United States President Donald Trump on Wednesday confirmed that he has authorised the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to carry out covert operations in Venezuela.
He added that his administration was also mulling land-based military operations inside Venezuela, as tensions between Washington and Caracas soar over multiple deadly US strikes on Venezuelan boats in the Caribbean Sea in recent weeks.
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On Wednesday, Trump held a news conference with some of his top law enforcement officials, where he faced questions about an earlier news report in The New York Times about the CIA authorisation. One reporter asked directly, “Why did you authorise the CIA to go into Venezuela?”
“I authorised for two reasons, really,” Trump replied. “Number one, they have emptied their prisons into the United States of America.”
“The other thing,” he continued, was Venezuela’s role in drug-trafficking. He then appeared to imply that the US would take actions on foreign soil to prevent the flow of narcotics and other drugs.
“We have a lot of drugs coming in from Venezuela,” Trump said. “A lot of the Venezuelan drugs come in through the sea. So you get to see that. But we’re going to stop them by land also.”
Trump’s remarks mark the latest escalation in his campaign against Venezuela, whose leader, Nicolas Maduro, has long been a target for the US president, stretching back to Trump’s first term in office.
Already, both leaders have bolstered their military forces along the Caribbean Sea in a show of potential force.
The Venezuelan government hit back at Trump’s latest comments and the authorised CIA operations, accusing the US of violating international law and the UN Charter.
“The purpose of US actions is to create legitimacy for an operation to change the regime in Venezuela, with the ultimate goal of taking control of all the country’s resources,” the Maduro government said in a statement.
On Wednesday, Maduro lashed out at the record of the CIA in various global conflicts without directly addressing Trump’s comments about authorizing the CIA to carry out covert operations in his nation.
“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 is made up of representatives from various political, economic, academic and cultural sectors in Venezuela.
Earlier, at the news conference in Washington, reporters sought to confront Trump over whether he was trying to enforce regime change in Caracas.
“Does the CIA have authority to take out Maduro?” one journalist asked at the White House on Wednesday.
“Oh, I don’t want to answer a question like that. That’s a ridiculous question for me to be given,” Trump said, demurring. “Not really a ridiculous question, but wouldn’t it be a ridiculous question for me to answer?”
He then offered an addendum: “But I think Venezuela’s feeling heat.”
Claiming wartime powers
Trump’s responses, at times meandering, touched on his oft-repeated claims about Venezuela.
Since taking office for a second term, Trump has sought to assume wartime powers – using l