Now we know why warmonger Trump so swiftly ramped up the US military profile against Venezuela. https://stateofthenation.info/?p=36127
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Overthrow: Trump Authorizes CIA Covert Ops Targeting Venezuela's Maduro
Wednesday, Oct 15, 2025 - 11:40 PM
It is easy to imagine that there's been CIA infiltration into Maduro's Venezuela for a long time, but covert operations there are now becoming an "open secret" - as fresh Wednesday reporting in the New York Times indicates. "The Trump administration has secretly authorized the C.I.A. to conduct covert action in Venezuela, according to U.S. officials, stepping up a campaign against Nicolás Maduro, the country's authoritarian leader," the Times writes.
Already the Pentagon has been engaged in what could be interpreted as more overt acts of war in regional waters - the targeting of boats off Venezuela accused of being engaged in narco-smuggling operations. Clearly anti-Maduro operations are picking tempo, and ratcheting the temperature.
Trump's CIA Director John Ratcliffe, via LA Times/APAt this point after five instances of drone attacks on these boats, at least 27 people have died. The Trump administration has alleged the drug traffickers are operating with the blessing and oversight of socialist strongman Nicolas Maduro, which Caracas vehemently rejects.
The US military has further maintained a significant military build-up in the Caribbean, including some 10,000 troops, over several weeks. According to more details from the new NY Times report:
The authorization is the latest step in the Trump administration’s intensifying pressure campaign against Venezuela. For weeks, the U.S. military has been targeting boats off the Venezuelan coast it says are transporting drugs, killing 27 people. American officials have been clear, privately, that the end goal is to drive Mr. Maduro from power.
The new authority would allow the C.I.A. to carry out lethal operations in Venezuela and conduct a range of operations in the Caribbean.
But the below part is somewhat surprising and alarming, given the unpredictable and dangerous implications of the CIA acting "unilaterally":
The agency would be able to take covert action against Mr. Maduro or his government either unilaterally or in conjunction with a larger military operation. It is not known whether the C.I.A. is planning any operations in Venezuela or if the authorities are meant as a contingency.
But the development comes as the U.S. military is planning its own possible escalation, drawing up options for President Trump to consider, including strikes inside Venezuela.
What is the end-goal here?
Many observers have speculated that it is nothing short of regime change in the Latin American nation known for having the world's largest proven oil reserves, estimated at over 300 billion barrels.
The NYT actually provides a blunt answer in agreement with the regime change assessment:
The Trump administration’s strategy on Venezuela, developed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, with help from John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director, aims to oust Mr. Maduro from power.
Mr. Ratcliffe has said little about what his agency is doing in Venezuela. But he has promised that the C.I.A. under his leadership would become more aggressive. During his confirmation hearing, Mr. Ratcliffe said he would make the C.I.A. less averse to risk and more willing to conduct covert action when ordered by the president, “going places no one else can go and doing things no one else can do.”
F-16s reportedly scramble from Venezuela's El Libertador Air Base in response to US B-52 bombers nearby
VENEZUELA scrambles F-16s
F-16s reportedly scramble from El Libertador Air Base in Arabia
https://dzen.ru/a/aO_f0JgSQgX1EyHS
And yet it must be remembered that Trump has constantly touted himself as the "peace" president who solves wars and doesn't start them.
But now, as the NY Times says, there is a highly classified presidential finding which seems to authorize government overthrow in Caracas.
President Trump at the start of this month formally notified Congress this week that the US was entering a "non-international armed conflict" with drug cartels. Trump's rationale for the attacks on drug boats in his memo to Congress stated that the cartels are "non-state armed groups" whose actions smuggling drugs "constitute an armed attack against the United States".
https://x.com/manolo_realengo/status/1978484932159983684
In particular the administration has essentially declared war on the Tren de Aragua cartel, and says it is cooperating with the Maduro government, which Caracas has rejected, and so the presence of the cartel's members in the US is a "predatory incursion" by a foreign nation. In this way he's trying to cast this as an 'America First' policy, and yet if bombs start falling on yet another foreign country which has not militarily attacked the United States, few Americans are likely going to buy it.
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https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/trump-authorizes-cia-engage-covert-ops-targeting-venezuelas-maduro-nyt
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Trump Administration Authorizes Covert C.I.A. Action in Venezuela
The development comes as the U.S. military is drawing up options for President Trump to consider, including possible strikes inside the country.
Julian E. Barnes and Tyler Pager
Reporting from Washington
The authorization is the latest step in the Trump administration’s intensifying pressure campaign against Venezuela. For weeks, the U.S. military has been targeting boats off the Venezuelan coast it says are transporting drugs, killing 27 people. American officials have been clear, privately, that the end goal is to drive Mr. Maduro from power.
