Sunday's 60 Minutes didn't air their controversial report on the Salvadoran CECOT prison, but they did make quick room for Scott Pelley to investigate President Trump's seizure of Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro. The story led with the expert Roger Carstens, a former "Special Envoy for Hostage Affairs" under Trump and Biden, who quibbled with the notion that Maduro was a "bloodthirsty drug dealer."
Has he had people killed? Sure. Is Venezuela pumping out drugs? Yes. But trust the Expert located by CBS.
Scott Pelley threw this question: "The administration would paint Maduro as a bloodthirsty drug dealer, that, is that the man you knew?"
CARSTENS: I don't think so. And yet— let me answer that by this way. In one way, I could say I'm not naïve to the crimes that were committed by the regime writ large. And if you're the president of a country, you, of course, have responsibility for what's being happen — what's happening — in your government.
On the flip side, I would say that being the person in the room with President Maduro my job was to get Americans back and that's best done by building a very human relationship. And in doing so, I didn't find him to be a bloodthirsty maniac. I found him to be — a practical person, someone who wanted to find ways to solve the problems — that was — were faced by his country.
Pelley also asked Carstens: "Do you believe the Maduro you met was an international drug dealer?" The answer was slippery:
CARSTENS: I think the — the country clearly touched drugs — and there's information — I always have to be very — clear that I might see certain amounts of information and there's always a treasure trove of information that I've never seen or never will see due to classification or compartmentalization. But what I witnessed was not someone who's necessarily hard-core in the drug business. And I'll be interested to see in how the prosecution goes about proving their case.
Later in the story, longtime DEA agent Sandy Gonzalez disagreed with that assessment. "It's a state sponsored drug trafficking organization. So, it's a massive conspiracy. And what I mean by that is not everybody is going to be holding the kilos of cocaine. But in a conspiracy you link everybody together. That's part of the chain. Maduro was part of that chain."
This did not sound like the "CBS Newsmax" that leftists are already complaining about. Pelley was still seeking to undermine the Trump administration's arguments.
