Senior military officials on Wednesday presented President Trump with updated options for potential operations in Venezuela, including strikes on land, according to multiple sources familiar with the meetings at the White House.
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine and other senior officials briefed the president on military options for the coming days, the sources said.
No final decision has been made, however, two of the sources told CBS News.
White House spokespeople did not immediately comment. A Pentagon spokesperson declined to comment.
The U.S. intelligence community assisted in providing information for potential operations, the sources said. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard did not attend White House discussions because she was returning from an overseas trip. Secretary of State Marco Rubio was in Canada at a G7 summit of foreign ministers.
Earlier this week, the USS Gerald Ford carrier strike group entered U.S. Southern Command’s area of responsibility. Southern Command is the primary combatant unit for operations in the Caribbean and South America.
The Ford joins a flotilla of destroyers, war planes and special operations assets that are already in the region.
Over the last two months, the U.S. military has conducted strikes against at least 21 vessels it alleges were ferrying drugs from South America to the U.S. (There have been 20 strikes so far, but an operation in late October targeted two boats.) At least 80 alleged smugglers have been killed in the strikes. Two survived and were repatriated to their home countries of Ecuador and Colombia. The man released in Ecuador was freed because authorities found no evidence he had committed a crime.
At a defense summit Wednesday in Fort Wayne, Indiana, Hegseth raised the Trump administration’s offensive against narcotics traffickers.
“If you’re trafficking drugs to poison the American people and we know you’re a designated foreign terrorist or trafficker, we will find you and we will kill you,” Hegseth said. “No one is better at tracking and networking and mapping and hunting than the American military. Been honing those skills for many decades in foreign lands.”
