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IS THE U.S. PLANNING TO ASSASSINATE MADURO? PETER KORNBLUH ON
“TRUMP’S GUNBOAT DIPLOMACY”  
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Peter Kornbluh, Amy Goodman
November 7, 2025
Democracy Now!
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_ The U.S. is continuing to blow up boats in the Caribbean and the
Pacific despite growing international condemnation, while the Trump
administration reportedly considers launching airstrikes on Venezuela
or even assassinating President Nicolás Maduro. _

, Democracy Now!

 

The U.S. is continuing to blow up boats in the Caribbean and the
Pacific despite growing international condemnation, while the Trump
administration reportedly considers launching airstrikes on Venezuela
or even assassinating President Nicolás Maduro.

“We are committing wanton criminal acts of assassination in the
Caribbean innocent people who haven’t been found guilty of anything,
and kind of setting the stage for an attack on Caracas itself in an
attempt to take out its leader,” says Peter Kornbluh, a senior
analyst at the National Security Archive.

Kornbluh also discusses the legacy of the Church Committee 50 years
ago, which investigated abuses by U.S. intelligence agencies,
including coups and assassinations abroad.

 

TRANSCRIPT
_This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form._

AMY GOODMAN: This is _Democracy Now!_, democracynow.org, _The War and
Peace Report_. I’m Amy Goodman.

The U.S. is continuing to blow up boats in the Caribbean and Pacific,
despite growing international condemnation. On Thursday, Defense
Secretary Pete Hegseth announced the U.S. had struck a boat in the
Caribbean, killing three people. He alleged they were
narcotraffickers, but once again offered no proof. U.N. human rights
chief Volker Türk recently denounced the U.S. extrajudicial killings.
In recent months, the U.S. has blown up 17 boats and one submarine.

This comes as _The New York Times_ reports
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the Trump administration is considering launching airstrikes on
Venezuela or even assassinating the Venezuelan President Nicolás
Maduro. The _Times_ reports one idea floated involves the U.S. sending
Army’s Delta Force or the Navy SEAL Team 6 to try to capture or kill
Maduro.

We’re joined right now by Peter Kornbluh, senior analyst at the
National Security Archive, co-author of a new piece
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in _The Nation_ headlined “Trump’s Gunboat Diplomacy” and
another piece
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in _Foreign Policy_ headlined “With Military Buildup Against
Venezuela, the U.S. Eyes Cuba as Well.”

Peter Kornbluh, welcome back to _Democracy Now!_ It’s great to have
you in the studio. Let’s talk about the U.S. — I mean, this _New
York Times_ exposé
[[link removed]].
You also wrote about it, the U.S. intention to assassinate another
president of another country.

PETER KORNBLUH: That’s right. It’s one of the most extraordinary
kind of open discussions of assassinating a foreign leader that I
think we’ve ever experienced. It comes 50 years this month after the
Church Committee, the famous Senate committee, went ahead and exposed
the reality that the CIA had been going around trying to assassinate
foreign leaders. And at that point, it was a scandal, 50 years ago.
And today we have a situation where, openly, the president of the
United States and his team are trying to come up with a legal
rationale for basically neutralizing, liquidating, assassinating a
foreign leader, in this case, Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela. And it’s
an extraordinary turn of circumstances. It’s something we have to
talk about. The cynical interpretation of the murder of these boat
crews in the Caribbean is basically that the Trump administration is
sending a signal to Maduro that he is next. And we are committing
wanton criminal acts of assassination in the Caribbean, innocent
people, who haven’t been found guilty of anything, and kind of
setting the stage for an attack on Caracas itself in an attempt to
take out its leader.

AMY GOODMAN: You write in the _Foreign Policy_ piece
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about the military buildup against Venezuela, “With 10 naval vessels
and 10,000 troops already deployed to the Caribbean — the largest
military buildup there since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis — and a
carrier strike group led by the USS _Gerald R. Ford_ taking up
position.” Talk about the significance of the _USS Gerald R. Ford_.

PETER KORNBLUH: The _USS Gerald R. Ford_ is the biggest aircraft
carrier, most modern aircraft carrier in the world. It is described as
the most lethal combat platform in the U.S. military. It is currently
arriving in the Caribbean in the next three or four days to take up a
position, along with another 10 battleships that are already there.
The _USS Gerald Ford_ carries 5,000 Marines and seamen. It already is
going to augment the military force that’s in the region by another
10,000, so it will be 15,000 U.S. military personnel aimed at
Venezuela.

So this is a crisis. It’s a crisis for Latin America. It’s a
crisis for the American people, because there has been no provocation
here. Venezuela has not threatened the United States. It has not
attacked the United States. We have a preemptive effort by the
president of the United States to kind of renew the old era of gunboat
diplomacy and simply say, “Might makes right. We control what goes
on in the Latin American region. We don’t like Nicolás Maduro.
We’re going to take him out.”

AMY GOODMAN: So, Trump officials told lawmakers on Wednesday the U.S.
is not currently planning to launch strikes inside Venezuela and
doesn’t have a legal justification that would support attacks
against any land targets right now. It’s unclear if they were doing
that because it’s right before their vote on the War Powers Act, and
they were concerned that that vote is getting closer and closer, and
they may lose.

PETER KORNBLUH: Right. So, there was a resolution that was just voted
on last night in the U.S. Senate that would apply the 1973 War Powers
Act to Trump’s plans for a military intervention in Venezuela. That
vote lost by 51 to 49, with, I think, two or three Republicans voting
for the resolution. The resolution basically says the Constitution
says that Congress must declare war for the United States to go to
war. And this resolution basically said the Trump administration must
cease and desist its military hostilities towards Venezuela until
Congress authorizes such a war. And that resolution failed, in some
ways giving the Trump administration more latitude, I think, to go
forward with the military plans that they may have.

