It took the US two hours and 28 minutes to snatch President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, in the small hours of Saturday morning, an extraordinary display of imperial power that plunges 30 million Venezuelans into a profound uncertainty. But it was also months in the planning.
Critical to Operation Absolute Resolve was the work of the CIA and other US intelligence agencies. From as early as August, their goal was to establish Maduro’s “pattern of life”, or as Gen Dan Caine, the chair of the US joint chiefs of staff, described it, to “understand how he moved, where he lived, where he travelled, what he ate, what he wore, what were his pets”.
As the US built up its military presence in the Caribbean from September, Maduro had tightened his personal security in an effort to evade capture. Gone were the well-trailed public speeches. He changed his sleeping location regularly – using between six to eight places to spend the night, according to the New York Times.
The president also relied even more heavily on Cuban counterintelligence and bodyguards, more trusted than Venezuelans, with the latter not allowed to use mobile phones. Yet such measures were not enough. On Friday evening, as the weather was finally clear enough for the US operation go ahead, Maduro’s location was fixed at a compound on Fuerte Tiuna, a key military base in Caracas.
Spy drones were part of how the CIA monitored Maduro, but after his capture on Saturday the agency also surprisingly briefed it had a human source inside the Venezuelan government – a bold statement given it could risk leading to a person being discovered – though also a way, perhaps, of undermining the confidence Maduro’s successors will have in their own security system.
As many as a quarter of all US navy warships had been in the Caribbean since November, bolstered by the arrival of the world’s largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R Ford, with about 4,000 sailors and aircrew onboard. But despite the nearby deployment, on the night of the operation the aim of the US military was to achieve tactical surprise and air dominance.
Though some preliminary flights and other manoeuvres were inevitable, the final go order was given by the US president, Donald Trump, at 10.46pm eastern time, or 11.46pm in Caracas. The first step was to clear an air corridor – by smashing Venezuela’s aviation and air defences – for the helicopters that would carry the elite Delta Force troops tasked with snatching Maduro from his bed.
It had been considered that Venezuela had a reasonably capable military by regional standards. It had used its oil wealth to buy two squadrons of Russian Su-30 jets, plus S-300 and Buk missile and air-defence systems. But, when it came to the moment of truth, the Russian kit was easily defeated, a reminder that the talk of asymmetric threats to western weapons systems can easily be exaggerated.
Airbases and communications centres were bombed, probably by Tomahawk cruise missiles and AGM-88 Harm anti-radiation weapons, designed specifically to detect and destroy air-defence systems. There were also reports of F-35 fighter jets bombing Venezuelan fighters on the tarmac, once the air defence was suppressed. In total more than 150 US aircraft were involved in the night raid.
Trump also boasted that power in Caracas had been largely turned off “due to a certain expertise that we have”, a potential allusion to a cyber-attack. City residents did report electricity cuts after the first explosions were heard and satellite imagery showed a power station bombed at Fuerte Tiuna and it is possible that the cause was the kinetic military action, rather than a covert or cyber-attack.
After taking off, the Delta Force team flew “at 100ft above the water”, according to Caine, to evade radar detection. Caracas is not far from the coast, about 10 miles away, making the flight time relatively brief, though in between are mountains, which the general said helped the incoming helicopters “hiding in the clutter” until they reached the capital city itself.
One video filmed from Caracas showed nine helicopters – modified Black Hawks and double-rotor Chinooks – flying in formation across the city to Fuerte Tiuna. None were hit or damaged by Venezuelan air defence or aircraft, so successful the suppression operation had been, but as they approached Maduro’s compound at 2.01am they came under gunfire – and a single helicopter was damaged, though still flyable.
Again, the US military had heavily prepared for what would be the critical moments. A replica of Maduro’s compound at the Fuerte Tiuna base had been built in the US, its plan and security apparently known to the Americans. The Delta Force team had a blow torch to get through the steel doors and a hostage negotiator from the FBI in case Maduro locked himself away and refused to surrender.
It went almost as planned. Gun battles broke out as the Delta Force team was on the ground. A large part of Maduro’s security team was killed, Venezuela’s defence minister said on Sunday. Venezuelan officials said at least 40 people had died around the country. No US soldiers were killed, though a handful were wounded.
The president, in his last moments in power, had tried to run to a safe room as dozens of Delta Force soldiers arrived. According to Trump, Maduro had got to its protective door but he could not close it. “He got bum rushed so fast,” the US president said after Maduro was quickly captured.
All that was necessary was to take Maduro and Flores out of the country. The helicopters, covered by fighter jets from above, crossed back into the Caribbean at 4.29am, nearly two and a half hours after first arriving at Fuerte Tiuna, before initially depositing them on the USS Iwo Jima assault ship.
On its own terms, as a military operation, it was undoubtedly a successful, though naked exercise of US power. But it is far from clear it will allow the US to take control of the country or lead to a transformation of Venezuela – while the wider political ramifications cannot be forecast. Matthew Savill, an analyst at the Royal United Services Institute thinktank, said: “The Americans have removed a couple. Impressive, but hardly ‘decapitation’.”
