The U.S. Still Needs Sensitive Intelligence About Venezuela. Can It Get It?

Republicans say it’s clear the operation to oust Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was done using “exquisite intelligence.” Intelligence experts, including some of the lawmakers most familiar with the federal government’s ability to collect sensitive data, said it will be crucial to keep that type of information from Venezuela flowing.

And as Venezuela braces for the political and economic fallout, some intelligence experts say it could get harder to keep receiving it.

“A lot of members of the regime are going to be very paranoid right now,” said Emily Harding, vice president of the Defense and Security Department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “They’re going to be not talking on their cell phones, they’re going to be not sending emails. They’re going to be trying to hide their movements a lot better. They’re going to be only telling things to people they 100% can trust.”

Harding said she expects less information to come out of the country now that the element of surprise is gone.

Rep. Mike Quigley, a Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, told NOTUS that the quality of intelligence may suffer from regime change chaos.

“How good is the intel coming from a country like Venezuela? How does that change when something like the taking of Maduro and the chaos that ensues? How does that change?” Quigley said. “The answer is, it can absolutely change.”

After its strike in Caracas last Saturday, Trump administration officials described the level of information they had about Maduro. Intelligence officials had gathered extensive data, including with the assistance of a human CIA source close to Maduro, according to The New York Times.

“After months of work by our intelligence teammates to find Maduro and understand how he moved, where he lived, where he traveled, what he ate, what he wore, what were his pets, in early December our force was set, pending a series of aligned events,” Gen. Dan Caine, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters after the mission.

Republicans have praised the intelligence the administration operated with.

“The president used his authority under the law. He did so in a way that caused no casualties on the American side, and he got the job done with exquisite intelligence and extreme precision that can only be done by the U.S.,” House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters earlier this week.

Sen. John Cornyn, a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, echoed Johnson.

“You couldn’t have a successful extraction of somebody like President Maduro from a country like Venezuela without exquisite intelligence,” Cornyn told NOTUS. “It’s a real testament to how they are law enforcement personnel, but also to the intelligence community and the military for doing something that probably nobody thought was possible.”

He added that “we need to know everything” and said that reliable information is crucial because “it saved lives.”

While Republicans agreed that keeping information flowing would be critical down the line, they dismissed unease about the ability to keep getting it.

“The sources, the methods, the tactics that we employ are very good,” said Sen. Mike Rounds, a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, about information gathering. “We continue to receive reports, let me just put it that way. But I’m not concerned about our ability to get good data down there.”

Republican lawmakers said that the U.S. will work with Venezuela’s interim president Delcy Rodríguez in part because as former vice president, she retains information that is crucial for running the country.

“It’s important, as part of planning, to make sure that there are people in place that know where the keys are, can take the phone calls of leaders in the region, because they know which number is calling, right?” Rep. Brian Mast, chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told reporters.

Members, such as Mast, Rounds, Cornyn and Johnson, who have some of the highest intelligence clearances because of their committee assignments and belong to the president’s party, only had opportunities to ask questions about the operation after the fact. That Congress wasn’t briefed until after the strike has been a source of tension among some of the lawmakers.

Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, told NPR on Monday that he learned of the news at home.

“I was woken up by my wife, who said, ‘you won’t believe what’s happening,’” Himes said.

In addition, some Democratic lawmakers expressed concern about the current culture within the American intelligence community, citing examples of Trump administration officials removing top intelligence officers after agencies released intelligence contradicting the administration’s public narrative.

“I’m concerned that if people in the intelligence community don’t feel that they can present that true intelligence without getting fired, then they’re less likely to report at all,” Rep. Jimmy Gomez, a Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, told NOTUS in an interview.

Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen said fear of retribution could muddy the version of the story even Trump receives from his top intelligence officers.

“What it does is it provides these really perverse incentives simply to feed the president the line that he wants to hear,” Van Hollen said. “And that’s very dangerous because you want presidents to have independent, fact-based information. But it’s Donald Trump’s own fault.”

The White House pushed back on that assessment.

“It’s bizarre to suggest that the arrest of a top target for the American justice system will impair our intelligence community,” said Anna Kelly, a spokesperson for the White House, in a statement. “United States military and law enforcement entities were able to perform this judicial enforcement action against Nicolas Maduro, a narcoterrorist indicted for criminal and conspiratorial actions, thanks to the extraordinary quality of information gathered by our intelligence officers.”

There was agreement between members of both parties that having accurate, consistent data going forward will be critical to long-term success in Venezuela.

Trump has said he has demands for Rodríguez and is looking to see if the new regime will “behave.” If not, Trump said he will consider further military moves. Knowing the status quo is therefore crucial, lawmakers said.

“You want to know, are they going to actually fulfill what they’re saying they’re going to do,” Gomez said. “You want to know if there’s anything that may create a situation that will cause that country to become destabilized.”