Inside the World's Most Spectacularly Failed Coup

if your only purpose as a criminal enterprise and dictatorship and authoritarian regime is to stay in power you need to prevent any attempt to draw you from being empowered jj rendon is a fervent anti-communist and political fixer he's worked to influence latin american politics for decades so how long have you been trying to overthrow the venezuelan government uh depends on what you call overthrow but we were fighting for 98. it's 23 years of that and do they consider you their enemy they recognize me as an enemy of whatever they call the state because there is no difference in venezuela between party state and criminal enterprise today one of his last jobs was working for one venezuelan president to overthrow the other venezuelan president operation gideon a coup attempt to launch from colombia in may 2020 to overthrow venezuela's socialist government took three ex-green berets 60 soldiers and months of planning two fail spectacularly operation gideon was over before the two boats even hit venezuela's shore the government had detained two former u.s special forces soldiers they're accused of being involved in a bizarre and failed plot to overthrow the country's president when the dust settled at least six of the soldiers were dead and dozens were detained including the two americans recruited for the job luke denman and aaron berry both on their first ever private military contract and at the center of this doomed enterprise was a canadian-american mercenary who turned to social media choosing to tweet this video about the mission even as it was falling apart our men are continuing to fight right now our units have been activated in the south west and east of venezuela the video went viral this is a story of how modern geopolitics unfold shadowy mercenaries fumbling leaders and twitter venezuela is a sovereign country we have articles and a constitution that says that is not a right a duty or any venezuelan with or without power to do whatever necessary doesn't have any limitation to overthrow any dictatorship to irony government oppressors to regain the rule of law the constitution and democracy so we have a mandate from the constitution not even from the president to be clear when you're saying the president you're referring to one guetto sure the only person that we have we have a tire and a person nicholas maduro is the sitting president of venezuela but after years of civil unrest food shortages and crushing sanctions in winter 2019 young charismatic politician juan guido was named president by venezuela's national assembly international community including the trump administration quickly recognized his presidency joining us in the gallery is the true and legitimate president of venezuela juan guido guido called for mass protests and high-level military defections to overthrow maduro it didn't work because maduro held onto control of the military and the security forces a formal body was created by venezuelan opposition called the strategic committee to investigate ways of ousting maduro rendon was appointed its top strategist we went to every law possible in that process we discovered we cannot use that law so we study what is the possibility of someone else a third party the french legion whoever to pick him up like they have bounty hunters in the united states and present them to justice there's no one way to stage a coup but history shows that it generally starts with casting mercenaries ex-soldiers who take money in exchange for using or sharing their skill set rendone was introduced to this guy jordan goudreau a decorated ex-green beret and the owner of florida-based private military contractor silvercore i can say i liked the guy in the beginning he was clever educated on time rendon believed goudreau an ex-commando who seemed like a real-life rambo actually knew what he was doing we needed to transform our military so he came with a proposal of re-engineering the entire armed forces after the freeing the country so we wanted to know more and that begins the entire conversation about operation helio the two reached an agreement according to a later lawsuit quadro's silver corps stood to gain a 1.5 million dollar retainer and if the coup worked over 200 million dollars backed by venezuelan oil there was some awareness that jordan gadreau had planned to undertake some sort of offensive operation a military action let's call it military action i did overthrow kill capture we didn't get into the specifics at that moment but before any military action gudro needed troops and the right personnel to train them so he brought in his former brothers in arms two more ex-green berets luke denman and aaron berry i always would say to him dude clear in present danger if you don't have that u.s flag on your shoulder they don't have responsibility for you the reason they're hiring you is because you're deniable this is mark denman brother of luke who's languishing in a venezuelan jail at this very moment since he left special forces he's always getting offers from we'll be on a hunting trip and guys will talk about how much money they made during contracting mercenary work contracting work sure so for seven years since he left the military he's never accepted any of these offers so now he tells me he's in colombia and i immediately kind of heavy sigh what are you doing man then he goes on to start talking about it and how meaningful it is and it's the most important thing he's done in his life and he's doing things that really make a difference so he's texting you in 2020 at this point right yeah he's texting me from colombia and he's saying he's involved in an operation did he tell you what it was for he didn't call an operator he says he's down there training colombians and i said my response was who are you doing this for he says it's a private contract sanctioned by the u.s government hired by the president of the rightful president of exact phrasing he used but the rightful president of venezuela and so he he from what you're gathering he thinks this is completely backed yes by the truth this is a u.s operation this is exactly for the supply of soldiers they turn to caribe a network of venezuelan soldiers that defected with the ultimate goal of getting rid of maduro one of the leaders of caribe is captain javier nieto quintero commander nieto is with me is co-located nieto is this guy he in the caribbean network readily joined operation gideon hey how you doing how are you doing they even got a field commander cleverakala who began training troops for