Tag: cia

US planning CIA foothold in post-Maduro Venezuela

The CIA is quietly working to establish a permanent US presence on the ground in Venezuela, spearheading the Trump administration’s plans to exert its newfound influence over the country’s future, according to multiple sources familiar with the planning.

Planning discussions between the CIA and State Department have centered around what the US footprint inside Venezuela will look like, both in the short and long term, after the dramatic capture of former President Nicolás Maduro earlier this month.

While the State Department will serve as the primary, long-term US diplomatic presence in the country, the Trump administration will likely lean heavily on the CIA to initiate that re-entry process due to the ongoing political transition and unstable security situation in Venezuela post-Maduro, the sources added.

“State plants the flag but CIA is really the influence,” one source familiar with the planning process told CNN, noting the agency’s near-term objectives include setting the stage for diplomatic efforts – including relationship building with locals – and providing security.

In the short term, US officials may operate out of a CIA annex, prior to the opening of an official embassy, allowing them to start making informal contact with members of different factions of Venezuela’s government as well as opposition figures and target third parties who may be threats, the source said, drawing a parallel to the agency’s work in Ukraine.

“Setting up an annex is priority number one. Before diplomatic channels the annex can help set up liaison channels, that will be with the Venezuelan intelligence and that will allow conversations that diplomats cannot have,” said a former US government official who engaged with the Venezuelans.

The CIA declined to comment.

Keep reading

Mike Benz exposes the dark underbelly of U2’s Bono…

We’ve been told over and over that celebrity “humanitarianism” is the purest form of goodness on the planet. Big stars, concerts, movies, emotions, giving back, bla bla bla. The message is always the same: open your heart, open your wallet, and don’t ask too many questions, because celebrities would never steer you wrong.

But every once in a while, someone comes along and does ask questions. And when they do, many uncomfortable dots start showing up.

And that’s exactly what’s happening with Bono, the frontman of U2. But beyond his lead vocals, Bono has very carefully cultivated an image as a global humanitarian icon. Nobody asked questions, because Bono had everybody convinced he was an angel, doing the purest work. However, there’s a lot more to it, according to Mike Benz.

He says Bono’s humanitarian work may not have been driven purely by compassion but by something much darker: elite power networks, intelligence operations, and narrative control.

What makes this even more disturbing is how often USAID keeps popping up in Bono’s so-called “humanitarian” work. As you likely recall, USAID spent years selling itself as a charitable force while quietly operating as a political operator overseas. Once DOGE started digging, the fraud and true mission were revealed, and Team Trump moved to gut large portions of the agency. Only now are Americans beginning to understand just how much of this so-called “aid” wasn’t what it appeared to be.

Which brings us right back to Bono and Mike Benz, the guy who just pulled back the curtain on U2’s singer.

Mike points out how celebrity activism, government agencies, and intelligence agencies all come together under the phony banner of “humanitarianism.”

Benz points to massive USAID-linked fundraising concerts, including events that were supposed to stop hunger in Somalia. The thing is, that didn’t happen, because most of the money allegedly financed CIA-backed warlords and weapons purchases.

This is where the glossy “Hollywood humanitarian” story really starts to crack.

Benz goes through how these shady operations really run. They use aid vans that can’t be inspected because “the food will spoil,” and the relief funds move through layers of contractors and other shady folks.

While the public PR stunts stir up emotions, all the sketchy stuff happens in the shadows. What’s sold to the public as compassion is actually a delivery system for covert action.

And then there’s the politics…

Keep reading

Mike Pompeo Says the Quiet Part Out Loud About ‘Popular’ Regime Change in Iran

Former Secretary of State and Director of the CIA Mike Pompeo is one of the most bloodthirsty and prominent neocons in the United States today. He is militantly pro-Israel and has openly and consistently pushed for regime change in Iran. In the first Trump administration, he was one of Trump’s most hawkish advisors. As one of the main advocates for the assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, Pompeo clearly is not bothered by military action which is illegal under international law. However, one factor which differentiates Pompeo from his neocon cronies is his blunt, nigh-idiotic honesty.

