Two Americans Among Venezuela Coup Plot Fail

Two Americans with SOF backgrounds, Luke Denman and Airan Berry, are among the former Venezuelan soldiers-turned-guerrillas plotting a coup against Socialist President Nicolas Maduro. From UK Daily Mail, they were arrested along with their boat team as they made their way ashore.

Its not clear at the moment what got them made, although it was likely a snitch that compromised their contact ashore. But what is clear is that this one is being exploited to its fullest by the Maduro regime and by proxy, the American media.

Looking over their gear, they didn’t seem to have much in the way of long term equipment, only tactical level kit.

Why they have AR pistol braces is beyond me.

Marine band VHF radio, Icom and Motorola digital radios, likely P25, and Garmin GPS units.

What I would expect, looking over their kit, is that they were linking up with a contact ashore who had already been compromised. Either way, the plan to move in the harbor would have been dicey at best for anyone with more than two brain cells on its face. Why they didn’t move in from the mountains of west Venezuela is anyone’s guess. Speaking on their behalf, the operation’s organizer, Ex-Green Beret Jordan Goudreau, stated:

‘They were running dangerously low on fuel,’ Goudreau said. ‘If they had gone onto landfall, they would have gone to a safe house.’

Goudreau said the two were waiting for a boat on the Caribbean island of Aruba with emergency fuel to help extract them.

But from there the whole thing gets muddy:

An AP investigation published Friday found that Goudreau had been working with a retired Venezuelan army general — who now faces U.S. narcotics charges — to train dozens of deserters from Venezuela’s security forces at secret camps inside neighboring Colombia. The goal was to mount a cross-border raid that would end in Maduro’s arrest.

Its no secret that several firms have been seeking to coordinate deserters and disaffected Venezuelan troops who’d fled to eastern Colombia since last year’s failed coup. But why anyone would touch this General who apparently is no friend of the US is a serious question as well. Perhaps he was the best networked, but in partnering with him they’d compromise potential support from within the US government itself. And lacking that overhead cover, the chances of success get a lot lower.

There’s a number of billionares supporting removal of the Maduro regime, including Roen Kraft and Richard Branson, both providing substantial financial aid with the latter organizing a Live Aid concert series in Colombia in support of President-in-Exile Juan Guido. Without a doubt, this blunder is a major setback for chances at a coup, compromising the networks that have taken a substantial amount of time to build. Any successes they may have hoped for are set back substantially if not wiped out completely for the time being- the support network, especially around Caracas, is learning why if you’re going to play revolution, you better not fail.

“…send lawyers guns and money, I’m in a little jam…”

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About the Author: NC Scout

NC Scout is the nom de guerre of a former Infantry Scout and Sergeant in one of the Army’s best Reconnaissance Units. He has combat tours in both Iraq and Afghanistan. He teaches a series of courses focusing on small unit skills rarely if ever taught anywhere else in the prepping and survival field, including his RTO Course which focuses on small unit communications. In his free time he is an avid hunter, bushcrafter, writer, long range shooter, prepper, amateur radio operator and Libertarian activist. He can be contacted at [email protected] or via his blog at brushbeater.wordpress.com .

19 Comments

  1. Matt Bracken May 6, 2020 at 08:50

    I wonder what their mission planning experience was?
    And not nightly Iraq/Afghanistan raid/snatch missions, with all of Uncle Sam’s assets overhead, but a full-blown cross-border long-range over-the-horizon mission, into a denied area, relying on dodgy local contacts and with no outside support, not even enough fuel.
    I feel sorry for them, but they were just not playing in the right league. They were like a good high school football team going against the Baltimore Ravens. Just out of their league.
    Let this be a lesson.

    • NC Scout May 6, 2020 at 08:55

      Exactly. I seem to remember a book about some guys planning a raid from the sea that goes disastrously wrong. The fact they were even on this boat insertion was idiotic at best. But it plays to the fact that GWOT thinking (in all areas, not just this example) is going to kick a lot of people in the balls.

  2. Noell Bishop May 6, 2020 at 09:27

    The article put out by SOF News stated that the Military Decision Making Process (MDMP) was lacking. If that is true then there is a very big problem with Silvercorp.

    • NC Scout May 6, 2020 at 09:48

      I saw that one too. This whole thing is bad from the ground up.

  3. Joachim May 6, 2020 at 09:35

    Typical, CIA FUBAR like the Bay of Pigs or every other op they pull. Leave Venezuela alone for the love of God. This is why America is now hated so much.

    • NC Scout May 6, 2020 at 09:49

      Or they could learn from their mistakes and do it right.

  4. Jefferson Thomas May 6, 2020 at 09:36

    The masks are hilarious.

    • NC Scout May 6, 2020 at 09:49

      I thought so too. They watched Sicario one too many times.

  5. Patriotman May 6, 2020 at 09:45

    Has no one noticed the orange tip on the “rifle”? LOL

    • NC Scout May 6, 2020 at 09:51

      I saw that, but I couldn’t tell if it was a glare or what the deal was. Looking at how f’d up this whole thing appears on its face, it wouldn’t surprise me if it was an airsoft rifle.

  6. Matt Bracken May 6, 2020 at 10:04

    Once Upon a Time, in the 1980s, the CIA was tasked to help the “Contras” blow up the POL storage at Corinto, Nicaragua.
    That story would blow your mind. It involves 2 SEALs who were “sheep dipped” as civilians to train the contras, but they ended up doing the mission when they could not get their Nicos trained up in time. Mother ship drops off speedboat with 2 U.S. citizens / SEALs / spooks.
    It worked, barely, despite the speedboat getting stuck on a tidal mud bar (huge tides there) as dawn came while the fuel tanks burned!
    They thought they were “had” for sure, but got loose of the mud on the rising tide and escaped to the mothership.
    A few lessons: even trained operators can come within a whisker of getting bagged.
    And that was just 2 operators on one boat, with “KISS” as a guiding principle. Nothing like this hare-brained and convoluted (doomed from the start) Venezuela operation.
    The “official” history of the Corinto demo raid does not tell the entire story, but provides more background.

    https://www.nytimes.com/1984/04/18/world/oct-10-assault-on-nicaraguans-is-laid-to-cia.html

  7. Noell Bishop May 6, 2020 at 10:12

    I think these guys were way over their heads.

  8. Greg May 6, 2020 at 11:29

    When I read this, it occurred that the; who, what, how and where are all fubar. It also occurred that this may be slight of hand. This gave the Maduro regime something to focus on, while something else may have been going on elsewhere.

    Even if that didn’t happen, we need to learn how to make that very thing happen…programmers may wind up being our best tools in the future.

  9. Anonymous May 6, 2020 at 12:28

    5

  10. David Leflar May 6, 2020 at 12:29

    Take note partisans. Rats everywhere.

  11. Irish-7 May 6, 2020 at 13:56

    My first thought as well “Someone dropped a dime on their assess”. Seems to me to be a rather “tall task” for such a small unit.

  12. Ned Crabb May 6, 2020 at 15:16

    Could it be Maduro paid these guys to stage this and make him look persecuted?. He did stage his own assassination attempt a few years ago.

    • NC Scout May 6, 2020 at 15:22

      You never know. But the fact that this “General” is on the DEA’s wanted list (and a recent addition, btw) that they were allegedly working for is highly suspect. Everyone is shady in these dealings, it comes with the territory, but he’s a little more suspect at face value than most.

      Maduro could have easily staged an assassination attempt without all this drama. He’s got enough Russians from Wagner Group on the ground to make it look ‘western enough’ for the press without resorting to duping Americans into a trap.

  13. sss May 18, 2020 at 00:00

    good

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