From the New York Times, I'm Natalie Kittrowaf.

This is a special episode of The Daily.

It began with early morning strikes across Caracas.

And ended with a dramatic capture of Venezuela's leader, Nicholas Maduro.

Mado was handcuffed, blindfolded, put on a U.S. warship, and brought to the U.S. to face drug charges.

Tonight, I'll be easier.

Today, my colleague Eric Schmidt tells the story of how the operation unfolded and what comes next?

It's Sunday, January 4th.

Eric, happy New Year.

Thank you for being here for this special Sunday episode. Thank you.

I want to just start with an observation, which is that even though we have been bracing for something like this, what we've just witnessed may be the most audacious exercise of American power in a generation. President Trump has captured and removed a sitting foreign leader. Nothing close to this has happened in something like 25 years. It is

truly historic. That's absolutely true. And it's here we have been watching this pressure campaign build on President Maduro at Venezuela for the last several months.

But to go in with special operations forces in the dead of night and seize the leader of a country is really extraordinary.

You have to go back to 1989 when the U.S. military carried out an operation,

a similar operation to go after then the president of Panama, Manuel Noriega.

Much larger force went in on the ground and ended up spending quite a bit of time there

because it wasn't an in-and-out operation like this was. So you're right. This really is, in your words, audacious.

So I want to talk about the operation that led to this, an operation they called Absolute Resolve.

Talk to me about the planning that went into and the execution of this operation.

What do we know?

So the planning for this operation really goes back several months to the summertime. This is when the administration is first considering what they

called phase one, which would have been to strike boats trafficking, what they believe were

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