What’s happening with the U.S. and Venezuela?

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Sources & Methods – “What’s happening with the U.S. and Venezuela?”

Date: January 8, 2026
Host: Mary Louise Kelly
Guests: Tom Bowman (NPR Pentagon correspondent), Kerry Kahn (NPR South America correspondent)

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Overview: Unpacking the U.S. Operation in Venezuela

This episode dives into the stunning and fast-unfolding developments surrounding the American military action in Venezuela, the capture of Nicolas Maduro, and the geopolitical, economic, and intelligence implications. From on-the-ground perspectives to high-level policy confusion and future repercussions, host Mary Louise Kelly guides correspondents Tom Bowman and Kerry Kahn through a detailed and nuanced exploration of the week's seismic events.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Shock of Maduro’s Capture: Real-time Reactions

Timestamps: 00:26–04:07

• The correspondents recount being woken up by editors about overnight explosions in Caracas and the U.S. operation resulting in the capture of Maduro, who is now in custody in Brooklyn.
• Kerry Kahn describes the surreal pace and emotional whiplash:

  “The situation that's happened in the last week is so stunning. The pace is so fast, the situation is just so incredible, it's hard to find words for it.” (00:26)

• On-the-ground Venezuelans reported fear and disbelief at the bombing, particularly those near the military base that was struck.

2. Reporting Barriers: Journalists Locked Out

Timestamps: 04:07–09:12

• Kerry Kahn details the difficulties accessing Venezuela since 2024 due to a journalist crackdown:

  “We cannot get in without a visa. There has been a widespread crackdown on journalists…there is an iron wall now that nobody is being allowed in. There was one evening that they rounded up about 14 journalists…” (06:57)

• Despite risks, she continues to seek entry, stressing the importance of firsthand reporting for capturing the reality and emotions of Venezuelans.

3. Power Vacuum and Internal Danger

Timestamps: 09:12–10:43

• Tom Bowman explains ambiguity in U.S. claims of “being in charge” since there’s no embassy or significant U.S. troop presence:

  “First of all, there's no embassy down there. There are no large numbers of troops…so we really don't know what he's talking about.” (09:36)

• The intelligence community is especially worried about remnants of Maduro’s regime—specifically defense and interior ministers—fearing possible government splintering and increased violence.

4. Oil Over Narco-terrorism: Shifting U.S. Narratives

Timestamps: 11:45–14:35

• The discussion pivots to oil as a central motive, eclipsing the prior emphasis on narco-terrorism.
• President Trump is hosting oil executives while lawmakers feel underinformed:

  Mary Louise Kelly: “I have heard…that the oil executives appear to have been better briefed than some members of Congress.” (12:55) Tom Bowman: “Oh, that's right. Senator Elizabeth Warren…put out a statement saying…the oil company executives know more than we know.” (13:20)

• The logistics of delivering promised oil profits “to the Venezuelan people” remain murky and unconvincing.

5. Venezuelan Perspective: Cooperation Under Duress

Timestamps: 14:25–15:47

• Kerry shares insights from new president Delsey Rodriguez’s public address, where she denounces U.S. actions yet simultaneously signals willingness for “cooperative agreements of energy resources.”
• Rodriguez is described as leftist but pragmatic, instrumental in reviving Venezuela’s oil industry.

6. Geopolitical Expansion: Greenland Back in Play

Timestamps: 15:47–16:54

• Amid Venezuela turmoil, the White House once again entertains buying Greenland from Denmark, with talk of “military options on the table.”
• The tone is more aggressive than previous iterations:

  Tom Bowman: “Now it's more muscular. It's more: Listen, we may send the military in. We're going to grab Greenland. It's going to be ours.” (16:13)

7. U.S. Military Policy: Women in Combat Review

Timestamps: 18:52–20:57

• Tom reveals a Pentagon document on a coming six-month review of women’s effectiveness in ground combat roles.
• The review is seen by many as a prelude to potentially rolling back women’s participation in combat units, raising concerns among advocates.

