CIA's 2025 Christmas Eve Strike on Venezuelan Narco Empire
CIA's Christmas Eve Strike Ignites U.S. Shadow War on Venezuelan Narco Empire
By Max Afterburner | December 31, 2025
Full video: https://youtu.be/L3s7gf6Nj2E
On Christmas Eve 2025, a quiet dock on Venezuela's Guajira Peninsula erupted in flames—a CIA drone strike that marked the first confirmed U.S. attack inside Maduro's borders. Eyewitnesses from the indigenous Wayuu community described a low hum slicing the night sky, followed by a deafening boom that illuminated the horizon, vaporizing storage huts and speedboats tied to the Tren de Aragua cartel. Debris, including twisted metal and scorched hulls, washed ashore in neighboring Colombia days later, confirming the hit on a facility loading cocaine and fentanyl precursors bound for U.S. ports. President Trump acknowledged the op on December 26 during a WABC radio interview, calling it a takedown of a "big facility" in his escalating "shadow war" against Nicolás Maduro's regime—framed as precision anti-drug action but part of a broader chokehold on Venezuela's $8 billion shadow oil trade.
The strike, executed by an RQ-170 Sentinel stealth UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) launched from a U.S. carrier in the Caribbean, exemplifies Trump's "Operation Southern Spear." The RQ-170, with its batwing design and radar-absorbent composites, ghosted in at 300-400 mph (480-640 kph) over 1,200 miles (1,930 km) from the USS Gerald R. Ford strike group, loitering at 20,000 feet for hours via Williams turbofan endurance before dropping GBU-39 small diameter bombs (SDBs). These 250-pound (113 kg) gliders, guided by GPS/INS (inertial navigation system) and laser seekers from Marine Recon spotters, struck within 3 meters—obliterating the site without casualties but crippling Tren de Aragua's export node. No Venezuelan MiG-29s or S-400 batteries (surface-to-air missiles) detected it, thanks to Growler ECM (electronic countermeasures) jamming.
This wasn't random; it's retaliation in a narco-hybrid war Carvajal's recent flip exposed as deliberate since Chávez's 1999 rise, weaponized mid-2000s with Cuban input. Tren de Aragua—10,000 prison-hardened enforcers—exports violence and drugs, fueling U.S. fentanyl deaths that spiked 23x to 72,776 in 2023 per CDC data ([chart here](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db522.htm)). The dock serviced go-fast boats hitting 60 mph (97 kph), armed with AK-74s and modded Mavic drones for evasion. Maduro's FANB (Bolivarian National Armed Forces) shields it, backed by Chinese Type 054A frigates and Russian Tu-160 hypersonics.
Escalation looms: UN Security Council debates rage, with Beijing vowing tanker escorts through the U.S. "quarantine" that's seized three vessels since December 17, slashing exports 70%. Critics decry Democratic silence on this first-term echo, while MAGA hails narco-hunting. A CSIS wargame hypothetical: January 2026 sees Delta teams lasing border warehouses, XBats cueing F-35 Stormbreakers—50 tons destroyed, but ELN retaliation spikes refugees and oil to $135/barrel.