C (6:01)

Yeah, and Marco Rubio is an interesting case because if you talk to people who are around him, they would say, you know, he's gone through a genuine transformation when it comes to the use of US Force overseas. He's not the warmongering neoconservative that he was when he first kind of rose up in the, the 2010s. And then you say, well, what about Cuba and Venezuela and Latin America? He said, well, no, that he's still the old Marco Rubio on that question. It's, it's elsewhere, you know, that he has moderated in his position as Secretary of State. He was basically boxed out of everything else. You rarely saw him have any serious engagement when it came to Israel, Gaza. You saw him have effectively no role when it came to Russia, Ukraine, for instance, not doing much when it comes to Asia, China. And so he was sandboxed in to the one area that, where he is happiest to play, where he has been dreaming about executing the vision of, of his, basically his, you know, parents generation to roll back the Cuban revolution to, you know, allow South Florida to return there. You know, they still have their deeds and their safes down there, the ones who are still alive and they, they, they plan to go back triumphant. And they see Venezuela as the, as the key that unlocks that, that door. And so Rubio unleashed, was able to kind of push things in this direction. But clearly Trump is, is quite content to use extraordinary amounts of American force. And we're also seeing kind of structurally the US as it recognizes China as a kind of equal player on the world stage, back off of the notion of total global hegemony. And while that might be a good thing for the rest of the globe, that's going to be a negative thing for, you know, people very close to us. And, you know, when we started dropsite, I remember we were, we were, we were talking about that very phenomenon that the U.S. no matter who the president was, which, which party was in charge, was going to be paying a lot more attention to this hemisphere. And that, and that usually means paying attention to it violently. So about six months ago, we started setting out plans to launch a Latin America desk mirroring what we've done in the Middle east by relying on journalists who are on the ground there and working with us here in Washington and elsewhere. And so people have probably seen we rolled that out recently led, led by Jose Luis Granado Ceja. We're giving him the, the morning off. He's been on a epic media tour. If, if people have seen his, his different interviews throughout the week, that, which won't stop. You can also find him over at, at Twitter. He's on at Granado Ceja. Terrific journalist. You know, he has, he's working, he's based out of Mexico City. He's got colleagues in Venezuela and obviously elsewhere, all throughout the region. So, and we're building that because that's unfortunately for the region, you know, where a lot of the US Focus is going to be, I think, in the decades to come.

A (9:20)

Yeah, let's, let's, let's go straight to Caracas right now. We're joined by Carlos Ron, he's the former Venezuelan deputy foreign minister who was responsible for North America, had a lot of dealings with the United States government as the build up to this abduction of Maduro took place over these years. And Carlos is now at the tri Continental Institute for Social Research. Carlos, thanks so much for joining us at this time of incredible tension and danger. And you are joining us from Caracas. Let's just begin by giving us the sense you were close and you worked for this Maduro administration. And I think it would be good to get a sense from Your perspective how people are now responding, a few days removed from the snatching of Maduro and the taking him to New York City and all the images that have been published of Maduro in this process.

D (10:17)

Well, first of all, thanks for this opportunity. I think it's important for voices from Venezuela to actually get heard throughout the U.S. i have to say, you know, of course, we were shocked by the. By the strength of the. Of the attack. I mean, something that Venezuelan has. Has an experience in its history, honestly, in all of its history. I mean, the last international conflict Venezuela was in was in the 19th century. So something of this magnitude, you know, had a huge impact on the population. However, one thing that may seem counterintuitive is that, you know, the government was not overthrown. I mean, we have a president that has been technically kidnapped by the United States. He was abducted by the United States. But there has been a continuity of the Bolivar Revolution in charge of the government of Venezuela. And that is important. I mean, yesterday, Vice President Del Ze Rodriguez was sworn in as acting president. So there's a continuity in these institutions of Venezuela. There's a continuity in the armed forces and in the streets. I mean, the reaction of the people is of a lot of obviously, indignation. I mean, there's this feeling of people are upset, people are angry at what happened. But people came out to the streets in support of President Maduro, I mean, demanding that president would be returned to Venezuela in support of the Bolivarian Revolution, the government and the institutions. And the other thing that I think is important is that there is no fracture within the government base. I mean, you see in every act that has taken place, the soaring in. I mean, yesterday was also the inauguration of the new period of the national assembly. And all authorities were soaring in there. You saw everybody, I mean, every leadership, every different key person, actor of the Bolivar Revolution present. You see in the streets. There's been two, three days of people going out to the streets from commune, social movements, political parties. Everything that has been the support base of the Bolivarian Revolution is still there in the streets demanding the return of the president, demanding, of course, an end to US Aggression. So this has served, I would say, to actually bring together the Venezuelan population and even people that were not supporters necessarily or sympathizers with the government. There's a lot of people that feel angry and frustrated at an attack on Venezuela. There is no visible signs of any opposition trying to capitalize on this and say, now we should have a different government. None of that was seen throughout the streets of Caracas and pretty much Caracas, at least today, you can see it's trying to come back into its everyday activities.

C (13:25)

And Carlos, what does the government see as the best case scenario out of this? Like what? How is the government trying to navigate this situation?

