Trump says he has authorized covert CIA action in Venezuela

[Zorro]

Source: Washington Post

President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he had authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to conduct operations in Venezuela, markedly escalating U.S. pressure on President Nicolás Maduro amid a string of lethal strikes against alleged drug trafficking boats in Caribbean waters off that country’s coast.

Trump declined to say whether he had authorized the CIA to overthrow Maduro, a step some of his top national security aides have urged. “I think Venezuela’s feeling the heat,” he said at a White House news conference.

The president was asked about reports that he signed a highly classified document, known as a “finding,” that allows the CIA to conduct covert operations in foreign countries, ranging from clandestine information operations to training guerrilla opposition forces and conducting lethal strikes. Trump’s order was reported earlier by the New York Times. The details of the new authorities now available to the CIA remain unclear.

But people familiar with the matter said the spy agency has surged personnel to the Caribbean and Central America as part of the Trump administration’s move against Western Hemisphere drug cartels. They are there to collect intelligence, not conduct armed operations, said the people, who like some others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. CIA surveillance drones are also prowling the skies above Mexico, searching for labs that make the deadly drug fentanyl, they said.

Read more: https://wapo.st/4oeRb3Y

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Nothing says "covert" more than announcing covert operations to the world.

[JoseBalow]

1. What a fuckin' moron

[mjvpi]

2. Back to the dumb shit that Reagan did. When history starts to repeat itself in your own lifetime, it's depressing.

[bucolic_frolic]

3. Well, it's not very covert if you're telling us about it.

Just sayin'.

[JohnnyRingo]

12. That was my 1st thought.

I know he' learning on the job, but we usually don't out our spies or blab where our nuke submarines are.

[yardwork]

17. Same thought.

[Rebl2]

18. Exactly

what I said to my husband when I read about it. Isn’t covert if you tell the whole world about it 🙄

[C_U_L8R]

4. Toddler Trump is playing Double Naught Spy

He’s gonna break all the toys in the toy chest.

[lonely bird]

5. 🤭

Well, that is just fucking stupid.

[Polybius]

6. It's a "covert" mission and he's announcing it?

Umm, not so covert anymore, is it?

[BigmanPigman]

7. Suuuuure...like the CIA would be able to

do that yet they can't get rid of tRump. The Mafia would do a better job than the CIA.

[ananda]

22. How do we know it isn't a mafia-style CIA?

Hmmm

[BigmanPigman]

23. Because I've been keeping my fingers crossed

and they're getting pretty tired. I'm an atheist so I don't pray.

[BaronChocula]

8. Today I celebrated day one of my diet

with cake and ice cream.

I'm starting to think this guy's an idiot.

[mdbl]

10. I'm starting to think this guy's an idiot.

Starting?

[Rebl2]

19. I've

thought this guy was an idiot since the 1980’s. Then it was confirmed when he had his stupid show on nbc. Definitely confirmed when he became president.

[BaronChocula]

20. Same here

It was totally suspicious to me that there was all this media hype around one tacky rich guy for no reason I could discern accept for the fact that he liked attention.

Don't know if you're familiar with Spy magazine from the 80s and 90s, but it was cofounded by Graydon Carter. He was the one who originally described trump as a short-fingered vulgarian. Spy had ruffled trump's delicate feathers and in response he told Liz Smith it was a terrible magazine and it wouldn't last a year. For several years after, Spy printed that quote in a blurb section in the early pages of each edition.

They relentlessly pegged him as a scammer in blistering coverage way back then so you could imagine my shock at how he's been able to fool so many people for so long. But of course Spy magazine had limited readership and folded in the late nineties [shrug].

[Rebl2]

24. Seems like

many in NY knew what a crook he was. Too bad they didn’t spread the word far and wide. I still believe the Russian mafia offered him a deal he couldn’t refuse. Would not be surprised if his father was involved as well.

[markie]

9. He does nothing

But talk incoherently…. The big decisions, I’m sure, are made by someone else

[Botany]

16. "The big decisions, I'm sure, are made by someone else."

Btw how much South American cocaine has gone up his and Don Jr’s noses?

[IronLionZion]

11. Like he knows what "covert" means

I wouldn't want to be the agents on that mission

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

13. Nothing says "covert" more than announcing covert operations to the world.

Donny's stupidity is astounding.

[Ray Bruns]

14. This is beginning to smell like the Iraq war and weapons of mass destruction all over again.

[Botany]

15. If Trump starts a war on Venezuela I hope all the other nations recall their ambassadors and treat ...

… Trump’s America as a cancer. He is a mad man with dementia, who works for Putin, who got
back into the White House in a crooked and criminal election, and is trying to hide the decades
long rape of underage girls as he was part of Epstein and Putin’s sex trafficking operation with
the use of his planes along with his modeling tryouts and beauty pageants.

The man is murdering people in international waters right now. He is a mad man who is getting
his orders from a sadist called Stephen Miller.