The Colonels Corner-Corporate Coup (Venezuela) Part 4

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Transcript

0:00 Well, guys, it looks like it's going to be us today. I didn't get a response from Bridget. She's probably out hunting. So we're going to trudge on. Hi, Tony, Jane, Lux. Glad to have you here. These guys will have to just tune in at four o'clock and listen to the recording. Let us go live over here on Rumble. Which one of you guys want to volunteer to be my co-host until?

0:34 Bridget shows up if she does. Because if I don't have someone, they'll kick me out of the space. Lux, I'm going to send you an invite to co-host. You don't have to say anything. Just accept. Okay. Let's go ahead and get started. This story broke my heart. I'm just going to say out loud.

1:13 Let me try to send it to you again, Lux. Oh, you got it? Okay. Awesome. All right. We're going to get started. Okay. There's an island called Cape Verde off the coast of Africa. And there were many incidences at Cape Verde. Lots of incidents in historical perspective.

1:46 Its figure, and I'm going to butcher his name, is Amalir Amakar Cabral until his assassination in 1973. And that's a whole different story. Cabral led West Africans fight for sovereignty from Portugal, a prolonged guerrilla campaign like Operation Gladio that achieved the independence of the.

2:22 Gina Basu and Kate Verde, just months following his murder. A skilled military strategist and cunning political theorist, Cabral stands among the giants of the 20th century and anti-colonial resistance. He was the Lumumba of that area. And that's why I...

2:51 And I'm just going to get on my soapbox here for a second. That's why I hate anyone who says Africa is a shithole. They tried to be independent. They had a lot of fierce leaders that created the independence from the colonial powers. And every one of them was assassinated, murdered, or died under mysterious circumstances. They had the ability to not be a shithole.

3:20 But NATO ensured their continued label as that for decades. Only now are you seeing the reemergence of fierce leaders and breaking free of that financial, economical, political colonialism throughout the continent of Africa. End of soapbox. Chavez.

3:53 would credit Cabral with inspiring his own effort to free Venezuela from foreign subjugation at the dawn of the second millennium. Each January 20th, on the anniversary of Cabral's death, Cape Verdeans observed National Heroes Day, an official commemoration of those who died for their independence. Those heroes

4:22 and contemporary Cape Verdean officials have nakedly disgraced their patriotic sacrifice. In June 2020, they willfully converted Amalir Cabral's International Airport into the site of an unprecedented kidnapping scheme, betraying their history and humiliating the people of the country. Washington's extradition

4:52 Abduction in Cape Verde targeted a Colombian-born Venezuelan official who had established his own legacy in the global struggle against the West. In 2016, with inflation and unpredictability in their supply chains brought on by U.S. sanctions, forced Maduro to completely overhaul.

5:26 Venezuelan's economy. On January 19th, he inaugurated the National Council for a Productive Economy, a roundtable of 45 businessmen, government officials, including opposition figures, union leaders, and representatives from the different sectors throughout the country tasked with revamping domestic production capability. The following month, he established a national productive corporation to oversee management.

5:55 of the state assets. The following month, he established a national productive... Oh, sorry. I'm doing this without coffee, guys. To go along with the reforms, Maduro initiated a crackdown on what he described a cancer of corruption in state industries. By mid-February, his government had arrested and charged over 50 federal bureaucrats.

6:27 including three high-level cabinet officials overseeing food production for participating in fraud schemes. The most significant aspect of Maduro's 2016 economic offensive would prove to be a dramatic expansion of Venezuela's production capability and turned into a program. I'm not going to tell you what it stands for because it's a whole bunch of Spanish words that I'll butcher.

6:58 The acronym was called CLAP, C-L-A-P. Launched amid national sanctions, fueled shortages of basic commodities. CLAP aimed to insulate Venezuelans from external assaults on their economic system. CLAP aimed to remedy Venezuela's import crisis by delivering regular shipments of government subsidized pantry staples to households to millions of families.

7:31 Kind of like our current SNAP program. Neighborhoods were directed to form CLAP committees that would essentially serve as the middlemen between their locality and the central government. By assessing the needs of their communities and coordinating with the CLAP central committee, they would procure and distribute supplies.

8:01 At its core, CLAP represented a direct lifeline from the Venezuelan government to its population, a path to circumvent their crazy supply chains controlled by domestic elite oligarchy because they began hoarding common staples to destabilize their own government. Venezuelan economist and outspoken Maduro critic.

8:35 Francisco Rodriguez conducted an in-depth analysis of CLAP in 2021 and determined the program was associated with a more than doubling of households' access to food assistance. And this is a guy that doesn't like Maduro. But he acknowledged the success of this program to keep people from starving. He concluded that without CLAP invention,

9:04 Venezuela's food crisis would almost certainly have been much worse. The U.S. government's obsession with CLAP further underscored its success. In February of 2019, the U.S.'s envoy to Venezuela, remember Elliott Abram, that guy, the guy that's trying to coup the government, took the floor of the U.N. Security Council to...

9:37 complain about the initiative on the UN floor, declaring, quote, Maduro has continued to politicize aid via the CLAP program, unquote. He said it was being used to just feed Maduro's supporters. When the Treasury Department hit CLAP with sanctions, yeah, we're sanctioning their SNAP program. In June, State Department Mike Pompeo

10:08 lauded his colleagues for targeting Venezuela's oil for food scheme. He called feeding people to keep them from starving a scheme, claiming that Caracas had no intentions of providing food to the people. Yet the guy in the country actually watching this happen said it was basically like a miracle. Venezuela's vice president.

10:42 Delce Rodriguez promptly thanked Pompeo for his honest confession of U.S. financial terror, asserting his statement proved Washington's illicit sanctions were designed to prevent the arrival of food in Venezuela. Others in Washington routinely denounce CLAP as a form of social control. Well, if their CLAP program is social control, what does that make our SNAP program?

11:14 Washington argued Maduro's government used the program to arouse artificial support. So doesn't that mean that we're doing the same thing? Is SNAP artificial support for the government here in the United States? I'm seeing a striking similarity. The wealthy members of the anti-Chavista opposition.

11:45 were less likely to seek its benefits, claims of rampant political discrimination within CLAP did not square with reality. By the time the author, Anya, arrived in Venezuela in February of 2019, roughly 6 million households were receiving CLAP boxes every month. The fruit of the program, she observed, was

12:18 unlike anything that she had ever seen before. One of the people, even the people who opposed the government, was getting these. One shipment her host received contained pasta, dry beans, and cooking oil from Turkey. During another visit in December of 2020, the house was excited as they cooked their clap distributions for the Christmas holiday.

12:51 Terry Mattson, a U.S. peace activist who lived in Venezuela for several months around the time of the February 2019 visit, described a similar experience. Quote, my neighborhood was predominantly opposition, not supporters of Maduro. Quote, those people got food just as we in the Chavista household got food.

13:20 The food was distributed through the community council, and the community council was majority opposition forces. Rodriguez's academic review of CLAP confirmed that Mattson's observation was true. Using data from 27 separate surveys conducted by Venezuelan pollster Data Analysis, Rodriguez calculated that...

13:52 nearly 70% of self-identified opposition respondents received CLAP benefits between the years 2016 and 2021. The CLAP initiative scored a key rhetorical point against the tale of a wicked Venezuelan dictator starving his people to death. If Washington's narrative was true, why would Maduro's government send millions of Venezuelan households basic supplies on a monthly basis?

14:23 virtually free of charge. In July 2019, an increasingly frustrated U.S. Treasury lobbed sanctions against 10 individuals and 13 international corporations providing food. They used food as a form of social control, it was said, to reward political supporters and punish opponents. All the while, this is from our U.S. Treasury.

14:49 all the while pocketing hundreds of millions of dollars through a number of fraudulent schemes, Steve Mnuchin said. Washington's mission to overthrow Venezuelan government would place the Caribbean businessman most responsible for CLAP's success in the crosshairs of this economic war. In conjunction with its crusade against hunger, Maduro's government continued a Chavez-initiated campaign.

