Donald Trump said on Wednesday he had authorized the CIA to carry out covert operations in Venezuela, marking a sharp escalation in his administration’s pressure campaign against Nicolás Maduro’s government.
Trump further suggested he was considering strikes on Venezuelan territory, a dramatic step that would go beyond a series of recent lethal attacks on boats in the Caribbean, which Democrats and United Nations experts have forcefully condemned as unlawful.
Maduro decried what he called “coups d’etat orchestrated by the CIA” after Trump’s comments.
“No to war in the Caribbean … No to regime change … No to coups d’etat orchestrated by the CIA,” the leftist leader said in an address to a committee set up after Washington deployed warships in the Caribbean for what it said was an anti-drug operation.
Trump’s remarks about the CIA confirmed an earlier story from the New York Times, which had reported on a classified directive about the secretive operation in Venezuela.