The Caracas checklist is the answer John Kiriakou gave to a viewer who asked what the CIA would have had him do in Venezuela — an itemised account of what a regime-change operation consists of, followed by his standing objection to the whole enterprise.
The involvement
He began by refusing to hedge on the premise. “first of all, the CIA is 100% yes involved in whatever it is that our government is doing right now in Venezuela.”[1]
The steps
The first is psychological. “what you need to do is operationally put pressure on Maduro to to just run away. You want Maduro to run away.” The plan reported in the press, he notes, was to make him think he could — which is why “we now know that the CIA tried to recruit his private pilot” so that a flight to Havana would land instead in Key West.[1] Told that such a trick would mean no future target of American regime change could believe anything Washington promised, Kiriakou agreed: “That’s exactly right.”[2]
The rest is physical, and he numbered it himself. “you have to secure the the presidential palace whether Maduro is in it or not. Um number number two, you have to um either co-opt the military or bombard the military if they can’t be co-opted. Uh number three, you have to take control of the television and radio stations, at least the ones in Caracus.”[2] Then: “you have to take over the the main intersections of the capital.”[3]
Asked whether these are CIA or military tasks, he answered that the distinction has largely lapsed: “It would be it would be joint operations … Since 9/11, most of these kinds of operations would be joint with special forces.”[3]
The objection
The checklist exists in Kiriakou’s telling mainly to be dismissed. “like I’ve said in the past … overthrowing the government is the easy part.” When his interlocutor supplied the other half — “It’s governing” — Kiriakou finished it: “It’s governing that’s the hard part. What do you do the next day?”[3][4]
He endorsed two further measures put to him — cyber attacks on Venezuelan internet infrastructure and shutting the banking wire system so that regime officials could not move money abroad — with “Exactly right.”[4]