CIA director John Ratcliffe met with Venezuela’s interim President Delcy Rodríguez for two hours Thursday in Venezuela’s capital, Caracas, to “deliver the message that the United States looks forward to an improved working relationship,” a U.S. official told CBS News Friday.
The official described the trip as historic, noting that Ratcliffe was the first Cabinet-level official to visit Venezuela since the U.S. military operation to remove the country’s autocratic leader Nicolás Maduro nearly two weeks ago.
At the meeting, which was first reported by The New York Times, Ratcliffe was said to convey a warning that Venezuela must stop supporting drug trafficking.
“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 came the same day that President Trump met with Venezuela’s opposition leader María Corina Machado at the White House.
Though Mr. Trump has publicly praised Machado, the administration appears to view Rodríguez — who was vice president under Maduro — as more capable of maintaining stability in Venezuela in the near term.
That aligns with the findings of a CIA analytic assessment that modeled potential political leadership scenarios in Venezuela if Maduro were no longer president, CBS News can confirm. The analysis, which was closely held and briefed to a limited group of senior administration officials, concluded that existing Maduro-aligned officials — including Rodríguez — would be best positioned to maintain short-term stability.
During his Senate confirmation hearings last year, Ratcliffe promised that, as he put it, the agency would be less risk-averse under his leadership. This visit to Caracas reflected the U.S. intelligence chief’s belief that he would not ask the CIA workforce to take risks he would not take himself, the U.S. official told CBS News.
CBS News has previously reported that the CIA had a small team operating clandestinely on the ground in Venezuela as early as August to lay the groundwork for Maduro’s capture, including a human asset helping it track Maduro.
After months of preparation that included building a replica of Maduro’s compound and studying his daily habits, U.S. forces arrived at the Venezuelan president’s residence just after 2 a.m. local time on Jan. 3.
The surprise operation involved U.S. forces dismantling and disabling Venezuela’s air defense systems as U.S. military helicopters neared Caracas, and U.S. military personnel deployed weapons “to ensure the safe passage of the helicopters into the target area,” Joint Chiefs chairman Gen. Dan Caine said earlier this month.
Maduro was apprehended along with his wife, Cilia Flores, and brought to the U.S. to face charges including charges of narco-terrorism, conspiracy to commit narco-terrorism, drug trafficking, money laundering and corruption.
Maduro and Flores appeared before U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein in a federal courthouse in lower Manhattan on Jan. 5.
“I’m innocent. I’m not guilty — I’m a decent man,” Maduro said through an interpreter, insisting that he was “still president of my country.”
Maduro has long been accused of human rights abuses, including extrajudicial killings, torture and repression during his rule over the South American country. He kept his grip on power despite what the U.S. called “overwhelming evidence” that he lost reelection in 2024 to opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia.
U.N. experts at the United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner have expressed concern over the U.S.’s unilateral action to abduct Maduro as a potential violation of international law.
“These actions represent a grave, manifest and deliberate violation of the most fundamental principles of international law, set a dangerous precedent, and risk destabilising the entire region and the world,” the group said in a statement last week.
