 For more videos on people's struggles, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. Hello and welcome to People's Dispatch. At the beginning of this month, the Venezuelan authorities foiled yet another attempt to overthrow the legitimate government of Nicolás Maduro and the Bolivarian Revolution. Mercenaries were arrested on May 3rd and May 4th and soon a conspiracy was uncovered which involved a plot to basically seize control of the airport and arrest the president. To talk more about this, we have with us Ania Parambil who hosts the show Red Lines at the Grey Zone and she's been extensively covering the Venezuelan opposition especially for the past couple of years. Ania, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for inviting me Prasant, a friend I actually made in Venezuela. Absolutely right. So to start with the plot sounds a bit like something from a very very bad spy novel from the 60s or 70s so to speak. You have the mercenaries and there's this very shady organization called Silvercore at least in the way it has functioned in this conspiracy. But one of the key aspects of this whole operation has been the attempt to make it seem that this was something done by a few independent actors and it was not anything much larger. So for instance we had the report by the AP which kind of made it appear that this was basically only Jordan Godrow the founder of Silvercore and recently we had Juan Guaido's advisors resign again whereas Juan Guaido has said that he has nothing to do with it. So do you actually see this as a credible narrative or is there something behind the scenes? From the moment I read that article in the Associated Press which was the first news piece which revealed the name Jordan Godrow I believe it was released on May 1st. This was the first time that we'd heard of Silvercore or even gotten the specific details of this operation they launched to apparently kidnap the president of Venezuela. And the minute I read that AP article I was extremely suspicious because it was based on according to the AP interviews with 30 individuals with knowledge of the operation. However they went out of their way to repeatedly make the point that the U.S. government and U.S. officials had no involvement in the plot whatsoever. And to me it just didn't really make sense that according to the article a group of U.S. former Green Berets U.S. soldiers could be operating a military camp training bringing in weapons. Now we've heard about the weapons that were actually shipped into Colombia for Jordan Godrow. How it would be possible that these individuals could pull off an operation of that scale without the knowledge of at the very least U.S. embassy staff in Colombia. But then as more information about the plot emerged and as the plot actually went through more layers emerged which I'll try to dissect in order to explain kind of how I believe the initial article was designed to cover the backs of the U.S. government and then how subsequent articles were really designed to give Guaido cover and make it seem as though he didn't actually know anything about the operation. So initially the article in the AP claims that Godrow was contracted by Juan Guaido the opposition figure recognized that the United States recognized last year as the legitimate president of Venezuela that he contracted Godrow to carry out this mission. And then in that article Godrow actually neglects to comment on the existence of this contract. But then within two days we hear about a failed maritime invasion of Venezuela. Venezuela announces that it kills eight invaders. What they characterized is terrorist coming into the country from the Colombian side. And Jordan Guadrero emerges that evening. It was it was Sunday the Sunday following the publication of that AP article to claim responsibility for the botched raid and to say that the operation is still underway. He does an interview with Miami media opposition media which confused me at first. But I've since learned represents a faction of the U.S. based Venezuelan opposition which finds Guaido to be too soft. They would prefer to see someone more like hardliner Maria Karina Machado whose official position is that the United States should invade Venezuela and overthrow Maduro. They would like to see her at the forefront. So that was their interest in interviewing Godrow. And then out of him getting some text from the contract as well as the page that Guaido is alleged to have signed and video recording Godrow produces of of the conversation that Guaido and he had at the moment that the document that the contract was reportedly signed this was a document contract worth 212 million dollars that that was going to go to to Jordan Godrow for him to carry out this operation. But he goes on Miami media to say I'm coming forward with this information because I've never felt so backstab these men meaning the the figures in the opposition he was working with have no dis have have so much disregard no care for my soldiers and my troops that I've gathered in Columbia. And it was clear that Godrow hadn't been paid that his end of the the other end of the deal hadn't really been kept up. And from there the plot just really falls apart. Godrow tweets at President Donald Trump saying that the invasion or a strike force incursion into Venezuela is underway including two former U.S. Green Berets. And then the next day Monday Venezuela announces that it has arrested dozens of individuals coming into the country including those two Green Berets Jordan mentioned in his tweet that was the day that I actually got a hold of Jordan Godrow the last time I spoke with him the last time he really showed any sign of life he's disappeared since and I wanted to ask him why he felt so betrayed by the Venezuelan opposition but of course I also had some names some ideas of U.S. officials who may have been involved in the planning individuals that were working out of Columbia. And after Jordan Godrow makes this big stink about the Venezuelan opposition he promises to speak with me on Tuesday and it sounds as though he was actually genuinely willing to do that. He also speaks with Bloomberg and complains says something he probably shouldn't have said that the Venezuelan opposition has access to the sit-go accounts that were seized last year following the U.S.'s recognition of Guaido. The U.S. actually seized sit-go which is Venezuela's most valuable international asset. It's an oil refinery and distribution company in the United States it's a gas company there are sit-go gas stations all over the country and the United States has actually frozen all of its accounts all of its facilities and and transferred it into the hands of the Venezuelan opposition but for months and this is something I've reported very closely