Pod Save the World - Who is President of Venezuela?

Episode Date: January 30, 2019

Tommy talks with Anthony Faiola, the Washington Post bureau chief for South America and the Caribbean, about the dire situation in Venezuela. Then Ben Rhodes joins to discuss the Trump administration's approach to Venezuela's leadership struggle, the Worldwide Threat Assessment hearings in Congress, a potential peace deal in Afghanistan, Ebola, Jared's security clearance (again) and bumbling spies.

Welcome back to Pots Save the World. This is Tommy Vitor. Thank you all for tuning in to listen to the show. It has been a wild week in foreign policy news. It was actually very hard to decide what should go in the show today because there's been so much news. But I think any way you look at it, the biggest story has been the roiling events in Venezuela. So the show starts with a phone call from Anthony Fiala, who is the Washington Post's South American and Caribbean Bureau Chief. We talked about what's going on. in Venezuela, how the ongoing coup-like efforts are going, how the U.S. intervention in the situation is being received by the Venezuelan people and what we think might come next. Then Ben Rhodes comes and joins in studio, and we talked through how the Trump administration has been handling Venezuela. You might be surprised to learn that we're torn. We don't want to reflexively oppose things that the Trump administration does. Both of us would love to see Maduro get the hell out of there. but it's complicated. And, you know, the United States doesn't have the greatest history of interfering in political events in Latin America.

So we talked through all of that. And then we talked about the Senate's worldwide threat assessment hearings. That's where they bring in all the heads of the intel community to talk through all the great challenges we face across the planet, basically. What was stark was the fact that on all these key issues, climate change, Iran, North Korea, the intel professionals have a very different perspective on what the situation is than Donald Trump himself and how do we reconcile that difference, the fact that their words just don't match up with reality, what's coming out of the Oval Office. Then we talked about huge news of a possible peace deal in Afghanistan. We talk about a scary uptick in Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo. And then we talk about the on again, off again security clearance for Jared

Kushner and a fun story in the New York Times about a bumbling private spy. It's a great, great show. I really think you'll enjoy it. If you did, we'd love it if you'd share it with your friends. Maybe give us a review in the iTunes store because it really does help a lot of people finding this show. And without further ado, here's the interview with Anthony Viola. Anthony, thank you so much for joining us today. Thanks for having me. So last week, the United States and a whole bunch of countries decided that a 35-year-old industrial engineer named Juan Wido should be recognized as president of Venezuela and not Nicholas Maduro, who was elected in 2013 in an election that was pretty universally

seen as fraudulent. You know, democracy at its best there. Andy, can you give us like the quick and dirty version of what got us to this point where all of these countries are coming out in support of Wido and not Maduro, who was notionally elected to be president? Sure. I mean, Guido didn't quite come out of nowhere, but almost. You know, as you mentioned, he's an industrial engineer turned politician, and he's been mentored for years by Leopoldo Lopez, who is a very well-known opposition leader in Venezuela who's been under house arrest, but has a fairly strong support base within the opposition. Guizro was named head of the National Assembly last month, and that, you know, essentially gave him the legal standing that he needed in order to start waging

these arguments that they're waging now. That Maduro is not only legitimate, but guess what, you know, there's someone else who could stand in his place, and Guaido is the man. You know, he also was able to take the opposition that was divided in Spanish for ages and give them a figure to stand behind, which was an incredibly significant thing to do. But they also did something very smart. I mean, they played on their international support. They sought legal recognition. And, you know, Maduro, as you mentioned, held elections last year that were largely seen as a fraud, you know, and what they did is they used the fact that Maduro swore himself in on the 10th as evidence that he was now a surper, and in fact, legally, he could

no longer be recognized as, you know, the legitimate head of state of Venezuela, and they invoked articles of the Constitution to say that Guaido was now that man. And this is exactly the kind of legal cover that foreign governments needed in order to do what they've done, which is essentially switch their diplomatic recognition from Maduro to Guaido. Right. I didn't realize he was a Leopoldo Lopez guy. That's interesting. Interesting. Actually, I went to the same college as Leopoldo Lopez. A bunch of my older brother's friends are friends with Leo. And so we've all been, you know, watching that case for a long time. He was imprisoned for a while. I believe he's still under house arrest. It's been a pretty dicey situation for him. So I'm glad to hear, you know, he's doing okay and that someone who's his friend is actually leading the charge here. Yeah, I spoke to his wife, Lillian, just the other day. And, you know, she says that he's in good spirits. Obviously, he's watching this very closely. You know, as I mentioned, you know, Guaido really came from his ilk and was mentored by Leopoldo.

And I think that's one thing that has given him broader recognition and a broader support base within the opposition, the fact that he can count on someone like Leopoldo's backing. Yeah. So the Washington Post interviewed Guido recently. What did you make with him? And what's his plan to push through this very challenging leadership change in Venezuela? Yeah, I mean, he's going through this, you know, very systematically. I mean, it's basically a two-prong strategy.

to Al's Maduro. I mean, first, there's this really new element of foreign support, especially the Trump administration, to cut off Maduro's sources of foreign income and make him pay a high price for what they're calling this precipitation of power, right? I mean, the U.S. is not the only one behind this. You know, the Trump administration, even before it started playing hardball, you had the Canadians, you have the Colombians, you have the Brazilians and other South American countries that were banning together and saying that they would not recognize Maduro. But obviously, having the U.S. on board for Guido is the real game changer, you know,

in the sense that they can really put the hurt on him, right? I mean, yesterday they took major steps adopting these measures that effectively make it impossible for Venezuela to keep selling oil to the U.S. And since that's its largest and direct stream of dollars, this is huge. I mean, it really does hurt the government and helps the opposition. The other prong in Guido's plan is to bring Venezuelans back out into the streets. I mean, he managed last week to run. rally, hundreds of thousands. And basically we're seeing a return to what we saw of the protests,

you know, in 2007, 17 when we had four months of this. But that was severe repression. And what we're seeing now, again, is that Maduro appears to be rolling out an even harsher response than he did in 2017. So it's going to be incredibly interesting to see whether or not this cows the people and to staying at home, you know, or whether or not this simply makes them angrier and makes them turnout in larger numbers. Yeah, I mean, you mentioned that Maduro is playing hardball. I mean, people who cross him tend to end up arrested, detained, exiled, or otherwise pulled out of the political arena. This morning, the top prosecutor in Venezuela asked the Supreme Court to prohibit Gua from leaving the country and to freeze his bank accounts. This comes just days after the U.S.

