Ex-CIA Officer On How The Cubans Failed Maduro in Venezuela

The Rest Is Classified

Goalhanger

History

4.4 • 2K Ratings

🗓️ 9 January 2026

⏱️ 5 minutes

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Summary

*Declassified Club exclusive: ⁠⁠⁠⁠SUBSCRIBE⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to listen to the full series* What does one of the CIA's leading experts on Venezuela think about the operation to capture President Maduro? What will history say about the decision to invade a sovereign nation? And how involved were the Cubans? Listen as David and Gordon are joined by former CIA officer and Latin America Chief of Operations to discuss the Trump administration's operation in Venezuela and what this means for the future of the region. ------------------- Join The Declassified Club: Start your free trial at ⁠⁠⁠therestisclassified.com⁠⁠⁠ - go deeper into the world of espionage with exclusive Q&As, interviews with top intelligence insiders, quarterly livestreams, ad-free listening, early access to episodes and live show tickets, and weekly deep dives into original spy stories. Members also get curated reading lists, special book discounts, prize draws, and access to our private chat community. To sign up to the free newsletter, go to: ⁠⁠⁠https://mailchi.mp/goalhanger.com/tric-free-newsletter-sign-up⁠ ⁠⁠ ------------------- Email: therestisclassified@goalhanger.com Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@restisclassified Social Producer: Emma Jackson Producer: Becki Hills Head of History: Dom Johnson Exec Producer: Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	For exclusive interviews, bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series,
0:09.0	first look at live show tickets, a weekly newsletter, and discounted books.
0:13.1	Join the Declassified Club at the rest is classified.com.
0:17.3	Music Welcome, everybody.
0:26.2	Welcome everybody.
0:26.5	Welcome to classified club members, secret squirrels.
0:29.3	Welcome any new members we've got.
0:32.1	And we've been running.
0:33.5	I hope you've heard a series,
0:36.0	a kind of rapid response emergency podcast series looking at those
0:39.8	events in Venezuela in the last week or so. And we've done two episodes looking at the raid
0:46.9	that captured Nicholas Maduro and also the questions of why the US carried it out.
0:52.9	But events are clearly moving very fast. And we wanted to kind of
0:56.6	dive a bit deeper this week and give our club members the perspective of someone who's got some
1:02.1	real experience in Latin America and from inside the US intelligence community. So we've got a
1:08.3	great guest, haven't we, David? We do, Gordon, and we are very delighted to welcome to the club Dave Fitzgerald. Dave served for 37 years and did
1:19.9	13 overseas tours in the CIA. He was a seven-time chief of station serving in numerous conflict zones all over the world,
1:29.5	including Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and South Asia.
1:34.0	He served principally in Latin America throughout his career, but also held a number of senior
1:40.5	headquarters positions, including the chief of our Latin America operations and Latin
1:46.1	America deputy division chief. He was also the senior DCIA, director of the CIA representative,
1:54.8	to CENTCOM, U.S. Central Command, from 2017 to 2020, and he is currently the president and co-founder of Vector 1 Global,
	...

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