Has Trump set his sights on Venezuela's Nicolas Maduro?

[ad_1] On the afternoon of September 19, an Airbus airplane utilized by Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro took off from Caracas. However 20 minutes later, it abruptly looped again.

A airplane spotter on X posted a screenshot of a flight-tracking map that confirmed the presidential Airbus making a U-turn.

A short time earlier, a unique put up on X caught the eye of on-line sleuths. Marshall Billingslea, a former assistant secretary for terrorism financing on the US Treasury, had posted two photographs of the identical man. In one of many pictures, the person was sitting on a purple leather-based sofa with a smile on his face. The opposite was a proper photograph of him in uniform, embellished with badges.

“¡Feliz cumpleaños “Basic” Bitner!” Billingslea wrote on X alongside the photographs, wishing a contented birthday to Basic Bitner Villegas – Maduro’s longtime trusted pilot and the person believed to have been flying the airplane.

<img fetchpriority="low" src="https://s.france24.com/media/display/74a2b98e-b66b-11f0-8e98-005056bfb2b6/w:980/Capture-d-%C3%A9cran-2025-10-31-160658.png" srcset="https://s.france24.com/media/display/74a2b98e-b66b-11f0-8e98-005056bfb2b6/w:246/Capture-d-%C3%A9cran-2025-10-31-160658.png 246w,https://s.france24.com/media/display/74a2b98e-b66b-11f0-8e98-005056bfb2b6/w:388/Capture-d-%C3%A9cran-2025-10-31-160658.png 388w,https://s.france24.com/media/display/74a2b98e-b66b-11f0-8e98-005056bfb2b6/w:720/Capture-d-%C3%A9cran-2025-10-31-160658.png 720w,https://s.france24.com/media/display/74a2b98e-b66b-11f0-8e98-005056bfb2b6/w:980/Capture-d-%C3%A9cran-2025-10-31-160658.png 980w" sizes="(max-width: 1023px) calc(100vw - 32px), (min-width: 1024px) 850px" alt="A screenshot of a tweet by Marshall Billingslea, a former assistant secretary for terrorism financing at the US Treasury" style="max-height:463px" loading="lazy" class="a-img "/> A screenshot of a tweet by Marshall Billingslea, a former assistant secretary for terrorism financing on the US Treasury © This weird put up could have been the explanation for the flight’s abrupt diversion, an investigation by the Related Press revealed on October 28 reveals. The exposé posits that Villegas could have been on the centre of a CIA-led covert operation concentrating on the Venezuelan president. The AP reviewed – and authenticated – textual content exchanges between the pilot and Division of Homeland Safety (DHS) agent Edwin Lopez.

The plan was presupposed to be easy. The DHS sought to recruit Villegas to assist arrest Maduro, Venezuela’s president since 2013 and "one of many largest narco-traffickers on the planet" in response to the USA. Trump has been a long-time critic of Maduro, who returned to workplace in January after an election that was extensively rejected by the worldwide neighborhood and fraught with allegations of fraud.

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The investigation by the Related Press is replete with all the weather that make a pulp spy novel: luxurious jets, clandestine conferences and blackmail between two of probably the most highly effective figures within the Americas. It reveals the extent to which the US is prepared to go to topple the Maduro, who's accused of destroying the oil-rich nation’s fledgling democracy and offering protected haven for drug traffickers and terrorist teams.

It additionally shines a light-weight on the haphazard strategies of the Trump-era CIA.

Enjoying on Maduro's paranoia The AP exposé alleges that DHS agent Lopez approached Villegas in 2024 after a tip-off concerning the location of Maduro’s planes. On the time, Lopez was main investigations into transnational felony networks after having constructed a profession taking down drug gangs and money-laundering operations.

His provide to Villegas was easy: the pilot would surreptitiously divert Maduro’s airplane to a territory the place the US might legally arrest him. In trade, he would make the pilot a wealthy man who could be beloved by many who want to overthrow the authoritarian Venezuelan chief.

In keeping with AP, the dialog between the boys was tense. Villegas was noncommittal however left his cell quantity with Lopez, who could have taken it as an indication of potential cooperation.