put sanctions on their state-owned oil company. I mean, do you think this is the beginning of much harsher treatment for Guido, who I think to date had been treated surprisingly okay or at least, you know, not harassed. I mean, he was briefly detained, as you know, but for about an hour earlier this month. But nothing compared to the House of Rest, for instance, that Leopoldo is seen or, you know, the other ways in which, you know, opposition leaders have been exiled or jailed or tortured. I mean, you have not seen that. I think to date the calculation by the Maduro administration has basically been that, you know, if they touch a hair on his head, it gives the international community

more of a reason to launch a response, and particularly the U.S., which has been saber-rattling from Washington and, you know, insisting that no, you know, options are off the table. But I think what we're going to see now is an interesting and very delicate and perhaps more dangerous, period, as we see, you know, Maduro has less and less to lose. You know, if the Americans have cut the oil supplies, the flow of oil cash, they've cut that off. They've frozen accounts by the Venezuelan government, you know, in the United States. The European for preparing to do the same. Maduro has tried to pull $1.2 billion worth of gold of the Bank of England, and they're not letting him get at it. So, you know, he's got less and less to lose. And I think what we see here,

perhaps, is, you know, a toe in the water of what happens when they start cracking down on Guaido. I guess what we're going to have to see is what's next and exactly what the international response will be, you know, and whether the Trump administration is going to carry on with this threat to take this to a higher level and escalate. Yeah, I mean, so you mentioned this a little bit. I mean, Trump administration keeps saying that all options are on the table, which usually means military forces on the table. That formulation often gives a president flexibility, but in this case, there's some real concern that he means it. I mean, yesterday, a photo of John Bolton, the National Security Advisor's notebook, showed that he had written 5,000 troops to Columbus,

on the piece of paper, that's not very good operational security. What do you make of the feasibility of a U.S. military option in Venezuela? And do you think that the rest of the coalition and the region that supported us so far, or at least gone along with the U.S. effort to force Maduro out, would be cool with U.S. boots on the ground? You know, I think you have to remember that in Latin America, you know, the idea of U.S. intervention is particularly thorny. Yes.

You know, as you know, there is lots of resentment in the region over past intervention. and heavy-headedness by the U.S. That said, you know, I think what we have seen is that a general understanding in the region that Venezuela is different. The humanitarian crisis, and Venezuela is horrific. You know, people are starving. Disease is spreading. There is a lack of medication.

There is, you know, hyperinflation that is crippling the country. It's almost a failed state. And so as a result of that, we've seen hundreds of thousands, even millions, of Venezuelans pouring over the border into countries like, you know, Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Chile, Argentina. And these countries are feeling overwhelmed. Now, they want the situation solved one way or another. And I think you may see them, you know, publicly, you know, perhaps still insist that military intervention is a horrible idea. But privately, I think you may see some of them thinking that, well, you know, look, this problem has got to be solved. How is it going to get solved? I think they want to see everything.

exhausted before anything like a military intervention takes place. I mean, I don't know that we're there yet. But, you know, I think what you are seeing is perhaps behind the scenes, some toning down of the normal opposition that you would see towards some kind of, in a military intervention in Latin America, because of just how bad the humanitarian crisis is and the way in which it's impacting the country's in the region. Wow. I mean, yeah, you mentioned the U.S. has a long and troubling history of facilitating coups or generally interfering in Latin American countries, and it does not often end well. Given that history, I've been surprised to read all these TikTok news stories where Mike Pence and Marco Rubio seemed to compete for credit for Guido's

announcement. What is your sense of how people in Venezuela are receiving this overt call from other countries to choose their new leader? Is this welcome? Yeah. I mean, I think depends on who you're talking to, right? I mean, the people who have been on the side of the opposition have for some time felt disillusioned. And I think they felt disillusioned because not only were their leaders divided and not necessarily guiding them towards any real solution, but at the same time, I think they felt that the international support they were getting was fairly empty. So I think for those people, they're receiving this with, you know, some kind of a deep sense of receptivity. I mean, I think they would like to see the international community

become more involved and solve the problem that they're living every day. That said, you know, you can't underestimate the fact that there are still quite a lot of Venezuelans who believe in Chavezmo, which is this left-wing ideology that was created by Hugo Chavez and, you know, who anointed Maduro as his successor in 2013 before he died of cancer, right? So you have a huge segment of the country that still firmly believes in this. Now, those people are very likely, outrage by the idea that, you know, their country is being interfered with by foreign powers. And they may not look sympathetically on Southern Lake Guaido for being an allegiance with them. But, you know, I think that portion of the population as the humanitarian crisis has gotten

worse and worse in Venezuela has probably diminished. It's hard to tell just how large that block is. But it's certainly still there. But I think you'd also have to say that the people who may be a little a bit more receptive to this kind of, you know, stronger international agitation is growing in Venezuela. Yeah. Anthony, thank you so much for helping me better understand what's going on down there. I hope this resolves without any military intervention or, you know, violence because, boy, it feels dicey. Yeah, for sure. Thank you very much for having me. Have a great day. Appreciate it. So, Ben, everybody just heard the conversation with Anthony Faiola in The Washington Post walking us what the hell's going on in Venezuela itself.

