The Colonels Corner Corporate Coup Venezuela Part 15 Final

auto-scroll word highlight ▶ Rumble @ here

Transcript

0:00 How are you today, Bridget? Oh, wonderful, wonderful. Another beautiful day. It is definitely beautiful here. Well, good. It's been raining and kind of dreary, but we've been through a major drought. So, you know, it's kind of a good thing. Right? Yeah. All right. We got a lot to cover today. So we're going to jump right in. Let me get us live over here on Rumble.

0:29 Please add SR because I keep getting thrown out every time. Yesterday I did post a bunch of stuff about the operation you were going through. Yeah. But right before it threw me out, I have reset everything over and over and over, and it just does it. It's just going to do it, and, you know, it's all I can do. Mine comes in fits.

0:57 It will do it like three days in a row, multiple times. And then for the next three or four days, it's fine. So I don't know what's going on. Right. All right. We're on Chapter 16. When Anya visited Venezuela in December 2020, she covered the first legislative elections since the opposition won control of the National Assembly in 2015.

1:26 And when I was looking over this last night, preparing for today, when I started this chapter, which we're going to talk about elections, one of my first thoughts was, hold on just a second. The opposition won seats in their legislature, but I thought they had a corrupt system. So they elected Maduro.

2:00 in a presidential election, and then they have legislative elections and the majority of the legislatures are from the opposition party. How can that be corrupt? I mean, either they shouldn't have been in the legislature or he shouldn't. You know what I mean? If you're going to do this, would you not do it so that you had control of the legislature too?

2:32 Again, details matter. And these are the things that you don't learn if you don't read alternative sources of information. So the December 6th vote not only presented the Maduro-lined Gran Palo Politico-Simón Bovaler party, it's an abbreviated GPP coalition.

3:00 with an opportunity to regain a majority in the legislature, but marked the formal conclusion of the Guaido fake presidency. With his Validad Popular Party officially boycotting the election, Guido, Guaido, was guaranteed to lose his seat. He already...

3:29 had a dubious position there anyway. By refusing to take part in the vote, Guaido and other members of the U.S.-backed coalition intensified their tried and true strategy of delegitimizing Venezuela's election process in international media, which spun their lack of participation as evidence of Maduro's authoritarian rule, even though they voluntarily did it themselves.

4:01 The push to sabotage the vote was overseen by Leopoldo Lopez, who coordinated the opposition PR campaign from the comforts of Spain. He's not even in Venezuela. So this is literally the definition of outside interference. After spending roughly a year in Madrid's Caracas embassy,

4:30 where they found sanctuary following Guaido's failed military uprising in April of 2019. Lopez and his family finally relocated back to the capital of the former Venezuelan colonial occupier, Spain. Lopez escalated the opposition delegitimization efforts on November 30th when he tweeted a video of

5:04 official Diosdado Caballo proclaiming before a campaign rally, those who don't vote don't eat. The culprits of the humanitarian catastrophe that Venezuela is experiencing blackmail the hungry people with food, Lopez wrote in a message. Lopez allegations were promptly repeated by U.S. lawmakers who issued

5:32 a since-deleted December 4th letter accusing Venezuela's government of threatening to withhold food from citizens who refused to participate in what they characterized as a sham election. Their denunciation was parroted by Wall Street Journal reports, which described Venezuela's upcoming vote as a sham, merely a challenge.

6:03 merely designed to challenge incoming U.S. President Joe Biden. In their case to undermine the Venezuelan Democrat process, U.S. officials in their lackeys overlooked the cultural and comical context of Kabbalah's remarks. Though Kabbalah did in fact say those words, those who don't vote don't eat. In the short clip Lopez deceptively posted to Twitter,

6:32 A full review of his statement revealed the notoriously sarcastic military captain was making a sexually charged joke. Women are going to be at the forefront of this battle, he said in the part that was deleted, explaining that he believed Venezuelan females would lead the effort to get the vote out on election day. Only then did he declare those who don't vote don't eat.

7:01 which had a double entendre meaning, meaning you weren't going to get sex. So he was actually joking that the women were in charge and would withhold sex if you don't vote, but that was completely lost on the edited clip in order for everybody to get their digs in. Cabello's words were not a threat to withhold food, but a...

7:31 play on an ancient Greek comedy in which women launched a sex strike to force the end of the Polynesian War. Though Lopez himself may have understood his deceit, the Venezuelans' flaying and literary innuendo at play in Kabbalah's comments was far too advanced for U.S. lawmakers and international media to process. For them, the narrative of

8:02 Venezuelan official openly announcing his intent to starve his own population at a public campaign rally was what they wanted to hear and what they wanted to believe. In conjunction with dishonest attacks in the press, the U.S. launched a pressure campaign against members of the Venezuelan opposition who refused to concede their right to run for office. As with previous attempts to implement a nationwide electoral

8:32 boycott, the extremist bloc zero-sum strategy was complicated by the fact that moderate forces within the opposition actually wanted to engage in the Democrat process. As one of the AP parties explained to Anya, many opposition leaders were poised to keep their AN seats. As a result, they saw no value in sitting on the sidelines and allowing a

9:03 Chavista Coalition to sweep the election unchallenged. To intimidate candidates into complying with the boycott strategy, Washington levied sanctions against a variety of opposition figures who dared to challenge it. So not only are they sanctioning Maduro's government, now they're going to sanction the opposition in Venezuela to the Maduro government because they won't go along with their plan.

9:34 That's crazy. Among those people that were targeted was Luis Parra, the anti-Maduro lawmaker and former Guaido ally who was elected leader of the Venezuelan National Assembly in the disputed January 2020 vote when Guaido climbed over the fence, as well as members of the opposition MUD coalition, while announcing

10:07 the MUD sanctions, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo accused the targeted lawmakers of enabling Maduro's efforts to rob the people of Venezuela of their right to choose their leaders in free and fair elections as he's robbing them from choosing their own leaders in a fair election. Washington's boycott campaign ultimately failed as more than 100 parties fielded the candidates.

10:37 for the December 6th vote. To obscure this reality, Reuters openly asserted that opposition candidates who participated in the election were secretly collaborating with Maduro, running a December 3rd article accusing those who defied the boycott of suspected ties to Maduro. Just can't oppose them enough.

11:05 Efforts to undermine the vote's validity extended far beyond those launched by Venezuela's U.S.-backed opposition and their media allies. Though Venezuela's government invited European officials to observe the vote in the summer of 2020, Brussels rejected the offer and called on Caracas to delay the mandated, constitutionally mandated elections.

11:29 Critics of the EU decision claimed it was meant to delay Caracas' ability to legitimize the vote with the presence of an international observer. Regardless of over 300 foreign observers from 34 countries who did travel to Venezuela to monitor the vote, which went ahead on December 6th, as constitutionally mandated, U.S. officials leapt to disqualify the results almost immediately.

11:59 And in some cases, before the polls even closed and they announced the results. So it was unfair before it was even over. Venezuela's electoral fraud has already been committed, Pompeo went to Twitter and announced. The results announced by the illegitimate Maduro regime will not reflect the will of the people. Yet the vote concluded without incident.

12:27 As more than 14,000 candidates from over 100 parties, the majority of which oppose Maduro's government, competed for 277 seats in the Venezuelan legislature. Though the radical opposition boycott resulted in lower voter participation rates than in the past, Venezuelan American political analyst Leonardo Flores

12:56 Noted turnout was not drastically lower than those seen in Americans' midterm elections, which averaged around 40%. The PSUV-GPP coalition, which is a group of two different parties, won 68% of the votes cast, securing a legitimate legislative supermajority. Beyond the material triumph,

13:24 The vote was touted as a final defeat of the U.S. regime change policy as it left Washington's coup leaders without a legitimate claim to any government office whatsoever. And so what happened was the people in Venezuela was so pissed off once it was exposed that Guaido and all of that had arranged with his fake government the theft of Sitco.

13:52 for all intents and purposes. Even the opposition parties voted for people that supported Maduro. So it literally fits the definition of blowback when we try to do something to achieve one result and you achieve the exact opposite of what you're attempting to do. And that's what all of these efforts did.

14:24 By the time of the election, roughly a month before Venezuela cast their ballots, former Vice President Joe Biden had declared victory over Trump in the 2020 election, which was marred by massive amounts of fraud accusations. For the first time in modern U.S. history, the winner of the presidential vote had not been declared on election night, but nearly four days after the polls closed.

14:54 Though many U.S. citizens went to bed on November 3rd believing that Trump had secured a victory with the delayed ballot counting that happened in all of the key battleground states and the mail-in voting thanks to COVID-19, you woke up and found out that he had lost the lead and by November 7th had completely turned around in the fake.

15:26 gay election to hand it to Biden. Regardless of your personal view, there's no denying that it is unprecedented circumstances prompting millions of U.S. citizens to lose faith in their electoral system and, by extension, exceptional ideals of U.S. democracy. This was not lost on foreign populations subject to Washington's regime change.

15:53 exploits, including the people of Venezuela. As Anya visited polling stations and chatted with voters throughout the election day on December 6th, one talking point reigned supreme. One older gentleman said, we're used to voting. On the other hand, if we consider the U.S. elections, they held a vote and Trump still claims there was fraud. No one knows.

16:24 who the president is. But Biden, the winner, is now on standby. Inside the polling centers, a middle-aged brunette noted the extreme delay in the 2020 U.S. election, saying, tonight, most certainly, we will know who our winning candidates are. The Venezuelans that she spoke to were not only confident in their electoral process, but considered it much superior to the U.S.

16:53 Based on Anya's experience covering the 2020 legislative election in the country, such comparisons were not unfounded. In Venezuela, voting machines were activated through a two-step verification process consisting of a physical check of the voter's national ID card and a digital scan of their fingerprints. After casting their vote, the voter received a physical receipt.

17:22 of their ballot, which they then personally dropped into a secure box on site. The voter then signed their name and stamped their thumbprint on a physical electoral registry to certify their participation. When the polls closed, authorities to eliminate fears of digital vote tampering by checking their final electronic tallies.

17:53 against a random sampling of 54% of the physical ballot receipts submitted by voters at the polling station. This multi-step process is what once prompted former U.S. President Jimmy Carter to characterize Venezuela's elections as the best in the world. It was also comparable to an election process that Anya observed in Bolivia, which, weirdly enough, elected...

18:22 Evo Morales, and then we overthrew him, which similarly included an in-person ID check and issuing of physical ballot receipts to enable multiple audits of the electronic vote. I even went watch poll workers in one of the precincts physically count votes by holding up every ballot for the public to see, vocally declaring the chosen candidate and marking the selection on a public displayed tally sheet.

18:53 Such transparency stood in stark contrast to the U.S. voting system, where just a few months prior, vote counts in several Iowa Democratic Party caucuses had been determined to be a literal coin toss. Venezuelan and Bolivians alike spoke of their respective systems with pride, pointing out that the physical ID check as proof of their electoral process.

19:25 This flew in the face of conventional wisdom in the U.S., where strict election laws and voter ID checks are largely considered right-wing initiatives. I think if the U.S. government believes there is fraud in Venezuela, then they should reflect on themselves and their own elections before giving an opinion on ours, one man said. There is no bigger fraud than the one committed in the U.S.

19:52 When the victors of the Venezuelan 2020 legislative vote were sworn in on January 5th, Juan Guaido's short-lived career in government reached its official end. Even so, his swan song was not broadcast in foreign press until December 2022, when outlets from Reuters to the New York Times finally declared the U.S.-backed coup leader had been voted out.

20:21 as leader of the Venezuelan opposition. A little late, but no big deal. The reports emerged after opposition lawmakers from the 2015 National Assembly, which continued to meet and legislate via videoconference well beyond their constitutionally mandated five-year term, voted to formally dissolve Guaido's interim government on December 30, 2022.

