Demand that the ISCAP declassify the OLC memo being used to justify the killings in the Caribbean.  Act Now!

Dear John,

Can I rant for a second?
I promise there’s a reason.

Since early September 2025, the United States has been firing missiles at small boats near Venezuelan waters. The attacks killed the passengers instantly. Some who survived the first strike were hit again while still in the water. In total, at least 95 people have been killed. Washington calls this a “counter-narcotics operation.”

What’s happening in the Caribbean right now is not about drugs. The Trump administration is recasting criminal activity as so-called “narco-terrorism” to unlock wartime powers. But people who actually live and work on these waters say most of the men killed were fishermen, divers, fathers, sons. UN experts say the killings are extrajudicial. Maritime workers say this is not a fentanyl route. And even if drugs had been present, that would still not be a license to kill people without trial or to launch an undeclared war.

So how is the government getting away with this?

With a secret legal memo.

The military is using a classified Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) opinion to justify taking human lives. The public and even most members of Congress aren’t allowed to read it. Let that sink in. People are being killed based on legal reasoning we are not permitted to see. Demand the Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel (ISCAP) declassify the memo.  

This is not new. This is how the war machine works. After 9/11, OLC memos were used to legalize torture, justify drone assassinations, and redefine war so presidents could bypass Congress. Each time, secrecy came first, and oversight came last, if it came at all. Now the Trump administration is deploying that same legal architecture in the Caribbean, under the shadow of the Monroe Doctrine, treating Latin America once again as a U.S. backyard rather than a region of sovereign nations.

If this memo stands unchallenged, it will not stop at boats near Venezuela. And I don’t say that abstractly. My family is there. My friends are there. The people along those coasts are not faceless figures in a briefing. They are mothers, workers, fishermen, organizers, dignified people who have already endured sanctions, shortages, disinformation, and economic siege. Now they are being told their lives can be erased under a label invented in Washington.

The drug narrative is a smokescreen. The real goal is regime change. And what makes me furious is not only the violence, but the arrogance behind it. Trump and the people around him seem to believe that if they escalate enough, if they strike boats, seize tankers, tighten the stranglehold, Venezuelans will simply comply. That installing a puppet government will bring obedience. That belief is presumptuous and ignorant. It ignores history, dignity, and reality. A regime-change war in Venezuela would not bring stability or submission. It would be catastrophic, for Venezuela and for the entire region.

And the justification is already being built.

From the very first boat strikes, we warned where this logic was heading: drugs would become the new “weapons of mass destruction.” That the label would do the work. That once something is framed as an existential threat, the law will bend to accommodate whatever violence follows.

Yesterday, the White House made that fear real.

The Trump administration formally designated fentanyl as a “Weapon of Mass Destruction.” Not a public health crisis, but a WMD. The same category once used to justify the invasion of Iraq. The same framing that erases limits on force.

That is why this memo terrifies me.

Because once you accept a borderless legal logic, once a president can define an enemy anywhere under elastic labels like “narco-terrorism,” there is no limiting principle. No accountability. No brake. Just the quiet expansion of a war that is never formally declared and never democratically approved. Demand the ISCAP make the memo public.

We have seen this movie before. We know what comes after the secrecy. We know what “test cases” turn into. And I refuse to accept that the lives of people I love, or the sovereignty of an entire country, can be treated as collateral damage in another failed experiment in U.S. power.

That is why we are demanding the memo’s release. The ISCAP has the authority to declassify it. And when a secret document is being used to justify killing people, that authority becomes a moral obligation.

The only reason Trump has not launched a full-scale attack on Venezuela is because he is still testing the ground, testing resistance inside Venezuela, testing Congress, testing the media, and testing us. He knows nearly 70% of people in the United States oppose a war with Venezuela. He knows he cannot sell another Iraq. So he is probing, pushing, looking for the line we will not let him cross. 

We are that line.

Peace and love,
Michelle, Medea, Teri and the entire CODEPINK

P.S.: As threats of war escalate, hearing from eyewitnesses matters. Join the Venezuela Solidarity Network and CODEPINK for “Venezuela Under Threat: Eyewitness Reportbacks,” a live webinar with activists recently returned from Venezuela. Thursday, Dec 18, 6pm ET (Zoom).

P.P.S.: One small way to show your opposition to war: check out our Peace with Venezuela t-shirts.