[News] Trump admin’s $15 million bounty on Maduro triggers explosive confession of violent Guaidó plot

[Anti-Imperialist News]

 https://thegrayzone.com/2020/03/27/trump-bounty-maduro-guaido-plot/ Trump
admin’s $15 million bounty on Maduro triggers explosive confession of
violent Guaidó plotMarch 27, 2020
------------------------------
The Trump administration’s deception-laden indictment of President Nicolas
Maduro and members of his inner circle has badly backfired, resulting in
the exposure of a violent assassination plan that could lead to the arrest
of coup leader Juan Guaidó. By Leonardo Flores

For twenty years, right wing extremists in Miami and Washington have been
slandering the Venezuelan government, accusing it of drug trafficking and
harboring terrorists without offering even a shred of evidence
<https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/14509>.

The item at the top of their wishlist was fulfilled on March 26, when the
U.S. Department of Justice unveiled indictments against President Nicolás
Maduro and 13 other current or former members of Venezuela’s government and
military.

In addition to the indictments, Attorney General William Barr offered a $15
million reward for information leading to the arrest or conviction of
Maduro, as well as $10 million rewards for Diosdado Cabello (president of
Venezuela’s National Constituent Assembly), Tarek El Aissami (vice
president for the economy), Hugo Carvajal (former director of military
intelligence) and Cliver Alcalá (retired general).

The indictment has backfired already. Hours after the announcement, Alcalá
posted videos online that threaten to cause further splits in the
opposition and exposed a violent plot that could result in the arrest of
Juan Guaidó. Before going into those details, however, it’s important to
understand just how politically biased
<https://twitter.com/rosendo_joe/status/1243334834195517440> the charges
are against Maduro et al.

The myth that Venezuela is a narco-state has already been debunked by the
Washington Office in Latin America
<https://www.wola.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Narcostate-Venezuela-Drug-Trafficking-Ramsey-Smilde.pdf>
(WOLA), a think tank in Washington that generally supports US regime change
operations in the region, as well as by FAIR
<https://fair.org/home/media-continue-to-push-misinformation-about-venezuela-and-drug-trafficking/>
, 15 y Último <https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/14794>, Misión Verdad
<https://medium.com/@misionverdad2012/es-oficial-eeuu-terceriza-sus-operaciones-para-el-derrocamiento-de-nicol%C3%A1s-maduro-10589cf1f6f6>
, Venezuelanalysis
<https://twitter.com/venanalysis/status/1243234258531028996> and others. It
cannot be denied that Venezuela is a transit country for cocaine, but as
the maps above and below show, less than 7% of total drug movement from
South America transits from Venezuela (the Eastern Caribbean region
includes Colombia’s Guajira Peninsula). These maps, produced by the Drug
Enforcement Agency
<https://www.dea.gov/sites/default/files/2018-11/DIR-032-18%202018%20NDTA%20final%20low%20resolution.pdf>
and U.S. Southern Command,
<https://www.businessinsider.com/heres-how-drugs-are-getting-smuggled-from-south-america-to-the-us-2017-9>
respectively, immediately raise questions as to why Venezuela is the
country being targeted.
Maritime drug flows from South America in 2017. Photo: Adam Isaacson

 Of course, the charges have nothing to do with the drug trade; they are
the latest escalation in the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure March
<https://www.codepink.org/maximum_pressure_march_us_hybrid_war_on_venezuela_heats_up>.”
The pretext is an alleged plot by the Venezuelan government to flood the
United States with “somewhere between 200-250 metric tons of cocaine
<https://www.justice.gov/opa/speech/attorney-general-william-p-barr-delivers-remarks-press-conference-announcing-criminal>.”
Although that figure might seem high, it’s important to understand the
context. The United States is the world’s biggest consumer of cocaine
<https://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/tocta/4.Cocaine.pdf> and
Colombia is the world’s biggest producer
<https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-45578492>. On the other hand,
Venezuela does not cultivate coca
<https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/crop-monitoring/index.html>, does not
produce cocaine and, according to the U.S. government’s own figures, less
than 10% of global cocaine traffic transits through the country.