20:50 To annul this government is to leap into the void, Guaido said. Who is going to take over in this power vacuum? The only power you had was in the U.S. to bankrupt your supposed country. You literally had no power in Venezuela. The December 30th vote represented a monumental shift in the strategy of Venezuela's U.S.-backed opposition. By then, under the stewardship of Biden,

21:20 After backing his regime change efforts for nearly four years, even as moderate forces within the opposition mounted official challenges to his authority, Guaido's allies within the hardline coalition had ultimately spearheaded an effort to dissolve his government. Their wish to oust Maduro, however, endured. Everything we're doing has to do with laying the foundation for a new stage of a more effective democratic struggle.

21:50 One of the G4 people said he was stressing the opposition gold was still to defeat Maduro. Considering G4's deep financial and political links to the U.S., primarily at the time USAID, their move to drop Guaido reflected a decision made in Washington.

22:14 Though the Biden administration has yet to reverse the U.S.'s formal recognition of Guaido or Treasury's aggressive Venezuelan sanctions, for that matter, at the time that she finished this book, the radical opposition break with the failed coup leader was not a mere act of symbolism. While media reports focused on the civic implications of Guaido not being around anymore,

22:41 the material focus of Venezuela's Washington-aligned political faction remained unchanged. In addition to dissolving Guaido's non-existent government, opposition lawmakers voted to establish a commission dedicated to managing Venezuela's international financial assets, most importantly, those belonging to a state oil company. In other words, the vote appeared to be an effort by the G4, which had no legitimate authority at all.

23:11 and their U.S. backers to reassert command over these assets, which they don't own, particularly that of Sitco. Leading up to the opposition vote to remove Guaido, the U.S. government hosted the ninth summit of the Americas in Los Angeles. The State Department-led gathering, I got a gnat flying around, sorry, served as a roundtable on Biden's

23:42 administration policy towards Latin America and the Caribbean, featuring esteemed guests like Salvadoran President Bukele, Bolivian President Luis Arque, and other regional dignitaries. Washington formally excluded three governments, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. The trio

24:10 NSC Chief John Bolton infamously characterized as a troika of tyranny. The person that you recognize as the leader, Democratic leader in Venezuela, is not here, a female reporter complained during a press conference to Nancy Pelosi. What do you think about the absence of Juan Guaido? Pelosi, the veteran Democratic Party leader.

24:36 who had momentarily adjourned from her partisan posturing to eagerly applaud Guaido's presence at President Trump's State of the Union address just two years prior. By whom, Nancy Pelosi asked, meaning, what do you think about it? And she's like, are you asking me? Yeah, she was asking you. Next chapter, Eskisey of Gold.

25:13 In a country beaming with natural resources, perhaps the most marvelous region of Venezuela, spanning over 4,000 square miles, is the Gran Stavana with flowing rivers, tabletop mountains, and tropical foliage. It is home to a section of Venezuela's most renowned national park and a gigantic territory that stretches over 11,000 square miles.

25:45 Within that, you find Angel Falls, which is the largest waterfall in the world. A Venezuelan friend who had climbed one of the mountains went up to the waterfall. The waterfall is very hard to get to, just FYI. It's a lot of hiking. And Anya explains how...

26:15 Her friend that was hiking had hurt her knee in the middle of the hike. And the locals took her to an area that looked like a sinkhole below the waterfall. And they rubbed some of the precious minerals that, like, in the bottom of the water basin below that waterfall.

26:43 is a gathering of minerals that come out of the mountain on the fall of the water down, wherever it tracks through. And they rubbed it on her knee. And the woman was explaining to Anya that almost immediately all of the pain in her knee was gone. So they basically believe that there's a mythical power of Angel Falls that was rooted.

27:12 in the lack of industrial contamination. And that's one of the reasons why they don't want that area messed up. And of course, it has lots of minerals as well as gold. Venezuela hosts the largest untapped gold deposit in the world, with much of its supply of precious metal concentrated in that area.

27:42 is man's most eternal and universal fixation. After all the Spanish conquistadors were pillaged, the Americas first set out for the continent in search of El Dorado, the city of lost gold. Indeed, the thirst for Venezuela's gold has been maintained as a West obsession ever since it was discovered. To fully understand gold's significance in...

28:11 context of Venezuela, it is necessary to graph the precious metals importance in the international financial system. The lust for gold, for the gilded chemical elements, stretches millennia, all the way back to the days of ancient Egypt. Despite centuries of technology, economic, and political advances, they still want gold. Even as the U.S. emerged from World War II as a dominant power,

28:40 The Bretton Woods system, established in 1944, enabled competition between national currencies through its incorporation of a gold standard. While the U.S. dollar became the principal fiat currency of international trade, the green-backed fixed exchange right under Bretton Woods allowed governments to easily convert their national currencies into dollars.

29:07 This was possible thanks to the U.S. Treasury gold window, where foreign governments exchanged unwanted U.S. dollars for physical gold buoyant. This system, in which the U.S. dollar effectively served as banknotes representing Washington's physical gold supply, was not challenged until the mid-1960s, when former imperial governments in Japan and Europe began to recover from the

29:37 long-term economic impacts of the war. After nearly 20 years of Bretton Woods, it was evident that the financial arrangement disproportionately benefited the U.S. and that Washington had violated the deal's basic terms. According to economists Michael Gratz and Olivia Beifold, by 1965, the international gold supply had not increased to match the growing supply of dollars.

30:07 The U.S. deficit had ballooned. The U.S. inflation was increasing as a result of spending on both social programs in the Vietnam War. That year, French President Charles de Gaulle delivered a landmark speech in which he declared, the convention that gives the dollar the overriding value of an international currency no longer has its initial basis, meaning that the dollar supply was not backed.

30:37 by the gold supply. De Gaulle's assertion was not unfounded. According to the IMF, by 1966, foreign central banks held more than $14 billion in U.S. dollars, yet the U.S. Federal Reserve maintained gold deposits at $13.2 billion. Of that deposit, only $3.2 billion was available to pay out foreign dollar holdings.

31:04 meaning the U.S. had printed and issued billions upon billions of paper dollars that it had no physical back gold to exchange. As a result, the U.S. dollar, stashed in the central banks of Paris, Frankfurt, Tokyo, and beyond, represented a gold supply that didn't exist. De Gaulle, the leader of France, continued in his 1965 address, We cannot see...

31:35 that in this respect, there can be any other criterion, any other standard than gold. Oh yes, gold, which never changes its nature, which can be shaped into bars, ingots, and coins, which has no nationality, and which is eternally and universally accepted as an unalterable fiduciary value par excellence. The French president

32:02 promptly endeavored to reassert his country's financial independence by launching an initiative to convert Paris's U.S. dollars into gold, but his effort was cut short. De Gaulle resigned on April 28, 1969, following months of widespread student and worker protest against his leadership. So, as soon as he said that he wanted to return to the gold standard, all hell broke loose.

32:33 And of course, we know Paris, France in general, was steeped with NATO stay behind units all over. They had already tried to kill Charles de Gaulle over 20 times at this point. And they're willing to destabilize France in order to make sure that he doesn't get to go back to the gold standard. That's typical of...

33:03 Everything that we have read. Charles de Gaulle would die the following year, and the dream of ending Bretton Woods would be buried alongside of him. By 1971, Washington's allies in Europe were officially fed up with the system. West Germany dropped the dollar on May 5th, effectively withdrawing from Bretton Woods, and immediately convened a meeting of regional finance ministers to explore alternative monetary arrangements.

33:35 That July, Switzerland redeemed $50 million worth of gold from the U.S. Treasury. The following month, French President, now George Pompidou, deployed a warship to New York Harbor alongside with a demand to repatriate $191 million worth of gold. When Washington obliged, the U.S. Gold Reserve plunged to their lowest level since 1938.

34:03 When Britain's ambassador to Washington implored the U.S. Treasury to convert $3 billion worth of London's dollar holdings into gold within a day of Paris doing it, the fragility of the U.S. Federal Reserve was laid bare. Faced with soaring domestic inflation and an evident international run on Washington's over-leveraged gold supply, President Richard Nixon gathered the Federal Reserve chairman.

34:32 Arthur Burns, Treasury Secretary John Connolly, and 13 other U.S. officials to a watershed summit at Camp David. When Nixon emerged from this meeting two days later, he announced a new economic policy that stunned the world. We must protect the position of the American dollar as a pillar of monetary stability around the world, Nixon declared in a national address.

35:02 accusing foreign speculators of waging a war against the American dollar. Accordingly, I have directed the Secretary of Treasury to take action necessary to defend the dollar. He had directed Secretary Conley to suspend temporarily the convertibility of American dollars and conditions determined to be in the interest of monetary stability and the best interests of the U.S. Known as the Nixon shock.

35:32 Washington redesigned exchange policy unilaterally ended the international monetary system that had reigned for nearly three decades. By suspending the dollar's convertibility, the U.S. government formally shuttered the Treasury's gold window that served as a basis for Bretton Woods. No longer able to exchange U.S. banknotes for gold, foreign governments were finally forced to accept that billions of U.S. dollars stored in their central banks were

36:03 In some cases, people said at the time, worthless because of the inflation. When U.S., European and Japanese officials gathered in Rome for a summit of the IMF Group of 10 that November, Treasury Secretary Conley famously informed the colleagues, the dollar is our currency, but that's your problem. Yet Nixon's 1971 surprise did not mark the end of the U.S. dollar global supremacy.

36:32 As established prior, his administration resurrected the dollar status as the world's reserve currency just three years later when U.S. officials, including Secretary of State Kissinger, negotiated a deal with Saudi Arabia that gave birth to the petrodollar. Because the U.S. and Saudi kingdom were by far the leading oil producers of the world, the 1974 arrangement ensured the U.S. dollar continued.

37:03 in its world currency status. Roughly 55 years since the petrodollar inception, the system is facing a crisis similar to the Bretton Woods in the 1960s, as Washington weaponization of the international financial system against sovereign nations that refused to submit to its will has revived a global push to dump the dollar. Meanwhile, the U.S. Federal Reserve

37:31 has increased its money printing efforts at an unprecedented rate, many more new dollars in a single month in June of 2020 than it did throughout its first 200 years in existence. Coupled with the soaring international oil prices, the increased dollar flow gave way to record U.S. inflation and subsequently caused to return to the gold standard.

37:57 by U.S. Representative Alex Mooney, introduced a bill to peg the U.S. dollar to gold in October 2022, formally proposing a return to the monetary standard that President Trump initially wanted to do during his first term. The dollar's uncertain future has renewed a global gold rush of epic proportions. International demand for gold

38:27 by close to 20% in 2022 alone, and gold market prices is on a track to shatter its all-time highs. It's no surprise, then, that foreign corporations and governments alike are keen to exploit Venezuela's vast gold supply. The Trump administration transferred control of Venezuela's U.S.-based financial accounts to representatives of the Guaido shadow government immediately following

39:02 the announcement that he was president in January of 2019. As the U.S. lobbied its allies to do the same, it found no accomplice more zealous than the U.K. Within days of the self-directed swearing-in ceremony, the Bank of England blocked Venezuela's attempt to repatriate its London-stored gold bullion, then worth $1.2 billion.

39:29 The Bank of England's decision came despite the fact that Caracas lodged its expatriation request for its gold way back in November of 2018. Months before any of this happened, they just refused to comply. Probably, since all roads lead to London, they knew this plan was in effect.

39:54 The U.S.-backed coup leader inserted himself into the drama on January 28, 27, when he published an extraordinary letter begging the U.K. officials not to give Venezuela back its gold. In the letter, he wrote, I am writing to ask you to stop this illegitimate transaction, even though it was already done months before. And he addressed it to Theresa May, the Bank of England governor, Mark Carney.

40:28 Quote, if the money is transferred, it will be used by the illegitimate regime of Nicolas Maduro to repress and brutalize the Venezuelan people, unquote. Not to feed them, not to provide anything for them, just for Maduro himself. London officially recognized Guaido as the fake president days later, further complicating the situation.