operation gideon in lawahira colombia so did you ever hear about the plans for operation gideon my staff asked me caribe which is the militars and policies and around the world they asked me to go directly see eyes to eyes clever alcala and he gave me some information about the operations since the goal of operation gideon was to overthrow the venezuelan government they needed to convince generals inside the country to turn against maduro and the generals weren't going to join without assurance that this was a functional and well-resourced operation you got like i don't know how many rifles and no night vision stuff like that that show up the political leaders in venezuela and the international community that the commitment was already there for the freedom of venezuela [Music] a source with intimate knowledge of the inner workings of operation gideon provided these exclusive videos device news [Music] from the venezuelan military in 2019 [Music] roberto was one of more than 60 men who trained for operation gideon which primarily took place not in an obscured remote location but in the city of rio aca and in plain [Music] sight what was a normal day inside this this house what did you do [Music] the men moved between three houses trained with wooden guns and there was apparently only enough food to eat once a day and what did all the neighbors think when they kept seeing like 20 soldier looking dudes going in and out of these smaller houses [Music] [Music] [Music] m [Music] the supposed leader was mostly absent during the training what do you think about that guys [Music] foreign gedro believed he had the backing of the u.s government but at least publicly then or since the u.s wasn't backing operation gideon no one was even the contract with rendon had been supposedly canceled months earlier so throughout this jordan goudreau is claiming that the u.s government is backing his this operation yes and juan guado throughout this entire process doesn't go to the us government and try to vet that piece of mind no because we didn't know it was true or not the only thing that was concerned for us was the backers contract specifically said that if he don't bring the backers the controversial avoid so he didn't bring the backers we didn't pay the money the contract became avoid but then more signs of the mission falling apart emerged in late march 2020 alcala turned himself in to u.s authorities after being indicted on drug trafficking charges leaving the mission without its commander when the cleveland got impression he called me by the way nieto this is impossible after that i i lost my hope this operation and that wasn't the only problem just a month before the operation maduro's number two person diosdado cabello actually went on venezuelan national tv and detailed how they had explicit information on the mission not an ideal development for a clandestine coup attempt [Music] [Music] as the day of the launch approached the new commander upped the training and the men went outside the city into the desert [Music] uh [Music] [Music] within hours of launching the boats lost contact with each other and the first boat was intercepted by the venezuelan military and several of the operation gideon soldiers were killed then the second boat learned what happened to the first [Music] so you're in the same boat as the americans so what happens then when you disembark on land what happens to them [Music] [Music] how did you escape then is roberto says he walked in the mountains for weeks to cross back into colombia escaping from venezuelan security forces the mission was over ending in disaster when do you see your brother next like when you actually see him next the next videos we saw with their supposed confession where they're holding up the contract who commenced jordan president donald trump the maduro government was pushing the story that trump was behind the operation which the u.s denied we'd have been involved it would have gone differently [Music] since leaving public office bill richardson has been working as a hostage negotiator trying to free imprison americans abroad he's leading the charge to free aaron barry and luke denman i don't think that we're going to be able to get him out right away because the situation is so hostile between the two countries there are negotiations even richardson has suspicions about whether or not the u.s was involved or knew of the situation i don't know what happened i don't have access to intelligence reports the way i used to but it seemed suspicious and and the trump administration did in foreign policy have rogue elements people that were not in the state department that were doing stuff on their own and and you know so i wouldn't put it past it but i can't conclusively say a mission intended to be a coup was now ending in a legal battle in october 2020 godrew filed a lawsuit in u.s court against rendon for breach of contract in it he named several people in trump's orbit cadrell alleges he met former bodyguard and trump insider keith schiller who introduced him into the coup he also alleges he sat down in washington dc with a member of vice president mike pence's staff to talk about the operation emails to schiller's lawyer when unanswered while vice president pence's office has denied any connections whatsoever to cadreaux through his lawyer gudra refused to appear in this report and declined to comment on a list of questions except to say he denies any and all coordination with the maduro regime as for guido he says not only did he have nothing to do with the operation it was all maduro here's what we know even though overwhelming evidence showed operation gideon was infiltrated by the maduro government godro still launched it and then basically disappeared if you could tell jordan gadreau anything right now what would you tell him honor your oaths you made oaths these are your brothers do what you're meant to do step up stop looking out for yourself if there was an invasion of venezuela how many people from your estimation would join up with you they're just waiting for something to happen [Music] would you do this all again would you try to overthrow maduro in another operation if you had the chance [Music] do you ever think you're going to succeed in overthrowing this venezuelan government sometimes i doubt it most of the times i wake up thinking that we will eventually succeed [Music] you

Channel: VICE News

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Id: D2jtiQpxUH4

Length: 20min 17sec (1217 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 27 2021