15:18 against homelessness in Venezuela. I thought that was a good thing. Since the 2011 launch of La Grande Mission de Vienda Venezuela, the Great Venezuelan Housing Mission, its acronym is GMVV, the Venezuelan state had provided over 4 million people free or subsidized housing, while a portion of the properties were built

15:48 Following GMBV's initiation, others were procured through the federal expropriation of existing constructs like Verte Tiona, a military base in southwest Caracas that Chavez partially converted into public housing, which is exactly what we did with our decommissioned bases throughout the United States.

16:17 We turned them over to local governments to create housing for their local population. The author visited Verte Tiona in February 2019 and observed in an oasis of urban security within a city previously defined by poverty and petty crime. It was through an effort to construct new social housing developments, however, that Maduro's government first encountered Alex Nain Saab.

16:50 Moran. Alex Saab is the focus of this chapter, a Colombian businessman who would ultimately sacrifice a life of wealth and privilege in defense of Venezuelans' sanctioned public. Saab was born to Lebanese immigrant parents in Colombia in 1971, the son of a very successful industrialist in Colombia's textile sector.

17:16 Saab launched his first business venture when he was 18 years old. His friends all scoffed at his efforts engulfing their Venezuelan neighbor at the turn of the century. Saab eagerly looked across the border to cut deals. By 2004, his export company, Shantex S.A., relied on a Venezuelan market to supply 82% of its earnings.

17:48 Saab cemented his relationship with Chavismo in 2011 when he won a contract to provide building materials for Venezuela's public housing mission. Five years later, he signed a deal to procure goods for 10 million clap boxes, marking his former formal foray into the fight against U.S. economic warfare.

18:16 In April 2018, Saab's efforts to sustain CLAP-inspired Venezuelan government to appoint him as a special envoy to its foreign ministry, an act that granted the businessman official diplomacy status. Saab's work for CLAP, for obvious reasons, were shrouded in secrecy because they didn't want him to be targeted by the sanctions.

18:43 Considering the entire program was designed to subvert unilateral U.S. sanctions, the supply lines and deals Saab brokered were naturally subject to sabotage, especially when the secondary sanctions kicked in against foreign entities conducting business with Caracas. The Treasury Department in 2019 attacked Clapp.

19:11 attack on CLAP was primarily focused on Saab, asserting that he operated a vast corrupt network by providing food. He was accused of enabling Venezuela's government to illegally profit from food imports and distribution in a U.S. Treasury report written in 2019. The charges stem from a 2017 report by the pro-opposition Venezuelan news site

19:45 are Mondo that purported to reveal a scheme through which Saab overcharged Venezuelan government for services related to CLAP so that he and others could pocket surplus and profit immensely. Now, again, I just have to highlight this. There's opposition newspapers in Venezuela, which kind of flies in the face of the fact that

20:13 He's a dictator. Wouldn't you close down the media that's criticizing you? I mean, if I was a dictator, I would. And that's exactly what U.S.-backed dictators do immediately for this very reason. On the surface, the expose appeared damning. Yet further analysis of the allegations and reality of U.S. financial war placed Saab in a more sympathetic light.

20:40 Armando presented its fraud case against Saab by contrasting figures listed on his clap invoices with the market price of those same goods in other countries, concluding that he had overcharged Caracas government for his own benefit. Yet without proper context, such comparisons are very misleading. In 2017, Washington's sanctions and decisions to classify Venezuela as a national security threat.

21:09 had raised the cost of doing business throughout Venezuela. Francisco Rodriguez, the economist and Maduro critic, therefore argued that the fact that any firm providing goods and services to Venezuelan government runs the risk of being accused of material assisting a sanctioned government. Those risks incurring U.S. sanctions itself implies that the prices of these goods and services will include a large risk premium.

21:39 that could well explain the difference between the international prices. He wrote that in a report in 2022. According to Rodriguez, the price discrepancy in Saab's invoices were therefore explained by many factors and cannot, in and of itself, be taken as evidence of corruption, particularly if they happened at the same time the risk increased. The Economist highlighted Washington's decision to sanction two Mexican companies for establishing a

22:09 oil-for-food agreement with Caracas as evidence that the state and private entities alike faced major risks if they engaged in Venezuelan government, yet the firms in Mexico were not targeted. A second allegation consistently lobbed at Saab was that he managed Venezuelans' relationship with allies in Turkey and Iran, overseeing what is often characterized as an illicit network.

22:38 through which he traded Venezuelan gold for food and other goods. Now, I just want to remind you guys, when the U.S. government uses our money, UNI's money, for food for countries like in Iraq and other countries around the world that we're targeting, they get all the credit for being sympathetic to the starving people.

23:08 But if a country does it themselves, the U.S. government, because they're not going to get any credit for feeding poor people, will go and attack the very people inside the country that is arranging the same program that the State Department sets up. But because the State Department doesn't control it, it's not allowed to happen. And the reason that is, is because when the State Department controls it, they control the people in the chain.

23:37 which they can get to spy on the targeted country. So the fact that Maduro went outside the State Department-sanctioned food program and they weren't going to hire CIA assets to spy on the targeted country, it's now a bad thing to feed poor people. In April 2019, an article in Bloomberg cited the U.S. investigators.

24:08 alleging that Venezuelans' goal for food trade with Turkey has evolved into a multi-layer scheme built on a foundation of criminals and placed Saab at the center of the conspiracy. So as long as our tax dollars are feeding these people and the CIA can control the distribution of the food through the State Department, it's fine. It's charity.

24:40 But if the country does it themselves, it's fraud without our tax dollars. Though the U.S. periodically threatened to punish Turkey for its economic relationship with Venezuela, it never did. Regardless, it is clear that both Turkey and Iran provided life-saving assistance to Venezuela and the government. Turkish exports to Venezuela had increased dramatically since the onset of U.S. sanctions in Caracas.

25:10 reaching a monthly height of just under $30 million in March 2021 alone. The surge began in March of 2018, shortly after Saab became involved in the Venezuela trade negotiations. Food products, including wheat flour and chocolate, made up the majority of Turkish exports to Venezuela.

25:40 In 2021, pasta alone accounted for 40% of the Turkish shipments to Venezuela. That same year, Turkey ranked as the second most common destination for Venezuelan exports, rivaling only China. Venezuelan exports to Turkey consisted almost exclusively of raw material, scrap iron accounting for just shy of 80%.

26:08 The author said she observed the results of a fortified Caracas-Ancara relationship firsthand while staying with friends in Venezuela. I have seen the Turkish products, including pasta, arriving in collapsed shipments. In fact, when I first visited Caracas, she said, in April of 2019, posters welcoming Turkish President Erdogan were still peeling from the public street post. Erdogan had toured.

26:37 the Venezuelan capital, two months before, marking the first time in history a Turkish leader arrived in Venezuela for an official state visit. Political problems cannot be resolved by punishing an entire nation, he said. We do not approve of these measures that ignore the rules of global trade. Yet perhaps no reliance

27:05 has proven more consequential for Venezuela than its blossoming partnership with Iran, a top target of U.S. hybrid war ever since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Chavez prioritized a friendship with Iran from the outset of his presidency, another reason why he was targeted. He signed roughly 300 deals with Tehran, including the establishment of a joint development fund.

27:35 between 2001 and 2013. Since Saab entered the picture, he had been credited with, or accused of, depending on who you talk to, stimulating ties between Caracas and Tehran to unprecedented heights, an act that would eventually rescue Venezuela from the depths of a fuel crisis brought on by this economic warfare. To fully grasp Venezuela's fuel crisis in 2020, the

28:05 Saab's role in ending it, the fundamentals of oil production are instructive. While there are several ways to evaluate crude, it is primarily categorized as weight, light, medium or heavy. Light crude is the easiest to reform and therefore yields the highest percentage of fuel. Heavy crude, on the other hand, is thick and very difficult to pump out of the ground. Venezuela.