40:58 By calling into question which government, the fake one or the real one, could claim rightful ownership of Venezuela's foreign assets, the reality that Maduro's government controlled every single financial institution, including Venezuela's central bank, apparently did not matter to the British authorities, nor ours. In fact, according to John Bolton, the UK foreign minister, Jeremy Hunt,

41:25 visited Washington in the early days of the fake government and expressed that London was delighted to cooperate on steps they could take to support the fake government, including phrasing all of Venezuela's gold deposits. That was in Bolton's book. The UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office was so enthusiastic about the prospect of regime change in Caracas, in fact,

41:53 that it quickly prepared plans to further exploit Venezuela's natural wealth in the event of the coup's success. In May 2020, British journalist John McEvoy obtained UK government documents via a FOIA request that revealed the Foreign Commonwealth Office had created a clandestine unit tasked with planning Venezuela's economic reconstruction under a hypothetical

42:22 Guaido presidency. Well, that's weird. Though the Foreign Commonwealth Office established its Venezuelan reconstruction unit led by Venezuelan former ambassador to Caracas in the fall of 2019, it had been kept in secret. So they were planning it before it actually happened.

42:52 We cannot understand why they created this unit to reconstruct Venezuela when it was not destroyed, Venezuela Foreign Minister Jorge Ariza said. Following McElroy's expose, Ariza summoned the British charge de l'affaire and Caracas' Duncan Hill to demand details of this unit's purpose. I asked him, what's the meaning and what is the sense of this unit?

43:22 If they wanted to bomb and attack Venezuela like they did Iraq, like they did Afghanistan, like they did Syria, to reconstruct Venezuela with their companies and win profits out of Venezuelan tragedy and bloodshed. Venezuela's foreign minister recalled his conversation with Hill. According to Ariza, the British diplomat's only line of defense was to insist the unit had been misnamed.

43:49 so we should have used one of them sneaky names like We Support Venezuela Unit. At the time of this book's publication, Caracas' UK-stored gold reserves remain in legal limbo. Regardless, UK's authorities had already allowed Venezuelan opposition to loot a portion of the country's assets in London. In August of 2021,

44:20 McEvoy uncovered court documents revealing that Guaido officials tapped into Venezuela's U.K. bank accounts to satisfy 400,000 pounds of attorney fees stemming from the Bank of England's gold case. Fortunately for U.K. authorities, the unresolved legal fight enabled them to continue blockage of Caracas' repatriation request.

44:49 They're using Caracas's money to pay for the fight against Caracas getting their money back. Bastards. Ensuring that Venezuela's gold remained forever in the Bank of England vaults. Convenient development as London was also dealing with a bullion shortage. So just overthrow governments. Try to. If that doesn't work.

45:20 Then stick a fake government in, recognize them immediately, and tell everybody they can't have their gold back. Brilliant. What's more, the market price of gold has skyrocketed in recent years, and Venezuela's U.K. stored reserve is now worth over $2 billion, compared to its estimated value of $1.2 billion in 2018.

45:47 In other words, Guaido effectively facilitated London's indefinite seizure of Venezuelan's gold assets in contradiction of an explicit repatriation request from the country's elected government. London's modern treatment of Venezuela recalled the strategy of the British crown deployed to establish its empire centuries ago when it contracted high seas pirates to

46:16 seize ships and New World territories so they could control them. They invented a government in Narnia, a government of fantasy, to steal companies' money accounts and to steal gold from Venezuela, Maduro said. Across the Atlantic, meanwhile, Guaido's coup attempt yielded similar lucrative results for U.S. financial interests as well. As in the U.K., Guaido

46:44 directly coincided with the U.S. effort to hold Venezuela's New York gold reserves. In March of 2019, Citigroup announced that it would sell off $1.3 billion worth of Venezuelan gold bullion housed in its vaults after the governor, Caracas, failed to make a $1.1 billion debt payment to the bank. Caracas' default was by design.

47:12 Trump's sanctions introduced in 2017 banned all transactions from the Venezuelan government in U.S. financial markets. So you can't pay your debt. So we're going to steal your gold to pay your debt that you would have otherwise paid in oil revenue. Brilliant. According to Reuters, Citigroup planned to deposit surplus cash raised from the sale of Venezuela's gold, an estimated $258 million.

47:45 into a bank account in New York, while Reuters failed to disclose its beneficiary. But it was eventually revealed that Citi dropped the funds into an account owned by Venezuela's central bank, which by then had been turned over to the Guaido government. That didn't exist. So they didn't actually put it in Venezuela's central bank, because that's in Venezuela.

48:17 put it in a bank account, and gave Guaido a signature card. Though sanctions officially rendered those monies frozen, Venezuela's opposition later approved a U.S. Treasury request to transfer the funds out of City Vault and into account maintained by the New York Federal Reserve.

48:40 Venezuela's government denounced the decision, accusing Guaido's operatives of coordinating with the U.S. Treasury to enable the plunder of their country's wealth. As with London's indefinite seizure of their gold, the U.S. Treasury and city swindled was entirely enabled by the scam Guaido regime. Though the highest

49:06 these cases did not constitute the bulk of the international heist committed against Venezuela thanks to Guaido's U.S. direct coup efforts. Portugal's Novo Banco, which is majority owned by a U.S. private equity fund, similarly blocked the transfer of $1.2 billion worth of Venezuela funds to Maduro's government in February of 2019.

49:31 Months later, a Congressional Research Institute report found that the U.S. Treasury attempted to divert millions of dollars raised from its prosecution of the Venezuelan interests, like the ones we've already discussed, to bankroll the construction of the U.S.-Mexico border wall. That June, the Miami-based Pan Am Post published an investigation extensively documenting

50:04 how Guaido's envoys in Colombia blew thousands of dollars earmarked for Venezuelan refugees on luxury shopping sprees and hotel stays. That same month, Venezuelan government accused Guaido's U.S. representatives, Carlos Vecchio, of personally pocketing $70 million destined for U.S. bondholders with a stake in the country's...

50:31 state oil company PDVSA. The following April, AP Joshua Goodman revealed Venezuelan opposition lawmakers appropriated a portion of their country's seized assets to pay themselves $5,000 monthly salaries after transferring $80 million to finance Guaido's fight against COVID-19, who wasn't even in the fucking country.

51:02 They didn't give Venezuela anything. They gave Guaido $80 million for fighting COVID and he wasn't even in charge. Nice paycheck for pretending you're a president so all of these other countries can steal your country blind. Finally, the actions of Guaido's officials directly enabled a gang of corporate bandits to loot Sitco.

51:33 Venezuela's prized international asset. It is worth recalling the company's peril is primarily the result of maneuvering coordinated by Guaido's top legal advisor, Jose Inacio Hernandez, and a Canadian mining company, Crystal X, to seize those assets as payment for debt owed by the Venezuelan state. And for what was that debt determined to be owed?

52:00 as financial retribution for Venezuela's decision to nationalize their oil and to tear up a piece of paper that said you could mine but hadn't bothered to do so. With international demand for gold surging, the gold mine will no doubt incur even more value and attract more foreign interest in the future and, of course, make Venezuela more of a target.

52:32 Though the total cost of the financial hybrid war on Venezuela is impossible to tally, one fact is certain, it could have never occurred without Guaido. Nearly 50 years after Nixon seized the world's gold supply, seemingly overnight, the U.S. and its allies made off with billions of dollars worth of Venezuelan assets through the simple and absurd act of appointing a fake government.

53:04 The regime change in Caracas remains a fantasy relegated to the minds of Bolton and his crazed contemporaries, whom thankfully will soon be in the past. Even so, Guaido's imaginary authority provided by Washington and its allies proved a perfect cover for theft internationally. And one of the obvious, to me,

53:36 fallouts of this, who the hell would ever put their assets in the United States? Would anybody ever deposit gold in the United States when your government can do something at the drop of the hat to piss the U.S. off and they seize the assets? Okay. Incapable of winning elections, Venezuela U.S. backed opposition exploited Guaido's assent to a fake government.

54:06 appointing ambassadors and officials to key international capitals to steal their resources. Guaido's ability to take control of Venezuela's foreign bank accounts, diplomatic compounds, and seats before institutions like the Organization of American States was facilitated by a Western imperial regime change. Whether it was handling Venezuela's national...

54:36 Washington embassy over to an Exxon lawyer or installing a Harvard professor as a fake economic advisor and appointing him to the international, the Inter-American Development Bank, the U.S. government repeatedly demonstrated its total disregard for international law and country sovereignty. And whom did these officials serve? Though Guaido's project

55:03 claimed to represent the interests of the Venezuelan population, it revealed itself as nothing more than a vassal to the same foreign and commercial interests that have worked to overthrow Chavismo since its inception and which pillaged Venezuela throughout most of the history. The top functionaries of this U.S.-banked shadow regime were alter egos of oil titans, mining giants, and neoliberal financial institutions.

55:33 that have attacked Venezuela for a long time. What have they achieved? Thanks to their actions, Venezuela's most valuable international asset is slated for liquidation. Competing oil companies will buy up Sitco's assets for pennies on the dollar. The U.S. oil market will further monopolize. If nothing else, Sitco's destruction serves as a lesson.

56:05 of Imperialism 101, revealing the machinations of international financial system rigged in favor of transnational corporate giants. Jose Fernandez, Guaido's fake attorney general, who never argued a single case on behalf of his government in Venezuela courts, served his corporate paymasters well. He will fade into the machinery of Harvard alongside his mentor, Haasman.

56:33 who remains forever encased in an ivory tower of neoliberal delusion. Haasman will never again have the chance to test his failed economic vision on the Venezuelan population and is instead left in Boston with his Saudi-sponsored professorship. Carlos Vecchio's future is a bit brighter, though the U.S. government assumed official control over Venezuela's U.S. embassy in March of 2023.

57:01 He will continue to serve as a de facto liaison between Venezuela's radical opposition and U.S. politicians vying for votes in South Florida. Meanwhile, until Washington restores official diplomatic ties with the actual government of Venezuela, they will have to travel to Mexico, Canada, or elsewhere to conduct consular services.

57:30 Venezuela's embassy in Washington remains empty with cardboard blocking the view of anything on the inside. So that's the end of the book. I just find this absolutely fascinating because when you look at, let me just say this, if I

58:03 Wanted to affect a regime change. And I was going to set up a fake government. And I was going to have access to billions of dollars. Would you not have used Guaido instead of killing people in Venezuela by starving them? Wouldn't you have tried to get him to hand out money there? Wouldn't you have?

58:32 tried to feed the people there? Wouldn't you have tried to set up, use that money at least for the betterment of the Venezuelan people? But that never occurs to these people because that's never the intent. The intent is always to control the government. They don't give a shit about the people and to control the natural resources.

59:01 They had lots of options, but none of those options would have ever occurred to these people because they don't give a shit about people. And it's massive amounts of pain and suffering. I'm convinced that that is also part of their underlying motive. No doubt. SR, go ahead. Thank you. And thank everybody for attending here on on X and on Rumble. The way to end this book was absolutely marvelous, in my opinion. It went right to the money.

59:34 The source. It's always the money. Now, yeah, we want the resources, but why? The money. We want the money. Yep. It's always about the money. Yep. So thank you, Colonel. Yeah, because with money, you have control of everybody. And that's the reason why, you know, I've said it a million times. You can never, ever be dependent on the government to feed you because they also can starve you.

1:00:04 So it's true with everything. If you depend on the government to educate you, they will miseducate you. You have to maintain the smallest footprint of federal government ever because you have a lot more power as a population over your state and your county. And that's the way our republic was designed and set up.

1:00:33 for that reason. Can I say, it reminds me of when Charlie Kirk, when he very first began his journey, was a bumper sticker that had a slash through big government. You know, ironically. Absolutely. Now, obviously, you can't have no government, but you need to have the smallest damn government.

