How Maduro was captured: Air Force general outlines mission and raid in Venezuela

During the operation to capture Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, one U.S. aircraft was hit but “remained flyable” for the rest of the mission, Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a Jan. 3 press conference with Trump and others at Mar-a-Lago.

U.S. troops faced “multiple self-defense engagements as the force began to withdraw from Venezuela,” Caine said.

Members of the Army's secretive Delta Force reportedly led the raid to capture Maduro. Delta Force, is trained in counterterrorism and raids against important targets. The unit carried out the 2019 raid that killed Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the head of ISIS.

Caine described the complex raid, characterizing it as “an audacious operation that only the United States could do.” and emphasized the amount of planning that went into the mission to capture Maduro, noting that it required coordination between all branches of the military and intelligence agencies including the CIA, National Security Agency and National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency

“The word integration does not explain the sheer complexity of such a mission, an extraction so precise it involved more than 150 aircraft launching across the Western Hemisphere in close coordination,” Caine said. “Failure of one component of this well-oiled machine would have endangered the entire mission, and failure is never an option for America’s joint force.”