A retired Venezuelan army general says US officials at the highest levels of the CIA and other federal agencies were aware of his efforts to oust Nicolás Maduro — a role he says should immediately debunk criminal charges that he worked alongside the socialist leader to flood the US with cocaine.
The stunning accusation came in a court filing by lawyers for Cliver Alcalá seeking to have narcoterrorist charges filed nearly two years ago by federal prosecutors in Manhattan thrown out.
"Efforts to overthrow the Maduro regime have been well known to the United States government," General Alcalá's lawyers said in a November 2021 letter to prosecutors that accompanied their motion to have the charges dismissed.
"His opposition to the regime and his alleged efforts to overthrow it were reported to the highest levels of the Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Council, and the Department of the Treasury."
The court records raise fresh questions about what Donald Trump's administration knew about the failed plot to oust Mr Maduro in 2020 for which US Green Beret Jordan Goudreau was helping General Alcalá train a ragtag army of Venezuelan military deserters at secret camps in Colombia around the time of his arrest.
General Alcalá has been an outspoken critic of Mr Maduro almost since he took office in 2013 following the death of Hugo Chávez.
But despite such open hostility toward Mr Maduro, he and his sworn enemy were charged together in a second superseding indictment with being part of a cabal of senior Venezuelan officials and military officers that worked with Colombian rebels to allegedly send 250 tonnes of cocaine a year to the US.
While the attorneys provided no details about what the US government may have known about General Alcalá's coup plotting, they said they believe his activities "were communicated at the highest levels of a number of US government agencies" including the CIA, Treasury and Justice departments, the NSC and the Drug Enforcement Administration.
To that end, they are seeking documents and information, much of it classified, regarding communications between US officials and members of Venezuela's opposition about General Alcalá.
Those US officials include former secretary of state Mike Pompeo, former attorney-general William Barr, as well as senior officials at the White House and unnamed CIA operatives in Colombia.
The CIA didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
Also named as having knowledge of General Alcalá's activities are two allies of opposition leader Juan Guaidó — who the US and Australia recognise as Venezuela's legitimate leader — as well as Miami-based political strategist JJ Rendon, who signed on behalf of General Guaidó, a never-executed agreement for Mr Goudreau to carry out a snatch and grab operation against Mr Maduro.
"The evidence is clear that he has been openly and actively opposed to his alleged co-conspirators for at least the past eight years," attorneys wrote in the letter to prosecutors included in the filing.
"Indeed, his conduct, in support of the democratic ideals in which he believes, constituted treason against the very people whom the government alleges were his co-conspirators for which they seek his detention, imprisonment, and life."
General Alcalá indicted before coup attempt
In the telling of General Alcalá's attorneys, on the eve of launching what would've been his second armed raid against Mr Maduro, he received a knock on the door from a US law enforcement official at his home in Barranquilla, Colombia informing him that he had been indicted.
"The agent informed [him] that he could either board a private jet bound for New York or be held in a Colombian jail where he would no doubt be targeted by the Venezuelan intelligence services for assassination," General Alcala's attorneys claim.
"Left with little choice, [he] agreed to accompany the agent back to the United States."
Although General Alcalá was out of the picture in a Manhattan jail, a small group of would-be freedom fighters pushed ahead and on May 3, 2020 — two days after an investigation by The Associated Press blew the lid on the clandestine camps — launched a cross-border raid that was easily mopped up.
Operation Gideon — or the Bay of Piglets, as the bloody fiasco came to be known — ended with six insurgents dead and two of Mr Goudreau's former special forces buddies behind bars in Caracas. It also delivered a major propaganda coup to Mr Maduro, who has long accused the US of seeking to assassinate him.
The US has always denied any involvement in violent attempts to overthrow Maduro.
However, Mr Pompeo's cryptic statement that the US had no "direct involvement" in Operation Gideon left some observers wondering what the US may have known about the plot in a region where the CIA has a long history of coup-plotting during the Cold War.
General claimed he had a contract with US and Guaidó
General Alcalá has been living in Colombia since fleeing Venezuela in 2018 after the discovery of a conspiracy that he was secretly leading in hopes of ousting Mr Maduro. The US offered a $US10 million ($14.3 million) reward for his arrest when Mr Barr announced he, Mr Maduro and several other senior Venezuelan officials had been indicted.
Before surrendering in 2020, General Alcalá shocked many by claiming responsibility for a stockpile of US-made assault weapons and military equipment seized on a highway in Colombia for what he said was a planned incursion into Venezuela to remove Mr Maduro.
Without offering much in the way of details, he said he had a contract with Mr Guaidó and his "American advisers" to purchase the weapons but blamed the US-backed opposition for betraying the cause.
"We had everything ready," General Alcalá said in a video published on social media moments before turning himself in.
"But circumstances that have plagued us throughout this fight against the regime generated leaks from the very heart of the opposition, the part that wants to coexist with Maduro."
ABC/wires
