How plan to capture Venezuela's Maduro fell apart - The Was... https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/from-a...

Democracy Dies in Darkness

From a Miami condo to the Venezuelan

coast, how a plan to ‘capture’ Maduro
went rogue

1 of 2 5/6/20, 21:52
How plan to capture Venezuela's Maduro fell apart - The Was... https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/from-a...

By Anthony Faiola, Karen DeYoung and Ana Vanessa Herrero

May 6, 2020 at 7:34 PM EDT

Inside a glittering Miami high-rise, representatives of the Venezuelan

opposition sat in a room adorned with samurai swords and listened to a
pitch. They had been appointed by opposition leader Juan Guaidó to
explore all options in their U.S.-backed quest to oust Venezuelan
President Nicolás Maduro. On that afternoon on the shores of Biscayne
Bay last September, a former U.S. Army Green Beret presented them
with an answer.

Operation Resolution.

Jordan Goudreau, a 43-year-old Special Forces veteran who ran a

strategic security firm on the Florida Space Coast, laid out a plan that
could double as a screenplay for an episode of “Jack Ryan.” Goudreau
claimed to have 800 men ready to penetrate Venezuela and “extract”
Maduro and his henchmen, according to J.J. Rendón, the Venezuelan
political strategist tapped by Guaidó to help lead the secretive
committee.

Guaidó “was saying all options were on the table, and under the table,”
Rendón told The Washington Post. “We were fulfilling that purpose.”

By October, the plan had advanced to the point of a signed agreement,

contingent on funding and other conditions. Rendón calls it a trial
balloon, a test of what Goudreau could do that was never officially
greenlit. But the language of the agreement left no ambiguity on the
objective: “An operation to capture/detain/remove Nicolás Maduro . . .
remove the current Regime and install the recognized Venezuelan
President Juan Guaidó.”

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