The Deadly Americans: Adam Isacson & John Walsh on MAGA's Killing Rampage in Latin America

00:00:31 Andrew Keen: Hello, everybody. As America remains preoccupied with the Middle East and Iran, we may be forgetting an equally important story on America's back steps, its backdoor, Latin America. There was a very troubling report in Foreign Policy magazine, a few days ago with the headline “US Boat Strike Campaign Is Shrouded in Secrecy.” And that's what we're gonna talk about today. We want to unshroud this secrecy, reveal really what's happening with the US boat strike policy. And, that has been done extremely professionally by my two guests today. They're both, senior researchers at, the Washington Office on Latin America, otherwise known as WOLA. And, my two guests have, authored an important report on, what they're calling this Killing Spree, American policy over the last year in Latin America. Adam Isacson is the director of defense oversight, and he's the lead, writer, researcher in this report, Killing Spree, and he's joining us from Washington, DC. Thank you very much, Adam. Perhaps you might introduce this Killing Spree report that you've put together. You've, you've authored it with our other guest, just below you, John Walsh, who is the director for drug policy and the Andes at WOLA. So, Adam, lead away. Tell us about this report. How long did it take you? Why have you done it? And why is it so important?

00:02:23 Adam Isacson: Well, thank you for having us, Andrew. And, yeah, since the first attack on, you know, civilian watercraft in the Caribbean back on September 2, about eleven months ago, I mean, WOLA has been following this super closely. We have, put up a tracker of every attack that has been announced on social media. We've been taking part in coalition efforts to stop it. A lot of work with Congress, a lot of work, a lot of writing, actually, in the past of shorter things. But we got a green light from management, thanks to management, for allowing us to really do—

00:02:59 Andrew Keen: But you guys are the management, aren't you? Did you give yourself a green light?

00:03:02 Adam Isacson: Director we're directors, but we also have presidents and vice presidents and people who actually, help us keep the lights on and—

00:03:10 Andrew Keen: Well, I would have in all seriousness, Adam, given that you're a human rights group focusing on Latin America, I would have thought for your senior people, this would have been a no-brainer.

00:03:23 Adam Isacson: Well, I mean, to have, some of your so-called directors devote enough time to actually crank out a 27,000-word report, that's a big investment, for a place that has I think we have a less than $2 million budget to actually just have us use that much time and that much resources to put out something this big. But we realized no one else was doing it. There had not been something that gives a 360-degree view of this really dark chapter in US policy toward Latin America, the human rights aspects of it, but also the failure as a drug policy, what it means for US democracy, what we know about the victims, other countries' roles, and just roll that all in together. And, you know, what we found, looking at expert opinions and looking at all the facts we're able to find is that these boat strikes well, first of all, I should just give the numbers. Right? We're talking about 63 attacks that we know about over these last eleven months on 67 different boats. 221 people that we know of killed, only three survivors, and that they violate the law in many ways. The most obvious one is, you know, Title 18, Section 1111 of the US Code that prohibits murder and the idea of premeditatedly killing civilians with no immediate self-defense justification to do so is exactly what the statute prohibits. This is murder, and it applies on the high seas according to US law. So we have killed 221 people without due process, often without even knowing exactly—

00:04:58 Andrew Keen: what I wanna come to, John, in a second. Adam, but very briefly, you mentioned that this began in early September of last year. Is this a slow drip of what you call, a murder spree? Did it happen over particular months? Is it has the pace heightened? What has been the narrative over the last twelve months?

00:05:25 Adam Isacson: It's a little insidious. I mean, it's gone off and on. There had been bursts, and then there had been some dry periods. In fact, there hasn't been an attack since before the Venezuelan earthquakes at the end of June. But what's happened is that every attack sort of looks like the last. Southern Command will put out a statement briefly on Twitter saying it happened in this ocean. There were this many killed. Happened at our orders. These guys were obviously [unclear; likely “narcoterrorists”], so they never give any evidence. And that's it. And every statement looks like the last one. So what's been insidious about it is if you are at a news organization and you know that these human rights abuses are going on, but every time they happen, there's nothing particularly new about it and there's no news handle on which to grab, at most, you end up with, like, you know, a 150 words in the AP, maybe a few seconds in the NPR read, maybe something very, very brief on the New York Times website, but it's almost like checking a box. And that starts to get us, numb to it. It becomes, normalized in a way it should never be.

