MIAMI (AP) — The federal agent had a daring pitch for Nicolás Maduro’s chief pilot: All he needed to do was surreptitiously divert the Venezuelan president’s aircraft to a spot the place U.S. authorities may nab the strongman.
In trade, the agent advised the pilot in a clandestine assembly, the aviator could be made a really wealthy man.
The dialog was tense, and the pilot left noncommittal, although he supplied the agent, Edwin Lopez, along with his cell quantity — an indication he is likely to be fascinated with serving to the U.S. authorities.
Over the subsequent 16 months, even after retiring from his authorities job in July, Lopez saved at it, chatting with the pilot over an encrypted messaging app.
The untold, intrigue-filled saga of how Lopez tried to flip the pilot has all the weather of a Chilly Conflict spy thriller — luxurious non-public jets, a secret assembly at an airport hangar, high-stakes diplomacy and the fragile wooing of a key Maduro lieutenant. There was even a closing machination geared toward rattling the Venezuelan president concerning the pilot’s true loyalties.
Extra broadly, the scheme reveals the extent — and sometimes slapdash vogue — to which the U.S. has for years sought to topple Maduro, who it blames for destroying the oil-rich nation’s democracy whereas offering a lifeline to drug traffickers, terrorist teams and communist-run Cuba.
Since returning to the White Home, Donald Trump has taken an excellent tougher line. This summer time, the president has deployed hundreds of troops, assault helicopters and warships to the Caribbean to assault fishing boats suspected of smuggling cocaine out of Venezuela. In 13 strikes, together with a couple of within the jap Pacific Ocean, the U.S. navy has killed at the least 57 folks.
This month, Trump licensed the CIA to conduct covert actions inside Venezuela, and the U.S. authorities has additionally doubled the bounty for Maduro’s seize on federal narco-trafficking fees, a transfer that Lopez sought to leverage in a textual content message to the pilot.
“I’m still waiting for your answer,” Lopez wrote the pilot on Aug. 7, attaching a hyperlink to a Justice Division press launch saying the reward had risen to $50 million.
Particulars of the in the end unsuccessful plan have been drawn from interviews with three present and former U.S. officers, in addition to considered one of Maduro’s opponents. All spoke on the situation of anonymity as a result of they have been both not licensed to debate the trouble or feared retribution for disclosing it. The Related Press additionally reviewed — and authenticated — textual content exchanges between Lopez and the pilot.
Makes an attempt to find the pilot, Venezuelan Gen. Bitner Villegas, weren’t profitable.
The U.S. Division of Homeland Safety and the State Division didn’t remark. The Venezuelan authorities didn’t reply to a request for remark.
It began with a tip on Maduro’s planes
The plot was hatched when a tipster confirmed up on the U.S. Embassy within the Dominican Republic on April 24, 2024, when Joe Biden was president. The informant presupposed to have details about Maduro’s planes, based on three of the officers accustomed to the matter.
Lopez, 50, was then an attaché on the embassy and agent for Homeland Safety Investigations, part of the Division of Homeland Safety.
A wiry former U.S. Military Ranger from Puerto Rico, Lopez was main the company’s investigations into transnational prison networks with a presence within the Caribbean, after a storied profession taking down drug gangs, cash launderers and fraudsters. His work dismantling a bootleg money-changing operation in Miami even earned him a public rebuke in 2010 from Hugo Chávez, Maduro’s predecessor. The embassy project was to be his final earlier than retirement.
The embassy was closed, though Lopez was nonetheless at his desk. He was handed a 3×5 index card with the tipster’s title and telephone quantity. When he referred to as, the tipster claimed that two planes utilized by Maduro have been within the Dominican Republic present process pricey repairs.
Lopez was intrigued: He knew that any upkeep was more than likely a prison violation beneath U.S. legislation as a result of it will’ve concerned the acquisition of American elements, prohibited by sanctions on Venezuela. The planes have been additionally topic to seizure – for violating those self same sanctions.
