'Months of planning and rehearsal' for Maduro seizure: Top US general
- Last updated: January 3, 2026 | 21:22 ..
The US military operation to extract Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in a nighttime raid in Caracas took "months of planning and rehearsal," and more than 150 US aircraft were used, top US General Dan Caine told reporters Saturday.
"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," Caine told a joint press conference with President Donald Trump.
After months of growing military pressure on Maduro, President Trump ordered a brazen operation into the South American country to capture its leader and whisk him to the United States where his administration planned to put him on trial.
In a Saturday morning interview on "Fox & Friends Weekend," Trump laid out the details of the overnight strike, after which he said Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were flown by helicopter to a US warship.
Later on Saturday, Trump and other officials gave more details during a news conference from his Florida residence. Trump described Maduro as being "highly guarded" in a presidential palace that was "like a fortress."
Maduro had nearly made it to a safe room inside it, Trump told reporters, although "he was unable to close it."
American forces were armed with "massive blowtorches," which they would have used to cut through steel walls had Maduro locked himself in the room, Trump said earlier.
"It had what they call a safety space, where it's solid steel all around," Trump said. "He didn't get that space closed. He was trying to get into it, but he got bum-rushed right so fast that he didn't get into that. We were prepared."
Gen. Dan, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said US forces had rehearsed their maneuvers for months, learning everything about Maduro - where he was and what he ate, as well as details of his pets and the clothes he wore. "We think, we develop, we train, we rehearse, we debrief, we rehearse again, and again," Caine said, saying his forces were "set" by early December.
"Not to get it right, but to ensure we cannot get it wrong." Earlier, Trump said U.S. forces had practiced their extraction on a replica building.
"They actually built a house which was identical to the one they went into with all the same, all that steel all over the place," Trump said.
Trump said the US operation took place in darkness, although he did not detail how that had happened. He said the US turned off "almost all of the lights in Caracas," the capital of Venezuela.
At the news conference, he said the city's lights "were largely turned off due to a certain expertise that we have." "This thing was so organized," he said.
"And they go into a dark space with machine guns facing them all over the place." At least seven explosions were heard in Caracas.
The attack, which Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth described as part of "massive joint military and law enforcement raid," lasted less than 30 minutes.
Venezuela's vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, who under law takes power, said some Venezuelan civilians and members of the military were killed.
Agencies