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Trump denies U.S. involvement in alleged Venezuela invasion attempt U.S. denies involvement in alleged Venezuela invasion attempt as details remain murky
(about 5 hours later)
President Trump said Tuesday that the arrest in Venezuela of two U.S. citizens after an alleged invasion attempt “has nothing to do with our government.” An apparent attempt to invade Venezuela involving several Americans remained shrouded in confusion Tuesday as the two countries traded accusations but offered little new information about the mysterious mission.
“We just heard about it,” Trump said of the widely reported Monday events. “But whatever it is, we’ll let you know. But it has nothing to do with our government.” He spoke to reporters as he departed the White House for a visit to a factory making face masks in Arizona. Venezuela’s foreign minister said two Americans, both former U.S. Special Operations soldiers, were “confessing without any reservations” after being arrested by security forces during the aborted invasion. He did not describe what the men had told authorities about the operation, which President Nicolás Maduro described as an assassination plot.
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro announced the arrests Monday evening, saying that two American “mercenaries” were part of a plot to infiltrate the country, incite rebellion and apprehend its leaders. He said the plan was to kill him. President Trump denied any U.S. involvement in the incident, saying “it has nothing to do with our government.”
Maduro identified the two as Airan Berry and Luke Denman. Photographs of their identification cards have circulated on social media. They were among eight men captured on Monday when their small boat landed, allegedly from Colombia, on the Venezuelan coast west of Caracas — only to find Venezuelan security forces awaiting them. The State Department said that it could not comment on the reported arrests, citing privacy considerations, but added that “there is a major disinformation campaign underway by the Maduro regime, making it difficult to separate facts from propaganda.”
Former U.S. Army Green Beret Jordan Goudreau, who on Sunday released a video announcing the launch of what he called “Operation Gideon,” confirmed the identities in an interview with The Washington Post. He said the two were former U.S. Special Operations soldiers acting as “supervisors” for a force of about 60 men, primarily defected former Venezuelan security officials living in Colombia. The two men were captured, along with six others, on Monday when the small boat they were traveling in attempted to land along Venezuela’s coastline, only to be met by Venezuelan military and police forces. On Sunday, eight others, apparently Venezuelans, were killed and two were captured in a separate landing attempt, according to Venezuelan reports.
He also confirmed an earlier claim by Maduro’s government that eight people who were part of the overall operation were separately killed, and that two were captured, when their boat was intercepted Sunday. The incident added to more than a year of growing tensions as the Trump administration, accusing Maduro of human rights abuses, corruption and narcotics trafficking, has tried to force him from office with economic sanctions and criminal indictments.
Goudreau, who operates a Florida company, Silvercorp, that says it offers paid strategic security services, said he had known Berry and Denman for years. The three deployed to Iraq in 2010, according to an active-duty soldier who served with them in the 10th Special Forces Group but did not deploy with them. The soldier spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. A U.S. Army spokesman, Lt. Col. Emmanuel Ortiz, said that service records confirm that the two captured Americans, Airan Berry and Luke Denman, are Special Forces veterans, as is Jordan Goudreau, the head of a Florida security services company who first announced the operation in a video Sunday morning.
Efforts to reach the families of Berry and Denman for comment were unsuccessful. Goudreau said he has engaged a lawyer in Venezuela and was reaching out to the State Department to try to secure their release. State Department officials have not commented on the arrests. Goudreau, in an interview with The Washington Post, said Berry and Denman were “supervisors” of a force he said numbered about 60 Venezuelans. Most, if not all of them, were believed to be military and police defectors living in camps in Colombia, near the Venezuelan border.
The U.S. government “should engage and try to get these guys back,” said Goudreau, who apparently did not physically participate in the operation. “These are Americans. They are ex-Green Berets. Come on.” Juan Guaidó, the Venezuelan legislator and opposition leader recognized as “interim president” by the United States and more than 50 other countries, lashed out Tuesday at Maduro for staging what he called a “massacre.”
Colombian authorities and the U.S.-recognized Venezuelan opposition leader, Juan Guaidó, said they were not involved in the alleged plot. Both said they believe Maduro loyalists infiltrated the operation. “They knew about this and were waiting to massacre them,” Guaidó said in a virtual session of the opposition-controlled National Assembly. “Nicolás Maduro, you are responsible. The regime knew about that operation, you infiltrated it and waited to massacre them.”
Maduro appeared to confirm this. “We knew everything,” he said in his televised Monday speech. “What they ate, what they didn’t eat. What they drank. Who financed them. We know that the U.S. government delegated this as a [U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration] operation.” The CIA declined to comment.
The DEA on Monday denied any involvement in the operation. The State Department statement, which described the unfolding situation as a “melodrama,” said officials would be “looking closely into the role of the Maduro regime . . . and especially of the very large Cuban intelligence apparatus in Venezuela.”
Maduro also displayed passports, Silvercorp identification cards and images apparently depicting the two apprehended Americans in a lineup. “The record of falsehoods and manipulation by Maduro and his accomplices, as well as their highly questionable representation of the details, argues that nothing should be taken at face value when we see the distorting of facts,” the statement said.
