Shortly before 11pm on Friday, Donald Trump ordered the US military to launch an operation in the dead of night to snatch the leader of Venezuela Nicolás Maduro from his compound in Caracas.
“Good luck, and god speed,” Trump said, as he gave the command.
Within hours Maduro was in US custody, captured as he tried to make his way to a steel safe room in the compound. Trump and his senior advisers watched the operation live from the president’s Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida.
“He was trying to get to a safe place, which wasn’t safe, because we would have had the door blown up,” Trump said in a press conference on Saturday, flanked by secretary of state Marco Rubio, defence secretary Pete Hegseth and other senior officials.
The Venezuelan leader and his wife, Cilia Flores, were taken by helicopter to the USS Iwo Jima. A photo released by Trump on social media showed Maduro aboard the warship, blindfolded and his hands bound in front of him.
The operation, one of the most complex carried out by the US in recent history, was months in preparation. It involved all branches of the military working with law enforcement and intelligence agencies, said Dan Caine, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, the nation’s most senior military officer.
Since August, a small CIA team had been on the ground to provide “extraordinary insight” into Maduro’s habits and patterns of movement, a source familiar with the operation said.
US intelligence officials worked to find Maduro, who had tightened his security in response to US threats, and “understand how he moved, where he lived, where he travelled, what he ate, what he wore, what were his pets”, Caine said.
Planning was conducted by a core group of top US officials, including Trump’s homeland security adviser Stephen Miller, Rubio, Hegseth and CIA Director John Ratcliffe, a person familiar with the operation said.
Trump has presided over a major military build-up in the Caribbean in recent months as he sought to dial up the pressure on Maduro, who was designated by Washington as the leader of a “narco-terrorist” drug cartel.
More than 14,000 US troops were moved into the region, in addition to dozens of aircraft, warships and an aircraft carrier.
By early December, US forces were ready to carry out the operation. It was then a matter of choosing the right day to minimise the risk of civilian harm and maximise the element of surprise, Caine said.
Trump told Fox News on Saturday that the operation was initially planned to take place days earlier but was called off because of poor weather.
“We waited four days,” he said. “Then, all of a sudden it opened up and we said ‘go’.”
After Trump gave the order on Friday evening, more than 150 US aircraft, including B1 bombers, F-35 and F-18 fighter jets and surveillance aircraft took off from 20 locations on land and sea from across the region.
Multiple videos from social media appeared to show footage of CH-47 Chinook helicopters flying over Caracas. In one video, an air refuelling boom was visible.
US warplanes pounced on Venezuelan air defence systems to allow helicopters and ground forces to approach Maduro’s compound.
“The lights of Caracas were largely turned off, due to a certain expertise that we have,” Trump said. Videos posted on social media appeared to show explosions across the city. The US Space Force and Cyber Command helped clear the way for the operation as the planes approached.
Explosions were reported at several military and communication targets in and around Caracas early on Saturday. Targets included the sprawling military complex at Fuerte Tiuna, the main air base at La Carlota and a communications facility at Cerro El Volcán.
Outside the capital, La Guaira, Venezuela’s primary seaport 30km to the north, was also hit, according to social media footage verified by the FT.
The airport in the coastal city of Higuerote, about 120km to the east of Caracas, also appears to have been targeted.
There is little evidence that Venezuelan anti-aircraft equipment offered any meaningful resistance to the attack. “We assessed that we had maintained, totally, the element of surprise,” Caine said.
Experts in air assault said that the US air armada would have been able to suppress Venezuelan airspace defences using a variety of electronic and kinetic attacks, from spoofing GPS timing and jamming communications to turning off early warning and targeting radar.
This meant that the Blackhawk and Chinook helicopters seen flying low over the skyline of Caracas were “in little danger until they reached the fortress”, said Andrew Turner, a former Royal Air Force helicopter pilot.
“The ingress and egress from the Iwo Jima to the target would have been the easy part,” said Turner. “The most dangerous time is the 60-90 seconds as you are approaching and are on the target when you don’t have the full picture, bullets are going everywhere and you have yet to secure the area. That is where the danger is.”
US helicopters came under fire as they descended on Maduro’s location shortly after 2am, and responded with force. One US helicopter was damaged in the exchange of fire, but was still able to fly, Caine said.
Trump said that two US troops were injured in the operation, but had returned in “pretty good shape”. No US forces were killed. It is unclear whether there were Venezuelan casualties.
“Maduro and his wife, both indicted, gave up, and were taken into custody by the Department of Justice,” Caine said. The pair were flown out on US helicopters before being transferred to the USS Iwo Jima.
They are expected to be taken to New York, where Maduro will face federal charges of “drug trafficking and narco-terrorism conspiracies” according to an indictment unsealed on Saturday.
Additional reporting from Alison Killing, Ian Bott, Steven Bernard, Alan Smith, Peter Andringa, Amy Mackinnon and Charles Clover
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