The CIA’s operations abroad are usually shrouded in secrecy, but President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he had authorized the spy agency to take unspecified action in Venezuela, an extraordinary and unprecedented acknowledgement 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. “Number one, they have emptied their prisons into the United States of America.”
The second reason, the president said, was narcotics trafficking.
“And the other thing are drugs. We have a lot of drugs coming in from Venezuela,” Trump said.
The president’s highly unusual remarks about his orders to the CIA came 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 if the Central Intelligence Agency had authority to “take out” the president of Venezuela, Nicolas 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.”
In a post on social media on Tuesday, Trump said 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.
NBC News has previously reported that U.S. military officials are drawing up options to target drug traffickers inside Venezuela.
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