CARACAS, VENEZUELA — At approximately 3:14 a.m. local time Thursday, a team of U.S. Special Operations forces fast-roped onto the roof of the Miraflores Palace, removed President Nicolás Maduro from a bedroom on the third floor, and loaded him onto a helicopter bound for an undisclosed location, an operation the White House described as “long overdue” and Congress described as “the first they were hearing of it.”
The raid, which administration officials are calling Operation Bolívar’s Revenge despite Bolívar having no obvious stake in the matter, was authorized under what one senior advisor called “a robust legal framework consisting of the President really wanting to do it.” The Office of Legal Counsel reportedly produced a memorandum justifying the operation in the time it took the helicopters to refuel.
The State Department issued a four-paragraph press release at 4:02 a.m. confirming that Venezuela’s elected leader was now somewhere over international waters, and that the United States looked forward to working with whichever sufficiently grateful successor emerged from the rubble. The release did not use the word “war,” the word “invasion,” or the word “sovereignty,” though it used the word “democracy” eleven times, mostly as a verb.
A defense contractor familiar with the planning, speaking on condition that his employer not be named because it has six Pentagon contracts pending, said the raid had been rehearsed twice in a mock-up of the palace built in North Carolina, and once in PowerPoint. “The Powerpoint version had fewer casualties,” he said. “But the real one had better ratings.”
On Capitol Hill, members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee learned of the operation the way most Americans did, which was from a push notification during their morning workout. Senator Tim Kaine, who has spent the better part of a decade attempting to reassert congressional authority over the use of military force, issued a statement noting that the War Powers Resolution remains technically law, and was last consulted in 2002 by a man who has since retired.
The Speaker of the House released a statement praising the bravery of U.S. forces, the decisiveness of the Commander-in-Chief, and the deep bipartisan tradition of finding out about wars on the news. He did not take questions, citing a scheduling conflict with not wanting to.
Venezuelan state television briefly showed an empty podium, then a cooking program, then a test pattern, then the cooking program again. By midmorning, three rival figures inside the country had each declared themselves acting president, and the U.S. ambassador to the OAS had recognized two of them, pending clarification on which one had taken the meeting.
Asked at a televised briefing whether the administration had a plan for what came next in Venezuela, the Press Secretary said the administration absolutely did, that it was extensive, that it had been developed in close consultation with regional partners, and that she would be happy to share it as soon as someone wrote it down. She then introduced a video montage set to country music.
By Thursday evening, the operation had been declared a complete success, a complicated success, an early success, and a success whose final dimensions would only be understood in the fullness of time, depending on which cable network the viewer happened to land on. The President, asked aboard Marine One whether the raid had been legal, gave a thumbs up and pointed at the helicopter, which was loud.