For the sake of comparison, the U.S. agencies that provided Barr with the
figure of “200-250 tons” also say that an average of nearly 2,400 tons of
cocaine flowed through Colombia between 2016 and 2019 (Venezuela averaged
216 tons – ten times less – in the same period). Colombia’s current
president, Iván Duque, is a close ally of the country’s former president,
Alvaro Uribe, who himself has been linked to drug trafficking
<https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/25/world/americas/colombia-uribe-drugs.html>.
Almost exactly a year ago, President Trump complained that “more drugs are
coming out of Colombia right now than before
<https://colombiareports.com/drug-trafficking-from-colombia-up-since-duque-took-office-trump/>”
Duque was president, yet the U.S. continues giving millions in security aid
to Colombia as part of its failed war on drugs.

The U.S double standard about narco-states
<https://jacobinmag.com/2019/10/tony-hernandez-cocaine-honduras-venezuela>
is not limited to Colombia. Honduras’s U.S.-backed president, Juan Orlando
Hernández, was linked to drug trafficking in a U.S. court,
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/03/honduran-president-juan-orlando-hernandez-drug-money>
yet this news did not warrant a major announcement by the DOJ, presumably
because Hernández is a U.S. ally. Another U.S. ally, Guatemala, had six
times as much cocaine flow through its territory
<https://www.wola.org/analysis/beyond-the-narco-state-narrative-what-u-s-drug-trade-monitoring-data-says-about-venezuela/>
as Venezuela.

The indictments are another brick in the foundation for a pretext for
either a direct U.S. military invasion or a proxy war using Colombian
forces. There are obvious comparisons to 1989, when the U.S. put a $1
million bounty on Panamanian president Manuel Noriega, only to subsequently
invade the country, causing an estimated 4,000 deaths
<http://elsiglo.com.pa/panama/muertos-invasion-misterio-aclarar/23829789>.

The rewards the U.S. is offering for Maduro and four others are also
troubling, as they have already been compared to a bounty
<https://twitter.com/dancohen3000/status/1243247388782989312>. Maduro has
survived at least one assassination attempt (in August 2018 when drones
laden with explosives detonated prematurely), and the rewards could be
interpreted as, at minimum, a “get out of jail free” card should someone
succeed in murdering him. On the other hand, the rewards verify what the
Venezuelan government has been saying all along: the U.S. is offering
millions of dollars for people to turn on the country’s leadership.

Yet the Trump administration appears to have made a serious miscalculation
by including the retired General Alcalá in the indictments. A former ally
of ex-president Hugo Chávez, Alcalá joined the opposition in 2015 and has
been linked to various coup plots and planned terror attacks since 2016. He
is the highest profile former officer to turn against Maduro and is
considered the “leader of pro-Guaidó military personnel
<https://www.perfil.com/noticias/internacional/alcala-el-general-que-era-chavista-y-ahora-lidera-a-los-militares-pro-guaido.phtml>.”
Alcalá is now wanted both by the United States and by Venezuela.

Alcalá is implicated in a recent plot to attack the Maduro government. On
March 24, Colombian authorities seized a truck full of weapons and military
equipment, including 26 assault rifles
<https://www.eltiempo.com/colombia/otras-ciudades/incautan-armamento-de-guerra-entre-cienaga-y-barranquilla-476388>,
worth $500,000. Venezuelan intelligence services linked the weapons to
three camps in Colombia where paramilitary groups of Venezuelan deserters
and U.S. mercenaries
<https://albaciudad.org/2020/03/jorge-rodriguez-3-campamentos-riohacha-colombia-arsenal-armas/>
are training to carry out attacks against Venezuela. According to
Venezuela’s Communication Minister Jorge Rodríguez, these groups were
planning to take advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic to attack military
units and plant bombs. He also linked the groups to Alcalá.

These allegations proved to be correct, as Alcalá, in a video he posted
online hours after the indictments, admitted that the weapons were under
his command. He further admitted that the weapons were purchased with funds
given to him by Juan Guaidó
<https://twitter.com/Mision_Verdad/status/1243251030445494273>, with whom
he allegedly signed a contract.  Additionally, Alcala claimed that the
operation was planned by U.S. advisors, with whom he supposedly met at
least seven times <https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/14825>. Aclalá also
alleged that Leopoldo López, the founder of Guaidó’s party Voluntad Popular
who was sprung from house arrest during Guaidó’s April 30 attempted
insurrection
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2019/apr/30/venezuela-opposition-leader-juan-guaido-claims-coup-underway-live-news>,
had full knowledge of the terror plot.

