Trump confirms CIA covert operations in Venezuela as he weighs land operations

US President Donald Trump confirmed on Wednesday that he had authorised the CIA to conduct covert operations inside Venezuela and said he was weighing carrying out land operations on the country. The acknowledgement of covert action in Venezuela by the US spy agency comes after the US military in recent weeks has carried out a series of deadly strikes against alleged drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean. US forces have destroyed at least five boats since early September, killing 27 people, and four of those vessels originated from Venezuela. Asked during an event in the Oval Office on Wednesday why he had authorised the CIA to take action in Venezuela, Trump affirmed he had made the move. “I authorised for two reasons, really,” Trump replied. “No 1, they have emptied their prisons into the United States of America,” he said. “And the other thing, the drugs, we have a lot of drugs coming in from Venezuela, and a lot of the Venezuelan drugs come in through the sea.” Trump added the administration “is looking at land” as it considers further strikes in the region. He declined to say whether the CIA had authority to take action against President Nicolas Maduro. The Trump administration has offered US$50 million for information leading to Maduro’s arrest and conviction on drug trafficking charges. Trump made the unusual acknowledgement of a CIA operation shortly after The New York Times published that the CIA had been authorised to carry out covert action in Venezuela. On Wednesday, Maduro lashed out at the record of the US spy agency in various conflicts around the world without directly addressing Trump’s comments about authorising the CIA to carry out covert operations in Venezuela. “No to regime change that reminds us so much of the (overthrows) in the failed eternal wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and so on,” Maduro said at a televised event of the National Council for Sovereignty and Peace, which was made up of representatives from various political, economic, academic and cultural sectors in Venezuela. “No to the coups carried out by the CIA, which remind us so much of the 30,000 disappeared,” a figure estimated by human rights organisations such as the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo during the military dictatorship in Argentina (1976-1983). He also referred to the 1973 coup in Chile. “How long will the CIA continue to carry on with its coups? Latin America doesn’t want them, doesn’t need them and repudiates them,” Maduro added. The objective was “to say no to war in the Caribbean, no to war in South America, yes to peace,” he said. Speaking in English, Maduro said: “Not war, yes peace, not war. Is that how you would say it? Who speaks English? Not war, yes peace, the people of the United States, please. Please, please, please”. In a statement, Venezuela’s Foreign Ministry on Wednesday rejected “the bellicose and extravagant statements by the President of the United States, in which he publicly admits to having authorised operations to act against the peace and stability of Venezuela”. “This unprecedented statement constitutes a very serious violation of international law and the United Nations’ Charter and obliges the community of countries to denounce these clearly immoderate and inconceivable statements,” said the statement, which Foreign Minister Yvan Gil posted on his Telegram channel. Early this month, the Trump administration declared drug cartels to be unlawful combatants and pronounced the United States was in an “armed conflict” with them, justifying the military action as a necessary escalation to stem the flow of drugs into the United States. The move has spurred anger in Congress from members of both major political parties that Trump was effectively committing an act of war without seeking congressional authorisation. On Wednesday, Senator Jeanne Shaheen, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said while she supported cracking down on trafficking, the administration had gone too far. “The Trump administration’s authorisation of covert CIA action, conducting lethal strikes on boats and hinting at land operations in Venezuela slides the United States closer to outright conflict with no transparency, oversight or apparent guardrails,” Shaheen said. “The American people deserve to know if the administration is leading the US into another conflict, putting servicemembers at risk or pursuing a regime-change operation.” The Trump administration has yet to provide underlying evidence to lawmakers proving that the boats targeted by the US military were in fact carrying narcotics, according to two US officials familiar with the matter. The officials, who were not authorised to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the administration has only pointed to unclassified video clips of the strikes posted on social media by Trump and Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth and has yet to produce “hard evidence” that the vessels were carrying drugs. https://t.co/AYyPZuUsm9 pic.twitter.com/1gY3vBnvqa — Pete Hegseth (@PeteHegseth) October 14, 2025 Lawmakers have expressed frustration that the administration is offering little detail about how it came to decide the US was in armed conflict with cartels or which criminal organisations it has claimed were “unlawful combatants”. Even as the US military has carried out strikes on some vessels, the US Coast Guard has continued with its typical practice of stopping boats and seizing drugs. Trump on Wednesday explained away the action, saying the traditional approach has not worked. “Because we’ve been doing that for 30 years, and it has been totally ineffective. They have faster boats,” he said. “They’re world-class speedboats, but they’re not faster than missiles.” Human rights groups have raised concerns that the strikes flout international law and were extrajudicial killings. Additional reporting by Reuters

Trump confirms CIA covert operations in Venezuela as he weighs land operations

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Venezuela’s Maduro decries ‘coups carried out by the CIA’ as the US continues a major military build-up in the southern Caribbean

Venezuela’s Maduro decries ‘coups carried out by the CIA’ as the US continues a major military build-up in the southern Caribbean