The director of the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), John Ratcliffe, met in Caracas with the interim dictator of Venezuela, Delcy Rodríguez, according to information from The New York Times, released this Friday (16).
The meeting between the two would have taken place this Thursday (15), the same day that Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado visited the White House, on which occasion she presented President Donald Trump with his Nobel gold medal.
Ratcliffe was the highest-ranking American official and the first cabinet member to visit Venezuela since the US military’s capture of dictator Nicolás Maduro nearly two weeks ago.
A Washington source told the Times that the meeting with Rodríguez took place at Trump’s request “to convey the message that the U.S. expects an improvement in labor relations.”
According to the information transmitted, the CIA director dealt with issues involving intelligence cooperation, economic stability and the need to ensure that the country is no longer a “safe haven for US adversaries, especially drug traffickers”.
A confidential CIA report, completed before the Venezuela operation, assessed that Maduro’s high-ranking allies, including interim dictator Delcy Rodríguez, would be in a better position to maintain short-term stability in an interim government if dictator Nicolás Maduro were removed from the Venezuelan political scene. The information comes from sources who spoke to the Wall Street Journal.
White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt reiterated this Thursday the Trump administration’s opinion that Corina Machado does not have enough support in Venezuela to lead a political transition.
