CIA

WASHINGTON — President Trump confirmed Wednesday that he has authorized the CIA to conduct covert operations inside Venezuela and said he was weighing carrying out land operations on the country.

The acknowledgement of covert action in Venezuela by the U.S. spy agency comes after the U.S. military in recent weeks has carried out a series of deadly strikes against alleged drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean. U.S. forces have destroyed at least five boats since early September, killing 27 people, and four of those vessels originated from Venezuela.

Asked during an event in the Oval Office on Wednesday why he had authorized the CIA to take action in Venezuela, Trump affirmed he had made the move.

“I authorized for two reasons, really,” Trump replied. “No. 1, they have emptied their prisons into the United States of America,” he said. “And the other thing, the drugs, we have a lot of drugs coming in from Venezuela, and a lot of the Venezuelan drugs come in through the sea.”

Trump added the administration “is looking at land” as it considers further strikes in the region. He declined to say whether the CIA has authority to take action against President Nicolás Maduro.

Trump made the unusual acknowledgement of a CIA operation shortly after the New York Times published that the CIA had been authorized to carry out covert action in Venezuela.

Maduro pushes back

On Wednesday, Maduro lashed out at the record of the U.S. spy agency in various conflicts around the world without directly addressing Trump’s comments about authorizing the CIA to carry out covert operations in Venezuela.

“No to regime change that reminds us so much of the [overthrows] in the failed eternal wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and so on,” Maduro said at a televised event of the National Council for Sovereignty and Peace, which is made up of representatives from various political, economic, academic and cultural sectors in Venezuela.

“No to the coups carried out by the CIA, which remind us so much of the 30,000 disappeared,” a figure estimated by human rights organizations such as the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo during the military dictatorship in Argentina (1976-1983). He also referred to the 1973 coup in Chile.

“How long will the CIA continue to carry on with its coups? Latin America doesn’t want them, doesn’t need them and repudiates them,” Maduro added.

The objective is “to say no to war in the Caribbean, no to war in South America, yes to peace,” he said.

Speaking in English, Maduro said: “Not war, yes peace, not war. Is that how you would say it? Who speaks English? Not war, yes peace, the people of the United States, please. Please, please, please.”

In a statement, Venezuela’s Foreign Ministry on Wednesday rejected “the bellicose and extravagant statements by the President of the United States, in which he publicly admits to having authorized operations to act against the peace and stability of Venezuela.”

“This unprecedented statement constitutes a very serious violation of international law and the United Nations’ Charter and obliges the community of countries to denounce these clearly immoderate and inconceivable statements,” said the statement, which Foreign Minister Yván Gil posted on his Telegram channel.

Resistance from Congress

Early this month, the Trump administration declared drug cartels to be unlawful combatants and pronounced the United States is now in an “armed conflict” with them, justifying the military action as a necessary escalation to stem the flow of drugs into the United States.

The move has spurred anger in Congress from members of both major political parties that Trump was effectively committing an act of war without seeking congressional authorization.

On Wednesday, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said while she supports cracking down on trafficking, the administration has gone too far.

“The Trump administration’s authorization of covert CIA action, conducting lethal strikes on boats and hinting at land operations in Venezuela slides the United States closer to outright conflict with no transparency, oversight or apparent guardrails,” New Hampshire’s Shaheen said. “The American people deserve to know if the administration is leading the U.S. into another conflict, putting servicemembers at risk or pursuing a regime-change operation.”

The Trump administration has yet to provide underlying evidence to lawmakers proving that the boats targeted by the U.S. military were in fact carrying narcotics, according to two U.S. officials familiar with the matter.

The officials, who were not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the administration has only pointed to unclassified video clips of the strikes posted on social media by Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and has yet to produce “hard evidence” that the vessels were carrying drugs.

Lawmakers have expressed frustration that the administration is offering little detail about how it came to decide the U.S. is in armed conflict with cartels or which criminal organizations it claims are “unlawful combatants.”

Even as the U.S. military has carried out strikes on some vessels, the U.S. Coast Guard has continued with its typical practice of stopping boats and seizing drugs.

Trump on Wednesday explained away the action, saying the traditional approach hasn’t worked.

“Because we’ve been doing that for 30 years, and it has been totally ineffective. They have faster boats,” he said. ”They’re world-class speedboats, but they’re not faster than missiles.”

