Botched raid in Venezuela 'a real gift' to the Maduro government, says analyst

A failed raid on the Venezuelan government is an embarrassment for opposition and a hindrance to peace, says a Caracas analyst and former journalist.

Former U.S. Green Beret Jordan Goudreau — who the Globe and Mail identifies as Canadian-American — has taken responsibility for what he claimed was a failed attack Sunday aimed at overthrowing Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

Goudreau, who has said he also served in the Canadian armed forces, now lives in Florida where he runs a private security firm called Silvercorp USA.

Venezuelan authorities arrested two U.S. citizens, both former soldiers, in connection with the botched maritime incursion. The U.S. government has denied any knowledge or involvement in the plot. 

Phil Gunson is a senior anaylst at the International Crisis Group, a non-profit think-tank that promotes a peaceful resolution to the crisis in Venezuela. Here is part of his conversation with As It Happens host Carol Off. 

Phil, what do you make of this failed invasion?

Well, perhaps invasion is a rather grand term for what appears to have been a series of rather incompetent incursions, which have left most of those involved either dead or imprisoned by the Maduro government.

It's a complicated story, but at the heart of it, I think, is a bunch of mercenaries who saw an opportunity to sell a deal to people in the Venezuelan opposition leadership, who fairly rapidly concluded that these were not people they wanted to have any dealings with and tried to cut things off.

But it appears to have been too late. The whole thing went ahead with what I think will be quite serious public relations consequences for the opposition leadership.

And, obviously, for the Maduro government, it's a real gift.

We're wondering in Canada about this one character who is involved with this, Jordan Goudreau, who is, in the American press, described as an ex-Green Beret. But we know him to also apparently be a Canadian citizen who was in the Canadian Forces in the 1990s [and] studied computer science at the University of Calgary. What was Jordan Goudreau's role in all this?

He seems to have been the prime mover, in a sense.

He describes himself as a strategic analyst. It appears he wasn't going to get his boots dirty.

But he sold the Venezuelan opposition on the idea that, with some help from former Venezuelan military people in Colombia, deserters from the Venezuelan military, he could, by inserting a number of groups into the country, he could capture some key regime people and effectively overthrow the government.

And at least at the beginning, they appear to have believed him.

And so they thought that ... they were going to take on the military in Venezuela and then get through that and overthrow the Maduro government. Is that essentially the plot?

That was what they thought they could do, crazy though it seems.

The plan, you know, never did look as if it was going to work. And Goudreau says that he was never paid, although it's now emerging that there was a $50,000 payment, it appears, at the beginning for "expenses." But he didn't get the money that he needed to mount the operation. And he went ahead anyway because he's a freedom fighter and not a mercenary.

Although cynics may prefer to believe that he hoped that he was going to get the $213 million that's apparently specified in the contract that he claims he signed with Juan Guaidó.

Juan Guaidó being the leader of the opposition in Venezuela and someone who Canada has given support to.

Guaidó, who is recognized by several dozen countries, including the U.S. and most of the European Union, as the legitimate head of state in Venezuela.

They say that Nicolas Maduro was fraudulently re-elected back in 2018, and that Juan Guaidó, as the head of the legislature, is entitled to claim the interim presidency pending fresh free elections.

But I imagine that a lot of these governments who are supporting Guaidó, though, will look at this askance and say, you know, do we really want our reputations to be linked to someone who's prepared to apparently put his name to something quite so crazy as this?

Is there any evidence that Juan Guaidó did support this? I mean, he is quoted as saying that he doesn't even know the people involved with this .... and that he wanted no part of it. 

Well, they've been very careful, actually, in their response. They've not said a lot. They do say that they don't have any relationship with Silvercorp, which is Goudreau's security outfit, or whatever you want to call it. Whether they ever did, I think, is a matter that hasn't really been explored properly yet.

There's a lot more to be answered that so far has not been addressed. And I don't think this is going to go away, unfortunately, for Juan Guaidó.

It's difficult to piece together, isn't it? Because there were some earlier reports of this thwarted coup that was coming, I think, over land. The one that we understand on the weekend was with Mr. Goudreau, [who] described [it] as a "daring amphibious raid launched from Colombia." What do you know? What have you figured out as to what happened this weekend?

It seems that the original plan did involve crossing the Colombia-Venezuela border. But as I understand it, and also taking at face value some of what Goudreau himself says, it seems that the Colombian military were harassing them.

They were being watched pretty closely. And what appears to have happened is that they improvised at the last minute a maritime incursion, or a set of maritime incursions, which were really poorly prepared, badly supplied in the sense that they didn't have what they needed.

And they've been effectively, it would appear, defeated more or less at the outset. Although, Goudreau still claims that there are people within Venezuela who are continuing to fight.

He apparently was tweeting, putting out videos of himself, saying that the people are still valiantly fighting within and talking about his amazing attempted coup. But at the same time, I understand, there have been a number of people he's associated with, including some former Green Berets who were his friends, who have been arrested in Venezuela. Is that the case?

These two U.S. citizens. And again, I think there doesn't seem to be much doubt about their identity and the fact that they are former U.S. special forces people.

How much damage has this done to the Venezuelan opposition?

I think it's done a lot of damage.

More importantly, perhaps, it's done a lot of damage to the prospects of a negotiated peaceful solution to the Venezuelan crisis, which, of course, has been building for 20 years and has led to a humanitarian emergency here.

We desperately need a solution. And the only real solution, the only real sustainable solution, is a negotiated peaceful solution. It's very unlikely that this is going to be resolved by force of arms.

So that, I think, is the worst aspect to this. 

Written by Sheena Goodyear with files from The Associated Press. Interview produced by Kate Swoger.