on the Venezuelan opposition denied that they had any access to this money and Jordan Godro accidentally or maybe not accidentally from his point of view goes out there and says look these guys have this money obviously someone was telling him they had access to those accounts from within the Venezuelan opposition and from that moment on Jordan disappears from the radar we have not heard from him since he did not respond to any of my calls or messages last week after he he had initially and then what happens is the narrative of the Venezuelan opposition starts to emerge the the the cover for Juan Guaido because Jordan Godro's gone out there said that they had access to this money they claimed to not have access to AP has published a report all but asserting and and and taking for granted the the claim that Guaido signed this contract and so two figures emerge speaking one speaking to the Washington Post but they they they the names JJ Rendon and Sergio Bergada are are the ones we start to hear in media there's an article in the Washington Post saying that it was in fact Bergada and Rendon who were hired as sort of political consultants representing Juan Guaido in the United States the Venezuelan opposition figures that somehow behind Juan Guaido's back they had met with with Jordan Godro they put this whole plot together one of them even claims that he personally paid Godro 50 grand out of his own pocket as a sort of confidence and retainer fee and that Juan Guaido did not sign the contract that it was only the two of them that they they had kind of masterminded this and they eventually resigned from their fake positions their non-existent positions the fake president Guaido accepts their their resignations and it looks as though at least if you believe Juan Guaido's story that he was abused his trust in these two figures were abused was abused but that he's done the right thing and accepted their resignations and they're trying to move on well nobody really believes that story even my sources in the Venezuelan opposition say that they accept they believe he signed this contract but Guaido recently gave an interview to Venezuelan opposition media media figure Carla Angola and essentially asserted that his signature was forged in that document Jordan Godro presented but if you were going to believe his his claim his line of his narrative then you would have to believe that Jordan Godro was some sort of agent created by the Venezuelan government or Cuban intelligence that's kind of what they always suggest and that just doesn't really make sense it's clear that Venezuelan intelligence did infiltrate this plot but they weren't controlling it Jordan Godro if anything seems to have a very close relationship with the US government and so that is the question here they're trying to cover for Guaido and claim he had no knowledge but they're also trying to claim the United States government had no knowledge and I just can't believe that specifically because two days before this AP report emerged Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made very bizarre comments to reporters during which he said that he was actually instructing his staff to update plans to reopen the US Embassy in Caracas and the flag will fly again is what he said I believe exactly which was very strange because as of last year with the recognition of Guaido the US charge de ferre the highest ranking diplomatics figure and all the embassy staff was kicked out of the country because they were very clearly recognizing a shadow government and trying to overthrow the actual state and so they were dismissed and since then they've been working out of Colombia and what the US government describes as a virtual embassy yet for some reason just days before Godro was supposed to launch this this mission Pompeo was super confident that that his staff would be returning to Caracas so that was very suspicious to me and the last piece of evidence that I found compelling was that one of the main sources actually named in the AP article is a figure named Cliver Acala and this is a very high level Venezuelan military defector someone who switched sides in 2015 and since then has been coordinating with the United States in Colombia to participate in these these failed invasions and coup attempts in in in his homeland and on March 26 which was the same date that the United States rolled out narco trafficking charges against the Venezuelan president Maduro Cliver Acala released a video on his twitter saying that he was involved in a plot to kidnap or assassinate Nicholas Maduro and that it was an operation which had been contracted by Juan Guaido then very bizarrely he's also named in this indictment against the president and he turns himself in while in Colombia to US authorities to the drug enforcement administration but his arrest is so friendly he's not even handcuffed he's shown to be interacting pretty pretty friendly with with the US officials who are supposed to be arresting him so much so that actually the Colombian attorney general released a communication complaining that proper procedure had not been followed in his arrest and he ends up in in in New York state where he's awaiting trial somehow while he was in US custody in New York he manages to get in touch with the Associated Press and is comfortable acting as a named source right in this article I don't know how that would have happened without US support and cooperation and there's no way that they would have detained Acala and that he'd be going around and telling media about this plot that the US government had no idea about so when you look at all those pieces together you can see how and why the Venezuelan opposition was trying to cover for Guaido why it totally doesn't doesn't really make sense and and why we shouldn't take US government claims that they had no knowledge of the plot seriously right so to follow up a bit on the opposition itself so it's been it's been over a year now and we've seen of course the events of last February when there was an attempt to push humanitarian aid so to speak which was a big fires and good rumors also involved in providing security for that event and later we had the attempted military coup which again fizzled out because there was absolutely no support from the Venezuelan army the Venezuelan army was solidly behind Maduro so it's been over a year specifically the the recognition happened in January so based on your own analysis plus the conversations you had with the opposition what is the kind of state of the opposition right now as of january of this year Juan Guaido's term as president of Venezuela's national assembly came to an end the constitutional term for the national assembly president is one year he came into that office in january of last year