Human rights groups have raised concerns that the strikes flout international law and are extrajudicial killings.

Madhani writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Jorge Rueda in Caracas, Venezuela, contributed to this report.

Oct. 15 (UPI) — The CIA is authorized to conduct operations in Venezuela and likely has been for at least a couple of months, President Donald Trump confirmed on Wednesday.

Trump commented on a possible CIA deployment in Venezuela when a reporter asked why he authorized the CIA to work in the South American nation during a Wednesday news conference.

The president said he has two reasons for authorizing the CIA to be involved in Venezuela.

“They have emptied their prisons into the United States,” Trump said. “They came in through the border because we had an open-border policy.”

“They’ve allowed thousands and thousands of prisoners, people from mental institutions and insane asylums emptied out into the United States,” Trump said. “We’re bringing them back.”

The president said Venezuela is not the only country to do so, “but they’re the worst abuser” and called the South American nation’s leaders “down and dirty.”

He said Venezuela also is sending a lot of drugs into the United States.

“A lot of the Venezuelan drugs come in through the sea, so you see it,” the president explained. “We’re going to stop them by land, also.”

Trump declined to answer a follow-up question regarding whether or not the CIA is authorized to “take out” Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

The president called the question a fair one but said it would be “ridiculous” for him to answer it.

The president’s answer regarding CIA deployment in Venezuela comes after he earlier said the U.S. military obtains intelligence on likely drug smuggling operations in Venezuela.

Such intelligence enabled the military to strike a vessel carrying six passengers off the coast of Venezuela on Tuesday.

“Intelligence confirmed the vessel was trafficking narcotics, was associated with illicit narco-terrorist networks and was transiting along a known [designated terrorist organization] route,” Trump said in a Truth Social post announcing the military strike.

All six crew members were killed in the lethal kinetic airstrike on the vessel, and no U.S. forces were harmed.

Trump told media that Venezuela and a lot of other countries are “feeling heat” and he “won’t let our country be ruined” by them, ABC News reported.

The president in September notified several Congressional committees that the nation is in “active conflict” with transnational gangs and drug cartels, many of which he has designated as terrorist organizations.

Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua is among those so designated, and the United States has a $50 million bounty on Maduro, whom Trump says profits from the drug trade.

During Trump’s first term in office, the CIA similarly worked against drug cartels in Mexico and elsewhere in Central and South America.

The Biden administration continued those efforts, including flying drones over suspected cartel sites in Mexico to identify possible fentanyl labs.

United States President Donald Trump on Wednesday confirmed that he has authorised the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to carry out covert operations in Venezuela.

He added that his administration was also mulling land-based military operations inside Venezuela, as tensions between Washington and Caracas soar over multiple deadly US strikes on Venezuelan boats in the Caribbean Sea in recent weeks.

On Wednesday, Trump held a news conference with some of his top law enforcement officials, where he faced questions about an earlier news report in The New York Times about the CIA authorisation. One reporter asked directly, “Why did you authorise the CIA to go into Venezuela?”

“I authorised for two reasons, really,” Trump replied. “Number one, they have emptied their prisons into the United States of America.”

“The other thing,” he continued, was Venezuela’s role in drug-trafficking. He then appeared to imply that the US would take actions on foreign soil to prevent the flow of narcotics and other drugs.

“We have a lot of drugs coming in from Venezuela,” Trump said. “A lot of the Venezuelan drugs come in through the sea.  So you get to see that. But we’re going to stop them by land also.”

Trump’s remarks mark the latest escalation in his campaign against Venezuela, whose leader, Nicolas Maduro, has long been a target for the US president, stretching back to Trump’s first term in office.

Already, both leaders have bolstered their military forces along the Caribbean Sea in a show of potential force.

The Venezuelan government hit back at Trump’s latest comments and the authorised CIA operations, accusing the US of violating international law and the UN Charter.

“The purpose of US actions is to create legitimacy for an operation to change the regime in Venezuela, with the ultimate goal of taking control of all the country’s resources,” the Maduro government said in a statement.

Earlier, at the news conference, reporters sought to confront Trump over whether he was trying to enforce regime change in Caracas.

“Does the CIA have authority to take out Maduro?” one journalist asked at the White House on Wednesday.

“Oh, I don’t want to answer a question like that. That’s a ridiculous question for me to be given,” Trump said, demurring. “Not really a ridiculous question, but wouldn’t it be a ridiculous question for me to answer?”