As a result of these videos, Venezuela’s Attorney General has opened an
investigation into Juan Guaidó for an attempted coup
<https://albaciudad.org/2020/03/fiscalia-venezolana-abre-investigacion-contra-guaido-y-cliver-alcala-por-intento-de-golpe-de-estado/>.
Despite Guaidó’s self-proclamation as president in January 2019, his
attempted insurrection in April 2019, his repeated calls for sanctions and
a military invasion, Venezuelan authorities had refrained from moving
against him. The U.S. indictments appear to have caused the Venezuelan
government to issue its strongest response to the Trump administration’s
and Guaidó’s continued provocations.

Of course, if the Trump administration were truly serious about combating
terror, corruption and drug trafficking, the first Venezuelan they should
look at ought to be Juan Guaidó. After all, he was photographed with
members of the infamous Los Rastrojos drug cartel
<https://www.codepink.org/the_venezuelan_opposition_s_paramilitary_gambit>,
who allegedly helped him cross into Colombia in exchange for his turning a
blind eye to the cartel’s expansion from Colombia into western Venezuela.
Guaidó’s team in Colombia embezzled humanitarian aid funds
<https://es.panampost.com/orlando-avendano/2019/06/14/enviados-de-guaido-se-apropian-de-fondos-para-ayuda-humanitaria-en-colombia/>
and now he has been directly implicated in a terror plot, one which
presumably used money given to him by the United States (as that is his
only source of financing).

The revelations about Guaidó’s spending of U.S. funds to buy weapons and
his alleged involvement in yet another violent plot are putting pressure on
opposition figures and parties that have hinted at wanting to participate
in this year’s legislative elections but have yet to fully commit to
dialogue. A day before the U.S. indictments were revealed, President Maduro
invited several of these leaders to join a dialogue
<https://albaciudad.org/2020/03/presidente-maduro-llama-a-un-dialogo-nacional-con-la-oposicion-para-combatir-pandemia/>
in the Apostolic Nuncio (the Vatican’s embassy in Caracas) in order to try
to reach consensus over the nation’s response to COVID-19. Now they are
faced with the difficult choice of either angering Venezuelan voters (83%
of whom reject a military option
<https://www.telesurtv.net/news/venezolanos-rechazo-sanciones-eeuu-20200224-0022.html>)
by continuing to support Guaidó’s violence or angering the United States by
working with indicted government officials.

The Trump administration has been sabotaging a negotiated solution to
Venezuela’s problems for two years, including in February 2018, when it
threatened an oil embargo and support for a coup during negotiations
between the government and the opposition in the Dominican Republic, and
again in August 2019, when it imposed a full embargo during another attempt
at dialogue. These new indictments, which even the New York Times described
as “highly unusual
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/26/nyregion/venezuela-president-drug-trafficking-nicolas-maduro.html>”,
seemed timed to sabotage negotiations once again, as earlier in the week
members of the moderate opposition, including National Assembly president
Luis Parra, had recently urged the U.S. to lift the sanctions due to the
coronavirus pandemic
<https://talcualdigital.com/luis-parra-pide-levantar-ineficientes-sanciones-para-afrontar-crisis-por-covid-19/>
.

Yet another blunder with the indictments is that the Trump administration
is sending contradictory messages. On the one hand, they have spent three
years urging high level Venezuelan government and military officials to
defect, promising space to operate politically after a transition
government comes into power. On the other, they indicted the most
high-profile member of the military who has defected, Cliver Alcalá, on
serious charges of narcoterrorism.

The brazenness of the indictments in attempting to cast Venezuela as a
narco-state, the lack of foresight regarding possible repercussions, the
attempted sabotage of dialogue and the mixed messaging are all signals that
the Trump administration is desperate to ensure its regime change policy
shows results. The victims of this policy are the Venezuelan people, who
would be much better off with a policy of de-escalation, dialogue and a
removal of the deadly sanctions.
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