WASHINGTON _ The first piece of a psychological plot by the U.S. government to raise suspicion that one of the most powerful men in Venezuela may be a CIA operative was hatched in a seventh floor office of the State Department.
Around April 2017, Fernando Cutz, then-senior director at the National Security Council, stopped by the Foggy Bottom office of a veteran diplomat to get ideas about how to destabilize Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro's inner circle, with the goal of further weakening the government that has thrown the once-thriving country into poverty and chaos.
As a bobble-head statue of the iconic socialist leader Hugo Chavez looked down from a shelf above them, Ambassador William Brownfield joked with Cutz that it wasn't advanced science. There were tactical benefits to selectively choosing leaders to target with sanctions, travel restrictions and other punishments and to raise questions within the Venezuelan hierarchy about the people left alone by the U.S.