He then offered an addendum: “But I think Venezuela’s feeling heat.”

Claiming wartime powers

Trump’s responses, at times meandering, touched on his oft-repeated claims about Venezuela.

Since taking office for a second term, Trump has sought to assume wartime powers – using laws like the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 – by alleging that Venezuela had masterminded an “invasion” of migrants and criminal groups onto US soil.

He has offered little proof for his assertions, though, and his statements have been undercut by the assessments of his own intelligence community.

In May, for example, a declassified US report revealed that intelligence officials had found no evidence directly linking Maduro to criminal groups like Tren de Aragua, as Trump has alleged.

Still, on Wednesday, Trump revisited the baseless claim that Venezuela under Maduro had sent prisoners and people with mental health conditions to destabilise the US.

“Many countries have done it, but not like Venezuela.  They were down and dirty,” Trump said.

The authorisation of CIA operations inside Venezuela is the latest indication that Trump has been signing secret proclamations to lay the groundwork for lethal action overseas, despite insisting in public that he seeks peace globally.

In August, for instance, anonymous sources told the US media that Trump had also signed an order allowing the US military to take action against drug-trafficking cartels and other Latin American criminal networks.

And in October, it emerged that Trump had sent a memo to the US Congress asserting that the country was in a “non-international armed conflict” with the cartels, whom he termed “unlawful combatants”.

Many such groups, including Tren de Aragua, have also been added to the US’s list of “foreign terrorist organisations”, though experts point out that the label alone does not provide a legal basis for military action.

Strikes in the Caribbean Sea

Nevertheless, the US under Trump has taken a series of escalatory military actions, including by conducting multiple missile strikes on small vessels off the Venezuelan coast.

At least five known air strikes have been conducted on boats since September 2, killing 27 people.

The most recent attack was announced on Tuesday in a social media post: A video Trump shared showed a boat floating in the water, before a missile set it alight. Six people were reportedly killed in that bombing.

Many legal experts and former military officials have said that the strikes appear to be a clear violation of international law. Drug traffickers have not traditionally met the definition of armed combatants in a war. And the US government has so far not presented any public evidence to back its claims that the boats were indeed carrying narcotics headed for America.

But Trump has justified the strikes by saying they will save American lives lost to drug addiction.

He has maintained the people on board the targeted boats were “narco-terrorists” headed to the US.

On Wednesday, he again brushed aside a question about the lack of evidence. He also defended himself against concerns that the bombings amount to extrajudicial killings.

“When they’re loaded up with drugs, they’re fair game,” Trump told reporters, adding there was “fentanyl dust all over the boat after those bombs go off”.

He added, “We know we have much information about each boat that goes. Deep, strong information.”

Framing the bombing campaign in the Caribbean as a success, Trump then explained his administration might start to pivot its strategy.

“ We’ve almost totally stopped it by sea. Now, we’ll stop it by land,” he said of the alleged drug trafficking. He joked that even fishermen had decided to stay off the waters.

“ We are certainly looking at land now because we’ve got the sea very well under control.”

US president attacks John Brennan and James Comey amid reports two men are under investigation over Trump-Russia probe.

United States President Donald Trump has suggested that former CIA director John Brennan and ex-FBI chief James Comey may have to “pay a price” amid reports that the two men are under criminal investigation.

Asked about reports on Wednesday that Brennan and Comey are being investigated by the FBI, Trump said he did not know anything other than what he had read in the news, but he viewed both as “very dishonest people”.

“I think they’re crooked as hell and maybe they have to pay a price for that,” Trump told reporters during a meeting with African leaders at the White House.

“I believe they are truly bad people and dishonest people, so whatever happens happens.”

Fox News, which first reported on the probe, said the two men were being scrutinised over unspecified “potential wrongdoing” related to investigations into the 2016 Trump campaign’s connections to Russia.

Multiple other outlets, including CNN and The New York Times, confirmed the investigation.

The FBI declined to comment. The US Department of Justice did not respond to a request for comment.

In an interview with MSNBC, Brennan said he had not been contacted by the authorities, but any investigation was “clearly” politically biased.

“I think this is, unfortunately, a very sad and tragic example of the continued politicisation of the intelligence community, of the national security process,” Brennan said.