AMY GOODMAN: And these boats that they’re blowing up, that’s also
infuriating a number of Republicans. I mean, for example, you have
Rand Paul — right? — the Kentucky Republican, who’s been
continually raising a red flag around this. One attack after another
that the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, proudly announces, and yet
not a shred of evidence are they presenting on their allegations that
these people — I think the U.S. has killed, what, 70 at this point,
in 18 bombings in the Pacific and the Caribbean?

PETER KORNBLUH: That is correct, 70 people, none of them found guilty
of anything, none of them prosecuted for a crime. The photos you just
— the footage you just put up on your screen of the boat being
blown out of the water in smithereens is basically a snuff film. And
with every attack that the United States has made over the last two
months, they’ve put up one of those films, and just celebrating the
kind of wanton elimination of human life.

And this isn’t going to stop the flow of drugs into the United
States. If there’s supply — if there’s demand, there’s going
to be supply. Venezuela is not a major transfer point for drugs coming
into the United States. Trump has claimed it’s fentanyl. If there is
drugs on — are drugs on these boats, it’s cocaine. But in the
end, we don’t have a situation where the law is being followed. This
is wanton murder, turning the Caribbean into a killing field.

AMY GOODMAN: So, what do you think is the goal here? We’re looking
at Venezuela right now. Trump is increasing his attacks against the
Colombian president. And then, where does Cuba fit into this picture?

PETER KORNBLUH: I think there are two issues here. One is that Donald
Trump wants to be an emperor. He wants territorial gains. He wanted
the Venezuela — he wanted Canada to become the first 51st state of
the United States. He wanted to take the Panama Canal Zone. He
announced that during his inauguration speech on January 20th. He
looks at Latin America as, quote, “our backyard” and thinks that
the United States should impose its kind of will on it. He was even
quoted. He told his aides back during his first term, “Isn’t
Venezuela part of the United States? I think it would be cool to
invade Venezuela.” So, I think that’s one issue. You know, an
emperor needs an empire.

The other issue is Marco Rubio and his kind of need to undermine and
overthrow the Cuban government. And he sees Venezuela as the key
patron of Cuba. If Maduro can be eliminated in Venezuela, that will
cut the economic and political ties between Venezuela and Cuba and
make it easier to undermine the Cuban government.

AMY GOODMAN: So, I want to ask you about what you just referenced, the
50th anniversary of the Church Committee Senate hearings that
investigated the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency for the first
time in 1975, '76. It was officially called the Select Committee to
Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities.
At the time, the committee's chair, Democratic senator, Idaho’s
Frank Church, declared the CIA, quote, “may have been behaving like
a rogue elephant on a rampage,” referring to potential illegal
activities by the CIA, including plots to assassinate foreign leaders.
This is Senator Church during one of the committee’s hearings,
questioning then-CIA Director William Colby.

SEN. FRANK CHURCH: Why did the agency prepare a shellfish toxin, for
which there is no practical antidote, which attacks the nervous system
and brings on death very quickly?

WILLIAM COLBY: The first part of the answer to that question, Mr.
Chairman, is the fact that the L-pill, which was developed and
— during World War II, does take some time to work and is
particularly agonizing to the subject who uses it. Some of the people
who would be natural requesters of such a capability for their own
protection and the protection of their fellow agents.

AMY GOODMAN: That was past CIA Director William Colby being questioned
by the Idaho Senator Frank Church. This is the 50th anniversary. For
people who weren’t even alive then, talk about its significance.

PETER KORNBLUH: People don’t remember what a scandal it was when it
was revealed that the CIA had been involved in plots to assassinate
Fidel Castro, that they’d been very thoroughly involved in a plot to
neutralize the commander-in-chief of the Chilean Armed Forces, René
Schneider, in 1970.

AMY GOODMAN: You’ve just returned from Chile.

PETER KORNBLUH: Yes, I have. And the assassination of Diem in Vietnam
and in Trujillo in the Dominican Republic. This was a scandal, the
mid-1970s, kind of as the war in Vietnam was ending, and the United
States, American public was really kind of rethinking the values and
ethics of U.S. foreign policy. And the report is still very much worth
reading. And at the very end of the report, the Church Committee, led
by Senator Church, said, “We think this is an aberration,” these
attacks by the CIA, trying to kill foreign leaders. “We don’t
think this is what the American public is really all about. And we
think we have to learn from this past history and go forward with a
far more ethical, you know, foreign policy.”

And now here we are, 50 years later, openly celebrating the
assassination of low-level boat captains and crew in the Caribbean and
setting the stage and openly discussing legal rationales for
assassinating the leader of Venezuela. And, you know, so we’ve come
a long way in the wrong direction since the scandal of the Church
Committee report 50 years ago.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that was the first Church Committee report.

PETER KORNBLUH: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: And then, Senator Church went on to investigate the
suppression and the targeting of domestic dissidents.

PETER KORNBLUH: Yes, well, eventually, the Church Committee released a
set of volumes, the first true study on the secret history of the CIA
and the NSA and the FBI and the other members of the intelligence
community.

_The original content of this program is licensed under a __Creative
Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United
States License_
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attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the
work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately
licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact
us._
_PETER KORNBLUH_
[[link removed]]_ is senior
analyst for Latin America at the National Security Archive_

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* Donald Trump
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* Venezuela
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* Nicolas Maduro
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* assassination
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* U.S. Military
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* Cuba
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* U.S. Intelligence agencies
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