<img fetchpriority="low" src="https://s.france24.com/media/display/fb7cd2fa-b42c-11f0-b7c8-005056bfb2b6/w:980/AP25295696009042.jpg" srcset="https://s.france24.com/media/display/fb7cd2fa-b42c-11f0-b7c8-005056bfb2b6/w:246/AP25295696009042.jpg 246w,https://s.france24.com/media/display/fb7cd2fa-b42c-11f0-b7c8-005056bfb2b6/w:388/AP25295696009042.jpg 388w,https://s.france24.com/media/display/fb7cd2fa-b42c-11f0-b7c8-005056bfb2b6/w:720/AP25295696009042.jpg 720w,https://s.france24.com/media/display/fb7cd2fa-b42c-11f0-b7c8-005056bfb2b6/w:980/AP25295696009042.jpg 980w" sizes="(max-width: 1023px) calc(100vw - 32px), (min-width: 1024px) 850px" alt="Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro stands behind pilot Gen. Bitner Villegas in the cockpit of an airplane." style="max-height:567px" loading="lazy" class="a-img "/> Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro stands behind pilot Gen. Bitner Villegas within the cockpit of an airplane. © AP And the "Glad birthday" photograph could have helped gasoline Maduro's fears that he was being betrayed.

Neither Washington nor Caracas confirmed the allegations when contacted by the AP.

Lopez reportedly maintained contact with Villegas, even after his retirement in July this yr. When Trump elevated the reward for capturing Maduro in August this yr, the pilot acquired a message reminding him that there was nonetheless time to affix forces with the CIA. Lopez informed the pilot that there was nonetheless time left to be a Venezuelan hero and "on the fitting facet of historical past”. Lopez connected a hyperlink to a Justice Division press launch saying the reward had risen to $50 million.

The pilot finally refused to cooperate with US intelligence companies and even appeared on Venezuelan tv in late September alongside the minister of the inside, who asserted that Villegas is, and all the time has been, loyal to the president.

Echoes of the previous This isn’t the primary time the US has sought to make or break governments in Latin America; US authorities famously spent many years concentrating on Cuban president Fidel Castro and his entourage.

“There's a very fascinating parallel right here with a plot in 1960, when a CIA official tried to persuade a Cubana Airways pilot to take down a airplane carrying [the president's brother] Raul Castro," says Luca Trenta, an intelligence companies specialist at Swansea College in Wales.

"They provided him $10,000 or so and mentioned they'd pay for the schooling of his children," says Trenta, in case he did not survive what might have been a suicide mission. However the pilot did not comply with by way of.

"He simply got here again with out having killed Raul Castro or himself," Trenta says.

The AP report on the CIA’s newest try got here simply after Trump authorised the CIA to conduct clandestine operations in Venezuela final August, signalling ever-greater chance of future interventions.

Annette Loafer, an affiliate professor on the Blavatnik College of Authorities on the College of Oxford and a specialist in worldwide safety points, notes that US interventions in Latin America have had an extended and troubled historical past.

“We are able to begin with the overthrowing of Guatemala’s president in 1954 or to supporting anti-Castro operations in Cuba. Then we had the intervention concerning the coup towards [Socialist President Salvador] Allende in Chile in 1973, then Nicaragua. The listing goes on and on.”

<img fetchpriority="low" src="https://s.france24.com/media/display/ef747134-a87e-11f0-ad2c-005056a90284/w:980/2025-10-12T234051Z-1147537008-RC2LAHANYUNT-RTRMADP-3-VENEZUELA-ANNIVERSARY-COLUMBUS-DAY.jpg" srcset="https://s.france24.com/media/display/ef747134-a87e-11f0-ad2c-005056a90284/w:246/2025-10-12T234051Z-1147537008-RC2LAHANYUNT-RTRMADP-3-VENEZUELA-ANNIVERSARY-COLUMBUS-DAY.jpg 246w,https://s.france24.com/media/display/ef747134-a87e-11f0-ad2c-005056a90284/w:388/2025-10-12T234051Z-1147537008-RC2LAHANYUNT-RTRMADP-3-VENEZUELA-ANNIVERSARY-COLUMBUS-DAY.jpg 388w,https://s.france24.com/media/display/ef747134-a87e-11f0-ad2c-005056a90284/w:720/2025-10-12T234051Z-1147537008-RC2LAHANYUNT-RTRMADP-3-VENEZUELA-ANNIVERSARY-COLUMBUS-DAY.jpg 720w,https://s.france24.com/media/display/ef747134-a87e-11f0-ad2c-005056a90284/w:980/2025-10-12T234051Z-1147537008-RC2LAHANYUNT-RTRMADP-3-VENEZUELA-ANNIVERSARY-COLUMBUS-DAY.jpg 980w" sizes="(max-width: 1023px) calc(100vw - 32px), (min-width: 1024px) 850px" alt="Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro in Caracas, Venezuela, October 12, 2025." style="max-height:567px" loading="lazy" class="a-img "/> Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro in Caracas, Venezuela, October 12, 2025. © Leonardo Fernandez Viloria, Reuters The CIA’s involvement in Latin America reached a brand new excessive through the Chilly Struggle-era struggle towards communism, when the company participated within the fall of 5 regimes between 1963 and 1981: Ecuador, Brazil, Chile, Bolivia and Panama. US intelligence additionally offered monetary and operational help to Operation Condor, a marketing campaign of political repression carried out within the Nineteen Seventies by a number of right-wing Latin American dictatorships towards left-wing opponents.

