US President Donald Trump confirmed on Wednesday, October 15, that he had authorized the CIA to conduct covert operations inside Venezuela, stating the decision was made to clamp down on illegal flows of migrants and drugs from the South American nation. He stopped short of saying the CIA had authority to remove President Nicolás Maduro.
Trump cited two main reasons for the authorization, which reportedly expands the CIA’s authority for lethal targeting and covert action in the region: the alleged influx of drugs from Venezuela, particularly by sea, and his claim that Venezuela’s leaders have emptied their prisons and mental institutions to send people to the United States.
He defended the move, saying previous, less aggressive efforts to stop drug traffickers over the past 30 years had been “totally ineffective” and “never worked” when done in a “politically correct manner.” He also indicated his administration was considering expanding strikes to land targets in the country.
The authorization is part of an intensifying pressure campaign that includes a secret directive ordering the military to begin striking Latin American drug cartels.
The President’s remarks came a day after the US military conducted another strike on a boat off the Venezuelan coast, which Trump alleged was trafficking drugs and resulted in six deaths. This marked at least the fifth such strike by the US, which has escalated tensions with the Maduro government.
Neither Trump nor his administration has offered public evidence for the claims that these were drug-trafficking vessels, though they have produced a classified legal opinion justifying lethal strikes against an expansive list of suspected drug traffickers.
Venezuela’s Foreign Minister Yvan Gil immediately rejected Trump’s “warmongering and extravagant statements,” calling the use of the CIA and the military deployments a “grave violation of international law” and a policy of “aggression, threat, and harassment against Venezuela.” President Nicolás Maduro further condemned the US for “discriminatory and xenophobic statements,” and ordered military exercises in response to the perceived threat, urging “Not war, yes peace.”
The legality and scope of the actions have drawn criticism in the US Congress. Democratic Senator Peter Welch expressed concern about the lack of oversight and legal justification, stating that the president was acting without accountability on who gets killed.
Other Democrats and Republican Senator Rand Paul have questioned the move. However, Republican Senator Jim Risch defended the President, saying he was “doing exactly what he should be doing.”
Meanwhile, Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, who recently won the Nobel Peace Prize, called for greater US support to stop what she described as a “war” on her country by Maduro, echoing the Trump administration’s language by calling Maduro the leader of a “criminal narco-terrorism structure.”
The new authorities for the CIA action, described in a highly classified presidential “finding,” could allow for a range of covert actions, from clandestine information operations to lethal strikes. The escalation of military operations in the region is wider than previously known, with at least one US military strike in the Caribbean also targeting Colombian nationals on a boat that left from Colombia.