00:06:25 Andrew Keen: Let me, I wanna come back to you, Adam. But, John, let's introduce you. You're the director for drug policy and the Andes at WOLA. Is this a drug-related policy? Is the logic, the justification, at least in the minds of the Trump administration, because they're somehow fighting a drug war?

00:06:48 John Walsh: Yeah. I mean, it is, on its face, justified as a drug control policy to attack, what the administration calls narcoterrorism and to use the military to do so. Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, refers to the this effort as the only way to fight drug trafficking is with the military. He says that in a conference with a lot of Latin American defense ministers and government people. So it's very, clearly framed by the administration as a way to fight drugs, but the label that they use in particular is narcoterrorist. So in that sense, it's a melding of the global war on terror, post-9/11 with the long-running war on drugs, but in a way that makes it explicitly formally, a project of the military. So you have these strikes being carried out by drones with missiles and bombs or civilian aircraft guided by intelligence provided by radars and boats. So you have a massive military, not just display theatrical violence, but a lot of hardware being used, in the Caribbean, but also in the Pacific to, support these strikes. So it is very not just militarized, but it is a military campaign. And to your question, yes, it's been described as a way to, both attack narcotrafficking or drug trafficking organizations, but also to stem the supply of drugs. And the administration and President Trump have made some pretty absurd claims about what could be achieved in terms of stopping drugs from coming to the United States, but and we can get to that.

00:08:53 Andrew Keen: John, the Trump administration is not the first or probably the last to deal maybe they invented the term narcoterrorism, but to address this issue of drugs, the United States and Latin America. To what extent is there any continuity with the Biden administration, the Obama administration, the Bushes, Clinton, in terms of US policy, this narcoterrorist policy when it comes to Latin America?

00:09:26 John Walsh: Well, there is enormous continuity because US policy has always, had a very, very prominent element of supply control. That is the sort of theory that, if we can only eradicate drugs where they're produced or stop them either before they leave the producing countries or en route to the United States, whether by sea or over land, we can prevent illegal drugs from even getting to the United States and therefore, avoid or prevent, problems with drugs here. That's never actually been possible to do, but it's a staple of US policy. This particular version of it is, builds on a longstanding since the Reagan administration role for the military in support of civilian law enforcement agencies or in the case of the high seas, the Coast Guard, the military is overseas, the main sort of support for logistics, et cetera, to so this is, in that sense, not new for there to be a military role and for there to be a very prominent interdiction and supply control effort. That said, you know, one of the more interesting statements at the outset of the boat strikes was Secretary of State Rubio saying, along with President Trump, You know what? We're doing this because interdiction, which we've been doing for decades, interdiction drugs with Coast Guard and Navy, et cetera, doesn't work. It doesn't stop drugs from getting to the United States. Therefore, the answer is to use lethal force, at the you know, without any intermediary steps. We're just going to kill people who we say are smuggling drugs and are part of these networks.

00:11:32 Andrew Keen: Brings to mind the Iran-Contra affair, which maybe we'll come back to in terms of history. Adam, you mentioned, Stephen Miller or one of you mentioned Stephen Miller. The Foreign Policy piece I talked about features a photograph of Pete Hegseth with Trump.

00:11:54 Adam Isacson: Mhmm.

00:11:55 Andrew Keen: John just mentioned, Marco Rubio. How important in your sense you're the political guy here in terms of being the director of defense oversight. How important is this policy within the Trump administration? They're obviously involved on all sorts of fronts, in Ukraine, China, obviously, in the Middle East. Is this something that they address at the end of meetings when they get bored and they wanna shout and scream, kill a few innocent civilians? Or is this the core in some ways of Trump 2.0? Of course, Sam, I'm not sure whether it was his term, but people have come up with the term Donroe Doctrine [ed.: coined by the New York Post; Trump later adopted it himself] to describe Trump's policy towards Latin America as a direct descendant of the nineteenth-century Monroe Doctrine.

00:12:48 Adam Isacson: I mean, I don't know whether it's on the same level as the Strait of Hormuz, you know, and things like that for the Trump administration, but it is more than we have seen in any administration in decades. I mean, I my focus since the nineties here has been security in Latin America. And I'll tell you, quite often, that's been a very small boutique, you know, niche, issue to work on. It is no longer. In, early December, the administration and really—

00:13:15 Andrew Keen: This was December of last year of twenty twenty five.

