The capture of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro in Caracas, carried out on January 3 by United States forces, opened a new stage in the politics of the Caribbean country and exposed unprecedented details about the military operation that led to his arrest. The action, called "Absolute Resolution", involved more than 200 U.S. troops, according to War Secretary Pete Hegseth.
From Washington, the authorities highlighted the magnitude and complexity of the operation. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Caine, emphasized that it was an extremely precise mission. "The word integration isn't enough to describe the enormous complexity of a mission of this kind, such a precise extraction", he stated when he referred to the coordinated deployment of the forces involved.
One of the elements that caused the greatest impact after the operation was the testimony of a security guard who was present during the operation. The account was disseminated through a text quoted by White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt on the social network X, and it describes a sequence marked by the total collapse of the defensive systems.
According to the witness, the episode began abruptly while he was performing surveillance duties. "Suddenly all the radar systems shut down without any explanation", he recounted. Shortly afterward, drones began to fly over the area, causing confusion among those present, while helicopters approached the place of the capture.
The guard maintained that a small group of soldiers descended from the aircraft. "Maybe twenty men", he indicated, although he stressed that their technological level did not resemble anything known until then. "But those men were technologically very advanced. They didn't look like anything we've ever fought before", he stated.
