In the seventh episode of “Playing President,� Ray McGovern, 27-year CIA veteran and briefer of five presidents, continues to make sense of the world to “President� Scheer, who prepared for this role through his decades as a journalist, including in-depth interviews with five presidents from Nixon to Clinton. This week, McGovern briefs the president on Putin’s relationship with North Korea, Putin’s Friday speech at the meeting with senior staff of the Russian Foreign Ministry and Boris Johnson’s axing of a Ukraine peace deal that also materialized at the start of the war.

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TRANSCRIPT:

McGovern: Morning, Mr. President. I’m happy to be with you today. There are a lot things going on that I believe you’d be interested in. First and foremost, a unique event with President Vladimir Putin going to Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea.

This is a big deal. Relations between North Korea and Moscow have become closer and closer over the last few years. It’s mostly a symptom of ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’ very similar to the Sino Russian rapprochement that we’ve seen over the last five or six years, or more. But it has its military, and it has very dangerous aspects to it.

The reception that Putin has gotten so far, he’s just arrived, has been foreshadowed by the most effusive — what’s the right word — it was just almost sickening, this turgid prose that Putin himself wrote in the North Korean Communist Party Newspaper advertising the closeness of the relationship.

Now there’s an old practice as you know, Mr. President, criminal knowledge, you read all these things and if a communique says the talks were cordial and friendly, that’s one thing. If they were frank, that means they were loggerheads.

This was cordial and friendly to the nth degree. Now there’s substance behind this. And that’s what I really want to point out, Mr. President, because I don’t think —

Scheer: Let me interrupt you for a minute. Now, so when there were communists over there in Russia, they were close to North Korea. Not as close maybe as China, when they had the sign of the Soviet Dispute and all that got mixed up somewhat, but that was normal. They were close. Putin is the guy who defeated the communists, right? So, brief me here, Ray, what’s their relation to North Korea now?

I know the Chinese communists and the North Korean communists, they’re getting cozier. They haven’t always been, but where’s Putin coming in on this?

McGovern: There’s been a lot of water under the bridge, so to speak, since Stalin encouraged North Vietnam to go South. And they did. As you know, war ensued.

Relations between Russia and North Korea have not been so good over the last decades until Ukraine and other events made North Korea realize that they had to choose, just like China, between a close association with the West or hopefully some decent relationship with the West or signing up big time with Russia.

Now it’s about to say that all these this nice rhetoric, this effusive cordiality is backed by things that are very troubling. I want you to know, Mr. President, that we believe that Putin has given North Korea a very sophisticated ICBM, an intercontinental ballistic missile, capable of reaching all, every inch of the United States with the most sophisticated delivery systems, that is shaft and all kinds of decoys.

And worst of all, Mr. President, we can’t be sure of knowing where they are because they’re solid fueled, and they’re mobile. So this an inch up on the escalatory scale. We have known this for over a year. It was it was reported in a very prestigious think tank. And Jacob Sullivan, your financial security advisor, was asked about this in August.

And he said ‘yeah, we’re aware of that, our intelligence people are looking into it.’ That was a lot of months ago. All right. Now, we could tell you, Mr. President, because our scientists and the people who used to brief the Pentagon, Chief of Naval Operations, MIT professors, and so forth swore to the fact that this is not Russia’s most sophisticated, but next most sophisticated ICBM.

And there’s no gainsaying the fact that, surprising as hell, Putin gave that to North Korea a couple of years ago, okay? They’ve test fired it now, not to its full range, but it can go.

Scheer: Wait, what do you mean he gave it to them, and so he gets drones back and other stuff and munitions from Korea?

What’s going on? Who controls those? Is it Russian technicians? Who controls them?

McGovern: That’s the good question. We have been trying to figure that out. Now, there are some people think maybe the Russians put a little bug in there so that they could control it ultimately. In other words, so that North Koreans couldn’t use this without Russia putting a little switch in there.

Most people say, no, that’s not likely. North Koreans have this. They would be smart enough to figure out about this little gizmo that was in there. The idea is this is ready to go. They have nuclear weapons. And what Putin is doing now in North Korea is saying —

Scheer: Wait, do North Koreans have a warhead that fits on this thing?

McGovern: Yes, they do. They have 50, 60 such warheads. It’s not a big task to fit a warhead on this size missile, and as I say its range includes every inch of the United States. Now, one reason I’m raising this with you directly is because I don’t know if Mr. Sullivan has told you about this.

It’s big news. Did it come as a surprise to Russian specialists? It sure did, myself included. But there’s no gainsaying of science here. It’s been tested, and it could reach the United States.

Scheer: When did you guys at the CIA discover this?

McGovern: A year ago. And we published —

Scheer: I’ve been briefed on it?

McGovern: No, actually, we discovered it from a very prominent scientist who wrote in a think tank article that this had happened, the name of —

Scheer: Wait, I’m supposed to be reading think tank articles? What are you doing here? Why haven’t I been told about this.

It’s scary. It’s very scary, right?