00:13:18 Adam Isacson: Twenty twenty-five, the administration. And we're talking about a very small group here. Just really you the ones you just named, Miller, Hegseth, Rubio. The—

00:13:26 Andrew Keen: the inner circle, so just being—

00:13:29 Adam Isacson: The inner circle, and almost no one else seems to be invited to those meetings. It sounds like the State Department is a bit of a ghost town right now.

00:13:36 Andrew Keen: They— Surprise. Surprise. I mean, I can't imagine many people in State are particularly sympathetic to this, although Rubio, of course, is Secretary of State.

00:13:44 Adam Isacson: Yeah. But he may be spending more time at the White House most days. They put out this document in December, this national security strategy, whichever administration does. This is our national security priority for the next four years. And Latin America is suddenly brought up to first tier, which kinda surprised us too that this was gonna happen. Really and there's even language that says, you know, the Middle East is, they've gotta really start working things out on their own. We can't always be dealing with the Middle East. Of course, three months after that came out, they invaded Iran, so I don't know what the heck is going on there. I don't know if anybody does. But for the first time, Latin America is this first-tier issue, and particularly, you've already mentioned this issue of narcoterrorism. They're defining or redefining organized crime groups, which are rife in Latin America and a huge problem, as something on a par with al-Qaeda and ISIS.

00:14:33 Andrew Keen: That Cold War rhetoric. And, I mean, obviously, much of this is bound up with, what you could politely call US Venezuelan relations and the relocation of a certain Nicolás Maduro. How central is Venezuelan policy and the situation in Venezuela to all this, Adam?

00:14:56 Adam Isacson: It seems like it was a real proof of concept for using the military as their main foreign policy tool. You know, they haven't actually changed the regime in Venezuela at all, but they have changed the behavior of the regime.

00:15:07 Andrew Keen: They have changed the front the, you know, the—

00:15:08 Adam Isacson: the front diplomats really couldn't have done it quite as quickly. But their whole proof of concept here is to they call it joint operations. They're pushing on many leaders around the region, some of them willing, some of them not, to allow them to have mainly special forces, but US troops operating on their soil to go after leaders of 24 groups that they have considered terrorists or really criminal groups that they've considered terrorists, all around the region. Mexico has said no. We cannot have US troops firing their weapons or getting involved in anything that might harm Mexicans. Mexicans. Sorry. But they're pushing, pushing, pushing. Ecuador has said yes. You've you know, the new Venezuelan regime coordinated, or at least allowed a bombing of the leader of the Tren de Aragua in Venezuela in the middle of June. And Colombia and Peru just elected far-right leaders who are probably going to invite the US troops to play a much more intimate role. The difference from, like, the Cold War, during the Cold War, the United States gave billions of dollars to really abusive militaries around the region. We all know that history. But there were very few examples of US troops actually coming in and firing their weapons in anger. You know, Panama in 1989, Grenada, Dominican Republic in the sixties. But those were brief. The idea of actually having US troops carrying out joint operations side by side, kicking in doors with Latin American militaries is kinda new, and that's what they're pushing very hard to do. And the boat strikes and the Maduro operation were sort of proofs of concept for this.

00:16:37 Andrew Keen: Yeah. And I know your office was actually set up in the wake of the Pinochet coup in, in Chile in Sept— the coup of September '73. So you guys are very familiar with that. Adam, let's come back to this issue of narcoterrorism. I mean, it goes without saying that—

00:16:58 Adam Isacson: Mhmm.

00:16:58 Andrew Keen: It's an exaggerated, absurd term. But is there a problem when it comes to— drugs, illegal drugs, Latin America and the United States? What's your analysis? You're the, so to speak, the drug guy here. You're the director for drug policy and the Andes. A couple of questions. Firstly, how reliant on Latin America is the American, North American, US, illegal drug business. My understanding was a lot of these drugs now are synthetic, and they're actually coming from East Asia.

