President Donald Trump has just launched an attack on the CIA. Yes, because that is what can be inferred from his announcement to the world that he is ordering covert operations, which he should rather have called "overt" operations, within the sovereign territory of Venezuela. There are many ways to approach this issue.
Let's start by insisting that no international law allows the U.S. government to take actions that contribute to altering the sovereignty of another state. Unfortunately, this, which is a truism, is worth remembering in light of the chaos in which the world is functioning.
Secondly, and again based on the rules of civilized coexistence, it is unacceptable for any country's intelligence service to propose the assassination of a human being; that is, an extrajudicial execution, plain and simple. We already know they do it, but for the president to calmly admit it crosses every red line.
And as for the secret or covert nature of the operation, it is better not to go into detail. Imagine an undercover CIA agent anywhere, conspiring, and suddenly the president of the government that sent him publicly acknowledges the purpose of his presence in that country. In short, the spy's situation, already complex, becomes practically untenable.
But Trump's disdain for the CIA is nothing new. One day before taking office for his first term, on January 27, 2017, the new president expressed "disparaging" opinions about the work of this institution in the Langley lobby, a position he took on subsequent occasions. Imagine again the undercover agents who learn from the press that their dangerous service is being discredited by their top boss, the president.
During Trump's current term, Elon Musk, then director of DOGE, visited Langley in April 2025. What was discussed there was not disclosed, but it did leave a trail of concern about his efforts to cut back on, and even close, those structures whose usefulness is in doubt according to President Trump's vision.
THE CIA AND THE THEATER OF OPERATIONS AGAINST VENEZUELA
Perhaps the most dangerous aspect of this story is that Trump seeks to normalize not only the colossal lie that Venezuela is responsible for drug trafficking into the United States, but also, based on this lie, that the U.S. government has the right to kill people in third countries, according to Marco Rubio's suggestions.
In reality, the U..S president is not as clumsy as one might think at this point. No. The threat to use the sinister CIA to assassinate or eliminate alleged Venezuelan enemies is part of a plot to generate panic and, eventually, betrayals within the Venezuelan people and Chavismo in particular.
For all the above reasons, Trump's statements are fundamentally a media ploy. The CIA will not carry out covert operations in the future; the CIA already operates in Venezuela, and has done so since its inception. Yes, because where there is abundant oil, the CIA has to be there, especially if there is a profound revolution like the Bolivarian one.
Experts describe this type of maneuver as part of cognitive warfare. They bet that it is enough to frantically generate verbal threats or deploy troops to demobilize the victims and, in doing so, achieve the desired regime change at a very low cost, from a military standpoint and in terms of their marines not being wiped out.
Following this logic, the aggressors know that it is not possible for any invasive variant to succeed, even if limited to a surgical strike, as they call it, without first or during the process creating an internal situation that contributes to breaking the unity or defensive response capacity of those attacked, whose minds and emotions have been previously manipulated.
ALWAYS THE CIA
It is impossible to count the number of times the CIA has embarked on actions such as those ordered by Trump in front of the cameras. One of its most recent directors, the scoundrel Mike Pompeo, boasted at the University of Texas in 2019 that the CIA had lied and stolen; he only failed to admit that they had murdered.
Equally despicable was the implementation of what became a program of flagrant human rights violations on a universal scale during the "war on terror" in the Bush era. In that context, the CIA engaged in kidnapping and setting up torture facilities in several distinguished European nations, calling them "enhanced interrogation techniques."
Some of the victims ended up in the illegally occupied territory of Guantanamo Bay, at the famous base, the only place in Cuba where such "excesses" have been practiced since the fall of the Batista tyranny.
The CIA is always involved in every coup d'état in Our America; behind the many forms of fascism and military dictatorships in South America, including Plan Condor, is the CIA; state terrorism against Cuba was entirely organized by the CIA; more recently, in the judicialization of politics in the region and the media lynching of leftist and progressive leaders, the CIA was behind the scenes.
When it comes to drug trafficking, the CIA also appears in a "covert" form; remember its involvement in the trafficking of opioids during the invasion of Vietnam, in Afghanistan, in post-Gaddafi Libya, or during the war of the "contras" in the Sandinista Revolution; all indelible traces of the unspeakable objectives of the "Company," as it is often called in film versions that seek to whitewash this apparatus.
But they should warn Trump that south of the Rio Grande, there is no "fear" of the "Company." Their failures are there for all to see, for example, the many times they tried to assassinate Fidel, to mention just one thing that has become legendary, like everything else concerning the historic leader of the Cuban Revolution.
In 2008, Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist Tim Weiner published an anthology about the Langley headquarters, entitled Legacy of Ashes, which lists a series of errors and limitations and predicts that, if they do not change, they are doomed to a state of endemic failure.
An interesting fact: the phrase "legacy of ashes" is said to have been used by Eisenhower in response to Kennedy when the latter expressed interest in the history of the Central Intelligence Agency upon taking office. The poor opinion of the "Company" seems to go back a long way.
What happens now in Venezuela could confirm Weiner's prediction. All it would take is for the Chavista authorities to catch and expose some of these killers, previously announced/denounced by their top boss, for a scandal to erupt in Washington. It would probably even contribute to the collapse of the entire anti-Venezuelan operation.
A question is going viral on social media after Trump admitted to ordering covert operations abroad that include assassinating people: can any other country therefore do the same in the United States? Perhaps, in their response, Americans will understand the danger of this issue.