28:34 has by far the largest crude reserves in the world, with its US, according to a US geological survey, estimating that somewhere between 380 to 652 billion barrels are beneath its territory. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia, with the second largest, has 87 billion. So, I mean, they have anywhere from

29:02 I mean, that's a lot. I'm not going to do math in public. Most of Venezuela's reserve consists of heavy crude. To become the gasoline and diesel required for fuel, Venezuela's oil must pass through extraction and refining processes during which it is mixed with inputs such as lighter crude and chemicals that dilute it into a usable substance.

29:31 Venezuela's capacity to implement that process was severely hampered in 2017 when Washington applied sanctions that severed Caracas from U.S. financial institutions, blocking its access to foreign suppliers of the inputs needed to refine the crude. Within weeks of the measure's introduction, Venezuela experienced a steep decline in domestic oil production. Washington compounded that.

30:01 on the petroleum sector of Venezuela in January 2019 during a push to install Guaido as president when the Trump administration banned the country's state oil company PDVSA from exporting crude to the U.S. or conducting business with U.S. entities. These measures, combined with Washington's repeated vow to administer secondary sanctions,

30:31 against third-party governments and entities willing to work with Caracas led to yet another plunge in Venezuela oil production. Because it doesn't make any sense to take it out of the ground if you can't refine it. Throughout 2019 and 2020, Venezuela was plagued with seemingly endless lines at gas stations. The resulting foreign media headlines perfectly served Washington's intent to administering the sanctions.

31:01 deriding the socialist government endowed with the world's largest oil reserves for failing to provide fuel for its own citizens that they were causing. According to the mainstream narrative, Maduro had mismanaged his socialist policies and was blamed for the shortage. As the crisis deepened and gas lines lengthened, Maduro's dispatched a team of negotiators, including Saab, to...

31:32 an ally 7,000 miles away, to avoid U.S. sanctions. Iran quickly agreed to a deal that exchanged Venezuelan gold for light crude and other chemical inputs Caracas needed to re-engage in their oil refining process. When five Iranian oil tankers set out for Venezuela's coast in early 2020, Washington transformed the Caribbean Sea into a theater.

32:03 There were deploying Navy destroyers, combat ships, aircraft, and helicopters, Coast Guard cutters, and Air Force surveillance aircraft, doubling the capacity in the region, it was announced, weeks before the Iranian ships were scheduled to dock. As the tankers entered Venezuela's territorial waters, however, the looming U.S. Naval Patrol proved to be futile.

32:33 May 25th, Venezuelan naval ships and fighter aircraft safely escorted the first Iranian tanker to its reception in Venezuela. On behalf of all of us, we say to Iran from the Caribbean Sea, thank you for your courage. The Venezuelan oil minister said, proudly welcoming the ship himself. We are not anyone's colony and we will never be. We're rebellious. The Caribbean people are full of glory and virtue.

33:04 virtue, he said. Iran's intervention marked the dramatic end of Venezuela's first oil crisis, enabling Caracas to double domestic oil production in 2021. Yet just as Tehran-Caracas' partnership succeeded in alleviating suffering of ordinary Venezuelans, so it placed a target on the back of the man who created it.

33:31 The oil minister, an external object of obsession in U.S. media thanks to his Syrian-Lebanese heritage, which the press routinely capitalized to brand him an agent of Hezbollah, earned a spot on Washington's de facto hit list as a result of his shipments. Mere weeks before the Iranian tankers docked at Porto Cabello, the U.S. State Department placed a $10 million bounty

34:01 on El Hashemi's head. That's their foreign minister, or their energy minister. They accused him of narco-trafficking for bringing oil to Venezuela. No man bore the brunt of Washington's economic war like Saab, however. He had set out for Tehran in the immediate aftermath of Venezuela's triumph at Porto Cabela.

34:35 U.S. officials initiated a plan to hinder his diplomatic efforts to feed and fuel Venezuela once and for all. On June 12, 2020, Maduro dispatched Saab on an official mission to Iran, where he was tasked for procuring medicine, food, and other humanitarian supplies for Venezuela's population. En route to Tehran, Saab's jet made a brief service stop for fuel.

35:06 Cape Verde, a routine excursion that did not require him to exit the plane or pass through immigration. They were just there for fuel. As Saab's aircraft refueled on the tarmac of the airport, Cape Verdean authorities suddenly demanded that he get off the aircraft and that he was required to purchase a visa, even though he's a diplomat. To justify their actions, authorities in

35:40 Cape Verde claimed to have detained Saab in compliance with an Interpol red notice seeking his arrest. Who put that Interpol red notice in the system? You're about to find out. Yet while Interpol did eventually post a red notice for Saab, it did not issue it until June 13th, the day after this happened. They were simply trying to work out the answer.

36:16 After the arrest, Saab's legal team said, they were looking for a red notice to justify the arrest. Interpol's former director of legal affairs, a Dutch lawyer, Russel Martha, reinforced the legal team's view, asserting that the agency breached official protocol in Mr. Saab's case.

36:44 Speaking to Nigerian media in January of 2021, Martha said that his own explanation for the discrepancies in the timing of Saab's arrest, alleging U.S. authorities only submitted a formal Interpol request for his detention after they learned he was refueling at Cape Verde.

37:09 Martha pointed to the fact that the local authorities took multiple unnecessary steps designed to delay Saab's departure, trying to get the red notice put in the system, including forcing him to obtain a visa as evidence that Washington had ordered Cape Verde to stall his takeoff so they could get the red notice in the system. Without doubt, at the time they arrived, at the time they arrested him,

37:39 There was no red notice from Interpol, nor were there an arrest warrant from Cape Verde. This makes his arrest arbitrary and illegal, an ex-Interpol chief said. Noting the agency's red notice protocol is not instantaneous and would have required Washington to notify Saab that it planned to pursue his detention.

38:09 which never happened. Cape Verde was acting on the orders of the U.S. government, Saab's attorney said. Their claims are further backed by media reports that a private jet owned by U.S. government contractors, Presidential Aviation, that's the name of the company, idled at the airport for days following Saab's detention. According to tracking data,

38:41 The plane was on standby for a chartered flight to Miami, Florida for his extradition, where a sealed indictment on money laundering charges awaited him. Assertions that Washington orchestrated the diplomat's extradition and his kidnapping was ultimately confirmed by Trump's own Secretary of State in his 2023 memoir, Never Give an Inch.

39:12 Mike Pompeo wrote that Trump's Venezuelan envoy and Iran-Contra crook, Elliott Abrams, first briefed him on the plot days before it went into effect. According to Pompeo, Abrams informed him that some clever drug enforcement agency folks had a chance to nab Saab while he was on a mission to arrange a swap of Venezuelan gold for Iranian oil.

39:41 Upon learning the diplomat's jet would stop in Cape Verde to refuel, Pompeo said he called Attorney General Bill Barr and arranged for our ambassador in Cape Verde in the Department of Justice to file the paperwork for his extradition to the United States. Pompeo continued his unrestrained admission of guilt by saying this, quote, suffice it to say that no other nation has the global reach.

40:12 to intercept an Iranian-Venezuelan plot in real time and convince a small island nation to hold a wanted man. Wanted for feeding people outside the State Department and USAID. Yet even as Pompeo and his collaborators succeeded in extra-legally apprehending Saab, the diplomat's journey to Florida was not guaranteed.

40:41 Before the U.S. could put Saab on trial in Miami, it would have to physically transfer him to Florida, a task complicated by the fact that no formal extradition treaty was in effect between Cape Verde and Washington. Unless Cape Verde is a banana republic, it cannot allow the United States government to order the detention of an envoy with diplomatic immunity who was on a humanitarian mission.

