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Every week we bring you as much insight as we can about events unfolding in America's centers of power and their global impact. It takes a lot of work, late nights across time zones, planning, sourcing, checking, taping, editing. Join our supporters who make that work possible with npr. You'll get all episodes sponsor free and unlock access to our archives. Sign up@plus.NPR.org.
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Once you start striking a country, that's called war. He's pushing the envelope for presidential power.
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President Trump says he's moving his campaign against Venezuelan cartels from sea to land. What does that mean? And why bring the tools of war to bear on drug traffickers? Plus, the Pentagon press corps walks out en masse. This is Sources and Methods from npr. I'm Mary Louise Kelly. Every Thursday, I get together with a couple of my colleagues from NPR National Security Team and we talk through the biggest stories of the week. Today, that is Ryan Lucas, who covers the Justice Department and is a Sources and Methods rookie. Welcome.
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Thank you for having me.
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Your first swing at bat. And Tom Bowman returning. You still cover the Pentagon, just not from the Pentagon, Correct?
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I've been booted out along with my many colleagues.
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And we are going to get to that. And I want to hear about the moment that y' all walked out. But I want to start by talking about Trump's very overt acknowledgement of covert operations. Wednesday afternoon, Trump was asked about a New York Times report, curious, why did you authorize the CIA to go into Venezuela? And he answered, I authorized for two reasons. Really the two reasons he named immigration. He alleged without evidence that Venezuela has, quote, emptied its prisons into the United States. He also cited drug trafficking. And we know that these last few months, the Trump administration has carried out a series of strikes on boats in the Caribbean, killing drug smugglers. That's according to the administration. Now, Trump says that campaign is expanding.
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We've almost totally stopped it by sea.
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Now we'll stop it by land. Ryan, you have been digging into, A, what's happening, B, what the goal is, C, if these strikes are legal, start with that last one. We are not at war with Venezuela. What is the legal underpinning for these strikes?
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Well, look, the administration has not been totally forthcoming in its rationale for this. It has come up with an OLC memo, basically a Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel memo that was put together with the White House counsel's office, the Pentagon, the CIA general counsel, as well as JAGs. But they have not made any of.
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This Judge Advocate Generals. These are military lawyers.
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Yeah, but they have not made this public. The best understanding that we have comes from a notification that they had to provide Congress under law. And what they, the White House said in this was that essentially the President is operating under his Article 2 powers as commander in Chief and in self defense. And this is important here, that the President has determined that cartels are non state armed groups. They've been designated as foreign terrorist organizations, determined that their actions are an armed attack on the US and that the US is in a non international armed conflict with them and that the Pentagon is going to conduct operations pursuant to the laws of armed conflict. So that's kind of the legal rationale that has been provided publicly.
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Okay, hold on, you just said a lot, but basically you're saying this boils down to Article two. He's the Commander in chief. If this is an emergency, he can do what he wants. Is that the basic argument?
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That's the basic argument. It boils down to the President has decided on his own that we are at war in an armed conflict with these cartels.
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When you talk to lawyers, do they believe this is sound?
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I have talked to a number of lawyers, former jags, law professors, they all have serious concerns about the legal rationale that's provided here. They say that it's full of holes, that it's essentially the President determining on his own by diktat that we are in an armed conflict and that that gives him the right to conduct these armed strikes, in essence to kill people on boats in the Caribbean. People who are civilian, allegedly narco traffickers.
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And by the way, military officers have a problem with this as well because first of all, you're not at war with Venezuela. And secondly, there's no threat from the supposed drug boats. They're not shooting at you. So it could be an illegal order. Some military officers say you can't just shoot at people who do not pose a direct threat to you. So there could be problems going on.
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For now though, people are following orders. This is they are just another strike just this week.
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Right.
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I do want to note it's not just legal experts, it's not just the military that is raising questions that some of the President's fellow Republicans on Capitol Hill. Ryan, you just said this has been brief to Congress. I want to play a little bit of this. Senator Rand Paul, a Republican. Here he is on Bloomberg tv. We can't have a policy where we just blow up ships where we don't.
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Even know the people's names.
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It can't be the policy for drug interdiction either.
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In the country or outside the country. So I will support a war resolution.
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To say the government shouldn't be doing this. Senator Paul saying we shouldn't be doing this. But are there really any checks on the President's ability to do this?
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No. Congress is being given, I was told by one congressional aide, a trickle of information about the attacks on these drug boats. How do you know, know that these people are drug traffickers.