While Washington has orchestrated numerous coups around the globe, few prominent officials have been so bold or careless as to acknowledge that the United States or Israel is helping foment a revolution in real time. However, Pompeo did just that when he tweeted, “The Iranian regime is in trouble… Riots in dozens of cities and the Basij under siege – Mashed, Tehran, Zahedan.  Next stop:  Baluchistan… Happy New Year to every Iranian in the streets.  Also to every Mossad agent walking beside them…”

Pompeo’s remarks are important because of what it casually assumes: Israel is intimately involved in the current protests in Iran. This undermines the US and Israeli governments’ narrative that the protests are an organic development. Contrary to neoconservative narratives, the fact that every protester is not literally on a State Department payroll does not make the protests organic. While some, if not most, of the protesters might genuinely oppose the government, the fact remains that funding, intel, media amplification, training, and sanctions have all been used as tools to influence political outcomes inside Iran to the benefit of Washington and Tel Aviv.

The biggest historical example of this is the 1953 coup against Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh. After Mohammad Reza Shah was installed by the Iranian military on behalf of the US and UK, the CIA hired mobsters to stage riots in favor of the Shah. On top of this, the CIA also paid for buses and trucks full of demonstrators to protest in Tehran. Following the Iranian Revolution, the US trained members of the leftist Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK) who previously killed American soldiers. With the rise of the internet, the US government provided funding for online activism targeting the Iranian government, asked Twitter to delay site-maintenance to help 2009 Green Movement protesters communicate, and carried out cyberattacks in collaboration with Israel. In short, for decades the US has tried to destabilize Iran to foster regime change. Pompeo’s remark suggests that this long-standing policy has not changed under the nominally “anti-war” second Trump administration.

Like the Obama administration, the second Trump administration is following the “Arab Spring playbook.” The Arab Spring was a series of protests, insurrections, and rebellions across the Arab world which sought to “promote democracy.” In reality, many of the figures and groups involved in the Arab Spring received not only training, but also funding from American NGOs like the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute, and Freedom House. These organizations all receive money from the US government via Congress or the State Department. Most of the aims of the Arab Spring failed. Instead of democracy, the protests led to an authoritarian backlash from Arab governments. This “counter-revolution” was beneficial for Israel as the failure of the Arab Spring made normalizing relations with destabilized, divided Arab regimes easier.

Ultimately, the main beneficiaries of regime change are not the United States or its people, but instead Israel. Unfortunately, so many figures in the American government, like Mike Pompeo, have a theology which places support for the secular State of Israel in high regard. In fact, Pompeo once suggested that God sent President Donald Trump to save Israel.

To put it frankly, there is nothing godly about Israel, especially with regard to its conduct in its proxy war against Iran. A godly nation would not have its intelligence agency pose as the CIA in an attempt to recruit terrorists for a false flag operation against Iran. The terrorist group in question, Jundallah, has been responsible for murdering both Iranian government officials and civilians.

Keep reading

The CIA/Mossad Operation to Spark a Color Revolution in Iran has Failed

The CIA/Mossad plan to spark a color revolution in Iran, which has attracted global attention and a tsunami of propaganda pieces portraying the Iranian protests as a massive, unstoppable popular movement, has failed. Yes, protests continue in some parts of the country, but Iranian security forces have taken off the gloves and are fighting back. Casualty estimates are all over the board… Ranging from hundreds to thousands dead. Iranian officials have announced that the alleged ring leaders of the violent protests will be publicly executed starting Wednesday.

While Trump is now promising to try to come to the aid of the protestors, his promise appears to be more rhetorical than substantive. According to a report by the Jerusalem Post:

US President Donald Trump is expected to assist Iranians who are protesting nationwide against the Islamic Republic regime, several sources familiar with the details of the discussions held in recent days told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday.

“Trump has essentially decided to help the protesters in Iran. What he has not yet decided is the ‘how’ and the ‘when,’” they said. . . .

“The spectrum ranges from a military option, namely strikes against regime targets, to cyber support against the regime, to providing Starlink systems to help protesters,” one source told the Post.

“While the Trump administration does not believe that the Iranian regime is collapsing, it definitely sees problems and cracks that did not exist a week ago,” the source added.

Keep reading

CIA can neither ‘confirm nor deny’ existence of 3I/ATLAS file — hinting at possible threat: Harvard scientist

Is this the new Area 51?

