CIA director traveled to Venezuela to meet with country’s acting president

By Zachary Cohen, Kaanita Iyer, CNN

(CNN) — CIA Director John Ratcliffe met with Venezuela’s acting president Delcy Rodríguez in Caracas on Thursday, according to a US official.

“During the meeting in Caracas, Director Ratcliffe discussed potential opportunities for economic collaboration and that Venezuela can no longer be a safe haven for America’s adversaries, especially narcotraffickers,” the official said.

The meeting, which was first reported by the New York Times, comes as Trump has asserted control over Venezuela, particularly its oil production, saying the US will effectively “run” the country following its capture of Nicolás Maduro earlier this month.

Trump has shown support for Rodríguez, a longtime regime insider, over opposition leader María Corina Machado, who met with the president on Thursday and even gifted him her Nobel Peace Prize medal.

Trump administration officials insisted to lawmakers in a briefing after Maduro’s capture that the move was not a regime change operation since the Venezuelan government remains largely intact and is now led by Rodríguez, who was Maduro’s deputy, sources familiar with the briefing previously told CNN.

The administration’s policy decision to back Rodríguez over Machado was informed by a classified CIA analysis on the impact of Maduro no longer being president and near-term implications of his potential removal, according to a source familiar with the matter.

The tightly held intelligence product was commissioned by senior policymakers, and the CIA was expected to continue providing similar recommendations on the leadership situation in Venezuela going forward, multiple sources previously told CNN.

The CIA was also involved in the plan to capture Maduro. In August, the agency had covertly installed a small team inside Venezuela to track Maduro’s patterns, locations and movements, which helped bolster the operation earlier this month, sources familiar with the plans told CNN.

The assets included a CIA source operating within the Venezuelan government who assisted the United States with tracking Maduro’s location and movements ahead of his capture, one source briefed on the operation told CNN.

Ratcliffe’s meeting with Rodríguez this week was meant to build trust, according to the US official, and reflects the CIA director’s emphasis on human intelligence gathering and wanting the agency to be less risk averse.

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