  Tom Bowman: “There's a real concern with advocates that they're going to try to find information to prove their case to either remove women from ground combat roles, reduce their numbers.” (20:35)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Kerry Kahn (on personal motivation despite danger):

  “My children ask me that all the time, too...It just feels easier because it's a visceral feeling that you can report. The situation that's happened in the last week is so stunning...from hundreds of thousands of miles away, it just makes it five times harder.” (08:00)

• Tom Bowman (on uncertainty of U.S. control):

  “He says America's in charge, but it doesn't make any sense.” (10:43)

• Tom Bowman (on the oil plan):

  “Walk me through how you get that money to your average Venezuelan...Congress has a lot of questions about that and they're not being answered.” (12:50)

• Mary Louise Kelly (on shifting justifications):

  “What happened, by the way, to drugs? For months we have been told that all the US Attention to Venezuela was about fighting drug trafficking...Now, that conversation, oh, that's so two weeks ago.” (13:32–13:47)

• Kerry Kahn (on Venezuela’s contradictory messaging):

  “She [Rodriguez] would say, this is terrible what they've done to us, and we are willing to engage in cooperative agreements of energy resources.” (14:35)

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Important Segment Timestamps

• Maduro’s arrest & breaking news reactions: 00:26–04:07
• Venezuelan civilian reaction, reporting barriers: 04:07–09:12
• Internal dangers of post-Maduro government: 09:12–10:43
• Oil interests & U.S. narrative shift: 11:45–14:35
• Insights from Venezuela’s new leader: 14:25–15:47
• Greenland conversation resumes: 15:47–16:54
• Women in U.S. combat review: 18:52–20:57
• OSINT Segment (open-source intelligence reporting): 20:57–26:11
  • Kerry on tracking Venezuela’s feared Interior Minister via TikTok (21:16)
  • Tom’s anecdote about the Aldrich Ames case, discussion of the “MICE” spy motivators (23:01–26:11)

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OSINT (Open-Source Intelligence) Highlights

• From Kerry Kahn:

  • Monitoring the TikTok account of Venezuela’s feared interior minister, Diosdado Cabello.

    “He walks around with a cap on all the time that has his trademark slogan, and it says, ‘to doubt is to betray.’” (21:43)

• From Tom Bowman:

  • Recounts wife’s experience investigating Aldrich Ames’ trash during his infamous espionage case.
  • “MICE” acronym for spy motives—Money, Ideology, Compromise, Ego.

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Tone & Style

• The conversation mixes urgency and gravity (war, coups, oil) with the weary humor and camaraderie of veteran reporters working through sleepless breaking news cycles.
• First-person, on-the-ground perspectives contrast with the higher-level policy and intelligence analysis, providing a full-spectrum account of U.S.-Venezuela developments.

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For Listeners: What This Episode Reveals

• How quickly geopolitics can shift in the Americas and the profound uncertainty such shifts generate on the ground and within policy circles.
• The central, and often shifting, role of narratives—be they about drugs or oil—in justifying U.S. actions.
• The practical and ethical challenges of reporting in closed or hostile environments.
• Future policy debates (women in combat, implications of U.S. interventions elsewhere) are set up by current events.
• The enduring importance of open sources—from journalists’ fixers to TikTok videos—in making sense of opaque events.

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For more context and similar in-depth discussions, tune in Thursdays to NPR’s “Sources and Methods.”

Transcript

[NPR Announcer]

This week on Consider this, the deadly ice shootings in Minneapolis. That city's police chief told us he was already concerned with how federal agents were doing their jobs.

[Tom Bowman]

Truly, the manner how this enforcement action is being conducted.

[NPR Announcer]

An immigration crackdown gone wrong on Consider this. Listen every weekday afternoon on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Kerry Kahn]

The situation that's happened in the last week is so stunning. The pace is so fast, the situation is just so incredible, it's hard to find words for it.

[Mary Louise Kelly]

Just one week ago, Nicolas Maduro was in power, leading his country as president of Venezuela. Today, he is sitting in a detention center in Brooklyn, New York. What a difference a week makes this is. Sources and METHODS from npr, I'm Mary the Week Kelly. Every Thursday on this podcast, I dive deep on some of the world's biggest national security stories with the NPR reporters who are out and about covering them this week. A certified stalwart of the podcast at this point, Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman. Hi, Tom.