McGovern: It’s scary, Mr. President, you need —

Scheer: It’s the end of the world maybe, right?

McGovern: I don’t think the leaders of North Korea are crazy, but they’re certainly not a sane as many others. What you need to do, Mr. President, I have to tell you, is ask Mr. Sullivan why he’s kept this from you.

It was in August of last year that he was asked at one of his press conferences at the National Security Council what about this report put out by this prestigious think tank that this Topol M, this very sophisticated Russian missile has been given to North Korea.

And he said, ‘oh, we’re aware of those reports. We’re looking into it. Our intelligence people are looking at it.’ Mr. President it’s not our purview to advise you on these things, unless we feel we have to. After 10 months, we feel we have to, that’s why I’m presenting this to you right now. It’s a measure of how much Putin believes that he’s on the fire from the West and his exigent need for as many allies as he can muster, not only Belarus, not only China, but now North Korea.

Scheer: This doesn’t scare the Russians and the Chinese, too? Couldn’t that same missile be shot at them?

McGovern: Not really, no. Its range is such and it’s not pointed at them. The Russians can see exactly what it would be targeted against. There would be no need or no real reason for North Korea to choose any other target than the good old ol’ U.S.A.

Scheer: But if that missile hits in the United States, that’s the end of Russia.

We’re not going to play games and say, oh, that’s Korea, but not Russia. They gave them the vehicle.

McGovern: Mr. President, that would be the end of all of us. That’s why we really are puzzled by this.

Scheer: Let me get something here Ray, you told me that somebody’s known this has been discussed. Where is it? Is it discussed in a front page of the New York Times anywhere or on the television? Where? Where is it discussed? It’s the first time I’m hearing about it.

McGovern: Yeah, that’s the problem. It’s better late than never. It was published in July in a very prestigious think tank called the International Strategic Studies Institute. And it was it caused a bit of a stir among specialists, but none among the press. And that’s why the press finally asked Jacob Sullivan, what do you think about this?

And he knew about it, but he said, ‘Oh yeah we’re aware of that. We’re having our specialists look at it.’ Now, I would have thought that he would’ve made some kind of report to you by now. I don’t know why he hasn’t, but we figure it’s our job as principal Foreign Intelligence Advisors to you, Mr.President, to go ahead and step in even though we in a way are going be around channels.

Scheer: Ray, why am I hearing about it this morning? Just because Putin’s over there. Trump went over there. He only crossed the line there in the demilitarized zone, let’s say it wasn’t, embracing them in the same way you say Putin is, but why are we learning about this now?

McGovern: I just thought that since Putin has just arrived in Pyongyang, that this was a convenient juncture at which to advise you that, I don’t know why Sullivan hasn’t told you about this, but it’s real, it’s there, it surprises the rest of us, but it’s factual. Now, the principal author of this paper is a fellow named Ted Postol, Professor Emeritus at MIT, and long-time advisor to the Chief of Naval Operations for Strategic and Other Forces.

He’s a guy who’s been in government at very high levels and, as I say, taught physics and other things, not only at MIT, but at Stanford and Cal and other places. So he’s very well respected, but nobody wants to deal with this. That’s why I’m telling you, Mr. President, it’s our job to tell you things that nobody else wants to tell you.

Scheer: Okay. So let me get this straight because Ted Postol, he’s been around and he’s a peacenik now, right? And for some time concerned about the spread of nuclear weapons to a degree that would immobilize us because we couldn’t come to the aid of the Ukrainians and other things we have to do because we’d be so afraid of triggering nuclear war.

People question what some of these scientists say, that bulletin of atomic scientists and those kind of people say that stuff. But what I’m asking you is, you’re connecting this with Putin’s visit. This is not some intellectual discussion we’re having.

You’re telling me that Putin’s being in Korea now is related to an increased, maybe the most extreme threat we’ve had. If you figure that these guys in North Korea have got the weapon that could hit New York or something, Los Angeles, and that Putin is their what? To tell them it’s okay or he’s the ally of theirs, what’s going on?

McGovern: He is de facto an ally of North Korea now and I tried to explain before Mr. President, the way we see it is the old adage ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’. It’s worked extremely well for Putin incurring favor with Xi Jinping in China, and now it’s worked with North Korea.

Scheer: Yeah, but that shows a real desperation.

This guy has been telling the world that he’s a solid statesman, that he cares about peace, that he respects law and order, and then he gets in bed with the North Koreans. He’s panicking. Is he panicking because we’re winning now in Ukraine? We’ve turned it around and and he’s going to lose?

We just had this conference, all these nations. I didn’t go, but Kamala went and they all support Ukraine. So is he panicking now?

McGovern: Mr. President, no, he’s not panicking. It’s disconcerting that some years ago, we think maybe two or three, he saw fit to give North Korea this missile, this kind of capability.

Scheer: By the way, you keep bringing this up, just so I’m clear here, this guy, Postol at MIT, he says this, but is this backed up? Does the CIA believe this? Do we know? Do we have evidence that they actually have this weapon?