00:17:37 John Walsh: Yeah. Well, the reality in Latin America is that the drug trafficking organizations have expanded, in their reach and in their power, and the strength of their markets over the past several decades, and they really are a force to be reckoned with in pretty much every country. Part of it is, they take advantage of, you know, big market opportunities. Our global prohibition regime, which is in a set of UN treaties, uses essentially punishment and criminal law to ban and try to contain these consumer markets, which have, you know, literally hundreds of millions of buyers. So they have a very, very robust markets, and they devise different ways to stimulate demand and create, you know, addiction. So it's very, very profitable all over the world. And as a result, drug trafficking networks have grown. Their most important, use of that money is actually not to engage in sort of terrorist acts, but actually to buy the complicity, and silence and cooperation of government officials, and also to have the weaponry to fend off enforcement if needed, but also fend off rivals. So they've become extremely powerful in certain regions of Latin America where they, basically become government, provide government services, but also, you know, real levels of employment, and at the very least, subsistence incomes but beyond that. So, the Latin America's sort of longstanding deficits in terms of, weak judicial systems in many countries, very large informal sectors in terms of, economic, employment, means that there's plenty of work to be had in and plenty of money to be made and spread around in the drug trafficking industry. So the United States has long been, because of its proximity, a prime market. And in the case of cocaine, which is really what we're talking about when we're talking about these boat strikes, the Andean region, primarily Colombia these days, but in the past, Peru and Bolivia, what is the primary source of cocaine for the world and, of course, for the United States as well. That doesn't mean it's the only source of, you know, where cocaine exits the Andean region of South America, but that's the case. But as you said, Andrew, synthetic drugs, which can be made anywhere based if you have the right chemicals and the right recipe, are much more prominent, in the United States now in terms of driving the US overdose epidemic. Synthetic drugs, opioids like fentanyl, which has really overtook the heroin markets. And that is made primarily illicitly manufactured, in terms of the US market in Mexico and crosses the land border, based on chemicals that can be sourced anywhere, but for the most part these days are sourced from, China and Asia. So that is a very different way of making and supplying drugs. And the real advantage that a drug like fentanyl has over even heroin, but even over cocaine is much, much more compact and extremely potent.

00:21:30 Andrew Keen: John, I read a piece recently about what's happening in Ecuador, the way in which the Ecuadorian society is being destroyed by one kind of drug civil war or another. How is this played out? I know that one Ecuadorian prosecutor was assassinated while investigating US boat strikes. Was he assassinated by the US or by someone within Ecuador?

00:21:59 John Walsh: I don't think anyone knows the answer, but probably someone within Ecuador, presumably. But Ecuador has gone within a very in a very quick time span of, you know, less than ten years, even less than five years from a relatively, by Latin American standards, relatively secure and safe country, even in their own estimation, of Ecuadorians to one of the most violent countries in terms of homicide rates in Latin America and in the world. And that has been driven by, fights among rival drug trafficking groups fighting for, dominance of this lucrative trade. And in part, that's because in large part, that's because the arrival of, transnational criminal groups, you know, including from Mexico and the realization that there's enormous profits to be had in markets in Europe, for instance, and that Ecuador, is very well placed, although it might not seem it, you know, geographically. They have very large, ports and container shipping industries that go to Europe and other sort of profitable drug markets, using—

00:23:20 Andrew Keen: So yeah. So this is not just a tragedy for the people assassinated, presumably, especially if they're innocent, but also for these societies. Adam, you're the political guy here. Would it be fair to say that as so often with Trump, the issue is real. It's just the way—

00:23:40 Adam Isacson: Yeah.

00:23:40 Andrew Keen: He's trying to deal with it, which is so absurd and illegal and immoral.

