"Face the Nation," June 25, 2023

Interview

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Good morning, Margaret.

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Sure.

Well, the intelligence community was very much aware of that the conflict between Prigozhin and Putin was inevitable. And, even from public sources, which you've seen Prigozhin for months has put out videos critical of the Russian government, critical of Putin.

Putin has allowed this. And, as the secretary said, those videos themselves even included criticizing Putin's very premise of the war, that it was not started by NATO, that there were not Nazis in Ukraine.

And then entering into Moscow -- entering into Russia itself and taking their convoy to Moscow, that really shows to the basic issue of whether or not Putin controls his military. For any government to have stability, they have to control their military. Obviously Prigozhin, in order to make it that distance, has to have accomplices.

You know, where was the air force? Where was the Russian air force in preventing this? That's going to be an issue that -- that Putin is going to have to deal with both internationally and domestically, is his government, as an authoritarian government depends, on its assertion of power, force, in order to be able to contain -- to continue to wield power, and that certainly is going to be an issue.

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Well, I can't go into what our intelligence was.

But I can tell you this. These videos that he was allowing Prigozhin to put -- put out were public. They were distributed around the world.

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Putin certainly was aware of them because he was allowing them, the content of them, where they not only criticized Putin and the Russian government and called for the removal of the minister of defense.

Ultimately, as you know, this weekend, Prigozhin's statement was removal of the president himself. So, Vladimir Putin certainly had lots of public notice that Prigozhin was -- was a -- was a critic and was threatening the -- the government, and now ultimately took this military action into Russia itself.

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Well, you know, he's a military guy.

Remember, this is like a 12-hour trip from Ukraine to Moscow, and he got within two hours of Moscow. Now, being a military guy, he understands the logistics and really the -- the assistance that he's going to need to do that. This is not a weekend trip he's taking, taking his convoy, and his military convoy, up to Moscow.

There's a number of accomplices, including, as we saw, some of the Russian people on the border with Ukraine who clearly support the Wagner group, in contrast to their support for the Russian government. This is something that would have had to been planned for a significant amount of time to be executed in the manner in which it was,

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Right.

So this really does hurt -- hurt Putin, and not only just politically and in his leadership in Russia and his presidency, but in his efforts to continue the war in Ukraine. You know, I think, obviously, in the beginning, there's going to be an initial increase of activity from Russia against Ukraine.

But because he went -- Putin himself went on a national TV to respond to Prigozhin, and Prigozhin said that your government has lied to you, this is not a war that NATO started, there are no Nazis in Ukraine, taking down the very premise makes it much more difficult for Putin to continue to turn to the Russian people and say, we should continue to send people to die in this war that -- for which Prigozhin himself has said to the Russian people, the premise is a lie.

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Well, you know, I can't answer that either. But you can -- you can assume certainly that we have been very focused on Russia and Ukraine.

And this is an area where Ukraine's successes has been a result in part because of the successes of the intelligence community. So we've been very, very focused on this. I think that as we -- as we go forward, this is going to be even more critical as it face -- as we face the threats both for Ukraine and for the United States as to what's going to happen to Putin and Russia next.

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Right.

So, President Xi has got to be very concerned right now, because, as you know, he went to Moscow, stood next to Putin and said, you know, "We're together," he and Vladimir Putin, are bringing about change that hasn't happened for 100 years.

And, of course, that is the march of authoritarianism against democracy that we won in World War Two that they're now rising up against. But now he's standing next to a guy who can't even control his -- his own -- his own military.

Remember, Putin, in his national address said that these individuals are going to have inevitable punishment. And then, in the end, Prigozhin gets a vacation in -- in Belarus, and his troops are now going to sign contracts. It sounds more like paperwork than a KGB agent, than doing inevitable punishment.

Xi, in seeing that with Putin, has got to understand that -- that Putin's stature in the world has diminished. That diminishes President Xi. And, certainly as Putin looks weakened, certainly not being able to control his -- his military and being a strong nuclear power, President Xi has to be worried about the stability of Russia itself.

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Well, and this is the problem, really, what -- what the director of national intelligence has done, Director Haines.

We passed a law saying, declassify the information that you have about the COVID and Wuhan lab's activities. What they did is they basically went and -- and did a paper on what they believe about the intelligence they've looked at. I will give an example of this.We've asked to open the curtain and release the intelligence, and they went behind the curtain, read this stuff, and came out and said, well, this is what we think about it.

This is not sufficient. And, certainly, this is going to be -- set up between a battle between Congress and the director of national intelligence to make certain that -- that the law that was passed unanimously, both the Senate and the House and signed by the president, is complied with, but also the American public get the answers they deserve.

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No, actually, we just got this late, late Friday, so I haven't had access to it in a classified setting.

But even releasing a classified annex goes against what the law says. The law says declassify, not give us more classified information. I mean, my committee has already seen a significant amount of this intelligence. Giving my committee more intelligence doesn't give it to the American public, and that's what the declassification law was about.

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So, I -- I have seen, for example, the classified annex to the report that President Biden requested the intelligence community gave.

What you just read were more conclusions by the intelligence community.

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In the report that was given to the President, the 90-day-or-so report, they have -- they have information in that report that contradicts, I believe, the impressions that are given in -- in these statements by the Intelligence Committee.

We want the intelligence released, not their opinion about the intelligence. If we wanted their opinion, we would have asked for it. We passed a law saying, declassify it. It's the law of the land. Release this so the American public and see it.

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Experts out there in the community besides the intelligence community...

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... need to take a look at this and help us understand what really happened that resulted in millions of people dying.

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