A former Special Operations veteran, noting that the captured Americans apparently chose to keep identifying information on them, said Tuesday that they probably did not have experience with the kind of operation they allegedly undertook in Venezuela. “What is clear is that the former regime is using the event to justify an increased level of repression,” the statement said. Noting “the timing of these events,” the statement said that 46 prisoners were killed, and 74 injured, in a “massacre” by government forces at Los Llanos prison in Venezuela over the weekend.
Maduro was reelected for a six-year term in May 2018, in a vote widely viewed as fraudulent amid allegations of widespread human rights abuses and corruption. When he was inaugurated in January of last year, the United States and more than 50 other countries that refused to recognize his government instead declared Guaidó, the elected head of the Venezuelan legislature, the country’s legitimate president. Maduro’s foreign minister, Jorge Arreaza, told The Post that the U.S. government had yet to make contact with the Venezuelan government after Maduro’s Monday-evening announcement of the arrest of the two Americans.
The Trump administration has called on Maduro to step aside, exerting what it calls “maximum pressure” on Venezuela in the form of escalating economic sanctions, and charged that Russia and Cuba, Maduro’s two main allies, keep his government afloat with economic, intelligence and security assistance. “They have already had many hours to develop their ‘it wasn’t me’ strategy,” Arreaza said in a text-message exchange. He said the two were being questioned by Venezuelan authorities and were “confessing without any reservations.”
The United States in March indicted Maduro and more than a dozen other officials on narcoterrorism charges, offering a $15 million reward for information leading to his capture or conviction. Jorge Rodríguez, Maduro’s communications chief, alleged at a news conference in Caracas that Goudreau and Trump are connected.
In early April, the U.S. Southern Command announced “enhanced” operations in the Caribbean that it said were directed toward stopping narcotics shipments from Venezuela that had increased by 50 percent “in recent years.” “How is it that the Secret Service of the United States hired Silvercorp to handle Trump’s security and that Silvercorp publishes that on its website?” he asked.
Herrero reported from Caracas, and Faiola reported from Miami. The alleged connection appeared to refer to a relationship between Goudreau — who operates a Florida company, Silvercorp, that says it offers paid strategic security services — and former Trump security chief Keith Schiller.
According to a person close to Schiller, the two met early last year after a meeting in Washington organized by Global Governance, a group of business executives exploring potential opportunities in a post-Maduro Venezuela. At the meeting, Schiller was asked whether he knew someone who could provide security services in Venezuela.
He responded he did not but later received a telephone inquiry from a contact of Goudreau’s, inquiring about security work. Schiller, said the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity about the private contacts, said that he knew of possible work in Venezuela.
Schiller and Goudreau eventually made contact and went together to a meeting of Venezuelan opposition figures in Miami. After hearing what they were interested in and becoming increasingly leery about Goudreau, the person said, Schiller had no further involvement.
In his Sunday video, Goudreau and former Venezuelan National Guard officer Javier Nieto Quintero said that what they called “Operation Gideon” was designed to capture senior members of Maduro’s government. They called on Venezuelan military forces inside the country to rise up and join the invaders.
Goudreau later told The Post he had known Berry and Denman for years. Goudreau and Denman deployed together in Iraq in 2010, said a former Special Forces soldier who served with all three of them. He spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
Berry was a capable leader but dealt with personal family issues, two men who served with him said. Denman is an “artistic hipster” type, a former soldier said, with a lighter, carefree personality that was respected and rare in the community.
The three men deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan eight times combined, said Ortiz, the Army spokesman.
Goudreau, he said, left the service in February 2016 as a sergeant first class after serving first as an indirect fire infantryman and then a medical sergeant. Berry was a Special Forces engineer sergeant who served in the Army from 1996 until October 2013. Denman served on active duty as a Special Forces communications sergeant from October 2006 to December 2011 and in the Army Reserve through September 2014.
David Maxwell, a retired Army officer with 22 years of experience in Special Forces, said the Venezuela operation appeared to be poorly planned and executed.
Operators would typically favor sterile uniforms and forgo anything connected to their identity, Maxwell said. But Maduro waved Berry and Denman’s expired military IDs, Veterans Affairs cards and passports in a televised address Monday following their capture.
“I don’t know what their thinking was. It’s embarrassing for the regiment and the U.S.,” said Maxwell, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank in Washington. “Did they think it was going to be a ‘get out of jail free’ card?”
A core competency of Special Operations is working with indigenous forces to incite rebellion or overthrow a regime, Maxwell said, tasks that require a measured approach and long-standing ties.
“It doesn’t seem like this contractor did any of that,” he said of Goudreau.
A family member of Berry in Texas declined to comment Tuesday. Efforts to speak to Denman’s and Berry’s immediate families were unsuccessful.
Faiola reported from Miami. Ana Vanessa Herrero in Caracas and Dan Lamothe, Shawn Boburg and Dalton Bennett in Washington contributed to this report.