00:23:46 Adam Isacson: Oh, absolutely. I mean, the organized crime when they say organized crime is one of the biggest threats in Latin America, it's a huge threat to Latin Americans. It kills. It displaces. It forces people out, you know, out of their country and makes them migrate away. It's the number one complaint in polls how people feel unsafe. It penetrates governments and makes them, makes them useless often and unable to govern because they bought off so many people. You know, they extort just about every business from the street peddler to the five-star restaurant and even in touristic cities. It is everywhere, and it is a huge problem. Now the Trump administration's approach, I would say, is wrong in two ways. One well, there may be more than two, but I'll focus on two. They're one, they're focusing on drugs. Drugs, drugs, drugs, and John just explained that very well. But drugs is just one income stream. Right now, the price of gold is over $4,000 an ounce. It's possible that they're making more from illicit precious metals operations, digging it up, poisoning the environment deep in the Amazon and elsewhere all over the Americas. Kidnapping for ransom, human trafficking, migrant smuggling. Let's not forget, yeah, there's just so many ways. They got ex the extortion that I already mentioned that they can make money. So if you're only fighting the drug income stream, you're not really you're gonna inconvenience them terribly, but you're not gonna really affect that much. And then the other thing they're getting wrong is simply, you know, when Stephen Miller got up in front of generals and said only the military can fight, can fight you can fight organized crime. Look, I mean the supermax prison in Florence, Colorado is full of drug lords already. We have taken down so many leaders. We have actually obliterated entire cartels— the Medellín and Cali cartels in Colombia went away in the nineties and there's more coca and there's more members of armed groups now than there was then. Why? Why is oddly enough, organized crime is actually harder to fight than, like, a guerrilla insurgency or somebody who wants to actually fight the government. Anytime they see the government, they're gonna, you know, ambush the troops or whatever. Organized crime doesn't wanna ambush the troops. They'll do it when they feel cornered, and they attack the government a lot, but they'd rather not to because it is so bad for business. They are not motivated. They never wanna roll into the capital and take power and pursue some kind of program. They just want profits. And having to fight a government is bad for profits. It's so much easier to corrupt everybody from the soldiers at the checkpoint waving people through, to the minister of finances—

00:26:18 Andrew Keen: Okay. So I take your point, Joe [ed.: Adam].

00:26:20 Adam Isacson: Money laundering. And if you're not attacking that and you're just doing the military, what are you doing?

00:26:24 Andrew Keen: So you're not the first or last people to criticize Donald Trump and his foreign policy. John, what there is. So as we've agreed or as you guys have laid out, there's a huge problem both for the United States and for these societies from Ecuador, Peru, Colombia, Bolivia, and elsewhere. What should, ideally, the Trump administration do, given that they're conservatives? They're not gonna just pick up their phones or come down to your offices at WOLA and tell you guys to go over there and fix it. What realistically could we hope from them that would be more credible and less outrageous than essentially assassinating 221 people without any clear benefit?

00:27:18 John Walsh: Well, I don't know how realistic this would be. But if they really wanted credit for making a difference in Latin America and also making a difference in the United States, in terms of, you know, the real harms of drug addiction and overdose, et cetera, is they wouldn't tear away the public health infrastructure and support for people suffering with addiction, that should be a nonpartisan issue. That should be—

00:27:49 Andrew Keen: You mean in the United States—

00:27:51 Adam Isacson: not in Lebanon [unclear; possibly “Latin America”]?

00:27:51 John Walsh: In the United States. That's job one is sort of get our own house in order. And this is something that affects every single community. It's not a blue or red issue. It's not blue cities or anything like that. So, unfortunately, the Trump administration and the GOP Congress have torn away at that infrastructure, have, massive cuts to the Medicaid program, which is the first payer for substance use. So that is a massive, own goal in a sense. And if the administration wanted to show real progress and build upon the positive trends that we're seeing for the first time in decades, which is reduction in overdose deaths, they would sort of restore that money. In Latin America, if the Trump administration now President Trump, I don't think he cares about law other than using it as a weapon for his opponents and to, you know, safety for his friends. But if they really believe in sort of bringing a law and order, they should fortify the justice systems, the prosecutors, the public defenders, the courts, everything that has to do with actual justice rather than murder. Right? So they're what they're doing is stoking more violence in a way that, supposes that there's another sort of military out there, and they're are they're arguing that we are at war with these cartels. But if you look at it on the ground in any certain in any particular country, you know, criminal groups are part of communities. So there's no way to reliably distinguish other than investigations, evidence, law enforcement, and then, you know, if you have a culprit to bring them to trial. To just murder people and actually, at the same time, destroy any evidence that there may have been that you would make a case with is just ludicrous. So it's the exact opposite of what a serious effort would mean. Now is that a realistic thing to suppose for this administration, which seems sort of, you know, so, interested in and sort of smitten by this theatrical violence that shows we are strong. And so I think it's something that the administration should do, but I'm not gonna hold my breath that they will do it.

00:30:26 Andrew Keen: Yeah. I wonder whether they all spend their time in the White House rewatching Brian De Palma's “Scarface” and enjoying the violence and all that. Adam, if what you're saying is true and that these 221 people have been killed on the high seas as a consequence of Trump, Hegseth, Rubio, and above all, Stephen Miller? What's likely to be the legal consequences of all this? I sometimes wonder about the murder of the entire Iranian leadership, which doesn't seem to be getting as much coverage perhaps as it should. Are these guys gonna turn into Netanyahu? Are they not once Trump's out of office, the Democrats are hopefully back, are they gonna be able to travel around the world, or is the International Court of Justice [ed.: the International Criminal Court is the relevant body; Adam clarifies below] — is it gonna be after these guys?

