In the closing year of US President Donald Trump’s first term, the CIA secretly launched a cyberattack that crippled Venezuela’s intelligence service, targeting the digital backbone of President Nicolas Maduro’s regime, CNN revealed, citing four individuals familiar with the covert operation.

The same sources told CNN that the operation had achieved complete success, adding that it was a "throwaway"; the CIA’s way of appeasing the president’s desire to act on Venezuela while steering clear of more dangerous or direct measures against Caracas.

This little-known episode was part of a broader pattern of covert maneuvers aimed at placating Trump’s insistence on removing Maduro, efforts that ultimately deepened his frustration as the Venezuelan leader stood strong.

Today, those earlier tensions are reflected in the president’s renewed determination to take a harder line in his second term. Since the summer, Washington has amassed roughly 10,000 troops in the region and dispatched an aircraft carrier from Europe. Trump has openly discussed the possibility of direct strikes on Venezuelan soil and has reportedly authorized new CIA operations there. Recent “attack demonstration” flights by US bombers off the Venezuelan coast underscored the administration’s readiness to project power.

While officials continue to describe the buildup as part of "an anti-narcotics campaign," the scale and scope of the deployment have fueled speculation of a looming regime-change mission, the report stressed.

Frustration and the military option

Throughout his first term, Trump repeatedly demanded military plans to escalate pressure on Maduro. But both Pentagon and intelligence officials resisted such moves, wary of plunging the US into another costly regional conflict, CNN added, according to multiple accounts.

In one 2019 meeting, a senior Pentagon official reportedly struck the table in exasperation as White House aides pushed for more aggressive options. “In the first Trump administration, he said that all options are on the table,” recalled Jimmy Story, the former top US diplomat to Venezuela. “Many of the options are now at the front door.”

A former senior administration official summarized Trump’s current mindset bluntly: “I told these guys I wanted the military option in 2018 and 2019, they didn’t give me one. I want a real one now.”

'Get it done'

Trump’s fixation with toppling Maduro dates back to 2017, when he first raised the prospect of military action during a meeting with his national security advisor H.R. McMaster at his Bedminster golf resort. “I’m not going to rule out a military option for Venezuela,” he told reporters afterward.

That demand resurfaced repeatedly. By 2019, Trump’s frustration had reached a boiling point. “Get it done,” he told national security advisor John Bolton, referring to Maduro’s ouster. “This is the fifth time I’ve asked for it,” Bolton later wrote in his memoir.

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Inside the administration, it became increasingly clear that both the Pentagon and the CIA were uneasy about using force. CIA Director Gina Haspel, sources said, opposed direct agency involvement in operations against Maduro, resisting White House pressure for covert action.

Divisions between civilian and military leadership left US policy adrift. Officials debated how best to undermine Maduro without repeating Cold War-era failures that had tarnished the CIA’s legacy in Latin America. 

The Guaidó gamble

By 2019, Washington shifted toward a strategy of bolstering opposition leader Juan Guaidó, recognizing him as Venezuela’s legitimate president after a widely condemned election handed Maduro another term. More than 50 nations followed suit.

“The regime was shaky, and we thought the opposition had a good chance,” one former senior official told CNN.

But optimism quickly faded. Guaidó never gained control of the military, protests fizzled, and a failed coup in spring 2019 left him a symbolic figure without real power.

Trump’s anger was palpable. He viewed both Guaidó and his own advisors as having let him down. “In his mind, Guaidó and the opposition failed him,” said a former White House official. “But so had his own government, they’d backed a losing horse.”

Covert operations and cyberwarfare

After Guaidó’s collapse, Trump’s attention drifted, but his stance hardened. White House officials began exploring covert methods, cyberattacks, sabotage, and intelligence gathering to weaken the regime.

Plans for a dedicated Coast Guard cyber unit focused on targeting alleged Venezuelan-linked narcotics networks were floated but never implemented amid legal and bureaucratic constraints. Another idea,  a cyber strike against a hydroelectric dam, was quickly dismissed as impractical.

According to one former White House official, the hope was that enough disruption could trigger fractures within Venezuela’s armed forces, potentially prompting defections. But critics inside the administration derided the approach as directionless. “Opposition doesn’t have a plan. We don’t have a plan,” the official said. “Hope is not a plan.”

Hawks ascendant

At one stage, some officials thought Trump might soften his stance. Special envoy Richard Grenell reportedly met Maduro multiple times to negotiate the release of detained US citizens. But those talks ended abruptly when Trump ordered Grenell to stand down, handing control of the Venezuela file to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a leading advocate of regime change. “Then the hawks took over,” said Story. “So now it’s ‘maximum pressure’ to another level.”

As the US military presence has grown, the administration has conducted a series of lethal strikes on small boats leaving Venezuelan ports, which it claims were tied to narcotics trafficking. Yet the Pentagon has offered no evidence to support that assertion.

Story said he would be “very surprised” if US ships stationed in the Caribbean weren’t used “in some way” against the Maduro government. “It’s not a force capable of invading the country,” he explained, “but it could potentially be a force capable of doing a highly sophisticated rendition of senior leadership.”

Political gamble

For all the saber-rattling, Trump remains sensitive to the optics of meddling, as per the report. Having long criticized US failures in Iraq and Afghanistan, he is acutely aware of the risks of alienating voters wary of another foreign conflict.

Ultimately, one former White House official told CNN that the president could frame any outcome as a victory.

“This is wag the dog,” the official said. “This is anything you want it to be.”