Inside US Agent's Plan to Flip Maduro's Chief Pilot

A U.S. federal agent had a daring pitch for Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro's chief pilot: All he had to do was surreptitiously divert Maduro's plane to a place where U.S. authorities could nab the strongman.

In exchange, the agent told the pilot in a clandestine meeting, the aviator would be made a very rich man.

The conversation was tense, and the pilot left noncommittal, though he provided the agent, Edwin Lopez, with his cell number — a sign he might be interested in helping the U.S. government.

Over the next 16 months, even after retiring from his government job in July, Lopez kept at it, chatting with the pilot over an encrypted messaging app.

The untold, intrigue-filled saga of how Lopez 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 machination aimed at rattling the Venezuelan president about the pilot's true loyalties.

More broadly, the scheme reveals the extent 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 lifeline to drug traffickers, terrorist groups, and communist-run Cuba.

Since returning to the White House, President Donald Trump has taken an even harder line.

This summer, Trump has deployed thousands of troops, attack helicopters, and warships to the Caribbean to attack boats suspected of smuggling cocaine out of Venezuela.

In 10 strikes, including a few in the eastern Pacific Ocean, the U.S. military has killed at least 43 people.

This month, Trump authorized the CIA to conduct covert actions inside Venezuela, and the U.S. government has also doubled the bounty for Maduro's capture on federal narco-trafficking charges, a move that Lopez sought to leverage in a text message to the pilot.

"I'm still waiting for your answer," Lopez wrote the pilot on Aug. 7, attaching a link to a Justice Department press release announcing the reward had risen to $50 million.

Details of the ultimately unsuccessful plan were drawn from interviews with three current and former 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.

Attempts to locate the pilot, Venezuelan Gen. Bitner Villegas, were not successful.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the State Department did not comment, and the Venezuelan government did not respond to a request for comment.