Judging Freedom - [SPECIAL] Jack Devine : Why is the CIA in Venezuela?

Episode Date: October 30, 2025

[SPECIAL] Jack Devine : Why is the CIA in Venezuela?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Today is Thursday, October 30th, 2025. That is not a still shot that you see next to me. That is the one and the only judge. Jack Devine, former chief of operations of the Central Intelligence Agency, a dear friend of mine who returns to our camera at your request and at his so that we can discuss Venezuela and other related matters. Jack and I, of course, disagree on many things. There are many things we agree on, usually involving the Roman Catholic Church.

But on the law, we disagree. But Jack, welcome here, my dear friend. You look great. welcome back to the show. Jack, why is the CIA trying to overthrow the Maduro government in Venezuela as we speak? Well, first of all, happy Halloween. I wanted to get that out front, right? So let's go to that issue because I think it's a major development. As you know, I was head of counter-narcotics for years, four years to be precise in the agency, both as the head the Kennanard County Center and as Chief of Latin America Division.

So I've been a strong voice for going very hard against the traffickers. And I wrote an op-ed recently in USA Today about working with the Mexicans and using drones kinetically. So I'm quite comfortable with taking this battle to Venezuela. There's no doubt that Maduro is also in their administration's crosshair. And they should be in the crosshairs. After all, they're a non-democratic government working against our interests and their own people's interest. The recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize was the opposition to Madera.

So I think we're with God in country. But when you go beyond the drones, then we have to look at it more carefully about changing regimes and what it takes to change them. And isn't it risky for the CIA to ensure? engage in covert operations when the president announces that, I mean, covert is supposed to mean covert, not, hey, we got CIA agents running around. They used to masquerade as diplomats in the embassy and the consulates, but not anymore. Well, I mean, a couple things embedded is usually in your question. One is the word covert. Covert, by the way, is not clandestine. It's something in between because I ran a war against the Afghanistan, in Afghanistan, against the Russians

on the U.S. side. And that was covert, but you knew it and everyone else knew it. But you conceal the hand so that you don't go toe the toe with the other side. I've never seen it announced. This is new ground for me that we're announcing do you have a covert action program. But you enter into, I actually was quoted in a David Ignatius article last week you know, Washington Post saying, look, if you're going to do this, you better do it right. What does that mean? You better make sure you have indigenous people on the ground. Then you're going to come out ahead of the game.

You're going to minimize the bloodshed, right? Then you have the capability to do it, that you have congressional support. And you don't dabble. So it's one thing that want to get rid of Madero, but now we're talking tactics. And I know, I have no qualms about trying to. push him out. He's not a Democratic elected official and the agency's been involved in these things over the years. What business is it of the United States if he's democratically elected or not? We do business with autocrats all the time, but they're our autocrats, right? Well, I can tell you

off the top of my head that he's working very closely with the Iranians. They have a drone factory there. You know, Hamas is in our back court these days and everybody sleeps right through it. His Bala works with them, trains. The Cubans have been there for years. Let's say everything you just said. Your father would never have tolerated this. Whose father? Yours.

Their generation of the best. Well, all right. My father and his generation had a different attitude about all of us. God rest of us. So, by the way, his wife, my mother, next Wednesday, turns 100. This is why we're going to be doing this for years and years of time. But back to Venezuela. What conceivable national security threats of the United States of America is posed by the country of Venezuela, Jack Devine?

Well, I consider pushing drugs into the United States a national security threat. And so does the United States Congress. I believe the American people. and you know people have to really understand the drug market for one decade it's in Colombia another it's in Mexico now a lot of it's moving into Venezuela the more we pressure the other places the more they go to safe havens so this is not some benign dictator sitting down there in his palace this is a guy who's lined up with the Iranians lined up with the Cubans against our interests but but didn't the CIA it's

