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Tuesday November 12, 2024
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Secret US spying targeted top Venezuelan officials

It also offers rare window into lengths DEA was willing to go to fight drug war in a country that banned US drug agents nearly two decades ago

By News Desk
February 02, 2024
(First row, L to R) The AG Venezuela, Tarek William Saab, President Nicolas Maduro, President of the Supreme Court of Justice, Caryslia Rodríguez, the president of the National Assembly, Jorge Rodríguez, and the president of the CNE, Elvis Amoroso, attend the inauguration ceremony of the judicial year at the Supreme Court of Justice building in Caracas on January 31, 2024. — AFP
(First row, L to R) The AG Venezuela, Tarek William Saab, President Nicolas Maduro, President of the Supreme Court of Justice, Caryslia Rodríguez, the president of the National Assembly, Jorge Rodríguez, and the president of the CNE, Elvis Amoroso, attend the inauguration ceremony of the judicial year at the Supreme Court of Justice building in Caracas on January 31, 2024. — AFP

MIAMI: A secret memo obtained by the media details a years-long covert operation by the US Drug Enforcement Administration that sent undercover operatives into Venezuela to surreptitiously record and build drug-trafficking cases against the country’s leadership – a plan the US acknowledged from the start was arguably a violation of international law. “It is necessary to conduct this operation unilaterally and without notifying Venezuelan officials,” reads the 15-page 2018 memo expanding “Operation Money Badger,” an investigation that authorities say targeted dozens of people, including Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

While there’s no clear mechanism to hold the United States accountable legally, the revelation threatens to roil already fraught relations with Maduro’s socialist government and could deepen resentment of the US across Latin America over perceived meddling. It also offers a rare window into the lengths the DEA was willing to go to fight the drug war in a country that banned US drug agents nearly two decades ago.