A US federal agent offered Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s chief pilot a fortune to divert the leader’s plane so US authorities could capture him, according to a media report detailing a 16-month covert operation that ultimately failed to topple the strongman.
According to AP, the agent told the pilot in a secret meeting that he would be made a very rich man.
The conversation was tense, and the pilot left noncommittal, though he provided the agent, Edwin Lopez, with his cell number — a sign he might be interested in helping the US government.
The AP report, whose details it says were drawn from interviews with three current and former US officials, as well as one of Maduro’s opponents, comes amid tensions between the Trump administration and Venezuela over drug trafficking.
This month, Trump authorised the CIA to conduct covert actions inside Venezuela, and the US government has also doubled the bounty for Maduro’s capture on federal narco-trafficking charges, a move that Lopez sought to leverage in a text message to the pilot.
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More broadly, the ultimately unsuccessful plan reveals the extent to which the US has for years sought to topple Maduro, whom it blames for destroying the oil-rich nation’s democracy while providing a lifeline to drug traffickers, terrorist groups, and communist-run Cuba.
For the last 16 months, even after retiring from his government job in July, Lopez kept 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 elements of a Cold War spy thriller—luxury private jets, a secret meeting at an airport hangar, high-stakes diplomacy, and the delicate wooing of a key Maduro lieutenant.
There was even a final machination aimed at rattling the Venezuelan president about the pilot’s true loyalties, according to AP.
Since returning to the White House, US President Donald Trump has taken an even harder line on getting Maduro.
This summer, Trump deployed thousands of troops, attack helicopters, and warships to the Caribbean to attack fishing boats suspected of smuggling cocaine out of Venezuela.
The US military has killed at least 57 people in 13 strikes, including a few in the eastern Pacific Ocean.
According to AP, all persons in its report spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were either not authorised to discuss the effort or feared retribution for disclosing it.
The report also said the outlet reviewed — and authenticated — text exchanges between Lopez and the pilot.
“I’m still waiting for your answer,” Lopez wrote to Maduro’s pilot on 7 August, attaching a link to a Justice Department press release announcing the reward had risen to $50 million, the report showed in what it claimed to be the most recent exchanges between the two sides.