41:10 his lawyer asserted. For the ideologues commandeering Trump's Latin American policy, however, ducking and dodging law was a preferred pastime. Four months following Saab's June 2020 arrest, a U.S. naval cruiser called USS San Joaquino set out from the Chesapeake Bay in Norfolk, Virginia, across

41:42 the Atlantic to Cape Verde. Though no former war had been declared upon Cape Verde, Hawks embedded within Trump's administration had dispatched the ship to increase pressure on Cape Verde to extradite Sopp. Their ploy was exposed in December 2020 New York Times report detailing how hardliners at the Justice Department and State Department

42:12 Particularly, Abrams had pushed for the ship's deployment out of fear the US would lose an unusual opportunity to punish Mr. Maduro. That was in the New York Times. If Saab's detention lingered on, Abrams and his cronies claimed that without a strong US naval presence off the waters of Cape Verde, that some special forces that didn't exist would venture

42:42 to invade Cape Verde and break him out of prison. According to then U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper, the paranoia allegations was just one of several unsubstantiated rumors that Abrams circulated throughout the media about the diplomat. In his 2022 memoir, A Sacred Oath,

43:08 Esper detailed a slew of wild theories that Abrams and his colleagues floated about Saab. This is a quote of one of them. Maduro persuaded President Putin and Russian special forces to spring Saab from jail. Russian mercenaries in Libya were going to travel hundreds of miles in small boats to rescue or kill Saab. Venezuelan intelligence was chartering.

43:38 a special plane to fly to Cape Verde to repatriate Saab, and Iranian Revolutionary Guard troops were preparing the rescue mission, unquote. That's what Abrams was floating around Washington, D.C. during this time. Just as their weapons of mass destruction had nearly two decades prior, the Axis of Evil's commando squads failed to materialize.

44:09 the U.S. Navy ship ultimately returned to Norfolk in time for the Christmas holidays. By then, U.S. taxpayers had financed the deployment, costing us about $2 million just to set off the coast of Cape Verde. Which, by the way, is how we got Hawaii, just in case you want to know. We just floated some ships over there, over through the Queen, and the presence of our Navy off the coast sent the message, don't resist.

44:40 It seems that somebody was watching too many Mission Impossible movies, Esper joked in his memoir. Esper went on to say something very critically, though. I never saw intelligence to back up any of the accusations that Abrams was making. Weeks before the Navy ship set sail, the US sent another vessel.

45:13 a Coast Guard cutter called the Bear to Cape Verde, establishing an armed presence in the waters under the guise of countering illegal fishing. On top of, because we really care about illegal fishing off the coast of Africa, on top of military pressure, Washington attempted to effectively bribe Cape Verde to extradite Saab.

45:49 Following the diplomat's detention, U.S. officials wrote out a conveniently timed $100 million direct investment in Cape Verde's economy alongside plans to spend $300 million renovating our embassy in Cape Verde. So a $400 million bribe of our money.

46:18 Meanwhile, Saab's lawyers accused Cape Verde authorities of routinely blocking them from meeting with their client while subjecting him to dehumanization torturous conditions. On top of obstructing his legal counsel, local authorities denied him access to his medical team despite the fact that he was a cancer patient.

46:48 He was being kept substantially in incommunicado. The same month, CNN published a handwritten interview with Saab that offered a portrait of his persecution in Cape Verde. I've been physically and psychologically tortured. I've been denied medical attention that I need. I was kept in a cell with only an hour of daylight every day, denouncing the U.S. case against him as a political action.

47:18 that lacked proof of legal justification. Earlier that year, prosecutors in Geneva concluded an investigation into Saab's Swiss bank accounts and determined there was no evidence to pursue money laundering case against him. The public prosecutor's office will move to discontinue these criminal proceedings, the Swiss authorities said, which was a blow to Washington's case. In December 2020,

47:48 a regional court for the Economic Community of West African States, of which Cape Verde is a member, demanded its government transfer Saab to house arrest, an order that Cape Verde complied with the following month. Weeks later, the same court formally ordered Cape Verde to release Saab based on the fact that the Interpol Red Notice seeking his detention had been issued.

48:16 after his arrest. The court further demanded Cape Verde discontinue all proceedings and processes aimed at extraditing him to the U.S., even instructing the government to pay the diplomat $200,000 in damage for wrongful arrests. Cape Verde ignored them. Instead, on March 16, 2021, hours after that ruling, Cape Verde's Supreme Court formally approved

48:46 his extradition to the U.S. They decided that the $400 million was more important than complying with the law. Cape Verde did not officially ship the diplomat to Miami until October 16th. At around 5 p.m., a Gulfstream owned by the U.S. Justice Department took off from Cape Verde for an unlisted Northwestern destination. Hours later, Cape Verde's national radio station confirmed.

49:16 that the government had just extradited Saab to the U.S., prompting an unsealing of a money laundering indictment that had already been discredited. His first Miami court appearance was set for October 18th. The timing of Saab's extradition exposed yet another layer of Cape Verde's neocolonial subservience. Within an hour of his October 16th extradition, Cape Verde's ruling

49:45 Movement for Democracy Party suffered an overwhelming defeat in national elections. So they did it right at the time where the already compromised government of Cape Verde could approve it. The new government would have never done that. Moving on. On October 18, 2021, Saab's wife, Camilla,

50:23 Fabre Saab emerged into the Caracas sunlight and delivered a statement about the plight of her husband, who appeared in U.S. court for the first time that day. Quote, we will always be a united family. We're very close. Now that he has been kidnapped, we feel kidnapped as well. But like him, we will continue the struggle.

50:56 The author spoke with his wife in December of 2021. And she started off by saying, I'm doing this interview for Alex. And went on to say she explained his whole plight of trying to feed Venezuelans. Fabre Saab went on to recount how Alex maintained regular contact with her throughout his internment in Cape Verde by smuggling letters out of the prison.

51:28 They wouldn't even let him communicate with anybody. They have two daughters, very young, and this went on for quite some time. So I'm not going to go over all of the things that she said, but it's heartbreaking because, again, one of the daughters was so young that she didn't even really know who her dad was. In addition to the psychological torment,

52:01 Fabre Saab, the wife, was aware of the physical torture that he had endured. The first letter that she received was dated five days after his arrest. She explained that he spent the first three days of his detention in a basement jail cell where they had placed bags over his head and denied him food and water to interrogate him.

52:29 He had no mattress, no pillow, and no bathroom. They ultimately moved him to a solitary confinement after complaining that he was cutting himself with pens, but he wasn't. And in the jail, all of the other people, he was actually writing letters with a pen, and they had to take his pen away because they found out that they were secreting his letters out of the jail.

52:58 So they accused him of cutting himself, which he never did. And then in solidarity, the rest of the prisoners who were still allowed to have pens and write letters and stuff like that, they would throw pens at his cell so he could continue writing letters. The prosecution was designed to achieve far more ambitious goals than one man's personal torment.

53:28 Through the U.S. government's case against the diplomat concerned allegations that he laundered funds related to the construction of Venezuela's public housing. Saab's advocates maintain the charges were simply a pretext for extradition. Once the diplomat was in Miami, U.S. authorities would focus on their actual target, the international network forming in opposition of Washington's global economic war.

53:57 against Venezuela. Even their own admissions, the U.S. authorities were far less interested in pursuing their money laundering case, because it didn't exist, against Saab than they were in pressuring him to defect from Venezuela's government and disclose the avenues through which Caracas evaded Washington's sanctions. A confession of the true motive behind Saab's detention and torture

54:26 was printed in December 2020, Times report on the Navy ship's deployment to Cape Verde. Buried in the piece in the New York Times, conceded that Saab's captivity, quote, stripped Mr. Maduro of an important ally and a major financial fixer at a time when fewer countries are willing or able to come to Venezuela's.

54:56 aid, unquote. So his detention, illegal detention, was to send a message to the world to not deal with Venezuela. The Times went on to say if Mr. Saabs cooperates with American officials, he could help untangle Mr. Maduro's economic web of support and assist authorities in bringing charges against the Venezuelan government. So he was a pawn.

55:28 in a much bigger game. An October 2021 explanation of the diplomat's case in Forbes similarly admitted that, quote, for the US, Saab is a key that unlocks the Venezuelan monetary mystery. That is, how a country facing sanctions from the US and the UK and the EU is still able to export things like gold and oil. The only man who can actually explain how the country survives today

56:00 When he arrives in U.S. custody, he will become a serious information asset for the U.S. in understanding how the country does business, unquote. He's a pawn. Defense Secretary Esper and Secretary of State Pompeo confirmed Washington's desire to flip Saab in their respective memoirs. Both men explain their interest in Venezuela was largely driven by frustration with Caracas' fruitful

56:30 alliance with designated U.S. enemy states. And Esper asserted that, quote, allowing countries like Russia, China, and Iran to gain strength in the Western Hemisphere was of great concern, unquote. Pompeo was more openly ideological, writing without a hint of irony when it came to Venezuela, quote, in the spirit of the Monroe Doctrine.