D (13:38)

Well, I mean, not speaking for the government myself, but just as watching it as a researcher and as a Venezuelan citizen, I think what the government here is mainly concerned about at this point is guaranteeing peace and instability in the country. And I think that in that sense, it has been successful. Like I said, you know, there's no dispute in the streets as to who is in power, who's in charge. I mean, there's more of a call to consciousness to, you know, get on with. Try to get on with daily life. Of course, not to ignore what happened, but to continue. Everybody understands that for the country to function, for the country to continue on track, it needs to get back on its daily life and daily activities. Now, you have to also take into consideration that one of the main concerns, I think, for the government right now is to guarantee that there are no further attacks that we don't have to. The Venezuelan population doesn't have to undergo this experience again. And I think that's what was signaled the first statements of Acting President Denzel Rodriguez into calling for, again, diplomacy, dialogue, words like cooperation, all these things that I understand as an attempt to reopen the communication with. With the United States and again, avoid further confrontation. Which is not something that is different from what the Venezuelan position has been all these years. I mean, if you look back at all, the. Even during the whole Maduro administration, he has been constant in asking for respectful dialogue with the United States. A dialogue, of course not. Not a threatening type of arrangement, but a dialogue of respect between sovereign nations to seek cooperation. Venezuela has actually been always ready to have cooperation in the energy sector, cooperation against drug trafficking, all these issues that have come up. But Venezuela has always demanded that it's on a respectful level, on equal terms, type of level. And I think this is where we're picking up. I think the sense that the Venezuelan people got from the government now is that there needs to be open, again dialogue so you can avoid another type of aggression like the one that's currently going on.

A (16:27)

The initial narrative on this that was floated by the administration and by news outlets that were getting leaks from the administration, but actually a lot of it was just set out in the open was that the US has did not consider Maduro the legitimate president of Venezuela. In fact, that's the position of Hakeem Jeffries you know, the leader of the Democrats in the House and many Democrats. That's the position that they're taking that, you know, and we're going to talk to Jack in a moment about the way that the Trump administration also utilized U.S. law enforcement as part of this Special Operations raid. But, you know, the, the overarching narrative is that Maduro was under indictment from the United States. He was given opportunities to essentially go into exile in Turkey. Was, Was, was reported that he refused those opportunities and that what the US Was doing was a law enforcement operation to apprehend a narco terrorist. This is the, the term that they're using. But then after they snatched Maduro and began the process of bringing him back to the United States, you had Trump saying that the US Is in control of Venezuela right now, that the US Is going to be running Venezuela. And, you know, Trump really kind of humiliated Maria Corina Machado, who won the Nobel Prize and is still campaigning. She. Now, the most recent thing is she's offering to give the Nobel Prize to Trump. But both Trump and Rubio basically said this isn't a serious person who has any respect in Venezuela. And instead they call Dulcie Rodriguez, who, as you said, was the Vice president, is now acting in the capacity as president. But part of the narrative, Carlos, seems to be to give the impression that she's someone that can do business with Washington. And there is a whisper campaign that maybe she or others were in on this from the beginning. Now, I've seen really strong pushback from Venezuelans close to the government on this, but that is a narrative that's out there. And it seems as though that's part of what is being implied in the press, is that there are elements within the Maduro government. And we'll talk to Jack about some of the reports that there were informants and assets involved with this on the ground. But I'm asking you a political question. Do you think there's any validity whatsoever to the idea that Delsey Rodriguez or others are in some kind of agreement with the United States?

D (18:54)

I don't see that. I honestly, I think that what we have is a cohesive, you know, movement that has supported the revolution historically. I mean, even. Even, even because of her own history. I mean, I don't know if a lot of people know this, but explain.

A (19:14)

Who her father was and. Yeah, sure, she and her brother are.

D (19:16)