I wanted to talk to you about the Washington component of this diplomatic effort. Because, you know, the Trump team has been running a pretty intense diplomatic play to push Maduro out of power in Venezuela. I've been impressed, by the way, they have coordinated with regional allies. Trump's recognition of Guido was closely followed by a bunch of countries in the region, OAS, which is an international organization, European allies. So, like, that kind of diplomatic unity has been missing in almost everything else they've done candidly. Similarly, they've cracked down hard on Maduro with sanctions, including sanctions against Venezuela, a state-owned oil company that happened on Monday. That said, it does feel like we are diving into a coup without any discussions of the implications or how it might be received given the sort of fraught history of the U.S. has in Latin America. So I guess, like, I'm struggling with this.

Maduro is a fucking monster who is starving his own people. He's an idiot. He doesn't know what he's doing. Like, he's mismanaged the country. He's corrupt. He's awful. But we are not very good at the regime change business. So I'm torn here.

How are you feeling? Yeah, I'm in the same place. I'd start by saying that, first of all, there's no question that Venezuela would be much better off if Maduro was not in power. He has zero democratic legitimacy. He's eviscerated democratic institutions in the country. You know, I met him once. Obama and I met him backstage at a summit. Oh, really?

We had to do it away from the cameras. so that like, you know, we didn't want to be seen with the guy. Right, because you could get beaten up on Fox News for six months. Yeah, but, you know, we wanted to kind of say like, hey, man, this is before things were completely off the rails. And, you know, we obviously were saying, you're taking this wrong direction. He was kind of incoherent. He just kind of went on about how he was a revolutionary.

And, you know. Dan Restrepo's take was just he had to do with him all the time. Dan Ristrepo, who ran Western Hemisphere, Latin American Affairs for us of the White House, which is like, the guy's just not smart. He's none of the Chavez charisma. That's right. And I also saw him in Cuba speak to a very large crowd and, like, I'll talk about a home game, right? And he couldn't even fire up that crowd.

So Chavez had a charisma and hold on the country. Maduro has all the, you know, corruption and cult of personality of Chavez with none of the charisma. And he's completely mismanaged and destroyed the economy through corruption. He's repressed the opposition. He's cheated in the election. So he has no legitimacy. That's a starting point. I also, like you think that this was an unusually well-coordinated play that they did,

getting a host of other countries in Latin America to come along with them in the deregination of Maduro and the recognition of Guido. I have a couple of concerns with it, though. One is the decision to recognize an alternative president. That makes for a very good story, a very good kind of bold-seeming move. but it's kind of your last diplomatic bullet to fire, you know, and the reality is the military still backs Maduro, so you've recognized someone who's really not in charge of the country. You mentioned the challenge that Obama had in this exact scenario in Syria by recognizing the Syrian opposition. I put this on our, we have bad experience of this, right? Because we recognize you're in opposition. They get their hopes up and Assad digs in and nothing changes. And then you look feckless because you can't, you know, execute regime change. And so I think there's a bit of a worry that, you know, this was a play

that might serve to kind of galvanize Maduro's backers. And you already saw Russia and China kind of come to his defense and the military come to his defense and leave open the question of, okay, you've recognized this other guy, you know, what are you going to do about it? Because if the Venezuelan military doesn't flip, then the situation is going to further deteriorate. And the risk then becomes, well, you know, do we invade Venezuela? John Bolton's got his 5,000 troops in Columbia that we saw written on his... I want to ask you about that. Yeah, legal power. We'll come back there. So I guess this is such a tough issue because I support what the Trump administration wants to have happened, which is Maduro leave power and a restoration of semblance of democracy

Venezuela. I just worry that they are kind of driving the car 80 miles an hour without kind of of a clear plan for where this is headed and a lot of fraught history in Latin America and a lot of ways that this could just kind of continue to get worse. Yeah, I also kind of worry about the people who are in the room because obviously Marco Rubio is running to the New York Times to tell them that he's driving this decision. But then, you know, the decision to ultimately tell Guido that they were going to recognize him and derecognize Maduro was reportedly, Josh Rogan from the Washington Post reported that it was on January 22nd. John Bolton convened what has come to be called a, quote, small group National Security Council meeting, which is the restricted meeting they do to lock out a bunch of other people.

So listen to who is there. Okay. Mike Pompeo, Secretary of State. Sure, of course. Treasury Secretary Steve Minookin, sanctions are important. Makes sense to have him be there. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, like they woke that guy up for the meeting. Why?

Larry Cudlow? What the fuck? The chairman of the Joint Chiefs, sure, a Pentagon official. Like, it's, there's no technocrats. I didn't hear a bunch of intel people. It doesn't sound like the right room to make a smart decision where you're thinking through all the options. Yeah. I mean, there are a few problems of this.

One is they have no credibility on democracy, right? So Mike Pompeo had just probably returned from a flight where he was giving a foot rub to Muhammad bin Salman. Yeah. You know, I mean, you know, look, the U.S. always is a bit hypocritical in the application of its values. But, you know, this administration makes no pretense of caring about democracy anywhere in the world except in Venezuela and Cuba, right? where they have a domestic political interest in doing so, right? They are trying to appeal the certain kind of more conservative hardline elements in Florida who support changes in government in Cuban Venezuela.

And that makes it harder. You know, it undercuts your credibility internationally. It undercuts your credibility inside of Venezuela. If it just kind of looks like, you know, you're taking this shot at Maduro because, you know, you have some domestic interest in doing so. That's the first problem. The second problem is that group suggests to me that this is entirely like a sanctions policy, right? I mean, the reason that Larry Cudlow is there, I guess, is that they're going to try to throw the book at the Venezuelans in terms of sanctions.

