CIA orchestrated last week’s drone attack in Venezuela, US officials reveal.
The Associated Press added in the report: This is the first known direct operation on Venezuelan soil since the US began the attacks in September, indicating a significant escalation of pressure on the government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro for months.
CNN had previously reported on the CIA’s involvement, citing informed sources. Trump had long threatened that he could soon order attacks on Venezuelan soil.
The attack has not been confirmed by Venezuelan officials. US President Donald Trump first mentioned the operation in an interview on WABC radio, claiming that the US had destroyed some kind of “large facility where ships come from.”
Speaking to reporters on Monday, while hosting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at his Mar-a-Lago resort, Trump claimed that the operation targeted “a dock area where boats are loaded with drugs,” but the president declined to comment when asked whether the strike was carried out by the military or the CIA.
CIA and White House officials also declined to comment.
“Special Operations did not support this operation,” Eli Weiskopf, a spokesman for Special Operations Command, which oversees U.S. operations in the Caribbean, said in a statement.
The raid adds to a broader deployment of U.S. forces in the Caribbean since August, which has seen at least 30 U.S. military raids on suspected drug-trafficking vessels in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific. Trump recently ordered the blockade and seizure of sanctioned Venezuelan oil tankers.
The US president has also taken the unusual step of publicly admitting that he has allowed the CIA to conduct covert operations inside Venezuela.