[Tom Bowman]

Hey, Mary Louise.

[Mary Louise Kelly]

And NPR international correspondent Kerry Conn, who covers South America, usually from her base in Rio de Janeiro, but today, Carrie, where are you exactly?

[Kerry Kahn]

I am in Bogota, Colombia.

[Mary Louise Kelly]

Bogota, Colombia, Fabulous. Well, let's start there today. I will note we are taping it a little after 2pm Eastern. That's here in Washington, same time where.

[Kerry Kahn]

You are, Kerry, I am on the same time zone. I kind of miss my 2 hour buffer when I'm in Rio de Janeiro from headquarters, but I am on the same time zone.

[Mary Louise Kelly]

Catch up. All right, so let's go back Saturday morning. I know I was sound asleep when an editor at NPR headquarters called, woke me up and said, can you come in and anchor live coverage of the Maduro news? And my first thought as I was brushing sleep from my eyes was, wait, what Maduro news? What happened? Kerry, where were you? Where were you and how'd you hear?

[Kerry Kahn]

Same. I was asleep. An editor called me too and said that there had been reports of explosions. Then I saw that the explosions were in Caracas and this was big news. We had all been on pins and needles. Will the US act, will Trump actually make some sort of incursion on land? There had been this brief the week before.

[Mary Louise Kelly]

There had been hitting a dock. Yeah, I remember.

[Kerry Kahn]

But we never saw pictures of it, so it was just odd. But then when I saw the videos immediately were popping up on social media of these explosions and the skyline of Caracas, you'd see in different neighborhoods. And so I text my fixer there who helps us out and does some reporting for us. And I Said, are you awake? And immediately she wrote me back. And she said, of course I'm awake.

[Mary Louise Kelly]

There's no sleeping through this.

[Kerry Kahn]

Yeah. And then it began to hit me, the reality that this was quite a big.

[Mary Louise Kelly]

Yeah. And then I think you and I were talking to each other on air. Not too long after that, as the live coverage did indeed get up and running. Tom Bowman was. Where were you? Were you starting to check in with sources at the Pentagon right away?

[Tom Bowman]

I was asleep. It was before the sun came up. And the phone rings. I look down. It's Andrew Sussman, my editor, who I'm looking at right now. And he told me what happened, And I was absolutely stunned. And the first thing I said to him was, holy.

[Kerry Kahn]

Are you allowed to say that?

[Tom Bowman]

Yeah. And then I started working on that.

[Mary Louise Kelly]

I appreciate your intentionality about being accurate with your cure.

[Tom Bowman]

Then I immediately started working the phones, talked to someone in the Hill who said, listen, I got a call early, before dawn, even before he had a cup of coffee, and he was helping me. What do you know? What's going on? And then we went right from there.

[Mary Louise Kelly]

All right, okay. So let's go to what we know. Carrie, you have been speaking with a lot of Venezuelans. These are people who you're reaching on the ground or who are coming in and out of Venezuela. Who are you talking to, and how are you getting them?

[Kerry Kahn]

It's complicated. We cannot get into Venezuela. I haven't been back in Venezuela since 2024 after the presidential election. We were all told to leave rather quickly, and we have not been able to get back in, despite multiple attempts to do that. So I work through reporters and journalists on the ground there that we actually employ, and they go out and they speak to people on the streets. They send us all sorts of information. Also, we have a team up at the border between Colombia and Venezuela. It's in a city called Cucuta.

[Mary Louise Kelly]

And give us the highlights of what people you are reaching in these last few days are telling you.

[Kerry Kahn]

Well, at first, it was just utter stunned, shock, and fear. Coincidentally, though, the reporter that works for us there lives right across the street from the military base that the United States did actually bomb. They could feel it shaking, and she felt it in her home. And then actually, another person that we spoke to coincidentally lived right by that same area and just explained the feeling of the bomb hitting the ground and the shock waves that rumbled through the buildings and rattled the walls and rattled the windows. And so it was just fear for so long. People didn't understand it. And Then later in the day, when they. When President Trump announced that the United States had seized Maduro and his wife and that they were on a plane or a helicopter being sent back, being sent to New York to face trial, I think there was just shock, and people there was. Didn't know what to do. We heard a lot of people very happy about Medordo. There is no love lost there. People are overwhelmingly happy that he has gone, that we speak to. You see a lot of. There have been daily parades, marches, rallies in support of President Maduro and his wife. You see that filling state tv. But when you talk to people on the ground, there is no love, loss for the man or his wife. They're very glad. But then everybody says to us, what did they leave behind? I've spent the last three days at the Venezuelan Embassy here in Bogo trying to talk to Venezuelans and also trying to get a visa to get in.

