CIA operations abroad are often shrouded in secrecy, but President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he had authorized the spy agency to take unspecified actions in Venezuela, an extraordinary and unprecedented recognition from a commander in chief.
“Why did you authorize the CIA to enter Venezuela?” a reporter asked Trump at the White House.
“I authorized it for two reasons, really,” Trump said. “First of all, they have emptied their prisons in the United States of America.”
The second reason, the president said, was narcotics trafficking.
“And the other thing is drugs. We have a lot of drugs coming from Venezuela,” Trump said.
The president’s highly unusual comments about his orders to the CIA came just hours after The New York Times reported that the Trump administration had authorized the CIA to carry out lethal covert actions in Venezuela.
The CIA declined to comment on the report.
When asked if the Central Intelligence Agency had the authority to “eliminate” Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, Trump said: “Oh, I don’t want to answer a question like that. It’s a ridiculous question for me. It’s not really a ridiculous question, but wouldn’t it be a ridiculous question for me to answer?”
“I think Venezuela is feeling the heat,” he added. “But I think many other countries are also feeling the pressure.”
In a social media post on Tuesday, Trump said the US military had carried out an attack on another ship in the Caribbean that he said was smuggling narcotics into the United States. It was the fifth such strike since early September.
NBC News previously reported that US military officials are working out options to target drug traffickers inside Venezuela.