this is of course we're just going to ignore the fact that the supreme court has held the national assembly in contempt it's technically not a legally functioning body at the moment that's due to some questions over the last election the last election there were some questions of a voter fraud that that opposition legislatures legislators refuse to address but just ignoring that point and saying all right it's a functioning functioning branch of the government Juan Guaido's term as as the president should be up right his his position as the the highest ranking member of the legislature is come to an end and that is his constitutional justification for claiming the presidency that he because the president was absent or whatever justification they used from Maduro not being eligible that as a national assembly president Guaido should take over well this january even figures within Venezuela's opposition began to challenge Juan Guaido's legitimacy said look the constitution clearly states your term is up they had a a an attempted vote to put in a different opposition figure another party should have their chance to to to lead the national assembly and Guaido has refused to recognize this or or accept his defeat there was that image of him climbing over the fence when he realized he was going to to lose the vote inside the national assembly he made this very dramatic scene to make you look like the venezuelan government was preventing him from entering the building but it was just another one of his desperate attempts at getting attention and distracting from the fact that he was completely failing even amongst people who oppose venezuelan president maduro so there are that that group which which uh took over from him it was kind of a signal that among venezuelan venezuelan's opposition Juan Guaido is not even as strong as he was a year ago and in the months leading up to that there had been reports from his rallies that he was still trying to hold even new york times reporters were saying i've never seen so few people out on the streets it seems as though his whole dream was coming to an end but there's also the issue of of the domestic or of the expat opposition i should say in the united states here and a lot of those people are fed up with with guaido because they don't think he's been taking a hard enough line but there's also a segment of the venezuelan opposition which isn't controlled by the united states that are kind of just the normal opposition figures that you would encounter in any country right you know it's not as though we want to we're going to believe that there's just one party and then venezuela is not that way there are many parties it's a democracy and if you remove the united states from the equation there would still be a group of opposition figures who would engage with the government these are the individuals who actually participate in dialogue or or negotiations with the government for example when the u.s opposition is boycotting it completely or for example they there was the candidate anry falcone who actually ran in the 2018 presidential election when all of the u.s backed opposition boycotted it in order to give it the appearance of only maduro running for president but one opposition candidate actually ran and he did that under the threat of u.s sanctions which i just always find so interesting there was a report in usa today that said the u.s actually threatened to sanction anry falcone because they didn't want him to legitimize the electoral process in venezuelan anyway but these figures these opposition figures are really frustrated with the guido administration not only because they find it completely disgusting that any venezuelan would advocate for sanctions or perhaps even the outright invasion of their country the way guido and his and his uh and his allies do but they're also just so corrupt and it's very evident that they're abusing their authority in the united states that they have taken control of venezuelan accounts venezuelan wealth stored abroad and that they're not being completely transparent in the way they're using the funds as i mentioned they the opposition had denied that they had access to any of this money in fact one advisor to former presidential candidate anry falcone francisco rodriguez he actually several weeks ago proposed that guidos administration used the money that they have to pay a sum of support to venezuelan migrants and refugees abroad he said if you have this money this is the middle of a health crisis we should be using it to to help our fellow countrymen who are struggling under under these very difficult conditions and at that time the venezuelan guido crew said oh we don't have that access to that money well just a few weeks later there was another report in the associated press which reported the national assembly of venezuela had passed legislation granting each national assembly member a salary and it said right there in the ap article that this money was coming from a fund created by the us government using venezuelans seized assets and wealth a fund that i think they call something such as the venezuelan liberation fund and so they were found with that ap article to be lying when just a few weeks ago they were saying oh we don't have access to that money when it came to the question of actually servicing migrants and refugees it tells you a bit about what the priorities of the guido administration shadow puppet regime as i like to call it what they are they're more interested in lining their own pockets than giving any sort of assistance to the average venezuelan right and the other key aspect of course is the role of columbia because we do know that there are many of the deserted camps are organized in columbia alcala as you said has been of course involved in many of them so what is the information you currently have on the role of the columbian government in not only maybe this operation but in also supporting the opposition just days following the failed invasion of venezuela as venezuelan authorities were rounding up more mercenaries all around the country very mysteriously some abandoned columbian combat boats very small ones kind of speedboat size but filled with weapons washed up on the shores of venezuela and venezuela authorities sees the ships produce pictures of the weapons and the boats but you can start to wonder whether or not those boats were ready in the event that there was success in the guido invasion if they had managed to spark the rebellion or uprising within the venezuelan military which they hoped to and they abandoned ship because it didn't happen but that was an interesting piece of evidence to suggest the columbians were certainly on guard and and it just doesn't again make sense that they could be shipping