Officials: U.S. rebuffed Venezuelan officers plotting a coup

WASHINGTON » The Trump administration met several times last year and early this year with Venezuelan military officers purporting to be dissidents plotting a coup against President Nicolás Maduro, but ultimately rebuffed their requests for assistance, according to U.S. officials.

The operation was small and closely-held, according to one senior official, who described the meetings as “all listening. We listen to anyone who wants to talk to us.”

President Donald Trump, both publicly and privately, has raised the possibility of U.S. military action in Venezuela, although aides have repeatedly dissuaded him, according to a number of officials and people familiar with the episodes, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss foreign policy and intelligence matters.

Maduro has frequently accused the United States of plotting with his opponents and of economic and actual warfare against him.

The outreach by the officers “highlighted the level of desperation” in Venezuela, and the Trump administration was eager to understand what was going on inside the armed forces, according to another person familiar with meetings.

But “we had very little confidence in the ability of these people to do anything, no idea at all about who they represented, and to what extent they had not exposed themselves already,” the person said.

The Venezuelan government did not publicly respond to a report about such meetings, which first appeared Saturday in The New York Times. A spokesman said Maduro or other officials would comment “at the right moment, if they consider it necessary.”

White House National Security Council spokesman Garrett Marquis said in a statement that “the United States government hears daily the concerns of Venezuelans from all walks of life — be they members of the ruling party, the security services, elements of civil society or from among the millions of citizens forced by the regime to flee abroad.”

“U.S. policy preference for a peaceful, orderly return to democracy in Venezuela remains unchanged,” the statement said.

Venezuela is in the midst of hyperinflation and severe humanitarian and political crises that have sent millions fleeing to other countries in the hemisphere. In a televised address early this year, Maduro appealed to Pope Francis “to prevent Trump from sending his troops to invade Venezuela.”

Trump has denounced Maduro, who took over in 2013 after the death of revolutionary leader Hugo Chávez, as a “dictator.”