New in SpyWeek: CIA's Venezuela Ops, Ukraine Spies' Kremlin Prank, FBI and Terror Plotters

Welcome to Spy Week, a curated compilation of important news from the intersection of intelligence, foreign policy, national security and military operations.

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

All this was preceded by President Trump’s odd announcement months back that he’d authorized “covert action” against Maduro—a contradiction in terms. Former CIA Director John Brennan praised the agency’s Venezuela performance on MS Now Saturday, but said its rank-and-file “would have been aghast that he would have announced it publicly.” Members of Congress—mostly Democrats but also some Republicans—said SecState Marco Rubio lied to them by denying in briefings that regime change was in the air. No word yet on which Venezuelan(s) Trump & co. will choose to help them “run” Venezuela, from generals down to bus drivers. As SpyTalk reported on Nov. 8, a 2019 Pentagon war game on regime change there forecast chaos if Maduro were forcibly removed by the U.S. To many critics, it’s already beginning to sound a lot like Baghdad.

Russia-Venezuela-Ukraine: In 2019, Fiona Hill, a top White House Russia hand in the first Trump administration, testified that in 2017 Moscow was “signaling very strongly that they wanted to somehow make some very strange swap agreement between Venezuela and Ukraine.” In other words, “they were basically signaling: ‘You know, you have your Monroe Doctrine. You want us out of your backyard. Well, you know, we have our own version of this. You’re in our backyard in Ukraine.’” Is a laissez-faire op in the works?

CIA Spits on Putin Bomb Claim: Last Monday Russian officials began whining that Ukraine had targeted one of Vladimir Putin‘s estates in northern Russia. The Kremlin strongman even made the claim in a phone call with Trump, who apparently fell for it, even after his CIA Director, John Ratcliffe, shot it down. Trump “conceded it was ‘possible’ the allegation was false and such an attack had not occurred,” CNN reported, but he then added, “But President Putin told me this morning it did.”

Kiev Intel Pranks Kremlin: After Ukraine learned that Moscow had offered a $500,000 reward for the assassination of Denis Kapustin, aka the “White Rex,” a high profile Russian neo-Nazi fighting alongside Ukrainian troops, it decided to go for the reward itself. Kiev’s HUR military intelligence agency sent a fake tipster to the Russians with fake info about Kapusin’s whereabouts and then reported sometime later that Kapustin had been killed in an alleged drone strike on eastern Ukraine. Kiev’s double agent then duly collected the cool half million. Surprise! On Thursday HUR Gen. Kyrylo Budanov “said in a new video that Ukraine had staged Kapustin’s assassination and collected the funds from Moscow.” Haw! Sensational if true. (Washington Examiner) Whatever, on Friday President Volodymyr Zelensky appointed Budanov his new chief of staff. (A.P.) The Ukrainian news site RBC, meanwhile, claimed that Russia was preparing a spectacular Jan. 7 false-flag missile attack on some significant Ukraine landmark, like a beloved religious site in Russian-occupied Donetsk, that could be blamed on Kiev and the U.S. Jan. 7 is the Eastern Orthodox Christmas.

FBI Intervention: “FBI says undercover operation thwarted ISIS-inspired terror attack.” So went the top headline on the front page of Saturday’s Washington Post, suggesting something big went down. Turns out that Christian Sturdivant, the would-be terrorist, is an 18-year-old “Burger King employee and grandson of a Christian minister,” who “planned to attack shoppers at a grocery store and fast food restaurants around Charlotte, N.C. … with hammers and knives.” Russ Ferguson, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of North Carolina, claimed that “[i]t was a very well-planned, thoughtful attack. He was preparing for jihad, and innocent people were going to die.” Not many, we’d wager, before he was tackled. Seems like the Kash Patel Effect* was in play.

It also turns out the perp has well known mental problems and his arrest may have been a kindly effort by authorities to get the troubled youngster off the streets before something bad happened. “Authorities…sought earlier in the week to have him involuntarily committed for care,” Ferguson told The Post. “A North Carolina state judge’s denial of that request prompted the decision to charge him with a crime and arrest him instead.” Maybe now he’ll now get the care he needs.

But then there’s this, as reported by The Post’s Jeremy Roebuck: “In recent weeks, the FBI has arrested a number of other individuals alleged to have been plotting terrorist attacks in Texas, California and Louisiana. Many of those investigations, like the one that led to the charges against Sturdivant, involved undercover agents or officers offering encouragement and in some cases suggestions on carrying out those attacks.” (Our ital.) Shades of Dick Cheney’s “dark side” there.

*exaggerating and intervening in cases