00:31:20 Adam Isacson: If the International Court of Justice still exists after the Trump administration and if the US justice system has completely failed to hold anybody accountable, which could happen because of Trump's pardon power and things like that, then here's what could happen. If, you know, the United States is not party to the International Criminal Court, so we don't recognize what they do. But if the United States destroyed can be found to have destroyed any boat that was registered in any of those countries and killed innocent people or even non-innocent people. They have effectively staged an unprovoked attack on the territory of that country. And that country would be within its rights and or the victims to actually go to actually bring the case to the International Criminal Court and get a prosecution against officials in the Trump administration. And, yeah, it would be hard for them to travel if there was suddenly a notice saying that these people had to be taken and go face justice at the ICC. They might be stuck in the United States.

00:32:18 Andrew Keen: And what's the I mentioned, Iran-Contra earlier, which didn't bring down the Reagan, presidency, but certainly tarnished it. It was ongoing. It became rather boring, from what I can remember, between '81 and '86 [ed.: the arms-for-hostages dealings ran 1985–86 and broke publicly in November 1986]. How likely would the Democrats actually pick this up if they come back to power and say, this administration has been, behaving illegally overseas in the murder of innocent people and that somebody has to be liable.

00:32:50 Adam Isacson: Well, you know, if we have anything to say about it, they can be super likely, but we don't always have anything to say about it.

00:32:55 Andrew Keen: Unfortunately, you will be. But, I mean, are the Democrats beginning to talk about this?

00:33:00 Adam Isacson: On the Foreign Affairs and Relations Committees, yes. Tim Kaine has actually been going in and reading every, like, after action report and every document about this and really is sinking his teeth into it. I will say on the record, I'm more concerned with that about, the Armed Services Committees, Democrats being just as quite as energetic [unclear]. They've said the right things, but haven't taken this as much to heart. But I do hope that they make this a real issue. The thing that could stop them is that, you know, the average American voter thinking in sound bites, they were terrified of being portrayed as defending narcotraffickers. Why are you so upset about these, dead Colombians when there are American addicts dying every day? And, you know, you know, it's a it's an argument that you have to make that we are not the kind of country that massacres people, but often it gets garbled once, Fox News gets to, frame it for people.

00:33:56 Andrew Keen: John, of these 221 people, how many of them are actually innocent and have no involvement at all with the drug trade?

00:34:03 John Walsh: Nobody really knows.

00:34:05 Andrew Keen: Well, you're the guys. You've written this long report, so you know more than most. What's your sense? I mean, how much of it is complete incompetence, which would not surprise certainly me, many of our listeners about the behavior, of this administration overseas in screwing everything up?

00:34:22 John Walsh: Right. Well, I think the first thing that needs to be said is, even if every single one of them was engaged in drug smuggling, these are these operations are illegal because they've they pose no threat to the people who killed them. So—

00:34:39 Andrew Keen: I take your point on that. But leaving aside that almost goes without saying. But, I mean, are they just are some of these characters from what I've read just fishermen who happen to be caught in the crossfire?

00:34:53 John Walsh: Yes. Definitely. And that goes with the territory. I mean, the people who are gonna be on these boats are gonna largely be people who are fishermen. They're not sort of full-time drug traffickers. They engage in drug smuggling sort of as part of, you know, routines, to make extra money. They know their way around the water. They know their way back and forth to other islands. They'll bring people over for seasonal work. They'll bring migrants back. They'll have friends. They'll have relatives. The people on these boats, may, you know, occasionally be or, you know, more regularly engaged in drug smuggling, but as far it's not the only thing they do. These communities are fishing communities. So it's to be expected that they will be sort of a mix of people on the boats. And for the administration to say, basically, everything about this is secret. We know what we're doing. Trust us. I think this administration certainly does not deserve any benefit of the doubt in terms of trust about the their information and intelligence. And Adam really dug into that piece for our report, and maybe he wants to say more about that.