“And quite frankly, I’m really shocked that individuals are willing to sacrifice their reputations, their credibility, their decency.”

Comey did not respond to a request for comment sent through his website.

Trump has repeatedly hit out at Brennan and Comey over their role in what he has dubbed the “Russia hoax”.

A 2019 report released by special counsel Robert Mueller concluded that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to benefit Trump, but did not find that his campaign “conspired or coordinated” with Moscow.

LANGLEY, Va. — At CIA headquarters, beyond the handsome granite seal on its lobby floor and a wall of stars carved in honor of the agency’s fallen, experts are at work in the complex tasks of spycraft: weapons-trained officers, computer engineers, virologists, nuclear scientists.

But there are also storytellers, makeup artists, theater majors and ballerinas — Americans who probably never thought their skills would match the needs of a spy agency. Yet the CIA thought otherwise.

Though it rarely gets the spotlight, there’s a revolving door of talent between the country’s premiere intelligence agency and its entertainment industry, with inspiration and influence often working both ways.

The agency is targeting professionals at the intersection of arts and technology for recruitment, CIA officers told The Times, and continues to cooperate with entertainment giants to inspire the next generation of creative spies.

This month, the agency is assisting a New York Times bestselling author on a young adult book examining the foundations of the CIA laid during World War II. Scenes from a major upcoming film production were just shot at its headquarters, a logistical feat at an intelligence campus tucked away in the Virginia suburbs behind rings of security perimeters, where officers roam cracking down on Bluetooth signals. Another popular streaming TV series will be back at Langley to film this fall.

But their collaboration goes far deeper than that, officers said. Creative minds in Hollywood and the entertainment industry have long had a role at the Central Intelligence Agency, devising clever solutions to its most vexing problems, such as perfecting the art of disguise and harnessing a magician’s ability to cast spellbinding illusions. Indeed, in the 1950s, a magician from New York named John Mulholland was secretly contracted with the agency to write a manual for Cold War spies on trickery and deception.

These days, the officers said, creative skills are more valuable than ever in such a technologically complex world.

“You’re only limited by your own imagination — don’t self-censor your ideas,” said Janelle, a CIA public affairs officer, granted the ability to speak under her first name at the request of the agency. “We’re always looking for partners.”

An elusive history

David McCloskey, a former CIA analyst and author of “Damascus Station” and other spy thrillers, offered several theories on why the agency might be interested in fostering a robust relationship with Hollywood, calling it “a two-way street.”

“There definitely have been operational applications for espionage,” McCloskey said. “It’s probably the exception to the rule, but when it happens, it’s compelling.”

It’s easy to see why CIA leaders would be interested in Hollywood, he said, in part to shape impressions of the agency. “But their bread and butter business is receiving people to give secrets,” he continued, “and part of that is getting close to people in power.”

“The closer you are to Hollywood,” McCloskey added, “that’s a really interesting ‘in’ to having a lot of interesting conversations.”

The CIA’s mission to rescue six American diplomats out of Tehran during the Iran hostage crisis, the subject of the film “Argo,” featured a detailed ruse centered around a fabricated movie project.

(CIA Museum)

Some of the CIA’s most iconic missions — at least the declassified ones — document the agency’s rich history with Hollywood, including Canadian Caper, when CIA operatives disguised themselves as a film crew to rescue six American diplomats in Tehran during the Iran hostage crisis, an operation moviegoers will recognize as the plot of “Argo.”

“‘Argo’ was almost too far-fetched to even believe,” said Brent, an in-house historian at CIA headquarters. “It’s almost more Hollywood than Hollywood.”

Canadian Caper was both inspired by Hollywood and relied on Hollywood talent. Agent Tony Mendez had been a graphic artist before joining the agency and helping craft the mission.

Another key player was John Chambers, the makeup artist who gave the world Spock’s ears on “Star Trek” and won an honorary Oscar for his trailblazing simian work on “Planet of the Apes.” He was awarded the CIA’s Intelligence Medal of Merit for his work on the covert rescue effort.

The Los Angeles Times broke the story in February 1975 that business tycoon Howard Hughes had lent his ship, the Glomar Explorer, as cover for a CIA operation.

(CIA Museum)

Just a few years before, Howard Hughes, then one of the world’s richest men and a tycoon in media, film and aerospace, agreed to work with the CIA to provide cover for an effort by the agency to lift a sunken Soviet nuclear submarine off the floor of the Pacific Ocean.

