Quote of the Day (William F. Buckley, on a Past CIA Operation)

“A dozen years ago someone remarked that the weekend’s attempted assassination of Sukarno had all the earmarks of a CIA operation: Everyone in the room was killed except Sukarno.”— Political commentator, editor, and conservative public intellectual William F. Buckley (1925-2008), “On the Right,” Danville Register (Va.), Dec. 23, 1972

Well, this weekend’s removal of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro was more successful than that failed (and officially denied) hit on the Cold War Indonesian President. The story has it that the Central Intelligence Agency had been tracking Maduro’s activities since August.

But I doubt that we will find out soon whether the CIA under current head John Ratcliffe made any mistakes in this or any other activities since the beginning of Trump 2. In a larger sense, questions are already rising about even the wisdom of such covert operations as this one.

A warning to this effect was raised by none other than current Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. Within 24 hours of President Trump’s announcement of Maduro’s removal, people with memories longer than the 24-hour-news cycle were circulating Gabbard’s 2019 warning about such an operation:

“Venezuela poses no threat to the United States,” Gabbard, then a Democrat, said in a video. “Congress has not authorized the United States to go to war in Venezuela, and there’s no justification for our country to violate the sovereignty of the Venezuelan people.”