McGovern: I have to tell you, Mr. President, it’s really embarrassing to say this, but the CIA knows about it.

It’s science, okay? When a missile like this is tested, which this one has been, you could see the parameters, you could see what it’s capable of, and it has not yet been tested to its full range, but it can easily be so tested. So it’s not really so much a matter of desperation. It’s a matter of when Putin decided to do this.

He saw that there’s no turning back. There’s no turning back to Europe to curry favor with NATO and the United States. That he had to build very strong cards in the far east, not only in China but in North Korea. As for that peace conference, or peace summit that Vice President Harris attended.

I hope she has briefed you on her experience there, and why she only spent a couple hours there. It was by all objective standards a debacle. Very few people were willing to say the kinds of things that Zelensky wanted. And the background of the whole thing was the fact that not only the Russians consider Zelensky a usurper now, illegal, according to Ukrainian constitutional law, is no longer president. And so why should they bother?

Scheer: But that’s a lot of crap, Ray. You know that. He can’t have an election because they invaded him. They invaded his country, so he’s postponed the election. But he’s clearly the leader of Ukraine. Don’t give me that malarkey, and the conference.

Most of those countries supported him. Look, we made a commitment at that conference to back Zelensky for 10 years, right? That’s a pretty big commitment, and the Russians, what are they doing? They’re panicking, right? They’re desperate.

McGovern: Not really. Putin on Friday laid down his terms for what might happen in Ukraine if the West showed some flexibility.

He said, look we are winning in effect. We have the domain over almost. The totality of four provinces, what we insist on before negotiations start is the Ukrainian troops withdraw from these four provinces. That will create a ceasefire right away. And Ukraine needs to forswear any objective to join NATO.

Now those are strong —

Scheer: Yeah, they’re strong. It means giving up what 20 percent of the Ukraine, which is your industrial base, your main big grain area. I’m not an expert like you are on Russia and on Ukraine, all that. But the fact of the matter is, that would be a compelling victory. He’s talking about grabbing that permanently, that the 20 percent or whatever it is.

McGovern: He says that those four provinces need to remain as part of Russia now.

Scheer: That’s conquest. That’s grab it. And what are these people in the four provinces supposed to do?

McGovern: There have been plebiscites there conducted already. There have been international observers, and those plebiscites have come out on the side of most people wanting to be part of Russia.

He’s got that on his side.

Scheer: They don’t, they’re not Ukrainians?

McGovern: They’re Russian speakers, mostly, and they don’t like the Zelensky government and the way it’s proceeded in marginalizing minorities like Russian speakers.

Scheer: Okay, but Ray, I know you’ve been with the CIA, you were with the CIA, 27 years or something, and you’re Russian speaking, you’ve got your piece of authority.

But I must say, I stick with you because you’re an old timer and, I believe in being open. But you’re telling me something I don’t hear from any of my advisors. Okay. Now I defend you. Every single time I say something that Ray tells me in these briefings, they say, yeah, but that’s Ray, and he’s out of touch and he’s not speaking for the whole agency.

And he’s not following current events and he’s a pinko. Now I know it’s hard to call somebody a pinko who supports Putin, since Putin defeated the communists and he claims that he doesn’t like them. But the fact of the matter is, you’re telling me something that I’m not hearing from the other people in the intelligence community.

Now, I’m sticking with you, and I’ve told you this before, but a lot of people say I’m wasting my time talking to you. Some people are even suggesting maybe you work for them or something, a lot of talk now. We got a lot of people in this country. And after all, maybe Donald Trump, right?

Donald Trump had close ties to Putin, and we don’t know where, he doesn’t like NATO and what’s that all about? So that’s gonna be a big issue in this election that I’m gonna push. I’m gonna push that, because where is Trump? Maybe Trump’s sympathizer it to the communists, to Putin.

McGovern: Mr. President, I appreciate your candor. And all I can say is that I welcome your openness to hearing other views because you’re getting the same view from all of your other acolytes, not acolytes, all of your other advisors who, frankly, Mr. President, are telling you what they think you want to hear.

That’s not the role of an intelligence officer or intelligence agency. Now, one thing I would want to make clear to you is that in all the publicity that has come out of this major speech that Putin made on Friday, one thing has been noticeably lacking, and that is the fact that in April of 2022, so six weeks after the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, there was a deal.

And the deal included Ukraine saying ‘We will be neutral. We will not join NATO’ and the Russians saying, ‘Okay, we’ll guarantee your security with the help of other people. And we’ll talk about the Donbass and we’ll talk about Crimea later’. That was initial. That was the deal. How do we know that the chief Ukrainian negotiator Arakhamia.

He comes and he talks openly a year ago about, yeah, we had this deal and guess what happened? Boris Johnson came in from London and said, ‘Don’t sign that deal. We’re going to fight them. We’re going to fight them to the end.’ And as Russian leaders have recently said, that’s when they turned to, we’re going to use this to weaken Russia, to give Russia a strategic defeat.