3I/ATLAS may have left Earth’s neighborhood, but it’s still very much on our radar. In a new Medium post, Harvard Scientist Avi Loeb pointed out that the CIA hinted at the existence of classified documents related to the interstellar comet, suggesting that it could potentially be a threat to humanity.

“It’s very interesting that they did not dismiss the existence of documents within the CIA on this matter,” the astrophysicist told the Post.

Loeb was referencing the CIA’s response to a query by UFO researcher/conspiracy theorist John Greenewald Jr.

In the letter, which Greenewald Jr. shared to X, the agency wrote that it can neither “confirm nor deny the existence or nonexistence of records” related to 3I/ATLAS. 

Keep reading

ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE: CIA Tells Court It Cannot Produce Requested J6 Documents and Information for 4 More Years!

Here is the latest example of your government working against you!

Last year, on January 6, 2025, Tom Fitton, the President of Judicial Watch, released a video exposing the CIA at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

This video was released four years after the stolen 2020 election and uprising at the US Capitol.
From the video:

Tom Fitton: We just uncovered documents that show the CIA had folks involved in a response to January sixth. Now, I got a question for you. What if I had told you three weeks ago and I said, I think the CIA was involved somehow on January sixth. Somehow they were involved somehow. I’d probably get thrown off the internet, right? For promoting a conspiracy theory. But we just uncovered documents that show the CIA had folks involved in the response to January sixth.

Here’s My video first highlighting it.

Hey, everyone. Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton here with some massive news. Judicial Watch just uncovered that the CIA was involved in the response to the January 6th disturbances on Capitol Hill. In fact, CIA bomb technicians were sent over to the RNC and DNC where those pipe bombs supposedly were found. On top of that, there were CIA dog teams on standby in response to January 6th.

Now, there are a lot of questions that are raised by our disclosures. First of all, why did it take Judicial Watch heavy lifting in federal court to get access to these documents after all these years? Why didn’t the Pelosi January sixth Committee, even as corrupt as it was, not disclose the CIA involvement? What was the CIA involved for? Were they investigating foreign intelligence operations? Were they investigating American citizens? What else have they done related to January sixth? All these questions you can be sure your Judicial Watch will pursue. In federal court if necessary.

So we had asked for records from the Department of Justice. What did we ask for? Last year. We asked for records and communications regarding shots being fired inside the US Capitol as well as request for Bureau of Alcohol, Department of Farms, Explosive Special Response Team Assistance on January 6. Remember, they had these pipe bombs that were supposedly found at the RNC and DNC. And so we were interested in the responses there. So we got a bunch of text messages. Of course, they ignored our request, and we had to sue in federal court. Again, this is June 2023. We filed the lawsuit. We probably had asked. Yeah, we asked in… No, we filed the lawsuit in August. We asked for the records in June. So we’ve been waiting almost a year for these records, and it took a federal lawsuit to get them out to us. And so we got these ATF text messages that detail the CIA’s involvement. And there are two sets of text messages, and they’re very interesting to read because they do talk about, as I say, we were asking about the reports of shots fired.

Keep reading

Behind the DOJ’s politicized indictment of Maduro: a CIA-created ‘network’ and coerced star witness

The US Department of Justice indictment of Venezuela’s kidnapped leader, Nicolas Maduro, is a political rant that relies heavily on coerced testimony from an unreliable witness. Despite DOJ edits, it could expose more Americans to the CIA’s own history of drug trafficking.

The January 3 US military raid on Venezuela to kidnap President Nicolas Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores was followed by the Department of Justice’s release of its superseding indictment of the two abductees as well as their son, Nicolasito Maduro, and two close political allies: former Minister of Justice Ramon Chacin and ex-Minister of Interior, Justice and Peace Diosdado Cabello. The DOJ has also thrown Tren De Aragua (TDA) cartel leader Hector “Niño” Guerrero into the mix of defendants, situating him at the heart of its narrative.

The indictment amounts to a 25 page rant accusing Maduro and Flores of a conspiracy to traffic “thousands of tons of cocaine to the United States,” relying heavily on testimony from coerced witnesses about alleged shipments that largely took place outside US jurisdiction. It accuses Maduro of “having partnered with narco-terrorists” like TDA, ignoring a recent US intelligence assessment that concluded he had no control over the Venezuelan gang. Finally, the prosecutors stacked the indictment by charging Maduro with “possession of machine guns,” a laughable offense which could easily be applied to hundreds of thousands of gun-loving Americans under an antiquated 1934 law.