Finding the plane was straightforward – they have been housed in La Isabela government airport in Santo Domingo. Tracing them to Maduro would take federal investigators months. As they constructed that case, they realized that the Venezuelan president had dispatched 5 pilots to the island to retrieve the multimillion-dollar jets – a Dassault Falcon 2000EX and Dassault Falcon 900EX.
A plan comes collectively
Lopez had an epiphany, based on the present and former officers accustomed to the operation: What if he may persuade the pilot to fly Maduro to a spot the place the U.S. may arrest him?
Maduro had been indicted in 2020 on federal narco-terrorism fees accusing him of flooding the U.S. with cocaine.
The DHS agent secured permission from his superiors and Dominican authorities to query the pilots, overcoming the officers’ issues about making a diplomatic rift with Venezuela.
On the airport hangar, a brief distance from the jet, Lopez and fellow brokers requested every pilot to affix them individually in a small convention room. There was no agenda, the brokers mentioned. They only wished to speak.
The brokers pretended to not know that the pilots spent their time jetting round Maduro and different prime officers. They spoke to every airman for about an hour, saving their greatest goal for final: Villegas, who the brokers had decided was Maduro’s common pilot.
Villegas was a member of the elite presidential honor guard and colonel within the Venezuelan air pressure. A former Venezuelan official who often traveled with the president described him as pleasant, reserved and trusted by Maduro. The planes he flew have been used to shuttle Maduro throughout the globe –- usually to U.S. adversaries like Iran, Cuba and Russia. In a December 2023 video posted on-line by Maduro, Villegas might be seen holding up a radio within the cockpit because the president trades patriotic slogans with the pilot of a Russian Sukhoi fighter jet.
Lopez referred to as Villegas into the room, they usually bantered for some time about celebrities the pilot had shuttled round, his navy service and the kinds of jets he was licensed to fly, based on two of the folks accustomed to the operation. After about quarter-hour, the pilot started to develop tense, and his legs began to shake.
The agent drilled in additional sharply: Had the pilot ever flown Chávez or Maduro? Villegas at first tried to dodge the questions, however finally admitted he had been a pilot for each leaders. Villegas confirmed the brokers photographs on his telephone of him and the 2 presidents on varied journeys. He additionally supplied particulars about Venezuelan navy installations he had visited. Unbeknownst to Villegas, considered one of Lopez’s colleagues recorded the dialog on a mobile phone.
Because the dialog wrapped up, the 2 folks mentioned, Lopez made his pitch: In trade for secretly ferrying Maduro into America’s arms, the pilot would grow to be very wealthy and beloved by tens of millions of his compatriots. The rendezvous may very well be of the pilot’s selecting: the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico or the U.S. navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Villegas didn’t tip his hand. But, earlier than departing, he gave Lopez his cell quantity.
‘Treasure trove of intelligence’
Villegas and the opposite pilots returned to Venezuela with out the plane, which they have been advised lacked the correct clearances.
In the meantime, the U.S. authorities was assembling a federal forfeiture case to grab the jets. It seized one, registered within the European microstate of San Marino to a shell firm from St. Vincent and the Grenadines, in September 2024.
It seized the opposite in February through the first abroad journey by Secretary of State Marco Rubio as the highest U.S. diplomat.
At a press convention on the airport within the Dominican Republic, Lopez briefed the secretary in entrance of the press. Lopez advised Rubio that the aircraft contained a “ treasure trove of intelligence,” together with the names of Venezuelan air pressure officers and detailed details about its actions. Lopez affixed a seizure warrant to the jet.
Maduro’s authorities reacted angrily, releasing an announcement that accused Rubio of “brazen theft.”
Even in retirement, Lopez saved going
As he assembled the forfeiture in live performance with different federal businesses, Lopez centered on coaxing Villegas to affix his plot.
The duty wouldn’t be straightforward. Maduro had made it exceedingly pricey for anybody who turns towards him. Since taking workplace in 2013, he has brutally repressed protests, resulting in scores of arrests, whereas jailing even once-powerful allies suspected of disloyalty.