57:00 We shouldn't allow China, Russia, and Iran to interfere in the system of sovereign nations, unquote. But you're interfering in the sovereign nation of Venezuela. Are you kidding me? And you're the one that pushed them. They didn't want to deal with Iran and China and Russia. They wanted to deal with us. You're the reason that they're dealing with them by default. You pushed them into their bed. It's just...

57:31 Total lunacy. To Esper and Pompeo, Saab was a linchpin in this relationship. His detention was part of Washington's overall strategy to attack Venezuela and its trading partners. While boasting of his hand in the diplomacy kidnapping of a fellow diplomat, Pompeo remarked, quote, we may never know how much oil we kept away from Maduro.

58:02 It depends on what swab, who is now in jail in the U.S. on money laundering charges that doesn't exist, chooses to share with us, unquote. Esper echoed Pompeo's hope the diplomat would cooperate with U.S. authorities and divulge Venezuela's methods for evading sanctions, writing, quote, Saab was a very important player and access to him could really help explain.

58:30 how Maduro and his regime worked, unquote. This is just crazy. And of course, Esper is a former Raytheon executive. I'm sure that has nothing to do with it. It's important to get custody of him, he said. This could provide a real roadmap for the U.S. government to unravel the Venezuelan government's illicit schemes and bring them to justice, unquote.

59:02 Their illicit scheme was to feed the people and get gas for their cars. That's the illicit scheme. What the Times, Forbes, Pompeo, and Esper failed to understand, however, was that their allegations of Saab's illicit schemes were informed through the prism of U.S. law. While Saab may have overseen bank transfers between Caracas and Tehran,

59:30 That violated U.S. sanctions in theory. In reality, the U.S. Treasury jurisdiction did not include agreements and transactions between foreigners and their government. What's more, over a year of torment and isolation in Cape Verde, failed to move Saab to sell out Caracas, a reality that appeared unchanged following his arrival in Miami, much to the chagrin of Pompeo and Esper. Quote,

1:00:00 What bothers the U.S. the most about him, my husband, is that he will never, ever surrender, unquote, from his wife, Mrs. Saab. Acting as a de facto guerrilla unit resisting a modern medieval seize, Venezuela's clap committees would have been powerless against the force of U.S. economic warfare if not for the sacrifice of Alex Schwab.

1:00:33 This fact, combined with his successful drive to neutralize U.S. attacks on the oil sector of Venezuela, transformed the businessman turned diplomat into a general in the global fight against Western financial tyranny. Though international law seldom hinders Washington's exploits in the past, U.S. officials had yet to make the exceptional decision to kidnap and torture.

1:01:01 a foreign diplomat before their treatment of Saab. The only comparable case that perhaps WikiLeaks Julian Assange, although he was not actually an official diplomat, but he was a journalist. When he was extraditionally abducted from the Ecuadorian embassy on the orders of the United States,

1:01:32 You know, by the same Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, who had already tried to kill him. As with Saab, Washington sought Assange's extradition over a sealed indictment that the U.S. prosecutors unveiled after his arrest. Ultimately, the case of Saab and Assange demonstrate Washington's conviction that its legal jurisdiction has no earthly boundaries.

1:02:01 Robert Scola of the U.S. District Court of Southern Florida dismissed all seven money laundering charges filed against Saab in November 2021, leaving him to face a single count of conspiracy to commit money laundering. So they have no evidence that he committed money laundering at all and did all of this to this man to get him to turn against Maduro.

1:02:27 And conspiracy to do something is significantly different than having evidence that it was actually done. The following December, the author attended an evidentiary hearing in the trial. Over the course of two days, Saab's defense team implored Judge Scola to honor their client's diplomatic status and throw out the case altogether. To support Saab's claim to diplomatic immunity, his lawyers disclosed.

1:02:59 that he was carrying official Venezuelan government documents, including a letter personally addressed from President Maduro to the Iranian government at the time of his detention. Photographs of the envelopes and diplomatic testimony from Saab's Cape Verde attorney, Florian Mandel, revealed that an anonymous hand, Cape Verde or otherwise,

1:03:29 had opened all the sealed diplomat communiques following his arrest. Maduro's letter to Iranian president was a heartfelt expression of gratitude for their assistance in feeding the country. Quote, I am writing to you in the name of God, the merciful, on behalf of the people of Venezuela and the government that honors me.

1:04:01 to thank you from the deepest soul of this earth for the support you have bravely and resolutely given to Venezuela, upholding international law and laying bare empires made of paper, Maduro had written. Judge Scola denied Saab's request for diplomatic immunity on December 23, 2022. The U.S. released Saab and returned him to Venezuela as part of a partnership.

1:04:30 prisoner swap in December 2023. And that is the end of that. When I read that, to me, it's just, it's overwhelmingly crazy. Now, how do you think the U.S. would react if one of our diplomats flying around with diplomatic immunity around the world gets kidnapped like that?

1:05:07 And then all of these fake charges where independent investigative authorities like the Swiss government says, hey, we've looked at all of his bank accounts. He's not money laundering. And you still proceed with this facade. And then when he gets here, they're hoping that most people aren't tracking this. They drop all of the charges that they use to extradite him.

1:05:36 The U.S. government dropped them. It's just literally crazy. Rules for thee, but not me. Yeah. And to me, the biggest irony of all of this is the connection between, hey, we can starve your country and then force you to only deal with our food.

1:06:05 to feed your people, so we get all the credit for feeding your people, and we can use people to insert into the food program, which we all know to be CIA assets, through USAID, and use taxpayer money to do it, and you have Venezuela, who does it on their own, and they're the bad guy. Ron, go ahead.

1:06:33 I'm sitting here and my mouth is like, I'm trying to pick my mouth up off the fricking desk. I mean, this essentially is completely contradictory to everything that I felt like Trump stood for. Why the hell would he, I mean, did he know this? I don't think he did. So I'll be very honest with you.

1:06:58 We already know Pompeo's a bad guy. We know Abrams a bad guy. And John Bolton was involved in all of this. OK, that was that was kind of going to be my question. Yeah. So it is completely possible because they did it to JFK, too, to feed fake information into this system and not know this. And as Esper.

1:07:28 pointed out the whole rumor mill that was going on throughout the State Department, the CIA with their mouthpieces in the media of all of these threats that they were going to break Saab out of jail any day had literally no intelligence behind them. But that doesn't stop from this information being briefed because John Bolton's running the National Security Council. Right.

1:07:57 And Abrams is like his right hand man. Right. Absolute douchebag is douchebag and a half. Yeah. So where do you get the real information from? Well, and not that I trust Bill Barr either. No. Yeah. I mean, it was Bill Barr's attorneys that were prosecuting the case. Just by the way, just point of reference. It was the ship was the San Jacinto.

1:08:31 Jacinto, okay. Jacinto, just FYI. Thank you. Not correcting you, just letting you know. No, no, no, I appreciate it. I'm very upfront with that. No foreign language ability. Well, it's actually named for the Battle of San Jacinto during the Mexican-American War in Texas. Okay. Thank you for that information. You're welcome. Anybody else? Actually, if nobody's got a question, I have a question for you.

1:09:01 Are you aware of any book or any document that goes in and divulges the scam or details the scam of the use of communism as the justification for the CIA's role in international politics? Not per se. How you eventually figure that out.

1:09:31 is reading the 120 books. And I get all that. There's not one book that says the entire thing was fake. Okay. What you find out is, for example, and I had a very interesting conversation with Paul Williams about this in my second interview. So, you know,

1:09:56 Between those interviews, obviously, I had read a whole bunch more books. And I asked him point blank, do you get the feeling that the justification for Gladio and that whole stay behind unit program all billed as anti-communist in nature and drastically needed because, you know, any minute they were going to come over the Folga Gap, which was ludicrous, especially. A thousand percent.