DOJ prosecutors carefully avoid precise data on Venezuelan cocaine exports to the US. At one point, they describe “tons” of cocaine; at another, they refer to the shipment of “thousands of tons,” an astronomical figure that could hypothetically generate hundreds of billions in revenue. At no point did they mention fentanyl, the drug responsible for the overdose deaths of close to 50,000 Americans in 2024. In fact, the DEA National Drug Threat Assessment issued under Trump’s watch this year scarcely mentioned Venezuela.

By resorting to vague, deliberately expansive language larded with subjective terms like “corrupt” and “terrorism,” the DOJ has constructed a political narrative against Maduro in place of a concrete legal case. While repeatedly referring to Maduro as the “de facto… illegitimate ruler of the country,” the DOJ fails to demonstrate that he is de jure illegitimate under Venezuelan law, and will therefore be unable to bypass established international legal precedent granting immunity to heads of state.

Further, the indictment relies on transparently unreliable, coerced witnesses like Hugo “Pollo” Carvajal, a former Venezuelan general who has cut a secret plea deal to reduce his sentence for drug trafficking by supplying dirt on Maduro. Carvajal was said to be a key figure in the so-called “Cartel of the Suns” drug network which the DOJ claims was run by Maduro. If and when he appears to testify against the abducted Venezuelan leader, the American public could learn that the “cartel” was founded not by the deposed Venezuelan president or one of his allies, but by the CIA to traffic drugs into US cities.

As sloppy and politicized as the DOJ’s indictment might be, it has enabled Trump to frame his lawless “Donroe Doctrine” as an aggressive policy of legal enforcement, emboldening the US president to levy further threats to abduct or bump off heads of state who stand in the way of his resource rampage. This appears to be the real purpose of the imperial courtroom spectacle to come.

Keep reading

Virginia’s Deep State Deepens Under Spanberger

Virginia’s Democratic Governor-elect Abigail Spanberger has displayed incredible audacity with her nomination of Stanley Meador to be the next Virginia secretary for public safety and homeland security. The choice provides a jarring indication of the radical agenda that Spanberger, a former CIA agent, intends to pursue in her administration. Stanley Meador was the Special Agent in Charge (SAC) of the FBI’s Richmond, Virginia, office that issued the infamous FBI memo targeting “radical-traditionalist Catholics.”  

In June, Meador was one of many agents fired, demoted, or put on leave by new FBI Director Kash Patel. The New York Times rushed to their defense, of course, characterizing the dismissals as “retaliation” and “politicization” of the Bureau. The Times story on June 5, 2025 claimed that the agents were targeted on an “enemies list” of FBI employees who were being purged for not being personally loyal to Donald Trump. Here are the opening paragraphs of the Times story, titled “As Ousters Continue, F.B.I. Singles Out Employee Over Friendship With Trump Critic:

The F.B.I. has targeted another round of employees who ran afoul of conservatives, forcing out two veteran agents in Virginia — one of whom is friends with a critic of President Trump — and punishing another in Las Vegas, according to several people familiar with the matter.

Two of the men, Spencer Evans and Stanley Meador, are senior agents who ran F.B.I. field offices in Las Vegas and Richmond, Va. The third, Michael Feinberg, a top deputy in the Norfolk, Va., office, had ties to a former agent whom Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, identified in his book as part of the so-called deep state.

The moves add to the transfers, ousters and demotions that have rippled across the F.B.I. as Mr. Patel and Dan Bongino, his No. 2, promise to remake the country’s premier law enforcement agency. The wave of changes, current and former agents say, amount to little more than retaliation, underscoring what they describe as the politicization of the F.B.I. as its leaders seek to mollify Mr. Trump’s supporters.

Naturally, the Times’ spin purposely ignores the facts concerning the agents’ egregious actions, including their participation in the illegal, unconstitutional, and immoral weaponization of the FBI against President Donald Trump and his advisors, appointees, and supporters. More on that down below, but first, back to Governor-elect Spanberger.

Keep reading

Spook Story: Ex-US amb. to Venezuela monetizes coup-plotting alongside former CIA officials

Former US ambassador to Venezuela James “Jimmy” Story has gone from de facto manager of the putschist, Washington-backed opposition in Venezuela to one of the most prominent voices promoting the Trump-Rubio regime change policy inside legacy media.

