U.S. plot to bribe Maduro's pilot and capture him in flight fails.
The federal agent presented a bold proposal to Nicolás Maduro's chief pilot: all he had to do was discreetly divert the Venezuelan president's plane to a location where US authorities could arrest him.
In exchange, the agent told the pilot during a clandestine meeting, they would make him a very rich man.
The conversation was tense, and the pilot left without committing himself, although he gave his cell phone number to Agent Edwin López, a sign that he might be interested in helping the US government.
Over the next year, even after retiring from his government job, López persisted and exchanged text messages with the pilot through an encrypted messaging app.
The untold and intriguing saga of how López tried to get Maduro's pilot to work for the Americans has all the elements of a Cold War spy movie: luxury private jets, a secret meeting in an airport hangar, and high-stakes diplomacy in a delicate game to convince a lieutenant to switch sides. There was even a final act of intrigue aimed at unsettling Maduro about the pilot's true loyalties.
More broadly, the plan reveals the extent to which—and how often in an improvised manner—the U.S. government has attempted to overthrow Maduro for years, while the line between law enforcement and intelligence gathering often became blurred. Interest in regime change in Venezuela has gained momentum since President Donald Trump took office.
Fracasa complot de EU para sobornar a piloto de Maduro y capturarlo en vuelo
En términos más generales, el plan revela hasta qué punto el gobierno de EU ha intentado durante años derrocar a Maduro, mientras la línea entre aplicar la ley y recolectar inteligencia a menudo se volvía difusa.