The new authority would allow the C.I.A. to carry out lethal operations in Venezuela and conduct a range of operations in the Caribbean.
The agency would be able to take covert action against Mr. Maduro or his government either unilaterally or in conjunction with a larger military operation. It is not known whether the C.I.A. is planning any operations in Venezuela or if the authorities are meant as a contingency.
But the development comes as the U.S. military is planning its own possible escalation, drawing up options for President Trump to consider, including strikes inside Venezuela.
The scale of the military buildup in the region is substantial: There are currently 10,000 U.S. troops there, most of them at bases in Puerto Rico, but also a contingent of Marines on amphibious assault ships. In all, the Navy has eight surface warships and a submarine in the Caribbean.
The new authorities, known in intelligence jargon as a presidential finding, were described by multiple U.S. officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the highly classified document.
Mr. Trump ordered an end to diplomatic talks with the Maduro government this month as he grew frustrated with the Venezuelan leader’s failure to accede to U.S. demands to give up power voluntarily and the continued insistence by officials that they had no part in drug trafficking.
The C.I.A. has long had authority to work with governments in Latin America on security matters and intelligence sharing. That has allowed the agency to work with Mexican officials to target drug cartels. But those authorizations do not allow the agency to carry out direct lethal operations.
The Trump administration’s strategy on Venezuela, developed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, with help from John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director, aims to oust Mr. Maduro from power.
Mr. Ratcliffe has said little about what his agency is doing in Venezuela. But he has promised that the C.I.A. under his leadership would become more aggressive. During his confirmation hearing, Mr. Ratcliffe said he would make the C.I.A. less averse to risk and more willing to conduct covert action when ordered by the president, “going places no one else can go and doing things no one else can do.”
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The United States has offered $50 million for information leading to Mr. Maduro’s arrest and conviction on U.S. drug trafficking charges.
Mr. Rubio, who also serves as Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, has called Mr. Maduro illegitimate, and the Trump administration describes him as a “narcoterrorist.”
Mr. Maduro blocked the government that was democratically elected last year from taking power. But the Trump administration’s accusations that he has profited from the narcotics trade and that his country is a major producer of drugs for the United States have been debated.
The administration has asserted in legal filings that Mr. Maduro controls a criminal gang, Tren de Aragua. But an assessment by U.S. intelligence agencies contradicts that conclusion.
While the Trump administration has publicly offered relatively thin legal justifications for its campaign, Mr. Trump told Congress that he decided the United States was in an armed conflict with drug cartels it views as terrorist organizations. In the congressional notice late last month, the Trump administration said the cartels smuggling drugs were “nonstate armed groups” whose actions “constitute an armed attack against the United States.”
White House findings authorizing covert action are closely guarded secrets. They are often reauthorized from administration to administration, and their precise language is rarely made public. They also constitute one of the rawest uses of executive authority.
Select members of Congress are briefed on the authorizations, but lawmakers cannot make them public, and conducting oversight of possible covert actions is difficult.
While U.S. military operations, like the strikes against boats purportedly carrying drugs from Venezuelan territory, are generally made public, C.I.A. covert actions are typically kept secret.
Some, however, like the C.I.A. operation in which Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden in 2011, are quickly made public.
Left: CIA Resource Tim Osman, sc. "Osama bin Laden" died of kidney failure in December 13, 2001.
Right: Barry Soetoro, sc. "BARACK OBAMA" CONCLUSIVELY OUTED AS CIA CREATION.
The agency has been stepping up its work on counternarcotics for years. Gina Haspel, Mr. Trump’s second C.I.A. director during his first administration, devoted more resources to drug hunting in Mexico and Latin America. Under William J. Burns, the Biden administration’s director, the C.I.A. began flying drones over Mexico, hunting for fentanyl labs, operations that Mr. Ratcliffe expanded.
The covert finding is in some ways a natural evolution of those antidrug efforts. But the C.I.A.’s history of covert action in Latin America and the Caribbean is mixed at best.
In 1954, the agency orchestrated a coup that overthrew President Jacobo Árbenz of Guatemala, ushering in decades of instability. The C.I.A.-backed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961 ended in disaster, and the agency repeatedly tried to assassinate Fidel Castro. That same year, however, the C.I.A. supplied weapons to dissidents who assassinated Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina, the authoritarian leader of the Dominican Republic.
The agency also had its hands in a 1964 coup in Brazil, the death of Che Guevara and other machinations in Bolivia, a 1973 coup in Chile, and the contra fight against the leftist Sandinista government of Nicaragua in the 1980s.
Tyler Pager is a White House correspondent for The Times, covering President Trump and his administration.
See more on: National Intelligence Estimates, U.S. Politics, Nicolás Maduro, Donald Trump, John Ratcliffe
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