Thread by @AnnieJacobsen

🧵Having been a writer/producer on TOM CLANCY's Jack Ryan, I have thoughts on this👇The Venezuela plot we wrote into S2 seems prophetic because CIA operators have been thinking about (+ possibly rehearsing) an assault on Venezuelan presidential complex since Hugo Chávez began destroying the country decades ago.

Legendary CIA operator Billy Waugh who took me through how it would go down, which I will explain here.

https://x.com/AnnieJacobsen/status/2007747656198803591

During Bush era, Billy was asked how he would lead a kill or capture mission against Chávez while he was sleeping inside the palace.

It would involve a HALO (High Altitude Low Opening) insertion, which Billy was famous for. He was on the second-ever HALO jump into a war theater, in Laos during the Vietnam War. Billy lead all HALO training during that time frame, too.

🧵A lot of what happens next can be seen in the Jack Ryan Season 2 assault on the VZ complex. Nothing Billy told me - or any of the *former military folks* I had zoom into the Jack Ryan writers' room - was classified because the assault never happened. Billy taught it as a power point at Ft. Bragg.

Here he is, talking me through an unclassified power point👇

🧵Billy Waugh was the longest serving CIA paramilitary operator (that we know of), beginning when Eisenhower was POTUS. Billy was involved in the highest level kill or capture missions of the Cold War, most of which were kill missions, the majority of which we will never know about because they are still classified.

I write about the unclassified ones in SURPRISE, KILL, VANISH, which I hope you will read.

Here's Billy in my office, showing me a power point about the mission to capture Carlos the Jackal, which succeeded — though the French got credit, also typical. Kill or capture missions of extremely high value targets are profoundly complex and involve ornate ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) the likes of which you and I can't imagine, but Billy could—and did.

Billy's most intense (and sorrowful) kill or capture mission was during the Vietnam War, to kill General Giap, the head of the North Vietnamese Army. It was an abject failure. Many American Special Forces died, many members of the legendary MACV-SOG. It's the most intense story (again it's in SKV, so please read that). Here's what some of those plans look like, from Billy's power point.

P.S. I wrote on S1 + S2 (not S3 + S4).