SAEDNEWS: A former senior U.S. law enforcement official, in a secret operation beginning in spring 2024, tried to persuade Bitner Villegas — the chief pilot and close aide to Venezuela’s president — to divert Maduro’s plane to a location where American authorities could arrest him on drug trafficking charges. The pilot ultimately refused.
The bold proposal from a U.S. federal agent to Nicolás Maduro’s chief pilot was simple: secretly divert the Venezuelan president’s plane to a location where American authorities could arrest the strongman.
In return, the agent promised during a covert meeting that the pilot would become “very rich.”
The conversation was tense. The pilot left without making a firm commitment, though he handed over his mobile number to the agent, Edwin López — a possible sign of interest in cooperating with the U.S. government.
Over the next sixteen months, even after López retired from his government post in July, he kept in touch through encrypted messaging apps, trying to win the pilot over.
The untold story of López’s attempts to persuade the pilot contains all the ingredients of a Cold War–era spy novel — luxury private jets, secret hangar meetings, high-risk diplomacy, and the careful seduction of a key commander inside Maduro’s inner circle. A final plan was even drawn up to make the Venezuelan president question his pilot’s true loyalties.
More broadly, the plot reflects the scope — and often the recklessness — of Washington’s years-long efforts to unseat Maduro, whom the U.S. accuses of destroying democracy in the oil-rich nation while enabling drug traffickers, terrorist groups, and communist Cuba.
Since returning to the White House, Donald Trump has taken an even tougher stance. This summer he deployed thousands of troops, attack helicopters, and warships to the Caribbean to target fishing boats suspected of smuggling cocaine from Venezuela. In thirteen raids — including several in the eastern Pacific — U.S. forces killed at least fifty-seven people.
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro points to a map of the Americas during a press conference in Caracas, Venezuela, Sept. 15, 2025. (AP Photo / Jesus Vargas)
President Donald Trump speaks with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth after a roundtable on criminal cartels, in the White House State Dining Room, Thursday, Oct. 23, 2025. (AP Photo / Evan Vucci)
This month, Trump authorized CIA covert operations inside Venezuela and doubled the U.S. bounty on Maduro’s capture in federal narcotics cases — a move López later cited in a text message as leverage on the pilot.
“I’m still waiting for your answer,” López wrote to the pilot on August 7, attaching a Justice Department press release announcing the bounty increase to $50 million.
Attempts to locate the pilot — Venezuelan Air Force General Bittner Villegas — were unsuccessful.
Neither the U.S. Department of Homeland Security nor the State Department commented. The Venezuelan government also offered no response.
The plot started when an informant walked into the U.S. Embassy in the Dominican Republic on April 24, 2024, while Joe Biden was still president. According to three officials familiar with the matter, the source claimed to have information about Maduro’s airplanes.
At the time, López — a 50-year-old embassy attaché and Homeland Security Investigations agent — oversaw transnational crime investigations across the Caribbean. The slender, Puerto Rico–born former Army Ranger had a reputation for breaking up drug rings, money-launderers, and fraudsters. His work dismantling an illegal currency-exchange operation in Miami even drew a public warning from Hugo Chávez back in 2010. The Dominican posting was meant to be his last mission before retirement.
When the informant called, he told López that two of Maduro’s aircraft were undergoing expensive repairs in the Dominican Republic.
López was intrigued. He knew such repairs might violate U.S. sanctions, since they could involve American-made parts. That meant the planes were legally subject to seizure.
Tracking them down was easy — they sat at La Isabela Executive Airport in Santo Domingo. Linking them to Maduro took months. Eventually, investigators learned that the Venezuelan president had sent five pilots to retrieve the multimillion-dollar jets — a Dassault Falcon 2000EX and a Dassault Falcon 900EX.
According to current and former officials, López then had an idea: what if he could persuade one of the pilots to fly Maduro to a location where the U.S. could arrest him?
Maduro had already been indicted in 2020 on U.S. federal charges of narco-terrorism, accused of flooding the U.S. with cocaine.
López received permission from his superiors and Dominican authorities to interview the pilots despite their diplomatic concerns.
At the airport hangar, agents met the pilots one by one in a small conference room. There was no formal agenda — just conversation. Pretending not to know that the pilots transported high-ranking officials, they chatted casually for about an hour each.