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But on the, on the legal question and whether there's anything to stop the President from doing this, there is the War Powers act. And he has 60 days in which he can act if he's decided that there's an imminent threat of armed attack against the United States, which as we said from the notification, he has, he has a 60 day window when he can act without authorization from Congress. He can extend that for another 30 days. But Congress essentially has to say that you can't continue to do this.
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Where are we in that window?
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Where are we? We're about, it's been at least a month in. But you know, this is, this is something where Congress has not shown a desire to push back on the President on this. We heard Rand Paul talking there and he's been one of the rare voices from Republican senators just really come out and push back against this. Lindsey Graham, who is a former Judge Advocate General himself, has been supportive. What I will say is that the legal framework here is similar to the one that the US Operated under during the war on terror and the kind of echoes of that here.
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Although after 911 Congress passed, there was the AUMF, the authorization for the Use of Military Force. We haven't had that here.
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No. And that's a critical point to make, that Congress explicitly condoned U.S. use of force, military force against al Qaeda after 9 11. And we have not seen Congress pass an authorization for the use of military force in the case of these strikes against supposed drug traffickers in the Caribbean.
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We also had after 9 11, obviously with 9 11, Al Qaeda directly attacking the American homeland. Nothing of the like happening here.
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Nothing of the like happening here. What the administration is saying is that pouring drugs into the country is killing Americans and that that amounts to an armed attack on the U.S. essentially, what I will say is that there's been no evidence that these drugs are being directly sent to the United States. There's also, as I have been told, under the laws of armed conflict, drug trafficking has never been considered direct participation in hostilities, which means these people on the boats have to be considered civilians. And if you are killing civilians, that is Murder is what legal experts say.
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I want to talk about the president's newest remarks, that this is moving from sea to land. Tom Bowman, what does that mean?
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Well, it sounds like he's going to do mount airstrikes on Venezuela itself.
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On what in Venezuela? Do we know?
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No, we have no idea. And once you start striking a country that's called war with no congressional authorization, with very little information, as I said to the Hill about exactly what is going on here, he's pushing the envelope for presidential power, clearly. But is this a threat to try to undermine Maduro? I mean, what is this? Do you expect him to just resign?
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Nicolas Maduro, who is the sitting president of Venezuela, much to President Trump's chagrin.
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Right. So it just, we have very little information about the way ahead here.
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To the point we were kicking around a moment ago, Covert actions are covert, typically historically, they're supposed to be secret. We're not supposed to know about them. We all know about this. It makes you wonder a, why the administration wants this information to be public. But also do we know what covert action might entail, what the CIA might be up to?
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It could mean anything. It could mean, let's say, creating protests against a particular government, paying people to go out into the streets. Here's the other thing Maduro could say, anything that happens there, any protest, any bombing, he could blame it on the CIA. Now it could be a legitimate protest against his government. Now he has the benefit of saying, oh, it's all the CIA. It's not, you know, my people rising up against me and that that could be dangerous.
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We're going to take a short break. When we get back, what is the goal of the expanded campaign against Venezuela and will it work? That's Ed on Sources and methods from npr.
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The federal government has shut down. What are lawmakers arguing about and what does it mean for you? The NPR Politics podcast is here to make sense of it all, giving updates and news every day to keep you informed. The NPR Politics Podcast listen every day.
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Rhinoplasty, the humble nose job. It's one of the most common facial plastic surgeries performed today, but it's been around for over 2,000 years. If you're wondering why on earth would doctors thousands of years ago need to reconstruct noses, that's a great question. And on NPR shortwave podcast, we dive into to that answer, listen in the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. When someone you love is diagnosed with cancer or another serious illness, all you want to do is help. But where do you start on the Life Kit podcast. We have tips for you. Your agenda should be I'm going to be with you and be totally present.
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To whatever comes up.
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Listen in the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts for different ways to offer support.
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On NPR's Wild Card podcast, Jeff Hiller says fans of his character in somebody somewhere have a slogan, WWJD. What would Joel do? You know, in the 80s they had what would Jesus do?
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You've been deified.
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Oh, no.
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This is what brought the Beatles down. Watch or listen to that wildcard conversation.
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On the NPR app, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. So we've worked through some of the legal issues, some of the many legal questions. Outstanding. Ryan. Luke, because you have also been looking into the question of effectiveness. If the goal, as the administration states, is to stop drugs from getting into the US Will these strikes work? Whether we're talking sea, land, wherever?