Deploying Hughes’ Glomar Explorer under the guise of mineral extraction, the CIA was able to salvage most of the sub before The Times broke a story blowing its cover — “the story that sunk our efforts,” in CIA parlance.

And another mission was made possible thanks to a device invented by a professional photographer — a gadget that later became the inspiration of an over-the-top scene in the blockbuster Batman film “The Dark Knight.”

In Project Coldfeet, CIA agents gathering intelligence on a Soviet station erected on a precariously drifting sheet of ice in the Arctic needed a reliable extraction plan. But how does one pick up an agent without landing a plane on the ice?

The answer was the “skyhook”: Balloons lifted a tether attached to a harness worn by an agent high into the sky. A CIA plane snagged the tether and carried the agent off to safety.

In “The Dark Knight,” Batman makes a dramatic escape deploying the same kind of balloon-harness contraption.

‘The superhero spy’

CIA leadership often says that acceptance into the agency is harder than getting into Harvard and Yale combined. Yet the agency still has challenges recruiting the type of talent it is looking for — either in reaching those with unconventional skills, or in convincing them that they should leave secure, comparatively well-paid, comfortable jobs for a secretive life of public service.

It is no easy task managing work at the agency, especially with family, CIA officials acknowledged. Deciding if and when to share one’s true identity with their children is a regular struggle. But Janelle said the CIA tells potential recruits there is a middle ground that doesn’t require them to entirely abandon their existing lives.

A professional photographer working with the CIA invented what became known as the “skyhook,’ a surface-to-air recovery system used by the spy agency in an Arctic mission and later featured in the 2008 Batman film “The Dark Knight.”

(CIA Museum)

“People don’t have to leave their companies to help their country and to work with CIA,” Janelle said. “People come here because they love their country and know they can make a difference.”

Janelle is part of a team that regularly engages with creatives who want to portray the agency or spies as accurately as possible.

“Some producers and directors reach out and they do care about accuracy,” Janelle said, “but they ultimately pick and choose what’s going to work for the film or show.”

CIA analysts have also been known to leave the agency for opportunities in the entertainment industry, writing books and scripts drawing from their experiences — so long as they don’t track too closely with those experiences.

Joe Weisberg, the writer and producer behind the television series “The Americans,” and McCloskey, who is working on a fifth novel focused on U.S. and British intelligence, were both part of the agency before launching their writing careers. And as CIA alumni, they had to submit their works for review.

“There’s a whole publication and classification-review process,” Brent said.

That process can be a bit of a slog, McCloskey said: “They quite literally redact in black ink.”

But it is far more difficult for nonfiction writers than novelists.

“There could be bits of tradecraft, or alluding to assets, or people at the agency, which are clear no’s,” McCloskey said. “But with novels, it’s not that hard to write them in a way to get them through the review board.”

Try as they may, studios often repeat the same falsehoods about the CIA, no matter how often they are corrected. Officers and agents aren’t the same thing, for one. And as disappointing as it may be for lovers of spy thrillers, the majority of officers are not licensed or trained to carry weapons.

“One thing Hollywood often gets wrong is the idea that it’s one officer doing everything, when it’s really a team sport here,” Janelle said.

Jessica Chastain, center, plays a member of the elite team of spies and military operatives who secretly devoted themselves to finding Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in the Columbia Pictures 2012 film “Zero Dark Thirty.”

(Jonathan Olley / Sony Pictures)

“Zero Dark Thirty,” an Oscar-winning film released in 2012 about the hunt for Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, was widely acclaimed but criticized by some within the intelligence community over the credit it lends a single, fictional CIA analyst for tracking him down.

McCloskey sympathizes with the writer’s dilemma.

“I can’t have 35 people on a team. From a storytelling standpoint, it just doesn’t work,” he said, acknowledging that little in the field of espionage is accurately captured on screen, even though there are plenty of former spies available to work as consultants.

“There’s no lack of sources to get it right,” he said. “It’s that the superhero spy — the Jack Ryans and Jason Bournes — are pretty much the Hollywood representation of espionage.”

However inaccurately glorified and dramatized, the agency hopes that Hollywood’s work can keep the revolving door moving, inspiring atypical talent to join its ranks.

“We have architects, carpenters, people who worked in logistics,” Brent said. “People might not realize the range of skill sets here at CIA.”