But that may work in pressuring Maduro a lot, but I worry that they're not thinking through the secondary effects of that, right? If you completely collapse the Venezuelan economy, you have potentially millions more people flowing out of the country, going into Colombia, people frankly coming in the United States. states where they're not giving any protected status to Venezuelans fleeing repression. And even if somehow you might succeed in kind of collapsing the country, there are not a lot of people in that room who know anything about Venezuela or what comes next, right? I mean, let's say they're even successful somehow and just kind of collapsing the place. And Guido's saying he's president and maybe some military goes with him and some others. Well, then you have this kind of failed state and what is, who are the smart people who are going to help put it back together, right? So again,

this is the problem with this policy in general, is that they're just trying through brute force to dislodge Maduro. In doing so, they're going to further destroy the economy of the country without probably giving a lot of thought to what comes after that. And what happens if there's kind of a civil war situation? What happens if, you know, there's just a massive humanitarian crisis even bigger than today in the middle of South America? And so it doesn't give you a lot of faith that they're thinking two or three or four moves down the board, as some of Trump supporters say, that they're playing chess instead of checkers. Yes, yes.

Speaking of chess. So Trump keeps saying that all options are on the table when it comes to Venezuela, which is usually code for saying the military option is on the table and to offer just, it's often just posturing in a way to, you know, sort of increase the pressure on the other party. But on Monday, National Security Advisor John Bolton was spotted with a notepad that said 5,000 troops to Colombia. So first of all, get a cover sheet, you moron. Like, I guarantee you, a troop movement of that hasn't occurred yet is classified.

So that is disclosing classified information. Great job. But what the hell, like, what are you going to do with 5,000 troops in Colombia to impact the situation? Who among us hasn't doodled in a meeting, you know, fantasies, 5,000 troops to some South American country? I don't think there's a viable military option. You know, if the template is like Panama, Grenada, these tiny, countries that we invaded in the past. Venezuela is a big country. The Venezuelans have external support from not just Cuba, but the Russians just deployed some like mercenary brigade to help

protect Maduro. That'll be good. And so you're talking about potentially putting thousands of American troops into a very large country that has very high levels of violence and insecurity already in a region that has a deep resentment of the history of U.S. military interventions, which have really broken some of those places and not let-de-good outcomes. Rightly so. It's fair for them to question our motivations here. Yeah, so not only I think there's not a viable option, but even if we were to somehow create one by staging all the troops in Colombia,

what does that look like to invade Venezuela? By the way, what is the legal basis for that domestically or nationally? That we can just pick a country in South American and invade it. Can we get UN support for that? Absolutely not with the Russians and Chinese. Will Congress authorize an invasion of Venezuela? I don't think so, right? So it may seem like an inconvenience, but usually when you start a war, you want to have some legal basis for it. And so, again, it's a sign that they seem to be kind of flying without a net here, just trying to throw stuff at Maduro to dislodge him. Again, I want him gone. Like, we should obviously. very clear, like, this would be good. I do think there's a different way to go about this, which is to be tightening the news, to be tightening sanctions, but to be very intensively trying to negotiate with the different factions inside of Venezuela, frankly, talking to the Chinese and other countries about how to create some soft landing to a transitional government that can then hold an election. That was clearly the preference of the Europeans who are a bit slower and kind of falling early, and

they put the onus on, no, let's negotiate to hold on a new election. election, right? Like a week, right? Yeah, and I think that's the, that's a better course to say, let's get everybody at the table here to try to find some common ground where there's some transitional government that can then hold the new election so that you have the democratic legitimacy of an election to choose a new leader. Because frankly, I don't know that it's good for Guido to come into office unelected, but kind of selected by Mike Pence. Don Trump, you know, yeah, I mean, so I think that they're ways. is other than an invasion to be trying to manage us.

And not just because those are simpler, but because those are more likely to result in more stable outcomes, right? It's not just a question of getting Maduro out. It's what does the country look like after that and how broken is the country in that process? And what is your capacity to bring together enough of the different actors in Venezuela so that it's easier to rebuild the country? And I think that is more easily done through a negotiated settlement

than it is through some kind of U.S. invasion or U.S. kind of sponsored coup in the country. So, again, I think I'd be very happy to wake up one day and learn that Maduro is gone. I think these guys are, again, going about it with all the, you know, aggression and not a lot of the thought. Yeah. Well, so I think you kind of half answered my last question. It was just, you know, if you were sitting in a situation room, like, what would you tell the president to do? and maybe more importantly, what do you think Democrats today right now should be saying about the Trump administration policy? Because you know, you see that like Dick Durbin and some very thoughtful members of Congress and senators are torn.

Yeah. Well, people like Durbin, Tommy, your friend and former Kenyan fellow alum, Leopoldo Lopez, an incredibly courageous guy. Durbin has for many years championed him. Leopoldo is a freedom fighter in Venezuela who was in prison for a long time and came out and then went back in. Now, I believe he's on house arrest. There's actually a fantastic episode of The Daily where they talk with him about his story and what he's been through. Check it out. Yeah.

So I think it's a tough situation for Democrats because on the one hand, you know, there's this reflexive distress of Trump. Yeah. Which can lead you to say, well, he's for this, so I must be against it, right? And then there are these people like Durbin are thinking like, well, look, I support the Venezuelan and opposition. So I'm just going to kind of, I'm going to come in behind this. I think there's another way of doing this. It's like a lot of things we've talked about, Tommy, where. I can find some sympathy with the objective that Trump has, but I also have a lot of concerns

about how he's doing it. I think Democrats can say, look, we're for a transition in Venezuela. We don't think Maduro is a legitimate leader. But what is a comprehensive approach to this look like? Okay. Well, number one, we should be doing more to support the Venezuelan people. So we should be giving TPS temporary protected status for Venezuelans who are here in the United States fleeing that violence.