1:10:24 Yeah. In the immediate aftermath, I said, do you because in his book, he it's very obvious that he never questioned that. But since my first interview with him in my second interview, I had gone on and started exploring Operation Condor, where there's actually cables between CIA and State Department officials in some of the countries in Latin America that actually have.

1:10:54 documented evidence that says there's no communism here. There's literally no contact with the Soviet Union down here. While at the same time, all of the newspapers in America are all drawing those links. And so you just get the general idea over, you know, tons and tons of books is that they used the

1:11:23 communist threat in order to justify overthrowing a particular designated regime that they didn't like.

1:11:34 Regardless of what the actual facts were. To say anti-communism in the United States is essentially like that is the most evil thing that could possibly be. It's psychological. Exactly. It is psychological warfare against Americans. I've talked to several people who've actually immigrated from the former Soviet Union and they're like, we were never communists. We were socialists.

1:12:03 I don't even like to address the communism as a thing. I have my own personal opinions of it. I'm at that point too. But to use the word communism as a threat in a country that doesn't have, I mean, other than, you know, like we had the

1:12:33 U.S., communist, whatever, communist USA, whatever it is. But to use the fact that you have a few disorganized, and probably the best example of that is Iran, when we overthrew that government in 1953. Every single piece of paper that went back and forth between the State Department

1:13:01 And their embassy in Tehran in 1953 said, oh, my God, the communists are going to overthrow the government. The communists are in bed with Mossadegh. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Well, if you actually do the math, and I've read so much about this, if you actually do the math, there was not more in a country that had millions and millions and millions of people. There were not more than 4,000 who were self.

1:13:30 proclaimed communist what in the world is 4 000 people going to do in a country that has millions yeah and the majority of them were workers they weren't like embedded in the government or had high they were workers and in that day and time um the communist party um and the label communist

1:13:59 was more associated with labor unions than they were with being intricately involved in the government because they had lived as a colonial power and been slaves to the UK and other European governments. And they viewed communism as the party of the workers. That same thing was true in Italy. It was not.

1:14:27 like the evil empire communism that we've been programmed to believe. It was a worker party that wanted workers' rights. But if you're going to exploit the, like in Iran's case, the oil sector, you damn sure don't want those people organizing against the concessions that you have in that country in the oil industry.

1:14:56 They've conflated labor unions with communism in order to be able to do whatever they want in these countries and brainwashed us into believing that if I'm the CIA and I want to overthrow a government to steal all of their resources for my oligarch bosses.

1:15:20 All I have to do is use the word communism, and then we documented the fact that that changed to radical Islamist terrorists in the fall of the Soviet Union. 1,000%. I agree with that. As I have progressed in my understanding of this, I feel the same way as you. I almost feel like using the term communism as the threat.

1:15:46 as the justification is something that is like, it's like kindergarten level in terms of understanding geopolitics. But most people don't understand geopolitics. And so when you say communism, it's like, oh, well, we got to do that. It's this extraordinarily puffed up threat.

1:16:09 that everybody's terrified of when they really don't have any idea of what it truly is. Well, I think we know what communism is, but they don't have the education to differentiate between the use of that word.

1:16:35 as it represents an entire country or government and the psychological operational use of that word in order to manipulate Americans. And you said it much better than I did. But yes, you hit the nail on the head, in my opinion. Yeah, you create a boogeyman and then you use that to manipulate Americans. And obviously, that's the problem I have with it the most.

1:17:06 And, you know, you go back to the history of the creation of communism, the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, and find out that the same oligarchs paid for that to have it to use as a weapon against us. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, it's just, it's crazy once you understand it. Yeah, and I'm at that point. And it's just, it's like...

1:17:34 That's what we're here for. Amen. Amen. Okay. So I'm going to finish this up if we don't have any more hands. And please keep me in your prayers. Colonel, since you're going to be ending here shortly, do you have a moment for a private call after this? Maybe once I get to the airport. Okay, very well.

1:18:05 I'm doing this without coffee, so I have to make a coffee stop on the way to the airport. I have some stuff I want to talk to you about real quick. Sure. Also, let me just take this time, since I've got a couple of minutes, and go over the meeting that we had yesterday. It was a fantastic meeting.

1:18:30 And it was hosted by General Flynn and his Gold Institute, which is basically focused, despite the name, which I think is kind of an odd name, but that's just me. It's focused on international media, independent media. And I want to share with you guys something that I was completely unaware of till yesterday. Bridget and I talked through messages about it yesterday.

1:19:00 Um, something that we all need to pay attention to is, um, you guys are very familiar that basically there was an economic attack on Parler to take it down. Um, and I'm not going to go into the background of that, but it was, um, a economic warfare attack against Parler, much like we just talked about in our story today. So the timing is perfect. Um, Parler.

1:19:30 In 2003, what was left of it was purchased. And they have worked silently behind the scenes to relaunch Parler. And it was just recently relaunched. But it's not the old Parler that uses Amazon Cloud and all of these, the pay mechanism of...

1:19:59 Stripe or whatever they were using, which allowed them to be taken down. They spent from the time they purchased it in 2003 until just a few months ago to build an independent cloud. They literally own their entire infrastructure now. They even created, and I'll tell you what it is, the name of it. I was just completely amazed.

1:20:29 They created Kivo, K-Y-V-O. That is basically, for those of you who don't know, behind the scenes, all of these media platforms have a pay mechanism. And it can be PayPal, it can be Stripe, but all of those are owned by nefarious people that can cut you off without you even knowing it.

1:21:01 pay platform they also um set up another um media must like spaces called or rumble called play tv and they own everything to include the cloud that all of the video resides on so they have built kind of an impregnable um other than the internet going down um

1:21:29 entity business model that is completely insulated from a tax by taking things down. And they are going to go public next year. And they are going to be the only platform that owns every aspect of their business model.

1:21:59 I wanted to let you guys know that because Bridget and I are going to begin participating over on Parler as well. Not primarily. All of our primary content will be here. But we are going to establish a presence over there and begin uploading our videos over there so that they're secure for the future.

1:22:27 because right now our videos are on Rumble. And thanks to our Swedish partners, they're in the box link on my pin post. But they all need to be moved because that's owned by Gmail, Google. They all need to be moved to that platform for posterity so that anybody looking for this information can find it forever.

1:22:54 And so I just wanted to put that out there to let you guys know. That was, to me, the biggest takeaway. Parler sponsored part of the program yesterday. And all of the independent media that was represented there. I put a few pictures of some of the speakers there. I did get to meet Laura Logan, finally. I got to meet George Papadopoulos.

1:23:23 I'm going to try to set up an interview with his wife because his wife is a lawyer and she's from Italy. And I would love to have her perspective as an Italian on the lasting effects of Operation Gladio within Italy as well. So I'm going to be working on that behind the scenes. And there's also a new media, Truther Media, I think is the name of it.

1:23:51 that a friend of mine has set up. They were all there. That's who I went to dinner with last night. A bunch of great content providers. I'll be helping them promote their content in the future. And it's common people that you guys know. And I was not able to like write down all their handles on X.

1:24:18 But Scott Zimmerman, Beer in the Parade, who's a friend of mine, is in that group. And he's going to, when he gets back home today, he's going to give me a list of all their handles so I can promote them and their new media venture. So the more people do this, and there were several people, thanks to you guys, that...

1:24:41 recognize me and come up and ask me to come on their shows as well. And as those get set up, I will share them with you. A lot of work to be done in this space, that's for sure. And with all the drama that goes on in the conservative, independent media, MAGA, it's nice to find some people that aren't affected by the drama.

1:25:10 and don't wish to participate in it. Oh, I see Duane Cates over on Rumble. Thank you, Duane, for joining us. But my husband asked me last night when I got back to the room, well, was it worth it? And I said, it absolutely was worth it. It was worth it to be here and represent all of you guys here. And one of the things that struck me the most that General Flynn said, because in that room,

1:25:41 I definitely am a small independent voice. But his point was that coming to these forums and they had, I met the guy that was representing the Kurds in Iraq and I gave him my information. We're going to have some kind of forum, whether it's on Rumble or whatever.

