Going, Going, Back, Back…
To Venezuela.
Here’s a two-part series on Venezuela, digging into the efforts by the CIA, as well as the Trump administration, to topple the Socialist President Nicholas Maduro. Since 1998, when Hugo Chavez took control of Venezuela, “it is like Iran, a couple hundred miles downwind from Miami,” says Mike Benz, former cybersecurity officer for the U.S. State Department.
Here we learn about Operation Absolute Resolve, the U.S. raid that led to the capture of Maduro. But there were earlier covert monkey business as well, including Operation Gideon. This foiled armed incursion into Venezuela, in 2020, also aimed to capture Maduro. A Canadian mercenary Jordan Goudreau was involved in that effort, drawing upon assistance from a Trump security officer — Keith Schiller.
There are many other players here, from government agencies to oil companies and even airlines. Each of these two installments is roughly an hour and a half — so there’s quite a bit of depth and ground covered.
