Former Green Beret stands with Venezuelan coup plotter

Former Green Beret Goudreau was one of three US veterans involved with a botched attempt to overthrow Venezuela’s Maduro. We posted about the other two here and here. The latter two have since been released as part of a prisoner swap deal. Cliver Alcalá, a retired Venezuelan officer was a part of this plot. Alcalá is scheduled to be sentenced on January 18 for his support of a Colombian rebel army that the U.S. labels a terrorist group. Goudreau submitted a letter on Alcalá’s behalf describing the good deeds that the latter did despite having limited resources.

From the Military Times:

Goudreau, in a letter filed Monday in Manhattan federal court, recounted how he came to admire his fellow soldier, living with Alcalá and his family in a spartan apartment in northern Colombia. While he makes no mention of their covert coup plans, he described how the two would pool funds to buy rice and other food staples for those in need, tracing Alcalá’s sense of service to the example set by his grandmother, who raised him after he lost his parents, and two decades as a military officer in some of the most remote corners of Venezuela.

“Most soldiers feel the need to be of service, and I know that Cliver always sought to assist those in need,” Goudreau wrote in the one-page letter to Judge Alvin Hellerstein urging a reduced sentence. “He had been dedicated to providing whatever little extra he had to give to others.”

Goudreau’s public appeal for leniency stems from his involvement in the bizarre plot highlighted in a 2020 investigation by The Associated Press which blew the lid on jungle camps where Alcalá, going by the nom de guerre Julius Cesar, was training a few dozen desperate Venezuelan military deserters to oust Maduro.

The AP never found any evidence of direct U.S. government involvement despite Goudreau’s constant knocking on doors of the Trump White House and inking of deals with Maduro’s opponents to muster support for what came to be known as the Bay of Piglets, in reference to the far better planned but similarly botched 1961 invasion of Fidel Castro’s Cuba.

The Military Times has additional information here.

Category: "Teh Stoopid", Veterans in the news