Let me just read you what Putin said, not on Friday, but back in March, it’ll give you a sense for how the Russians look at this, which is what I think you need to know. Here it is.

Putin, we were holding talks in Istanbul, in Turkey, and there was a document, there was actually a draft treaty. It was initialed by the head of the negotiating group, Mr. Arakhamia.

You could see a signature on it. He himself publicly told the world, it was at a meeting of journalists, that Prime Minister of Great Britain and Mr. Johnson arrived and convinced them not to sign the treaty and therefore not to implement it. And that’s when they started to bring up this topic you have just mentioned, namely the need to defeat Russia on the battlefield.

Putin said that in March. Now, one little carousel here. In April, Lavrov, the foreign minister, said this, ‘Yeah, Arakhamia said this with such a naive expression about Mr. Johnson coming in and saying no. Such a naive expression on his face that I even felt a bit sorry for him. He seemed to be upset that Johnson had exhibited this behavior.’

All that negotiating for nothing. When was Arakhamia appointed to negotiate? Four days after the invasion, February 28th. He went up to Belarus, negotiated, went down to Istanbul, negotiated. They had a deal. Now, why do I make this point? Nobody knows this. You know why? Because even though the New York Times had a fulsome article, two articles on Saturday about these documents, never was it mentioned that they were near a finalization until Prime Minister Boris Johnson arrived and put the kibosh on the whole thing.

My point here is simply that unless people know the truth about this, people are going into a certain interpretation of history. And I would suggest that you tell your people to tell the whole story, and then the New York Times will feel free to tell the whole story. And then people might be ready for what’s going to happen in Ukraine. And what’s going to happen in Ukraine before the election, in our estimate, is very bad news for this administration.

Scheer: What is going to happen?

McGovern: There will be a definitive defeat.

Russia will win. In other words, what you said in July of last year, Putin has already lost in Ukraine. Turn that around 180 degrees, the world will see that Russia has not lost, but won in Ukraine. Putin has the capability. There is nothing to stop him, Mr. President, unless now I say, unless you don’t want World War III, but the only way that he could be stopped would be if your advisor said, ‘Oh, let’s use a low yield nuclear weapon.’

Would that stop him? I don’t know. Many people are concerned, including of course, Putin and Lavrov and the defense people in Kremlin. That this being the only thing that’s not yet been tried by your advisors, that they might say to you, Mr. President, we’re going to lose big time in Ukraine, and then we’ll lose the election and all the implications of that.

So let’s try this mini nuke thing.

Scheer: Okay. Ray, you’re just going so far ahead of me here and my own understanding and look, I keep repeating this. Okay. Sometimes everybody tells me I should stop talking because, I don’t know why, and you’re not speaking for the agency. People point out you’re actually not connected anymore.

Really, I keep you as an advisor just cause in the old days you talk to me, but let’s understand that we’re just now giving them all these new weapons that are going to change the balance of power there, right? And we’ve even given them permission to go attack targets in Russia that are attacking Ukraine.

And I’m giving them some of the finest weapons that the West has, the finest in terms of ground warfare and so forth, and you are telling me that in a matter of months, all of this stuff is going to fail to stop a victory. And what would the victory be? They’re going to grab Kiev, they’re going to conquer the country, or they’re going to keep their four provinces?

What are we talking about here?

McGovern: Mr. President, with all due respect I believe you’re using the wrong tense. We haven’t given them anything except money. We don’t have the weapons to give them. Neither does Europe. We didn’t produce the shells that are necessary for their basic artillery.

You know why, Mr. President? Because we did not consider Russia a threat until we overturned the government in Kiev in 2014. So there’s a lack of preparedness, lots of money going into Zelensky, but no weaponry for the next couple of months. So no, this is not —

Scheer: Ray, come on. There are tanks that he didn’t have before.

The most advanced artillery that he didn’t have before. The range has increased. We’re causing all kinds of damage for Putin there with his fleet. I see reports all the time. And sometimes, really, I wonder, what are you drinking or something? Is this all made up?

McGovern: Mr. President, I know enough from looking at CNN now and then to know that this is the impression given to people in the country, including yourself. But it’s an erroneous impression, and it’s actually parroted by people like your defense minister, your defense secretary, who is totally unrealistic, saying that we are in control, and we’re going to win.

You have John Kirby, your spokesman, saying, ‘Yeah, we’re going to win, we’re going to have Ukraine join NATO.’ That’s not going to happen, Mr. President. So I welcome the chance to be devil’s advocate or the fly in the ointment here. You need to know that you need to widen your circle of advisors.

We said that precisely to George W. Bush before he went into Iraq. We said that to Obama before he went into Afghanistan, and now we’re saying to you. Let me give you one for instance, as we used to say in the Bronx, okay? Here’s the for instance: John Mearsheimer 10 years ago said the Ukraine debacle is the fault of the West and Ukraine is going to be destroyed if it goes this way?

Now, I asked John Mearsheimer publicly. You’re in Washington now. Has anyone sought to talk to you, like from the State Department, and what he said was very telling. He said, Ray, in all my years as a professor as the chief of the Realistic School of International Relations, not once has any administration official tried to ask my advice on anything.

