Secure Da Bag
Veteran
You mean the same way the US was.
Do you have a link proving that Russia is intervening against Maduro's wishes?
Venezuela Crisis: Failed coup attempt by Juan Guaido; Military remains supporting Nicholas Maduro
- Thread starter 88m3
- Start date
You mean the same way the US was.
Do you have a link proving that Russia is intervening against Maduro's wishes?
Whose wishes? Russia accuses Venezuelan opposition of resorting to violence - ReutersYou mean the same way the US was.
Do you have a link proving that Russia is intervening against Maduro's wishes?
Maduro's? Or the people's? Venezuela Convulses And Russia Frets: What Does Moscow Stand To Lose If The Maduro Government Falls?
not so funny now, is it?
Secure Da Bag
Veteran
So, no, the Russians aren't there against Maduro's wishes. In fact, he approves of Russia being there.
Tres Leches
Empire Business
Maduro’s ex-spy chief lands in U.S. armed with allegations against Venezuelan government
Exclusive interview: Maduro's ex-spy chief reveals allegations against government
0:10 / 4:29
Gen. Manuel Ricardo Cristopher Figuera, the ex-spy chief of Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro, sat down for an exclusive interview with The Washington Post. (Photo: Josh Ritchie/The Washington Post)
By Anthony Faiola
June 24 at 8:42 PM
[Leer en español]
BOGOTA, Colombia — In a palace said to be filled with plotters, turncoats and thieves, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro could count on the loyalty of at least one man: Gen. Manuel Ricardo Cristopher Figuera.
The muscular 55-year-old was one of the revolution’s true believers, having spent a decade as security chief for the late Hugo Chávez, the father of Venezuela’s socialist state and Maduro’s mentor. He studied the art of intelligence with the masters in communist Cuba. He reached the zenith of his power in October with his appointment as head of Maduro’s intelligence police — the feared SEBIN.
And yet, when the U.S.-backed opposition leader Juan Guaidó announced his uprising April 30 to oust Maduro, Figuera emerged as a surprise conspirator — and, as the uprising failed, a man suddenly sprinting for his life into the hands of U.S. operatives in neighboring Colombia.
Keep Reading
After nearly two months in hiding here in the Colombian capital, protected around the clock by a security detail, Figuera arrived in the United States on Monday armed with allegations about Maduro’s government: The illicit gold deals. The Hezbollah cells working in Venezuela. The extent of Cuban influence inside Maduro’s Miraflores Palace.
The uprising failed, and Maduro remains in power. But Figuera doesn’t regret turning against his boss.
“I’m proud of what I did,” he said last week from a hotel room in central Bogota. “For now, the regime has gotten ahead of us. But that can quickly change.”
This is the story of how the opposition turned a man once thought to be unturnable — and the information he is now sharing with U.S. officials. It’s based on weeks of interviews with more than a dozen plot participants, opposition leaders and U.S. officials, including 12 hours of exclusive interviews with Figuera, his first with a major news organization, and by far his most exhaustive.
The opposition and the Americans have celebrated a measure of victory with the defection of Figuera — evidence, they say, that they have been effective and their effort remains viable even after the collapse of the uprising.
But as head of the SEBIN, Figuera ran an agency accused of arbitrary detentions and torture. He was one of five senior Venezuelan officials placed under sanctions by the Trump administration in February. His wooing indicates the moral trade-offs Maduro’s opponents have been willing to make in the effort to remove him.
Figuera defends his work advancing Chavismo. But he says he regrets some of its excesses.
“I have a big debt with the people who are still in jail,” he said, fighting back tears. “The people who had family members die and couldn’t even see them. This breaks me.”
He continued: “There are many people there who are innocent, and I owe them. I didn’t do enough.
“I thought I would be able to make Maduro see sense. I couldn’t.”
[Guaidó says opposition overestimated military support for uprising]
Cat and mouse
On the balmy Caracas evening of March 28, the plotters against Maduro staged one of their riskiest gambits. Cesar Omaña, a 39-year-old Venezuelan physician, businessman and adventurer, nervously entered the towering headquarters of the SEBIN on a mission to recruit its chief.
