Trump Has a Secret List of 24 “Designated Terrorist Organizations.” We Got Some of the Names.

To justify its deadly strikes on alleged drug-smugglers at sea, the Trump administration now claims that there are 24 designated terrorist organizations engaging in armed conflict with the United States, three government sources told The Intercept. This new list of Latin American cartels and criminal organizations is attached to a classified opinion produced by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel to support the administration’s argument that attacks on suspected drug-traffickers in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean are lawful. The list of groups supposedly engaged in “non-international armed conflict” with the United States includes the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua; Ejército de Liberación Nacional, a Colombian guerrilla insurgency; Cártel de los Soles, a Venezuelan criminal group that the U.S. claims is “headed by Nicolas Maduro and other high-ranking Venezuelan individuals”; and several groups affiliated with the Sinaloa Cartel, according to two of those government sources who spoke to The Intercept on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose classified information. The full list has not been disclosed, even to all lawmakers on the House Armed Services Committee. Of the groups now known to be on the list, there is no evidence that they are actually participating in armed conflict with the United States. “The administration has established a factual and legal alternate universe for the executive branch,” said Brian Finucane, a former State Department lawyer who is a specialist in counterterrorism issues and the laws of war. “This is the president, purely by fiat, saying that the U.S. is in conflict with these undisclosed groups without any congressional authorization. So this is not just a secret war, but a secret unauthorized war. Or, in reality, a make-believe war, because most of these groups we probably couldn’t even be in a war with.” The U.S. military has carried out 17 known attacks on boats in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific Ocean since September, killing at least 70 people. The most recent attack, on a vessel in the Caribbean Sea on Thursday killed three civilians. Military officials admitted to lawmakers that they do not know the identities of all the people on board a vessel before they conduct a lethal strike. Following most of the attacks, War Secretary Pete Hegseth or President Donald Trump have claimed that the victims belonged to an unspecified designated terrorist organization, or DTO. “This is not just a secret war, but a secret unauthorized war. Or, in reality, a make-believe war, because most of these groups we probably couldn’t even be in a war with.” Experts in the laws of war and members of Congress say the strikes are illegal extrajudicial killings because the military is not permitted to deliberately target civilians — even suspected criminals — who do not pose an imminent threat of violence. The summary executions are a significant departure from standard practice in the long-running U.S. war on drugs, in which law enforcement arrested suspected drug smugglers. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Hegseth, and other administration officials held a briefing with a small, bipartisan group of lawmakers who oversee national security issues for roughly an hour in a secure facility in the Capitol on Wednesday. Attendees said the administration’s legal justifications didn’t hold up. Related Are You on Trump’s List of Domestic Terrorists? There’s No Way to Know. “The Trump administration remains unable to provide any credible explanation for its extrajudicial and unauthorized military strikes in the Caribbean and Pacific. It was clear from this briefing that the administration’s legal justifications are dubious and meant to circumvent Congress’ constitutional power on matters of war and peace,” said Rep. Gregory W. Meeks, D-N.Y., the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, after attending the briefing. “I continue to believe these strikes are illegal, and an enormous overreach of executive power.” The Pentagon has been withholding key information about the attacks and the list of DTOs for almost two months and has still yet to share all the relevant information with all lawmakers. “While I am glad to have finally been provided the OLC opinion to review, I continue to find it unconvincing and am concerned that the legal reasoning it employs could be used to justify a range of operations that, like the current operations, are deeply problematic,” Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told The Intercept. “It’s unacceptable that only a handful of Members are allowed to understand the Administration’s interpretation of the law. The Administration needs to immediately make the opinion and list of DTOs available for all of Congress to review so that we can conduct our constitutionally mandated oversight of the use of lethal military force. Senate Republicans blocked a war powers resolution on Thursday aimed at preventing Trump from attacking