Yeah, so, so, so, so she's, she's, she is. She, she comes from a family in Venezuela, a political family. Her father, Jorge Antonio Rodriguez, was a leader in the 1970s in Venezuela from a group called Socialist League. And he was a strong community organizer leader from the left who was taken by the police forces in Venezuela. And he was murdered by basically by the government at the time. Of course, this also happened with the help of US Intelligence, as there were advisors from the US at the time who were in this counterinsurgency type of policy, and Venezuela was part of this. And I say this because if you look at it, there are weak leaks. There's actually weak leaks, files that show that talk about the murder of her father. So, I mean, just because of her history, her brother is also now the president of the national assembly, has been a key figure. He was also vice president at one point during the government of President Chavez. So, you know, this is a family of revolutionaries. And also because you see the cohesion of the revolutionary forces, I mean, yesterday you saw President Maduro's son helping and standing right next to her when she was being sworn in. So, you know, we're very hard to say that, you know, the, you know, there was a difference. She was some sort of plot. I think all these things are usually done whenever you're trying to divide a strong group, like, you know, the base of the Bolivian or the leadership of the Bulgarian revolution. And I say this because, I mean, if you look at it, I mean, you just said, I want to think a couple elements of what you guys were discussing earlier. You know, first I would say that this whole. The way, you know, especially this whole year, the way there's been a buildup of these cases or these accusations against President Maduro, you know, some of them not even making sense or not being coherent. I mean, first you have. First you have him accused as being leader of a criminal organization. You link him to Trangarawa, which already is a questionable issue in and of itself because, you know, it's an organization that it stopped existing in Venezuela for a while. And then, you know, there's no real evidence that it became an international network or anything of the sort. But you create this narrative, you place them at the top, then you pick up this old, you know, 1990s term, you know, the Cartel de los Soles, the sun cartels, which was something that was used to describe it in the 90s, way before the Bolivarian Revolution, it was used to describe certain complicity between army generals and drug trafficking and so forth. But there's no institution, there's no body that actually works as a cartel. And I think this was recognized. I mean, I read something quickly this morning apparently, this was also recognized in a way by the Justice Department just now. There's a way that the indictment was written. They don't really give more credence to this cartel. All this buildup of accusations against President Maduro are really an excuse to make this look as a police type of operation, a law enforcement operation, not as what it is. That is an act of war. And I have to say, the way that the United States has behaved towards Venezuela during the last few months, you know, there are elements of an act of acts of war. First, you criminalize all of the Venezuelan population by picking up the, you know, the Alien Enemies act from, you know, I don't know how many years ago, bringing that back. And you criminalize a whole set of people from a specific country. You send them to concentration camps in El Salvador. Then you pick up these accusations and put them all together to try to, you know, put President Maduro, who is the sovereign president of a sovereign nation. You know, there are limitations of international law as to how you can proceed and act towards head of state. Well, then you remove that by accusing him and treating him as a criminal. Of course, you can't recognize him as a real president because that would counter the narrative or that would give him some immunity that wouldn't allow you to just go into the country and abduct him. Then you present, then you carry out this offensive in the Caribbean Sea, which are acts of war. When you attack boats, when you basically blockade a nation, again, these are extrajudicial killings that nobody went through trial. Nobody was stopped. And it's not that they didn't have the capacity to stop these vessels and see if there were drug traffickers to find out what was really going on, because they really had the capacity to stop all tankers and steal the oil and blockade Venezuela's main source of income in its economy. So when you add all these things up, you see this is an aggression towards Venezuela. And what happened on January 3 is in itself an act of war. You didn't just hit one place. They didn't just come and go to his house. They had four states of Venezuela. They hit Caracas and the state of Aragua, La Guayra, Miranda. There are civilian casualties. The places that were hit were places that have civilian population. There were not only military places. And still, right after all this happened, President Trump comes out and says, we're warning if Venezuela doesn't do the right thing, whatever he wants, and then we can do this again. So, you know, Venezuela, I mean, these are forceful actions. So I Think all this buildup and all this narrative to say that there was complicity within is trying to basically break apart what you had. You know, the unity of the revolutionary forces, which by the way, are probably, you know, the forces that can really guarantee stability in the country. Because if you yourself, after supporting Maria Corina Machado and all these, and the opposition, after claiming that President Maduro lost the elections, all these things, then you come out and recognize the same day you say, well, she's really not, that she can't be the leader because she doesn't have the backing and support of the country. Wait a minute. Didn't you tell me just a few months ago that she won with 80% or that her people, whatever, won with 80% of the votes? How is it there's not one person here on the streets of Caracas trying to say, oh, bring back Maria Corina Machado? Then all these lies are falling apart the same way that, you know, the cartel Los Alas is falling apart. All these things are falling apart. What is really coming out is the interest of the United States and President Trump to control Venezuela's oil production.

A (26:39)

Yeah. And they're not making any, any secret about that. We're going to bring on investigative journalist Jack Murphy. You're going to see the, the, the, the video screens are going to flip a little bit here until Jack is on. But Jack Murphy is an investigative journalist, but he's also a former US Army Ranger and he and Sean Naylor, who's a really great and important journalist in the world of reporting on US Special operations. Really, really one of the most respected journalists. Jack and, and Sean got together a couple years ago and they launched a publication called the High side. I'm a paid subscriber to that publication because it's. It, it is. They don't publish frequently, but when they publish something, you get details and insight into the perspective from inside of the US Military. Jack is deeply sourced in the special operations community. And a couple days ago, Jack published a really interesting article about this operation in Venezuela on the high side. It's called Bold Delta Force Raid Leads to Capture and Arrest of Maduro Trump says jsox. JSOC is the Joint Special Operations Command, the most elite special operations forces in the US Arsenal. Operation Absolute Resolve will allow the United States to, quote, run Venezuela. And among the, the news items that Jack broke in this story based on sources from within the special operations and the intelligence community, was that a, an official familiar with the operation told Jack that the CIA had an asset very close to Maduro someone who was able to provide real time updates about his movements over the last few weeks. A special operations source elaborated, telling the high side that a local source network helped enable the operation. That network helped install jammers and other technical equipment on the ground, including beacons for airstrikes. The operational preparation of the battle space was conducted by Task Force Orange, which throughout its history has been known by a host of COVID names, including the U.S. army Office of Military Support, Titan Zeus and the Intelligence Support Activity. And in Venezuela, it was operating under the Authorization for the Use of Military Force, according to an official familiar with the operation. I encourage people to check out the high sides journalism and this specific report by Jack, but Jack, thanks. I know you're a little bit under the weather. Thanks for joining us this morning.

B (28:57)

Yeah, thanks for having me.

A (29:00)

So, Jack, why don't you just give us your. Your TikTok of what sources are telling you how all of this unfolded. Feel free to back up as much as you think is relevant.

B (29:10)

Sure. So, I mean, the thumbnail sketch of it, it seems that the planning for this operation really took off in earnest in September and October. There were a couple key defections, I'm told, that were very instrumental to helping the CIA understand who and how to work in Venezuela, that they were having some difficulties previously. And this is a big part of what allowed them to establish a local source network, a support agent network that was able to do things on the ground that they weren't able to do themselves. Most of the people that work in CIA look like me or you, Jeremy, so that's really not happening. They started going through that process and the operational preparation of the environment, as it's called. That's just laying the groundwork for the operations done months ahead of time. And I don't know where do you want to take it from there?

