Trump Orders CIA To Attack Venezuela: US Military Kills Innocent People in War Based on Lies

Orinoco Tribune – News and opinion pieces about Venezuela and beyond
From Venezuela and made by Venezuelan Chavistas
By Ben Norton – Oct 20, 2025
The USA is waging war on Venezuela. Trump authorized CIA “lethal operations” to try to overthrow President NicolĂĄs Maduro. The US military is killing innocent fishermen from Colombia and Trinidad.
The United States is waging war on Venezuela. This is not a hypothetical; it is happening.
The Donald Trump administration is using extreme violence to try to overthrow Venezuelaâs President NicolĂĄs Maduro.
The US military has killed dozens of Venezuelans in strikes on boats in international waters without charge or trial. UN experts have publicly condemned these attacks as âextrajudicial executionsâ that violate international law.
It is not only Venezuelans who have been executed by the US military. Among the victims of these illegal US attacks have been fishermen who were citizens of Colombia and Trinidad and Tobago.
Family members of the victims, from a Trinidadian fishing village, were interviewed by The Guardian, and they condemned Trump for âkilling poor peopleâ, arguing that he simply wants to take their âgas and their oilâ.
In other words, the Trump administration is killing innocent people from multiple countries as part of its war on Venezuela.
US military threatens Venezuela with B-52 bombers
Week by week, Trump is ratcheting up the US war on Venezuela.
The US military has approximately 10,000 troops in the Caribbean, along with eight warships and a submarine, all preparing to escalate.
The Trump administration has ordered three B-52 bombers to fly off the coast of Venezuela, threatening to bomb the country.
ABC News published a report on 16 October, writing (all emphasis added):
In less than a week, President Donald Trump has threatened to attack inside Venezuela, confirmed ongoing covert operations inside the country, and ordered bombers capable of dropping nuclear weapons to fly in circles off its coast in what appears to be an unprecedented show of force intended to pressure the Venezuelan president to step down.
Trump orders the CIA to carry out âlethal operationsâ to provoke regime change in Venezuela
Meanwhile, Trump has admitted that he has authorized the CIA to carry out destabilization operations inside Venezuela.
The public narrative of the US government is that it is supposedly targeting âdrug traffickersâ. This is not true. The real goal is regime change.
The New York Times interviewed members of the Trump administration, and reported, âAmerican officials have been clear, privately, that the end goal is to drive Mr. Maduro from powerâ.
Trump has ordered the CIA âto carry out lethal operations in Venezuelaâ, the Times noted.
âThe Trump administrationâs strategy on Venezuela, developed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, with help from John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director, aims to oust Mr. Maduro from powerâ, the Times added.
Rubio is a lifelong neoconservative war hawk. He has spent his entire political career pushing for regime change not only in Venezuela, but also in Cuba and Nicaragua.
During Trumpâs first term, when the US launched another coup attempt, Rubio was not in the administration, but he lobbied Trump to invade Venezuela.
Trump discussed his attacks on Venezuela in a press conference at the White House on 15 October.
âWhy did you authorize the CIA to go into Venezuela?â a journalist asked the US president.
Trump gave two excuses, falsely claiming that it is because Venezuela is supposedly sending criminals to the US and that he wants to stop âdrug traffickingâ. Both allegations are not true. They are demonstrable lies that the Trump administration is using to try to justify a war of aggression.
The journalist then asked Trump, âDoes the CIA have authority to take out Maduro?â
The US president replied, âOh, I donât want to answer a question like that. Thatâs a ridiculous question for me to be given. Not really a ridiculous question, but wouldnât it be a ridiculous question for me to answer? But I think Venezuela is feeling heatâ.
The CIAâs history of terrorism and coups in Latin America
The CIA has carried out myriad crimes against humanity in Latin America. The US spy agency has armed and trained death squads who have burnt down schools and hospitals and tortured and massacred civilians, like the Contras in Nicaragua in the 1980s.