once facilitate the movement of drugs into the United States for some CIA designated better purpose? Let me not, let me not equivocate. That is absolutely 100% nonsense. And we can go into this famous California incident where poor John Deutsch, the director of CIA, tried to go out and explain the reality and they booed him and got him out of there. But John, the CIA, never ever transported drugs into the United States or had anything to do with. I spent all my career beaten a little living day. But the CIA then looked at the way while this happened so that the kingpins behind the delivery of the drugs would cooperate with the CIA. We all know that, Jack. Do we? I have no I have no supporting evidence and I would like to see your and your team

supporting evidence. We don't work with drug traffickers. Who told me this nonsense? All right. Paul Escobar said goodbye to the world during my tenure. That's about how much we talk to them. All right. Should the United States invade Venezuela without a congressional declaration of war? I would say that we should absolutely go to the Congress, but you put a high bar. I have a much lower bar. We should be briefing the Congress thoroughly today. We should have them on board. I'm a big briefer in oversight and working with Congress.

I'll be surprised if this is a presidential finding that this is not being worked in the Hill. So yes, absolutely, you know, if we're putting troops on the ground and plays off the aircraft carrier, to me that qualifies. I'm not a lawyer, but, you know, my basic common sense tells me, yeah, that's, that's way. more than you need to go down to Congress to get approval. Here's the senior senator from South Carolina opining that land invasions of Venezuela, Colombia and Cuba. We haven't talked about Colombia and Cuba. You talked about Cuba peripherally are coming.

I'd like your thoughts on this. My apologies for subjecting you to Senator Graham, but maybe you agree. cut number 11. President Trump has decided to treat drug cartels as national security threats. Remember the caliphate, the ISIS caliphate that President Trump destroyed? We have a drug caliphate in our backyard. Venezuela is run by an indicted drug dealer Maduro, who's not a legitimate president of Venezuela. It's a safe haven for drug cartels. So President Trump has a policy that if you're in the drug business, you're a drug cartel and you're having boats come to America,

we're going to blow up the boats. I think his policy is going to go on the land. If you're a country housing drug cartels, we're going to treat you as a national security threat to our country. There is a caliphate in our backyard. Colombia, Venezuela, and Cuba are all countries that have allowed drug cartels to operate with impunity, make money off poisoning America,

and these countries should be on notice. With Donald Trump, the game is changing. Is changing. Should we be invading all three of those countries? Well, I didn't hear that. I didn't hear invading. I heard blowing up boats. But leaving the side, what I want to come back to,

because let me say, yeah, I understand what he's saying, but we've got so much in front of us. The drug problem is Mexico and China, right? And we have friends in Mexico, and I'm suggesting that we up the ante and go after them there. with their agreement, not evade Mexico shoot at them. In the meantime, if there's boats coming from Cuba, I don't care where they're coming from and they're bringing drugs under the new conditions

of being similar to terrorists. You blow them up. That's not a baby. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Some of these boats are 1,500 miles from the United States. This is a federal crime and the president is executing them without due process. Does the CIA support that? Oh, I don't know about the CIA. I do. first of all, it's not about the CIA. CIA never decides anything. People, this is one of the things that you and I have been fortunate to discuss. There's no action ever been taken to my knowledge. And I sat at the top of the heap there where the president of the United States was not behind and signed a written finding authorizing the CIA. CIA is an implement. It's a tool that's used by a president. So it really doesn't matter what. the CIA once said. The president speaks to the American people. Got it, Jack. He has apparently signed a finding saying, do what you must to overthrow the government of Venezuela. Does that include? I don't know that to be true. I don't know. Well, if he has, it sounds like he has it. Would that include killing people? Well, first of all, let's not do the hypothetical. There's a big road,

which I said very early, tempering, be very careful about doing this just for practical reasons, right? A lot of thought has to go into it. If they've signed that, that might be, from my perspective, wrong-footed if they don't read the criteria that I laid out earlier in this program. So right now, I don't know what the finding contains, but surely there are authorities that have allowed him to attack the narco-traffickers, wherever. they are. Remember, we went after terrorists no matter where they were.