1:01:11 um this side of anarchy stellar go ahead um i just find it all so very um your book and the timing of all this stuff to be very coincidental to if you want to say um because of the gold reserves that they had back there and all the funny stuff that's going on just saying yep yep i just i find it fascinating that

1:01:41 The the material that is out there that gives you and I mean, I leave out a lot of Anya's more provocative words. She uses a lot of and I find this in all of the books. I just spare you guys the drama. But a lot of the books, whether they're written by people that are very liberal or they're written by people very conservative.

1:02:11 They throw in about 50 adjectives in front of meaningful words. And I don't find them helpful. It's, you know, like they talk about extremely such and such. Why do you need to? And the such and such is something already gross. So I don't need you to tell me that it's extremely gross. Just tell me that it's gross. But they do that in order to.

1:02:42 put slant on the information. I just want the information. And that really would have been my only critique of, but it's not a critique of this book. It's a critique of almost every book that we, and that's why I'm very careful when the ones that I need to be more specific as far as reading the books.

1:03:10 I always go through them and highlight what I'm actually, the important parts. There's a lot of the material that kind of sets the stage for a particular thing that's not worth talking about because it's not relevant to the overall story. It's kind of like the fluff part. Her book doesn't have fluff in it.

1:03:37 But a lot of them do like a background of what somebody is wearing. She did have that in there about, you know, how somebody was particularly dressed, like the one lady that spoke, the vice president at the UN. I just don't find that necessary in our project here. So I tend to leave those kind of things out. And then I always leave out the.

1:04:07 emotional adjectives is how I would classify them. Because you don't need it. You have so much great material that trying to slant people with the use of those words, to me, now that I've read so many freaking books, it almost kind of decreases in my estimation.

1:04:31 You shouldn't need those. You should be able to just present the material. But I know they're trying to sell a book and all that other stuff. And so I understand the whole big picture of it. Those are just my takeaways from it. But otherwise, I think her book was excellent. SR, go ahead. Thank you, Colonel. Just the facts, ma'am. Everybody wants to be Charles Dickens, but they can't. Anyway, the other thing I was looking at is from the standpoint of.

1:05:01 The strong arm tactic, it's always worked for them. And that's why they don't consider other options. The strong arm is always the one that's worked, with few exceptions, Singapore being one of them. But what else can I say? Thank you, Colonel. Sure. Deller, go ahead. I guess another thing, too, is I didn't realize.

1:05:30 And this stuff, I don't think I really ever followed Venezuela until just recently, you know, again, you know, like back in the Chavez time or whatever, but I don't think I really paid much attention to it. So thank you for bringing attention. Didn't realize, you know, like with the petrodollar thing that they were also part of that, you know, and then what's going on now and how it seems like in some respects, that's kind of being what's reversed and things, you know, along with, you know.

1:05:56 with what's going on there in Venezuela as well as, not on the book topic, but Saudi Arabia was just in town with Trump and things. So it just seems like a lot of stuff is going around it. But again, I don't think I realized how embedded the international syndicate and all of that stuff was there. It's just insane. Well, and I had no idea. I just believe the hype that Cartel de la Sol was a legitimate,

1:06:26 you know, cartel that, because a lot of countries have cartels. And then you actually read the history of it. And it was set up by two CIA paid National Guard guys on behalf of the CIA. And I'm like, what the hell? Is there anything out there that's like literally organic and not touched by those creeps? Renee, go ahead. Hey, everybody.

1:06:56 Yeah, thank you for keeping it neutral and the, you know, expressions and all that stuff. I really appreciate you doing that because it is, I agree with you, it's not necessary. And also agree with you on these, whatever, elitist, oligarch, cabal, twisted psychopaths, whatever.

1:07:25 I think they always have to double, triple down on the strategy of tension because, God forbid, we have a hot minute to thrive, prosper.

1:07:41 have faith and a sense of belief of truth and transparency because we, that's a risk to them. You know, we may, we may have a moment of, of our divinity and overthrow them. So they have to constantly double, triple down and, and keep that everybody in tension. And that strategy of tension there, there can't be a bloody minute that we can thrive in our divinity from our creator. I feel. Yeah. So,

1:08:10 And just to reiterate, one of the most interesting authors that I've come across as far as investigative work is Doug Valentine. But my gosh, his TDS is so freaking out of this world that you really have to have a strong constitution to read his material.

1:08:39 and not just want to throw the shit out. That's the factual part, because he over-obsesses, like on every other page, about his hatred for Donald Trump. And as I was telling you when I was reading his material, I've got like three or four of his books, very good about the...

1:09:11 Phoenix program and never mentions Johnson's role in it at all. And you get up to the part where Iran Contra and never mentions, he skips right over Iran Contra and goes into the next big thing, but never mentions

1:09:39 The 1990s and the MENA airport part of the governorship of Clinton. And so it makes it difficult because in all of these books, in addition to the factual information, they will use facts in order to put forth some speculation. But you've already proven to me that your judgment.

1:10:07 is not impartial. So all you can go on in those books is the facts and not like an informed opinion because their informed opinion would be completely jaded by you are only writing historical information that happened during Republican administrations. And that's why I love people like Gary Webb and some of the other

1:10:36 investigative reporters that we've covered, they don't give a shit what political party you're in. If you do bad things, you need to be investigated. And if you are truly an investigative journalist and not a propagandist, you can then apply that standard to both parties. Why are you so awesome? Go ahead. Okay. Again, another country trying to be sovereign and have their currency backed by gold. And we always wind up seeing what happens.

1:11:08 As far as the whole party thing, I'm unaffiliated. Parties are for pawns. I think everybody should understand that. I mean, I just don't even bother playing that game. It's yeah, I've been done with that since I've been able to vote. And that's been a hate to say it a long time ago. So again, I just I want to get up here and give you guys really.

1:11:35 Thank you so much for bringing this out and bringing the dark to the light. And timing couldn't have been so perfect with this one with Venezuela. And I really appreciate how much information you're really getting out there. Everybody's got their Gladio glasses on and we can see it very, very clear. So thank you again, Colonel. You're doing a wonderful, wonderful job.

1:12:01 And Bridget and SR71, you guys, amazing, amazing work. Thank you again. Thank you. Appreciate it. Bridget, go ahead and call on the next person. I'm going to send you a text real quick. I need you over on Rumble. Are you there, Bridget? Nope. Bridget went away. L. Grandulon? Yeah, Colonel, this is...

1:12:36 Corey Edwards, you and I have gone back and forth on messages before. You had invited me on your podcast. I emphasize I wasn't 100% comfortable with that out of fear of our government. But this is a subject that is very near and dear to me. I've been coming to Colombia for 32 years. First came here as a Mormon missionary when I was 19.

1:13:05 My ex-wife is Colombian. My kids are half Colombian. My current wife is Colombian and Venezuelan. I have followed Venezuela and Colombia for years. I worked the Colombian target for a couple of years. And I'm currently located in Medellin, Colombia. Half my wife's family is Venezuelan and half of it's Colombian. So it's an issue I've followed for decades.

1:13:31 And I just want, you know, if people have questions about what's going on, I'd be happy to give my perspective, both as a former intelligence officer and as somebody that's had a close ties to Colombia and Venezuela for years. So are you at liberty to talk about what's going on in Colombia?

1:13:55 Absolutely, because my primary target as an intelligence officer was Iran. It was not Colombia. I worked that target for two years. That was it back in 2003 to 2005. So it's been a very long time that I've even worked on this target. But I've been coming to Colombia. Literally, I've come here about 25 times in the last five years because of my wife and her family waiting for her visa and everything. And I'm currently living in Colombia, Medellin.

1:14:27 So what is your take? I mean, obviously, the material that we've covered ranging back to the late 60s, 70s through the 80s, that the development of the narcotics industry that is commonly referred to as the crystal triangle.

1:14:58 is known to the U.S. government. Would you agree with that? Oh, absolutely. To give you an example of my experience while serving in government with these countries, if you go all the way back to 1999, I was stationed at Fort Gordon, Georgia, and my wife being Colombian, I mean, we were hanging out. I remember the...

1:15:29 year 2000 and everybody thought the computers were going to crash and all that stuff. I was at a New Year's Eve party where I was all Latino. I was the only gringo. I have spoken fluent Spanish since I was 19. And we had a couple of Colombian, or not Colombian, but Venezuelan military officers that were at that party. They were studying at Fort Gordon. And this was right after Chavez was elected.

1:15:57 They told me that night, they said, we're not going back. We are scared to death of Chavez, and we're not going back. And shortly after New Year's Day, they disappeared. It was in the press and everything, and they were trying to find them around Georgia, around Fort Gordon. So that was my first experience with Venezuela, really understanding what was going on there. I watched when they took...

1:16:26 away from the private citizens in, I believe it was 2015, 2017. And then with mass protests against, I think by then it was Maduro, started issuing guns to grannies and kids and anybody that was a Chavista was allowed to have a gun provided from the government to keep the protesters in check. I remember Guaido

1:16:55 At the time, my ex was Colombian but raised in Caracas. And, you know, Venezuela was very dear to her. I think she probably felt more Venezuelan than she did Colombian because she grew up there. And a lot of Venezuelans put a lot of hope in Guaido. I agree with you. I think he was corrupt. I think he was an illusion. And most Venezuelans are not happy with Juan Guaido after everything that happened.

1:17:25 As far as narcotics trafficking. He was funded by USAID. Him and Maria Marcato as well. Yep. Machado probably is as well. The people tend to like her a lot more, and she has sacrificed a lot more and put her wife on the line more times publicly. But that group that she founded down there was 100% USAID.

1:17:54 Oh, I don't doubt it. I'm not saying I doubt it. Yeah. But I'm just talking about the sentiment of the Venezuelan people. Yeah. Obviously, Gonzalez, the one that ran because Machado was banned from running, he's a total puppet. I mean, he's kind of worthless, and most Venezuelans see him that way. As far as narcotics trafficking, I have personally worked counter-narcotics, counter-human smuggling, counter-guerrilla operations.

1:18:23 I was assigned to the U.S. Virgin Islands in Puerto Rico as the senior intelligence officer from Homeland Security. I answered to nobody in the Caribbean. My boss was in Atlanta. His boss was at the secretary level at DHS back in 2012 to 2014. I've personally been on vessel incursions in Puerto Rico and U.S. Virgin Islands where all the trash was from Venezuela. The boat names were registered in Venezuela.

1:18:51 They were Venezuelan boats, and they were drug boats that came basically island hopping through the Antilles and all the way up to USVI in Puerto Rico. You have a lot of coastline there, a lot. If drugs or people can get to either Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, or US Virgin Islands, from Puerto Rico or US Virgin Islands to the US is a domestic flight. They do not have to go through.

1:19:21 Any kind of customs and border protection, they don't go through any real screenings because of that. During that time, we had small planes that would fly over the mountains in Puerto Rico, drop drugs in the mountains to be collected. To be collected. People on the ground, a lot of them Puerto Rican, would then find a house. They'd pay like $3,000. Yeah.

1:19:51 an apartment in the projects, and they stash it there until they can move it. Puerto Rican law enforcement, Puerto Rican government tries not to go into the housing projects because they get shot up. If they turn off the power for nonpayment, they'll get shot up. I mean, it's a violent place. I basically was the liaison between all federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies in Puerto Rico and U.S. Virgin Islands during that time.

1:20:19 So here's my problem with what you just said at this point. I'm not denying there's drugs coming out of Venezuela. What I have a problem with now that I know how the CIA operates is they set up fronts in countries that they're targeting for other reasons.

1:20:45 Yep. Pen narcotic trafficking on them. I mean, we know that they did that in Nicaragua. They've done it repeatedly all over the world. Sure. And at the same time, then, in countries like Thailand or Colombia, like there's so many people that in the national police, in the military, that is part of the narco trafficking.