A (30:05)

Well, I mean, part of what I want to get into with you is you know, who did this raid, how, how these types of operations are planned for, but you can, you can continue on with that. So based on what you, what you understand.

B (30:17)

So the, the, this operation was rehearsed in the Fort Bragg area and executed by Delta Force and the Ranger Regiment. 1. One element from a Ranger battalion augmented them. But there were other players involved in this operation. SEAL Team 6, also known as Development Group, hit some secondary targets during this operation. So it was the assault force was Rangers and Delta, and they launched that operation when they got the green light. And when the weather cleared for it, they went in in the middle of the night. The helicopters using Terrain masking meaning hiding behind land features to get below radar. There was a combination of little birds, Blackhawks and Chinook helicopters were used to get the assault force into place. And as they came up over that last terrain feature, the other aircraft, There was reportedly 150 aircraft in the air for this operation, which is substantial of course, and they began suppressing the air defense systems. Meanwhile, the local source networks that I mentioned previously, they had in place various technical devices like jammers and beacons for bombing runs and things like this. So all of that was pre arranged. The assault force came in and it sounds like they isolated the target building quite quick. And as President Trump told us during the press conference, the operators, the American soldiers actually caught him trying to close the door on a panic room and that's when him and his wife were both detained.

C (31:51)

What do we, what do we know about the time that the operators were at, at the main building? So you know about the time, so how much time to get to the building, to get in the building? Cubans have said 32 of their soldiers, their guards were killed. And then to get back out, like I've seen, you've seen in Venezuela, they've talked about a two hour gun battle. That doesn't quite seem to fit with the timeline. Like what have you, what have you heard about that?

B (32:20)

I mean this is, this is what has been put out. You know, the, the timeline that I, I'm about to quote comes from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. So you can take that at, for what it's worth, he said that they crossed into Venezuelan airspace at 01:01 local time and got back out over international waters at about 3:30am local time. So depending the, the amount of flight time was probably not that long. They launched from the USS Iwo Jima off the coast and Caracas is not that far away. I, I think they would probably have been on target for about an hour if I'm to make a semi educated guess about that. So they probably weren't on the ground very long.

C (33:04)

Did you hear much go ahead, like what kind of resistance there was and, and how, because it sounds like they were able to find, get to them pretty quickly. Yeah, if they're, if they're, if they weren't in the panic room yet, you know, it doesn't take that long to hear helicopters coming, get out of bed and get into a panic room. So that would suggest to me that they got there extraordinarily quickly.

B (33:30)

Yeah, I, I, I would agree. They, they had to have achieved tactical surprise to be able to get on him that quickly as far as you know? I, I know the, the Cuban government is saying something like 32 of their officers were killed during this operation. I don't know what personnel may have been killed on the target itself. There are definitely reports, airstrikes obviously, and you know, aircraft firing back, suppressing targets. But I, I don't know how many enemy KIA may have been on that target, unfortunately.

C (34:03)

And last. Do we know anything about US Injuries? Were there any, any injuries at all?

B (34:09)

But it sounds like there were. There may have been some mild injuries, but nothing serious from what I understand.

A (34:16)

How, how does that happen though, Jack? I mean, if you're, you're talking about the presidential guard of a country that is in a revolutionary stance, recognizes that the most powerful nation in the world is threatening regime change. I think some of us who have covered military operations, maybe even you also were, I was a bit surprised that there were no deaths among US Forces and it seems like the entirety of the security force of Maduro was wiped out. Maybe I'm asking you this more from your experience in the special operations forces than as a journalist, but going into an operation like that, how, how is that possible given that you're, you're taking on a presidential guard, presumably with some of the most elite forces that country has available to it? Venezuela is not a tiny country. This wasn't like the bin Laden raid where there's some guys with Kalashnikovs running around, you know, a house in Abbottabad. I mean, this is a nation state with a sophisticated military.

B (35:17)

Yeah, good question. And I, I think that the fact of the matter is you can't discount that there's an element of luck involved here. And even a well planned operation. You, as we found out in the past, you have a couple helicopters shot out of the sky and a very simple operation turns into a very complex and deadly one very quickly. I, I think probably the reason why this one went down the way it did was because of the extensive preparation that was done. One of my sources told me that we took control of the comm system, the commun system that the Venezuelan military uses. As this operation unfolded, the lights flickered out in this area, which was probably some sort of cyber operation that was conducted to do that. Just like the lights went out in Abbottabad, Pakistan, the night of the Bin Laden raid. So there were a number of things that they were, they were, you know, kind of making sure everything was aligned before they launched this operation. And I, they've even officially said, I think that they were standing by over Christmas and New Year's to do this operation. And it kept getting delayed and getting delayed because there were certain triggers that had to be met and clearly they waited until the right time. But, yeah, I would not discount that there's an element of luck involved in.