Omaña, based in Miami, was living between two worlds. He was close friends with one of Chavez’s daughters and senior Maduro officials, as well as members of the anti-government opposition. Unlike other Venezuelan businessmen involved in the plot, he has not been charged with crimes and had no U.S. sanctions against him. But he was distraught by his country’s collapse under Maduro.
By November, Omaña was in frequent contact with U.S. officials, according to Omaña and the officials. He also established regular contact, even a budding friendship, with the opposition leader Leopoldo López — then Venezuela’s most famous political prisoner, and Guaidó’s mentor.
Inside the secret plot to turn senior Venezuelan officials against Maduro]
Plan to flip the supreme court
In fact, another group of conspirators had already sprung into action.
In February, a group of Venezuelan businessmen, including media mogul Raúl Gorrín, who was put under sanctions by Washington and indicted on U.S. charges of money laundering, approached the Americans with a plan. The centerpiece, according to several people familiar with it: flipping key Maduro loyalists, including the chief justice of Venezuela’s supreme court, Maikel Moreno.
The men had been serving as interlocutors between the Trump administration and members of the regime, the people familiar with the plan said, and were eager to improve their own situations with the United States, where they were used to sending their children to school and their wives on weekend shopping sprees.
According to one senior administration official, the businessmen were told that if they were successful, travel bans and asset freezes could be reversed. The administration would not intervene with the Justice Department to lift indictments — but might put in a good word for those who were helpful.
How a plot filled with intrigue and betrayal failed to oust Venezuela’s president]
Hezbollah, ELN and money
After his meeting with Omaña, Figuera said, he felt a spark of hope. He had worked for years in military intelligence. But his new job as head of the SEBIN, he said, had opened his eyes to the extent of the rot in Maduro’s government.
“I never saw the country’s situation and the government’s corruption as closely as I did during my last six months,” he said. “I quickly realized that Maduro is the head of a criminal enterprise, with his own family involved.”
Figuera had begun to investigate allegations about a company set up by an assistant to Maduro’s 29-year-old son, Nicolás Maduro Guerra. He said the company had established a monopoly on buying gold from small miners in the country’s south at discounted prices and selling it at elevated prices to Venezuela’s central bank.
He was preparing to go to Maduro with the information, he said, but was warned off by a key Maduro aide.
As Venezuela’s misery grows, U.S. focus shifts to Cuba’s role]
Raúl Castro on the phone
Yet the inner workings of a dysfunctional government divided among the personal fiefdoms of warring officials caused him the most despair.
He recalled a meeting with Iris Varela, Maduro’s fiery minister of prisons, and Vladimir Padrino López, Maduro’s defense minister. He said Varela was demanding 30,000 rifles to start her own private army.
“She said that she had trained male prisoners,” Figuera said. “That she was their commander.”
Maduro, meanwhile, relied on 15 to 20 Cubans for personal security. Some were military guards, Figuera said. But three Cubans, called “the psychologists,” served as special advisers who would analyze Maduro’s speeches to assess their public impact.
Figuera saw Maduro multiple times a week at cabinet meetings. When he sought a one-on-one meeting this year, he was told to go through “Aldo” — a Cuban.
“I was like, ‘What?’ I’m his intelligence chief, and I have to go through a Cuban to be able to meet with him?”
Power outages nationwide paralyzed Venezuela in March. Figuera and other senior officials were in a meeting with Maduro when Raúl Castro called, Figuera said. Maduro took the phone into a corner of the room to speak to the former Cuban president.
As sanctions bite in Cuba, the U.S. — once a driver of hope — is now a source of pain]
'Maduro was very nervous'
In the days following Omaña’s visit, Figuera said, he began meeting with Omaña’s top ally in the opposition. Leopoldo López had been shuttled between house arrest and a prison cell since 2014. Gaining access was no problem — Figuera, as head of the SEBIN, was his jailer.
