The Trump administration has given the green light for the CIA to carry out secret operations in Venezuela. This move, confirmed by US officials, marks a significant escalation in the ongoing campaign against Venezuela’s authoritarian leader, Nicolás Maduro.
This secret approval is the newest tactic in the Trump administration’s aggressive efforts against Venezuela. For weeks, the US military has been intercepting vessels off the Venezuelan coast, claiming they were transporting illicit drugs, operations that have resulted in 27 fatalities. Privately, American officials have consistently stated that their ultimate objective is to remove Mr. Maduro from power.
On Wednesday, President Trump publicly confirmed his authorization of these covert actions, also mentioning that the United States is evaluating potential military strikes on Venezuelan soil.
Just hours after reports surfaced of the secret authorization, the president remarked to reporters, “We are certainly looking at land now, because we’ve got the sea very well under control.”
Any direct strikes within Venezuelan territory would represent a major escalation of the conflict. Previously, following several maritime interceptions, the administration emphasized that these operations occurred in international waters.
This fresh directive grants the CIA the power to execute lethal operations in Venezuela and to undertake a variety of missions across the Caribbean region.
The CIA could now act covertly against Mr. Maduro or his government, either independently or as part of a broader military effort. Details regarding any specific planned CIA operations in Venezuela remain unknown.
But this development arrives as the US military itself is preparing for potential escalation, developing options for President Trump that include the possibility of strikes within Venezuela.
The military presence in the region is considerable: currently, 10,000 US troops are deployed, primarily stationed in Puerto Rico, with a contingent of Marines aboard amphibious assault ships. The Navy has a total of eight surface warships and a submarine operating in the Caribbean.
These new powers, officially termed a ‘presidential finding’ in intelligence circles, were detailed by several US officials who requested anonymity due to the highly classified nature of the document.
In response, Venezuela issued a statement condemning President Trump’s “bellicose” rhetoric, accusing him of attempting to justify regime change to seize Venezuela’s oil resources.
Venezuela also announced its intention to present the issue before the UN Security Council on Thursday, characterizing Trump’s actions as “a grave violation of the UN charter.”
President Trump terminated diplomatic discussions with the Maduro government earlier this month, expressing frustration with the Venezuelan leader’s refusal to relinquish power voluntarily and officials’ ongoing denials of involvement in drug trafficking.
For a long time, the CIA has been authorized to collaborate with Latin American governments on security and intelligence sharing, which has facilitated operations with Mexican officials against drug cartels. However, these previous authorizations did not permit the agency to conduct direct lethal operations.
The Trump administration’s Venezuela strategy, shaped by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and CIA Director John Ratcliffe, is designed to remove Mr. Maduro from power.
While Mr. Ratcliffe has remained largely silent on the CIA’s activities in Venezuela, he has publicly committed to a more assertive agency under his command. During his confirmation, he vowed to steer the CIA toward greater risk-taking and a readiness to execute covert actions as directed by the president, “going places no one else can go and doing things no one else can do.”
The CIA did not offer any comment on the matter.
President Trump justified his authorization on Wednesday by claiming that Venezuela had “emptied their prisons into the United States of America.”
The president seemed to be alluding to his administration’s allegations that members of the Tren de Aragua prison gang were deliberately sent into the United States to commit various crimes. In March, Trump declared this gang, which originated in a Venezuelan prison, a terrorist organization engaged in “conducting irregular warfare” against the US under the direct command of the Maduro government.
However, an intelligence community report from February disputed this assertion, explaining why spy agencies did not believe the gang was controlled by the Maduro government, though the FBI expressed some disagreement. A senior Trump administration official pushed for the assessment to be re-evaluated. The National Intelligence Council later reaffirmed its initial findings, and subsequently, its acting director, Michael Collins, was dismissed.
The United States has put a $50 million bounty on Mr. Maduro, seeking information that would lead to his arrest and conviction on US drug trafficking charges.
Marco Rubio, also serving as Trump’s national security adviser, has declared Mr. Maduro illegitimate, with the Trump administration labeling him a “narcoterrorist.”
Maduro prevented the democratically elected government from assuming power last year. Yet, the Trump administration’s claims that he benefits from the narcotics trade and that Venezuela is a primary drug producer for the United States have been subjects of ongoing debate.
In legal documents, the administration has maintained that Mr. Maduro controls Tren de Aragua. Nevertheless, a review by US intelligence agencies disputes this conclusion.
Although the Trump administration has presented somewhat limited public legal justifications for its campaign, President Trump informed Congress that he considers the United States to be in an armed conflict with drug cartels, which he labels as terrorist organizations. In a congressional notification late last month, the administration declared that drug-smuggling cartels are “nonstate armed groups” whose actions “constitute an armed attack against the United States.”
White House authorizations for covert action are highly confidential documents, frequently renewed across different administrations, with their exact wording seldom revealed publicly. Such findings represent a potent exercise of executive power.
While certain members of Congress are informed of these authorizations, they are prohibited from disclosing them publicly, making oversight of potential covert actions challenging.
Unlike US military operations, such as the strikes on vessels allegedly transporting drugs from Venezuela, CIA covert actions are usually classified. However, some, like the 2011 CIA operation that resulted in the killing of Osama bin Laden by Navy SEALs, are swiftly brought to public knowledge.
The agency has intensified its counter-narcotics efforts over several years. During his first term, President Trump’s second CIA director, Gina Haspel, allocated more resources to drug interdiction in Mexico and Latin America. Subsequently, under Biden administration director William J. Burns, the CIA initiated drone operations over Mexico to locate fentanyl laboratories, operations that Mr. Ratcliffe further expanded.
This covert authorization represents, in some aspects, a logical progression of ongoing anti-drug initiatives. However, the CIA’s past record of clandestine operations in Latin America and the Caribbean has yielded mixed, and often controversial, results.
Historically, in 1954, the agency orchestrated a coup that deposed Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz, leading to decades of turmoil. The CIA-supported Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961 proved disastrous, and the agency made multiple attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro. Yet, in the same year, the CIA provided weaponry to dissidents who successfully assassinated Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina, the Dominican Republic’s authoritarian leader.
Furthermore, the agency was involved in a 1964 coup in Brazil, the demise of Che Guevara, and various other political maneuvers in Bolivia. Its influence also extended to a 1973 coup in Chile and the support for the Contras against Nicaragua’s leftist Sandinista government throughout the 1980s.