Well, there are no authorities that allow him to kill people who are transporting drugs outside the United States. According to the law, he can arrest them. And if there's evidence, seize the evidence, and arrest the people in possession of it. And if there's no evidence, let them go. But to kill them without due process and sometimes killing the wrong people, to murder, Jack. Judge, judge, please. this is really this is our classic dispute we kill terrorists that way what are you talking about

that we have to bring them the court that's 1990 law right no it's not it's 1791 when we ratified the fifth amendment well judge all i'm telling you is we attack every place we could terrorists that have a mission against the united states the president of the united states is announced to the American people and it's been signed in the law and approved by the Department of Justice that narco traffickers are terrorists

killing our people and we're going to treat them the same way. There is no such law. There's no such law committing the kill. Don't go down to Mexico and try to arrest somebody and give them due process in the United States. I'm telling you right now, I'm on writing,

I'm on public record in one of the national level newspapers, we should go with them with lethal force and destroy every damn market trafficker that's bringing drugs in the United States. They'll have the authority. Can Mexico and China enter the United States with lethal force and destroy people they think are adverse to their countries, or does it only work one way? I think you have to use practical thinking.

In other words, if you're going to go attack China, you better think about the implications. Not that you're not right to do it, but there might be implications. And you have to weigh them. And you have to weigh them in Venezuela. When I look at weighing going after traffickers in Mexico and Venezuela and attacking the China fentanyl facility, there's no comparison. There's a reality in the world. And I hope your audience understands that reality. No, not everybody's treated the same.

Absolutely not. But we should put maximum pressure within the realities of diplomacy, power, and economics to get the, the Chinese, are they trying to do that now, the back off from fentanyl? Do your audience really understand the pervasiveness of and deadliness of fentanyl in this country? And it can't be stopped by jaw-boning it in the tap rooms of the United States. We have to go after them. We've been doing it the same way since I was there. We need to up the game.

At one point, you could have to go head to head with him and the authorities are there to do it. At one point, you would have said the same thing about marijuana, which is now legal in two-thirds of the country. I want to shift years. I want to shift years. It's alleged some of my relatives used them. So I certainly would not have signed up to marijuana. Here's Senator Rand Paul. You know what?

You can smoke a lot of marijuana. You take a pen tip of fentanyl, watch your brain blow out. Do people take it voluntarily, Jack? So you should be people voluntarily, you want to stand on a quarter and let them take fentanyl? I would try to persuade them not to, but I sure as hell would go ahead. You would murder the people that are selling it to them. They're murdering our people. You want to talk murder.

Didn't you take an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution, the same oath I did? I did it 365 days a year for 32 years, and I'm proud of it. All right. Here's President Trump boasting about killing people. I'd like to know if you agree. And Mr. President, if you are declaring war against these cartels and Congress is likely to approve of that process, why not just ask for a declaration of war?

Well, I don't think we're going to necessarily ask for a declaration of war. I think we're just going to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country. Okay, we're going to kill them. You know, they're going to be like dead, okay. hang on jack agreed or should he go to the congress i don't think he go we didn't go to the congress they would declare war against terrorist organizations right well uh george w bush went to the congress on iraq and but he went against the nation said even lbj for all of his faults went to the congress on a made-up excuse the gulf of time he went to the congress on the congress on vietnam

Yeah, but they went for the war in Iraq, Afghanistan, but when you're doing what are labeled covert action activities, you go to the Congress, you brief it very carefully to the Congress, and the Congress then has the knowledge to make the decisions they need to. But the president can act and use force. There's no question about it. The whole history is full of the sea. The pre-CIA, pre-CIA, the U.S. government has taken action, and it hasn't. always declared war. Back to Congress, Jack. Here's Senator Rand Paul on all of this.

The land is going to be next. And we may go to the Senate. We may go to the, you know, Congress and tell them about it. But I can't imagine that they'd have any problem with it. I think they're going to probably like it except for the radical left lunatics. All right. So I'll start with you, Senator Paul. What do you need to hear in a briefing?

What questions do you have? You know, it's not so much about a briefing. but we haven't had a briefing. To be clear, we've got no information. I've been invited to no briefing. But a briefing is not enough to overcome the Constitution. The Constitution says that when you go to war, Congress has to vote on it. And during a war, then, there's a lower rules for engagement.

