WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump confirmed on Wednesday that he has secretly authorized the CIA to conduct covert operations in Venezuela and signaled he is now considering military strikes on Venezuelan territory. The explosive revelations came as he staunchly defended his administration's unprecedented and controversial use of lethal military force against suspected drug smuggling boats in the Caribbean, declaring them "fair game."
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| President Trump speaks as FBI Director Kash Patel listens during an event in the Oval Office at the White House on Oct. 15 in Washington. (John McDonnell/AP) (John McDonnell/AP) |
Speaking at an Oval Office news conference, the president framed the aggressive new posture as a necessary response to a deliberate campaign by Venezuela's authoritarian leader, Nicolás Maduro, to harm the United States.
“We’re not going to let our country be ruined because other countries want to drop their worst [here],” Trump stated, responding to a question about his decision to greenlight the CIA action, which was first reported by The New York Times. Claiming without providing evidence that the Maduro regime is intentionally flooding the U.S. with drugs and criminals, Trump warned of a significant escalation.
“We are certainly looking at land now, because we’ve got the sea very well under control,” he said. This follows reports that the U.S. military is actively "drawing up options for President Trump to consider, including strikes inside Venezuela."
When pressed on whether he had given the CIA "authority to take out Maduro," a move top administration officials are reportedly eager to see, the president was evasive, calling it a "ridiculous" question to answer publicly.
A "Shredded" Legal Rationale
Any strikes on Venezuelan soil would dramatically ramp up a campaign that is already facing intense scrutiny from legal experts and lawmakers. The administration has justified the boat strikes by unilaterally declaring an "armed conflict" against drug cartels, which it labels "nonstate armed groups." This designation, articulated in letters to Congress, allows the administration to treat any suspected smuggler as an "unlawful combatant" who can be targeted and killed without legal process, even if they pose no immediate threat.
This legal interpretation has been fiercely contested. Experts in international law argue that criminal drug trafficking does not meet the legal standard of "hostilities" required to declare an armed conflict.
“This is not stretching the envelope,” Geoffrey Corn, a retired Army judge advocate general and former senior adviser on law-of-war issues, told the New York Times. “This is shredding it. This is tearing it apart.”
The president, however, brushed aside such concerns. Asked why his administration had abandoned the long-standing practice of using the U.S. Coast Guard to intercept vessels and arrest smugglers, Trump claimed it was ineffective.
“It never worked when you did it in a very politically correct manner,” Trump argued. “They have faster boats. Seriously, they’re world class speedboats. But they’re not faster than missiles.” He justified the lethal force with a stark calculation: “When they’re loaded up with drugs, they’re fair game… Every boat that we knock out, we save 25,000 American lives.”
A String of Deadly Strikes
Since early September, the U.S. military has conducted at least five known lethal strikes on boats in the Caribbean, resulting in a minimum of 27 deaths. The attacks include:
Sept. 2: The first known strike on an alleged Venezuelan drug boat, killing 11 people.
Sept. 15: A second strike on a cartel vessel, killing three.
Sept. 19: A strike on a vessel killing three people described as "male narcoterrorists."
Oct. 3: A "narco-trafficking vessel" was destroyed, killing all four people on board.
Oct. 14: The most recent strike, which Trump announced on Truth Social, killed six alleged "narcoterrorists." He accompanied the post with a 33-second unclassified aerial video of the attack.
The campaign risks sparking a wider regional conflict. A CNN report suggested that the September 19 strike actually targeted a boat of Colombian nationals that had departed from Colombia. The report prompted Colombian President Gustavo Petro to state that U.S. officials "would be guilty of the murder of Colombian citizens" if the report were true.
Bipartisan Condemnation on Capitol Hill
The policy has drawn sharp rebukes in Congress from both sides of the aisle. Republican Senators Rand Paul of Kentucky and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska joined Democrats in an unsuccessful vote to block Trump's use of military force against drug trafficking organizations without a formal declaration of war.
Senator Paul highlighted the grave risks of the "strike first" approach. "About 25% of the time, the boat that they [the Coast Guard] board doesn’t have drugs on it. So they have made an error but they don’t kill them," Paul told Bloomberg News. "We’ve blown up four boats now, and if the percentages hold true, did one of those four boats not have drug dealers on it?"
Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT), the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, condemned the actions as "illegal killings" and said Congress had not been properly briefed.
“The notion that the United States... is involved in an armed conflict with any drug dealers, any Venezuelan drug dealers, is ludicrous,” Himes said on CBS's "Face the Nation." “It wouldn’t stand up in a single court of law.”
