Trump’s CIA Authorization for Venezuela: Covert Power Meets Public Reckoning
By acknowledging a covert CIA authorization for Venezuela, President Donald Trump broke the unwritten rule of silence around presidential findings. Supporters hail decisive action against cartels; critics warn of legal overreach, historical amnesia, and the quiet expansion of secret war in the Americas.
A Rare Admission With Sweeping Consequences
Presidents usually sign “findings” in whispers—classified orders known only to a few lawmakers—then let the machinery of intelligence hum quietly beneath the surface. Saying it out loud is the point this time. Trump wants the region, and his voters, to know that the CIA has been unshackled for operations linked to Venezuela.
Under U.S. law, a presidential finding can range from narrow sabotage against one network to a sweeping mandate authorizing covert warfare: arming rebels, conducting influence campaigns, or even targeted killings. “The parameters of the authorities are laid out in the finding,” former CIA paramilitary officer Mick Mulroy told the BBC, “but there are really no limitations“—because anything restricted by executive order can be rewritten by the same pen that signs it.
That’s precisely why previous presidents have avoided publicizing such authorizations. The moment a finding becomes visible, the demand for oversight grows. But Trump has chosen the spotlight. He linked the CIA mandate to recent U.S. Navy strikes on small boats in the Caribbean—justified as narcotics interdictions—and argued the same logic should apply on land. “Find them, fix them, finish them,” is how one senior official described the ethos to the BBC.
To Trump’s allies, this is clarity after years of caution. To his critics, it’s carte blanche disguised as courage. “The methodology honed in the ‘war on terror’ can be readily applied to criminal networks,” said Marc Polymeropoulos, a 26-year CIA veteran, to the BBC. “There’s nobody better at manhunting than the CIA.” That swagger resonates in Washington—but not everywhere else.
The Law, the Label, and the Limits
Legally, the new finding sits on shaky ground. Declaring cartels like Tren de Aragua or Venezuela’s Cartel of the Suns as Foreign Terrorist Organizations doesn’t automatically transform their members into wartime enemies. Nor does it create a lawful battlefield where one does not exist.
The difference between law enforcement and war isn’t wordplay—it defines when lethal force is permitted, where it may be used, and under whose authority. As legal experts told BBC Verify in earlier reporting on the maritime strikes, even on open waters, force must be “reasonable and necessary in self-defense” when there’s an immediate threat to life. Moving that logic onto land—without host-state consent—raises the bar higher, not lower.
Covert-action law does authorize risky operations, but only when they are “necessary to support identifiable foreign policy objectives” and “important to national security.” It also demands that Congress be notified. The statute does not grant the CIA a roving license to wage secret war wherever U.S. interests are inconvenienced.
At home, constitutional brakes exist too—at least on paper. Congress cannot approve every covert strike, but it can demand to see the legal rationales, condition funding, or legislate limits. That’s what critics say is missing now. “Our covert history in Latin America is not always positive,” said Dexter Ingram, a former State Department official, to the BBC. “We have to look at our history. It’s a slippery slope.”
Suppose the administration’s theory hinges on redefining drug networks as “narco-terrorists” to fit them under wartime precedents and Article II powers. In that case, Congress owes the public a debate, not an echo. For all the talk of decisive action, there is still no public explanation of what, exactly, the CIA has been authorized to do—or where.
History’s Echo: From Guatemala to Caracas
The White House insists there’s precedent. It points to the Reagan-era Contras, to the CIA’s role in Afghanistan, to the post-9/11 campaigns against al-Qaeda. History, though, is a stubborn teacher. Many of those “successes” morphed into long-term disasters.
Latin America remembers. From Guatemala in 1954 to Chile in 1973, the CIA helped topple governments and empower regimes that committed atrocities. The region learned to equate “covert action” not with surgical precision but with destabilization and distrust. That’s why Ingram’s warning to the BBC cuts deep: the ghosts of Cold War interventions haven’t faded.
Venezuela is not a failed state like Yemen or Somalia. It is a functioning, if repressive, regime. Operating there “without the cooperation of the Venezuelan government,” Polymeropoulos told the BBC, is “different.” Different—and more dangerous. Lethal strikes or sabotage could rally Venezuelans around Nicolás Maduro, fracture opposition coalitions, and drag neighbors into confrontation.
Even non-lethal influence operations risk backlash. If clumsy or exposed, they can taint civic actors Washington claims to support. Arms funneled to “friendly” factions tend to wander. Every president who toys with covert war assumes control; everyone eventually learns how fast control dissolves.
The issue isn’t moral squeamishness—it’s realism. Secret wars have a way of outliving their architects and eroding the legitimacy of the policies they’re meant to protect.
What Accountability Should Look Like Now
Venezuela’s government is brutal; its security forces have blood on their hands. But those truths don’t make any tool lawful or smart. The question is whether this CIA mandate—shrouded in secrecy and justified by old laws—will leave Venezuelans freer or more trapped.
Accountability starts with candor to Congress. Lawmakers deserve to know the operation’s scope, the legal theories behind it, and its boundaries. If this is a narrow campaign against specific networks, the administration should demonstrate restraint. If it’s broader—a new model of preemptive covert warfare—then the country deserves that truth, too.
A sustainable alternative would pair intelligence with diplomacy: multilateral policing, evidence-based extraditions, and joint task forces that strengthen regional rule of law rather than sidestepping it. Genuine partnerships, not unilateral raids, build legitimacy.
Even those who applaud an aggressive CIA should demand minimal transparency. Otherwise, the logic of the “war on terror” becomes permanent—a justification that expands until it touches everything. “The law is not an obstacle to effectiveness; it’s a compass,” a former intelligence legal adviser told the BBC. “Ignore it, and you lose direction.“
Trump has already crossed the line between secrecy and spectacle. The admission is public. The next step should also be oversight.
Also Read: Venezuela’s War of Appearances: Maduro’s Militia Spectacle and America’s Offshore Shadow
Because history is watching, and history is rarely kind to presidents who mistake boldness for strategy. The law, if it still means anything, is what separates a democracy from the shadows it unleashes.
