Trump confirms he authorized CIA action in Venezuela

By Dan De Luce

The CIA’s operations abroad are usually shrouded in secrecy, but President Donald Trump said Wednesday he had authorized it to take unspecified action in Venezuela, an extraordinary and unprecedented acknowledgment from a commander in chief.

“Why did you authorize the CIA to go into Venezuela?” a reporter asked Trump at the White House.

“I authorized for two reasons, really,” Trump said. “No. 1, they have emptied their prisons into the United States of America."

The second reason, he said, was narcotics trafficking.

“And the other thing are drugs. We have a lot of drugs coming in from Venezuela,” he said.

Trump made the highly unusual remarks only hours after The New York Times reported that the Trump administration had authorized the CIA to carry out covert lethal action in Venezuela.

The CIA declined to comment on the report.

Asked whether the CIA had authority to “take out” the president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, Trump said: “Oh, I don’t want to answer a question like that. That’s a ridiculous question for me to be given. Not really a ridiculous question, but wouldn’t it be a ridiculous question for me to answer?”

“I think Venezuela is feeling heat," he added. "But I think a lot of other countries are feeling heat, too.”

Trump said Tuesday on social media that the U.S. military had carried out a strike on another boat in the Caribbean, which he claimed was smuggling narcotics to the United States. It was the fifth such strike since early September.

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