US and Colombian govts supported botched invasion of Venezuela: Bombshell testimony from coup-plotter
A key coup-plotter in the May 2020 botched invasion of Venezuela said she met with FBI and DEA officials. She admitted Colombia’s intelligence services were aiding them and “knew everything,” adding that President Iván Duque and far-right political kingpin Álvaro Uribe helped.
by Ben Norton
Part 1
A witness at the heart of the botched invasion of Venezuela in May 2020 has stated that the US and Colombian governments were involved in the regime-change operation. Coup-plotter Yacsy Álvarez said she met with officials from the FBI and DEA in Florida and informed them of their plans.
Álvarez also revealed that Colombia’s President Iván Duque and his powerful mentor Álvaro Uribe, who is closely linked to drug cartels and death squads, were aiding the Venezuelan coup-plotters. Colombia’s top intelligence agency supported the conspirators before and after the attempted invasion, and Álvarez explained that “they knew everything.”
But the Colombian government later turned on Álvarez and her fellow coup-plotters and arrested them. Her lawyer has accused Colombia’s intelligence services of setting a “trap,” so Bogotá could pin the blame on her and her associates and wash its hands of the operation.
The failed invasion, which aimed to violently overthrow Venezuela’s elected President Nicolás Maduro, was spearheaded by a Florida-based private military company called SilverCorp, led by former US Army Special Forces officer Jordan Goudreau.
Goudreau said in a breach-of-contract lawsuit that he had met with two Donald Trump administration officials at the former US president’s National Doral Miami golf resort to discuss the coup plans, and was told that the White House supported it.
The US and Colombian governments both repeatedly denied involvement in the botched invasion, which was called Operation Gideon (Operación Gedeón in Spanish). President Maduro, on the other hand, said Venezuelan intelligence agencies had gathered evidence proving that both Washington and Bogotá backed the operation.
New bombshell testimony from one of the most important figures in the coup plot shows that Maduro’s accusations were indeed correct.
A hardline anti-Chavista Venezuelan, Yacsy Álvarez translated for Goudreau and helped him organize the operation, as the former US Green Beret trained a small army of Venezuelan defectors in camps along Colombia’s northern Caribbean coast.
In video testimony from July, published by the Colombian media, Álvarez said she had a meeting with her lawyers in Tampa, Florida, along with representatives from the FBI and DEA. “I explained to them a lot of the activities and all the stuff that we did for the coup,” Álvarez recalled.
In another testimony from June, Álvarez detailed the Colombian government’s involvement in Operation Gideon.
“President Duque and Álvaro Uribe, they promised us three things, in exchange for one: First of all, they promised a runway, so we can land planes; and a place to train, a camp; and the freedom to cross the border between Venezuela and Colombia,” Álvarez explained. She added, “In exchange, we would fight against the ELN” – a reference to a Colombian socialist guerrilla group.
“I know this because I am the translator between Jordan Goudreau and Cliver Alcalá,” Álvarez said in the video testimony, referring to a former Venezuelan general who fled to Colombia in 2018 and has been involved in numerous coup attempts against Venezuela’s leftist government.
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