1:21:15 And we're giving, like in the case of Thailand, $35 million to the national police so they'll let the narcotics fly in and out of the airports and the seaports. Colonel Towner, I don't think that Al can hear you. What happened to him? He kept saying hello, hello while you were speaking, so I didn't think he could hear you. Oh, okay. Okay. Can you hear me now? All right.

1:21:54 Let me go out. Let me get Bridget back up here. I'm going to go out and come back in in case it's me. Al, could you hear Colonel Towner by any chance? Hopefully he'll come back up too. Bridget, get up here. Okay, I'm back. Al Gretchen, I'm going to drop you down and bring you back up. Looks like you're spinning. I'm going to drop you down, Al Gretchen, and bring you back up, okay? SR, go ahead with whatever you needed to say.

1:22:37 I just wanted to say the issue is taken care of over on Rumble. And I'd like to remind everybody, we do take all points of view. That's not the issue. We will enforce civility. End of story. Thank you. Sure. Well, we're waiting. Oh, there he is. All right. Let me bring him back up here. Is it okay if I touch on that, Jess?

1:23:13 Hold on just a second. I wanted to let L. Corey. Sorry, the internet is wonderful here in Medellin, so I ended up getting dropped out. Okay. Okay, so you started talking and telling me that you had issues with CIA back and all this stuff, and then I lost. Okay, so.

1:23:38 My point was that the CIA has the ability to set up front companies in countries to traffic drugs out of. I mean, they even like it. They did it in Nicaragua a lot to implicate the Sandinista government. And then, you know, Congress gives them 100 million dollars to go overthrow.

1:24:04 the Sandinista government by training the Contras and the drugs weren't coming from the Sandinista government. They were coming from Colombia and they all knew it and they fake pictures. We found all of those fake fishing shrimp boats that were fake companies that they were using so that they can implicate.

1:24:31 countries in drug trafficking when later on they may want to overthrow them. They now have a talking point. And a lot of those operations in countries was going on without necessarily the country's government realizing it. And then in some cases, once they realized it, they were able to shut it down. But I just.

1:24:57 I want people to understand the whole picture of this, that because the CIA has lied to us so often about so much, it's almost impossible to believe anything at this point. Go ahead. Sure. So here's my point of view, and it's not necessarily a common one, and it probably conflicts with your point of view. Does the CIA benefit overthrowing the Maduro regime or keeping the Maduro?

1:25:28 Well, the CIA does what it's told to do by an international cartel that wants access to the oil and the gold. So it's kind of, in my opinion, the wrong question to ask. The CIA is, in my opinion, controlled and dictated to by a much higher authority, and it's not the U.S. government.

1:25:55 I would agree with that. And look, I'm very anti-agency. I have my reasons. I haven't been in human intelligence. I haven't been in the intelligence community for 23 years. I worked for DIA. I have no love whatsoever for the agency. I left the intelligence community, as I think I mentioned to you before, because of corruption I saw.

1:26:25 I was pretty disgusted with a lot of things I saw, both in the wars at home and elsewhere in the world. So I left a GS-14 position, which is fairly high up, in disgust, which there's not many government, especially GS-14 level people, that would give up a six-figure federal career and future pension and stand on principle. I did. I've suffered a lot because of it.

1:26:51 The transition to the civilian world has not been easy at all. But in my opinion, I think they would rather have the Maduro regime in place. I think they would rather have the Petro regime in place here in Colombia. I see the situation escalating tensions, possible toppling of the Venezuelan government as Trump's attempt to correct several things.

1:27:20 The excuse is drugs and drug trafficking and Cartel de los Soles and all that stuff. There's a lot more at play than just that. You have strong Cuban influence. You have strong Iranian influence. You have strong Chinese influence. You have spread of socialism, communism, whatever you want to call it, throughout Latin America in our backyard. You have the flood of...

1:27:48 immigrants into the U.S. during the Biden regime, backed by the Maduro regime. You have Tren de Aragua, you have Clan de Golfo, which I have a lot of hatred for right now since they beat up and extorted my wife in Santa Marta last month. So in my opinion,

1:28:13 The CIA benefits more by keeping the drugs flowing and the people flowing and having those two regimes in place than they do toppling the Maduro regime. Is there oil in Venezuela? Yes. Is there gold in Venezuela? Yes. Does it all come down to the money? We know all wars come down to the money. It certainly did in Iraq and Afghanistan. But that's going to be regardless of what country is starting the war.

1:28:42 Money, economics, resources are what run the world and run world economies and everything else. So the fact that the U.S. could be exerting control over natural resources, duh. The fact that China would, the fact that Iran would. I mean, everybody wants to reduce it down to oil or reduce it down to gold or reduce it down to natural resources or money or control. Yeah, I mean.

1:29:11 Of course. But there's much more at play than just that is my point. Here's the problem that I have. The influence. So and this has happened in, I don't know, 90 some countries that we've researched. Yeah. What's amazing to me is in the case of many of these countries.

1:29:39 In the past, let's say before the Soviet Union fell, there was only one country to call if the U.S. put their gun sight on you. Because there was only one country that didn't give a shit about what the U.S. thought of their trading partners. That was the Soviet Union. So the CIA and their machinations would.

1:30:10 conduct economic warfare on you. They would sabotage your elections to make sure that their puppet stayed in power. But if somehow the people elected someone that actually cared about the people of the country, then they went into the political warfare, the economic warfare, and eventually the paramilitary warfare. So at that point, before it goes kinetic,

1:30:39 And the president that's now sitting in there that they're attacking, he has nobody to call. There's no one in Europe that will trade with them because the U.S. and most of the European allies have their eyesight set on whatever it is that they have that they want. And there's only one country to call. That was the Soviet Union. And as soon as the phone call went through and Intel picked up on it.

1:31:06 Oh, my God. Everything. He's a communist. Look, he's calling the Soviet Union. Oh, yeah. So that's my problem with someone saying that there's Iranian, Cuban and Chinese influence in Venezuela. Well, who else is going to talk to him? Of course. Of course. We shut them off. Yep.

1:31:31 Yeah, but of course, they want something in return for it. Oh, really? So why did we cut them off? I agree with you. I mean, for example, the situation with Iran, when I watched what was going on in Iran, I was pretty livid over the whole situation with Iran, because what I see with Iran is this. After the revolution, you saw a bunch of Iranians loyal to the Shah.

1:32:02 leave Iran, move to the U.S., move to Europe. And I joined a few of these spaces that had Iranians. They didn't like me. They didn't like me at all. Because I called them out on their bullshit. They were all pro-Shah, pro-Raza Shah, Iranians that had not lived in the country for years. And I brought up the subject. I'm like, look, everybody knows that Iranians in Iran

1:32:29 The majority of them do not want the current regime, but they sure as hell do not want Pahlavi either. They do not. And you have Pahlavi living right next, you know, a stone's throw away from CIA, just waiting, just waiting for the CIA to reinstall him in Iran. And all of his Pahlavi sycophants in Europe and the U.S. that haven't lived in Iran for decades, hoping for this glorious return to power.

1:32:55 does not serve the people of Iran that have been there their entire lives and, frankly, been fed propaganda by the regime or that are old enough that they remember how bad Fatavi's father was. And the Savak was. And the Savak, yes, exactly. And, oh, if you could have heard the hell I caught.

1:33:17 from Iranians on those faces. They were not happy with me for bringing it up, and I was stupid, and I don't know what I'm talking about. I'm like, okay, I worked at Target for 21 years, but I speak Farsi. But I feel it's the same way with Venezuela. The people in Venezuela do not want the Maduro regime. There's a lot of Venezuelans here in Medellin and Colombia that I talk to and am friends with.

1:33:42 All of them are hoping and praying that Papa Trump will take out Maduro. A lot of them, I have Venezuelans ask me all the time, why is he taking so long? They're losing hope that Maduro could be removed. What we've got to do is, I mean, if that is the move they make, we cannot allow CIA to...

1:34:08 take control of the government again. It needs to be returned to the people. But I don't know that that's going to happen. I don't know that would happen. I have never seen them separated. That's my problem. You've never seen them suffering? I've never seen them separated. Oh, separated. Oh, I agree. There is never a good person that in the 90 plus coups that I have studied, there has never, ever once in a CIA orchestrated coup.

1:34:35 Led to a democratic government ever. Yep. And that's why at the end of the day, I was kind of happy with Trump's restraint at taking out nuclear facilities and stopping right there because it did not give Israel what they wanted. It didn't give the CIA what they wanted. You know, I saw this Trump removed the excuse.

1:34:58 for war. He's very good at that, actually. I'm hoping something similar would happen in Venezuela if we do go into Venezuela. I don't have much faith in the agency. I don't have much faith in the politicians. You've got people like Lindsey Graham that just get a hard-on for anything war-related, yet have never served and never been to war themselves. I've been to war three times.

1:35:27 He did serve, but he was a JAG officer, so your point is still valid. I agree. And, Colonel, look, I love you. You're a former officer. I'm not trying to knock all officers, but I had a JAG Fulberg colonel deploy with me in Afghanistan in 2015. My last deployment was 2020 to 2021. But in 2015, we had a JAG colonel, had to go to the war zone so he could get his combat patch to get promoted to brigadier general.

1:35:54 And the first thing he asked when he got in country in our office was like, where's the pool? Sir, there is no pool. This is a combat zone. Yeah, well, he must have went to the same JAG school that Lindsey Graham did. I don't know if you read that long diatribe that I wrote about him having to do the exact same thing. Yeah, I didn't read it. Yeah, he was 100% illegal.

1:36:23 He can claim military service, yes. Did he serve? Yes. But not a war fighter, not on the ground, not really putting himself at risk. No, no. Hopefully you're not a giant colonel. No, I actually spent eight years in aircraft maintenance and then got back to business. So I've actually had a real job at one point in my life. But I can tell you, the Venezuelans I know, if...

1:36:49 If we don't take out the regime, they're going to feel hopeless. They feel it's their last hope. Not saying we should, not saying we shouldn't. On a personal note, I would love to see Maduro gone, but I don't want to see the country controlled by the agency either. I'm kind of walking that line. I would love to see true freedom for Venezuelans and true freedom for Colombians. A lot of the Colombians here, hopefully they take Pedro with them.

1:37:17 I mean, things are getting worse in Colombia. They're not as bad as when I lived here in 93 and 94. But they've definitely gotten worse since Uribe left. It was kind of the peak of security in Colombia at the time. And he has some really weird ties, too. Oh, yeah. He's tied to the cartels and tied to the guerrillas. Look, I have a video.

1:37:45 of the last election, my wife was in Santa Marta, we were waiting for her visa, and she sent me a video of armored military vehicles coming from Venezuela into Santa Marta to suppress the vote for Fico Gutierrez, who was running against Petro, who's the current mayor of Medellin. If you had a Gutierrez sticker or whatever on your car, they were burning cars, they were...

1:38:11 intimidating people in Venezuela. I have seen no reports in press. All I have is what my wife sent me, and she's like, these were coming from Maracaibo, not Maracaibo, but on the border of Venezuela and Colombia, Maical, into Santa Marta, and they were military vehicles. They were not marked with Colombian military. They really didn't have any markings on them, but they were coming from

1:38:39 from Venezuela into Santa Marta, to intimidate people and force people to vote, people on the coast to vote for Petra. That's interesting. Very, very interesting. And do you agree with the assessment that in order to hold office in Colombia, you have to be supportive of the narco networks? To some degree, it's like Mexico.

1:39:10 I was going to move to Mexico next. Yeah, I mean, Mexico is very much controlled. I can tell you, Fico Gutierrez, having lived in his city that he is still mayor of, he's done a lot of stuff against the narcos. You know, we had, what was it, Miguel Uribe, I think it was, the politician that was just assassinated in Colombia a couple months ago. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he was very much against the narcos.