This is the guy that was right about Ukraine, and nobody consulted him. Here’s an idea. Talk to John Mearsheimer. You could dismiss what he says, but at least widen that circle of advisers and wall speakers.

Scheer: Ray, we’re going to run out of time this morning, and I’m disturbed by this briefing probably as much as I’ve been by any briefing.

First of all, the prospect that Putin has gone nuts here going to North Korea and that they’ve given him this weapon that could just bring on the end of the human race. This is not some minor consideration in an admittedly crass political concern because I am a candidate. I got to get reelected to stop this maniac Trump from getting in power.

You’re telling me that the Ukraine thing is going to be falling apart before the election. That will be a disaster, not just for me, but for the country and I want to pin this down because it’s enough. And the fact of the matter is I hear that the Russian casualties are astronomical. How long are they going to be able to grab people to fight in this war when they’re losing far more than the Ukrainians are, and the Ukrainian people are united to resist them. And as I say, you keep pushing away this conference that just took place. But we had, what, I don’t know, some 70, 80 nations that did agree with us. Yeah, some like India, Mexico, a few of them didn’t go along. But we got world, worldwide support for our effort to preserve freedom here.

I’m reminding you, Ray, we’re talking about freedom of the Ukrainians. You tell me some of the Russian speaking Ukrainians, they don’t mind or maybe who knows what those elections are. They were under Russian occupation. I just got to square this. You got the credentials, but you are getting old Ray, you’re old.

And maybe there’s a question of where your loyalties are, I don’t know. But you don’t have a contract with RT or Sputnik or any of those people, do you?

McGovern: No, I don’t.

Scheer: You’re not looking for a career of being a talking head on those kinds of shows? So what’s happening here?

Tell me what’s the reality check. Where do I go? I go on now and I ask my guys. I say, okay, I’ve got five questions for you. You tell me the war is going fine. We’re getting worldwide support. We got the right equipment. We put the most advanced tanks and artillery. It goes much further. I’ve given them permission to hit targets.

We know they’re hitting targets, even in Russia itself and everything. And you’re telling me. That this is all not happening, and all we’re doing is giving him money?

McGovern: Mr. President. I would suggest you ask your advisors to look in the history books and see the kind of situation that Lyndon Johnson faced at the end of 1967 in Vietnam.

He was told all these exact same things by Westmoreland, who was asking for 206,000 more troops to go up into Cambodia and into North Vietnam. Now, LBJ, by his own admission, said, I was gonna give Westy those troops. And what happened? Ted, the big offensive at the end of January, early February 1968, put the kibosh on this.

And Lyndon Johnson realized he’d been lied to, and that’s when he widened the circle of his advisors. A little late in the game, right? Clark Clifford and the others came in and said, Look, alright, they said Westmoreland said he’s winning, and he was lying to you, so you better go to negotiations. You better stop bombing, and Mr. President, probably be a good idea if you didn’t run again. And indeed, at the end of March 31st, 1968 president Johnson said, ‘I’m not gonna run for reelection’. So that’s history here. The analogy is invidious, but it seems to be apt in my view. Ask them about it.

Scheer: Yeah. Stop for a second. We got first of all, there’s money we’re giving them now. We’re getting out of their own money, the Russian money, right? We’re getting the interest on the money that we’ve frozen, right? That $50 billion there. I guess it’s more. We’re making Putin pay for this war, that’s number one.

Secondly, we got our allies in the free world stepping up in Europe. They’re building up their armed forces. They’re even talking about sending troops. French are talking about putting some troops in there to at least guide to weapons. We’re talking about incredible time of unity. Ray, I’ve been sitting here thinking, as opposed to this incredible mess with Israel and Gaza where, it’s just getting out of control, everybody’s turned against us here and call me Genocide Joe and all that kind of stuff. At least on Ukraine, we’re on the side of freedom. We’re winning. We got the support of the democracies of the world. And frankly, I can’t square what you’re saying here this morning.

With what has happened since our conference. Now I should have probably gone. Kamala went, she said she got a great reception there. And most, every democracy. I guess maybe India is some kind of democracy, they didn’t back us the way we want. Tell me, I got to go, we’re running out of time.

I got a lot of things I got to do today, but right now I’m getting ticked off big time. And I don’t know whether to get ticked off with my advisors or with you. So give it a shot, Ray, really, because this could be our last conversation,

Scheer: If you think now deeply, did you overstate it? What about all these signs of progress in the Ukraine?

McGovern: Mr. President with all the respect, I don’t believe I’m the one that’s overstating the progress. You’ll recall that 160 countries were invited to that summit, about half of them came. A good proportion, even of our allies, voted against the resolution, and the resolution was milquetoast, so most people believe that session there in Switzerland was a debacle.

Now, with respect to the rest of the stuff here, I don’t enjoy being unpopular, but I’m used to it. We told LBJ that Westmoreland was lying to you. Guess where that got us? Our director said, look, we can’t get involved in a pissing match with the U. S. Army at war. Knock it off! We didn’t knock it off.

