An investigation reveals a secret CIA system to disable ships that the Trump cabinet wanted to use against the Venezuelan regime

A work that includes the testimony of eight officials from the magnate’s administration and former CIA officials, and informs in an illuminating manner how the US and other foreign partners tried to destabilize the Venezuelan government between 2018 and 2020.

A double objective and the operation of the system

The idea was that Cuba depended on Venezuela’s oil. And U.S. officials maintained that Cuban security services had helped protect Maduro, “essentially serving as Praetorian Guard in the field for the embattled socialist autocrat,” states the ‘Wired’ report. Therefore, “the Trump administration thought that if the US could somehow intercept or sabotage the oil tankers sailing from Venezuela to Cuba, it could strike a blow against both regimes», they maintain.

As a result of these statements, the specialized defense magazine ‘The War Zone’ points out that this weapon may be a system that emits bursts of high-power microwave (HPM) energy. This explains why it could achieve the deactivation, interruption, and in the best of scenarios the destruction of crucial systems, from computerized navigation equipment or electronic means of engine control, stopping a ship in the process, but leaving its crew unharmed.

What’s more, a statement of 2023 related to a US Air Force and US Navy program called High-power Joint Electromagnetic Non-Kinetic Strike (HiJENKS) details: «HPM weapons create invisible rays of electromagnetic energy within a specific spectrum of radio and microwave frequencies “which can cause a variety of temporary or permanent effects on electronic targets.”

And it specifies that “the electromagnetic energy of an HPM weapon can be coupled to an electronic target directly through a transmitting or receiving element.” (like an antenna)or indirectly, through an opening or cable entry points (e.g. cracks or external cables). They can be induce currents and voltages into the target’s circuits, resulting in erroneous signals, system crash, system failure, and physical damage.”

Applications

In fact, it was done a successful test for use at the Navy’s China Lake Test Center in 2022. A project that TWZ claims is a follow-up to the Counter-Electronics High-Power Advanced Microwave Project (CHAMP) missile, which contains an HPM generator payload. . At the same time they indicate that it is also known that the US military funded work on lower-level HPM systems to stop smaller vessels as well as vehicles, including those prepared as suicide bombs on the ground.

The CIA’s ship arrest system might also be able to launch some another type of highly selective electronic warfare or cyber attack to produce blinding effects on sensors and communications that could slow or ultimately stop a ship.

The covert, non-lethal ability to stop ships for experts is extremely attractive. “It could be very useful for visit, boarding, search and seizure operations (called VBSS) without needing to fire a single shot. would easier and safer to board and stop a ship, and in more isolated areas with difficult access where deploying the VBSS would take time, a system of this type could “stop the ship until reinforcements arrived,” indicate. And “it would be an effective form of response to react with very little notice to top-priority intelligence information, such as alerts about the smuggling of particularly worrying shipments, such as nuclear material,” they say.

The CIA’s denial has a key detail

The plan to use this weapon was archived and was not used against Maduro, according to high-ranking sources told ‘Wired’. They also point out that the US intelligence agency refused because “CIA officials explained that they only had one of these systems, which at that time was in another hemisphere and that they did not want to move it to the extreme north of South America. For the TWZ specialists it was a reluctance to reveal what this system was capable of doing unless it was due to a major cause, that is, if a very serious crisis occurred or if it was a very high priority operation. And because now They had a marked objective to use in another area and I didn’t want to jeopardize that operation.

‘Venezuela day one’

This project proposed by Trump’s cabinet had other plans as a precedent. In 2019, Donald Trump had already publicly declared “a possible military option, if necessary,” to confront Venezuela. But it was during an appearance by Maduro in which he accused the United States of endangering his life that led to the green light being given to “a covert initiative led by the CIA toto help overthrow Venezuela’s strongman», points out ‘Wired’. What was not before became a high priority.

It was an especially critical moment with sanctions on the Caracas state oil company. And it also coincided with the rise of the Venezuelan opponent Juan Guaidó. Former US national security advisor John Bolton recounts in his memoirs that “it was time to tighten the screws” on Maduro.

But what this project did was more than anything to reveal the existence of a schism between the hardest wing of the Trump administration, ready for scalable responses, and a part of the CIA not particularly happy to follow his orders. And for the medium “it offers new perspectives on how a second Trump administration could try to evict Maduro.”

A Venezuela Task Force (Working Group on Venezuela) that encountered an internal struggle for resources and disagreements between different US departments. His first step was hack Venezuelan government networks and infrastructure for the collection of intelligence information. Temporarily preventing Venezuelan soldiers from receiving their paychecks to highlight the ineptitude of the regime. “There were quite a few complaints about not being paid,” says a former national security official. Because ““Armies march on their stomachs.”sentence. At the same time they spread pro-democratic content. But Trump’s cabinet called this initiative weak and CIA Director Gina Haspel refused to do anything more forceful.

«The CIA “It is closed, bureaucratic and not very bold… I would like to see an intelligence community more capable of carrying out clandestine operations in support of American policy,” Bolton tells ‘Wired’. He maintains that officials continued traumatized by the Bay of Pigs failure.

That’s when attention shifted to Venezuelan oil tankers and their connection to Cuba. And the officials of the re-elected US president pushed to practice interception operations of these ships. After discarding the secret weapon that the CIA refused to transfer, they entered the scene Colombian operatives who had little success in boycotting Venezuelan army planes.

The initial momentum weakened and Trump even told Bolton that Guaidó “I didn’t have what it took.” Which did not prevent Bolton, who in the end would be removed for being considered too radical in his proposals, from developing plans “for the day after” of Guaidó’s ascension. «A pilot program led by the US Department of the Treasury, known as “Venezuela Day One”, which was going to involve mass distribution of debit cards preloaded for Venezuelans,” he explains. Another project that was archived.

After the closure of the US Embassy in Venezuela, they say that there was a golden opportunity that was lost when Guaidó’s supposed followers backed down, one after another. A domino effect that buried the idea. For the sources The attempt came too late and gradually ceased to be a priority for Trump.

This failed story, however, for specialists offers a lesson not only of what can happen with Trump’s return, but also sheds light on a less public aspect of US military systems and its capacity for development, in the future, in other scenarios on the world board.