Langley Plants The Flag: CIA Takes Point In Post-Maduro Venezuela
January 28th, 2026Via: ZeroHedge:
The CIA is “quietly working” to establish a permanent footprint inside Venezuela to shape the country’s post-Maduro trajectory, according to a CNN report Tuesday – or rather it’s not-so-quietly, with sources saying Washington intends to run Caracas much the way it penetrated Ukraine after 2014.
While the State Department is planning an eventual reopening of a formal US embassy, setting up a CIA annex has been elevated to “priority number one,” an unnamed US official told CNN – though there are serious questions as to why the agency would want to advertise this all over CNN.
From that base, agency operatives would engage with the interim government of Delcy Rodríguez, cultivate opposition factions, and “target third parties who may be threats,” according to the source.
A former US official described the annex as a workaround to traditional diplomacy:
“Before diplomatic channels the annex can help set up liaison channels… that will allow conversations that diplomats cannot have.”
In other words, the intelligence apparatus moves first, with formal diplomacy to follow. According to the unnamed official:
“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.
Of course, no thinking person was entertaining any illusions that it would be anything less than a Langley outpost in Latin America. This is par for the South American course.
