A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
To help us understand the significance of this U.S. strike inside Venezuela, Philip Mudd joins us now. He served as deputy director of both the CIA's Counterterrorist Center and the FBI's National Security Branch. Phil, the drone strike marks the first known attack on the target - on a target in Venezuelan soil. What do you think? Act of war or not quite?
PHILIP MUDD: I would say not quite. The big question to me is not just what happened with this strike on this land facility. The question to me would be what's happening in the West Wing with conversations, for example, with Marco Rubio, Secretary of State, with the military, with the Treasury about economic sanctions. The CIA is not the answer to regime change. The government and regional allies are the answer. So this is a tiny piece of a puzzle. My question is, is there a bigger piece that the government is willing to implement, with things like expanded economic pressure, with things like the U.S. military's overt involvement with things like pressure from neighboring countries, the CIA is not the only solution. I want to know what else is going on.
MARTÍNEZ: How much further inland, though, would they have to get? Would they have to go to Palacio de Miraflores? That's where Maduro works and resides in Caracas. Would that be enough to call it something more than just an act of war?
MUDD: I think if you go against a presidential facility, which I would be surprised - I mean, that's sort of an assassination attempt. That's not just an act of war. That's almost beyond an act of war. I think the real question would be, or a couple of the questions would be, one, is the U.S. military going to get involved? Two is, are going to be military incursions from any regional states? And also, you have the question of whether there's any communication, including covert communication, with the military there to see if there are military officers who are willing to move. Much better to have locals who have a say in what's going to happen after Maduro than to have the U.S. do it itself. Doing it ourselves is not a viable option long term - maybe short term, but not long term.
MARTÍNEZ: You mentioned the CIA. An unnamed U.S. official confirmed to NPR that the CIA was behind that drone strike on the dock facility. So when it comes to President Trump, who is talking about this openly, Phil - he's made the operation public - how unusual is that?
MUDD: It is very unusual. I'm sure there are critics of it. I'm not sure I would be a critic of it. The reason it's unusual is typically the U.S. government wants to hide its hand in covert operations. For example, going back to the 1980s, 1990s, the biggest program I ever saw was the program to support Afghan rebels. In theory, in public, we never talked about it because you don't want to show your hand that the U.S. government is involved in a civil war in Afghanistan. In this case, the game has changed. As you were talking about a few minutes ago with your correspondent, the president wants to send a signal to Maduro that we're coming after him. And so this is part of the signal.
The other thing I'd say about keeping programs secret is you keep them secret when you don't want to give your adversary an advantage. In this case, the adversary knows what we did. We attacked a facility in their country. There's no real secret going on here. They know what happened and why it happened and who did it. So the president talking about it, to me, is unusual, but I'm not sure what he gave away to the opposition when he did that.
MARTÍNEZ: Philip, if the Trump administration wants to escalate pressure, continue escalating pressure on the Maduro government, how else might they do it?
MUDD: The thing from the CIA perspective, the questions I would have would be duration - are you going to continue to do this? Frequency - are you going to do this every day, every week? Variety of targets - if you want to signal to the government, are you going to go beyond this narrow range of narcotics targets? And then, are you going to signal by your contacts with like-minded countries, countries that agree with the United States that you're going to up the pressure and that the U.S. is not the only game in town? - in other words, that there's a broad coalition of people - as we used to say in Iraq, the coalition of the willing - who are going to participate in that.
So there's a lot of steps, going back to what I talked about about White House meetings in the Situation Room, a lot of steps that'll involve Marco Rubio, that'll involve the U.S. military, that'll involve the U.S. Treasury. And those steps, we've seen a bit of, but there's a lot the president can do beyond point strikes against a single target in the country.
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah. There have been sanctions on Venezuela since 2006. The Bush administration put sanctions on Venezuela. That's when Hugo Chavez was president. And the Obama administration in 2014 sanctioned Venezuela for human rights violations. I know that, Phil, maybe you're not a sanctions expert, but it's a form of economic war, I would assume. How much does that hurt or help the United States when in conjunction with what they're doing now?
MUDD: Boy, sanctions can occasionally work. I looked at - you talked about the history of sanctions, but you're looking what's happened just recently with stopping vessels that are exporting oil from Nicaragua. That is a huge step. That's not just a sanction. It's an economic step. To me, that's another military step that takes us a step closer to intervention in changing the regime. I think sanctions can have a piece of this. I - my personal perspective is that sanctions alone don't work. One of the reasons is that you encourage the local population to band together to say, it's not Maduro who did this. It's the outside people. Let's band together, including the opposition, to ensure that the outside people, those imposing the sanctions, never have a say in what happens in our country. Sanctions can help. I don't think they're the only solution here if you want to change the regime.
MARTÍNEZ: Now, there are a lot of questions about the legality of this strike. I know you're not a lawyer, but you previously served in the CIA. Phil, if you were still on the inside and you were getting directives to carry out these strikes - on the dock facility, on the boats - would you do so without hesitation?
MUDD: No. I lost my career - this is germane to your question. I lost my career in 2010. I quit because I had been involved in the CIA black site programs. When we first briefed those to Congress - and I did brief them to Congress - the Congress said, OK. Later on, they flipped because the national mood had changed. The lawyers can tell you whatever they want to tell you. You can get an opinion out of the Department of Justice. But then the question goes to - broader.
What will people say in five years and 10 years? What will they say not just about the legality of this? What will they say about the ethics of targeting criminals? These are not military targets. These are criminal targets. And will lawyers in the future and the U.S. Congress have a different opinion than lawyers today? If I were on the inside, I take a page from the history of the'd CIA and say, this may sound OK today, but later, people are going to come after us for this because it doesn't smell right.
MARTÍNEZ: Do you think that may have played a part in why the admiral in charge of U.S. military forces in Latin America stepped down recently without really explaining anything?
MUDD: Look, I can't speak for him, but when I saw that story break, the only conclusion you can have is that somebody looked at this - the - leadership takes experience over decades. Someone with that level of leadership and experience looks at this and says, I've seen situations like this over the course of a long career. This is going to hurt in the end. I got to go.
MARTÍNEZ: All right. Philip Mudd is a former CIA counterterrorism official and senior FBI intelligence adviser. Phil, thank you very much.
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