AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
President Trump made repeated threats over the course of months against Venezuela's president, Nicolas Maduro. Yet when Trump finally gave an order to seize the Venezuelan leader, the U.S. military still enjoyed the element of surprise. Special forces entered Maduro's compound in the middle of the night, grabbed him and his wife and flew out of the country all in well under three hours. NPR national security correspondent Greg Myre is here with details. Welcome.
GREG MYRE, BYLINE: Hi, Ayesha.
RASCOE: So the U.S. buildup against Maduro lasted months. It was very public. But the actual operation was top-secret. So what do we know about it?
MYRE: Yeah. General Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, appeared with President Trump at a press briefing in Florida yesterday. Now, he said the planning included exhaustive work by the CIA and other intelligence agencies to learn as much as possible about Maduro's pattern of life.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
DAN CAINE: After months of work by our intelligence teammates to find Maduro and understand how he moved, where he lived, where he traveled, what he ate, what he wore, what were his pets, in early December, our force was set.
MYRE: So the U.S. troops were in place a month ago, but they had to wait for the right moment to launch. And this is largely because of weather conditions. You're dealing with the Caribbean Sea, mountainous terrain, lots of frequent cloud cover.
RASCOE: So when did the president decide to launch the attack?
MYRE: Yeah. Trump was at his Mar-a-Lago residence and gave the order a little before 11 p.m. on Friday night. The U.S. forces then launched 150 planes from 20 different locations. This included bombers, fighter jets, surveillance aircraft, drones. So many of these planes were helping to protect U.S. helicopters that were flying low over the sea, carrying Army Delta Force troops toward Maduro's compound in the capital. Again, here's Dan Caine.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
CAINE: As the force began to approach Caracas, the joint air component began dismantling and disabling the air defense systems in Venezuela, employing weapons to ensure the safe passage of the helicopters into the target area.
MYRE: So the helicopters touched down at Maduro's compound just after 1 a.m. Saturday. And they came under fire and one of them was hit, but it was still able to fly.
RASCOE: How did they know where to find Maduro?
MYRE: So the U.S. forces had trained on mockups of the compound, and they knew where to look for Maduro and his wife. Trump said the couple were trying to flee and had reached a safe room with a heavy steel door, but they couldn't close it. So the U.S. troops seized the couple. It put them on helicopters, and then they flew out quickly. And they cleared the Venezuela coast and were back over the Caribbean by 3:30 a.m., and they landed on the USS Iwo Jima. Now, Maduro was then put on a couple flights. He landed eventually in New York. He is now at a federal detention facility in Brooklyn.
RASCOE: Does this mean all the U.S. forces have left Venezuela? And if so, what will they be doing next?
MYRE: Yeah. There's no signs of any U.S. troops in Venezuela. But Trump and General Caine said the U.S. forces remain in the region on ships and other places nearby, like Puerto Rico. And Trump said they are ready to move in a second wave if they are needed.
Now, the president in both his first term and this term has been very reluctant to send in troops on the ground, be it in Venezuela or elsewhere. But he said, quote, "we're not afraid of boots on the ground." And he said the U.S. can't just leave Venezuela, or the country would never recover. And then, in the remark that really grabbed everyone's attention, Trump said the U.S. would run Venezuela. And he said he'd do it with people that were with him at the news conference - he was referring to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Pentagon Chief Pete Hegseth - along with Venezuelans as well.
RASCOE: So how does the U.S. plan to run Venezuela if there are no American troops or U.S. government officials there?
MYRE: Yeah. This is far from clear, and it seems Trump would prefer not to send the troops back into Venezuela as an occupying force. And we should also note that the U.S. embassy in Venezuela has been closed since 2019. Now, Trump sounded mildly supportive of Venezuela's vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, who's now effectively in charge. Trump said she would be willing to do what the U.S. wanted. But shortly afterwards, she went on TV and delivered a very defiant message, saying the U.S. had invaded her country and that Maduro was still the country's leader.
RASCOE: And what about Maduro's supporters in Venezuela? I mean, do we know what they might do?
MYRE: No. We just don't know what the military and other pro-Maduro groups will do or how they'll respond to his ouster. And this is a very divided country. It's one industry, one valuable industry. Oil will need billions of dollars of investments. Trump says U.S. oil companies will jump in, but they will probably want to see some stability before they're willing to make that kind of big investment.
RASCOE: That's NPR's Greg Myre. Thank you so much.
MYRE: Sure thing, Ayesha. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
