US green beret – ‘I led coup attempt against Venezuelan president’
A former US green beret has taken responsibility for what he claimed was a failed attack aimed at overthrowing Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro that ended with eight dead.
Former US army special forces member Jordan Goudreau’s comments in an interview with an exiled Venezuelan journalist capped a bizarre day that started with reports of a pre-dawn amphibious raid on Sunday near the South American country’s heavily guarded capital.
Mr Goudreau had been working with a retired Venezuelan army general – now facing US narcotics charges – to train dozens of deserters from Venezuela’s security forces at secret camps inside neighbouring Colombia. The goal was to mount a cross-border raid that would end in Mr Maduro’s arrest.
But from the outset the ragtag army lacked funding and US government support, all but guaranteeing defeat against Mr Maduro’s sizableif-demoralised military.
It also appears to have been penetrated by Mr Maduro’s extensive Cuban-backed intelligence network. Both Mr Goudreau and retired Venezuelan Captain Javier Nieto declined to speak on Sunday when contacted after posting a video from an undisclosed location saying they had launched an anti-maduro putsch called “Operation Gideon”. Both men live in Florida.
“A daring amphibious raid was launched from the border of Colombia deep into the heart of Caracas,” Mr Goudreau, in a New York Yankees baseball cap, said in the video standing next to Mr Nieto, who was dressed in armoured vest with a rolledup Venezuelan flag pinned to his shoulder.
“Our units have been activated in the south, west and east of Venezuela.”
Mr Goudreau said 60 of his men were still on the ground and cells were being activated inside Venezuela, some of them fighting under the command of Venezuelan National Guardsman Captain Antonio Sequea, who participated in a barracks revolt against Mr Maduro a year ago.
None of their claims of an ongoing operation could be independently verified.
But Mr Goudreau said he hoped to join the rebels soon and invited Venezuelans and Mr Maduro’s troops to join the insurgency. However, there was no sign of any fighting in the capital or elsewhere as night fell.
In an interview later with Miami-based journalist Patricia Poleo, Mr Goudreau provided a contradictory account of his activities and the support he claims to have once had – and then lost – from Juan Guaido, the opposition leader recognized as Venezuela’s interim president by the US and some 60 countries.
He provided to Mr Poleo what he said was an eight-page contract signed by Mr Guaido in October for $213 million (£171m).