A (36:27)

This also, Jack, from a, from a historical perspective. You know, I mean, you, you, you talk about this also on your stream and you've written about it, but it does seem like there are echoes of the dirty wars in Central Latin America coming back sort of the, the heyday of some of the operations of the CIA and Special Forces. And Trump, for as much as he talked about being the peace president or moving away from interventions or explicitly from regime change operations, it does seem like they're leaning much harder now into the idea of greater utilization of Special Operations forces, including in really open, you know, regime change pushes like we're seeing now. And potentially they may try it in Cuba or Colombia or elsewhere.

B (37:12)

Yeah, I mean, it's a phenomena that we've seen basically our entire adult lives, I think, since 9 11, that special operations is kind of like the button that the President can push to chalk up, you know, ostensibly an easy win, you know, and put a feather in his cap. And I think we saw that during the press conference the other day. But yeah, I mean, the, the, the trepidations about this go all the way back to the filibuster campaigns in the 1800s. I mean, these, these fears exist and are real. And you're right, from what I understand, that Marco Rubio is a driving force behind much of this, and he does have his sights set on Havana.

A (37:52)

Next.

C (37:54)

Have, have you picked up anything new about some of the secondary targets that, that you were talking about?

B (38:00)

No, I'm afraid I haven't. I don't know what the, what the SEAL Team 6 targets were that they hit. You could presumably think that maybe it was coastal targets, but that's an assumption. You know, they can strike inland.

C (38:13)

Carlos, have you heard at all about what some of. Why, why some of these other targets? Like just, just judging from what targets were actually hit, what rationale there may.

A (38:24)

Have been for any of those?

D (38:26)

Well, there, I mean, the places that, I mean, at least that I know were hit, they're military. There's, you know, the military base in La Carlota, in Caracas, in the air base. That would make sense. There was a, there's a, there was an area in the coast of La Guayra which also had certain. Some sort of defense post installations. So I'm assuming, you know, these were places that they would strategically see as necessary to carry out the.

A (39:00)

Yeah, Carlos, I also, I've been reading reports and again, there's not that many, you know, independent reporters inside of Venezuela right now working for major news organizations. And that's been the case for, for a while now. But there are some, but there are reports that there have been security forces in a pretty aggressive campaign to try to track down anyone who potentially was collaborating. I mean, Jack in his reporting indicated that they did have sources quite close to the presidency that were able to work with U.S. intelligence to special operations forces to prepare for this attack. What is the sense right now that you're here? I know you're no longer in the government, but what is, what is your sense now? How much of a panic is there that there was again for there to be no US Military deaths on a raid like this? And all of the things that Jack is reporting, it does indicate there had to have been people very close to President Maduro or with access to sensitive information that aided and abetted this operation.

D (40:05)

Well, I mean, I think it's, I mean right now it's very hard to, you know, I don't want to speculate again, you know, because I know, you know, there's always this tendency to think or, you know, to believe that this is, this could be an explanation of how things, you know, went down. And you know, I heard President Maduro's son at one moment when one of his statements, you know, said something about, you know, the word treason and you know, things like that that could happen. So you can't rule out that something to that effect happened. But I think, you know, like, like Jack just described, I mean, the overwhelming capacity of the United States military power and preparation for this, it's also something that has to be taken into account. I mean, we are in Tri Continental Institute. We've, you know, we, we talked about how, you know, the over US spends over a trillion dollars in, in just military budget. And Venezuela is a country that is, that has been a peaceful country. So, you know, the balance of Venezuelan forces, no matter how, you know, prepared you, you know, you try to get in front of this huge display, you know, of the, of the largest military in the, in the world is, is, you know, disbalanced. So I think, you know, that we have to take that into consideration too.

C (41:35)

Jack, Jack, do you have any sense of how serious we should take the, the saber rattling at Colombia? You know, you've had President Petro saying, come and get me, coward. Which almost feels like a version of Maduro's dancing, which we apparently had something to do with if we believe the reporting, tipping Trump from, you know, off to press the button. JSOC knows Colombia a lot better. Right. Than you know, Venezuela. So how would that, I mean there's an election coming up. It's almost insane to even like talk out loud about this idea. It's like back a candidate in the election if you don't, don't like Petro Trump. But like how so how seriously are people taking that and would that. And is there any scenario at which JSOC says, wait a minute, this, we, you can't do this. Like you can't. We're not, we're not your plaything around the world. Or, or are they.

B (42:33)

Yeah, good question. So I mean the United States government has a relationship with Colombia going back. We have a military relationship with them going back to the Korean War. A lot of, a lot of work was put into playing Colombia and to stabilize the country. And you know, all of that went on for decades and decades. So I think there's a less likely chance that the United States would do like an armed incursion into Colombia. That would be throwing away a lot of hard work that's been done. But then again, there's also a seeming irrationality in the United States government at the moment that emotions get the best of, of our government at times. So yeah, it's saber rattling, but you can't take it. You know, you can't think it's a joke either because of the seriousness of, you know, these decisions that they get made.

A (43:25)

Jack, you, this is a technical question. It's just a detail from, from your reporting. You know, I know in the, prior to 911 when the US would do a rendition operation, you know, the extraordinary rendition was a CIA and then, you know, to an extent special operations program that almost exclusively existed post 911 where there were snatching of people in one country, shipping them to a third country. Many people were tortured and some were then brought to Guantanamo. And you know, there's still people being held at Guantanamo from the so called war on terror. But prior to that in the 90s and this existed under Clinton and it existed under Republicans and the FBI would be the sort of lead agency that would deal with operations where they were going to take someone from a third, you know, from another country and bring them back to the United States. And often there was an indictment associated with it. And in this case it seems like part of that there's a hybrid going on of sorts of different Concepts where you, you understood that there were FBI personnel along with the raid, although the, the jackets were all Drug Enforcement Administration dea. Yeah. So, so I want, I want to ask you about that, but also explaining some of why that would be the case rather than it just be the military going in, snatching them and bringing them back to the United States.

