You are listening to the War on the Rocks podcast on Strategy, Defense, and Foreign Affairs.

My name's Ryan Evans. I'm the founder of War on the Rocks. In this episode, I sat down with

Congressman Jim Himes. He is the ranking member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

He's a Democrat from Connecticut.

We had a wide-ranging conversation beginning with what's happening in the Caribbean around

Venezuela and the strikes on alleged drugboats, zooming out from there to broader issues related

to Latin America. and then going on from

China to Europe to the Middle East, we really covered a lot. It was a fascinating conversation. I think

you will enjoy it. Congressman, thanks for joining the show. Thanks so much for having me.

We live in a pretty nutty world right now. I think you share many of the concerns that I do

about what's happening in

and around Venezuela. Let's start with these strikes on what we're told are drug trafficking

boats. What's your view of the fact that they're happening at all and how the administration

is or is not working with Congress on what's happening? Yeah, the answer there is is not working with Congress. And look,

there's at least three things that are wrong about these strikes on these boats. You know, and it's a

hard argument to make because in this very polarized, very angry environment, you know, I'll make

these three points and people say, yeah, we should, we should kill more drug dealers. You know,

it's just there's some Arnold Schwarzenegger Hollywood-esque appeal to blowing up these boats and stuff. But look, here's the problems. Number one, they're illegal, right? They are not authorized by anybody. In this country, it's always been clear, even if there's been tension between the president and the Congress, that if you're going to go attack somebody, especially if you haven't been militarily attacked, that is to say, you know, on 9-11, for example, we were attacked, Pearl Harbor, we were attacked. You come to Congress and get authorization for the use of military force, and it doesn't matter if you call a group terrorist group. That doesn't give you lethal authority. Well, let's let's unpack. Let's zoom into that a little bit. So that's, that seems to be the

administration's argument is they've given the FTO designation, which is Congress gives the

State Department that authority to grant an organization a foreign terrorist organization.

That comes with some powers, especially when it comes to financial tools and investigative

tools, but it does not come with war powers tools and authority to conduct lethal strikes. Correct. There's all sorts of designated terrorist organizations against whom lethal force is not authorized. And you're exactly right, designating somebody. Now, by the way, we'd have a whole other conversation whether it makes sense to designate a cartel as a terrorist organization. If you're going to expand the

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