During these meetings, Figuera said, he learned of the uprising planned for May 1. Moreno would issue the ruling reinstating the National Assembly. Padrino, the defense minister, would back the ruling and force Maduro out.
According to Figuera, the plotters were all given code names. Figuera, an Afro-Venezuelan, was the Black Panther. Omaña was Superman. Mauricio Claver-Carone, the U.S. National Security Council’s director for Latin American policy, was Comeniños — the Child Eater.
But as May 1 approached, Figuera said, he grew uneasy. During an April 23 meeting at Moreno’s Caracas mansion, he thought the chief justice seemed hesitant. Moreno suggested that he, rather than Guaidó, become president, according to several people who were present.
On April 27, Figuera met with Moreno and Padrino at Padrino’s home.
“It was a short conversation,” Figuera said. “They kept looking at each other nervously.”
Figuera called Padrino the next day to reassure himself that the defense chief was still on board. But Padrino was watching “Avengers: Endgame,” Figuera said, and “didn’t want to talk.”
Neither Moreno nor Padrino responded to requests for comment.
Venezuela’s opposition, government pursue talks to resolve crisis; U.S. skeptical]
Still a Chavista at heart
Barbara Reinefeld, Figuera’s wife, was with family in Miami when her smartphone rang. Her husband ran through the failed plot and Maduro’s final order.
She insisted that he not turn himself in, that he make a run for the border.
Two months earlier, during a trip to San Juan, Puerto Rico, Reinefeld had been contacted by two people who identified themselves as FBI agents. They interviewed her, she said, and established a system to communicate with her covertly.
Figuera said that he blessed this back channel but that he had no communication with the Americans himself.
Gen. Manuel Ricardo Cristopher Figuera, photographed in an undisclosed location after arriving in the United States on Monday. (Josh Ritchie/For The Washington Post)
Soon after her husband’s April 30 call, Reinefeld was contacted by Venezuelans in Miami, one of them a relative of Guaidó. A senior Trump administration official was aware of her plight, they said, and offered to meet her in Washington.
She flew to Washington on May 1 and received assurances that her husband would be safe if he got to Colombia. Figuera, tapping military contacts on the ground, fled the country, arriving in the border city of Cúcuta on May 2, where he was greeted by Colombian intelligence officers .
The next day he was in Bogota, meeting with U.S. officials.
Moreno, Padrino and other Maduro loyalists have said publicly that they had no part in the plot. Two days after the uprising failed, Padrino appeared with Maduro and suggested that he had refused the opposition’s overtures.
“Don’t come and buy us with a false offer . . . as if we didn’t have dignity,” he said.
Within a week of Figuera’s arrival in Colombia, the Trump administration lifted the sanctions against him.
Figuera says he has had a rocky time in his initial debriefings with U.S. officials. He has recognized Guaidó as Venezuela’s rightful leader but remains, at heart, a Chavista. He and others believed his life was threatened by Colombian guerrillas aligned with the Venezuelan government. Omaña arrived in Bogota last week to help negotiate Figuera’s safe passage to the United States.
Figuera is a product of the socialist government he served for years. He says he regrets some, but not all, of his actions on its behalf.
“If I told you I was Mother Teresa, you would not take me seriously,” he said.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...ory.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.ae415e1e540e
Exclusive interview: Maduro's ex-spy chief reveals allegations against government
0:10 / 4:29
Gen. Manuel Ricardo Cristopher Figuera, the ex-spy chief of Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro, sat down for an exclusive interview with The Washington Post. (Photo: Josh Ritchie/The Washington Post)
By Anthony Faiola
June 24 at 8:42 PM
[Leer en español]
BOGOTA, Colombia — In a palace said to be filled with plotters, turncoats and thieves, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro could count on the loyalty of at least one man: Gen. Manuel Ricardo Cristopher Figuera.
