Noem: Oil tanker seizure linked to US anti-drug efforts

Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Sec­re­tary Kristi Noem on Thurs­day linked the seizure of an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela to the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion’s coun­ter­drug ef­forts in Latin Amer­i­ca as ten­sions es­ca­late with the gov­ern­ment of Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro.

Noem’s as­ser­tion, which came dur­ing her tes­ti­mo­ny to the House Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Com­mit­tee, pro­vid­ed the Re­pub­li­can ad­min­is­tra­tion’s most thor­ough as­sess­ment so far of why it took con­trol of the ves­sel on Wednes­day. In­cred­i­bly un­usu­al, the use of U.S. forces to seize a mer­chant ship was a sharp es­ca­la­tion in the ad­min­is­tra­tion’s pres­sure cam­paign on Maduro, who has been charged with nar­coter­ror­ism in the Unit­ed States. Trump of­fi­cials added to it Thurs­day by im­pos­ing sanc­tions on three of Maduro’s nephews.

The Venezue­lan leader dis­cussed the ris­ing ten­sions with Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin on Thurs­day. The Krem­lin said in a state­ment that Putin reaf­firmed his sup­port for Maduro’s pol­i­cy of “pro­tect­ing na­tion­al in­ter­ests and sov­er­eign­ty in the face of grow­ing ex­ter­nal pres­sure.”Asked to de­lin­eate the U.S. Coast Guard’s role in the tanker seizure, Noem called it “a suc­cess­ful op­er­a­tion di­rect­ed by the pres­i­dent to en­sure that we’re push­ing back on a regime that is sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly cov­er­ing and flood­ing our coun­try with dead­ly drugs and killing our next gen­er­a­tion of Amer­i­cans.”

US has seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, Trump says US air­craft car­ri­er nears Venezuela in flex of Amer­i­can mil­i­tary pow­er US la­bels Maduro-tied Car­tel de los Soles as a ter­ror or­ga­ni­za­tion. It's not a car­tel per se­Noem went on to lay out the ”lethal dos­es of co­caine” she said had been kept from en­ter­ing the U.S. as a re­sult.

Asked Thurs­day whether U.S. op­er­a­tions in the re­gion were about drugs or oil, White House press sec­re­tary Karo­line Leav­itt al­so gave a bi­fur­cat­ed an­swer, say­ing the ad­min­is­tra­tion was “fo­cused on do­ing many things in the West­ern Hemi­sphere.” She not­ed that such seizures could con­tin­ue, ar­gu­ing that the com­modi­ties be­ing trans­port­ed were used to fund the il­le­gal drug trade.“We’re not go­ing to stand by and watch sanc­tioned ves­sels sail the seas with black mar­ket oil, the pro­ceeds of which will fu­el nar­coter­ror­ism of rogue and il­le­git­i­mate regimes around the world,” she said.

The Jus­tice De­part­ment had ob­tained a war­rant for the ves­sel be­cause it had been known for “car­ry­ing black mar­ket, sanc­tioned oil,” Leav­itt said, adding that “the Unit­ed States does in­tend to get the oil” that was on­board the tanker.

Trump told re­porters a day ear­li­er at the White House that the tanker “was seized for a very good rea­son.” Asked what would hap­pen to the oil aboard the tanker, Trump said, “Well, we keep it, I guess.”The U.S. has built up the largest mil­i­tary pres­ence in the re­gion in decades and launched a se­ries of dead­ly strikes on al­leged drug-smug­gling boats in the Caribbean Sea and the east­ern Pa­cif­ic Ocean, a cam­paign that is fac­ing grow­ing scruti­ny from Con­gress.

Trump, who has said land at­tacks are com­ing soon but has not of­fered more de­tails, has broad­ly jus­ti­fied the moves as nec­es­sary to stem the flow of fen­tanyl and oth­er il­le­gal drugs in­to the U.S.Venezuela’s gov­ern­ment said in a state­ment that the tanker seizure “con­sti­tutes a bla­tant theft and an act of in­ter­na­tion­al pira­cy.” Maduro has in­sist­ed the re­al pur­pose of the U.S. mil­i­tary op­er­a­tions is to force him from of­fice.

By MEG KIN­NARD