B (44:42)

Right. So the, the legal authorities, the auspices under which this operation was conducted are, you know, kind of opaque. We know that the preparation for the mission was done under the AUMF. The 2001 authorization for the. The Use of Military Force. Whether or not that's an appropriate use of the AUMF is, that's bonkers.

A (45:03)

It's, it's bonkers if you read the aumf.

B (45:09)

But, and then the operation itself, I, I, it wasn't like a traditional JSOC capture kill mission like it was with bin Laden. It was more like JSOC was escorting FBI agents to the target to make an arrest. So there were two FBI agents on the assault force. They were members of the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team, or HRT, that was stood up really, for domestic hostage crises because we need a police force operating in the United States to do that. We don't like the military doing things internally within America. So HRT has a long relationship with Delta Force. I mean, they were. HRT was out on operations with us in Iraq 20 years ago. Yeah, I'm getting old. And that, that is what happened on this operation. They went in and once Delta had locked down the compound and, and secured it, the FBI made the arrests of Maduro and his wife. They were then transported back to the USS Iima, and from there the FBI transferred them over to the dea. That's where that happened. And I'm, I'm not sure exactly what the politics are of why that worked out, but I'm sure it has to do with what he was indicted under and that that indictment is a whole other legal quagmire that we can get into. If you want.

A (46:34)

Carlos, I want, I wanted to, as, as Jack's talking here, there's a lot of, there's a lot of history that I think emerges in the air here. And you know, given also your research, not just your former position within the Venezuelan government, but your broader research, the question that I asked Jack about this kind of some of these actions and the posture the Trump administration is taking, hearkening back to the eras of the coups and funding of death squads, et cetera, in Central and Latin America, sort of your set this operation and The Trump administration in that historical context from your perspective?

D (47:12)

Well, I mean, I think the Trump administration, I mean, President Trump himself, I mean, they've been talking about, you know, reviving the Trump, I'm sorry, the Monroe Doctrine. And they speak about a Trump corollary which basically saying, you know, we, we will do whatever we have to do to keep your, you know, the resources and the assets of Latin America at the disposal of the United States and not to any of any other foreign power. So I think this brings back this Cold War type of mentality, of course, and there's some objective realities to this. I mean, we see that the United States no longer has the hegemony that it used to have after the end of the Cold War. You have China and maybe Russia to an extent now competing with the US or even, even, you know, even are better than the United States in some, in, even in some aspects. I mean, the U. S lost control, hegemonic control of technological development, you know, artificial intelligence, things of the sword. Then there's, there's disputes about the, the power of the dollar and the financial structure around the world. There's the possibilities of maybe brics countries designing a new architecture, even though we're still a long way from that. But just the thought that some of these countries are now exchanging using their own currencies and not the US Dollar. I mean, you have all these points of dominance that the United States used to have. They no longer ask. So I think that at the beginning, or at least maybe in the last administration, the idea of disputing with Russia in Europe or with China in Asia was more visible. But I think the current Trump administration says, look, before we do this, we need to secure our region. This is something that you see in the national security strategy, you know, again, mentioning by, you know, by name, the Mono doctrine. You see it, you see it in Project 2025 talking about Rehemisphere as a, as a need for the US to secure its economic primacy. And, you know, you have to guarantee that the US has, you know, dominance over supply chains. And when you look at what's happened just throughout this whole year, it's not just Venezuela. I mean, Venezuela is very obvious because it's a country that has a political stance that signifies something. And of course, because of the largest oil reserves. But the US Interfered in elections in Honduras where it has an important military base, interfere in elections in Argentina where it could secure access to lithium. It's talking about retaking over the Panama Canal. It's talking about taking Over Greenland, it's talking about adding Canada. As for the 51st state, when you realize this whole push throughout the continent of the US Is trying to sort of secure its area of influence, you realize that we're going back to almost a neocolonial setting where United States sees that for it to maintain hegemony, for it to even compete with China or Russia or whoever, any other superpower that may eventually emerge, it needs to really hold control over the continent. And it will do things even that we didn't think about before that weren't impossible. I mean, you're expelling the president of Colombia from New York during the UN General assembly as a form of pressure, putting sanctions on Brazil, on Brazilian judges, because they would condemn Bolsonaro, who was an ally to Trump. These are moves that you can definitely see are against, you know, or are in the form of retaking control of the whole region. And I think there are countries that are especially targeted at this moment. And I'm not thinking only about Venezuela. I'm thinking of places like Cuba, for example, where it was put again on the list of countries supporters of terrorists. And the blockade has intensified.

C (51:39)

Carlos, one question I'm curious about. So John Arnold, who is a. He's now retired in here in the United States, but he's kind of a legendary energy trader. Started out as an oil trader. I think he retired in like 2013 or something. He has been saying publicly that. That Chavez wildly exaggerated the extent of the oil, the strategic oil reserves under Venezuela's potential control for obvious kind of geopolitical reasons why somebody might do that. And that PDBSA was, you know, went along with it, and that the trait. And that the kind of oil industry and the analysts around it use that, use the data that the country produces to come up with its own numbers of what the oil reserves are. Is it possible that. That Trump went in for an amount of oil that doesn't actually exist as far as we know?