Now, one of the reasons why the Trump administration is so embarrassed to take that step is it kind of validates the concept of asylum, of people having a legitimate reason to come here to flee violence, right? But if you really care about the Venezuelan people, you would be offering the protection of coming to the United States if they're fleeing violence and repression there, right? Second, you could also provide a lot more support to these countries like Columbia that are hosting, you know, like a million Venezuelan refugees. So one piece is Democrats can express through policy. approaches more support for the Venezuelan people. I think secondly, we can critique where we feel like there's danger in Trump's approach, certainly a military option. And again, I would also express a preference for a more negotiated approach to a transition rather than just kind of declaring the opposition, the president, and trying to muscle Maduro out. So I think there's a more

nuanced way of doing this. Now it's hard if you're in Congress. That's kind of what you'd be doing if you were in the White House. I think third, though, trying to plan for what is the Venezuela we would like to see after this transition. Because, again, part of what I worry about with Trump is you squeeze and squeeze and squeeze and look, maybe you do dislodge Maduro, but you've completely destroyed the place in the process, and you probably aren't giving thought to how you build it back up. What does a package of humanitarian and reconstruction assistance look like that is internationalized

that is ready that can frankly also serve as an incentive, a carrot, to say, look, if you guys make this transition, the international community and the World Bank and the IMF and these other countries will come in and help put this place in a stable footing with a kind of package of assistance so that you're not just thinking about how to bring one man down. You're thinking about how to build back up the country. Those are all the pieces I'd like to see. And I do think Democrats should be unabashed in calling out Trump's hypocrisy. You know, you should be for the freedom and democracy for the Venezuelan people. And frankly, we should be for those values in lots of places, including places like Saudi Arabia, where these guys have totally sold out our values,

right, including in dealing with people like Vladimir Putin. You know, Trump is going to go, you know, give a bear hug to Kim Jong-un next month, a man who's much more brutal than even a Maduro, right? So I think Democrats should also engage this fight and not just kind of offer the Republicans the rhetoric of freedom on Venezuela when they've clearly shown that they don't believe those values are for everybody. They just believe that those values are for, places where they have some domestic political constituency. Trump's worried about caravans coming north. Boy, wait until there's a failed state.

Well, that's why these oil sanctions are tricky. Yeah, seriously. Cutting off Venezuelan oil, like, is going to cause a humanitarian disaster, right? And that's always a difficult thing with sanctions policy. When are you hurting the people more than the leaders? There's a way to target the leaders more directly. The last thing I'd say, Tommy, is that Elliot Abrams announces the envoy, like Elliot Abrams? Really?

This is a guy, apart from kind of being one of the architects of the Iraq War, which worked out great and promoting democracy. A well-planned invasion followed by a well-planned reconstruction effort. Yeah, exactly what we need here. But also, the guy was an architect of Iran-Contra and a policy that supported Contras and death squads in Central America. So, like, this tricky history of American intervention in Latin America is this guy, right? And so this is the guy that we're bringing in. It doesn't offer you a lot of. of hope that they've learned from the history here. And again, I should say, like, we should be

very mindful that even if they somehow get Maduro out, which is by no means a guarantee, that's not the end of this story. It's like, are these guys equipped to help stabilize this place and move forward? Let's talk about some other worldwide threats. So every year, the Senate Select Intelligence Committee holds an unclassified annual threat assessment hearing where they detail, you know, Intel assessments on various issues around the globe. The Intel community hates this hearing because they make this highly classified version of the report that goes to lawmakers and nerds like us who love to read them. And they have to sand it down and present it and be held accountable. And so it's a good thing for democracy, but they hate it.

We're recording this episode on Tuesday. So the hearing is happening right now. Here are a few highlights for you from this morning. Most of the presentations are by the Director of National Intelligence, Dan Coates. So on North Korea, remember, these are Trump administration officials. his top Intel guy. Quote, we currently assess North Korea will seek to retain this WMD capability and is unlikely to completely give up its nuclear weapons and production capability. Quick reminder that Trump said there was no longer a threat to North Korea.

Yeah, you dealt with that one. Coates said on Iran, we do not believe Iran is currently undertaking the key activities we judge necessary to produce a nuclear device. So good news, but Trump pulled out of the Iran deal. Coat said ISIS still commands thousands of fighters in Iraq and Syria and maintain eight branches and a dozen networks around the world. Again, Trump has repeatedly declared that ISIS is defeated. Finally, they said that climate change is now a global and U.S. national security risk because of irreversible damage. So, Ben, it used to be a scandal when the president's words didn't match up with intelligence community assessments. Now this manipulation of intelligence

that literally got us into the Iraq war is standard. What do you do when the delta between the president's words and his top intel guy's words, is this great? Well, I mean, do you remember when this hearing would happen, and for you, more than anybody in the White House, it sucked, right? Because your biggest fear, right, was that, like, the Intel community would contradict something that we'd said. But I say that to make the point that it was good that we were worried about that.

We used to care. Because we cared, and we'd be like, shit, you know, like, and we didn't try to, you know, downplay the intel community. We'd have to say, okay, we don't have to adjust what we said. We'd have to adapt to them. And look, Trump has made clear he doesn't give a shit what the intelligence community says. I mean, in Helsinki, he sided with Putin against the intelligence community. He's called them the deep state.

So what's really awkward about watching this is knowing that they just don't care that these people have completely different assessments. And it is a very useful exercise, though, for the American people, and I think instructed for the Democratic House, to basically be using the intelligence community to fact check the administration, like, Like you say you dealt with the North Green threat, well, actually you didn't. You say you defeated ISIS. Well, actually, you didn't. You say there's no climate change because it's cold in the Midwest. Well, actually, it's a major national security danger, right? But I do think it shows the danger of an administration that makes policies that aren't informed by facts and evidence and analysis, right?

I mean, the Iran deals the clear case of that. Like, they're still complying with this agreement. Like, we pulled out, like, almost a year ago, and they're actually still complying, right? like Trump still says all the time that they're not. Like it also shows to reporters, by the way, that you don't have to say, well, Trump says that they're not complying, but, you know, Iran says, no, like, actually, there are factual bases for evaluating this. I'll say the one thing I was disappointed by is that Gina Haspel, the director of the CIA

wouldn't discuss at all, like, their Khashoggi judgments, you know, in open session. It's like, come on, guys. Like, why can't you let the American people know what you think happened here? There are ways of doing that without revealing sources and methods. But again, to me, it just, it highlights that Trump is kind of operating separate and apart from the vast multi-hundred billion dollar apparatus of his own government. And the danger of that is that that means he's making decisions that are entirely divorced from facts. Yeah. It's one of those moments where it's just, it's so stark.

