The U.S. seizure of a massive oil tanker off Venezuela‘s coast on Wednesday signaled a sharp escalation in the Trump administration’s pressure campaign against Nicolas Maduro. The Cuba-bound vessel was intercepted in a coordinated operation involving the U.S. Coast Guard, the Department of War, the FBI, and the Department of Homeland Security.
“We’ve just seized a tanker on the coast of Venezuela, large tanker, very large, largest one ever seized, actually, and other things are happening, so you’ll be seeing that later, and you’ll be talking about that later with some other people,” President Donald Trump told reporters. He added that the tanker “was seized for very good reasons” which he did not specify.
Elaborating on the seizure in a post on X, Attorney General Pam Bondi said the vessel had been transporting “sanctioned oil from Venezuela and Iran.”
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“For multiple years,” she wrote, “the oil tanker has been sanctioned by the United States due to its involvement in an illicit oil-shipping network supporting foreign terrorist organizations.”
This ratcheting up of hostilities comes after nearly two dozen U.S. military strikes on suspected Venezuelan drug boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific over the past three months, as well as the deployment of significant American military assets to the region. Trump has also indicated that a ground invasion of the South American nation remains a possibility.
So, what might explain this heightened U.S. aggression toward Venezuela? If the allegations contained in a letter addressed to Trump and “the People of the United States” by Hugo Carvajal Barrios — whom The Miami Herald describes as “a former three-star Venezuelan general and once one of the most powerful figures within the Caracas socialist regime” — are accurate, then the narco-state’s leadership has effectively been at war with the United States for decades, engaging in drug trafficking, organized criminal activity, and espionage operations on American soil.
According to the Miami Herald, Carvajal, who once served as Venezuela’s director of Military Intelligence, “defected from the Maduro government in 2017 and fled” to Spain before being extradited to the U.S. in 2023. He recently pleaded guilty to drug trafficking and narco-terrorism charges and is now awaiting sentencing in a U.S. federal prison.
Carvajal’s letter was published by The Dallas Express last week. It had been provided to the media outlet by his attorney, former federal prosecutor Robert Feitel.
Remarkably, the letter has received almost no attention in the U.S. media. The Dallas Express introduced it by noting that Carvajal — nicknamed “El Pollo” by Maduro’s inner circle — had “dealt directly” with the top leadership of both Hugo Chavez and Maduro.
Carvajal said he wrote the letter to “atone” for his role in Venezuela’s deliberate targeting of Americans. After publicly breaking with the Maduro government in 2017 and fleeing to Spain, he explained, “I acted with the strongest conviction to dismantle Maduro’s criminal regime and bring freedom to my country.”
His stated intention was to warn “the American people about the reality of what the Venezuelan regime truly is — and why President Trump’s policies are not only correct, but absolutely necessary to the United States’ national security.”
He noted that under Chavez, the Venezuelan government “became a criminal organization,” and has remained one ever since. “The purpose of this organization, now known as the Cartel of the Suns, is to weaponize drugs against the United States. The drugs that reached your cities through new routes were not accidents of corruption nor just the work of independent traffickers; they were deliberate policies coordinated by the Venezuelan regime against the United States.”
“This plan was suggested by the Cuban regime to Chávez in the mid-2000s and has been successfully executed with help from FARC [Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia], ELN [Colombia’s National Liberation Army], Cuban operatives, and Hezbollah. The regime has provided weapons, passports, and impunity for these terrorist organizations to operate freely from Venezuela against the United States,” Carvajal explained.
Carvajal detailed how the Tren de Aragua criminal gang was methodically organized and expanded under Chavez, including the “recruitment of criminal leaders inside and outside prisons” to build its ranks. Chavez, he said, began “exporting this criminality and chaos abroad” — a strategy that was continued under Maduro.
It appears Trump’s accusation that Venezuela was emptying its prisons and sending these individuals into the U.S., long ridiculed by the Left, is accurate.
He described how Maduro’s government “seized the opportunity” of the Biden administration’s open-border policy “to send these operatives into the United States. They now have obedient, armed personnel on American soil. To finance their operations, they were explicitly instructed to continue kidnapping, extorting, and killing. Every crime they commit on your soil is an act ordered by the regime.”
Carvajal discussed Chavez and Maduro’s collaboration with Russian intelligence to gain access to U.S. government communications.
Additionally, he claimed the government has been sending spies into the U.S., some of whom are “disguised as members of the Venezuelan opposition.”
“Cuban intelligence showed me their networks inside your naval bases on the East Coast,” he alleged. “They bragged about having sent thousands of spies over decades, some now career politicians.”
“U.S. diplomats and CIA officers were paid to assist Chávez and Maduro in remaining in power,” he added. “These Americans acted as spies for Cuba and Venezuela, and some remain active to this day.”
Carvajal concluded by warning, “The regime I served is not merely hostile — it is at war with you, using drugs, gangs, espionage, and even your own democratic processes as weapons.” He reiterated his support for Trump’s hard-line stance against Maduro, which he argued is not only “justified, but necessary and proportionate to the threat.” And he stands ready to provide details to his administration.
Just days after Carvajal’s letter was published, The Dallas Express obtained a second letter, this one from retired Maj. Gen. Cliver Antonio Alcala Cordones, who is currently serving a 21-year sentence in a U.S. prison. The outlet reported that Alcala “is a former high-ranking commander in Venezuela’s armed forces who served under Hugo Chávez but claims he requested retirement when Nicolás Maduro took power because ‘it was very clear a criminal gang leader was taking power.’”
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U.S. intelligence is likely already well aware of the threat the Venezuelan government poses to American national security. And while legacy media outlets have largely ignored this story — perhaps because a man awaiting sentencing might be inclined to say what he thinks the government wants to hear, or simply because it doesn’t fit their narrative — informants with deep insider knowledge remain invaluable.
Either way, it’s a safe bet that the Trump administration is taking Carvajal’s allegations extremely seriously — as it should.