1:39:40 Yeah, okay, so you can get in office, you just can't stay in office. Well, I don't know that you can get the presidency, let's put it this way. After seeing what happened with the last election when Petro won and Fico Gutierrez lost, I don't think Gutierrez is very well liked by the narcos, and he didn't win the presidency. I mean, they resorted to intimidation tactics to keep people from voting them.

1:40:06 So some of the lower offices you may be able to get into, but then you won't find one or they'll assassinate you. There are good politicians that are not owned and controlled by the narcos in Colombia. I firmly believe that. Whether you're going to get to the presidency without a connection, I mean, Uribe wasn't very well liked by the narcos either. Did he have connections? Probably. I think it was a careful balance.

1:40:31 Two of my books, as far as the DEA. Most of the Colombians I've talked to feel that Plan Colombia, which I worked the target during the Plan Colombia time. I have a former brother-in-law who I constantly had to report on my SF-86, who is a now-retired Colombian SIGINT guy, very anti-cartel.

1:40:59 I mean, there are good people in Columbia. There are good politicians in Columbia, but it's a constant struggle between who the cartel wants in office and the good ones. Okay. All right. Blue, thanks for hanging in there. Go ahead. No, you're welcome. Long time no see. I mean, I haven't seen you in a while. And Stellar, she's like, hey, why don't you jump in your sister's chat room? And I'm like.

1:41:27 Well, I got time. I mean, I've been working so much, so it's good to see you, sis. Long time no see, Watkins. No, it's the cartels. And the thing is, is that when you talk about the cartels and how we're going to try to go to down Venezuela and Watkins, sis, you could tell me differently, but they went after the mob.

1:41:56 Gambino was recently named. Same with the NBA doing nefarious actions. The thing is that Trump wants to get rid of the cartels, wants to get rid of the mob. Okay, all right, that's great. That's awesome. Well, you can get rid of the cartels and you can get rid of the mobs, but you have to get rid of the sleeper cells. Sleeper cells are basically Antifa and...

1:42:24 No name things and the protesters that are doing nefarious shit. So I'm sitting here thinking, OK, all right, we're going to turn around. We're going to get rid of the sleeper cells. We got rid of the mob. We're going after the cartel. But what I'm fucked up on is he just had a meeting with a boy from New York that is Muslim Brotherhood that is hooked up with.

1:42:55 Well, I would say George Soros, but his name is Alex Soros. So if we're going after the mafia, we're going after the cartel, everything else. I was just snipping shit in the butt. But the thing is, what's going on down there in Venezuela? That's important because we told.

1:43:22 Zelensky, OK, we could probably supply you with this and that. And then Russia's point is, OK, well, if you do that, we're going to supply Venezuela. So they supply Venezuela. But I think it's all down to money laundering. The cartel, what they're doing in Venezuela is money laundering. And they're trying to bring it to the surface. And Trump is trying to nip it in the butt.

1:43:51 I mean, sis, am I wrong on that, Watkins? I mean, we're trying to nip the shit in the ass, right, sis? I definitely think we're trying to eliminate all of that. SR, go ahead. Thank you, Colonel. And I want to thank El Grande Long, love the moniker, by the way, for your insight quite a bit. But I do have my point of view says if.

1:44:23 Even if you settle for Maduro and you don't get rid of this stuff, you're not going to stop the drugs coming into the U.S. because of the CIA and because of the way they operate. I would much rather Venezuela go on its own. Now, as unfortunate as that may be, that's the way I see it. On a second note, what I really want to ask you about is PMCs and the CIA.

1:44:50 And what really goes on there and how much, if at all, you were involved in any of that. Thank you. Go ahead, Corey. All right. So you're asking me about PMCs? He was actually a civilian SR. He didn't. OK. Yeah. OK. Never mind. I'm trying to figure out what you're asking me here. Yeah. It was just wondering if you had any interaction with the private military companies. No. Yeah.

1:45:22 No, I did not. I was DIA deployed to Iraq. And then I was a DIA contractor because I had left the government in 2014 and 2015. And I was a contractor as well in 2020 to 2021. I posted that video in the chat on the spaces that my wife had sent me of the armored.

1:45:49 coming in from Venezuela right before the election, if anybody wants confirmation of that. Okay, thank you for that. Yep. All right. So that is very interesting. So do you have any other information or insights? Because we've obviously done a lot of connecting the dots back to...

1:46:21 Columbia and the major role that they play in. Have you ever heard, I don't know if you heard me talk about Syntac. Did you ever come across them during your tenure? They were way before your time. I did not. I joined the Army in 97.

1:46:45 Was, you know, as an E2, worked my way up to Staff Sergeant and then GS-13 with DIA, 14 with Homeland Security. So CENTAC was Central Tactical Units that was set up in the 70s. And as soon as Reagan and Bush, Mr. CIA, got into office, they disbanded them. But they were central units that worked across the spectrum.

1:47:13 of IRS, DEA, they even had some former CIA guys on some of the teams that had got disgusted with the CIA once they found out they were actually facilitating the drugs and not trying to stop them. And they set up operations to take them down from the top down as opposed to what FBI and law enforcement does here.

1:47:42 and DEA for that matter, and going from the bottom up. And they were extremely, extremely effective, made more arrests than anyone in the timeframe that they existed. And their position was always take, you got to find the head of the snake.

1:48:08 A couple of times they got the head, a couple of times they didn't get the head, but they got two or three hundred of the first lieutenant on down. They never worried about the underlings that are the guys out on the streets because they disrupted the entire network. And every single case that they ran that that thousand page book I read talked about all centers on Columbia.

1:48:39 On the cocaine side. Well, seeing assist, the thing is that when I read and I watched how the mafia was made, they started a casino down there. It was the I believe it was the New York mafia that started the casinos and everything down there. And that's how they got rich. And then they went to the cartels.

1:49:07 Because there was like a whole mafia cartel type of thing? Or did I read that wrong? Yeah, hold on just a second. So drug networking in the United States, originally, as early as the 40s, the networks, because we didn't have this thing called cartels, was done through the mafia.

1:49:39 the domestic distribution because the drugs weren't manufactured here. They were dropped off at the coast, turned over to the mafia. The cartels came much later. And generally speaking, there were turf wars. But eventually, while the mafia was still in organized crime,

1:50:06 Domestic networks were turned over increasingly to originally expats from foreign countries. You had a lot of the former Nicaraguan people that got thrown out when Somoza got thrown out. And they just kept relocating more and more. You had a lot of the Colombians that came in and was running networks.

1:50:35 And when Escobar, who is notorious down in Colombia, got a little ahead of the schedule for the CIA, and he started coming into Miami knocking off their preferred domestic network carriers, which was the Cuban exiles. They began running the South Florida networks.

1:51:03 You know, we know what happened to Escobar. So that's kind of a lowdown of how that it's morphed over time as to who the preferred network is in the United States. And it also depends regional. A lot of the former Jamaican posses.

1:51:31 was doing the network in the Northeast area. So it's a very controlled, competitive environment. I'll just say that. Renee, go ahead. Thanks, Colonel. And thanks, Corey, for speaking with us and sharing information. If you don't mind, I am curious, please, on a little more information you mentioned earlier about Iran and Cuba and China.

1:52:02 Could you go into a little more detail about Cuba in Venezuela? And is it connected to mafia? Or can you go into that relationship a little bit more, if you don't mind, please? Sure. Now, I have never set foot in Venezuela. I will not, especially with this regime. Because of my background, I'd probably be snatched up and accused of spying on Venezuela. So I don't go to Venezuela. Smart move.

1:52:29 Yeah, my father-in-law is from Maracaibo. My wife has traveled there a couple of times. She entered the U.S. with a Venezuelan passport because we had problems getting her Colombian passport. During those trips that my wife has gone, my father-in-law being there, other friends and family members of my wife's that are there, I mean, they see Cuban troops. Anytime there's major protests in Caracas against the Maduro regime,

1:52:57 There's always a Cuban military presence in Venezuela, but they'll see an influx of Cuban troops come in on the streets because Maduro fears that enough of the Venezuelan government could turn against him during those moments and back the people. Cubans have no problems beating up Venezuelans. They don't care. They have no problems shooting Venezuelans. And so you see

1:53:25 Cuban troops take to the streets when they were brought in or if they're there full time. I couldn't tell you, but as far as Venezuelans, I know they distinctly recognize the Cuban accent and they're wearing Venezuelan military uniforms, but very obviously are Cubans. And I mean, that's the extent I know, really. That's very interesting. You know, there's a lot of Cubans in.

1:53:55 Not like Castro Cubans, but a lot of Cuban descendants in Mexico that are involved in the drug trade there. A lot of them, actually. Way more than I would have ever thought. That's very interesting. Who knows? Maybe they are Castro Cubans and they're just there for infiltrating.

1:54:26 and getting intelligence of their own. That's very interesting. This stuff is fascinating. Okay. Blue, go ahead. Yeah, it's very fascinating because I'm sitting here looking at where is the cartel, where is the main hub? Venezuela. And the mafia, even though they're known around the world, they're using the cartel.

1:54:55 and they're using sleeper cells, and they're trying to embed themselves in the United States. So in order to get rid of the mafia and their influence on the United States is to go after the cartel, because I believe that the cartel hired the mafia, and then that's where all the sleeper cells, that's where the incarnation. So it is very imperative that we go after Venezuela and try to get it straight.

1:55:25 And that's why I'm thinking that they're not going to go down without a fight. I believe that the cartel is going to push. Even though we just busted the mafia, we're arresting all these illegal immigrants, a.k.a. sleeper cells. I don't think it's going to be enough, sis. Watkins, I think we've got to push harder. I mean, even though...

1:55:52 In order to get rid of the cartels, the mafias, and the sleeper cells, we got to push harder on Venezuela and say, hey, you cannot fucking do that. But they're not going to do that. So we got to, I don't know how in hell all this is going to work. We have cartels all over the world. But the toughest cartels is in Venezuela. And it's like, okay.

1:56:19 And that's where the mafia started, like you stated, back in the 40s. That's, you know, and, you know, there's documentary on that. So you got the mafia and the cartels working together. I mean, the best way to do it is stop Venezuela. Okay. All right. I got it. I don't think Venezuela has the worst cartels in the world. Do they have cartels? Sure.

1:56:46 Has some of their cartels actually been invented by the CIA? Absolutely. But we'll just we'll leave that there. Stellar, go ahead. In my personal opinion, you turn off the faucet of the funding, which they're doing here.

1:57:05 you unfund them and then you just kind of go in because most of the people are there for the money and things like that, don't you think? And if you cut that all off and follow all of the money where it's going, you nab up all those people in the meantime. And, you know, hopefully that's enough. I don't know. I look at everything as everything's been planned out. So hopefully they're able to get all the ones that they need to. And it's, again, the CIA and hopefully.

1:57:34 You know, the Department of War is taking care of that. Yeah. Why are you so mad? Go ahead. Well, I got a question for Corey. I don't know if you're able to answer it. I want to make sure that I'm getting my information right. You were saying that there were Cubans in Venezuelan uniforms or Venezuelan military uniforms. When would you say there's an influx of them coming in? When were you first?

1:58:05 noticed them or your wife first noticed them? Yeah, I mean, you got to realize I don't have access to any kind of intel on that target. And I've been out of the intelligence community now for almost five years. So when they're coming in, when they're leaving, coming in and going, I have no idea. All I have is, you know, my sources, if you want to call them, my wife's family members, just saying that when there were major protests in Caracas,

1:58:35 that the people were pissed because it wasn't, you know, you'll see during the protests, they'll even show up on TV where they're trying to persuade the military and the police to turn against Maduro and back the people. And on occasions there have been military or police have taken off their uniforms and joined the protesters. But from what I've heard from the people I know in Venezuela, which is a lot of my wife's family, is they always say the effing Cubans.

1:59:04 It's effing Cubans that Maduro sends out there in Bolivarian military uniforms or Bolivarian police uniforms. And that they're way worse than the Venezuelan troops. As far as when they started arriving? Yeah. My wife and I have been together for five years. So it could have been before that. But the entire five years that we've been together. They've been noticed. Yes. Okay.