Yeah. The degree to which he lies every day about these major national security priorities. And there's just, we've not figured out. way to hold him accountable yet. Hopefully the speaker of the House will continue to find ways to do that. I mean, she's doing it so far. Yeah, well, and the North Korea one's a really important example because, you know, most Americans don't know, I mean, that much about North Korea, right? And I don't say that to be condescending at all. Like, who's kind of able to keep up with, you know, the intricacies of North Green program? So, you know, when Trump goes out and says he's dealt with a threat

and everybody just saw a picture of him smiling and shaking hands with the North Korean leader, they may feel a lot of people think oh okay I don't have to worry about that anymore and the reality is that they haven't you know as we've discussed here haven't given up their nuclear weapons at all yeah not at all I did not want to talk about Afghanistan this week but there's potentially huge news that I think we just have to cover according to Zalmei Khalil Zad who is the U.S. negotiator with the Taliban the U.S. the U.S. and the Taliban have agreed in principle to a deal where the Taliban would guarantee Afghan territory is never used by terrorist organizations, which in turn could lead to a full pull out of U.S. troops, which could then lead to additional concessions like a ceasefire from the Taliban and agreeing to negotiate directly with the Afghan government. That is the Taliban agree to negotiate with the Afghan government, which they previously refused to do. Obviously, these are delicate talks. These things, you know, fall apart all the time, but it would be a huge step forward.

And when you really step back and think about it, I mean, our national security interests in Afghanistan is preventing al-Qaeda from plotting another 9-11. So the letter of this deal would specifically prevent that. I don't know how you would enforce this promise to not let foreign terrorist organizations come into the country. It's not like they control every swath of territory, so they need to figure that out. But I think we should also be honest that this outcome would be horrific for a lot of people who would live in Afghanistan under Taliban rule, especially. women. So I guess just the question, is this the best deal that's ever going to be on the table as Trump announces we're going from 14,000 to 7,000 troops? Yes. And I think it is a deeply unsatisfying and limited deal, but the best one that you're going to get. I mean, look,

I think we should have been out of Afghanistan already. And I say that not just commenting on Trump's policies, I would have liked to see us because this pledge has actually been the reality for years. The Taliban does not sponsor attacks outside of Afghanistan. They just don't. They fight in Afghanistan. They have not really been inactive cahoots with al-Qaeda in some time. Al-Qaeda is kind of driven to Pakistan. I think they have marriages of convenience, but it's not like back in the day when they're

kind of providing protection for these al-Qaeda safe havens. So in reality, the Taliban commitment kind of validates what is already the reality, which is the Taliban doesn't care about attacks outside of Afghanistan. They just, they care about Afghanistan, right? I think the other thing that is tricky about this is that we, when we're in government, you'll remember this, always tried to insist on a negotiated piece where the Afghans were negotiating the Taliban, the Afghan government. And it has been kind of interesting to watch this kind of be a Taliban-U.S. discussion, like the Afghans kind of cut out of it, which kind of indicates the degree to which the Taliban are going to be power players going forward. All of that said, I think this is a good outcome. I mean, I think it's you need to create some framework to wind this war down.

My hope is that things like the commitment to a ceasefire become real so that there is some kind of space for a return to less violence in Afghanistan. I don't think anybody should have any illusions, though. You know, the Taliban will be very influential in the parts of Afghanistan that it already controls. The Afghan government will need continued support from us just to try to stay where they are and to control Kabul, right? And so it's going to be, you know, a messy situation. But again, as we, I don't think that keeping U.S. troops there has prevented that from happening. In fact, that's all happened while the U.S. has been there. And so you need some diplomatic framework to begin to extricate us from Afghanistan, and then hopefully and importantly,

to get the Taliban and the Afghan government talking to each other. And so that's the next big step that was alluded to that needs to take place here. You know, this is an odd comment, because I agree with you, this is an imperfect solution to say the least, but I do think our troops seem to get out. And it was one of the first times during the Trump administration where I thought, maybe this is the one silver lining to having a Republican president. Because Trump can cut this deal and not have Lindsey Graham light himself on fire in front of the White House and Fox News attack. I mean, President Hillary Clinton would never be able to cut this deal, which frankly probably reflects the best case scenario in Afghanistan.

You get just pressure to continue fighting. And a guy this was the one time I do this on this podcast. Yeah, I mean, if Obama had come out with this kind of deal, I can't even imagine what would be happening. Like the White House would be invaded by a mixture of like Lindsey Graham and Tom Cotton and Marco Rubio. And these guys are like fucking silent, you know, on this stuff, right? But you're right. I mean, and look, the unsatisfying thing about all of these post-9-11 wars, right, is, where there's a lot.

But, you know, one of them is, like, it was very apparent very early on that there was never going to be some surrender ceremony on the USS Missouri, like at the end of World War II here. And then it got even more apparent that, like, we weren't even really, we certainly weren't going to win in any traditional definition of the word win. there's going to be these unsatisfying murky outcomes. Right. We were never able to hold territory, then transfer it to Afghan authorities. That part fell down. And what we tried to do in the Obama administration is say, look, the goal was to defeat al-Qaeda. And on that, you know, we've scored some wins.

You know, it may not be all done, but we took up in law and we took out the leadership. I don't know when the goal became like remaking Afghanistan, remaking Iraq. like it was the Bush administration that moved the goalpost and defined objectives that were completely unwinnable. And this is the problem that I have with the blob, as we, you know, the farm, it's like you end up taking on these maximalist objectives. Like if we don't have a a democratic Afghanistan that is providing security and controls the whole country, we have to stay there forever. And the same is true in Iraq and the same is true everywhere, right? And this is what the real world looks like. You know, sometimes you have to say, like, this is the most we can get

done here, you know, and I think this represents that. One other scary thing before a fun thing. So there's been a serious outbreak of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The latest number is 733 confirmed in probable cases, 459 deaths, more scary, a bunch of the teams that get sent to, like, manage these outbreaks, track them, clean shit up, or getting met with aggression and potential violence, which can compound the problem because you can't, you know, help people. So you were at the I was in 2014 when there was like a very scary, able outbreak in West Africa, spiraled out of control.