And as Canadian Caper showed, sometimes spycraft requires stagecraft. It’s possible that what’s needed most to complete the next mission won’t be oceanography or data mining, but costume design. Or maybe another ballerina.

Charlie English begins “The CIA Book Club” by describing a 1970s technical manual: a dull cover, as uninviting as anything. A book that practically begs you to put it back on the shelf and move on.

Which was exactly the point. Secreted inside the technobabble dust jacket was a Polish-language copy of George Orwell’s “1984,” the boring cover a deliberate misdirection to deter prying eyes. The false front is a bit of skullduggery that harks back to a world where conspiracy to escape detection was a part of everyday life. A world where literature could be revolutionary, “a reservoir of freedom.”

English, formerly a journalist for the Guardian, specializes in writing about how art and literature are used to fight extremism: “The Storied City,” published in the U.K. as “The Book Smugglers of Timbuktu,” spotlights librarians who heroically saved priceless manuscripts of West African history from al Qaeda; “The Gallery of Miracles and Madness” traces the “insane” artists who influenced the early 20th century Modernism movement and Hitler’s attempts to stamp out their art — and them. His new book takes us through five decades of Poles fighting Soviet domination and Communist propaganda with a potent weapon: literature.

Even from the vantage point of the 21st century, when we know what became of the USSR, English’s book reads like a thriller. There are CIA suits, secret police, faceless bureaucrats and backstabbing traitors lurking in these pages. We face tensions between paramilitary cowboys and prudent intellectuals, between paper-pushing accountants and survivors saving a culture. While reading, I worried about figures like Helena Łuczywo, who edited and published an underground newspaper, and Mirosław Chojecki, who smuggled books and printing supplies into Poland. As with the best spy novels, we know the good guy is going to win while reading “The CIA Book Club,” but how English gets us there is exciting.

His best chapters follow the protests in the Gdańsk shipyards that led to the Solidarity trade union. A better future shimmers on the page when Lech Wałęsa climbs over a fence as an unemployed electrician, taps someone on the shoulder and becomes “the face of the Polish revolution.” (Ten years later, he became president of Poland, too.) In the violent crackdown that followed the momentary blossoming of freedom after Gdańsk, we feel the heartbreak and fear of the people. We hope again when fighters like Łuczywo begin printing a scant newsletter whose “main job was just to exist” and remind people they weren’t alone.

The book is gripping, but it doesn’t quite deliver on its subtitled promise to “win the Cold War with forbidden literature.” The story English has researched and put together focuses almost entirely on Poland’s fight for freedom from the USSR. Of course, the CIA’s funding of smuggling illicit literature into the Eastern Bloc is an important story, and a nearly forgotten one. As English mentions in the epilogue, while “the book program’s latter-day budget stood at around $2 million to $4 million annually, [the Afghan operation] by 1987 was running at a cost of $700 million a year, taking up 80 percent of the overseas budget of the clandestine service.” Apparently, an operation costing nearly 200 times the other deserves nearly 200 times the credit as well. The result is that the power of inexpensive books was swept under the rug in favor of expensive shows of force.

Still, the impressive power of the book club might have been better elucidated if details about its impact in other Eastern Bloc countries were brought into the story. The focus on Poland obscures what was happening in the USSR. English focused on Poland because the country had a long history of underground revolutionary culture; when the USSR turned independent Poland into a client state known as the People’s Republic of Poland, the Poles already knew how to go underground to fight back. The lifestyle doublespeak people used to survive under successive dictatorships in Eastern Europe came a little more easily to Poles, who had practiced it before. When the CIA offered funding, they were ready. Still, it would have been nice to see how “1984” inspired people in Ukraine or Moldova or Kyrgyzstan. If books are an answer to dictatorships — and as strong as “an organization packed with spooks and paramilitaries who fought in warzones” — it would be inspiring to see more of that. Hopefully a sequel is in the planning stages.

What this book does incredibly well is document an oral history of Polish resistance that has, until now, only been told in bits and pieces. There is archival research in here, but it is in the nature of dictatorships to destroy evidence of their crimes. Fortunately, English talked to many of the people who were there, publishing underground newspapers and smuggling in illicit literature. What information has been declassified — and much of it hasn’t been — bolsters the memories of survivors.

