RUTHFULLY YOURS

Recent sustained street protests, escalating intimidation, and violence by the Democratic Party’s leftist Black Lives Matter (BLM) and Antifa activists have reached an untenable level of threat. Americans of all political parties, races, and faiths need to examine closely what is transpiring on America’s streets and stand with the founding principles of freedom, equality, and opportunity enshrined in our founding documents and improved upon by succeeding generations.

America, the envy of the world, is under full assault by leftists determined to destroy it. The movement to defund the police is the first step in the establishment of a new order by anti-American radicals. The answer to that ambition must be no.

As a veteran of the United States Air Force and a retired senior operations officer and chief of station in the CIA’s Clandestine Service, I normally write and lecture on national security, terrorism, and counter narcotics. What has transpired on America’s streets is well beyond domestic party politics. It has become a national security threat.

There is an effort afoot to destroy the very foundation of American governance.

Homegrown Radicals with Venezuelan Drug Money

A little context. In 2006, Venezuelan socialist dictator Hugo Chavez, working closely with Cuban intelligence, ceded his three southern provinces of Apure, Amazonas, and Bolivar to the control of two Colombian narco-terrorist organizations: the Fuerzas Armadas Revolutionarias de Colombia (FARC) and the Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN).

FARC and ELN conducted massive coca cultivation and cocaine production and distribution in coordination with Cuban intelligence, and paid Venezuela a major percentage. Chavez told his inner circle that it was his personal goal to flood the United States with cocaine as a means of damaging American global dominance.

Chavez died of cancer in 2013, but all of his leadership team that succeeded him—current President Nicolas Maduro, National Assembly leader Diosdado Cabello, petroleum minister Tareck El Aissami, Vice President Delcy Rodriguez, former intelligence chief Hugo Carvajal, Venezuelan Army Chief of Staff Vladimir Padrino, and more—are all indicted in the United States for narcotrafficking.

A month ago, I sat down with a defector from Chavez’s inner circle. He provided incredible specificity on the narco-trafficking and regime kleptocracy, but also recounted a 2013 visit to Caracas by Black Lives Matter founder Opal Tometi and a second BLM leader. The BLM leaders traveled with American actor and left-wing activist Danny Glover for meetings with Chavez and Maduro. During those meetings, Chavez ordered that BLM be given $10 million to help create a foundational base for their organization.

The defector noted dryly that Chavez and his Cuban advisors understood fully that he was poisoning inner-city black youth with 26 tons of cocaine monthly, while simultaneously funding BLM to encourage young blacks to organize against the American political establishment. The defector noted that BLM’s first payment came out of a special account in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs which was from FARC/ELN cocaine smuggling proceeds.

The defector explained that Chavez started covert funding from this account but eventually transitioned to funding from Venezuela’s U.S. oil subsidiary, CITGO. This all took place as the Obama Administration was working through Venezuela to reestablish relations with Cuba!

From Venezuela, by Way of Spain

More history and context: During the mid- to late-1970s when America was wrapped up in the Watergate scandal and then governed by a hapless President Jimmy Carter, the Soviet Union and its Cuban partners moved against the United States. Leftist victories and revolutions in Vietnam, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Angola, and Central America were a challenge to America’s global leadership.

Beginning in 1980, strong leadership by Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush helped turn back this socialist wave. In the Americas, the CIA and Department of Defense took on the Cuban-supported terrorists and guerillas and put them down with counterterrorism and counterinsurgency efforts, restoring democracy to a majority of countries in the region.

The Cuban Communists and their Venezuelan ally Chavez learned from these losses. Instead of creating terrorist organizations as a vanguard to create conflict in a target state, they shifted their sights to the political process. They infiltrated legitimate political parties throughout Latin America, and used a combination of bribery and violence to intimidate political opponents.

So long as these Cuban-led covert efforts remained within political boundaries the United States would not intervene militarily. Chavez and his team then expanded their vision outside Latin America, according to the defector. In 2013, he used that same Venezuelan Ministry of Foreign Affairs account that funded BLM to create Spain’s leftist Populist Party “Podemos” (“We can”). For many months, the Venezuelan Ministry of Foreign Affairs filled its diplomatic pouch to Madrid with cash and cocaine to fund Podemos.

Podemos and Spain’s Socialist party now rule Spain, a NATO ally, in a coalition that answers to the Venezuelan narco-trafficking regime. Its banks and companies are loaded with stolen Venezuelan cash. Venezuela’s former intelligence chief Hugo Carvajal, the man who helped stuff the diplomatic pouch with cash and cocaine to create Podemos, is in Spain and the U.S. government is demanding his extradition for drug trafficking. He had been in Spanish custody several months ago and the Spanish have refused to extradite him, claiming he escaped. They are shielding him. The leftist Spanish government is full of liars. Critics of President Trump think he is too hard on our European allies. Think again!

Venezuela, once a significant oil-producing state, has been looted of $1.3 trillion by corrupt officials with their front men in league with the Cuban Communists. Together they have created one of the largest transnational criminal networks in history. Employing their wealth, they have penetrated business, banking, and political interests across the United States. American businessmen and political figures of both parties are in league with these transnational criminals.

We will learn the names of these traitors. Their top priority is to defeat President Trump, and continue causing chaos and disruption of the American political process. They recognize that their survival depends on Trump’s defeat.