A former CIA officer described the operation leading to the arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro as “tactically brilliant” during a Monday appearance on “Morning Joe.”
President Donald Trump announced in a Saturday post on Truth Social that American military forces, including Delta Force, protected a law enforcement operation that arrested Maduro and his wife in Caracas. “Morning Joe” co-host Joe Scarborough asked Marc Polymeropoulos to discuss the operation.
“Before we talk about what happens next, let’s talk about what happened during the attack,” Scarborough said. “We’ve seen you talk about how this was extraordinarily difficult and yet the military, special ops, CIA, seemed to handle it extraordinarily well.”
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“So, Joe, this is really the product of 20 years of close coordination between the CIA, my old organization, and the Joint Special Operations Command,” Polymeropoulos responded. “This started after 9/11, this lash-up. I actually worked with the special operations community, including Delta Force. This is the unit that conducted this operation. We grew up together and this is kind of techniques and practices that have been refined. And this is what you saw kind of play out in Venezuela.”
Some prominent leftists, including podcasters Keith Olbermann and Dean Obeidallah, took to Bluesky to demand Trump’s impeachment over the operation. Congressional Democrats decried the operation as an illegal act of war, with Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York saying he would push to use the War Powers Act to halt further operations.
“They reportedly had teams on the ground, they had recruited a high-level penetration of the Maduro regime and what they do is they kind of establish Maduro and his family’s pattern of life, which then allows for special forces team, in this case, Delta Force, to come and conduct this extraction operation,” Polymeropoulos said. “It really is remarkable, with certainly no U.S. killed in action.”
“At the end of the day, this is something that I think is going to be kind of written in intelligence and special operations history,” Polymeropoulos continued. “It’s something I think we can focus on and think about. It’s tactically brilliant.”
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