The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir

by John Bolton

The next morning, I called Pompeo to tell him how Trump had all but jumped ship on Venezuela and to make sure Pompeo wasn’t about to follow. Fortunately, I heard exactly the opposite reaction, Pompeo saying “we should go to the wall” to get Maduro out. Encouraged, I later asked Claver-Carone to follow up with Guaidó’s people to ensure that they were getting out letters, the sooner the better, to the International Monetary Fund, the Bank for International Settlements, and similar institutions announcing that they were the legitimate government.21 Pompeo thought there was a way forward on the safety of US personnel in Caracas, thus allowing us to retain a slimmed-down mission, which he wanted to do. I explained how State often became so hung up on safety issues that it made concessions on policy issues, arguing it was required to protect official staff. I certainly wasn’t arguing for ignoring risks to our people, but I did believe it was better to withdraw them rather than make substantive concessions to governments like Maduro’s.