The CIA has also committed war crimes directly. The CIA put mines in Nicaraguaâs ports in the 1980s, in a flagrant violation of international law.
Nicaragua took the United States to the International Court of Justice, the UNâs top judicial authority, in 1984, and it won the case in 1986. The Hague ruled in support of the people of Nicaragua, determining that the US government, and specifically the CIA, had violated international law in its attacks on Nicaraguan civilian targets.
However, Washington ignored the ICJ ruling and vetoed a UN Security Council resolution that demanded it be respected.
To this day, the US rogue regime refuses to pay the reparations that it legally owes to Nicaragua.
The CIA has also sponsored dozens of coups dâetat against democratically elected left-wing leaders in Latin America.
In 1954, the CIA overthrew Guatemalaâs democratically elected President Jacobo Ărbenz on behalf of US corporation the United Fruit Company (now known as Chiquita).
Then, on 11 September 1973, the CIA toppled Chileâs democratically elected socialist President Salvador Allende, and put in power the fascist dictator Augusto Pinochet, who killed thousands of people and maintained an iron grip on power for nearly two decades.
Trump is now clearly giving the CIA a green light to try to do the same in Venezuela, to overthrow the leftist Chavista government of President Maduro and install a right-wing puppet regime that will privatize the countryâs massive oil and gold reserves and other natural resources and sell them off to US corporations.
US Mercenary Exposes CIA as Creator of ‘Cartel of the Suns,’ Details Sabotage Campaign
Trump lies about âdrug traffickingâ to push regime change
The false narrative that the Trump administration is using is that it is attacking Venezuela supposedly in order to stop the âflow of drugsâ into the US. This is a lie that has been debunked by multiple sources.
The Financial Times published a lengthy report, citing US officials and Venezuelan opposition figures who have been working closely with the Trump administration, and they admitted that the real goal is regime change.
The US governmentâs priority âis to force the departure of top Venezuelan government figures, preferably via resignation or an arranged handover â but with the clear threat that if Maduro and his inner circle cling to power, the Americans may use targeted military force to capture or kill themâ, the FT wrote.
The Trump administrationâs unsubstantiated accusations that Venezuela is a major center of drug production are clearly contradicted by the data compiled by UN experts.
Venezuela is not a major source of drugs, nor is it a key transit country.
According to 2022 data from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), 65% of the cocaine in the world is produced in Colombia, which has historically been the closest US ally in Latin America and has been dominated by right-wing, pro-US politicians linked to cartels.
Peru is the second-largest source of cocaine, providing 27% of the global total, followed by Bolivia at 8%. Venezuelaâs role is so minor it is insignificant.
US government-funded coup leader MarĂa Corina Machado pledged to privatize Venezuelaâs oil
The Financial Times noted, âAt stake in Venezuela are the worldâs largest proven oil reserves and valuable deposits of gold, diamonds and coltanâ.
The FT cited an anonymous âAmerican businessman with interests in the countryâ who revealed, âWhat Trump wants in Venezuela is oil, minerals and gold⌠He wants US companies down there investingâ.
Far-right Venezuelan coup leader MarĂa Corina Machado has openly called for privatizing her countryâs natural resources and handing them over to US corporations.
Machado, who has been funded by the US government for more than 20 years, was awarded a so-called âNobel Peace Prizeâ due to her violent, US-sponsored regime-change efforts.
In an interview with Donald Trump Jr. in February, Machado declared (emphasis added):
Forget about Saudi Arabia; forget about the Saudis. I mean, we have more oil, I mean, infinite potential.
And weâre going to open markets. Weâre going to kick [out] the government from the oil sector. Weâre going to privatize all our industry.
Venezuela has huge resources: oil, gas, minerals, land, technology. And, as you said before, we have a strategic location, you know, hours from the United States.
So weâre going to do this right. We know what we have to do.
âŚ
And American companies are in, you know, a super strategic position to invest.
