What is known of the supposed plan to overthrow Nicolás Maduro (Operation Gideon) – ELESPECTADOR.COM

On the night of Monday, March 23, between Barranquilla and Santa Marta, an arsenal that was transported in a white van fell into a police registration post. 26 AR15 rifles and other elements of war. When questioned, the driver of the vehicle limited himself to saying that his job was to deliver that weaponry in Riohacha to a stranger named Panther. The news was known on the 25th and it was rumored that these weapons were for a criminal gang in La Guajira. But from Caracas, President Nicolás Maduro came out to say that these rifles were to attack in his country.

(Also read: Donald Trump says that if he ordered an incursion into Venezuela “it would be an invasion”)

With no time for the scandal, the next day, from the United States, the prosecutor William Barr announced a reward of US $ 15 million for the capture of President Nicolás Maduro on charges of drug trafficking and terrorism. In addition, it included in the list the president of the Assembly Diosdado Cabello, the president of the Supreme Court of Justice Maikel Moreno, the defense minister Vladimir Padrino, and the minister of industries Tareck El Aissami. The United States insisted on the Los Soles Cartel and former FARC chiefs Iván Márquez and Jesús Santrich were linked.

Until then, everything seemed like a habitual move of the hectic political and judicial chess between Venezuela and the United States with two scandals on board. But suddenly, one of those on the list of rewards jumped into the ring and put more bait on the lamp. The former Venezuelan general Clíver Alcalá, residing in Barranquilla, declared himself ready to face the accusations and assured that the weapons seized in Colombia were for him. In addition, he added that Panther It was the Venezuelan captain Robert Colina Ibarra and that these weapons were part of a plan to liberate Venezuela.

(You may be interested in: JJ Rendón, adviser to Guaidó, admits that he paid by raid to Venezuela)

At the request of W Radio, the former general Alcalá even went further and assured that those weapons had fallen because there was surely an infiltrator, but that it was all part of a contract signed by President Juan Guaidó. In addition, he also committed political advisor J.J Rendón. But the surprise was not only in his words. On Friday, March 27, Cliver Alcalá contacted the Police Intelligence Directorate and the DEA and, that same day, submitted to the North American justice, some agents of this organism transferred him to New York.

Everything happened like a flash, but the wick of the weapons confiscated in Colombia, the United States reward plan, and the rumor that another of those indicated, Hugo Carvajal, former intelligence chief of the Chávez government, was going to turn himself in . Then the interest was focused on the relevance of Alcalá in the Washington raid and his delivery to the DEA, being a man who was key in the civic-military operation led by General Raúl Isaías Baduel to restore Hugo Chávez to power during the failed coup in 2002.

(See: These are the people whom Maduro accuses of wanting to overthrow him)

Then he fell into disgrace and, together with his mentors Henry Rangel Silva and Hugo Carvajal, in 2008 he was referenced in an order from the United States Treasury Department to freeze assets and bank accounts for alleged help to the FARC in drug trafficking. It was the same time that Raúl Reyes’s computers were causing political turmoil, and it emerged that guerrilla leader Iván Márquez reported Reyes to a meeting with Alcalá and Carvajal to agree on a plan for finances, weapons and politics on the border. In September 2011, Alcalá entered the Clinton List.

With Nicolás Maduro as president after the death of Chávez, General Alcalá lost prominence and then left the Armed Forces. He then became a critical incisor of Maduro, traveled to Colombia and settled with his family in Barranquilla, appearing from time to time in the media to insist on his remarks. The surprise was to see him included in the list of rewards along with the senior staff of power in Venezuela. $ 10 million for it. Just as he came out to admit that he owned the weapons seized on March 23.

The almost world quarantine for the coronavirus began, April progressed and alarming news arrived from Italy and Spain. The wave of death hit hard in America. But the story of the weapons seized in Colombia, the reward plan in the United States, the delivery to the DEA of Cliver Alcalá was still in the air. A chapter that was not exhausted in the script of the fight between Washington and Venezuela, until the dawn of last Sunday, May 3 in the fishing town of Macuto, in the state of La Guaira, the new sequence was triggered.

(In context: The “gringo” who wants to overthrow Maduro)

A shooting with eight dead and two captured that hours later, the Interior Minister, Néstor Reverol, announced to the country as a reaction of the security forces against a “maritime incursion of mercenaries from Colombia”. Reverol stressed that the maritime invasion was called Operation Gideon and that it intended to promote acts of terrorism, assassination of leaders and a new attempted coup. Assembly President Diosdado Cabello took up the issue and accused the governments of the United States and Colombia of being involved.

And in his long dissertation, it was Diosdado Cabello who remembered the former general Alcalá, branded him as a drug trafficker, and returned him to the script with another important fact: among the unsubscribed was Panther, the one that had to receive the weapons that fell arriving at Santa Marta and that Alcalá claimed as his before submitting to the DEA. Panther His name turned out to be Robert Colina Ibarra, a former officer, and now a video of him claiming the operation as one of his bosses is circulating on the networks. It is unclear whether he is alive or dead because the Maduro government has prioritized detainees.