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Well, I was talking to a former senior DEA official last night who said quite bluntly, no, he doesn't think that this will have any effect. In part because one, cartels adapt pretty quickly. They will find other routes to get drugs into the United States. And then at a more fundamental level, what the administration says is that they are taking action to stop drugs coming in from the Caribbean, cocaine and fentanyl. This is problematic for a couple of reasons. One, fentanyl, I am told, does not come up through the Caribbean via maritime routes. Fentanyl generally comes over the the US Mexico border. And two, the vast majority, 80, 75 to 80% of the drugs that come into the US via the maritime route come via the Pacific, not the Caribbean. So if you really wanted to address the bigger outstanding issue of drugs coming into the US Via the route, we're.
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In the wrong ocean.
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Exactly. And the other thing is that the vast majority of the drugs that come via the Caribbean route come from Colombia. Roughly 80% come from Colombia, not from Venezuela. They're coming from Colombian cartels such as the Clando Golfo eln. But I've also been told by multiple sources that that more and more the the cocaine from the Caribbean is being sent to Europe, boats up to the Dominican Republic and then will be sent to Europe. So the administration saying that they know for certain that the boats that they're hitting are drugs that are coming to the United States is questionable because it's hard to say whether you know that that load, that one single boat that you're hitting is indeed drugs that are going to come to the US which would be the direct threat to the United States or whether those drugs are instead going to Europe.
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Which all prompts a reasonable question of are there other goals in play here, for example, regime change. President Trump in his first term wanted to see Nicolas Maduro ousted from office in Venezuela, but he's still there.
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Well, first of all, if you say when you go after drugs and you start blowing up drug boats again, it seems illegal for what Ryan was just saying about there's civilians on board and there's not a direct threat to you. If you openly say, I'm sending the CIA into another country, clearly to undermine that leader, I guess the reason would be he wants to see Maduro go one way or another, or at least.
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Make him very, very uncomfortable.
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Exactly.
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This segues right into our next topic because it strikes me that this Venezuela campaign is exactly the kind of thing that say, you, Tom Bowman, as our Pentagon correspondent, might want to be poking around the Pentagon, able to ask questions about yesterday. You and virtually the entire rest of the Pentagon press corps packed up and walked out. Take us to that moment. What happened?
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Yeah, it was a really bizarre moment. I've been covering the Pentagon 28 years, and we all showed up there. It was almost like leaving college. Everyone's hugging each other. There were some people close to tears. Even the press people, the uniformed officers, the military officers at the press center were really upset. They said, it's not going to be the same without you guys around here. So we all turned in our badges and we all walked out as a large group for the last time. If the Metro group will meet me outside when you guys are ready. And being reporters, we went to Pentagon City and went to a bar and had a couple of drinks. But you're absolutely right. I mean, something like this, the attacks on these supposed drug boats in past years, we would have a background briefing at the Pentagon, and a lot of times they would say, listen, we can't get into classified information, but listen, this is why we're doing it. This is the weapon we use. You know, was it an attack helicopter? Was it a drone? Basic questions like that. But again, we're not getting that. Secretary Hegseth, Pete Hegseth has been out to see the press twice now. Donald Rumsfeld used to go out twice a week. So not only are they throwing us out, they're not even providing basic information.
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Just very briefly, remind us the issue here. This was a pledge that all journalists credentialed to cover the Pentagon were asked to sign. We've covered this in episodes, but just remind people, because it has been through a few iterations.
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Right. It was 17 pages sent to all reporters. And basically you have to sign this document which says you will not solicit information from anybody who works in the Pentagon. You have to wait for the Pentagon to release information to you. In soliciting information, of course, means if there's a drug boat attack, I can't go to my contacts in the Pentagon and say, how do you know it was fentanyl? How do you know it was cocaine? Where did they come from?
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How did you know it wasn't fishermen?
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Absolutely.
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I mean, we don't know.
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Yeah, but we would be barred from doing that. And if you did that, they could pull your badge. So all of us just said, listen, we're reporters, we're not stenographers. So take my pass and we'll see you later.
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I have been struck by the unanimity of opposition across journalists not just covering the Pentagon. The White House Correspondents association put out a statement which reads, and I quote, the White House Correspondents association and the State Department Correspondents association stand in strong solidarity with the Pentagon Press association as it defends freedom of the press. It was remarkable. I'm right in thinking that even Fox News, where Pete Hegseth used to work and which has been broadly supportive of President Trump, even they are condemning these.
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That's right. And also the conservative Washington Times said, we're not going to sign that as well. So yeah, you're right. Everyone except one American news network, this far right organization, that was the only group that decided to sign this document.
