Draining the swamp has a ways to go in the intelligence community. A “Sense of Community Memorandum” prepared by a group of academic analysts from the federal government’s dozen or so security services downplays connections between Venezuela’s Maduro regime and the Tren de Aragua criminal gang, undermining president Trump’s efforts to expel gang members from the U.S.
The unclassified document released as a National Intelligence Council assessment has been widely cited by the media to challenge Trump’s invocation of national security laws to forcibly deport TDA thugs. It’s heavily doctored for an attempt to contradict statements by the White House, the FBI, and DHS accusing Venezuela of supporting the group, providing no background on the historically close ties between Venezuela’s ruling leftist cabal and criminal organizations.
The 5 page document starts by casually framing the relationship between TDA and Venezuela as one might treat occasional bribe taking by a local cop on the beat. It ascribes the group’s growth to “permissive conditions and regime incapacities.” It’s not until the end of page 2 that the report briefly alludes to FBI input:
Some Venezuelan government officials facilitate TDA members’ migration from Venezuela to the United States and use members as proxies in Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and the United States to advance what they see as the Maduro regime’s goal of destabilizing governments and undermining public safety in these countries, based on DHS and FBI reporting as of February 2024.
A former director of Venezuela’s intelligence service SEBIN, general Manuel Figueres offers further details. He tells The American Spectator that he personally witnessed how passports dated on the same day were issued to 43 of 406 TDA members let out of jail in a mass prison release some years ago, for selected teams to operate abroad.
The remaining 363, according to Figueres, “went to work for the police in security and enforcement roles at provincial levels under local governors aligned with the regime.” Many ended up with Freddy Bernal, an ex police detective and chief organizer of motorbike mounted “Colectivos,” used as political militias, which the NIC report also pictures as uncontrolled gangs somehow at odds with the regime.
Bernal is currently governor of Tachira province where he supervises the main cocaine running routes from Colombia controlled by the ELN and FARC terror groups. Maduro and other top members of his regime stand officially accused by the U.S. government of heading Venezuela’s drug “Cartel de los Soles.”
TDA goon squads spearheaded Maduro’s brutal repression following his steal of the 2024 elections, raiding homes of government opponents in what the regime announced as “Operation Knock Knock With No Mercy.” Women were raped in front of their husbands and fathers as hundreds of opposition workers got snatched from their homes and taken to secret detention centers. This was not mentioned by NIC.
Clear evidence of the regime’s use of TDA for international operations emerged in an incident involving the assassination of a Venezuelan army dissident in Chile. NIC makes passing reference to the highly shocking and compromising episode in couched language in the very last paragraph at the bottom of page 5 — the very last page.
The next event that may shed light on regime ties to TDA involves the legal case in 2023 of a junior Venezuelan military officer who escaped imprisonment in Venezuela after he participated in coup plotting against the regime and was killed in Chile in 2024. Last week, Chilean officials took the case to the International Criminal Court (ICC), alleging the Maduro regime is involved in the killing, acting via TDA.
One must assume that journalists at CNN, AP , WP and other news organizations didn’t read down to the end of the report as they make no reference to the episode in articles using NIC’s assessment to refute Trump’s claims about TDA official ties.
Neither did they read a Wall Street Journal full page investigative report published last year about the murder of lieutenant Ronaldo Ojeda. The article provided extensive detail of how the Venezuelan regime activated a TDA cell in Chile’s capital of Santiago to mount a close surveillance on Ojeda before gunmen masquerading as Chilean plainclothes policemen dragged him from his home in front of his screaming wife and child. Days later, he was found buried inside a cement block at a building site. The TDA hit squad escaped from Chile via neighboring Bolivia and Peru.
Chile took the case before the ICC after the Venezuelan government consistently denied appeals for the hit men’s extradition. One of them was later arrested while crossing into Panama from Costa Rica to join a caravan of migrants moving up the Darian gap towards the U.S. but was not handed over to Chilean authorities due presumably to Venezuelan pressures.
According to the WSJ, Ojeda’s role in efforts to organize army protection for Venezuela’s abused opposition was uncovered through the brutal torture of another military officer observed meeting him in Colombia by Venezuela’s military intelligence unit DGCIM, which found Lt. Ojeda’s Chilean cell number in the other officer’s mobile phone. A hit operation at such levels involving highly sensitive intelligence and material support from the regime could have only been authorized at the highest levels by either Maduro or his interior minister Diosdado Cabello, according to former regime officials.
Cabello’s name also came up during police questioning of a TDA member picked up in Palm Beach observing Mar a Lago following Trump’s 2024 election victory and two attempts against his life. NIC dismisses the episode by saying that the Venezuelan gang member’s “allegations of having ties with the regime could be an effort to deflect responsibility for crimes and to lessen any punishment by providing exculpatory or otherwise “valuable” information to U.S. prosecutors.”
Argentina’s security services which have closely monitored TDA activity since its hit operation in neighboring Chile, have no doubt as to the gang’s official ties. “Tren de Aragua is a branch of Venezuelan and Cuban intelligence,” a senior Argentine counter-terrorism official and close advisor to Interior minister Patricia Bullrich told The American Spectator.
According to Fabian Calle who is an intelligence advisor to president Javier Millei, the Venezuelan regime is in constant contact with TDA members operating abroad and supports other terrorist organizations including Hezbollah. Figueres pin points locations in Venezuela where hundreds of Hezbollah members are based, recalling how Venezuelan passports were distributed to many of the Arabs who couldn’t even speak Spanish.
The Trump administration has expelled over 200 members of Tren de Argua to El Salvador for confinement in high security prisons built by his close ally president Nayib Bukele. But thousands remain at large in the U.S. Further deportations are being blocked by Soros backed judges ruling against the application of the 1798 Alien and Sedition Acts, originally introduced by president John Adams to guard against the infiltration of French Jacobin agents during the Reign of Terror in 18th century revolutionary France.
“Cuba, which closely advises Venezuela’s intelligence services long ago devised plans to infiltrate societies through criminal organizations,” says Figueres. The fear is that Tren de Aragua and other criminal gangs could form grass roots networks to support terrorist operations in the U.S. or join up with far left groups already active in sanctuary cities to stage attacks.
A recent investigative report by Liberty Nation details how members of leftist insurgent movements in Central America formed the MS-13 gang in the U.S. and built up political lobbies in Democrat controlled states to protect its members. The case is given of the Maryland based activist group CASA, funded by Venezuela and operated by former members of El Salvador’s Cuban backed FMLN guerrilla movement, which has led lobbying efforts for the return of deported MS13 gang member Garcia Obrego accused of human trafficking.
At a time when heads of the FBI, CIA, and other intelligence agencies have consistently testified before congress — since before Trump came to office — on the heightened danger of a major terrorist attack in the U.S., , mid level intelligence analysts issue reports contrived to sedate American opinion on the threat from Venezuela.
It’s worth recalling the case of Defense Intelligence Agency Latin American analyst Ana Belen Montes charged by the FBI as a Cuban spy in 2001. Her leftist leanings and family connections would have emerged in any background check, as her mother was a communist ideologue of the Cuban backed Puerto Rican nationalist movement. Montes might have been among the Pentagon’s first DEI hires, so it can be expected others of her political leanings may have been brought inside.
Tulsi Gabbard, Kash Pattel, and Willian Ratcliffe should make sure that they have analysts focused on protecting U,S. national security instead of supporting the media war against Trump and covering for Maduro — and who know that the only way to fight terrorism is to give it an address.
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