Little by little, they transcend their identities. Captain Antonio Sequea Torres, commander of Operation Gideon, who actively participated in the civic-military uprising that led to the release of political leader Leopoldo López, fell from a second speedboat that intended to land on the coast of La Guaira. And with him, his brother-in-law Fernando Noya, and Adolfo Baduel, the son of former general Raúl Isaías Baduel, former Minister of Defense of Chávez and later a dissident. He is currently one of Maduro’s main opponents, but has been convicted and imprisoned since 2009.

(Read: What is known about the alleged invasion of mercenaries that Venezuela denounces?)

So far there are 16 detainees, but in the informative tidal wave they have gone into the background since the video that turned everything upside down circulated. Former Venezuelan captain Javier Nieto Quintero appeared alongside the American Jordan Goudreau to vindicate Operation Gideon, urge officers of the Venezuelan Armed Forces to unite, and end the Maduro government. But Goudreau did not limit himself to this proclamation, later clarifying that everything was part of a contract for US $ 212 million, signed with the interim president Juan Guaidó, the deputy Sergio Vergara and the political strategist J.J Rendón.

Jordan Goudreau, 43, is a Canadian-born ex-military man who participated in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and who, after leaving the United States Army, founded the Silvercorp USA security and defense company in 2018. In October 2018, he provided security service to President Donald Trump during a visit to Houston, Texas. According to himself, his connections with Venezuela arose through ex-general Cliver Alcalá. As Jordan Goudreau announced, two assault units failed in Operation Gideon, but the rest of the units continue to await instructions.

As expected, the mention of Juan Guaidó and J.J Rendón in Operation Gideón, added to the accusations by the Venezuelan authorities against the governments of the United States and Colombia, raised the political temperature. J.J Rendón accepted that the signature on the contract shown by Goudreau was his. But he insisted that “it was a preliminary agreement that did not become effective.” He stressed that the original was 42 pages and not seven, with military, legal, financial and diplomatic aspects of the same purpose: the capture and delivery of the Maduro government to justice.

Regarding Juan Guaidó, J.J Rendón maintained that in no way did he endorse the contract and, consequently, did not sign what the American showed. In addition, he insisted that he paid US $ 50,000 out of his pocket to pay the expenses of the Silvercorp man, but that the agreement “was not signed behind Guaidó’s back, but also with his consent.” Juan Guaidó’s comment was more revealing: “They were waiting to massacre them,” without further words, but in the line of the infiltrator who revealed the operation. In other words, the same thing that Alcalá said when the weapons fell in March.

(See: “We will meet again”, the secret of the emotional speech of Elizabeth II)

Something was missing from the repertoire, and the Maduro government concentrated on highlighting it. The detainees included two Americans, former members of the United States Special Forces, Luke Alexander Denman and Airan Berry. To the first of them, they made a massly disclosed video, in which he assured that on January 16, 2020 he entered Colombia, which traveled by car to Riohacha (Guajira), there they received instructions from a man in a wheelchair, there were three groups of about 70 men, and their objective was to take Nicolás Maduro.

Crazy, but he said that in the midst of Operation Gideon’s uproar, the Colombian government’s resounding no regarding any intervention in which J.J Rendón called “operation suicidal and irresponsible”, and the declaration of alienation by the United States government. In the midst of the situation, Washington announced its new ambassador for Venezuela with an office in Bogotá, James Story, who was consul in Rio de Janeiro, Director of Narcotics and Law Enforcement in the Western Hemisphere and Colombia, and senior civilian representative in the southeast Afghanistan.

For now, the theory-less version of the conspiracy is that it was a failed operation by ex-military and civilians from Venezuela, with the support of a North American security and defense company, which signed a contract in which JJ Rendón initially contributed US $ 50,000, and which President Juan Guaidó did not approve, nor did the governments of the United States and Colombia know. But there is an unavoidable question that floats: if the weapons had fallen in Colombia in March, why was armed action insisted a month later, when the Maduro government was warned by the seized rifles?

(See: American detained in Venezuela claimed the plan was to send Maduro to the U.S.)

Something should be clarified to the Colombian authorities. The chain deployed to collect 26 rifles and other elements of war in national territory, discovered at a police checkpoint in March. The activities of former general Clíver Alcalá since he settled in Barranquilla until he turned himself in to the DEA, remembering that he himself declared himself the owner of those weapons that his subordinate Pantera, declared dead in Operation Gideon, should receive. And the story of the house in Riohacha, where the suicides from the landing in La Guaira stayed and were instructed.

From the United States, President Donald Trump persisted in a few sentences in his determined version that it has nothing to do with the mess. “If I wanted to go to Venezuela, I would not do it in secret.” Immediately afterwards, he added: “it would be calling an Army.” In turn, the Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, declared that they will do everything possible for the American detainees to return. New captures are announced in Puerto Cruz, in La Guaira, a judicial process against Juan Guaidó, and the high-sounding microphones amplify the provocations. It is the strange movie of Operation Gideon grows as the coronavirus crisis.