PDB Afternoon Bulletin | October 16th, 2025: ESCALATION: Trump Greenlights CIA Strikes Inside Venezuela & Europe’s High-Tech Border Plan Revealed
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What actions has the Trump administration authorized in Venezuela?
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It's Thursday, the 16th of October. Welcome to the PDB Afternoon Bulletin. I'm Mike Baker. Your eyes and ears on the world stage. All right, let's get briefed. First up, the Trump administration is raising the stakes in Venezuela, giving the green light for the CIA to carry out covert action inside the country. So, not that covert, since we're talking about it. I'll have the details. Later in the show, Europe's preparing for a new kind of war. A leaked defense roadmap gives us more insight into its so-called drone wall stretching across the EU's eastern frontier, linking member states in a high-tech shield against Russian incursions. But first, today's afternoon spotlight. Washington's ongoing campaign against Venezuela's Nicolas Maduro may soon be entering a new phase.
Until now, US operations have been limited to the waters off Venezuela's coast. Naval interdictions targeting boats allegedly tied to drug traffickers. But, according to a new report from the New York Times, based on anonymous sources, President Trump has authorized the CIA to conduct covert operations inside Venezuela, granting the agency lethal authority for the first time in this campaign. It's a classified order. Okay, it's not a classified order anymore. Known as a presidential finding, and it represents the most aggressive step yet in Washington's effort to take on the cartels in Venezuela. Now, as an aside, it's not classified a covert anymore because somebody or some individuals couldn't keep their piles shut.
Trump himself confirmed the authorization on Wednesday, telling reporters, quote, we are certainly looking at land now because we've got the sea very well under control, end quote. That comment is telling in some ways, because for the past several weeks, U.S. forces have focused on the maritime front. The military has now carried out at least five strikes on vessels in the Caribbean that it claims were carrying narcotics from Venezuela, destroying several boats and killing 27 people. But those operations all took place in international waters, carefully avoiding Venezuelan territory. This new authority changes that, or potentially changes that. Under the presidential finding, the CIA can now conduct lethal operations inside Venezuela, either independently or alongside U.S.
military units. Officials haven't disclosed what those missions might entail, and they could simply be related to intelligence collection to aid the counter-narcotics effort but it gives the agency an open mandate to target Maduro's regime or the drug organizations that Washington links to it. It's part of a larger strategy, developed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and CIA Director John Ratcliffe, a campaign that's steadily escalated from sanctions and covert intelligence sharing to what now appears to be a hybrid military and intel community operation. We've been tracking the buildup here on the PDB. Roughly 10,000 U.S. troops are now stationed across the region, most in Puerto Rico, along with Marine contingents aboard amphibious assault ships operating nearby.
The Navy has deployed eight surface warships and a submarine throughout the Caribbean, and multiple reports indicate the presence of U.S. Special Operations units at forward positions right off of Venezuela's shores. Up to now, their mission has been surveillance and contingency planning, but with the CIA now authorized to take direct action, those roles could shift quickly if the White House orders an escalation. President Trump justified his decision by saying that Venezuela had, quote, emptied their prisons into the U.S. That's a reference to Trenderagua, or TDA, the violent Venezuelan prison gang that the administration has designated as a terrorist organization.
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