D (52:36)

I mean, as far as I know, this has been verified by international organizations. And it wouldn't just be. I don't think you can really just claim you have whatever you want and nobody, nobody have a, you know, a check. It's actually important, and not for a political reason, but for economic reason, to actually have that validated and certified so that those are things that are. That are certified. Now, the other thing is for understanding the oil business, the importance of Venezuela's reserves. First of all, the US has been using a lot of its own reserves, so this is depleting the actual stock. So that's one thing, but also that even though the US has actually increased its own production, there's a thing about the type of crude that is produced and Venezuela produces heavy crude. And heavy crude is not, is not the same that is produced in the US and it's produced maybe in other places like Russia or Canada, but it's a very specific type. And most of the refineries in Texas, Louisiana were designed specifically to treat this type of oil. So in a way, I mean you need this oil to sort of, you know, start to restart this, these refineries or help these refineries move forward. I mean the real business is all in oil is not necessarily the crude, but actually the refined products that come out and all you could do afterward. So you need the supply for these refineries and to, you know, just elevate the production and you know, profit in these areas. So it's not far fetched to understand that, you know, Venezuela is a key element of, you know, the US or the Trump administration in this case would want to tap and in order to improve the production in its own refineries.

A (54:34)

Jack, you know, when in the aftermath of the, of the Osama bin Laden raid, you had, you had a number of people from the Navy Seals and the intelligence community that were in on it that put out their own narratives. You know, there are multiple books and you know, speeches and you know, cash ins that took place and you know, you have competing versions of who shot who and when they did it and who the heroes were of that raid. But you also had, you know, John Brennan and other senior Obama administration officials leaking information in the immediate aftermath that turned out to be entirely false, you know, about that operation. And now if we look back on it, you have so much, so many competing narratives that it's, it's almost as though like to find the actual tick tock truth of what took place there for just, just going from open source intelligence is basically impossible. You had, you had incredible intentional and unintentional disinformation. Some of the disinformation was because people were looking for their own private glory. Some of it was because they were looking to glorify their own administration. In the case of John Brennan, some of it was civilian officials who were in awe of what they were watching on the helmet cams and other real time video feeds and they just couldn't wait to tell the Washington Post or whoever. In this particular case, you also had narratives that were being set by senior administration officials and others and this administration has been pretty atrocious on its own operational security. Interestingly, you had Pete Hegseth sending signal messages to Jonah Goldberg, for instance. But interestingly, both the Washington Post and the New York Times claim that they learned about this operation before it actually took place and that they withheld that reporting. And even though that was the case, the New York Times, for instance, still ran a headline that pretended to not know that it was the US that did this. It framed it as Venezuela. Making the accusation. Give us some insights from your career. And also, you're just watching this go on talking to people in the community of how these narratives get shaped in the aftermath, especially when, like, civilian officials want to, as you said earlier, put a feather in their cap. Like, what should we be looking out for as we parse through the details that have been promoted in public? Because I think there are real questions about who got killed and how they got killed during this raid.

B (57:05)

Yeah, I mean, the full accounting for it has yet to be done for sure. I mean, the, the military itself is probably still doing the after action review on it. And you know, what stories we get in the subsequent months and years to come is going to be interesting. Yeah, I mean, the, the, you know, semi official leaks that come out of the government and they end up with the press corps in Washington, D.C. and those leaks are done for all sorts of things. Sometimes it's about maintaining a budget or something that's going in front of Congress or some bureaucracy wants to put this on the front page of a newspaper that the President is going to see. As far as, like, what to watch out for. I mean, watch out for the Hollywood narrative. You know, after the Bing Laden raid, the CIA was ordered to collaborate with Hollywood to make that film Zero Dark Thirty, which kind of locked in everyone's story about what happened on that operation to this day. I mean, it's an interesting phenomena with Americans that, you know, what happens in the movies is more real than reality. You can show them reality, tell them about reality, but they're like, well, I saw it in this movie, how it really happened, so I would look for that. But on the other hand, I, I mean, you have to look at this administration and they're not very sneaky or secretive in so many ways. I mean, not to, like, hand it to them, but, you know, during the invasion of Iraq, we had this whole debate, is it about the oil? And the administration said, no, it's about freedom and democracy. This administration's like, yeah, it's the oil. Yeah, we're there for that.

C (58:40)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. They even, like the reporter even asked, you know, what about some of the political prisoners or what about elections, you're going to let in some of the exiled opposition. He's like, eh, it's not, we're going to do the oil first, then we'll think about that later. Yeah.

A (59:01)

Carlos, one last question. As you indicated earlier, I think it was the last interview that President Maduro gave. He was driving in a, in a car and he was indicating that a kind of recognition they were going to have to make a deal with the United States about, about oil and to, to, to make some agreements. And I've read some, you know, some Venezuelans and others talking about the strategic moment that Maduro was in and now that that Delsey Rodriguez is in. And you know, there have been some Marxists from Venezuela in recent days writing about how Venezuela making an agreement with Trump isn't necessarily selling out the Bolivarian Revolution. And there's been historical analogies made, but essentially the gun is at the head of Venezuela right now. And it seems like the challenge from the government, I mean, you aren't anymore, but up until January of 25, you were, you were a deputy foreign minister and you were working specifically on North America relations and you were also there during the first administration of Trump. So you, you know, you know, of which you speak when you talk about Venezuela's dealings with the United States. But I'm asking you about the chess game that Venezuela has to play now on this issue because Trump's demands are basically US Oil companies come back in. US Oil companies rebuild the infrastructure and reap the profits. And it seems like they're open to working with people from the Boulevardian revolution in doing so. But it's, it's complicated because the politics seem to swim against that of the entire spirit of that revolution.

