US arrests a former Green Beret over the failed 2020 raid into Venezuela to remove Maduro
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — A former U.S. Green Beret who in 2020 organized a failed cross-border raid of Venezuelan army deserters to remove President Nicolás Maduro has been arrested in New York on federal arms smuggling charges.
A federal indictment unsealed this week in Tampa, Florida, accuses Jordan Goudreau and a Venezuelan partner, Yacsy Alvarez, of violating U.S. arms control laws when they allegedly assembled and sent to Colombia AR-styled weapons, ammunition, silencers, night vision goggles and other defense equipment requiring a U.S. export license.
Goudreau, 48, also was charged with conspiracy, smuggling goods from the United States and unlawful possession of a machine gun, among 14 counts. Goudreau appeared in federal court following his Tuesday arrest in Manhattan but it was not clear a day later whether he would be released from custody pending trial. He was being held at a federal detention center in Brooklyn.
Goudreau, a three-time Bronze Star recipient for bravery in Iraq and Afghanistan, claimed responsibility in 2020 for the amphibious raid by a ragtag group of soldiers that had trained in clandestine camps in Venezuela’s neighbor Colombia. He said he and others were acting to protect Venezuela’s democracy after Maduro’s 2018 reelection was boycotted by the opposition and condemned as undemocratic by the U.S. and dozens of other countries.
Two days before the incursion, The Associated Press published an investigation detailing how Goudreau had been trying for months to raise funds for the harebrained idea from the Trump administration, Venezuela’s opposition and wealthy Americans looking to invest in Venezuela’s oil industry should Maduro be removed.
While then-opposition leader Juan Guaidó was initially enthused by the coup idea, signing an agreement with Goudreau to explore such an option, little financial support arrived and the rural homes along Colombia’s Caribbean coast that housed the would-be liberators suffered from a lack of food, weapons and other supplies.
Despite the setbacks, the coup plotters went forward in a comical if tragic way in what was widely ridiculed as the “Bay of Piglets,” in reference to the 1961 Cuban fiasco. The group was easily mopped up by Venezuela’s security forces, which had already infiltrated the group. Two of Goudreau’s former Green Beret colleagues spent years in Venezuela’s prisons until a prisoner swap last year with other jailed Americans for a Maduro ally held in the U.S. on money laundering charges.
