Takeaways from AP’s report on a U.S. plot to recruit Maduro’s pilot to betray Venezuelan leader

MIAMI (AP) — A longtime U.S. law enforcement agent secretly tried to recruit Nicolas Maduro’s pilot to join a plot to capture the Venezuelan leader and deliver him into U.S. custody to face drug trafficking charges. Details of the plot are emerging as the Trump administration exerts increasing pressure on Maduro. Trump has deployed a U.S. naval strike force to the Caribbean and doubled the bounty for Maduro’s arrest to $50 million.

The untold saga of how the agent tried to flip the pilot has all the elements of a Cold War spy thriller — luxury private jets, a secret meeting at an airport hangar, high-stakes diplomacy and the delicate wooing of a key Maduro lieutenant. There was even a final act of intrigue aimed at rattling the Venezuelan president about the pilot’s true loyalties.

Here are some key takeaways from AP’s story, which is based on interviews with three current and retired U.S. officials, as well as one of Maduro’s opponents. All spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were either not authorized to discuss the effort or feared retribution for disclosing it. The Associated Press also reviewed — and authenticated — text exchanges between Lopez and the pilot.

A U.S. agent’s bold recruitment bid

Homeland Security Investigations agent Edwin Lopez was serving as an attaché in the Dominican Republic when he learned that two private jets frequently used to transport Maduro had landed in the Caribbean nation for costly repairs. The planes were used to shuttle Maduro across the globe – often to countries hostile to the U.S. like Iran, Cuba and Russia.

A delegation of Venezuelan Air Force personnel arrived to pick up the planes, so Lopez secured permission to talk to the airmen, according to the current and former officials.

In May 2024, at an executive airport in Santo Domingo, Lopez made his pitch to Maduro’s pilot: In exchange for diverting the president’s flight to a place where he could be nabbed by U.S. authorities, the aviator would become a very rich man and earn the adoration of millions of Venezuelans. The rendezvous could be of the pilot’s choosing: the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico or the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, two of the people familiar with the plan said.

The pilot, Bitner Villegas, a member of the elite presidential honor guard, was noncommittal, though he gave Lopez his phone number. The two stayed in touch over an encrypted messaging app. Lopez, after retiring earlier this year, reached out again, according to three of the people.

“I’m still waiting for your answer,” Lopez wrote the pilot on Aug. 7, attaching a link to a press release issued by the Justice Department announcing the reward for Maduro’s arrest had risen to $50 million. Maduro had been indicted in 2020 on federal narco-terrorism charges accusing him of helping flood the U.S. with cocaine.

Lopez added a few days later: “There’s still time left to be Venezuela’s hero and be on the right side of history.”

Wider U.S. efforts to oust Maduro

The operation reveals the extent — and often slapdash fashion — to which the U.S. has for years sought to topple Maduro, who it blames for destroying the oil-rich nation’s democracy while providing a haven for drug traffickers, terrorist groups and communist-run Cuba.

Those efforts have gained momentum since President Donald Trump retook office. This summer, the president deployed thousands of troops, attack helicopters and warships to the Caribbean to attack fishing boats suspected of smuggling cocaine out of Venezuela. In 10 strikes, the U.S. military has killed at least 43 people.

This month, Trump also authorized the CIA to conduct covert actions inside Venezuela. Earlier, he doubled to $50 million a reward for Maduro’s capture to face narcoterrorism charges contained in a 2020 federal indictment accusing the Venezuelan strongman of leading a cartel of military officials accused of flooding the U.S. with cocaine.

Rebuffed by pilot, Lopez and opposition leaders campaign to rattle Maduro

When Villegas rebuffed Lopez’s efforts, allies of Venezuela’s opposition launched an online campaign to sow suspicion in Caracas about the pilot’s loyalty.

Marshall Billingslea – a former national security official in several Republican administrations — had for weeks been trolling Maduro. On the day Villegas turned 48, he posted on social media a mocking birthday message that included side-by-side photographs that would be sure to raise eyebrows. One was of Villegas on a red leather couch at the airplane hangar in the Dominican Republic where he spoke the previous year to Lopez, who was cropped out of the picture. The other was an official air force photo with a gold star denoting his new rank of general.

Billingslea’s post was published at 3:01 p.m. — a minute before another sanctioned Airbus that Maduro has been known to fly took off from Caracas’ airport. Twenty minutes later, the plane unexpectedly returned to the airport.

Fallout in Venezuela

The birthday wish, seen by almost 3 million people, sent shockwaves across Venezuelan social media, as Maduro’s opponents speculated the pilot had been ordered to return to face interrogation. Others wondered if he would be jailed. Nobody saw or heard from Villegas for days. Then, on Sept. 24, the pilot resurfaced, in an air force flight suit, on a widely followed TV show hosted by Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello.

Cabello laughed off any suggestion that Venezuela’s military could be bought off. As he joked about Villegas’ loyalty, calling him an “unfailing, kick-ass patriot, ” the pilot stood by silently, raising a clenched fist in a display of his loyalty.