The muscular 55-year-old was one of the revolution’s true believers, having spent a decade as security chief for the late Hugo Chávez, the father of Venezuela’s socialist state and Maduro’s mentor. He studied the art of intelligence with the masters in communist Cuba. He reached the zenith of his power in October with his appointment as head of Maduro’s intelligence police — the feared SEBIN.
And yet, when the U.S.-backed opposition leader Juan Guaidó announced his uprising April 30 to oust Maduro, Figuera emerged as a surprise conspirator — and, as the uprising failed, a man suddenly sprinting for his life into the hands of U.S. operatives in neighboring Colombia.
Keep Reading
After nearly two months in hiding here in the Colombian capital, protected around the clock by a security detail, Figuera arrived in the United States on Monday armed with allegations about Maduro’s government: The illicit gold deals. The Hezbollah cells working in Venezuela. The extent of Cuban influence inside Maduro’s Miraflores Palace.
The uprising failed, and Maduro remains in power. But Figuera doesn’t regret turning against his boss.
“I’m proud of what I did,” he said last week from a hotel room in central Bogota. “For now, the regime has gotten ahead of us. But that can quickly change.”
This is the story of how the opposition turned a man once thought to be unturnable — and the information he is now sharing with U.S. officials. It’s based on weeks of interviews with more than a dozen plot participants, opposition leaders and U.S. officials, including 12 hours of exclusive interviews with Figuera, his first with a major news organization, and by far his most exhaustive.
The opposition and the Americans have celebrated a measure of victory with the defection of Figuera — evidence, they say, that they have been effective and their effort remains viable even after the collapse of the uprising.
But as head of the SEBIN, Figuera ran an agency accused of arbitrary detentions and torture. He was one of five senior Venezuelan officials placed under sanctions by the Trump administration in February. His wooing indicates the moral trade-offs Maduro’s opponents have been willing to make in the effort to remove him.
Figuera defends his work advancing Chavismo. But he says he regrets some of its excesses.
“I have a big debt with the people who are still in jail,” he said, fighting back tears. “The people who had family members die and couldn’t even see them. This breaks me.”
He continued: “There are many people there who are innocent, and I owe them. I didn’t do enough.
“I thought I would be able to make Maduro see sense. I couldn’t.”
[Guaidó says opposition overestimated military support for uprising]
Cat and mouse
On the balmy Caracas evening of March 28, the plotters against Maduro staged one of their riskiest gambits. Cesar Omaña, a 39-year-old Venezuelan physician, businessman and adventurer, nervously entered the towering headquarters of the SEBIN on a mission to recruit its chief.
Omaña, based in Miami, was living between two worlds. He was close friends with one of Chavez’s daughters and senior Maduro officials, as well as members of the anti-government opposition. Unlike other Venezuelan businessmen involved in the plot, he has not been charged with crimes and had no U.S. sanctions against him. But he was distraught by his country’s collapse under Maduro.
By November, Omaña was in frequent contact with U.S. officials, according to Omaña and the officials. He also established regular contact, even a budding friendship, with the opposition leader Leopoldo López — then Venezuela’s most famous political prisoner, and Guaidó’s mentor.
Inside the secret plot to turn senior Venezuelan officials against Maduro]
Plan to flip the supreme court
In fact, another group of conspirators had already sprung into action.
In February, a group of Venezuelan businessmen, including media mogul Raúl Gorrín, who was put under sanctions by Washington and indicted on U.S. charges of money laundering, approached the Americans with a plan. The centerpiece, according to several people familiar with it: flipping key Maduro loyalists, including the chief justice of Venezuela’s supreme court, Maikel Moreno.
The men had been serving as interlocutors between the Trump administration and members of the regime, the people familiar with the plan said, and were eager to improve their own situations with the United States, where they were used to sending their children to school and their wives on weekend shopping sprees.
According to one senior administration official, the businessmen were told that if they were successful, travel bans and asset freezes could be reversed. The administration would not intervene with the Justice Department to lift indictments — but might put in a good word for those who were helpful.