1:59:33 Okay. All right. Thank you. All right. That's interesting. Yeah. Okay. Anybody have any other questions? And thank you, Corey, for coming and sharing all of your information. I definitely think it's important for all of us to hear all of the information because there's a huge difference, and Corey just pointed that out, between the

2:00:07 different perspectives. And what we want more than anything is dialogue, intelligent dialogue among people so that you can take all of the information, use the discernment that we've learned during this period of time, and come away with a much more informed opinion of what's going on.

2:00:35 Corey, you're welcome here all the time, and you know that. Go ahead, Corey. Go ahead, Corey. Yeah, I appreciate that. And look, if I don't know something, I'm not going to BS people either. I'm giving my perspective. You had mentioned books, and I 100% agree with you. I mean, that's why I follow you, and I saw you follow me as well. I think we see eye to eye on a lot of this stuff. One of the things I noticed early on in my career when I was Iran-focused was the number of books coming out.

2:01:05 about Iran. And I start looking into the authors and they're like a Russia policy analyst. Yes, yes.

2:01:12 Or something like that. A lot of people put out books, and it's not their expertise. Correct. It's a hot topic at the time, and they'll research a bunch of stuff and throw it in a book, and suddenly they're an Iran expert or a Venezuelan expert. So I agree with you. The sensationalism that goes along with the verbs they use, one of the things I try to emphasize with my kids when they were growing up, when they would spend summers with me, I'd give them news articles.

2:01:39 And I tell them, I want you to read the article and I want you to tell me the bias because everything you will read has a bias. And so many people don't do critical thinking. They just consume stuff and assume it's gospel. So I 100% agree with you on that, Colonel. And you know what's interesting? The first time that really stood out to me because prior to my assignment at CENTCOM, I had read more.

2:02:05 basic like biography kind of stuff, not like Middle Eastern focused or whatever. When I got to CENTCOM, I had a mentor there that was assigned to CENTAP up at Shaw, Major General Twitchell. He became a lifelong, very, very close friend of mine. And he was probably a more voracious reader than I am.

2:02:34 He came to CENTCOM at MacDill all the time and he'd bring me like a suitcase of books that he had read. He was single at the time, so he had a lot of time to read. And every single book he handed me, he did exactly what you just said. He was like, OK, this guy's background is this and this is his perspective.

2:02:57 But then he'd hand me the second book and say, this guy's background is this and this is his perspective. And when I come back, we'll go to lunch and you can tell me which one, you know, what's your opinion of how that kind of settles down based on what you're seeing in your job. And I just found that absolutely amazing that he was able to teach me that discernment of.

2:03:26 researching the authors from where they came from and reading both sides of issues. Because in most cases, they were like 180 degrees out of sync with each other. But of course, at the time, I had the ability to look at information that other people didn't have access to and be able to see which one was closer.

2:03:50 And sometimes I got it right and sometimes I didn't because some authors are very convincing that they know something they absolutely don't know. Yep. I'll never forget, there was a time, you know, I was the senior human intelligence targeting officer for Persia House in DIA and attended a meeting one time where we were getting briefed by a senior Iran analyst from agency, from CIA.

2:04:18 And she kept going on and on about, well, hominy this and hominy that and hominy this other thing. And finally, I mean, it was driving us nuts. And maybe it's because I'm a linguist, but one of my linguists stood up and said, are you sure it's hominy that did that? And she's like, 100%. That's what hominy did. It's like, well, that's kind of funny because it seems like it should have been hominy because hominy has been dead for quite a while.

2:04:45 So, I mean, even in the intelligence community, you'll see so-called experts that don't know the language, can't pronounce people's names correctly. I mean, how you can be a subject matter expert in Iran and not know the Ayatollah's name. I mean, you see stuff like that. So, yeah. That's why, you know, immediately with my definite difficulty saying names, I'm not an intelligence expert. That's kind of your first dead giveaway.

2:05:15 But I do find, and that's why, like I have told everybody here, I've read so many books about these topics, but I've only brought a fraction of them for us to go through because a lot of them, well, I mean, obviously there's duplicative information in many of them.

2:05:43 Some of the authors, I just can't, well, I read the book so I can get little nuggets. I don't feel comfortable using that book in this forum. And then other cases when, because you guys know I'm an addict about looking up footnotes, you just can't verify all of the footnotes that they're saying they're using. And then sometimes it's just because they,

2:06:13 I do make an exception on that case. If throughout a book, I notice that multiple references in that book to websites have been claimed, that actually makes me think they probably had much more. And some of them I've been able to then go to archive.org and look up and verify them. But I have kind of picked that up that.

2:06:43 There does appear to be a concerted effort on really good books for them cleaning out their websites off of the regular web. That, to me, it gives me a lot more verification, especially when I can verify it on archive.org that it's been picked up over there, that somebody actually doesn't want you to know that information. Yeah.

2:07:09 Do you mind if I just kind of vent briefly on something that's really been bothering me? No, go ahead. So we moved here the end of July of this year. And one of the biggest changes I've seen in Columbia, especially in Medellin over the years.

2:07:27 is it used to be Americans that came here. Sure, they were, especially Medellin, accused of coming down here for drugs and prostitution. But I have seen a huge shift in the people here turning against Americans. And to all credit to Fico Gutierrez, the mayor of Medellin, for cracking down on this. But I literally see on Colombian social media anywhere from one to five Americans.

2:07:56 arrested every day down here, just in Medellin for solicitation of sex with minors. We have had a huge issue down here with American pedophiles coming down here to molest. I mean, you saw it on the Sound of Freedom, kidnapping Colombian kids and stuff like that. I have a five-year-old and a seven-year-old stepchild that are Colombian citizens. So I wish that would get more attention.

2:08:24 that you're seeing a huge influx of American pedophiles coming down here. Could you do me a favor? Sure. Obviously that's going to be written about in your local media. Yep. Can you start DMing me and I'll translate them on Yandex and start, I know a lot of, I don't deal in that area per se, but I know a lot of people do like Sun Tzu.

2:08:53 And I would be absolutely happy to provide that conduit. Yeah. I mean, I don't know if you use WhatsApp. I could forward stuff on WhatsApp or if you give me an email address. I mean, I can take screenshots of what I'm seeing on social media. I'll send you a DM. You can email them to me. Thank you. Absolutely. And thank you for bringing that up. God bless you. Renee, go ahead. Thank you, Colonel. One more quick question, Corey, if you don't mind, please.

2:09:25 Regarding the thoughts of Nayib Bukele, what are the thoughts of the Colombian people, the Venezuelan people? Do they have an opinion? My husband is Brazilian. And his family, unfortunately, majority of them have been mugged twice. His mother's been kidnapped. His father had an attempted kidnapping on his life. And they are 100% hoping for...

2:09:53 that type of situation to come in Brazil. Yeah, I get the same sentiment from Colombians and from Venezuelans. I've mentioned briefly that my wife had some issues in Santa Marta. My wife, long story short, she needed to redo her Colombian documents in order to not be here as a tourist because she entered with her Venezuelan passport even though she was raised in Colombia.

2:10:21 She went to Santa Marta to try to get her Colombian documents straightened out, roughed up three times, beaten up. One guy sexually assaulted her, not raped, thank God, but groping and stuff. Clan de Golfo trying to extort money from her, which we ended up paying a couple thousand dollars. I was in touch with the U.S. Embassy here in Colombia, and they wouldn't do jack about it.

2:10:50 But I had to report it because I'm like, look, I'm a former intelligence officer. I can't be sending money to a cartel that's not going to look good. And I wanted to report it for counterintelligence purposes. So it's really angered me. Obviously, you can probably hear in my tone. The way things work, both in Venezuela and Colombia, it is something as simple as for a couple hundred bucks.

2:11:19 You want somebody killed, you go to a cartel and say, I want this person dead, and they'll kill them. What happened in her case was she got into an argument with a girl that was the girlfriend of the brother of her friend where she was staying in Santa Marta. This girl went to the cartel and said, she stole a gold necklace from me. My wife has no need to steal anything from anybody. Her husband's American, and we're fine.

2:11:51 Just a simple accusation led to the cartel extorting. They wanted 4 million pesos, about $2,000. They originally wanted $4,000, 8 million pesos out of her before they would leave her alone. Every week that went by that she didn't send the money, they beat her up. And my wife's pretty tiny. She's like 5'5 and about 97 pounds. I was going to go there to protect her. She said, don't do that. They find out you're American, it's going to be even worse.

2:12:21 So the way things happen in Colombia and Venezuela is you have these cartels take advantage of everyday people, beating them up, killing them, shooting them dead in the street, extorting them for money. So yeah, you better believe most Colombians and Venezuelans looked at Bukele and what's happening in El Salvador, and they would love to have that here. They would love to have that kind of security. Does that answer your question?

2:12:50 Yes, thank you so much. Okay. And what's interesting about that is you wonder behind the scenes what efforts are being made to find those people. Because obviously he's not doing that by himself. There's an effort behind him. Correct.

2:13:25 And the Petro regime, I mean, they're not doing jack about it. I can tell you Fico Gutierrez, the mayor of Medellin, he actually publicly announced that they would give 3,000 American dollars for every thief that was turned into police.

2:13:45 And Medellin is pretty secure. I mean, of all the years I've been coming to Colombia, I have no problem going out for a walk in the neighborhood I live in, which is not the top. It's not poblado. But I'll go for a walk at 2 in the morning with my dog if I can't sleep. I feel perfectly safe. So Medellin, which used to be a nightmare in the early 90s. I mean, I lived in Colombia when they killed Pablo Escobar, and Medellin was the worst place ever.

2:14:12 But some of the efforts, they tend to be local governments or department governments like Antioquia and on a limited basis where it's like, hey, you turn in criminals, we'll give you money. Wow. Wow. Okay. We're way over time, but Corey, thank you so much for joining us. I really appreciate that. Hopefully it was of value and I appreciate your time. No, it was absolutely. I mean, I wish you were here every day.

2:14:44 you definitely add a lot to the conversation. So thank you again for being here. And as I said, the last couple of days, our next book is The Mafia, CIA, and George Bush. And it's going to get into a little bit of this, of course, because it deals with drugs.

2:15:08 We're also going to learn Belize's role in all of this, which, again, in my naivety, even at this point, thought, hey, not too much going on in Belize because it's already a British colony. There's a whole bunch of shit going on in Belize and we're going to learn about it. So I can't believe they got me on that one. But anyway. All right, you guys.

2:15:35 Have a wonderful weekend. We're going to have our big Patriot meetup here tomorrow. I'm really looking forward to that. And we will be back on Monday at 4 p.m. Thanks for being here, everybody.