00:36:07 Adam Isacson: Sure. I mean, we what we know about the victims and it's been hard to get information about some of the victims because they do live in areas that are dominated by organized crime. People are afraid to come forward. They don't wanna end up like that prosecutor in Ecuador. Or they're in areas they're in countries that are run by authoritarian governments like Venezuela. But what we've been able to discover from a few dozen cases is that a big chunk of them were indeed fishermen or migrants or human trafficking victims. More often than that, though, well, actually, I should just say it. On the fishermen thing and or people who had just gone to get work and were passengers, there is a case in Boston District Court right now where the families of two men from Trinidad are suing, the United States to get reparations for the death of their relatives, who they say had nothing to do with the drug trade. There's a case in the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, of a Colombian fisherman's family trying to get some recognition of what was done to him. But the probably a bit more often than that were what John said. First of all, we're talking about the lowest link in the chain. It's like killing a street-corner drug dealer and thinking you solved the drug problem. Or it's people who were just crewing a boat that one day that boat is taking fishermen, one day that boat is taking passengers, one boat that taking that is taking a small amount of cocaine or marijuana. And I've been on boats like this in Latin America pretty frequently that look like the ones in the videos because that's there's no roads. That's how you get from one coastal town to another. I mean, it's pretty common. And so you gotta watch for, for that. There's you know, from what we've seen, there was one guy who was a local drug boss. He wasn't tied. In fact, he had his spats with some of the major groups that the United States considers terrorists, but he was definitely dirty and was involved in a lot of shipments. But for the most part, it was just like kids given a couple hundred dollars to run drugs once or to run fuel to the boats that were actually taking the drugs who have been killed.

00:38:00 Andrew Keen: Thinking ahead, Adam, more broadly. We still have two more years of this administration. That was, of course, the Bay of Pigs invasion back in 1961 that shaped US policy in the Caribbean for generations. Currently, there's a an embargo, if that's the right word to use, a US embargo on Cuba. Cubans now are sleeping on the streets because of the blackouts and the summer heat. Could all this be a prelude, do you think, to a broader war? I mean, obviously, there was the invasion of Venezuela or the coup in Venezuela. Is the center of the new storm ultimately, in your view, gonna be Cuba? What will happen? I mean, Rubio seems particularly invested in this.

00:38:53 Adam Isacson: I mean, it's hard to play probabilities right now. I think, it would have been more likely if they didn't get so badly bogged down in Iran, but it is still possible, very possible that they might try something in Cuba. I mean, certainly, President Trump has hinted on it on several occasions. You know, Rubio has definitely been putting the screws on Cuba every way he can. Politico reported this week that, there has been an increase in intelligence assets devoted, to Cuba in recent days. But I don't see yet, you know, the naval vessels massing or the assets moving around Cuba. The emphasis for now, at least, seems to be on these joint operations with willing militaries and willing countries. But, you just can't rule it out. It is something they might try. Another thing that might be stopping them is that they don't have you know, the way they found, like, the vice president of Venezuela was willing to go along with them and, just take up where Maduro left off and continue governing the country, I don't think they have anybody in Cuba who could guarantee such a smooth transition.

00:39:54 Andrew Keen: So let's wrap up. John, I mean, 221 people killed, obviously, is a terrible tragedy, especially for them and their families. But, you know, a single bomb in Iran has killed 221 people. And I'm not sure if quantifying murder is helpful in any way. But what's the conclusion on all this? What do you conclude in your Killing Spree? Is this another shameful episode, a particularly shameful episode in US policy in Latin America?

00:40:29 John Walsh: Well, it is especially shameful. Hopefully, there'll never be another strike. As Adam indicated, there hasn't been one for a number of weeks now. But, I think what's so alarming about the boat strikes is and you pointed to the number. I mean, in mistaken or stray bombs that the United States drops on cities and girls' schools, there can be more killings. The point here is that this is a policy that's deliberately designed to kill people. That's the goal. That's not some collateral damage. And the United States has done these 63 times. So the each one of these is individually a crime scene, and the United States is the responsible actor. The United States has attacked 63, you know, boats as part of a deliberate policy to, you know, murder people. So that's what's chilling about it. And I think the other thing that people need to keep in mind is this is not just restricted to the high seas in terms of its justification and the legal, arguments that the White House is making. The Justice Department memo is basically an open license to kill, a secret list. The president decides who's on it, and there's no limiting factor. If you if the president declares that you are affiliated with a narcoterrorist, it doesn't matter if you're in, you know, Colombia or Chicago. They're asserting that they have the legal authority to call in a drone strike and eliminate you. So I think Americans need to take heed that the that this administration, which is not shy about talking about bringing the military to confront the enemy from within, something that President Trump has repeated time and again.