Venezuela after a bipartisan group of senators warned that the undeclared war on alleged drug smugglers in the region could escalate. The vote to advance the resolution failed with 49 senators supporting it and 51 opposing it. Related Rand Paul Reveals Venezuela Boat Attack Was a Drone Strike The resolution, led by Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., would have directed the president “to terminate the use of United States Armed Forces for hostilities within or against Venezuela, unless explicitly authorized by a declaration of war or specific authorization for use of military force.” The resolution had 15 co-sponsors, including Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky. “If colleagues believe that a war against the narco-traffickers in the ocean or a war against Venezuela is a good idea, then put an [authorization of military force] on the table and debate and vote it, but don’t just hand the power over to an executive,” Kaine said on Thursday. “That runs against everything that this nation was founded on.” The administration has no plans to seek an authorization for the use of military force similar to the 2001 AUMF, which authorized counterterrorism operations by the U.S. military against those responsible for 9/11, Pentagon briefers told lawmakers last week. “Even if Congress authorized it, this would still be illegal under U.S. and international law because we are not in an armed conflict with these cartels,” Rep. Sara Jacobs, D-Calif., a member of the House Armed Services Committee who attended a briefing on the strikes last week, told The Intercept. “And so this is just murder.” Six government officials, among them two who confirmed the count of 24 DTOs, who spoke to The Intercept over weeks expressed high confidence that most, if not all, of the boats targeted in the strikes have been smuggling drugs. Sources said the United States has been using top secret sensitive compartmented information involving human sources and signals intelligence, provided by the National Security Agency and the CIA, to inform the attacks. Related License to Kill: Trump’s Extrajudicial Executions Lawmakers still expressed concern about U.S. targeting procedures. Himes said he wasn’t confident that U.S. forces are using the same “structure and architecture” employed in past counterterrorism strikes during the war on terror to prevent the killing of innocent civilians, and that sufficient safeguards within the intelligence community may not be in place. “If they cannot find a connection or show a connection with a DTO, then it goes to the law enforcement route with an interdiction. So that was their decision tree. But nailing them down more on what that connection is and how they show it and what they’re looking for, we didn’t get a lot of good information on that,” said Jacobs. “They know how many people they killed, but they made it seem like they were not really doing any post-strike evidence gathering.” The people aboard the boats are hardly drug kingpins. An investigation by The Associated Press into the lives of nine of those killed in U.S. strikes found that while they had been smuggling drugs, they were not narco-terrorists or gang leaders but laborers, a fisherman, a motorcycle taxi driver, two were low-level criminals, and one was a local crime boss. All were from a desperately poor area, and most were crewing such boats for the first or second time. Military briefers have admitted to members of Congress that they cannot satisfy the evidentiary burden necessary to hold or prosecute survivors of the strikes. Neither U.S. Southern Command, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Justice Department, nor the White House would provide the list of 24 DTOs who it claims are engaged in secret wars with America. The count of 24, according to a single source, was first reported by CNN on Thursday. The fantasy conflicts between the United States and Tren de Aragua, Ejército de Liberación Nacional, Cártel de los Soles, and various Sinaloa Cartel groups and other criminal organizations are a farce since America’s adversaries do not even know they are considered at war with the U.S., nor do the American people know with whom the U.S. is facing in a supposed state of armed conflict. Some experts even doubt the Cártel de los Soles — one the 24 DTOs — actually exists, explaining it is more a system of corruption than a group with a leadership structure. It is a foreign analogue to antifa, which the Trump administration claims is a “domestic terror organization” but is actually a set of ideas. Notably, Cártel de los Soles is not even mentioned in a two-volume, 670-page State Department report on global anti-drug operations released earlier this year. “The bottom line is, these strikes are illegal,” said Finucane. “We need to see the full list of groups that the government has given itself permission to attack without congressional authorization. And Congress needs to push back on this lawless killing and a potential real, illegal war with Venezuela.” The post Trump Has a Secret List of 24 “Designated Terrorist Organizations.” We Got Some of the Names. appeared first on The Intercept.