Entities here

Nicolás Maduro29 Venezuela25 Colombia25 Juan Guaidó25 United States25 2019 Venezuelan crisis25 United Kingdom18 Iran13 Cuba11 Donald Trump10 Medellín10 Gambino crime family9 Joe Biden8 CIA8 France7 Anya7 Bretton Woods system6 U.S. Treasury Department6 Leopoldo Lopez5 Mexico5 Richard Nixon5 Charles de Gaulle5 PDVSA4 Federal Reserve4 Citigroup4 Diosdado Cabello4 CENTAP4 Puerto Rico4 Nicaragua4 Fico Gutiérrez4 Santa Marta4 China3 John Connally3 John Bolton3 Saudi Arabia3 Soviet Union3 Bank of England3 Reza Pahlavi3 Afghanistan3 Miami3

Claims made here

Juan Guaidó carried_out_attack Venezuela documented ▶ 4:30

“where they found sanctuary following Guaido's failed military uprising in April of 2019. Lopez and his family finally relocated back to the capital of the former Venezuelan colonial occupier, Spain. L…”

Leopoldo Lopez covered_up Diosdado Cabello host_asserted ▶ 4:30

United States targeted_for_regime_change Venezuela host_asserted ▶ 13:24

“The vote was touted as a final defeat of the U.S. regime change policy as it left Washington's coup leaders without a legitimate claim to any government office whatsoever. And so what happened was the…”

United States funded Juan Guaidó host_asserted ▶ 20:50

“To annul this government is to leap into the void, Guaido said. Who is going to take over in this power vacuum? The only power you had was in the U.S. to bankrupt your supposed country. You literally …”

Venezuelan Opposition Government member_of Juan Guaidó host_asserted ▶ 21:20

“After backing his regime change efforts for nearly four years, even as moderate forces within the opposition mounted official challenges to his authority, Guaido's allies within the hardline coalition…”

Venezuelan Opposition Government funded Juan Guaidó host_asserted ▶ 21:50

“One of the G4 people said he was stressing the opposition gold was still to defeat Maduro. Considering G4's deep financial and political links to the U.S., primarily at the time USAID, their move to d…”

United States funded Venezuelan Opposition Government host_asserted ▶ 21:50

Venezuelan Opposition Government targeted_for_regime_change PDVSA host_asserted ▶ 22:41

“the material focus of Venezuela's Washington-aligned political faction remained unchanged. In addition to dissolving Guaido's non-existent government, opposition lawmakers voted to establish a commiss…”

United States targeted_for_regime_change PDVSA host_asserted ▶ 22:41

North Atlantic Treaty Organization ordered_assassination_of Charles de Gaulle host_asserted ▶ 32:33

“And of course, we know Paris, France in general, was steeped with NATO stay behind units all over. They had already tried to kill Charles de Gaulle over 20 times at this point. And they're willing to …”

West Germany removed_from_power Bretton Woods system documented ▶ 33:03

“Everything that we have read. Charles de Gaulle would die the following year, and the dream of ending Bretton Woods would be buried alongside of him. By 1971, Washington's allies in Europe were offici…”

Switzerland removed_from_power Bretton Woods system documented ▶ 33:35

“That July, Switzerland redeemed $50 million worth of gold from the U.S. Treasury. The following month, French President, now George Pompidou, deployed a warship to New York Harbor alongside with a dem…”

Georges Pompidou removed_from_power Bretton Woods system documented ▶ 33:35

Richard Nixon appointed John Connally documented ▶ 34:03

“When Britain's ambassador to Washington implored the U.S. Treasury to convert $3 billion worth of London's dollar holdings into gold within a day of Paris doing it, the fragility of the U.S. Federal R…”

Richard Nixon appointed Arthur Burns documented ▶ 34:03

Richard Nixon ordered_assassination_of Nixon Shock documented ▶ 35:02

“accusing foreign speculators of waging a war against the American dollar. Accordingly, I have directed the Secretary of Treasury to take action necessary to defend the dollar. He had directed Secretar…”

United States funded Petrodollar System documented ▶ 36:32

“As established prior, his administration resurrected the dollar status as the world's reserve currency just three years later when U.S. officials, including Secretary of State Kissinger, negotiated a …”

Henry Kissinger member_of United States documented ▶ 36:32

Alex Mooney proposed United States documented ▶ 37:57

“by U.S. Representative Alex Mooney, introduced a bill to peg the U.S. dollar to gold in October 2022, formally proposing a return to the monetary standard that President Trump initially wanted to do d…”

Donald Trump proposed United States host_asserted ▶ 37:57

Donald Trump installed Juan Guaidó documented ▶ 38:27

“by close to 20% in 2022 alone, and gold market prices is on a track to shatter its all-time highs. It's no surprise, then, that foreign corporations and governments alike are keen to exploit Venezuela…”

Bank of England blocked Venezuela documented ▶ 39:02

“the announcement that he was president in January of 2019. As the U.S. lobbied its allies to do the same, it found no accomplice more zealous than the U.K. Within days of the self-directed swearing-in…”

United Kingdom supported Juan Guaidó documented ▶ 39:02

Juan Guaidó appealed_to Theresa May documented ▶ 39:54

“The U.S.-backed coup leader inserted himself into the drama on January 28, 27, when he published an extraordinary letter begging the U.K. officials not to give Venezuela back its gold. In the letter, …”

Juan Guaidó appealed_to Mark Carney documented ▶ 39:54

United Kingdom recognized Juan Guaidó documented ▶ 40:28

“Quote, if the money is transferred, it will be used by the illegitimate regime of Nicolas Maduro to repress and brutalize the Venezuelan people, unquote. Not to feed them, not to provide anything for …”

United Kingdom cooperated_with United States book_quoted ▶ 41:25

“visited Washington in the early days of the fake government and expressed that London was delighted to cooperate on steps they could take to support the fake government, including phrasing all of Vene…”

Jeremy Hunt visited United States book_quoted ▶ 41:25

John McAvoy exposed UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office documented ▶ 41:53

“that it quickly prepared plans to further exploit Venezuela's natural wealth in the event of the coup's success. In May 2020, British journalist John McEvoy obtained UK government documents via a FOIA…”

Jorge Arreaza summoned Bill Duncan documented ▶ 42:52

“We cannot understand why they created this unit to reconstruct Venezuela when it was not destroyed, Venezuela Foreign Minister Jorge Ariza said. Following McElroy's expose, Ariza summoned the British …”

Juan Guaidó looted Venezuela documented ▶ 43:49

“so we should have used one of them sneaky names like We Support Venezuela Unit. At the time of this book's publication, Caracas' UK-stored gold reserves remain in legal limbo. Regardless, UK's authori…”

Juan Guaidó paid Bank of England documented ▶ 44:20

“McEvoy uncovered court documents revealing that Guaido officials tapped into Venezuela's U.K. bank accounts to satisfy 400,000 pounds of attorney fees stemming from the Bank of England's gold case. Fo…”

Citigroup seized Venezuela documented ▶ 46:44

“directly coincided with the U.S. effort to hold Venezuela's New York gold reserves. In March of 2019, Citigroup announced that it would sell off $1.3 billion worth of Venezuelan gold bullion housed in…”

Donald Trump sanctioned Venezuela documented ▶ 47:12

“Trump's sanctions introduced in 2017 banned all transactions from the Venezuelan government in U.S. financial markets. So you can't pay your debt. So we're going to steal your gold to pay your debt th…”

Citigroup transferred_funds_to Juan Guaidó documented ▶ 47:45

“into a bank account in New York, while Reuters failed to disclose its beneficiary. But it was eventually revealed that Citi dropped the funds into an account owned by Venezuela's central bank, which b…”

U.S. Treasury Department requested_transfer_from Citigroup documented ▶ 48:17

“put it in a bank account, and gave Guaido a signature card. Though sanctions officially rendered those monies frozen, Venezuela's opposition later approved a U.S. Treasury request to transfer the fund…”

Novo Banco blocked_transfer_from Venezuela documented ▶ 49:06

“these cases did not constitute the bulk of the international heist committed against Venezuela thanks to Guaido's U.S. direct coup efforts. Portugal's Novo Banco, which is majority owned by a U.S. pri…”

Juan Guaidó spent_funds_on Colombia documented ▶ 49:31

“Months later, a Congressional Research Institute report found that the U.S. Treasury attempted to divert millions of dollars raised from its prosecution of the Venezuelan interests, like the ones we'v…”

U.S. Treasury Department diverted_funds_to United States documented ▶ 49:31

Carlos Vecchio pocketed_funds_from PDVSA host_asserted ▶ 50:04

“how Guaido's envoys in Colombia blew thousands of dollars earmarked for Venezuelan refugees on luxury shopping sprees and hotel stays. That same month, Venezuelan government accused Guaido's U.S. repr…”

Juan Guaidó transferred_funds_to Venezuela documented ▶ 50:31

“state oil company PDVSA. The following April, AP Joshua Goodman revealed Venezuelan opposition lawmakers appropriated a portion of their country's seized assets to pay themselves $5,000 monthly salari…”

Juan Guaidó paid_salaries_to Venezuela documented ▶ 50:31

Jose Ignacio Hernandez coordinated_with Cristal Mining host_asserted ▶ 51:33

“Venezuela's prized international asset. It is worth recalling the company's peril is primarily the result of maneuvering coordinated by Guaido's top legal advisor, Jose Inacio Hernandez, and a Canadia…”

Jose Ignacio Hernandez seized_assets_from Venezuela host_asserted ▶ 51:33

United States assumed_control_of Venezuela documented ▶ 56:33

“who remains forever encased in an ivory tower of neoliberal delusion. Haasman will never again have the chance to test his failed economic vision on the Venezuelan population and is instead left in Bo…”

Carlos Vecchio served_as United States host_asserted ▶ 57:01

“He will continue to serve as a de facto liaison between Venezuela's radical opposition and U.S. politicians vying for votes in South Florida. Meanwhile, until Washington restores official diplomatic t…”

USAID funded Maria Corina Machado guest_asserted ▶ 1:17:25

“As far as narcotics trafficking. He was funded by USAID. Him and Maria Marcato as well. Yep. Machado probably is as well. The people tend to like her a lot more, and she has sacrificed a lot more and …”

USAID funded Juan Guaidó guest_asserted ▶ 1:17:25

CIA targeted_for_regime_change Sandinistas guest_asserted ▶ 1:23:38

“My point was that the CIA has the ability to set up front companies in countries to traffic drugs out of. I mean, they even like it. They did it in Nicaragua a lot to implicate the Sandinista governme…”

CIA trained Contras guest_asserted ▶ 1:24:04

“the Sandinista government by training the Contras and the drugs weren't coming from the Sandinista government. They were coming from Colombia and they all knew it and they fake pictures. We found all …”

CIA trafficked Sandinistas guest_asserted ▶ 1:24:04

CIA covered_up Reza Pahlavi guest_asserted ▶ 1:32:29

“The majority of them do not want the current regime, but they sure as hell do not want Pahlavi either. They do not. And you have Pahlavi living right next, you know, a stone's throw away from CIA, jus…”

Reza Pahlavi headed SAVAK guest_asserted ▶ 1:32:55

“does not serve the people of Iran that have been there their entire lives and, frankly, been fed propaganda by the regime or that are old enough that they remember how bad Fatavi's father was. And the…”

Alvaro Uribe member_of Colombia guest_asserted ▶ 1:37:17

“I mean, things are getting worse in Colombia. They're not as bad as when I lived here in 93 and 94. But they've definitely gotten worse since Uribe left. It was kind of the peak of security in Colombi…”

Gustavo Petro succeeded Fico Gutiérrez host_asserted ▶ 1:39:40

“Yeah, okay, so you can get in office, you just can't stay in office. Well, I don't know that you can get the presidency, let's put it this way. After seeing what happened with the last election when P…”

Soviet Union supplied_arms_to Venezuela host_asserted ▶ 1:43:22

“Zelensky, OK, we could probably supply you with this and that. And then Russia's point is, OK, well, if you do that, we're going to supply Venezuela. So they supply Venezuela. But I think it's all dow…”

George H.W. Bush removed_from_power CENTAP guest_asserted ▶ 1:46:45

“Was, you know, as an E2, worked my way up to Staff Sergeant and then GS-13 with DIA, 14 with Homeland Security. So CENTAC was Central Tactical Units that was set up in the 70s. And as soon as Reagan a…”

Ronald Reagan removed_from_power CENTAP guest_asserted ▶ 1:46:45

Pablo Escobar carried_out_attack Brigade 2506 guest_asserted ▶ 1:50:35

“And when Escobar, who is notorious down in Colombia, got a little ahead of the schedule for the CIA, and he started coming into Miami knocking off their preferred domestic network carriers, which was …”

Cuba supplied_arms_to Nicolás Maduro host_asserted ▶ 1:52:57

“There's always a Cuban military presence in Venezuela, but they'll see an influx of Cuban troops come in on the streets because Maduro fears that enough of the Venezuelan government could turn against…”