[Mary Louise Kelly]

Yeah, like standing in a long line, I'm told, to try to get. It's a special journalist visa that you're trying to get to get in.

[Kerry Kahn]

Yeah. We cannot get in without a visa. There has been a widespread crackdown on journalists inside Venezuela. And just a gate, an iron wall now that nobody is being allowed in. There was one evening that they rounded up about 14 journalists, and it took a while for them to be released. And I've heard from colleagues that they're going through. If you do get stopped by the border police there, and the ones that have been the journalists that have been detained, they go through all your equipment. They want to see all your phone contacts, and they have erased material that you already have collected.

[Mary Louise Kelly]

So just. I think Tom Bowman and I both can anticipate how you will answer this, because we are cut from the same cloth as you. You're describing a situation where it does not sound safe for an American journalist, for a big American news organization, to go into Venezuela. But you're still trying. Why?

[Kerry Kahn]

My children ask me that all the time, too. I have been to Venezuela before, and once you're there, it feels like a different situation. At least you can talk to people. It is so hard to report from the outside and really give that texture and that feeling of what people. You're asking me how people are feeling. And I only know that through secondhand talking to the contacts that I've had before and then hearing tape gathered in the street. And it's just so frustrating. I just rather be there and talk to people, see people's faces, see the scenes when you walk in an empty street or you walk in a crowd of pro government supporters, you just, you're able to report so much easier. It feels easier. Maybe it's more dangerous, but it just feels easier because it's a visceral feeling that you can report. The situation that's happened in the last week is so stunning. The pace is so fast, the situation is just so incredible, it's hard to find words for it. And when you're doing it from hundreds of thousands of miles away, it just makes it five times harder.

[Mary Louise Kelly]

Tom and I are both sitting here nodding and laughing and nodding.

[Tom Bowman]

I remember when.

[Mary Louise Kelly]

So, Tom, let me draw you back in here in terms of a little bit of a bigger picture. We are hearing a lot from President Trump about Venezuela. He says America's in charge. Are we getting closer here? As you track your sources to understanding what does that mean? What's that gonna look like?

[Tom Bowman]

Well, you're right.

[Kerry Kahn]

Yeah.

[Tom Bowman]

He says America's in charge. First of all, there's no embassy down there. There are no large numbers of troops, as we saw in the invasion of Panama or Afghanistan. So we really don't know what he's talking about. And people I talk with after the briefings by Secretary of State Rubio and Defense Secretary Hegseth on the Hill, they're still confused about what's going on. All that we know is and what they told them is Delsey Rodriguez, that was vice president, is now the president. The real concern is this, Mary Louise. The intelligence community is very worried about the defense secretary, the defense Minister Rather Lopez, and more importantly, the Interior minister Cabello.

[Mary Louise Kelly]

These are the same guys who were working for Maduro. They're still there. They're still doing the job.

[Tom Bowman]

Correct. Very hard line. And they're worried that the government could splinter and that that could be really dangerous because these guys run the security services. So if they're not in line with Rodriguez, then what happens? Do they splinter? Do they, you know, go into factions? That could make things much more dangerous. But again, he says the America is in charge, but it doesn't make any sense.

[Mary Louise Kelly]

We're going to take a short break. When we get back. For months, President Trump said this operation was about narco terrorism. We haven't heard much about that since Saturday. We are hearing a lot about oil. That's ahead on Sources and Methods from npr.

[NPR Announcer]

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[Mary Louise Kelly]

And we're back with NPR's Tom Bowman and Carrie Kahn. And Tom, I'm thinking of a number. It is a number between 30 and 50 million. I'll give you 10 points if you can complete my thought.

[Tom Bowman]

I'm guessing it's barrels of oil.

