President Trump’s raid on Venezuela took months of preparation. CIA had assets on the ground; there was a source close to Nicolas Maduro that tracked his movements, and Delta Force built a replica safe house to practice the eventual extraction. Airstrikes against Islamic terrorists in Nigeria came first, but January 3 was when this long-approved mission got the green light. Yet the press learned about it early and did something shocking—they held off on publishing it. The Washington Post and New York Times found out about the raid hours before the first airstrikes rocked Caracas (via Semafor):
The New York Times and Washington Post learned of a secret US raid on Venezuela soon before it was scheduled to begin Friday night — but held off publishing what they knew to avoid endangering US troops, two people familiar with the communications between the administration and the news organizations said.
The decisions in the New York and Washington newsrooms to maintain official secrecy is in keeping with longstanding American journalistic traditions — even at a moment of unprecedented mutual hostility between the American president and a legacy media that continues to dominate national security reporting. And it offers a rare glimpse at a thread of contact and even cooperation over some of the highest-stakes American national security issues.
President Donald Trump and top administration officials Saturday praised the stunning seizure of the Venezuelan president, which Trump approved at 10:46 p.m. Friday, citing both the lack of American casualties and the total secrecy surrounding the attack.
“The coordination, the stealth, the precision, the very long arm of American justice - all on display in the middle of the night,” Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth said.
[…]
The New York Times withheld some details in advance about the US Bay of Pigs invasion, and for months delayed a story on national security administration warrantless wiretapping during the Bush administration after White House officials said the story’s publication would endanger American lives.
Last August, American outlets held back reporting that the US was in the process of a prisoner exchange with Russia for Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and former US Marine Paul Whelan.
Yeah, good move, but a broken clock is right twice a day. The mainstream media is still the dishonest enemy of the people. Though these outlets kept their mouths shut, the same could not be said of congressional Democrats. You can’t trust them, and Trump and his team were right to keep their sorry a**es in the dark.
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