#authorized

Trump's comments were an extraordinary acknowledgement from a president, and they step up the administration's pressure campaign against Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro.

Oct. 15, 2025, 2:33 PM MST / Updated Oct. 15, 2025, 3:31 PM MST

By Dan De Luce

The CIA’s operations abroad are usually shrouded in secrecy, but President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he had authorized the spy agency to take unspecified action in Venezuela, an extraordinary and unprecedented acknowledgement from a commander in chief.

“Why did you authorize the CIA to go into Venezuela?” a reporter asked Trump at the White House.

“I authorized for two reasons, really,” Trump said. “Number one, they have emptied their prisons into the United States of America."

The second reason, the president said, was narcotics trafficking.

“And the other thing are drugs. We have a lot of drugs coming in from Venezuela,” Trump said.

The president’s highly unusual remarks about his orders to the CIA came only hours after The New York Times reported that the Trump administration had authorized the CIA to carry out covert, lethal action in Venezuela.

Authorized Agent

The House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz

“For the first time in its one-hundred-and-twenty-five-year history, the Arthur Conan Doyle Estate has authorized a new Sherlock Holmes novel.

Once again, THE GAME’S AFOOT…

London, 1890. 221B Baker St. A fine art dealer named Edmund Carstairs visits Sherlock Holmes and Dr John Watson to beg for their help. He is being menaced by a strange man in a flat cap – a wanted criminal who seems to have followed him all the way from America. In the days that follow, his home is robbed, his family is threatened. And then the first murder takes place.

Almost unwillingly, Holmes and Watson find themselves being drawn ever deeper into an international conspiracy connected to the teeming criminal underworld of Boston, the gaslit streets of London, opium dens and much, much more. And as they dig, they begin to hear the whispered phrase-the House of Silk-a mysterious entity that connects the highest levels of government to the deepest depths of criminality. Holmes begins to fear that he has uncovered a conspiracy that threatens to tear apart the very fabric of society.”