U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio disembarks from Marine One as he prepares to board Air Force One at Haneda Airport on October 29, 2025. Photo: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images.
By Misión Verdad – Nov 4, 2025
Rubio, Money, and the Fentanyl Hoax
Although Donald Trump’s government has justified its military escalation against Venezuela with accusations of fentanyl trafficking, “US intelligence has assessed that no fentanyl trafficked to the United States is produced in Venezuela,” according to a “high-level official directly familiar with the matter,” revealed to Drop Site.
This evaluation completely dismantles the official narrative, which has served as a pretext for a war offensive, the true objective of which is the overthrow of the government of President Nicolás Maduro.
Even Senator Rand Paul has acknowledged that “zero fentanyl is produced in Venezuela,” and the same official cited by Drop Site highlighted that “several of these attacked vessels do not even have the necessary gasoline or engines with the capacity to reach US waters,” which “dramatically undermines the accusations of Secretary of War Pete Hegseth.”
However, this has not stopped the Trump administration from declaring some kind of holy war in the Caribbean. On October 23, Trump announced that “drugs by sea” already represent only “5% of what it was a year ago. So they are coming by land. The land will be what comes next,” noting that he was willing to act “without congressional approval.”
The next day, the US deployed an aircraft carrier to Latin America.
Rubio: the driver of the regime change policy
Behind this escalation is Marco Rubio, current Secretary of State and “long-time proponent of regime change in Venezuela.” According to Drop Site, “two sources familiar with the discussions at the White House point out that Rubio had been the driving force behind the aggressive and rhetorical stance toward the Maduro regime.”
Rubio, also in charge of USAID remnants, has redirected “millions of dollars in money previously allocated to ‘pro-democracy’ measures in Venezuela and surrounding countries, a thinly veiled effort to prepare the region for war.”
Initially, his arguments—based on human rights and electoral concerns—did not convince Trump. But after temporarily taking office on the National Security Council, Rubio found the key: presenting Maduro as a “narcoterrorist,” appealing to one old accusation from the Department of Justice 2020 on cocaine trafficking.
“[Trump’s] personal distaste for drugs and a campaign promise to use the military against Mexican drug cartels” were, according to Drop Site, the “important impetus” for the president to greenlight the attacks: “With Trump so far unable to carry out attacks against Mexican cartels, attacks that look politically indefensible, Rubio effectively turned his gaze toward Maduro.”
Access to Venezuela’s vast oil reserves sealed the argument, so much so that Trump allowed himself to be influenced “by Rubio’s arguments that the best way to secure Venezuelan oil reserves was to facilitate regime change.”
The machinery of “support for democracy”
The strategy is not new. A diplomatic cable from 2006 he already detailed a roadmap against Hugo Chávez (the infamous “five-point strategy”):
1) Strengthen democratic institutions.
2) Penetrate Chávez’s political base.
3) Divide Chavismo.
4) Protect the vital businesses of the United States.
5) Isolate Chávez internationally.
Today, that logic is maintained with new actors. The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) has funded campaigns such as “Operation Retweet,” which used “artificial intelligence-driven avatars” to disseminate content critical of Maduro.
He also supported the Bogotá portal Connectas, which produced an investigation called “Petrofraud” and received, according to Drop Site, “at least $88,000” from the State Department’s Office of International Narcotics Affairs.
Meanwhile, funds continue to flow. An internal USAID evaluation reviewed by Drop Site reveals that “the US government has allocated at least 213 million dollars in the last five years to Venezuelan opposition groups,” including “18 million specifically in 2024,” destined, among others, to “the international trips of the recent winner of the Prize Nobel Peace Prize winner, María Corina Machado,” who “has aligned herself with the Trump administration in recent months in an attempt to see herself installed as Venezuela’s new leader.”
The investigations of Mission Truth regarding the flow of US money in Venezuela has revealed that the “five-point strategy” continues its course in non-governmental organizations (NGOs), “independent” media, and political actors disguised as any other “civilian” label that does not reflect the destituent shadow they cast. In that sense, the fact that Washington’s payroll has been uninterrupted; despite the Trump administration constantly repeating that it no longer pursues coup agendas in its foreign policy, corollary is relevant.
Read Misión Verdad’s special research paper: “Two decades of USAID in Venezuela: balance of a criminal agenda.“
Military preparation on the border
Regional militarization advances in parallel. In September, the State Department signed a “4.8 million two-year contract for ‘Colombia’s virtual shooting range’” with VirTra, Inc.
Likewise, the US Coast Guard delivered to Colombia “$1.73 million for 21-foot-long vessels” and “$3.8 million for eight 25-foot ‘heavy coastal combat vessels.”
In addition, “the Arlington branch of the international consultancy Deloitte also received a three-year contract worth $3 million” for energy consultancy in Colombia.
However, these movements have generated friction even with the government of Gustavo Petro, who has condemned the US military offensive in the Caribbean, whose criticism began with “the lethal airstrikes of September 15 against a fishing boat in Colombian waters.”
Covert operations and media manipulation
The CIA has also been openly participating. “The former, and troubled, station chief in Paris, Dale Bendler, recently retroactively registered as a foreign agent in the name of Armando Capriles,” linked to the newspaper Latest News, in an attempt to recruit him as an asset “in exchange for leniency against 2019 US sanctions.”
On the other hand, firms such as Madison Springfield, Inc. (MSI) carried out studies such as the “Guyana Ghost Men evaluation,” financed with $485,915 by USAID, and Premise Data—later purchased by Culmen International, a special operations contractor—executed a subcontract of $498,701 “35 days before the failed Operation Gideon.”
This is evidence, not opinions, of how a dismissal operation is disseminated through corporate money and covert actions.
A baseless war with clear objectives
As Drop Site concludes, “foreign policy under Trump has come to be dominated by a group known within the administration as ‘the gang of five,’” including Rubio; Stephen Miller, ‘second in office’ for policies; Susie Wiles, the chief of staff; Stephen Witkoff, the multifunction envoy; and Vice President JD Vance.”
Hegseth, who “in a campaign to achieve internal relevance, is enthusiastically executing Rubio’s strategy, regularly attacking ships,” has promised “an eternal war on drugs,” equating alleged Venezuelan drug traffickers with Al Qaeda: “Our message to these foreign terrorist organizations is that we will treat them as we treat Al Qaeda… we will kill them all.”
But the facts are compelling: there is no fentanyl from Venezuela in the US, there are no Venezuelan vessels capable of crossing the Caribbean, and there is a well-oiled machinery of regime change.
What is at stake is not the security of American citizens, but control of the largest oil reserves on the planet. And in that war, the truth is the first victim.