However Trenta says US intelligence interventions in South America truly peaked between 1981-1989 below Ronald Reagan.

“We returned to a form of golden age of covert operations, notably in Central America. Initially it was anti-communism and it reworked right into a struggle on medicine," he says, including that the Drug Enforcement Company is changing into more and more energetic within the area.

Learn extra 'Each purpose' to anticipate assaults inside Venezuela, skilled warns as US escalates operations

Trump is giving the impression of concurrently being for the established order – formally, the intention is to fight drug trafficking, of which Venezuela is allegedly a hub – whereas additionally elevating the spectre of latest US efforts to destabilise the Maduro regime by way of clandestine actions.

However the Donald Trump of 2025 could be very totally different from the Trump of 2016-2020.

“He desires to sign his resolve and his capability to make use of US energy,” Trenta says. Throughout his first time period, there have been the well-known "adults within the room" – profession authorities officers who tried, as greatest they may, to restrain the president's extra excessive impulses.

The CIA was eager to suggest much less radical options – together with a profitable cyberattack on the pc community utilized by Venezuelan intelligence – than what Trump was demanding in his first time period, in response to a CNN report this week that outlined Trump's ambitions to oust Maduro.

Not-so-covert operations The present director of the CIA, John Ratcliffe, is a staunch Trump supporter who, together with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, takes a muscular strategy to US coverage in Latin America.

“We all know Marco Rubio is a hardliner,” Loafer says. "And together with different hardliners on this administration, he is mentioned to have pushed Maduro excessive up on the agenda.”

What is really distinctive concerning the present escalation of tensions between Washington and Caracas is that every part is being carried out out within the open, Loafer says, including: "I do not see what might be clandestine about CIA operations which might be virtually introduced upfront."

"Not less than through the Chilly Struggle, the USA maintained the potential for denying any involvement in clandestine operations. This time, that precept of believable deniability not exists," she says.

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<img fetchpriority="low" src="https://s.france24.com/media/display/2234859c-b440-11f0-93a0-005056a97e36/w:1280/p:16x9/EN-20251028-213115-214047-CS.jpg" srcset="https://s.france24.com/media/display/2234859c-b440-11f0-93a0-005056a97e36/w:388/p:16x9/EN-20251028-213115-214047-CS.jpg 388w,https://s.france24.com/media/display/2234859c-b440-11f0-93a0-005056a97e36/w:720/p:16x9/EN-20251028-213115-214047-CS.jpg 720w,https://s.france24.com/media/display/2234859c-b440-11f0-93a0-005056a97e36/w:1024/p:16x9/EN-20251028-213115-214047-CS.jpg 1024w,https://s.france24.com/media/display/2234859c-b440-11f0-93a0-005056a97e36/w:1280/p:16x9/EN-20251028-213115-214047-CS.jpg 1280w" sizes="(max-width: 639px) calc(100vw - 32px), (max-width: 1076px) calc(100vw - 44px), 850px" width="1280" height="720" alt="" loading="lazy" class="a-img "/> © France 24 This strategy defies the essential guidelines of working as an agent – and could also be partly about bluster, Trenta says.

It "demonstrates that the Trump administration has solely a really rudimentary understanding of what pressure projection is," he says. "For them, it's merely about hitting onerous. The remaining is for present."

Loafer echoes that sentiment, saying the choice to make usually covert operations public is a part of a technique to persuade US residents that the administration has a powerful, tough-on-crime authorities, somewhat than truly working to resolve complicated worldwide points.

"Making these clandestine operations public turned them into devices of home signalling somewhat than efficient technique," she says. "Trump desires to be seen as a man being robust on medicine, on crime, on migration."

However the strategy could backfire. Venezuela introduced on Monday that it had thwarted a CIA plot, accusing the company of getting established a cell to manufacture "false flag" incidents that might be used to justify a US navy intervention.