1:26:08 Because when I started telling him who I had met when I was in northern Iraq, which he kept referring to as Kurdistan, and I don't blame him because that's what it used to be. He was very interested in getting together and hosting a show together. So I'll follow up on that. I got his card. It just allows you to expand.

1:26:33 the people that you know in that space. And it establishes a network that will bring more information to you guys and more insights into the international. We had the Eva, long name lady, she's beautiful. She does independent journalism in the Netherlands and is constantly under attack there because of their lack of freedom of speech. And it just gives you

1:27:01 a much broader appreciation for being those small voices focused on providing truth to people. So I wouldn't have been invited if it wasn't for you guys and you following my platform. So I'm deeply, deeply appreciative of all of the support you guys give us to pay for the books that we buy and the effort that we put into this.

1:27:31 So, thank you for being here and supporting us. Because that's what it's all about, is getting the truth out. So, it was definitely worth the trip up here. And now I just need to get home. So, and in time. Is this the same parlor that was out there? This is the one that Bongino was invested into? Yeah, okay. Cool. So, they've relaunched it. You have to go back and re-register now.

1:28:03 I'm trying right now and I can't get in. Yeah, probably because of yesterday. But yeah, it was a little dicey. Bridget and I were trying to do it through DMs. Are they employing this as a substitute or as an alternative to X? And are they going to be?

1:28:27 offering the same sort of like spaces capabilities that X has? Well, they have the video. And again, I just found out about it yesterday. I just re-registered my account there. So I can't answer any of those questions. I'll keep you guys updated as we figure out how to operate in that environment. But it would be great if they do. I don't, that Play TV, I'm not familiar with it. So I don't know what its capabilities are.

1:28:56 But as I get home and I'm able to do it on a laptop, doing it on my phone is a little dicey for me. I'm just, you know, most of this stuff I turn over to my daughter. She figures out how to do all the stuff and then comes and gives me a cheat sheet. So I will keep you guys updated. And I appreciate you guys being here this morning.

1:29:19 I've got to get home in time to take my grandbaby trick-or-treating for the first time. And we are going to use his new little Chevy truck for him to go around his neighborhood. So I'm really looking forward to that. And that's why I wanted to get this in today. And I wanted to get this information about Alex Saab to you guys and let you know how nefarious our government is once again. So we'll continue on Monday. Thank you guys for being here.

1:29:49 Take care. Thank you Colonel. Thanks.

Entities here

Nicolás Maduro25 Alex Saab25 Cape Verde25 United States25 Venezuela25 CLAP21 Iran18 Mike Pompeo15 Mark Esper11 U.S. State Department9 Elliot Abrams8 Turkey7 Camilla Fabre Saab6 Miami6 Soviet Union6 Cape Verdean authorities5 U.S. Treasury Department5 Swiss authorities5 Interpol5 United States government5 Francisco Rodriguez4 Amílcar Cabral4 Hugo Chavez4 Saab's legal team3 Operation Gladio3 William Barr3 Robert Scola3 The New York Times3 Russel Martha3 Forbes2 Julian Assange2 Elías Jaua2 Armondo2 Puerto Cabezas2 U.S. Navy2 U.S. Department of Justice2 USAID2 China2 Italy2 John Bolton2

Claims made here

Amílcar Cabral overthrew Portugal host_asserted ▶ 1:46

“Its figure, and I'm going to butcher his name, is Amalir Amakar Cabral until his assassination in 1973. And that's a whole different story. Cabral led West Africans fight for sovereignty from Portugal…”

North Atlantic Treaty Organization targeted_for_regime_change Venezuela host_asserted ▶ 3:20

“But NATO ensured their continued label as that for decades. Only now are you seeing the reemergence of fierce leaders and breaking free of that financial, economical, political colonialism throughout …”

Nicolás Maduro founded CLAP host_asserted ▶ 5:26

“Venezuelan's economy. On January 19th, he inaugurated the National Council for a Productive Economy, a roundtable of 45 businessmen, government officials, including opposition figures, union leaders, …”

Francisco Rodriguez exposed CLAP book_quoted ▶ 8:35

“Francisco Rodriguez conducted an in-depth analysis of CLAP in 2021 and determined the program was associated with a more than doubling of households' access to food assistance. And this is a guy that …”

Elliot Abrams exposed CLAP host_asserted ▶ 9:04

“Venezuela's food crisis would almost certainly have been much worse. The U.S. government's obsession with CLAP further underscored its success. In February of 2019, the U.S.'s envoy to Venezuela, reme…”

U.S. Treasury Department financed_via CLAP host_asserted ▶ 9:37

“complain about the initiative on the UN floor, declaring, quote, Maduro has continued to politicize aid via the CLAP program, unquote. He said it was being used to just feed Maduro's supporters. When …”

Mike Pompeo exposed CLAP host_asserted ▶ 10:08

“lauded his colleagues for targeting Venezuela's oil for food scheme. He called feeding people to keep them from starving a scheme, claiming that Caracas had no intentions of providing food to the peop…”

Delcy Rodríguez exposed U.S. State Department host_asserted ▶ 10:42

“Delce Rodriguez promptly thanked Pompeo for his honest confession of U.S. financial terror, asserting his statement proved Washington's illicit sanctions were designed to prevent the arrival of food i…”

Hugo Chavez founded CLAP host_asserted ▶ 14:49

“all the while pocketing hundreds of millions of dollars through a number of fraudulent schemes, Steve Mnuchin said. Washington's mission to overthrow Venezuelan government would place the Caribbean bu…”

Steve Mnuchin exposed Alex Saab host_asserted ▶ 14:49

Alex Saab founded Shantex S.A. host_asserted ▶ 17:16

“Saab launched his first business venture when he was 18 years old. His friends all scoffed at his efforts engulfing their Venezuelan neighbor at the turn of the century. Saab eagerly looked across the…”

Armondo exposed Alex Saab host_asserted ▶ 19:11

“attack on CLAP was primarily focused on Saab, asserting that he operated a vast corrupt network by providing food. He was accused of enabling Venezuela's government to illegally profit from food impor…”

Francisco Rodriguez exposed Alex Saab book_quoted ▶ 21:09

“had raised the cost of doing business throughout Venezuela. Francisco Rodriguez, the economist and Maduro critic, therefore argued that the fact that any firm providing goods and services to Venezuela…”

Alex Saab traded_network_to Turkey host_asserted ▶ 22:09

“oil-for-food agreement with Caracas as evidence that the state and private entities alike faced major risks if they engaged in Venezuelan government, yet the firms in Mexico were not targeted. A secon…”

Alex Saab traded_network_to Iran host_asserted ▶ 22:09

U.S. State Department targeted_for_regime_change Turkey host_asserted ▶ 24:40

“But if the country does it themselves, it's fraud without our tax dollars. Though the U.S. periodically threatened to punish Turkey for its economic relationship with Venezuela, it never did. Regardle…”

Hugo Chavez traded_network_to Iran host_asserted ▶ 27:05

“has proven more consequential for Venezuela than its blossoming partnership with Iran, a top target of U.S. hybrid war ever since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Chavez prioritized a friendship with Iran…”

Alex Saab traded_network_to Iran host_asserted ▶ 27:35

“between 2001 and 2013. Since Saab entered the picture, he had been credited with, or accused of, depending on who you talk to, stimulating ties between Caracas and Tehran to unprecedented heights, an …”

U.S. Treasury Department targeted_for_regime_change PDVSA host_asserted ▶ 30:01

“on the petroleum sector of Venezuela in January 2019 during a push to install Guaido as president when the Trump administration banned the country's state oil company PDVSA from exporting crude to the…”

U.S. State Department ordered_assassination_of Elías Jaua host_asserted ▶ 33:31

“The oil minister, an external object of obsession in U.S. media thanks to his Syrian-Lebanese heritage, which the press routinely capitalized to brand him an agent of Hezbollah, earned a spot on Washi…”