[Mary Louise Kelly]

You're so good. Go on. What do we know about this plan?

[Tom Bowman]

Well, what we do know is that Trump says they're going to give us numbers for this, almost $2 billion worth of oil. And Trump and his officials basically say, you know, we're going to set up this fund for the Venezuelans, we're going to give them this money. But the question is, if there's no US Officials on the ground, no US Embassy, no large numbers of US Troops, as we saw in Panama, more importantly in Iraq and Afghanistan, you had officials handing out the money, sometimes bags of money, I would see going to local leaders. So walk me through how. Get that money to your average Venezuelan and make sure that the Maduro led Maduro government. Right. Does the right thing and gives it to the people who deserve it and makes life better for average Venezuelan. Walk me through how you do that. Congress has a lot of questions about that and they're not being answered.

[Mary Louise Kelly]

Okay, so a lot of questions about how that plan, and I put that word plan in very loose quotes, what that might look like. Meanwhile, I will note that Friday, President Trump is hosting at the White House. He's hosting oil executives. They're going to be talking Venezuela. I have heard some commentary, and I'll throw this open to both of you, that the oil executives appear to have been better briefed than some members of Congress.

[Tom Bowman]

Oh, that's right. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts put out a statement saying very much that, that the oil company executives know more than we know. And again, there are a million questions from Congress. They're not being answered.

[Mary Louise Kelly]

What happened, by the way, to drugs? For months we have been told that all the US Attention to Venezuela was about fighting drug trafficking, was about protecting Americans from narco terrorists.

[Tom Bowman]

Now, that conversation, oh, that's so two weeks ago.

[Mary Louise Kelly]

It's all oil, it's all the time.

[Tom Bowman]

Right. We've had this conversation before. What is this about? What is this about? Is this about curtailing drugs, going after the cartel, seizing boats, which by the way, the Coast Guard, when the boats are seized, you know what the cartels call that? Shoplifting. It's a price of doing business. So we always had this conversation, is this about drugs or is this about getting rid of Maduro? Is it about oil? Then it changed, as we know. They started going after the oil tankers, and we both said, aha. Now it's really about Maduro and getting rid of him or squeezing him to make sure he leaves. And of course, he didn't leave. They gave him the chance and they seized him.

[Mary Louise Kelly]

Kerry, any insight from your end? These 30 to 50 billion barrels of oil that we're told Venezuela will turn over, a willing transfer. Was this voluntary?

[Kerry Kahn]

It's quite interesting because I was listening to the national address by Delsey Rodriguez last night, and she said it was just so amazing how she could say both things at the same time. She would condemn the US Actions, but at the same time didn't ever use the word but. I was always waiting for the but. She would say, this is terrible what they've done to us, but we will cooperate. She would just say, this is terrible what they've done to us, and we are willing to engage in cooperative agreements of energy resources. And it was just amazing to watch. She's never really addressed this specific quantity of oil and how it will be administered. But just to think about it, Venezuela's oil output is very low and it has been increasing under her leadership. That's why she has risen so to this position, we believe, because she's a very pragmatic. She's a strong leftist and a hardcore ideologue. But she is very pragmatic, and she has been able to help just the decimated oil industry of Venezuela sort of make a comeback. Not much.

[Mary Louise Kelly]

Let me do a little bit of a pivot to where Trump may be setting his sights next. Greenland suddenly back in the conversation. Tom, what do we know?

[Tom Bowman]

Well, what we know is they want to hit up Denmark and say, listen, we want to buy Greenland from you, and we're not taking military, the military option off the table.

[Mary Louise Kelly]

The White House keeps insisting all military options on the table.

[Tom Bowman]

And it's interesting, earlier this year in March, when Vice President J.D. vance and his wife went to Greenland, as you remember, he was more nuanced at that point. He said, listen, if Greenland declares independence from Denmark, then we'll have a conversation. So it made more sense at that point. And there's no sense. Some in Greenland want to be independent of Denmark, but there's no sense. There's a real push for independence right now. Now it's more muscular. It's more. Listen, we may send the military in. We're going to grab Greenland. It's going to be ours.

[Mary Louise Kelly]

Or we may buy it.

