WASHINGTON- A highly classified CIA assessment produced at the request of the White House warned President Trump of a broader conflict in Venezuela if he supported the country's democratic opposition once its president, Nicolás Maduro, was deposed, a person familiar with the matter told The Times.
The assessment was a closely classified CIA product commissioned at the request of senior officials before Trump decided whether to authorize Operation Absolute Resolve, the stunning US mission that captured Maduro and his wife from their bedroom in Caracas over the weekend.
Announcing the results of the operation on Sunday, Trump surprised an anxious Venezuelan public when he was quick to dismiss the leadership of the democratic opposition, led by María Corina Machado, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize last year, and Edmundo González Urrutia, the opposition candidate who won the 2024 presidential election that was ultimately stolen by Maduro.
Instead, Trump said his administration was working with Maduro's hand-picked vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, who has since been named the country's interim president. The rest of Maduro's government remains in place.
Backing the opposition would likely have required US military backing, as the Venezuelan armed forces are still under the control of Maduro loyalists unwilling to cede power.
A second official said the administration sought to avoid one of the cardinal mistakes of the invasion of Iraq, when the Bush administration ordered that supporters of ousted Saddam Hussein be excluded from the country's interim government. That decision, known as de-Baathification, led those responsible for Iraq's weapons arsenals to establish armed resistance to the US campaign.
The CIA product was not an assessment shared by the 18 government agencies that make up the US intelligence community, whose head, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, was largely absent from the deliberations, and who has yet to comment on the operation, even though CIA agents were deployed in dangerous locations before and during the weekend mission.
The core team that worked on Absolute Resolve included National Security Advisor Stephen Miller, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine and CIA Director John Ratcliffe, who met routinely for several months, sometimes daily, the source added.
The existence of the CIA assessment was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.
Signs have emerged that Trump's team was in communication with Rodríguez before the operation, although the president has denied that his administration gave Rodríguez advance notice of Maduro's overthrow.
“There are a number of unanswered questions,” said Evan Ellis, who worked during Trump's first term planning State Department policy on Latin America, the Caribbean and international narcotics. “There may have been a cynical calculation that they can be worked with.”
Rodríguez served as a point of contact with the Biden administration, experts note, and was also in contact with Richard Grenell, a senior Trump adviser who runs the Kennedy Center, early in Trump's second term, when he was testing his commitment to Caracas.
While the federal indictment unsealed against Maduro after his seizure named several other top officials in his government, Rodríguez's name was notably absent.
Rodríguez was sworn in as interim president of Venezuela on Monday in a ceremony attended by diplomats from Russia, China and Iran. Publicly, the leader has offered mixed messages, simultaneously promising to prevent Venezuela from becoming a colonial outpost of an American empire while offering to forge a new collaborative relationship with Washington.
“Of course, for political reasons, Delcy Rodríguez cannot say, 'I have reached an agreement with Trump and we are going to stop the revolution now and start working with the United States,'” Ellis said.
“This is not about democracy,” he said. “It's about him not wanting to work with Maduro.”
In an interview with Fox News on Monday, Machado said he had not yet spoken to Trump since the weekend's US operation but hoped to do so soon, and offered to share his Nobel Peace Prize as a gesture of gratitude. Trump has repeatedly touted himself as a worthy recipient of the award.
“What he has done is historic,” Machado said, vowing to return to the country from his hiding place abroad since accepting the award in Oslo last month.
“It is a big step,” he added, “towards a democratic transition.”
