The White House on Saturday shared a first-hand account of the US raid that led to the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. The post detailed a Venezuelan security guard’s claim that regime forces were overwhelmed in what he described as a “massacre”.
“Stop what you are doing and read this,” White House Press secretary Karoline Leavitt wrote while sharing the account online.
The post, presented as an interview with a Venezuelan security guard who claimed to have been on duty during the raid, describes a sudden and overwhelming assault that left Venezuelan forces unable to respond. According to the account, radar systems “shut down without any explanation” before swarms of drones appeared overhead.
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Wars without declarations: The American way“We were on guard, but suddenly all our radar systems shut down,” the guard said. “The next thing we saw were drones, a lot of drones, flying over our positions. We didn’t know how to react.”
The guard claimed that only a handful of helicopters followed, deploying what he estimated to be “maybe twenty men”. He said that the Venezuelan forces were "technologically unmatched."
“They didn’t look like anything we’ve fought against before,” he said.
When asked how the confrontation unfolded, the guard replied: “It was a massacre.”
“We were hundreds, but we had no chance,” he said, describing gunfire delivered with “precision and speed”, adding that it appeared as though each attacker was firing “300 rounds per minute”.
The guard also described a weapon that he could not identify, which he likened to a sonic or acoustic device. “It was like a very intense sound wave,” he said. “Suddenly I felt like my head was exploding from the inside. We all started bleeding from the nose. Some were vomiting blood. We fell to the ground, unable to move.”
The guard claimed the attackers suffered no casualties, adding: “Those twenty men, without a single casualty, killed hundreds of us. We had no way to compete with their technology.”
He concluded with a stark warning to other countries in the region. “I’m sending a warning to anyone who thinks they can fight the United States,” he said. “They have no idea what they’re capable of.”
Operation Absolute Resolve
The account surfaced as US officials continue to defend the legality and necessity of the raid that saw Maduro seized in a predawn operation and flown out of Venezuela.
The mission followed months of covert intelligence-gathering by the CIA, including drone surveillance and human sources close to the Venezuelan leader, which allowed US planners to map his movements in minute detail.
Chair of the joint chiefs of staff Gen Dan Caine previously said the intelligence operation meant the US knew “where Maduro moved, what he ate and even what pets he kept”. Elite Delta Force commandos rehearsed the extraction on a full-scale replica of Maduro’s compound before launching the raid.
US forces reportedly disabled air defences, plunged parts of Caracas into darkness and cleared a path for helicopters carrying special operations troops. Maduro was captured within minutes and transferred to a US warship before being flown to the United States to face charges.
President Donald Trump has framed the operation as a decisive blow against drug trafficking in Latin America.
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