00:42:33 Andrew Keen: Mhmm.

00:42:33 John Walsh: And he and Hegseth, you know, drummed into the military when they brought the brass, altogether, last September.

00:42:41 Adam Isacson: In Quantico. Yeah.

00:42:43 John Walsh: In Quantico. So I think we really need to take this seriously from the point of view of what is the Trump administration trying to create in terms of a, a vibe about a threat? And the tool is the military and lethal force, not just overseas, about people that the administration wants to keep nameless, faceless, and invisible, but here on US streets. And we don't have to imagine the rhetoric, and we don't have to imagine US armed agents killing people in broad daylight on US—

00:43:20 Andrew Keen: We need to dig up Graham Greene. He needs to write a novel. We do. I mean, it sounds like a bad Greene novel. Finally, Adam, you mentioned that you needed approval from your bosses at, WOLA to write this thing. I'm guessing it's been quite controversial. One of the things they probably needed to think about was the consequences. In terms of writing this report and in the research and publication, a lot of concern about the fate of American democracy. This might turn into one of those Watergate style, power, scandals where your report might be used in the long run to bring down an administration or prosecute war criminals. Have you had any issues or problems with publication?

00:44:09 Adam Isacson: Oh, no. No. And in fact, you know, management wanted us to be as aggressive as possible, you know, as truthful, credible, and aggressive as possible in this. It was more like, can we spend the resources that it would take to have, you know, two of their senior staff work this long on it? And we decided, yes. Let's pour it on.

00:44:24 Andrew Keen: How long did it take you to write?

00:44:26 Adam Isacson: Oh, 27,000 words, probably at least half of my time and for about six or seven weeks.

00:44:33 Andrew Keen: You should have used Claude or [unclear] AI. I could have done it in a few minutes.

00:44:37 Adam Isacson: I haven't done it in a few minutes. I haven't— [unclear; crosstalk]

00:44:38 Andrew Keen: —done it before.

00:44:38 Adam Isacson: —report. Yeah.

00:44:39 Andrew Keen: But then my question was really in terms of the response of I mean, I don't suppose Trump or Hegseth or Rubio would have read this, but has there been any response from the administration? Do you fear that or do some of your bosses perhaps fear that they'll be revengeful? They don't seem to like their enemies, these people very much.

00:45:00 Adam Isacson: You know, it doesn't keep us up at night, but, you know, I mean, it's always a concern that more the bigger fear is this, you know, lawfare that they will go after us with something frivolous that will bog us down. If I spent half of my time for six weeks writing those reports, I could spend half of my time for six months just being dragged through, you know, through some sort of weird litigation or dealing with Jeanine Pirro or, you know [unclear], I think she's on the line with the same lawyers. Even if we're obviously not guilty. I mean, that's not but that's the fear of every journalistic or human rights or other organization that's doing its job correctly right now, and that's just the price you pay. And so far, it hasn't come down on most of us, but it's not a reason ever to be silent.

00:45:41 Andrew Keen: Well, you guys are doing your job at, at WOLA, your human rights—

00:45:46 Adam Isacson: Mhmm.

00:45:47 Andrew Keen: Advocacy for the Andes, for Latin America. It's important business, an important document. It's out. And, I mean, I we can all read it online. Right? Killing Spree. Do you have to pay for it?

00:45:57 Adam Isacson: No. Absolutely not.

00:45:59 Andrew Keen: That's even better. You can read it online. If any American is concerned with the behavior, the extrajudicial, if that's the right word way to describe it, a euphemism to describe I mean, it's not narcoterrorism, but some people might argue it's a form of terrorism anyway. It's a— another stain in America, and—

00:46:22 Adam Isacson: It's to make it right. [unclear]

00:46:23 Andrew Keen: How people are thinking about it in the world. Adam Ike— Adam Isacson and John Walsh of, of WOLA, thank you so much, and thank you for writing this report.

00:46:32 Adam Isacson: Andrew, thank you for having us on.

00:46:34 John Walsh: Yeah. Thanks a lot, Andrew.