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After a quick break, how do you report on the Pentagon when you can't get into the Pentagon? That's ahead on Sources and methods from npr. A lot of short daily news podcasts focus on just one story, but right now you probably need more on up first from NPR, we bring you three of the world's top headlines every day in under 15 minutes because no one story can capture all that's happening in this big crazy world of ours on any given morning. Listen now to the upverse podcast from npr. Hi, it's Terry Gross, host of Fresh Air. Hey, take a break from the 24 hour news cycle with us and listen to long form interviews with your favorite authors, actors, filmmakers, comedians and musicians. The people making the art that nourishes us and speaks to our times. So listen to the FRESH AIR podcast from NPR and whyy crime looks stuck.
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Different than it used to.
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A loophole in a crypto wallet could.
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Yield a billion dollars.
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A deep fake of your voice could be used to steal money from your bank.
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We have PhDs in our team, and they can't tell the difference themselves. AI has gotten that good. The indicator from Planet Money is digging.
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Into the evolving business of crime. And listen in the NPR app or.
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Wherever you get podcasts you care about what's happening in the world. Stay informed with NPR's State of the World podcast. In just a few minutes, we take you to stories around the globe. You might hear the latest developments in world conflicts or about what global events mean. For the price of your coffee, listen to the State of the World podcast from npr.
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Okay, it has not even been a full day yet, so I imagine, Tom, you are still figuring out exactly how this is going to work. But how is this going to work? What's your strategy for covering the Pentagon if you can't get into the Pentagon?
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Well, it's gonna hamper our efforts. You know, you can't even walk in the building, go up to a press officer and just say, what's going on.
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With your can call them, you can pick a call. You can call them, you can email.
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Them, but everyone else is gonna be calling them. So it's gonna be hard. They can't walk up to someone's desk, number one. You can call them at home. You can reach out to the Capitol Hill more, which is I'm doing. And I'm also reaching out more to the embassies as well, because they obviously know what's going on. Cause they'll talk to the government. But, yeah, it's gonna be more difficult. But, you know, a Marine officer I was talking with at the Pentagon said one reporter came up and was kind of complaining about it. And he basically said, listen, be a Marine. Find a way around this. You'll do it. We don't give up. Just don't give up and just keep plugging. I just love that.
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I love that, too. It reminds me, I have to say, of, you know, the many years I spent trying to cover the CIA and the National Security Agency, where they never gave us press passes. We were never able to just wander around and, you know, doorstop people. And you found a way. You figured it out.
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Exactly.
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You're gonna figure it out, Ryan. You spend your days roaming a different government bureaucracy. What has press access been like at the Justice Department?
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So we have access to the building. We have hard passes that allow us to get in and talk to people. You don't. There are areas that are certainly off limits. The National Security Division, you can't just go and open the door and go say, hey, how's it going?
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Have you found during this Trump administration any difference in sor force's willingness to take your calls, to return your calls, to speak on the record?
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Speaking on the record, People are definitely more wary about doing now. And for obvious reasons. There have been a lot of people fired. There have been a lot of people fired from the Justice Department. There have been a lot of people fired from the FBI. On the other hand, that also means that there are a lot of people who have concerns about what's going on in the Justice Department and the FBI.
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And also, I guess, more people outside because they've been fired. So now they can talk to you with relative freedom.
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That's right. That's right. But I will also say that the political leadership of the Justice Department and the FBI is much more insular than previously. They do not interact, I have been told, with career staff to the same give and take on ideas about what to do and legal theories and how to approach stuff, which means that unless people are really in the inner circle, they don't have a lot of insights into the upper leadership.
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I want to just get you to tell one story, Tom, as we close out this portion of our conversation, because the stakes here are not just whether we are inconvenienced, whether we can go where we want to go as journalists, when we want to go there. You wrote an opinion piece about the whole issue with the printtagon Press Corps and you talked about a moment in 2016, you were in a convoy in western Afghanistan embedded with Afghan forces. Tell what happened.
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Well, we were heading in western Afghanistan to a town called Marja, which was just sort of a center of Taliban activity, drug activity. And the Afghan forces were telling us, you know, it's clear now in Marjor, you can drive down the road. And so I said, well, let's go. So we were in a convoy with David Gilkey, our photographer at npr, and a fellow journalist, Xabi Tamana. They were in a separate car. I was with Monika Evstatieva, my producer, her first trip to Afghanistan, and we were in an ambush. We took small arms fire. Dave Nzabi took a RPG rocket propelled grenade and were both killed. And I'll never forget we brought their bodies back by helicopter and their bodies were right in front of us. You know, it was just surreal. And then as we get, we landed at an American base and at night, all these bright lights on the base and there was an honor cord on for them, soldiers lining up on other side. And I just I almost wept. I just couldn't believe how decent that was. For people who aren't military, American civilian and an Afghan civilian. That honor is generally reserved for military folks who've been killed in battle.
