Very briefly, remind our listeners, and maybe for those who have never heard this story, uh, how the nation of Liberia was created in the early 19th century.

Okay.

Well, the, what's on our presidential, the seal of the Republic of Liberia says, "The love of liberty brought us here." And the us they're talking about are Black slaves from the United States, uh, freed Blacks and former slaves, who in 1820, and my great-great-great-great-grandfather, Elijah Johnson, was one of them, uh, sailed in a boat called the Elizabeth.

Began, uh, that was the first ship that went, uh, to the West African coast, and eventually landing in Liberia in 1822 to form this, uh, new country.

Um, at the time, they met, uh, West Africans already, who already lived there.

The American Colonization Society had, uh, purchased the land for only $300, uh, which as you can imagine, was not even, was not a lot of money even then, and there was a lot of conflict between these freed slaves and the Native Americans who, the Na- Native Africans who were already there.

But in any event, the freed Blacks from the, from America won, and they built their houses and their churches and their schools, and they started this, this new country.

This was the only sort of order of society that y- you'd ever seen or understood, so the idea that somebody could conceive of a, of a different kind of Liberia was incomprehensible to someone of your age and probably to a lot of people even older than you.

What does that send, that message?

Uh, hi.

Uh, well, thanks for having me.

Uh, an aircraft carrier is a ginormous, um, projection of American power.

We have been sending aircraft carriers to the Mideast, uh, where we had been for 20 years at war.

Uh, and to turn now and deploy an aircraft carrier, uh, sending the Gerald Ford towards Venezuela is a huge statement of intent.

Uh, with an aircraft carrier, uh, uh, American sailors, uh, American troops, uh, American airmen, Navy fighter pilots are better able to strike, uh, targets in Venezuela, and that's sort of like parking a giant howitzer on the doorstep of, you know, of Nicolas Maduro.

Helene Cooper, I want to understand what this means for you, for your work, and what it means for the American people who rely on you and your work and others like you to get us the truth of what is happening inside that building.

(laughs)

...

but functioning from outside of the building.

Uh, and then to answer your earlier question about what's going on with, uh, Venezuela and Columbia and these Latin American drug strikes, it's quite extraordinary because, uh, you, that is not how the United States in the past and not how the US military has waged war.

The US military is an instrument of, you know, exerting and projecting power.

It's not a law enforcement agency that's supposed to be, uh, going out and sort of blowing up boats.

We have yet to see any kind of evidence, the administration has yet to present any evidence that says anything about what this, they're just basically saying, "Take our word for it.

I know that it is stipulated that there are no checks on his power now, but tell me how much of that is, is bearing out, and tell me if the high-level resignation that was also reported, um, by you and your colleagues last week has anything to do with the pattern and practice that we're seeing with these strikes.

Um, the legal thing has caught the-

the-...

Defense Department had them up in stitches for the past month, ever since, uh, President Trump first, uh, late July, uh, had, uh, signed this military authorization that he was gonna announce- decided that he was gonna deploy the military against what he calls- is now calling narco-terrorists.

Uh, these drug smugg- smugglers from Venezuela, uh, primarily he's really going after, uh, uh, Venezuela and Triniagua, uh, but also the Cartel del Sol.

Uh, so he has gone after- he announced that he was gonna go after these guys, that he was gonna use the American military in this manner.

You- as you know, for the entirety of this second term of President Trump's, he's been deploying the military at all manner of, you know, all manner of things that they normally would not be used for.

So now, he's using the military to go after, uh, drug smaller- smugglers in the Caribbean who he says are bringing fentanyl to the United States, and the legal- but for about a month, ever since he's signed this order, the Pentagon has been trying to figure out what the legal justification would be for this.

You know, there's this famous quote from Secretary of State John Hay back in 1896 I think about the Spanish Civil War in which he called it a, quote, "splendid little war." There's a little bit of a feeling here that they're looking for something more than striking boats.

