Venezuela Says It Nabbed CIA Agents As US Warships Mass In Caribbean

The government of Venezuela’s socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro claimed in a Sunday statement that it captured an alleged “mercenary group” with “direct information” from the CIA.

The statement from Maduro’s Vice President Delcy Rodríguez accused the alleged group of planning a “false flag operation” from around nearby Trinidad and Tobago and accused the small island nation of performing ongoing “military exercises” under “the coordination, financing and control of the United States Southern Command.” The claim came days after the Trump administration’s Department of War authorized the deployment of the world’s largest aircraft carrier to Latin American waters to target drug cartels.

“Venezuela reports that it has captured a mercenary group with direct information from the U.S. intelligence agency, CIA, being able to determine that a false flag attack is underway from waters bordering Trinidad and Tobago, or from Trinidad or Venezuelan territory itself, which generates a complete military confrontation against our country,” Rodríguez said in the statement, originally in Spanish.

The Venezuelan vice president went on to compare the alleged “planned action” to the sinking of the USS Maine in 1898 and the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964 — both widely believed to have been misrepresented — which led, respectively, to the U.S. declaring war on Spain and to the escalation of the Vietnam War.

“Venezuela does not accept threats from any U.S. vassal government, We are not intimidated by military exercises of war cries,” Rodríguez’s statement added.

The Pentagon announced Friday that it had deployed the Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group to waters in the vicinity of South America as an effort to counter transnational cartel activity. The vessel has the capacity of carrying up to 90 aircraft and was, at the time of the announcement, in Mediterranean waters near Croatia,