weapons hard heavy weapons of war into columbia and moving them to this training camp how does that happen without columbian authorities intimate involvement unless they're completely inept which i just don't believe would be the case and more recently this week venezuela produced more evidence of the knowledge of u.s and columbian knowledge of the plot which was a photograph allegedly taken in the white house in march of a man named iban simonovis next to president trump standing in the oval office you know with the big smile that trump gives with every guest that comes and stands by his desk and what venezuelan authorities said was this picture was given to them by one of the soldiers the mercenaries during an intimate interrogation session or a questioning session and that the photo had been sent to the mercenary group by iban simonovis in order to demonstrate that trump was ready and on board for their operation he was like look it we're in the white house and the picture was supposed to have been taken right following a meeting with columbian president iban duke and president trump venezuelan authorities claim that when guido was in the united states he also met with jordan gudrow and president trump in the white house there has been less evidence produced that i've been able to see of that meeting but it's based on testimony that an intelligence that venezuelan authorities have gathered and there is now this photograph of iman simonovis with president trump and simonovis is an interesting character because anybody who's studied venezuela closely has probably seen that film the revolution will not be televised or they're at least aware of the events which took place in april of 2002 when the u.s. initiated its first outright coup attempt against venezuelan president ugo chavez when the military put him on a plane and installed the head of the commerce department kind of the the the the head of all the business groups in venezuela and he issued that infamous carmona decree which froze the national assembly froze all democracy and and democratic institutions in venezuela leading to this massive uprising of the population which was demanding chavez return and during that during that failed coup venezuelan authorities there's this famous event where they fired upon demonstrators from an overpass and kind of tried to manipulate the footage to make it look as though venezuelans in the street protesting for their democratic rights had initiated the fire but were proven to have been lying had been essentially shooting down these demonstrators in cold blood at that time iban c bonobos was the head of venezuelan security forces so since 2003 he'd been charged under arrest and he was under house arrest up until last year when he escaped he actually escaped house arrest and ended up in the united states and now he's photographed next to president trump he is involved with guido's representation in the united states and so that was more evidence presented of of us and columbian knowledge but also an introduction to a new character just a vile figure in in guido's inner circle and finally ania so we've seen how over the years and especially the last two years venezuelans have actually resisted very powerfully attempts by the us by this opposition to actually stage a coup to stage to overthrow the government there have been huge rallies and it's actually inspiring that the mercenaries who were arrested were done so by people of the militia by common citizens there's some amazing photos of that also so from the people you know in venezuela what is the response you have been getting to this coup attempt the same response that i've seen ever since the united states initiated this coup with its recognition of one guido which is that it's actually made the venezuelan government and the the revolution stronger in the face of these continued outside attempts whether it's february 23rd of last year when the united states attempted to invade venezuela under the guise of humanitarian aid delivery whether it was an on april 30th when one guido gathered 30 some soldiers and tried to storm main military bases and in the venezuelan capital in the face of these outside attacks the venezuelan military has only demonstrated to be unified more unified clearly than the united states could have ever imagined they keep hoping that if they just light a little match on the border or spark a little invasion with a group of mercenaries that suddenly everybody in the venezuelan military will tear off their uniforms lay down their arms and switch sides it just doesn't happen and this event specifically has also demonstrated the strength of the venezuelan security forces there was an interview or not an interview but a statement made by dios dato cabello the president of venezuela's national constituent assembly actually technically the highest ranking official in all of venezuela's government and he said during his weekly television program con el mas odando that they'd infiltrated this operation so deeply that they knew what these mercenaries were eating and that in some instances they had to pay for their meetings and i just don't think the united states realizes sometimes what it's up against that it's up against clearly some more sophisticated intelligence services than they realized they're up against united military and that they're up against united people i'm sure you would agree with me having been to venezuela yourself that it is so different from what we're told on the outside and people there really have an understanding even with the amount of suffering they face as a result of us sanctions they have an understanding of imperialism they understand that they are targets of the united states that that it's they're suffering as part of the plan and so that they shouldn't give in but they should actually resist and if anything this whole covid-19 outbreak has also strengthened venezuela's relationship with china and russia we've seen how china has delivered i think somewhere around 157 tons worth of medical supplies to venezuela including testing kits venezuela actually has the highest testing rate in the entire region because it's allowed to cooperate with a country like china whereas the us puppet states aren't and they're also not afforded any assistance from the united states which can't even get testing kits and masks to its own population so this whole experience has only shown how strong venezuela is and i think solidify its position as an actual bastion of independence and sovereign representation in latin america at a time when so many leaders from bolivia to ecuador should just really be ashamed thank you so much ania for talking to us my pleasure thanks so much that's all we have time for today keep watching people's dispatch you