We tried in every way to show LBJ is being lied to. And it wasn’t until it was too late after the Tet Offensive, January, February 1968, that finally he realized, ‘Now let me talk and talk to these people who know what’s up, Clark Clifford and the others.’ And they said, ‘Yeah, you’ve been lied to and you need to go to negotiations.’

Now, the parallel is so stark, Mr. President, that I thought I’d raise it, because you’ll remember all this. And even though you became a senator for the first time in 1972, lots of that stuff was very fresh in the minds of people, particularly people who are attuned to foreign affairs.

So 1968, 1972, you miss the big stuff, but you were there for the residue and the residue has been bitter. And if we don’t learn from our mistakes in the past, however unpopular the bearer of the message may be, we’ll come to what the Chinese used to call “a no good end�.

Scheer: If I take what you say seriously, I’m at the end here of my tolerance. It is actually the most frightening conversation I may have ever had. You’re telling me that we not only have brought, these people could have had tension between the Chinese, and the communists in China, communists in Russia. They were shooting at each other while we were in Vietnam. And we certainly didn’t get along with North Korea, which was scared them. And, the oddball country, hermit kingdom, whatever the hell you think. You’re now telling me we’ve fomented this alliance with North Korea, China, and Russia, and with all of their weaponry and all that stuff. And then at the same time, we know Putin’s economy is not suffering the way I thought it was, supposed to collapse.

Also, no one ever told me that they could make all these weapons and replenish their army, because they’re supposed to be all drunk and corrupt.

McGovern: You were just told the opposite.

Scheer: Yeah. But the fact of the matter is, and then they go make that stupid march up to Kiev.

Clearly that we, as I’ve been told, they were supposed to be conquering it and they failed and the trucks all got stuck in the mud and everything. And now, looking at it, you tell me I’m giving them nothing but money. But I’m being told by the people who make these weapons here that this is a game changer, that these are precision weapons of greater lengths and lethality and so forth, that’s going to turn this around.

You’re telling me, Ray, just your whole, it’s not the ballgame, your reputation. Right now I’m starting to think there’s something nutty about this that you’re telling me between now and the election, because I’ve been assured we can show progress between now and the election in Ukraine.

I don’t know about Gaza and Israel, because Netanyahu is off the charts. He’s going to denounce me and he’s going to support Trump. That’s what’s going to happen, he’s desperate. He’s desperate. He didn’t want to go to jail by his own people. He doesn’t want to be held responsible, for not having good security.

After all, they’re supposed to be the genius about it. And they’re all supposed to be winning wars in a matter of days, not, months, maybe years. Now they’re talking about being stuck fighting there for years. That’s a loser. And then Trump, and don’t say I’m stuttering or losing it, we talk about this stuff all the time, we make some lapses in our talk and everything, but, that, all right, let’s not go there. What I’m saying is, though, Ukraine is supposed to be our symbol of resolve and success. Just give it to me really straight here, because I’m going to go out and I’m going to be chewing out some people for some tough answers.

How in the hell can you tell me that after our putting in all this equipment, now the new stuff, and we got the support of, I’ve never seen NATO, such resolve. They’re actually talking about putting troops, are really stiffening all the penalties and everything, you’re telling me it’s going Putin’s way.

McGovern: Mr. President you need to be more widely advised by a wider circle of advisors. So let me do a substitute act here. NATO is not united in a way had not before. You have Hungary saying, ‘We’re outta here. We’re not gonna take part in any hostilities with Russia.’ We have Slovakia. We have other countries.

Turkey. Turkey wants to join BRICS. Never before has NATO shown such fishers. Okay.

Scheer: BRICS, the Russian, Chinese, Indian Alliance of the

McGovern: Yeah, the BRICS. Yeah. Brazil, India.

Scheer: Yeah. South Africa. Yeah.

McGovern: China, South Africa. Yeah. Now they’re, they have Saudi Arabia and several other countries. This is happening.

I’m not saying that your advisors want this to happen, what I am saying is that by their own actions, they have caused the rest of the world pretty much to say, ‘We don’t want any part of what’s going on in, in this rules based international order, whatever that is.’ And just parenthetically, Mr. President, in that long speech that Putin made on Friday, he no fewer than 22 times referred to international law, okay? Now he’s trained in the law, and he tries to adhere to the letter of the law. You can dispute what the law is, all lawyers do, but he has this thing about Rules based international law.

Let me just add one thing. There could be a game changer. F 16s could be it. Now you remember, Mr. President, that it was only —

Scheer: A game changer for freedom, right?

McGovern: Let me explain. When Bahmut was lost, you recall you were in the far East and Zelensky came out to see you. I was like, my God, we lost.

And you said. What we do, and you had no military advisors with you and somebody said how about giving them F 16? So you said immediately, we’ll get them F 16. Now the rub there, Mr. President is F 16 can carry nuclear weapons. And on the chance you have not been advised of this, the Russians have said, we won’t know once an F 16 takes off whether it has nuclear weapons on it.

