SpyTalk

As President George W. Bush was preparing to invade Iraq in March, 2003, he received a stern warning from a foreign leader that what he was about to do was a “significant” violation of the United Nations charter and international law.

It was a powerful message that resonates today as another U.S. president, Donald Trump, vows to “run” Venezuela and take over Greenland—by force, if necessary, according to his press secretary.

But the message to Bush came from about the last person in the world you would expect to be cautioning anyone about restraint.

“You said that the goal was regime change,” Russian president Vladimir Putin told Bush in a March 18, 2003 telephone call, a transcript of which was just declassified and posted Wednesday by the non-profit National Security Archive.

If the Trump administration’s game plan for Venezuela mirrors the 1989 capture of Panama’s Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega, don’t expect a speedy trial for deposed dictator Nicolás Maduro—nor an easy outcome.

With Panama as a guide for how the U.S. Justice Department will proceed, officials are likely already reaching out to convicted drug dealers and former co-conspirators willing to testify against Maduro.

Venezuela Crude: The Central Intelligence Agency played a pivotal role in the capture of Venezuelan president Nicholas Maduro, according to several reports. The New York Times reported that the CIA “had a team on the ground beginning in August collecting information on Mr. Maduro,” and that it “also collected intelligence from a fleet of stealth drones and a human source who could get close to Mr. Maduro and monitor his movements, according to people briefed on the matter.” The Washington Post reported that the CIA “also provided support to the air, sea and land operations, according to two people familiar with the mission.”

It’s been a while. Now, however, torture is back in the news. And in multiple ways. At home and abroad, the Trump administration has violated human rights taboos with alarming brazenness, echoing with newfound vigor the wrongful path set in motion by the war on terror. We’ve not seen the return of secret overseas CIA black site torture chambers, but anything seems possible under an administration that has shown an appetite for ignoring legal guardrails.

In November, the United States announced to the world its refusal to condemn the practice of torture. It voted “No” on the U,N. resolution against torture, the first time in the resolution’s forty-year history that the US has withheld support for the “Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.”

Since October 7, 2023, a rivalry has been unfolding between Israel and Turkey that evokes the “Great Game,” the 19th-century struggle between Czarist Russia and Britain for control and influence in Afghanistan, Iran, and Central Asia. Then, as now, this rivalry involves espionage and intelligence gathering, diplomatic intrigue, proxy warfare, and military missions. The U.S. is on the verge of getting more involved.

Israel and Turkey are competing for influence in Gaza, Syria, and now also in the Horn of Africa. The latest expression of this contest is the decision by Israel’s government, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, to recognize Somaliland as an independent and sovereign state and to establish open relations with it, including the opening of diplomatic missions in Hargeisa and Tel Aviv.

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has for years pursued regional hegemony and sought to revive the glory days of the Ottoman Empire; Prime Minister Netanyahu is attempting to challenge him. Donald Trump, who claims friendship with both leaders, has to maneuver carefully between them.

Spy for All Seasons: A former CIA chief of station in Venezuela, Enrique de la Torre, has created a lobbying firm and “raided” four of the clients from his previous firm that was connected to the [Marco] Rubio-affiliated Continental Strategies,” independent investigative journalist Jack Poulson reports at his All Source Intelligence substack. “De la Torre in late November published a blog post entitled ‘The Case for Ending Maduro’s Rule,’ which blamed the Biden administration’s reluctance to overthrow the Maduro government largely on Juan S. González, a former national security advisor for the Western Hemisphere.”

Catch and Release: Critics have blasted the “War Department” and White House for liquidating suspected drug boat crews and evidence that they were headed to the U.S. with fentanyl by blowing them out of the water. Now it turns out that the U.S. returned two survivors of an Oct. 16 attack to Ecuador “for detention and prosecution,” describing them as “terrorists.” Authorities promptly let them go because, well, the U.S. supplied no evidence of their guilt. (Washington Post)

Wishing you and yours a serene holiday season from all of us here at SpyTalk. Catch you on the rebound!

—Jeff Stein

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GENERATIONS OF US have now grown up reading or watching stories about the courage and heroism of the “Greatest Generation,” those young men and women who risked their lives in the existential battle against fascism in World War II. Yet, even 80 years after the guns fell silent, new chapters of that vast conflict continue to emerge, reminding us that the war was fought not just on the beaches of Normandy or the islands of the Pacific, but in the shadows.

Bruce Henderson’s captivating new book, Midnight Flyboys, takes us back to those days of danger and glory, illuminating a specific, harrowing campaign that has long remained a footnote in the broader history of the air war. It centers on the operations of the code-named “carpetbaggers”—U.S. Army Air Force pilots who flew modified B-24 bombers on low-altitude, nighttime missions to drop supplies and allied agents behind enemy lines. Central to this story are not just the aviators, but the intrepid spies—many of them women, by the way—who volunteered to hitch rides on these treetop missions, parachuting into the peril of Nazi-occupied Europe.

Wake Up and Smell the Borscht: The head of Russia’s SVR foreign intelligence organization, Sergey Naryshkin, claimed Friday that he had a “lengthy” conversation with new MI6 chief Blaise Metreweli back in October. Oh, to be a fly on that line. On Monday, Metreweli took the opportunity in her first speech as director to describe Russia as a “menace.”

“The front line is everywhere,” she said, with Moscow “testing us in the grey zone with tactics that are just below the threshold of war,” a reference to Vladimir Putin’s escalation of espionage, sabotage, cyber and drone ops against NATO allies, not to mention his bombing of Ukrainian civilians. “We are operating in space between peace and war,” Metreweli said—and much more in a virtual wake-up call to Trump..

The Trump administration has for the first time acknowledged there were “substantial security” issues relating to the destruction of the East Wing of the White House—an apparent reference to the work’s impact on a highly secure underground bunker built to protect the president and top officials from enemy attack.