Despite an unidentified party leaking plans of the Trump administration’s top secret military operation targeting Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela to both The New York Times and the Washington Post, neither publication decided to expose it, Semafor reported Saturday night.
Two anonymous sources, described as familiar with the communication between the administration and media outlets, told Semafor that both outlets declined to break the news on the operation before it happened out of concern for U.S. troops involved. The military incursion, carried out early Saturday, resulted in the capture and ouster of socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro, whom a grand jury later indicted on four charges, including narco-terrorism conspiracy.
The identity of the leaker or leakers was not made public as of Sunday morning.
President Donald Trump gave his final approval to go ahead with the operation at 10:46 p.m. on Friday night, fewer than eight hours before he announced on Truth Social that Maduro had been captured and flown out of Venezuela. A string of photos posted to the president’s primary social media account Saturday afternoon show him alongside senior members of his administration in a situation room at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida.
While a few U.S. soldiers were injured during the strikes, there were no American fatalities during the operation, according to Trump.
The decisions not to report on leaked information about the then-upcoming raid by the outlets regularly criticized by Trump as peddling “fake news” were not the first time in American history in which media establishments delayed or withheld reporting on national security matters out of concern for U.S. service members’ safety.
First in @semafor: NYT, WaPo learned of the secret US raid on Venezuela soon before it was scheduled to begin but held off publishing what they had at the administration’s request to avoid endangering US troops pic.twitter.com/LyWNSpNJwK
— Max Tani (@maxwelltani) January 4, 2026
The New York Times in 1961 abided by the federal government’s request and decided not to report information related to the CIA’s involvement in the ultimately doomed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba.
The same outlet, while reporting on the then-unfolding Iran-Contra affair in 1985, decided not to publish the name of key player Col. Oliver North out of concern for the Marine Corps officer’s life. The Washington Post, however, appeared to disagree with its competitor’s rationale and named North in its report of the scandal.
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