Latin America

Inside Operation Gideon, a Coup Gone Very Wrong
Why did three American ex-Special Forces soldiers try to overthrow the Venezuelan government?

BY KEVIN T. DUGAN
DEC 6, 2020 9:00 AM

. . .

The story of the failed coup is one of a plan so inept it makes John F. Kennedy’s Bay of Pigs fiasco 59 years earlier look sophisticated. Among the supplies brought were a high-end BB gun and a Kindle e-reader, according to photographs taken after the raid, and the two Americans, former Staff Sgt. Luke Denman and Sgt. Airan Berry, hardly spoke Spanish. Not only had the Maduro regime infiltrated Operation Gideon with informants, the secret plan was no secret at all: It was openly discussed on Venezuelan television, and its existence had already been reported in an article by the Associated Press. Goudreau himself provided a comment.

Operation Gideon’s failure isn’t in dispute. What’s less clear, however, is how it came to be. Those who supposedly knew about it — intelligence operators, political and military wanna-bes, secretive Trumpworld associates — have distanced themselves from it, unsurprisingly, as it resulted in the imprisonment of two former U.S. soldiers, the deaths of an unknown number of Venezuelans, and a consolidation of power by the Maduro regime.

. . .

Goudreau is also more inconsistent than his detractors have painted him: The 44-year-old calls himself a mere “kid” unfamiliar with business, while insisting he’s the mastermind behind the operation; he defends an allegedly cartel-linked Venezuelan general as having “a good heart,” while railing against other politicians for unspecified corruption; he insists that Operation Gideon was an honest attempt to liberate the Venezuelan people, while decrying the regime-change politics that led to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. In part because of his alleged betrayal by the Trump administration, at several points during our conversation Goudreau compares himself to Julian Assange and Edward Snowden, the latter of whom he calls a “hero.”

Yet, despite his engineering of a foreign coup, Goudreau is still a free man. Federal law-enforcement agencies have arrested others allegedly involved in the plot, but the Justice Department has not filed an indictment against him. His surfacing comes as he sues one of his financial backers for breach of contract, claiming he’d been told the planning was done with the personal knowledge of President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, and that Juan Guaidó, Maduro’s U.S.-backed challenger, had supported Goudreau’s plan to invade Venezuela through to the end — all claims that have been disputed.

. . .

In 2018, Maduro won a sham election, emboldening a new political adversary in his opponent Juan Guaidó, whom the U.S. and 49 other countries recognize as the true leader of Venezuela. At the time, there was a widespread belief in Washington, D.C., that Maduro’s administration was on the verge of toppling and the Venezuelan “armed forces would flip and go right over to Guaidó,” says Michael Shifter, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Trump reportedly asked his advisers why the U.S. couldn’t just invade the country. In his tell-all memoir, former National Security Adviser John Bolton — a Venezuela hawk who supported increasing sanctions on the country —
claims that Trump told advisers that it would be “cool” to invade.

. . .

And then there was ousting the president, which Goudreau claims he found out about from Donald Trump’s former personal bodyguard Keith Schiller. (Four lawyers who have represented Schiller didn’t respond to requests for comment on his behalf, and the White House didn’t return an email seeking comment.) “He was introduced [to] me by somebody else who had worked with me and saw what I was capable of,” Goudreau says. From there, the 133-page lawsuit Goudreau filed against Rendon in November explains his version of how he got involved: In May 2019, Schiller’s consulting company sought to hire Goudreau to help overthrow Maduro and made representations that this plan had the Trump administration’s backing. Goudreau then went to Bogotá, Colombia, to meet with exiled leaders of the Venezuelan military, including Gen. Cliver Alcala, a military official now in U.S. custody for drug trafficking, a charge he’s denied. (He is currently awaiting trial.) Goudreau says he made further inroads with the Trump administration by meeting with Drew Horn, an aide to Pence around this time, and Travis Lucas, whose lobbying firm has worked on behalf of the Trump administration. He also met with various financiers, including Roen Kraft, heir to the cheese fortune, and claims in the suit that Kraft had briefly discussed the coup plan with Pence at an event. Though attempts to reach Kraft through his family’s company were unsuccessful, he told the AP that he had discussed funding humanitarian aid, but after Goudreau maintained it would be a military operation, Kraft declined to fund it. By the fall, he was out.



Trump and Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó (left) at the White House in February 2020. EVAN VUCCI/AP

. . .

Although the Trump administration has used sanctions and support for political opponents to pressure Maduro to step down, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said there was no “direct” U.S. involvement in the attempted coup. Guaidó has denied any personal connection to the botched invasion. Lucas says any claims his company had any knowledge of the coup, or played any role in it, “are completely false.” Schiller has previously denied involvement.

. . .

By September, the plot was taking shape. “I learned at this point that there was a specific plan to overthrow Maduro, put Guaidó into power, and take back the country,” says Mattos. He realized something was off almost immediately. One of the revolutionaries showed him pictures Goudreau had posted of himself sitting in his car and working security at a Trump rally as proof of his bona fides.

. . .

“The execution stuff? That’s very possible,” Goudreau says. “But would it alarm you to know that we basically executed a whole bunch of people in Iraq? If I was in that [situation] I probably would have shot everybody, too. That’s war. Look, the Geneva Convention doesn’t cover fucking enemy insurgents.”

. . .

“Had we succeeded, you really think that the Guaidó administration would have said, ‘That’s not us, we want nothing to do with this’? Do you think that Donald Trump would have said, ‘That wasn’t us’? Every motherfucker that I talked to would have said, ‘That was us! U.S.A., baby!’ They would have taken credit for all of it. And if you say it’s not true, you’re pretty naive.”

More:
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/venezuela-operation-gideon-coup-jordan-goudreau-1098590/

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It's so clear there are a lot of arrogant, indifferent, and ignorant people who have never had a clue about what is involved in sanctioning a country. They always assume the elected, progressive government just can't handle things and blows up the economy. They may never be moved to feel the need to find out what it's all about, and why it is ever used, and what happens when it IS used. They scratch their backsides, roll over, and go back to sleep, and awaken to another day of ignorance.

That wouldn't be a problem if they didn't insist on arguing with people who DO KNOW and insist the onwho who do are simply unpatriotic. They've been doing it over 100 years, for certain, in this country. They appear to pass on that same willful ignorance to their children and their whole lineage remains arrogant and ignorant, too. And completely, wildly wrong, with stupid, silly, uninformed children if the kids don't ever question things.