CIA headquarters. Photo: Shutterstock Editorial / Profimedia Images
The intelligence agency of the United States is returning to a long tradition of interventionism in the region, journalists from the French weekly Le Point write on Wednesday, according to Rador Radio Romania.
CIA operations are usually classified “top secret”. It is a way to protect the resources in the field. It is also a matter of culture: the US intelligence agency operates in the shadows and never claims its actions.
But in the case of Operation Absolute Resolve, the attack carried out in Venezuela against Nicolás Maduro, the logic was reversed. Donald Trump has deliberately highlighted the agency's role. John Ratcliffe, the director of the CIA, featured prominently in Mar-a-Lago “war room” photos. He also attended the press conference that celebrated the success of the operation.
Several (skillfully orchestrated) leaks also revealed that the CIA had installed a “mole” in Nicolas Maduro's inner circle weeks ago, that it knew his every move, and that a clandestine cell of US agents had been set up in Caracas since August to prepare the operation.
China has dropped out of the priority risk list
This carefully orchestrated move is not only explained by Donald Trump's arrogance. It comes primarily from a calculated political move and a deliberate break with the past: signaling the return of intelligence to the Latin American continent. During his first term, Donald Trump had unsuccessfully asked the CIA, then headed by Gina Haspel, to organize covert operations against Nicolás Maduro. Latin America was not the agency's priority.
For researcher Raphaël Ramos, author of the book “Power and shadow: 250 years of America's secret wars” (Éditions du Cerf), this operation takes place in a context of redefining American priorities: “While the Biden administration, with William Burns at the head of the CIA, had established in 2021 a unit dedicated to China, bringing together all American intelligence agencies, the Trump administration has put in place the same type of structure, but on the subject of drug trafficking and therefore directly targeting the continent'.
The same thing happened in the recent publication of the US strategic priorities: China left the podium of priority risks. It was replaced by drug problems and illegal immigration. This, once again, is a way of pointing the finger at Latin America and allocating operational resources to that region.
Making clear the CIA's role in Venezuela is a way to acknowledge the agency's role on the continent, as well as its past, even if US intelligence hasn't left the best impression there.
20 million for the Contras
In 1954, the CIA played a direct role in the coup d'état in Guatemala to defend the interests of the powerful United Fruit Company, an American banana company. In April 1961, the Bay of Pigs operation in Cuba was organized directly by the agency. It also played a major and direct role in supporting the military dictatorships of the 1970s in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia and Brazil.
Later, Ronald Reagan nearly ruined his first term after he secretly authorized the CIA to provide $20 million in aid to members of the Contras (Nicaraguaan counter-revolutionaries) and sent CIA agents to El Salvador to quell the far-left rebellion in a civil war (1979-1992) that left 72,000 dead.
Finally, US agents apparently played a major role in the two US military operations in Central America, in 1983 in Grenada, then in 1989 in Panama, to hunt down Manuel Noriega, who had worked for a long time…as a CIA informant.
