Kerry Kahn

official who was not authorized to speak publicly did tell NPR the Coast Guard was in, quote, active pursuit of a ship.

The official said that ship, the tanker, was, quote, a dark fleet vessel attempting to illegally evade sanctions.

The official also stated that the tanker was flying a false flag and under a judicial seizure order.

What's a dark fleet vessel?

Usually, these are oil tankers that use a lot of deceptive practices to evade international sanctions, like they fly fake national flags.

They can disable their transponder, send out fake signals, all to hide where they've been and where they're going.

But this is not the only ship the U.S.

targeted over the weekend.

In the pre-dawn hour Saturday – and this is according to a social media post by U.S.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem – she said the Coast Guard, with the help from the military that's out there in the Caribbean, apprehended a different oil tanker that was last docked in Venezuela –

According to data from the monitoring group TankerTrackers.com, the ship was not under U.S.

sanctions, though.

A White House spokeswoman later then posted on social media that the tanker was flying under a false flag.

And again, TankerTrackers.com says it was a Panamanian flag.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in that posting on social media that the U.S.

is combating narco-terrorism, which the U.S.

says Venezuela funds through its oil sales.

That's what they've been saying.

But then when that White House spokeswoman also posted, Anna Kelly, in her social media post, she gave another argument that we've been hearing a lot from President Trump that the oil in these tankers is stolen from the U.S.

And if you remember last week when President Trump announced that he was going to