[Tom Bowman]

I mean, or we may buy it. Correct. But Denmark and the rest, Europe. The European leaders will look and say no.

[Mary Louise Kelly]

I have the feeling this is not the first time we will be talking Greenland on sources and methods. With that, we'll take another quick break. When we're back, the Pentagon will soon begin reviewing the, quote, effectiveness of women in combat. That's ahead on Sources and Methods from npr.

[Tom Bowman]

This week on up first, the Trump administration and Venezuela. Can the US Run a foreign government?

[Mary Louise Kelly]

As the president says, they simply may not adopt the policy that Trump would like to see.

[Tom Bowman]

It's a complex, fast moving story. As always, we're working overnight and every night so you can start each morning knowing what matters.

[NPR Announcer]

Listen up first on the NPR app.

[Mary Louise Kelly]

Or wherever you get podcasts.

[NPR Announcer]

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[Kerry Kahn]

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[Mary Louise Kelly]

I was writing and no one was buying what I was selling. I just couldn't get anywhere and I just kept doing it because I felt compelled to do it like a spider spinning a web.

[Kerry Kahn]

Listen to that wild card conversation on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Mary Louise Kelly]

Let's switch gears now to women in the military. Tom, you got your hands on a document and learned that the Pentagon is gearing up for a six month review of women in ground combat jobs. First of all, how did you get your hands on this document since this.

[Tom Bowman]

Is called Sources and Methods? MARY LOUISE I got it from a source and I was really surprised when I saw it. And as it turns out, I got this document even before members of Congress got it because I had People on the Hill reach out to me and say, where'd you get that document? So basically, what is the document? The document basically says that the Pentagon's gonna have a six month review looking at the, quote, operational effectiveness of having women in ground combat jobs. And they're gonna get all the data from the army and the Marine Corps, basically looking at when it comes to women, readiness training, performance casualties, how they're doing so far, and also any internal research and studies that have not been released on quote, unquote, the integration of women in combat. And of course, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has long questioned whether women should be in ground combat. Because I'm straight up just saying we should not have women in combat roles.

[Kerry Kahn]

It hasn't made us more effective, hasn't.

[Tom Bowman]

Made us more lethal. And he said that back in November 2024 in a podcast hosted by Sean Ryan. So that's their plan. They're going to look down the road at this thing and see how women are doing in these ground combat roles. Now right now, Mayor louise, are about 3,800 women in the army in ground combat roles. So that's infantry, armor, artillery and the Marine Corps, a very small number, like 700. So we'll see what they come up with. But there's a real concern with advocates that they're going to try to find information to prove their case to either remove women from ground combat roles, reduce their numbers. But there's a great deal of concern from advocates. But what the Pentagon is saying basically is, listen, you know, we have to make sure that all soldiers and Marines measure up to the best standards. So we'll see what happens with that.

[Mary Louise Kelly]

I will start to bring us toward a close. We end as we always do with osint O S I N T open source intelligence. The telling not so secret, but still telling details we stumble across in our reporting. Carrie, you're a rookie on sources and methods. Do you have any OSINT to share of open sources?

[Kerry Kahn]

I've been scouring a lot since I can't get into Venezuela. And I think one thing that I've just been amazed with covering the story are the characters of it. We talk a lot about the feared intelligence communities and the leaders in Venezuela and the Interior Minister and he has a crazy TikTok channel and I spend a lot of time on his TikTok channel.

[Mary Louise Kelly]

The interior minister's TikTok channel.

[Kerry Kahn]

Yep. Well, first of all, I got to tell you his name, Dios Dado Cabello. And if you translate that, Dios Dado is God Given. And Cabello is hair. So he's God given hair. He doesn't have a whole lot of it. He's lost a lot over the years, and he has been out patrolling the streets. It's just the juxtaposition of he is one of the most feared men in Venezuela. I'd say you could easily say the most feared man. And so he walks around with a cap on all the time that has his trademark slogan, and it says, to doubt is to betray. But he's on these TikTok videos, smiling out on the street. With these paramilitary groups that are doing.

[Mary Louise Kelly]

What, just like walking around saying hi to people or what?