And so we’re going to shoot it right away. And we might shoot the airfield from which it flew. So escalation, that would be escalation. Not so much the F 16s, the Russians have the capability to down them quite readily. But if the Russians attack air bases in Romania, or Poland, then you have a situation where these people might say Article 50, Article 5, the NATO treaty, we have to go to war.

I don’t think from my view, you wouldn’t want to be faced with that decision, but, F 16s could be a game changer. One other game changer, Mr. President. Now, these attackums and these HIMARS and these scalps and all these other missiles, they can do pinprick attacks in Russia. The Russians can handle all that.

What they can’t handle is attacks on their early warning radar facilities, early warning against strategic attack. There have been two or three of those. Now, they don’t have the capability that we have of every little strategic missile every ballistic missile that is shot up anywhere in the world.

We know where it is. We know exactly when the Russians don’t have that. And so, one reaction that the Russians have made with respect to this is, ‘Don’t do this, don’t hit our radio stations’. Now those are Ukrainian drones, but everyone knows they could not have been navigated so precisely without U. S. intervention. Now what’s a symmetric, what’s an asymmetric approach? Let’s send a small fleet of ships, nuclear powered and maybe nuclear armed ships to Cuba. Seems to me we did that before, in 1962.

Scheer: You’re talking about the Russians sending them.

McGovern: That’s right.

Scheer: They just did that, right? Because that’s what they’ve done.

Yeah.

McGovern: They’ve just completed a five

Scheer: No, they claim, I looked at one report, they claim they’ve been there before.

McGovern: They have visited Havana before. They’ve been there before. But this time it was in the context of retaliation, asymmetric or symmetric retaliation. For these hits deep inside Russia, and particularly in my view these early warning sites without which Russia is blinded were there to be a submarine in the Indian Ocean, for example that would shoot Trident missiles up into Russia. So things are getting strategically complicated. It’s one thing to talk about the battle lines in Ukraine. The other is to talk about F 16s that are, by definition, nuclear capable. And it’s yet another thing to talk about missiles that take, or missiles or drones, that take out early warning radar systems that the Russians depend on for early warning against nuclear attack.

Scheer: We’re taking out their early warning systems?

McGovern: There are 10 of them of this kind. We damaged two of them. Shot at three of them. And then when I say we, it was the Ukrainians.

Scheer: This has gone on long enough. We’re going to end with this, Ray. But let me understand something. I thought we are damaging their ability to wage war in Ukraine with these systems.

I didn’t know this was their early warning systems about whether they were under nuclear attack.

McGovern: Please ask your ask Mr. Burns, your CIA director. He’ll ask Mr. Austin the head of defense, and I hope they’ll tell you what the reality is, and that is that there is no rational explanation in the Ukraine context for these Ukrainian drones going deep, 1, 000 kilometers inside Russia.

Only possible by guidance from U. S. satellites and other mechanisms and hitting these places. Why did they do that? I don’t know, but maybe your people will have a better idea, but beware. The guidance you’re getting from particularly Secretary Austin, as I said before there is no check on the defense intelligence as we used to have back in Vietnam days for the U.S. The CIA had its own independent military analysis capability. There’s no check on that now. And so when Austin tells John Kirby to act like he’s been criticized as Baghdad Bob, okay, to say we’re gonna win, we’re gonna have Ukraine enter NATO. That’s not only not possible, it’s also quite dangerous because no one knows exactly what you believe.

Do you believe what Kirby says? He’s your spokesman. Or do you believe what Austin says? Or do you perhaps entertain the notion of believing other sources? Please, Mr. President with all due respect, widen your circle of advisers so that you’re not ingrained in this.

Scheer: Ray, okay, this is going to be the end of it.

You’re telling me that because the whole thing in the post war period after the development of the, what we had to drop Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We had to, those were military targets, we had to take them out. Although I noticed we were going to have peace. I remember I watched a couple of movies. Then we could have had a peace with Japan, they just wanted to protect their Emperor. I noticed he’s visiting now. So I don’t know how, myself, I’m perplexed because why did we drop those bombs? If it was to stop the emperor, it’s important to them for some national religious idea. They wanted to save their emperor, but now we don’t mind their emperor.

He’s traveling around and it seems to be on our side, the emperor.

McGovern: I have a personal view on that. I have a personal view on that, Mr. President. I’ve studied this problem greatly, if you’d like me to comment on it, but go ahead, please.

Scheer: Oh, go ahead. That’s the only thing I can learn from you, Ray, is you have some sense of history here because you helped make it.

And I must say, by the way, Ray, when you were making this history, I didn’t hear too much that this wasn’t good for America. You spent 27 years of your life here in the CIA, and now suddenly on my watch as president, you’re giving me a hard time? Did you give all those other guys a hard time?

McGovern: Frankly, I did until Secretary Shultz and President Reagan came around and saw that the Russians weren’t devil incarnate that they could be dealt with.

