Hemispheric securityPlot Led by a Former Green Beret to Topple Maduro Foiled
Jordan Goudreau, a former Green Beret soldier linked to a foiled or bungled plot to topple Venezuela’s leader, Nicolás Maduro, has insisted on Sunday that his troops are still in operation in Venezuela after launching what he described as “a daring amphibious raid” into economically and politically troubled country. The Venezuelan government said that in a short firefight, its forces killed eight members of the incursion force, which landed on the shore from three speedboats, and detained thirteen, two of them American citizens.
Jordan Goudreau, a former Green Beret soldier linked to a foiled or bungled plot to topple Venezuela’s leader, Nicolás Maduro, has insisted on Sunday that his troops are still in operation in Venezuela after launching what he described as “a daring amphibious raid” into economically and politically troubled country.
He spoke in a video released hours after an announcement by the Maduro government in which it claimed to have foiled what it described as a “United States-backed sea invasion” near Venezuela’s main international airport.
In a televised address Monday, Maduro said that Venezuelan authorities have detained two U.S. citizens working with Goudreuo. He said the Venezuelan military arrested thirteen “terrorists” – eleven Venezuelan and two Americans — involved in a plot he claimed to have been coordinated with Washington.
The Venezuelan army said that eight people were killed during the incursion on Sunday.
Time Magazine reports that Goudreau, 43, a former Special Forces medic, offered no evidence his claims, and that there were no reports of fighting in the capital, Caracas.
In a televised statement, Néstor Reverol, Venezuela’s interior minister, claimed a platoon of “terrorist mercenaries” used a speedboat to approach the Venezuelan coast but that they were repelled by security forces.
“Some were shot down and others detained,” Reverol, accusing the group of plotting to assassinate the leaders of Venezuela’s “revolutionary government.”
Reverol said “a meticulous land, sea and air search” was under way to capture any remaining invaders, vowing: “We will remain in permanent state of alert and resistance.”
In a phone interview Sunday night, Goudreau told the Washington Post that the operation had involved “60 troops” who had arrived in Venezuela by land and sea.
The Associated Press last week ran a story about Goudreau, who claims to have founded a private security company called Silvercorp USA in 2018. He told AP that last year he decided to focus on Venezuela because of what he described as the Trump administration’s obsession with overthrowing Maduro.
The AP report notes that Goudreau established contact with Clíver Alcalá, a retired Venezuelan army major general who has admitted to plotting against Maduro in the past. In late March he handed himself over to U.S. authorities after being indicted in the United States on drug trafficking charges.
Alcalá apparently told Goudreau he had three camps of volunteer Venezuelan combatants waiting near Colombia’s border with Venezuela, and Goudeau offered to train them for “a rapid-strike operation” to take out Maduro.