On December 7, CNN’s Fareed Zakaria featured his calls for toppling Venezuela’s government during a panel with convicted Iran-Contra felon Elliot Abrams, while the New York Times provided Story with space to argue that “Washington should approach dismantling the Maduro regime as we would any criminal enterprise.” Story’s appearance on Piers Morgan did not work out quite as well because Grayzone editor Max Blumenthal was present to dismantle his neocolonial propaganda.

While he pushes a US war on Venezuela in the media, Story is also monetizing his coup-plotting experience by soliciting clients for a series of consulting firms, where he works alongside top former CIA officials who orchestrated destabilization operations inside Venezuela.

The first of these firms is Dinámica Americas, where Story serves as a senior advisor helping “companies, philanthropies, non-profits, and multilateral and other organizations successfully navigate evolving conditions in the Americas.” Among his colleagues at Dinámica is Juan Cruz, the former CIA director for Latin America, whom The Grayzone exposed for his role in managing opposition assets in the lead-up to the failed Operation Gideon mercenary invasion.

At Frontier Advisors, a risk management firm he co-founded, Story works alongside Zodiac Gold CEO David Kol, whose company exploits the mineral wealth of Liberia, which suffers from rampant smuggling and deforestation due to foreign domination of its gold mining zones. Story’s fellow managing partner at Frontier, former Lt. Gen. Dave Bellon also runs a private equity firm, Global Frontier Capital, that “create[s] carbon credits to sell to investors and polluters in need of offsets” in South Asia and South America. These are precisely the kind of figures yearning to feast on the carcass of the Venezuelan state in a fantasy post-Maduro scenario.

Finally, Story is listed as “strategic partner” at Tower Strategy LLC, a lobbying firm founded by the ex-CIA station chief for Venezuela, Enrique “Rick” de la Torre. As journalist Jack Poulson explains in the article we’ve republished from his All Source Intelligence, de la Torre previously worked at a lobbying firm founded by one of the closest confederates of Secretary of State Marco Rubio – the lead architect of Trump’s regime change strategy in Venezuela.

Keep reading

CIA Drone Carried Out First Known Land Strike On Venezuela 

The CIA is reported to have carried out a bombing operation within Venezuelan territory, CNN and The New York Times report in follow-up to President Trump touting that the US had knocked out “a big facility”.

CNN while citing unnamed sources, reports that the CIA conducted a drone strike on a remote dock along Venezuela’s coastline, after the US suspected the site was being used to store and transport illegal drugs, and which were supposedly bound for America.

Reports indicate the location was unoccupied at the time of the strike, which occurred earlier this month. The New York Times published a similar account based on anonymous sources, specifying that the operation took place last Wednesday.

As we detailed, President Trump had on Friday in a radio interview disclosed something which missed the attention of the US and global media. He let slip that a large land site had been knocked out by a strike from US forces in the Caribbean.

Trump may have actually assumed the attack which he disclosed publicly for the first time was already being reported on, but it had not. He was being interviewed by John Catsimatidis, the Republican billionaire who owns the WABC radio station in New York on his The Cats & Cosby Show, and the two were talking about the Venezuela campaign. 

“They have a big plant or a big facility where the ships come from,” Trump said, though he did not explicitly identify the exact location or even country attacked. “Two nights ago we knocked that out.”

Interestingly, the remarks generated almost no headlines for much of that weekend. But by Monday he expanded on those remarks during a press conference, saying the target was located on Venezuela’s coast and that a “major explosion” occurred at a dock where boats were supposedly loaded with drugs.

“There was a major explosion in the dock area where they load the boats up with drugs,” he told reporters at Mar-a-Lago, his club and residence in Florida.

“They load the boats up with drugs. So we hit all the boats, and now we hit the area. It’s the implementation area, that’s where they implement, and that is no longer around.”

But even after this, neither CIA, nor White House, nor Pentagon would comment. Even more strange was that Venezuelan officials themselves have also remained silent, issuing no public statements regarding the alleged attack. It is perhaps the case they don’t want the population to panic, or else don’t want to give acknowledgement of a successful land strike by Washington.

Keep reading