Even so, Lopez plugged away. The pair texted on WhatsApp and Telegram a couple of dozen instances. However the conversations appeared to go nowhere.
In July, Lopez retired. However he couldn’t let Villegas go. He sought steering from the tight-knit group of exiled opposition leaders he acquired to know as a lawman. One described the previous agent as obsessive about bringing Maduro to justice.
“He felt he had an unfinished mission to complete,” mentioned an exiled member of Maduro’s opposition who spoke on the situation of anonymity over issues about his security. That dedication, he added, makes Lopez “more valuable to us than many of Maduro’s biggest opponents inside Venezuela.”
After the August textual content concerning the $50 million reward, Lopez despatched one other saying there was “still time left to be Venezuela’s hero and be on the right side of history.” However he didn’t hear again.
On Sept. 18, Lopez was watching the information of Trump’s buildup within the Caribbean when he noticed a submit on X by an nameless aircraft spotter who had intently tracked the comings and goings of Maduro’s jetliners over time, based on three of the folks accustomed to the matter. The person, @Arr3ch0, a play on Venezuelan slang for “furious,” posted a screenshot of a flight monitoring map that confirmed a presidential Airbus making an odd loop after taking off from Caracas.
“Where are you heading?” wrote Lopez, utilizing a brand new quantity.
“Who is this?” responded Villegas, both not recognizing the quantity or feigning ignorance.
When Lopez pressed about what they mentioned within the Dominican Republic, Villegas grew combative, calling Lopez a “coward.”
“We Venezuelans are cut from a different cloth,” Villegas wrote. “The last thing we are is traitors.”
Lopez despatched him a photograph of them speaking to one another on a crimson leather-based sofa on the airplane hangar the earlier yr.
“Are you crazy?” Villegas replied.
“A little…,” wrote Lopez.
Two hours later, Lopez tried one final time, mentioning Villegas’ three kids by title and a greater future he mentioned awaited them within the U.S.
“The window for a decision is closing,” Lopez wrote, shortly earlier than Villegas blocked his quantity. “Soon it will be too late.”
Attempting to rattle Maduro
Realizing that Villegas wasn’t going to affix the plan, Lopez and others within the anti-Maduro motion determined to attempt to unnerve the Venezuelan chief, based on three of the folks accustomed to the operation.
The day after the testy WhatsApp trade between Lopez and Villegas, Marshall Billingslea – an in depth ally of Venezuela’s opposition – took motion. A former nationwide safety official in Republican administrations, Billingslea had for weeks been trolling Maduro. Now he introduced Villegas into his cyberbullying.
“Feliz cumpleanos ‘General’ Bitner!” he wrote in a mocking birthday want on X the day Villegas turned 48.
Billingslea included side-by-side pictures that will make sure you increase eyebrows. One was the identical one which Lopez had shared with Villegas the day earlier than over WhatsApp, besides the agent had been cropped out of it. The opposite was an official air pressure picture with a gold star denoting his new rank affixed to the shoulder epaulet.
The X submit was printed at 3:01 p.m. — a minute earlier than one other sanctioned Airbus that Maduro has been identified to fly took off from Caracas’ airport. Twenty minutes later, the aircraft unexpectedly returned to the airport.
The birthday want, seen by virtually 3 million folks, despatched shockwaves throughout Venezuelan social media, as Maduro’s opponents speculated the pilot had been ordered to return to face interrogation. Others questioned if he could be jailed. No one noticed or heard from Villegas for days. Then, on Sept. 24, the pilot resurfaced, in an air pressure flight go well with, on a broadly adopted TV present hosted by Inside Minister Diosdado Cabello.
Cabello laughed off any suggestion that Venezuela’s navy may very well be purchased. As he praised Villegas’ loyalty, calling him an “unfailing, kick-ass patriot, ” the pilot stood by silently, elevating a clenched fist in a show of his loyalty.
Contact AP’s international investigative crew at [email protected] or https://www.ap.org/suggestions/
Related Press author Regina Garcia Cano contributed to this report from Caracas, Venezuela.