D (60:46)

Well, I mean, I think, you know, it's hard to say what's going to happen next, you know, few months and then we have to see, of course, first if the United States is going to be open to actually sitting down and trying to do some sort of dialogue. I mean, the things that have been put out, at least so far, has been, you know, if we're going to talk, if we're going to, you know, negotiate, there has to be on equal footing and footing of respect and, you know, we're open to cooperation, these kind of things that again, which has always been the line of the Venezuelan government. So I think, and I think I don't see why it would not continue to be the line of the government, of course, after, you know, the military incursion, after the attack and, you know, all that's there and the display of power. It's a difficult, it's going to be a challenging atmosphere for any type of negotiation. But I think there's a conviction, first of all, I think there's a conviction on the part of the leadership in Venezuela that this is what is going to sustain Venezuela. The resources are necessary to sustain Venezuela, to sustain peace, to sustain stability, and stability that remind you again that the US has really no other option of maintaining because they themselves say that the opposition is not capable of doing this, of maintaining stability. So that's also a factor to take into consideration. And I think, you know, overall, we'll see what, you know, what develops from here on. But I think, you know, the convictions that have been, you know, worked on for all these years in Venezuela, I think they remain in place. I mean, this is the same government. There has been a kidnapped president, but the same government is still in place. So we'll see how it plays out.

A (62:52)

All right. Well, Carlos Ron, I know you're very busy and you all are dealing now with a very uncertain situation, so I want to thank you very much for taking so much time to talk with us today.

D (63:06)

Thank you very much.

A (63:07)

Carlos Ron is a former Venezuelan Deputy Foreign minister and is currently at the Tri Continental Institute for Social Research. Jack Murphy, former U.S. army Ranger and investigative journalist. I recommend people check out the high side. You don't have to agree with everything, you know, that Jack says or that I say, but, you know, one of the things I really appreciate from knowing Jack for many years is he calls it as he sees it, and if he's wrong, he's going to say, I was wrong about that. And I think that that's one of the best qualities in journalists. It's a niche publication, but it is, it's really, really interesting. And if you look back into the, the work that both Jack and Sean Naylor have done, I've, I've learned a tremendous amount about it and I, I appreciate Jack being willing to engage with us. And thanks so much, Jack, for the work you and Sean are doing.

B (63:52)

Yeah, thank you, Jeremy Ryan, Appreciate it.

A (63:54)

Yeah.

C (63:55)

And Jack, I don't know if you remember, you, you helped me with a story on the Bolivian coup maybe six, seven years ago or something. That's very, very helpful. Appreciated that.

B (64:05)

Yeah.

C (64:05)

So more to come and we'll, we'll.

A (64:09)

We'Ll link to the high side and to, to Jack's article. It's it's behind a paywall. But maybe we can appeal to you and Sean to, to liberate it from the paywall so people can read it. Because we're going to send it around to a lot of people. I mean, it gives them an incentive to paid subscribe to you, but maybe it's a good way for them to see the quality of work you guys do.

B (64:26)

Well, thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

A (64:29)

All right, take care, Jack. Well, Ryan, that, that does it for this first live stream that we did of 2026. And again, as Ryan mentioned, we've just recently launched our Latin America desk and you're going to be seeing a lot more reporting not just on Venezuela, but on other countries throughout Central and Latin America. And of course, we're going to continue our ironclad commitment to reporting on Palestine, not just on the war against Gaza and this fraudulent so called ceasefire agreement, but also the intensifying war against the Palestinians in the occupied west bank and in Jerusalem. And just today there was a massive, violent Israeli raid on Berzeit University in the occupied west bank where they Israelis started attacking university students, Palestinian university students, and they shut down a screening of the Voice of Hindra Job, a film that has been shortlisted for Academy Award. And you know, we're going to talk more about this and report more about this situation. But just one note, these are the kinds of incidents, this attacking of Berzeit University, that can be one of the sparks that could really lead to a broader uprising. In the recent conversations I had with officials from Hamas and other Palestinian resistance factions, they were saying that the conditions are swiftly emerging for what potentially could be a third Palestinian intifada. And they caution that, you know, in the cases of both the first and second intifada, that it wasn't clear until it was happening what those sparks were. So we are maintaining our commitment at Dropsite to continue working with Palestinian reporters and also to continuing to report in depth there. And we're going to be expanding our coverage in Latin America. And if you want to support our work, you can go to dropsitenews.com there's ways to donate, ways to contribute. The simplest way is to become a paid subscriber. We don't put anything behind the paywall, including these live streams. So if you support this work and you're not yet a paid subscriber, jump on the dropsitenews.com and become one. Tell your friends, your foes, your family and others about Dropsite News. On behalf of everyone on our crew, I want to thank you so much for joining us. We'll see you next Tuesday at 9:30am I'm Jeremy Scahill with Ryan Grim. Thanks so much.