Finally, they spoke with Villegas — identified as Maduro’s regular pilot. A member of the presidential honor guard and an air force colonel, he was described by a former Venezuelan official as polite, discreet, and deeply trusted by Maduro. The jets he flew carried the president worldwide, often to U.S. rivals such as Iran, Cuba, and Russia.
During one December 2023 video posted by Maduro, Villegas appeared in the cockpit, radio in hand, as the president exchanged patriotic slogans with a Russian Sukhoi fighter pilot.
After some small talk, López grew serious. Had Villegas ever flown Chávez or Maduro? The pilot hesitated, then admitted he had flown both. He even showed photos of himself with the two presidents and described Venezuelan military facilities he had visited — unaware that one of López’s colleagues was secretly recording the conversation.
As the meeting ended, López made his offer: if Villegas secretly delivered Maduro into U.S. custody, he would become “very rich” and “beloved by millions of his countrymen.” The meeting place could be the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, or the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
Villegas didn’t commit — but gave López his phone number before leaving.
The pilots returned to Venezuela without the planes, which had been denied authorization to fly.
Meanwhile, the U.S. prepared federal forfeiture cases to seize the jets. One, registered in San Marino and owned by a shell company in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, was confiscated in September 2024. The other was seized in February during Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s first overseas trip.
At a press event in the Dominican Republic, López told Rubio the plane held a “treasure trove of information” — including the names of Venezuelan Air Force officers and detailed flight logs. He affixed a seizure order to the jet.
The Maduro government lashed out, accusing Rubio of “brazen theft.”
While coordinating the forfeiture case, López focused on convincing Villegas to join his plan. It wasn’t easy. Maduro had made betrayal a deadly offense; dissenters and suspected traitors were routinely imprisoned.
Still, López persisted. The two exchanged a dozen messages via WhatsApp and Telegram, but the talks stalled.
By July, López was officially retired — yet he couldn’t let go. Through contacts in the Venezuelan opposition in exile, he sought help. One opposition figure described him as “obsessed with bringing Maduro to justice.”
“He felt he had an unfinished mission,” said one exiled opposition member, speaking anonymously for safety reasons. “That made him more valuable than many of Maduro’s loudest opponents inside Venezuela.”
After the August message about the $50 million reward, López sent another: “There’s still time to be Venezuela’s hero — to stand on the right side of history.” He received no reply.
On September 18, while watching news of Trump’s troop buildup in the Caribbean, López saw a post from an anonymous flight-tracking account, @Arr3ch0, showing Maduro’s Airbus making an unusual loop after takeoff from Caracas.
“Where are you going?” López texted from a new number.
“Who is this?” Villegas replied — either not recognizing him or pretending not to.
When López referenced their meeting in the Dominican Republic, Villegas turned hostile, calling him a “coward.”
“We Venezuelans are made of something different,” Villegas wrote. “The last thing we are is traitors.”
López responded with a photo of the two of them chatting on a red leather sofa in the hangar.
“Are you crazy?” Villegas replied.
“A little,” López wrote back.
Two hours later, López tried again — mentioning Villegas’s three children and promising them a better future in America.
“The window to decide is closing,” he wrote, just before Villegas blocked him. “Soon it’ll be too late.”
Realizing Villegas wouldn’t defect, López and other anti-Maduro operatives decided to unsettle the president instead, according to three people familiar with the operation.
The day after the heated WhatsApp exchange, Marshall Billingslea — a longtime Republican national security official allied with the Venezuelan opposition — took to social media.
“Happy birthday, ‘General’ Bittner!” he posted mockingly on X, attaching two photos: the hangar snapshot (with López cropped out) and an official air force portrait showing Villegas with a new gold star insignia.
The post went live at 3:01 p.m. — one minute before another Airbus often used by Maduro took off from Caracas. Twenty minutes later, that plane abruptly turned back to the airport.
The “birthday” tweet, seen by nearly three million users, sent Venezuelan social media into a frenzy. Opposition figures speculated that Maduro had summoned Villegas for questioning — or even imprisonment.
Days later, Villegas reappeared on state television, wearing his air force flight suit beside Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello, who mocked the idea that Venezuela’s military could be bought.
Praising Villegas as a “loyal and strong patriot,” Cabello smiled as the silent pilot raised his clenched fist — a gesture of allegiance to Maduro.
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