Donald Trump weighed in because he ruins everything. Can you just remind us what that was like and what it took to control an epidemic or an outbreak like this? Well, West Africa was in some ways more problematic because it's more connected to the rest of the world. So there are more people coming and going from West Africa than from the Democratic Republic of Congo. So you had a situation where at peak there were estimates

that there could be tens of millions of people who would contract this. and it would basically destroy these three West African countries and potentially spread to many other places. In order to get that under control, Obama did something totally unprecedented. We deployed the U.S. military. So we sent almost 3,000 troops to set up essentially a staging area in West Africa

that would serve as the hub for health workers from all around the world coming in and building treatment centers and getting this epidemic under control. And ultimately, we, we were able to dramatically drive down the number. I mean, I think the number of deaths still obviously horrific and tragic ended up being somewhere in the range of 20,000. Again, there were estimates that this could have been in like the many, many millions.

And it took that level of foreign intervention. It was almost like treating it like a war. Like we're sending troops and we're building infrastructure and the rest of the world is pitching in health care workers. And frankly, we had to be back the fearmongering from. people like Trump and Chris Christie, who remember wanted to kind of quarantine health care workers. Shut down the airports. And shut down the airports.

And basically, you need health care workers to go do that to stamp out this disease. And they were disincentivizing anybody from doing that, right? It was highly irresponsible. I think in the DRC, you're helped a bit by the remote and isolated nature of the place, that there's not as much of a capacity for it to spread. However, it could. And it will require a degree of competence. that this administration hasn't demonstrated because the Ebola response, we needed to have

the U.S. military involved, U.S. aid agencies that could provide health care workers, the Centers for Disease Control, the National Institutes of Health working on treatments and vaccines. So a very complicated arrangement of federal agencies. Frankly, you need good government and good process. And those are two things that this administration doesn't have. And so I've always worried about what would happen if something like an epidemic took root because they're just not equipped to deal with it. Yeah, scary. Okay, that was dark. So let's talk to you about Jared Kushner for a second to laugh a little steam. NBC reported that Jared Kushner's application for a top secret security clearance was rejected by two career White House security specialists, but later overruled by a former Pentagon employee who was

installed by the Trump administration in 2017. There have been stories swirling about Jared's security clearance, but this is the most detailed we've gotten. This guy who they installed to oversee the the process apparently overruled like the experts in 30 cases and gave people top secret clearances where they had problematic backgrounds. So then on top of that, Jared went to the CIA to get a clearance to see sensitive compartmented information or your SCI clearance, which is higher level, more secret stuff. And the CIA reportedly said no and they even called over to the White House to say, how the hell did this guy get a top secret clearance given all the problems he has. So NBC says he doesn't have an SCI clearance still. That is shocking to me because

he's been in the PDB and supposedly managing Middle East peace and the Saudi account and all these other things. But like Ben, a security specialist overruling career professionals in 30 cases to give someone unqualified for a clearance, a top secret clearance seems to me to be a massive, massive scandal. I'm glad that the oversight committee, the House oversight committee is going to investigate it. but I mean, just the potential damage that could have been done is massive. Yes. So they should focus on this. It makes a mockery of the process, you know.

Let's be also very clear. We don't know the precise reasons why this particular clearance for Jared was denied. We can speculate, however, that it's the potential that, you know, he was compromised, that foreign governments had the goods on him because of corruption or because of what he'd done Russia during the campaign to transition, right? The most important reason that you would deny a clearance to somebody is so that they don't have sensitive information and can't be blackmail by foreign government, right? That is the number one reason why you would not want somebody to have a clearance. And everything we know about Jared and the group of grifters and malcontents

that probably make up those 30 people suggest that they were very valid, you know, this wasn't like, you know, drug use, which I'll get to in a second. I think you got to it earlier. This was something that really matters, right? And so it shows like a complete, utter disregard for the rules and the standards. And also a casual approach to our national security. Because if the professionals are saying,

hey, these are national security risks if you give these people clearance because they're susceptible to blockmail. And there's some guy saying, well, no, 30 of these people, the president says they get the clearance to get the clearance. You know, that's really fucking dangerous. Yeah.

You know? Yeah. I mean, you alluded to it, right? I mean, the only people I can remember getting grief about their clearances were people who had, like, smoked pot more previously than five or seven years, which was seen as the available, you know, the acceptable window before you were clean to get a clearance, which is dumb and arbitrary. So let's be very clear. Like, that was me. So I'm going to tell the story. I'm going to tell the story in part because I remember the right wing had this theory for a while.

They found out that I got initially denied a clearance, right? and then they said that they thought it was because I was an Iranian agent. Yeah, of course. But here's a real story, because it's kind of funny story, so bear with me. But the night before the election, Cassandra Butts, so I'd been submitted for an interim security clearance, right? So during the transition, so I got out of clearance. The night before the election, Cassander Butts got rest of soul, wonderful, lovely woman

who died tragically of an illness while Tom Cotton was holding her up for an ambassarhip for two years. She calls me because she was running the transition. She says, hey, you're denied it. your interim clearance. And I'm like, what the fuck? And she's like, because of like the recent nature of your marijuana use, right? And so I was fucking terrified that I wouldn't be able to come and serve in government because I actually would have abided by the rules. If somebody said, you're denied a clearance, I would have thought, well, then I can't work at the NSC, right? What happened,

though, was not like Donald Trump came in and snapped his fingers or Barack Obama. She said, no, look, what they do now is they go and they investigate you and they, you know, go to. And they, you know, go talk to a lot of people and they check out basically whether you're some like rampant needle in the armed drug user or whether, you know, this could be kind of explained away as like, okay, this is another person who's done marijuana. And they did that investigation over the next few months and I ended up getting a full clearance and SEI by the government and by the people who do this, right? So they went by the book and they determined like this is actually not a threat. This guy is not a drug addict and is not like at risk of being blackmailed by foreign

governments who know that this guy once smoked pot, right? That's how you do it by the book, right? And then I ended up getting SCI and all the other clearances. These guys clearly just, they didn't like the answer they got. They just said, well, we'll just overrule you, right? And again, overrule you on far more sensitive shit than whether Jared like took a hit, like a, or had an edible a few years ago, right? And the last thing I'd say about this is, I guarantee you that they're still breaking these rules. If Jared is sitting the PDB, you discuss SEI information in the P. Every single day. You discuss covert operations in there. Like, there's no way that that guy is not sitting in rooms today that he should not be in, right?