As a matter of fact, that there could be agreements among them, the destruction in place of fully armed a whole class of medium and intermediate range ballistic missiles. SS 20s in the Soviet Union, Pershing IIs in the United States. They agreed to destroy them. I was surprised as hell and they did it.

They were all destroyed. And my friend, Scott Ritter was one of the people went up to one of these godforsaken places in the Arctic to make sure they were destroyed. So if you have a modicum of trust in one another, If you talk to one another, as I encourage President Secretary Schultz to talk to Gorbachev and Shevardnadze, then you can work these things out.

I don’t know if you want to hear my thing about the Japanese Emperor, but

Scheer: You’re exactly right. Because of that movie, Oppenheimer and everything. Okay. You’re exactly right.

McGovern: Yeah. You’re exactly right to be puzzled as to why we did it, but I know why we did it. We did it because of racism.

Truman asked Eisenhower, MacArthur, Admiral Halsey, all this top military ‘Should we do this?’ And they all said, ‘No, the war is over’. We have the Japanese codes. All they need to do is to be told, ‘Look, you can keep your damn emperor. We’re not going to string them up. Okay. You got to keep them.’ and they’re ready to, they’re ready to fold.

Okay. So why did they do that? Jimmy Burns from the great state of South Carolina, he was the Secretary of State. He and Truman were racist through and through. Truman never referred to African Americans, except using the N word. And they said, look, we’re going to teach them a lesson.

They don’t look like we do. And direct descendants of those, General Westmoreland, where’s he from? Oh, South Carolina. What does he say? The oriental, they don’t put the same value on life that we do and so forth. And who else? Lindsey Graham. Yeah, we ought to blast them. We ought to blast those people. In other words, racism is an original sin in the United States.

It’s not gone. And that explains, in my view, why we didn’t just say, ‘Okay, keep your emperor’. Without using the bomb.

Scheer: We’re wandering too far field here. Okay. I got enough to think about here. But, I hope you feel the same way that I do, that you’re just all wrong about this because it’s a pretty frightening picture.

And let me just tell you, if you’re sitting in my seat, you got to ask yourself a question. I hope the voters are all asking themselves the question, what would Trump do? Now, you got two views to that. Some people think he’d be even tougher. I don’t think I’ve been too tough. I think I’ve been responsible.

But, maybe he just dropped the big one on Moscow or something, on the other hand, we got a lot of Democrats there in Congress and investigations saying, ‘He’s, ally or puppet of Putin, he wouldn’t blow them up.’ So this is a crazy election, because is he going to be able to pay?

He’s not going to attack me for being a warmonger, right? Because he talks tough, right? He wants to give Netanyahu everything. But then on Ukraine, where you’re talking, it’s really dangerous. There was a nuclear war, although nobody ever mentions nuclear war could involve Israel too. They got bombs that we don’t talk about, but still, we’re getting to an election now where the public has got to think, am I more dangerous than Trump?

And on this question of this thing falling apart before the election, one response could be, who lost in Ukraine? And that maybe, because there’s a lot of stuff I see in the newspapers that they’re finally getting it. The only reason Ukraine is in trouble is because the Republicans in Congress wouldn’t give them the aid they needed when they needed it.

I said, I think that’s something we’re going to stress in the campaign. And we’re going to have to bring up that Trump has been cozy with Putin. Maybe that’s why the Republicans didn’t give the aid to, to Ukraine when it could have used it. That’s what I’m going to say if they’re falling apart before the election.

McGovern: Mr. President, that’s a good domestic argument for debating purposes. What I would like to end with here is simply say that Putin has made it very clear, and he is in control, as no Russian leader has been in control since Stalin, okay? He’s made it clear that what he values in a U. S. president is predictability, okay? Predictability.

Now, as he looks on the scene, each red line that you personally have set with respect to the kind of weaponry you’re willing to give to Ukraine or use in Ukraine, has kept going up and the red lines have been discorded. So he’s looking at you and wondering what the next escalation will be, F 16s or worse.

And that is why he’s for the first time ever brandishing the nuclear weapons in such way as the cold exercises advertised heavily with tactical nuclear weapons first time ever in Belarus, in Russia, and when we talk nuclear, that’s very serious, Mr. President. I just want to say that I spent my career looking at things from a Soviet and then a Russian perspective. In my view, that’s usually looking at things. You’d like to be able to predict what’s going to happen.

The more those generals and admirals looking over his shoulder and breathing down his neck, you’d What is the President of the United States going to do once things go south in Ukraine?

Scheer: That’s it, Ray. Wrap it up. I’ve never given you an hour before and I hope you all, you’re just full of it. That’s what I hope, because it’s really frightening.

I’m going to think about it, but I know my guys are going to just tell me you’re off base. You don’t want to hear from me next week or something. That’s because I’ve had enough of this. But hopefully, maybe they say you raise some points anyway. All right. I’ll give you the benefit of that.

I’ll talk to you next week. Take care. Where’s that White House intern there? Is he going to turn us off or what does he do? Where’s that kid?