Nicolás Maduro appointed Alex Saab host_asserted ▶ 34:35

“U.S. officials initiated a plan to hinder his diplomatic efforts to feed and fuel Venezuela once and for all. On June 12, 2020, Maduro dispatched Saab on an official mission to Iran, where he was task…”

Cape Verdean authorities ordered_assassination_of Alex Saab host_asserted ▶ 35:06

“Cape Verde, a routine excursion that did not require him to exit the plane or pass through immigration. They were just there for fuel. As Saab's aircraft refueled on the tarmac of the airport, Cape Ve…”

Interpol issued Alex Saab documented ▶ 35:40

“Cape Verde claimed to have detained Saab in compliance with an Interpol red notice seeking his arrest. Who put that Interpol red notice in the system? You're about to find out. Yet while Interpol did …”

Russel Martha asserted Interpol guest_asserted ▶ 36:16

“After the arrest, Saab's legal team said, they were looking for a red notice to justify the arrest. Interpol's former director of legal affairs, a Dutch lawyer, Russel Martha, reinforced the legal tea…”

United States ordered_assassination_of Alex Saab guest_asserted ▶ 38:09

“which never happened. Cape Verde was acting on the orders of the U.S. government, Saab's attorney said. Their claims are further backed by media reports that a private jet owned by U.S. government con…”

Presidential Aviation provided_bridge_financing_for Alex Saab documented ▶ 38:09

Elliot Abrams ordered_assassination_of Alex Saab book_quoted ▶ 39:12

“Mike Pompeo wrote that Trump's Venezuelan envoy and Iran-Contra crook, Elliott Abrams, first briefed him on the plot days before it went into effect. According to Pompeo, Abrams informed him that some…”

Mike Pompeo ordered_assassination_of Alex Saab book_quoted ▶ 39:41

“Upon learning the diplomat's jet would stop in Cape Verde to refuel, Pompeo said he called Attorney General Bill Barr and arranged for our ambassador in Cape Verde in the Department of Justice to file…”

Elliot Abrams ordered_assassination_of Alex Saab documented ▶ 42:12

“Particularly, Abrams had pushed for the ship's deployment out of fear the US would lose an unusual opportunity to punish Mr. Maduro. That was in the New York Times. If Saab's detention lingered on, Ab…”

Mark Esper asserted Elliot Abrams book_quoted ▶ 43:08

“Esper detailed a slew of wild theories that Abrams and his colleagues floated about Saab. This is a quote of one of them. Maduro persuaded President Putin and Russian special forces to spring Saab fro…”

United States financed_via Cape Verde documented ▶ 45:49

“Following the diplomat's detention, U.S. officials wrote out a conveniently timed $100 million direct investment in Cape Verde's economy alongside plans to spend $300 million renovating our embassy in…”

Cape Verdean authorities ordered_assassination_of Alex Saab guest_asserted ▶ 46:18

“Meanwhile, Saab's lawyers accused Cape Verde authorities of routinely blocking them from meeting with their client while subjecting him to dehumanization torturous conditions. On top of obstructing hi…”

Swiss authorities asserted Alex Saab documented ▶ 47:18

“that lacked proof of legal justification. Earlier that year, prosecutors in Geneva concluded an investigation into Saab's Swiss bank accounts and determined there was no evidence to pursue money laund…”

Economic Community of West African States ordered_assassination_of Alex Saab documented ▶ 47:48

“a regional court for the Economic Community of West African States, of which Cape Verde is a member, demanded its government transfer Saab to house arrest, an order that Cape Verde complied with the f…”

Cape Verde Supreme Court ordered_assassination_of Alex Saab documented ▶ 48:16

“after his arrest. The court further demanded Cape Verde discontinue all proceedings and processes aimed at extraditing him to the U.S., even instructing the government to pay the diplomat $200,000 in …”

Cape Verde ordered_assassination_of Alex Saab documented ▶ 48:46

“his extradition to the U.S. They decided that the $400 million was more important than complying with the law. Cape Verde did not officially ship the diplomat to Miami until October 16th. At around 5 …”

Camilla Fabre Saab asserted Alex Saab guest_asserted ▶ 50:56

“The author spoke with his wife in December of 2021. And she started off by saying, I'm doing this interview for Alex. And went on to say she explained his whole plight of trying to feed Venezuelans. F…”

United States ordered_assassination_of Alex Saab guest_asserted ▶ 53:28

“Through the U.S. government's case against the diplomat concerned allegations that he laundered funds related to the construction of Venezuela's public housing. Saab's advocates maintain the charges w…”

The New York Times asserted Alex Saab documented ▶ 54:26

“was printed in December 2020, Times report on the Navy ship's deployment to Cape Verde. Buried in the piece in the New York Times, conceded that Saab's captivity, quote, stripped Mr. Maduro of an impo…”

Forbes asserted Alex Saab documented ▶ 55:28

“in a much bigger game. An October 2021 explanation of the diplomat's case in Forbes similarly admitted that, quote, for the US, Saab is a key that unlocks the Venezuelan monetary mystery. That is, how…”

Mike Pompeo asserted Alex Saab book_quoted ▶ 56:30

“alliance with designated U.S. enemy states. And Esper asserted that, quote, allowing countries like Russia, China, and Iran to gain strength in the Western Hemisphere was of great concern, unquote. Po…”

Mark Esper asserted Alex Saab book_quoted ▶ 58:02

“It depends on what swab, who is now in jail in the U.S. on money laundering charges that doesn't exist, chooses to share with us, unquote. Esper echoed Pompeo's hope the diplomat would cooperate with …”

United States ordered_assassination_of Alex Saab guest_asserted ▶ 1:00:33

“This fact, combined with his successful drive to neutralize U.S. attacks on the oil sector of Venezuela, transformed the businessman turned diplomat into a general in the global fight against Western …”

United States ordered_assassination_of Julian Assange guest_asserted ▶ 1:01:01

“a foreign diplomat before their treatment of Saab. The only comparable case that perhaps WikiLeaks Julian Assange, although he was not actually an official diplomat, but he was a journalist. When he w…”

Robert Scola asserted Alex Saab documented ▶ 1:02:01

“Robert Scola of the U.S. District Court of Southern Florida dismissed all seven money laundering charges filed against Saab in November 2021, leaving him to face a single count of conspiracy to commit…”

Saab's legal team asserted Alex Saab documented ▶ 1:02:27

“And conspiracy to do something is significantly different than having evidence that it was actually done. The following December, the author attended an evidentiary hearing in the trial. Over the cour…”

Florian Mandel asserted Alex Saab documented ▶ 1:02:59

“that he was carrying official Venezuelan government documents, including a letter personally addressed from President Maduro to the Iranian government at the time of his detention. Photographs of the …”

Robert Scola asserted Alex Saab documented ▶ 1:04:01

“to thank you from the deepest soul of this earth for the support you have bravely and resolutely given to Venezuela, upholding international law and laying bare empires made of paper, Maduro had writt…”

United States ordered_assassination_of Alex Saab documented ▶ 1:04:01

United States ordered_assassination_of Alex Saab guest_asserted ▶ 1:05:36

“The U.S. government dropped them. It's just literally crazy. Rules for thee, but not me. Yeah. And to me, the biggest irony of all of this is the connection between, hey, we can starve your country an…”

John Bolton ordered_assassination_of Alex Saab guest_asserted ▶ 1:06:58

“We already know Pompeo's a bad guy. We know Abrams a bad guy. And John Bolton was involved in all of this. OK, that was that was kind of going to be my question. Yeah. So it is completely possible bec…”

Elliot Abrams ordered_assassination_of Alex Saab guest_asserted ▶ 1:07:57

“And Abrams is like his right hand man. Right. Absolute douchebag is douchebag and a half. Yeah. So where do you get the real information from? Well, and not that I trust Bill Barr either. No. Yeah. I …”

U.S. State Department covered_up Iran host_asserted ▶ 1:12:33

“U.S., communist, whatever, communist USA, whatever it is. But to use the fact that you have a few disorganized, and probably the best example of that is Iran, when we overthrew that government in 1953…”