As U.S. Warships Crowd The Caribbean, Covert CIA Plan Targets Venezuela

From the deck of a US aircraft carrier off Trinidad and Tobago, Venezuela’s coastline is now within striking distance.

Under a mission known as Operation Southern Spear, Washington has sent a powerful naval and air group into the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific, officially to hunt drug-running boats linked to Venezuelan networks.

US forces say they have sunk more than 20 “narcolanchas” and killed dozens of suspected traffickers at sea, presenting the campaign as long-overdue toughness against a regime that let cartels thrive under state protection.

What the public cannot see so clearly is the second layer of this pressure. According to a report first published by the New York Times and echoed by other outlets, President Donald Trump has authorized the CIA to conduct covert operations inside Venezuela.

These activities are believed to include sabotage, cyberattacks and psychological or information operations designed to weaken the security shield around Nicolás Maduro and the insiders who control the drug routes and oil assets.

Pentagon planners, meanwhile, have mapped potential targets among cartel infrastructure and units loyal to the presidential palace, should the White House decide to go further.

US targets Venezuelan cartel as terrorism threat

In Washington, the State Department is also working to classify the so-called Cartel de los Soles — a loose network of Venezuelan officers and officials accused of managing cocaine shipments — as a foreign terrorist organization.

That label would expand the US government’s power to freeze assets, pressure allies and, in the administration’s view, justify military action without a formal war vote in Congress.

For Maduro’s circle, it means being treated less like ordinary politicians and more like leaders of an armed criminal structure. Yet even as warships patrol key sea lanes and intelligence teams push their luck on the ground, a quieter track continues in the shadows.

US and Venezuelan intermediaries have explored scenarios in which Maduro might agree to leave power within a couple of years and reopen Venezuela’s vast oil reserves to US companies in exchange for sanctions relief and personal guarantees.

For those watching from abroad, this is not a distant drama. It is a test of whether hard power and covert tools can force change in a failing petro-state without dragging the wider region — including Brazil — into a deeper security and migration crisis.