One of the most interesting details of “Book Club” is not that books inspired a nation but which books did. Philosophical tracts and political satires were smuggled in, of course; Poland received its share of “Animal Farm” and “1984” and “Brave New World.” But just as important to the Poles living under Soviet dictatorship were art books, fashion magazines, religious texts, lighthearted novels and regular newspapers. More influential than anti-Communist diatribes were the reminders that there was a world outside Soviet propaganda; each book read was a bid to avoid brainwashing, to not become a tool of the state.

This literary history is a prescient one. As book bans increase around the United States and peaceful protests are met with state violence here in Los Angeles, a tale of when stories saved the day is inherently hopeful. This book is a reminder that words are powerful and that stories matter. Sometimes the most rebellious thing one can do is read a book.

Castellanos Clark, a writer and historian in Los Angeles, is the author of “Unruly Figures: Twenty Tales of Rebels, Rulebreakers, and Revolutionaries You’ve (Probably) Never Heard Of.”

VLADIMIR Putin will launch an assault on Lithuania next if he conquers Ukraine, an ex-CIA boss has warned.

The caution comes as Zelensky slammed the Russian despot for “stalling peace talks” following his dismal attempts to get to the negotiating table.

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David Petraus, a retired US general and director of the CIA, warned an attack on the Baltic state would not be an isolated event but part of a longer-term plan to test the West.

Speaking at the Policy Exchange Think-Tank in London, Petraeus said Lithuania has “featured prominently” in Putin’s speeches meaning he might turn on the NATO state for his next assault.

After mad Vlad has installed a “puppet leader to control all of Ukraine” there’s a strong chance he will turn his “focus on one of the Baltic states,” he added.

Taking aim at Trump, he said the US had dithered too much on “individual decisions” and was giving the Russian president too many second chances – causing immeasurable losses for Ukraine.

He said: “What we’ve seen is three incidences where the US President has threatened that in two weeks we’ll have to take a different approach. 

“We’ll see this time what actually happens. The US also temporised far too long over individual decisions such as M1 [Abrams] tanks.

“A blind man on a dark night could see it had to be the F-16 (a multi- role fighter aircraft).”

Ukraine responded yesterday saying: “The Russians’ fear of sending their ‘memorandum’ to Ukraine suggests that it is likely filled with unrealistic ultimatums, and they are afraid of revealing that they are stalling the peace process.”

The comments come after Trump issued Vlad with a two-week deadline for a ceasefire following Russia’s deadly attack on Ukraine earlier this week.

Trump said in the Oval Office on Wednesday: “I’m very disappointed at what happened a couple of nights now where people were killed in the middle of what you would call a negotiation.”

He added: “When I see rockets being shot into cities, that’s no good. We’re not going to allow it.”

When asked if Putin really wants to end the war, Trump replied: “I can’t tell you that, but I’ll let you know in about two weeks.

“Within two weeks. We’re gonna find out whether or not he’s tapping us along or not.

“And if he is, we’ll respond a little bit differently.”

One of the largest stumbling blocks which is delaying any peace deal is said to be over Putin’s desire to control his former Soviet states and keep them away from Nato.

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This includes Ukraine themselves with the Kremlin always saying Kyiv gaining access to the group is a complete no go under any circumstances.

Kyiv has repeatedly said that Moscow should have no say in its sovereign right to pursue Nato membership however.

He declared he will only call off the war in Ukraine if the West vows to keep its hands off Russia’s prized former Soviet states.

Putin even demanded he got the assurances in writing.

The Russian president said he wants a “written” pledge from Western leaders to stop Nato’s expansion to countries eastward, top Russian officials revealed to Reuters.

The eastward expansion refers to Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova and other former Soviet republics.

Putin is reportedly preparing for a major push to take more land in the north east.

Military analysts believe he is trying to press home his advantage and capture more Ukrainian land.

They warn that Putin only has a “four-month window” to get a breakthrough in Ukraine this year.

And this could be the beginning of Russia’s summer offensive targeting the border city of Kharkiv – the “fortress” city of Ukraine which put up the maximum resistance at the start of the invasion.

Reacting to the reports, German Chancellor Freidrich Merz predicted that peace was still a long way off.

He said: “Wars typically end because of economic or military exhaustion on one side or on both sides and in this war we are obviously still far from reaching that [situation].

“So we may have to prepare for a longer duration.”

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