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It speaks to the respect that service members clearly had for your team and for the work that journalists do and why it matters that you have access to be able to cover what they are doing and share it with the American public. Our last segment, as usual, is osint Open Source Intelligence, osint. This is publicly available information that is nevertheless revealing and often quite entertaining. Ryan Lucas, you start.
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There was a roundtable last week at the White House on Antifa. And at that roundtable towards the end, it was 90 minutes long. Some of the right wing influencers who were there along with the President asked the administration to designate Antifa a foreign terrorist organization.
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Well, has that been done? Pretty close, right? Would you like to see it done? Yes, Mr. President. You think it would help?
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They have foreign lands all across Western Europe. I think it's the kind of thing.
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I'd like to do. If you'd like to like.
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Does everybody agree?
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If you agree, I agree. Let's get it done.
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Different from what the President in an executive order designating a domestic terrorist organization which has no legal meaning, but a foreign terrorist organization would have a ton of meaning. And the legal implications and societal implications of that are something that I think people don't fully grasp. It's something that I'm working on a story on, but it would open up the possibility to bring material support charges against anybody who is, you know, who.
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Writes a $25 check to a $10.
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Walmart gift card to somebody who is vaguely associated with this nebulous entity called Antifa. So that's something that I'm keeping an eye on.
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Okay. Mine has to do with travel. And the headline is that the US has fallen out of the top 10 on the list of the world's most powerful passports. This is an index called the Henley Passport Index. I read about it in the Washington Post. To give them credit where credit is, do the index ranks how many countries you can visit without needing a visa? Because it's obviously a lot easier if you can just get on the plane and you don't need a visa. A decade ago, the United States Passport was number one. We are now number 12. We are tied with Malaysia. The chair of Henley and Partners put out a statement, a press release along with this, and said it signals a fundamental shift in global mobility and soft power dynamics. So I guess the takeaway is if you have a US Passport as I do, good luck with all the visa applications you're going to get to do.
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Oh, I can hardly wait. I love filling out applications.
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Guess what number one is. What's the best passport?
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Brits close.
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They've fallen, too, though.
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Germany, Irish, Singapore.
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Whoa.
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That's what you want is a Singapore passport? Visa free travel.
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Wow.
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Tom, you want to take us home?
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We all remember the fiery speech that Defense Secretary Hegseth gave at Quantico to hundreds of admirals and generals. He talked about fat generals and admirals. He talked about we're no longer the Department of Woke, we're the Department of War and they're going to beef up the physical fitness standards. Well, now I got ahold of a memo being sent to all service members saying you have to listen or watch the video of this speech that he gave at Quantico. And we're going to make sure your commander signs off on this and puts it on your permanent record that you actually watched this video.
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Huh? Have you watched the full video, Tom?
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I watched it live. I don't think I'll watch the video. Once was enough.
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That's NPR Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman, still on the job, and NPR justice correspondent Ryan Lucas. Great to have you both and both in studio. Thanks.
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B
You're welcome.
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C
Thank you.
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And one more thank you before we go to our NPR supporters who have stepped up to support the journal journalism you hear on this podcast and across npr. Now, if you are not a supporter yet, it's not too late. You can learn more. You can sign up@plus.NPR.org that link is in our episode notes. And if you do that, you hear every episode of this show without sponsor messages. You can access our full back catalog and unlock a lot of great perks, discounts on NPR merchandise and sponsor free listening to other NPR shows, shows like up first and Fresh Air and the NPR Politics podcast. I'm Mary Louise Kelly. We are back next week with another episode of Sources and Methods from npr.
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When parents say to me, how do I get my kid where you are?
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You know, I say, well, the first.
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Funny answer is study woodworking.
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I'm Jesse Thorne on Bullseye. We get career advice from Nick Offerman of Parks and Rec and more. That's Bullseye. Find us in the NPR app on maximumfun.org or wherever you get your podcasts.
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These days, with all the information coming.
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At you, it can be hard to.
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Know what's accurate, what's not and what's worth your time. Here to help you navigate It all is 1A five days a week, the 1A podcast provides a forum for curious minds to explore different angles on the biggest headlines and give you a more balanced take on what's happening. Listen to the One A podcast from NPR and wamu.