[Kerry Kahn]

Yeah, he's shaking hands with the police forces. He's yelling his slogan to doubt is to betray. And he's smiling, and there's always this music underneath it. So it's just this. It's just this creepy, eerie juxtaposition that I just, you know, watch all the time and just have a terrible feeling after you watch somebody's TikTok for that many hours.

[Mary Louise Kelly]

There you go. A new TikTok to add to your feed. Tom, your OSA.

[Tom Bowman]

Okay, I'm going to take you back to February 1994. My wife was working at Knight Ritter News Organization as a reporter, and she was told by her editors, you know, the FBI is searching this guy's house out in Arlington, Virginia. His name is Aldrich Ames. Can you go out there and check it out?

[Mary Louise Kelly]

Aha.

[Tom Bowman]

So she did go out there to Arlington to check it out. Found the house, this brick colonial, and then, you know, started walking up the driveway and started going through the trash. I said, why'd you do that? She said, well, they do that in the movies to try to find out anything about this person. And I said, what did you find? She said, just bottle wine bottles, and it was cheap wine. And after she did that, the FBI came down the driveway and said, hey, get out of here. You know, there's an investigation going on.

[Mary Louise Kelly]

So I am very happy to share that. I know your wife, and she is. She's gone on to scale many, many heights in journalism since her trash foray. I will also note we are talking about the trash of Aldrich James this week because he died this week at age 84. He was D in federal prison, serving a life sentence in Maryland. But just to fill in a little bit of the background, he was CIA. He was widely believed to be the worst double agent from the CIA's perspective in the history of the agency. The one who did the most damage to the CIA during the Cold War.

[Tom Bowman]

I think he led to the deaths of 10 agents.

[Mary Louise Kelly]

Yeah, I remember when I was out in the field reporting, I was not digging through trash, although I've done that for other stories. But back in 2017, I was sitting down for an interview with the then head of US Counterintelligence, who at the time was Bill Evanina. And outside his office at their headquarters in Bethesda, he showed me this wall of shame. And it's these portraits that they've got hanging on the wall. And it's double agents and traitors and saboteurs, all people who got caught. Robert Hanson of the FBI, Jonathan Pollard from US Navy Intelligence, and Ames from the. And the pictures are up there to remind people this is why we're here, to do the work. It's to catch these guys before they can do damage. And I'll share one more little note about Ames. We did an obituary for him on All Things Considered this week, and we invited John McLaughlin to come share his memories of Rick Ames. John McLaughlin ran the CIA at one point in his career, about 20 or so years ago, he had worked at the CIA from way back when he knew Ames had met him. And we asked the why question, like why did Ames want to give up the secrets of his country and his colleagues, sell them to the Soviet Union? What was the motive? We tend to use an acronym, mice, M I, C, E, which stands for money, ideology, compromise and ego.

[Tom Bowman]

Those four characteristics are things that we.

[Mary Louise Kelly]

Often look at when we're trying to understand spying. Ames is an odd case, but I think money was a big factor.

[Tom Bowman]

And I would say in an odd.

[Mary Louise Kelly]

Sort of way, ego, that is, people get a thrill sometimes out of spying. So that is John McLaughlin, former longtime CIA analyst and eventually acting head of the agency, remembering his erstwhile colleague Aldrich, who died this week at age 84. And I'm going to be thinking of that, that acronym mice, when I'm thinking about why does someone do what they do? Because it explains a lot. Money, ideology, compromise. We've been speaking with NPR international correspondent Kerry Kahn in Colombia, trying to get to Venezuela. Thank you, Kerry.

[Kerry Kahn]

You're welcome. Thanks so much for having me. It was great to talk to you both.

[Mary Louise Kelly]

It was great to talk to you. And NPR Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman here in the studio. Thanks, Tom.

[Tom Bowman]

You're welcome.

[Mary Louise Kelly]

A reminder, you can email us with your feedback and your questions. You can write sources and methods, all one word, sourcesandmethodspr.org and if you're enjoying the show, support us. You could leave a rating or review on the platform wherever you listen. In a world of algorithms that goes a long way toward helping new listeners find us and find our show. Mary I'm Mary Louise Kelly. We are back next week with another episode of Sources and Methods from npr.

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