W- give us your, what your reporting says about that trajectory.

Well, thanks for having me, uh, Chris.

Uh, we, we all know, and you know very well, that Donald Trump has prided himself on being a non-interventionist.

He pledged during his campaign that he was not going to get the United States involved in any more forever wars.

He thought they were stupid.

He's long been, uh, uh, one of those people who did not want, uh...

He's very much of the America first, uh, uh, category.

'The president,' said one military official, 'was the biggest threat to OPSEC.' To build confusion to the attack plan, military officials decided to have two groups of B-2 bombers leave Missouri around the same time."

Mm-hmm.

Uh, and we were here in 2003 when we went through, we went into the Iraq War.

There seems to be, uh, a lot of officials in the Trump Administration who seem to, appear to think that this is a one drop, one and done type deal.

We go, go in and you drop this bomb, and, uh, the, that's it, the Iranian regime is, the nuclear regime is done for.

President Trump appeared to allude to that in his stream of tweets this week as well.

The Pentagon is more cautious because they believe that, the Pentagon, Pentagon officials believe that Iran can retaliate.

You know, with all of this bombing campaign that Israel has embarked upon, they have left Iran's naval assets so far alone.

Quote, "Ratcliffe used a football analogy in a closed-door Senate appropriations sub-committee hearing Tuesday to argue that the formal US intelligence assessment that Iran has not decided to build a bomb is of limited use." Quote, "'It's like saying a football team marched 99 yards down the field, got to the one-yard line and, oh, they don't have the intention to score,' one of the people quoted him as telling lawmakers." Helene, does that square with Tulsi Gabbard saying back in March that Iran has not decided to build a nuclear weapon, which to our understanding is still the current assessment of the intelligence community?

But just to explain precisely what we're talking about here when we talk about a military parade that's going to be happening this weekend, describe exactly what this is going to be and what it's going to look like.

It's gonna be very grand.

The parade's supposed to start at 6:30 PM in the evening on Saturday and follow Constitution Avenue from near the Lincoln Memorial to the Ellipse, which is, like, south of the White House.

There's supposed to be, what, 150 vehicles, and that includes 28 M1A1 Abrams tanks.

Those are the ones that you've been seeing on the battlefields of Ukraine.

There are gonna be 28 armored Bradley fighting vehicles.

Those are the sort of troop carriers.

Mm-hmm.

Um, Helene, take me through both what you reported, that we read from, as well as, um, today's hearing.

Hi, Nicole.

Thanks for having me.

It's been, you know, the Pentagon is still reeling about, uh, this, uh, this turnabout, where all of a sudden now, after, you know, decades of military doctrine, uh, in which they, uh, the force has, it's been drummed into every fighter pilot, soldier, Marine's head that you do not compromise OPSEC, operational security.

Uh, you suddenly have the defense secretary say, "Actually, it's okay to put that he put this stuff out there on a Signal chat." When I talked to these fighter pilots last week about this, and this, this, this sort of theme continues into this week, they're angry that this was done.

They're even more furious that Pete Hegseth still hasn't said, "I shouldn't have done it." He still hasn't acknowledged the mistake.

And that's where one fighter pilot I talked to last week was talking about aviation safety, he said, and how important it is to be humble, to have some level of humility about what you get wrong.

Mm-hmm.

... from architect to fighter pilot.

Uh, so he went on to join the Air Force, and he became a fighter pilot.

He flew F-16s throughout his career.

He led a squadron first and then continues to be promoted.

He ends up at CENTCOM, Central Command, where he's, like, the number two at the Air Force there during the Iraq and Syria fights, where he gets a reputation of being very calm in the storm.

One of his commanders at the time who said that, you know, whenever he walked out the door, there would be some crisis or another, and he'd say, "Who's in charge?" And if somebody said C.Q., he would calm down because he knew just how steady in a storm C.Q.

Brown was.

I'm curious what the official explanation becomes for why the president is getting rid of him in this role.