So not only did they break the rules and giving in the top secret clearance, I'm sure that, like, if he's doing all the things that they say he's doing, you know, Middle East peace, society relationship, going to the PDB, then they're just flaunting the rules again. And it adds to this, again, not just perception, this reality, that they think there are two sets of rules, Like one that applies to everybody and one applies to them. You're not supposed to get the job if you can't get the clearance, Jared. You got the clearance. Yeah.

You must be a cleaner whistle than me, Tom. Well, I mean, it took a while. Yeah, yeah. They must have done that investigation. I remember filling out the form too and it was not a very fun process. I should add, just for the concern of people who worry about drug use, if you're in that list, they drug test the shit out of your own government. I mean, I would get the random calls with a high degree of frequency.

Yes, yes, yes, lots of peeing in the EEOB. I peed in a lot of cups in the year. Last question for you. Sorry about that. You flagged this story for me. It was a headline in New York Times called The Bumbling Spy. And there's this group called The Citizen Lab, which is a cybersecurity watchdog organization up at Toronto at a university there. So they've done some really impressive work, you know, exposing intelligence agencies that are part of government censorship or surveillance of dissidents, including the fact that there's Israeli software was used to spy on Jamal Khashoggi's friends before his murder.

And his friends think that Khashoggi's, like, true feelings about the Saudis were in messages that were hacked. And so they saw, like, his blunt opinion. And that led to his death. So this should have been a bigger scandal. No kidding. Dangerous shit. So long story short, like, Citizen Lab gets his outreach from this weird character who says he wants to invest. But they smell a rat.

So they invite basically two AP reporters to come to this meeting at a New York hotel and sort of stake it out and watch this person. as there's sort of a double spy game going on. It's an amazing story. So it's an amazing story. Everybody should read this story. You've been a victim of these people. So they think this guy is with Black Cube, who was spied on you. So I'm just curious, like, what your take on this piece was and how it made you feel

knowing that these guys are still operating with impunity? Yeah. So the Black Cube, this group of former Israeli intelligence agents, you know, was hired to dig up dirt on me and my family and Colin Call. And they reached out to my wife. And it was a similar thing, like someone with like a shell, company, reached out to my wife because he said he's making a movie. She's smarter than me, so she didn't respond. But the same, this guy shows up and he says he's, you know, somebody who he's

not and he can't keep his story straight. I mean, it's almost comic to read the story. Like he, he said in the initial contact, he referenced having a son and then the meeting he said he had a daughter. You know, like he couldn't even like keep his fake identity straight. My favorite part was when they finally bust him and he tries to storm out and then he forgot to pay the bill. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. But I mean, it pisses. me off that like with these fucking clowns like operating with this like kind of weird degree of impunity careening around the world in the U.S. In the United States like trying to do these intelligence setups. And again, what bothers me is,

you know, if it's Black Cuban, we know that they helped try to dig up dirt on Harvey Weinstein's accusers as well as Obama people. And now they're going after people who just uncovered the truth, right, to intimidate them. I, I, I, I want to know what is the regulation around these people. You know, like, what is the Israeli government doing? Something suggests to me that you don't have a bunch of former Mossad people operating without the Israeli government knowing what they're up to, right? Or the U.S. government, for that matter.

And so I do think there needs to be a question. I don't think citizens and democracies are comfortable with the idea of people who've spent decades on the taxpayer dime learning how to be spies, then becoming these kind of rogue agents. It's one thing to kind of we gather, you know, it's unsavory but people might gather like on opposition research on people. Yeah, yeah. But it's a different thing. It's just a different

nature of thing to kind of pretend to be somebody else and to be launching these entrapments and these kind of spy operations. I think it bears a little more sunlight and scrutiny. Yeah, I mean, to your point, right, I mean, the political candidates who oppositions research and will forever, but this

guy was making all these leading statements like, doesn't citizen lab do its work because of, you know, hatred and racism against Israel. That's sort of that kind of leading question, which is, you know, not very good spy craft because the guy sniffed it out immediately. Yeah, and also they don't, right? And, like, this gets back to what we've discussed here a lot, which is, like, you can have concerns with the policies of Israeli government and not, part of the reason why

it was so laughable is that these people aren't, like, these raging any semites. Like, they're just people who are trying to understand what's happening in a certain cyber realm. Just nice nerds up in Canada. There's some nice guys up in the universe. received Toronto or something, you know, like. Yeah, leave Malone. Yeah. Ben, that's all I have for today.

Yeah, that was good. We covered a lot of grounds. Yeah, sorry about my clearance story, but I figured I could set the records right here. Look, there have been a lot of crazy people speculating about that clearance issue for a long time. So I'm glad we covered up here. Yeah, if you go back and look at the resources devoted by the free beacon and actually letters from like Republican congressmen, they were convinced or not. They convinced themselves that I was planted by the Iranian government.

in 2007, 2008 to get into the Obama Whitehouse to do the Iran deal, right? So the degree of conspiracy theory was a little nuts when, frankly, it was far more easily explainable. Like, yeah, I had some pretty recent marijuana use. Yeah, give me a break. Thank you again to Anthony Faiola. Thank you, Ben. Talk to guys next week.

Great. See you guys. Bye.