's there. We're there to use you as a tool in our ongoing competition against the Chinese. But remember, one of the nations that I call a perpetual tool is Ukraine. And look what's happened to the Ukrainian tool when it stops being of use to the United States. It will be discarded. You will be discarded. Look, America Marines love liberty in Australia. You're very great people. I've been to Australia several times. I love you guys. Marines love your women. Or they're men now that we have a different kind of Marine Corps. You're great people, great Liberty Port, fun to drink beer with, fun to go to the beach with, fun to hang out with, fun to work with. I've worked with Australian SAAS guys in Iraq through professionals, a joy to be with. I love Australians. I love Australia. I love visiting Australia. But that doesn't translate and I'm willing to die for Australia because you don't have any strategic significance for us other than the fact that we can use you to irritate the Chinese. And that's it. I'd like to pretend that my country was friends with us that cared about because if we did care about you, we'd sit there and say, "Look, boss, I'm your friend. I'm here to tell you around, China is an economic relationship. You don't want to screw up. We want to stay close with you. We'd like to have connectivity with you. Remember the good times and drink beer and all that. But you don't want to have Marines on your shore. You don't want to become a fixed aircraft carrier of the United States. The relationship you want with the United States is a business relationship, a tourist, a destination, a place where Americans can come and feel at home and relax, etc. But you don't want American Marines permanently stationed because what is the purpose of the Marine Corps? Not to defend you. The purpose of the Marine Corps is to implement the national security policy of the United States. We'll get you killed. So that's it. Look at me. Perfect. Let's do one more question. This is from Evo from, I think that's Bahia, Brazil. Maybe I'm close. All the attention of the world is on Palestine or Ukraine, but I would like to ask about Myanmar, Myanmar. Do you think China is changing its non-interference policy by meddling on the ongoing civil war in Myanmar? I know, Evo, you're testing me. You're hoping that I would fail and say asterisk, but I know the answer to this question. Myanmar used to call Burma, just so you know, but it's Myanmar. There's a situation that, you know, there was a junta that took over, ousted the presidency of the Nobel Prize winning lady whose name I can't pronounce right now. But that led to uprising, popular uprising. First of all, Myanmar has a number of long-standing ethnic divides. There are a number of ethnicities there that have been in long-term conflict with the central Myanmar government, Burmese government for some time. People are hearing me or not, but new groups have risen up, new alliances, et cetera, and they're having a real impact. They've been seizing border trade, crossing points, affecting the trade, impacting the economy of China, places on San Succi. I think it's a different name than that. But it's caused real trade problems. It's impacted the economy of China. To give you an example now with the crossings out in order to get, if you're a Chinese exporter, you have to actually send your stuff through Thailand now and come in through different border crossings, which aren't necessarily securing the long-term, but it costs you a lot of money. China is also some of the fighting is spilled over. So China has said, bringing in, they have brokered local ceasefires, but the fact is China wants to resolve this problem. China has historically been supportive of the central government of Myanmar, but has not recognized, I believe I could be corrected on this one, the Houta. They do have relations with them, but they are not doing the direct support. And I think what you're seeing right now is China needs the situation. Myanmar has become stable. And so you're going to see China doing some sort of direct intervention. It isn't going to be military in nature, but China is going to start playing some of the games that you play regionally, providing financial support to certain groups, making diplomatic overtures, seeking to broker economic relations. There's a pipeline, an energy pipeline that runs through Myanmar connecting their energy fields to Chinese markets. China could manipulate that to bring pressure about. But the bottom line is China can't allow the situation. Myanmar to continue to deteriorate. It's bad for China economically and it's bad for China from a security standpoint. All right, Scott, did you pay your internet bill this month, but I'm just curious. I did. Did you? No, it was a bad internet connection today. I'm just kidding. But I think your daughter's home, who are playing Minecraft. So there's three computers right now tapping into my Wi-Fi and they may just be stealing bandwidth. And I think that's what's going on is that we have a Minecraft war going on upstairs. And that could be what's going on because that makes perfect sense. I'm going to make a prediction. I'm going to check the comments on all our channels later. I bet some people are going to predict that it was because you were talking about the CIA. I'm not saying that's the reason. I'm predicting others have said that. But that could be. Let's feed the conspiracy. Let's remind folks. This is an update. I have applied for my passport to get it back. So now we're on passport walk day one. Let's see how long this takes for the State Department to decide to give me my passport back. Excellent. Sounds like progress. So just a reminder that Scott will be speaking at a dinner and book signing event. It's going to happen July 20th in Poughkeepsie in New York. If you want more information, go to farmers and chefs.com. That is the website for the restaurant. We will be back on Friday night for the loquacious version of Ask the Inspector at 8 p.m. Eastern Time, two hours with Scott answering everything quite extensively. Thanks to Yelena who worked backstage for us today, handling the comments. We appreciate it. Thanks to our beloved audience. And of course, thanks to Scott. His new book is on sale at our website, autographed copies. And we have plenty of other good stuff there too. So check out all the merchandise at scottritter.com. All the best to you and your Scott. Enjoy your visit with your daughters. I would say that's worth a little bit of a shaky internet connection to have the pleasure of their company. I'm sure the good news of Friday, they should be off at a lake house, enjoying the 4th of July weekend. And so our internet should be interference free, except for the CIA. Except for the say. All right. We'll see if there's any difference Friday night. All right. Well, happy 4th to you. And I guess Friday is the 5th, right? It might be the 5th, correct? Yeah. All right. Happy Independence Day to you and to everybody. Take care. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [BLANK_AUDIO]