âŚ
This country, Venezuela, is going to be the brightest opportunity for investment of American companies, of good people that are going to make a lot of money.
Even CNN and ex Biden officials are skeptical of Trumpâs âdrug traffickingâ lies about Venezuela
Immediately after the US government-funded extremist MarĂa Corina Machado won the so-called âNobel Peace Prizeâ, she was interviewed by CNN.
Machado proudly stated that she supports Trump and the murderous war he is waging against her country. In fact, she called for further military escalation.
âWe totally support itâ, Machado said, in reference to the US military attacks in the Caribbean.
âActually, weâre asking other countries in the Caribbean, in Latin America and Europe, to join that international coalitionâ for war on Venezuela, added the so-called âNobel Peace Prizeâ laureate.
CNN is normally a loyal mouthpiece for the US State Department. The corporate network has supported every major US war of aggression, against Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Iran, Yugoslavia, and beyond.
However, because CNN is an anti-Trump media outlet, it has been willing to challenge some of the administrationâs blatant lies about Venezuela.
In fact, CNN drew parallels between Trumpâs false claims about Venezuela and the fraudulent allegations that the George W. Bush administration fabricated in order to justify its illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003 (which CNN had supported at the time).
The Bush administrationâs CIA created false intelligence claiming that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had âweapons of mass destructionâ, or WMDs. This was not true.
Today, the Trump administration is falsely claiming that the Venezuelan government is run by drug cartels. This is totally preposterous and is not supported by any evidence.
In her interview with US government-funded Venezuelan coup plotter MarĂa Corina Machado, CNN host Christiane Amanpour pushed back against these false claims.
Amanpour cited a previous interview she did with Juan SebastiĂĄn GonzĂĄlez, who helped oversee US policy toward Latin America in the Joe Biden administration, as the senior director of the National Security Council for the Western Hemisphere.
GonzĂĄlez admitted that Venezuela is not a major producer of drugs.
This is what this top Biden administration official told CNN:
The reason that drugs have never originated from Venezuela â in the way that they originate from Colombia, over 95% of the cocaine that comes to United States comes from Colombia â is because Venezuela has one of the largest oil reserves in the world; they have the largest gold reserves in Latin America.
So there has never been a need for them to develop a native drug-producing industry.
In her CNN interview with Machado, Amanpour noted that, âwhen people look at whatâs going on, they say, OK, they [the Trump administration] have used the drug issue to justify getting rid of Maduro, like they used the non-existent WMD issue to get rid of Saddam Hussein in Iraqâ.
âSo are you, I guess what Iâm asking you is, are you concerned about that?â Amanpour asked.
Machado, the US government-funded coup plotter and staunch supporter of Trump, shot back, âI totally disagreeâ. She cited baseless claims that the FBI made during Trumpâs first administration that, supposedly, â24% of the world trade of cocaine goes through Venezuelaâ.
This politically motivated accusation by Trumpâs FBI has been blatantly contradicted by the data published by independent international experts at the United Nations.
Trumpâs lies about Venezuela are so transparent that even CNN and former Biden administration officials are willing to call them out. But their obvious fraudulence is not stopping the US government from escalating its war of aggression in the Caribbean.
Benjamin Norton is the founder and editor of the independent news website Multipolarista, where he does original reporting in both English and Spanish. Benjamin has reported from numerous countries, including Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Ecuador, Honduras, Colombia, and more. His journalistic work has been published in dozens of media outlets, and he has done interviews on Sky News, Al Jazeera, Democracy Now, El Financiero Bloomberg, Al Mayadeen teleSUR, RT, TRT World, CGTN, Press TV, HispanTV, Sin Censura, and various TV channels in Mexico, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia. Benjamin writes a regular column for Al Mayadeen (in English and Spanish). He was formerly a reporter with the investigative journalism website The Grayzone, and previously produced the political podcast and video show Moderate Rebels. His personal website is BenNorton.com, and he tweets at @BenjaminNorton.