The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir

by John Bolton

One ploy we considered to send signals to key figures in the regime was delisting from the sanctions people like wives and family members, a common practice in US policy to send signals to influence the behavior of selected individuals or entities. Such actions would likely get little public attention but would be powerful messages to regime officials that we were prepared to ease their paths either out of Venezuela entirely or into the arms of the Opposition as co-conspirators rather than prisoners. In turn, if they then cooperated in facilitating Maduro’s ouster, they could be delisted themselves. In mid-March, the issue came to a head when Treasury flatly refused to delist certain individuals, despite the unanimous support of the other affected players. Pompeo called Mnuchin, once again reaching him in Los Angeles, and told him to fulfill Treasury’s administrative role and stop second-guessing his department. Nonetheless, Treasury persisted, asking questions about Opposition negotiations with Maduro regime figures, second-guessing the State Department on whether delisting would produce the results desired. This was intolerable. It suggested that we should move the entire sanctions operation out of Treasury and put it elsewhere. Finally, Mnuchin said he would accept the State Department’s guidance if I would send him a note saying it was acceptable to me. This was nothing but “cover your ass” behavior, but I was happy to send a brief memo to Pompeo, Mnuchin, and Barr lay...