How a plot filled with intrigue and betrayal failed to oust Venezuela’s president]
Hezbollah, ELN and money
After his meeting with Omaña, Figuera said, he felt a spark of hope. He had worked for years in military intelligence. But his new job as head of the SEBIN, he said, had opened his eyes to the extent of the rot in Maduro’s government.
“I never saw the country’s situation and the government’s corruption as closely as I did during my last six months,” he said. “I quickly realized that Maduro is the head of a criminal enterprise, with his own family involved.”
Figuera had begun to investigate allegations about a company set up by an assistant to Maduro’s 29-year-old son, Nicolás Maduro Guerra. He said the company had established a monopoly on buying gold from small miners in the country’s south at discounted prices and selling it at elevated prices to Venezuela’s central bank.
He was preparing to go to Maduro with the information, he said, but was warned off by a key Maduro aide.
As Venezuela’s misery grows, U.S. focus shifts to Cuba’s role]
Raúl Castro on the phone
Yet the inner workings of a dysfunctional government divided among the personal fiefdoms of warring officials caused him the most despair.
He recalled a meeting with Iris Varela, Maduro’s fiery minister of prisons, and Vladimir Padrino López, Maduro’s defense minister. He said Varela was demanding 30,000 rifles to start her own private army.
“She said that she had trained male prisoners,” Figuera said. “That she was their commander.”
Maduro, meanwhile, relied on 15 to 20 Cubans for personal security. Some were military guards, Figuera said. But three Cubans, called “the psychologists,” served as special advisers who would analyze Maduro’s speeches to assess their public impact.
Figuera saw Maduro multiple times a week at cabinet meetings. When he sought a one-on-one meeting this year, he was told to go through “Aldo” — a Cuban.
“I was like, ‘What?’ I’m his intelligence chief, and I have to go through a Cuban to be able to meet with him?”
Power outages nationwide paralyzed Venezuela in March. Figuera and other senior officials were in a meeting with Maduro when Raúl Castro called, Figuera said. Maduro took the phone into a corner of the room to speak to the former Cuban president.
As sanctions bite in Cuba, the U.S. — once a driver of hope — is now a source of pain]
'Maduro was very nervous'
In the days following Omaña’s visit, Figuera said, he began meeting with Omaña’s top ally in the opposition. Leopoldo López had been shuttled between house arrest and a prison cell since 2014. Gaining access was no problem — Figuera, as head of the SEBIN, was his jailer.
During these meetings, Figuera said, he learned of the uprising planned for May 1. Moreno would issue the ruling reinstating the National Assembly. Padrino, the defense minister, would back the ruling and force Maduro out.
According to Figuera, the plotters were all given code names. Figuera, an Afro-Venezuelan, was the Black Panther. Omaña was Superman. Mauricio Claver-Carone, the U.S. National Security Council’s director for Latin American policy, was Comeniños — the Child Eater.
But as May 1 approached, Figuera said, he grew uneasy. During an April 23 meeting at Moreno’s Caracas mansion, he thought the chief justice seemed hesitant. Moreno suggested that he, rather than Guaidó, become president, according to several people who were present.
On April 27, Figuera met with Moreno and Padrino at Padrino’s home.
“It was a short conversation,” Figuera said. “They kept looking at each other nervously.”
Figuera called Padrino the next day to reassure himself that the defense chief was still on board. But Padrino was watching “Avengers: Endgame,” Figuera said, and “didn’t want to talk.”
Neither Moreno nor Padrino responded to requests for comment.
Venezuela’s opposition, government pursue talks to resolve crisis; U.S. skeptical]
Still a Chavista at heart
Barbara Reinefeld, Figuera’s wife, was with family in Miami when her smartphone rang. Her husband ran through the failed plot and Maduro’s final order.
She insisted that he not turn himself in, that he make a run for the border.
Two months earlier, during a trip to San Juan, Puerto Rico, Reinefeld had been contacted by two people who identified themselves as FBI agents. They interviewed her, she said, and established a system to communicate with her covertly.