People do sometimes get killed without due process. But the drug war, or the war or the crime war, has typically been something we do through law enforcement. And so far, they have alleged that these people are drug dealers. No one said their name. said their name. No one said what evidence. No one said whether they're armed. And we've had no evidence presented. So at this point, I would call them extrajudicial killings. And this is akin to what China does, to Iran does with drug dealers. They summarily execute people without presenting evidence

to the public. So it's wrong. Well, he has a right as a senator on the floor of the Senate to make a proposal and let the other senators vote on his rather silly present. of how, you know, it's not a briefing. We need to know. I am telling you, as a matter of fact, if the president has signed a finding has been briefed to the committees, nothing is absolutely guaranteed they have to take that beyond that to the entire and every member of Congress and explain and detail all the tactical things to take place. That isn't how the system works. Declaration of war, I mean, frankly, this is this is gamesmanship with, where, words here. This is, we are going after the traffickers just like we went after the terrorists,

right? And you could declare war against nations, right? You want to declare war against Venezuela? That's one thing. You go to Congress. You want to go after every single narcotics guy in Venezuela, how about it? And you can do that under the president's authorities. How's the war in Ukraine going, Jack? Well, I think Putin missed his big opportunity in Alaska. I think President Trump offered him an opportunity to come out of that looking like he might budge and that he could say, well, I cut a deal with the president. He has now put himself in an amazing box, which I predicted years ago. And I know your audience would go nuts on this.

Isn't he prevailing on the battlefield? Absolutely not. We've been four years. I think I forget the percent that he's gained, but it's like minuscule. Four years of war fighting losing at least 200 to 300,000 soldiers. The Ukrainians have lost a million. Jay, Judge, bear with me. I promise you not to go Putin-esque along on this.

But my point is, the president doesn't, there's not really many choices on the table. We are now going to up the ante against Putin. And what's his next move as we up the ante and allow, you know, deeper penetrations there, more squeeze on his economic front, squeezing the oil? Does he prevail? Is that the judgment of the judge that you think?

think that he is going to prevail in this battle? Doesn't look like it to me. He's had four years to put the great Russian army to force and look at it. Look at it today. With the bloodshed, he's a mafia done. Here's the mafia. Here's the mafia. When you say mafia, Don, you're talking about Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin? I would say that it's an insult to the President of the United States. All right. When you said Don, it confused me. But here's Here's the person you're being sarcastic. Here's the person you're calling a mafia done yesterday. Cut number nine.

They don't mind letting reporters, media representatives, including international and Ukrainian ones, in the encirclement zones, so that they could see for themselves what is going on there, could see the status in which the encircled troops are, could see their condition. so that the political leadership of Ukraine could decide on the further fate of their citizens, of their military people. We are ready to suspend hostilities for several hours, two, three or six hours, to allow a group of journalists to enter those areas, see what's going on there, talk to Ukrainian troops there, and move out. Well, Brezhnev would have approved that straightforward honest description. I spend part of my day every day looking at battlefield fighting.

And if he's winning, he's got Koreans. He's let everybody out in jail. He's paying an enormous amount of money to put people fighting this great fight. And he'll win a village, a village the size of my beach town, right? So that's nonsense. I mean, he's had his chances over and over again. I'm willing to do peace. And then he had a chance.

He also almost had a chance in Budapest. I said last was his last shot before we really squeeze him. And now I'm saying it would be at Budapest. But the president wisely, I said, look, said, look, this guy's not even willing to talk. This is all BS. Why we feel we need to listen to Putin and believe what he's saying after all these years escapes my wild. imagination. All right. And that will end, because I have another commitment in about three minutes. Jack, it's a pleasure. You haven't changed at all. And I look forward to seeing you again soon.

We're only a couple of blocks of each other. The public should know we'll get together for tender, Jack, and I'll try and pound some sense into your thick skull. All the best, my dear friend. Many have tried and few have succeeded. Thank you, Jack. All the best. Wow. Coming up later today at 2 o'clock, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson at 3 o'clock, Professor John Mearsheimer at 4 o'clock, Max Blumenthal. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Thank you. Thank you.