The Trump administration sought Monday to distance itself from an apparently abortive attempt to topple Venezuelan socialist President Nicolas Maduro over the weekend, in a mission that a former U.S. Special Forces soldier said envisioned a “daring amphibious raid” near Caracas.
The Trump administration has long supported efforts to oust Mr. Maduro, but there were far more questions than answers about the shadowy operation, which reportedly left eight people dead and deepened a mystery over who authorized and financed the assault.
“The United States Government had no connection to this weekend’s events, nor with Jordan Goudreau,” a State Department spokesperson said in reference to the former Green Beret, who claimed in a video online to have organized the pre-dawn raid from a base in neighboring Colombia. The Pentagon did not respond to requests for comment.
Venezuela’s U.S.-backed opposition leader Juan Guaido on Monday also denied having anything to do with Mr. Goudreau, as Mr. Maduro’s government hailed the failure of the mission and announced it was mobilizing more than 25,000 troops to hunt for other rebel cells.
The Associated Press reported Mr. Goudreau has worked with a retired Venezuelan army general now facing U.S. narcotics charges, training Venezuelan military deserters at secret camps inside Colombia. The raiders apparently planned to arrest Mr. Maduro, but the ragtag group lacked funding and U.S. government support, and appears to have been penetrated by Maduro’s extensive Cuban-backed intelligence network, according to the AP.
By Sunday night, the mission had apparently failed, with the Maduro government hurling allegations at the Trump administration and U.S. officials accusing Mr. Maduro of fabricating the whole episode for his own gain.
Mr. Guaido, whom Washington and some 60 other nations claim is Venezuela’s rightful president, said Monday he had “no relationship nor responsibility for any actions” taken by Mr. Goudreau — despite claims by the former Green Beret that Mr. Guaido had hired his private security company to engage in unspecified “services.”
In a video circulated Sunday, Mr. Goudreau and retired Venezuelan Capt. Javier Nieto, both of whom are believed to live in Florida, appeared in an undisclosed location to claim the anti-Maduro raid was ongoing inside Venezuela.
“Our units have been activated in the south, west and east of Venezuela,” Mr. Goudreau said in the video, wearing a New York Yankees ball cap and asserting that 60 of his men remained on the ground inside Venezuela. The Times was unable to verify the claim.
The video circulated after the Maduro government had claimed Sunday to have foiled a pre-dawn beach raid — arresting eight accused “mercenaries” and killing several others — near Venezuelan port city of La Guaira, about 20 miles from Caracas.
“Venezuela holds the governments of Donald Trump and Colombia’s [President] Ivan Duque responsible,” the Maduro government said in a statement.
The AP investigative report claimed Mr. Goudreau has worked closely with retired Venezuelan Gen. Cliver Alcala, an organizer of Venezuelan military deserters who handed himself over to U.S. authorities in late March after being indicted on drug trafficking charges.
The State Department’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, in a background statement Monday, pushed back against claims made by the Maduro government and pushed aside the claims made in the AP report about Mr. Alcala.
“General Alcala has been arrested in Colombia and extradited to the United States, where he is now detained per the indictment issued in the Southern District of New York,” the statement said. “While we have seen the reports out of Venezuela, we have little reason to believe anything that comes out of the … regime. The Maduro regime has been consistent in its use of misinformation in order to shift focus from its mismanagement of Venezuela.”
After years of hostility and demands for Mr. Maduro’s ouster, the Trump administration recently floated an offer to lift crippling sanctions on Venezuela within a year if Mr. Maduro agreed to step aside to allow elections to be held — and if Cuba and Russia withdrew their military support backing the embattled socialist leader.
Mr. Goudreau, meanwhile, insisted his mission was far from over, telling the AP in a phone interview Monday that 52 of his fighters, including two U.S. veterans, had successfully deployed inside Venezuela and were actively recruiting members of the government’s security forces to defect.
“That’s going to take time,” Mr. Goudreau said. “The ultimate goal has never changed — it’s to liberate Venezuela.”
• This article is based in part on wire service reports.
• Guy Taylor can be reached at gtaylor@washingtontimes.com.
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