Figuera said that he blessed this back channel but that he had no communication with the Americans himself.
Gen. Manuel Ricardo Cristopher Figuera, photographed in an undisclosed location after arriving in the United States on Monday. (Josh Ritchie/For The Washington Post)
Soon after her husband’s April 30 call, Reinefeld was contacted by Venezuelans in Miami, one of them a relative of Guaidó. A senior Trump administration official was aware of her plight, they said, and offered to meet her in Washington.
She flew to Washington on May 1 and received assurances that her husband would be safe if he got to Colombia. Figuera, tapping military contacts on the ground, fled the country, arriving in the border city of Cúcuta on May 2, where he was greeted by Colombian intelligence officers .
The next day he was in Bogota, meeting with U.S. officials.
Moreno, Padrino and other Maduro loyalists have said publicly that they had no part in the plot. Two days after the uprising failed, Padrino appeared with Maduro and suggested that he had refused the opposition’s overtures.
“Don’t come and buy us with a false offer . . . as if we didn’t have dignity,” he said.
Within a week of Figuera’s arrival in Colombia, the Trump administration lifted the sanctions against him.
Figuera says he has had a rocky time in his initial debriefings with U.S. officials. He has recognized Guaidó as Venezuela’s rightful leader but remains, at heart, a Chavista. He and others believed his life was threatened by Colombian guerrillas aligned with the Venezuelan government. Omaña arrived in Bogota last week to help negotiate Figuera’s safe passage to the United States.
Figuera is a product of the socialist government he served for years. He says he regrets some, but not all, of his actions on its behalf.
“If I told you I was Mother Teresa, you would not take me seriously,” he said.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...ory.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.ae415e1e540e
tried telling you... theres dozens of high level defectors telling the truth about Maduro's bullshyt.
Its time for him to bounce
@88m3 @dtownreppin214
Ain't this a bytch?
A high level defector (dude was fukking SANCTIONED) proves everything I said.
the Hezbollah ties in VZLA
The Cuban intelligence influence
The Narco trafficking
why do nikkas test me?
@88m3 @ADevilYouKhow @wire28 @dtownreppin214
@DonKnock @dza @wire28 @BigMoneyGrip @Dameon Farrow @re'up @Blackfyre @Cali_livin @NY's #1 Draft Pick
A high level defector (dude was fukking SANCTIONED) proves everything I said.
the Hezbollah ties in VZLA
The Cuban intelligence influence
The Narco trafficking
why do nikkas test me?
@88m3 @ADevilYouKhow @wire28 @dtownreppin214
@DonKnock @dza @wire28 @BigMoneyGrip @Dameon Farrow @re'up @Blackfyre @Cali_livin @NY's #1 Draft Pick
Secure Da Bag
Veteran
bruh this is ridiculous.
you can't make this up.
thats like the chief of the CIA running off to Moscow and shytting on Obama.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...0ad508-9477-11e9-956a-88c291ab5c38_story.html
Maduro, meanwhile, relied on 15 to 20 Cubans for personal security. Some were military guards, Figuera said. But three Cubans, called “the psychologists,” served as special advisers who would analyze Maduro’s speeches to assess their public impact.
Figuera saw Maduro multiple times a week at cabinet meetings. When he sought a one-on-one meeting this year, he was told to go through “Aldo” — a Cuban.
“I was like, ‘What?’ I’m his intelligence chief, and I have to go through a Cuban to be able to meet with him?”
Maduro, meanwhile, relied on 15 to 20 Cubans for personal security. Some were military guards, Figuera said. But three Cubans, called “the psychologists,” served as special advisers who would analyze Maduro’s speeches to assess their public impact.
Figuera saw Maduro multiple times a week at cabinet meetings. When he sought a one-on-one meeting this year, he was told to go through “Aldo” — a Cuban.
“I was like, ‘What?’ I’m his intelligence chief, and I have to go through a Cuban to be able to meet with him?”
@88m3 @dtownreppin214 its painful to be so accurate
