Exfiltrating María Corina Machado from Venezuela

Sasha Ingber: Welcome to Spycast, the official podcast of the International Spy Museum. I’m your host, Sasha Ingber, and we're at the end of a month of episodes on Latin America crossing borders and decades to explore clandestine activities that have shaped our world. Before Delta Force captured Nicholás Maduro, Bryan Stern went on a secret mission in Venezuela.

The veteran and Purple Heart recipient was there to extract opposition leader María Corina Machado, who had been living in hiding for her safety. Bryan took her to Oslo where she received a Nobel Peace Prize, but missed the formal ceremony and this daring operation, which he named Operation Golden Dynamite, inspired by the founder of the Nobel Peace Prize who invented dynamite, involved land, sea, and air. It's one of many high stakes evacuations. Brian has conducted through his nonprofit organization, Gray Bull Rescue. We sat down together to hash out the details a few days after he returned from Venezuela.

Bryan, welcome to Spycast.

Bryan Stern: Thanks for having me. 

Sasha Ingber: You still soar from the operation? 

Bryan Stern: Little bit. Getting better. It's been like, uh, like a week and a half already, so we're doing okay. 

Sasha Ingber: And you said that this is your 800th mission. What do you say to yourself every morning that you get up to do a new mission?

Bryan Stern: Should have gone to law school or something else. Like the fire department, we don't hope to have to work. We don't want people to have to call us because when they do, they usually called everybody else already, and the conversations usually start off very desperate and poor and not pleasant. Those calls are never fun.

Sasha Ingber: So speaking of phone calls, this operation starts with a phone call. Who called you and what did they say? 

Bryan Stern: A counter intel buddy of mine called me knowing that we were working and setting things up in Venezuela. Which we've been very loud about. We've been very vocal about for a couple of, couple of weeks in response to the, the escalation and military activity, which we think leads to Americans needing, uh, rescue when evacuation, which is what we do.

So he called me. I was on my way back from Aruba, where we have a small, uh, establishment there. He called and said, Hey, bro, uh, I got a weird one for you. And I said, okay. He says, it's about Venezuelan. I said, okay, cool. I'm doing that. He goes, I know. And I go, uh, I want to connect you with a guy that I know.

I don't know him terribly well, but he's real. He needs help and you can help him, and he's got a weird project for you. And I said, okay, well, the strange and unusual is what we love around here. So yeah, sure, by all means. So he connected me to this guy who turned out to be part of Maria's, uh, team. And we had a short phone call.

This is in between flights from, uh, Aruba to Tampa through Miami. He was not transparent at first with who it was, but we figured it out in like two minutes. He doesn't trust me and I don't trust him and even post operation, we, he and I, uh, still have trust issues. He says, I have a high value individual who's in Venezuela.

Do you do things in Venezuela? What can you do in Venezuela? And I say, well, it depends on who and where. And I can't touch the whole country, but I can touch a lot. We have infrastructure on the ground and we have some aviation options and some maritime options and some ground options and whatever. And he made me understand by accident that it was a female.

And through that, we figured out that it was Maria. I say, uh, is this Maria Corina Machado? And he says, no. I say, look man, if we're gonna do things together, you need to be honest with me and uh, uh, I know it's Maria, so you can lie to me now. You can tell me the truth later, but let's just get to the chase here.

And he discloses it, uh, relatively fast. And um, that was Friday night. We talked more on Saturday and got some more planning. And then Sunday was kind of more of the same. And then some folks and I go to Miami, do some things there, meet with some people, and, um, get ready to deploy into the operating area.

Sasha Ingber: You have rescued hundreds of people by this point, from war zones, from natural disasters, but none of them are Nobel Peace Prize Laureate opposition leaders who are confined for safety reasons to their homes under a regime that the United States says has been illegitimate for quite some time now. So is this mission going to be harder because of that? Yeah. Or is this mission easier in that you aren't necessarily having to deal with missiles? 

Bryan Stern: And actually, we are dealing with missiles and we're dealing with, uh, the, the Venezuelans are, have a real military, uh, so do the Cubans for that matter. Uh, so do the Russians for that matter, who are very present on the ground of Venezuela.

So the, the, the Venezuelans have F-16s. The Venezuelans have Russian radar with Russian surface to air missiles. We have reporting that they were spending up to a million bucks a day for the last seven months trying to find her. She was the Bin Laden for Maduro. There's considerable resources. They have a very sophisticated intelligence system, plus the cartels plus Hezbollah, plus the Iranians, plus the Russians.

The tactical piece of this was relatively [00:05:30] straightforward. We've rescued over 8,400 people from places that no one can get rescued from. We've done all this before, but not with someone whose face has billboards on it throughout a country who's the most popular face after Maduro in the Western Hemisphere.

She has lots of fans and lots of supporters, and the reality is if you are caught helping her, you'll be skinned alive. If you're lucky, you'll be arrested, you'll be tortured, and God knows what else. So the cost to you as a source helping out this operation is higher because of who Maria is. Okay, so it's, it's mostly counterintelligence threats that you are concerned about here.

Sasha Ingber: Which services from a nation state perspective are you most concerned about? Is it Venezuela's or is it their international partners who are operating on Venezuelan soil?

Bryan Stern: I'm worried about the Venezuelan service. Uh, primarily the SEBIN, the Cuban service, the DGI, the Russian services, the GRU and the FSB, the Iranian services, including MOIS, the, uh, the Chinese services, and there's a bunch of different ones on the ground depending on, on where.

Sasha Ingber: Let's talk for a moment about the drug cartels, about Hezbollah, which is also in the region. Are there tactics any different? 

Bryan Stern: They're able to roll a little bit looser, uh, but they're also twice a sinister.

So a uniform soldier generally has some ounce of patriotism to his people or to the service or something. You know what I mean? If you're a cartel guy, you don't care. You're just about dollars and cents. They're deeply invested. They don't like that Maria is trying to get rid of their piggy bank, but she's a threat to their bank account in a very real multi-trillion dollar a year away. She's a threat to the cartels. She's, uh, somewhat of a threat to Hezbollah because she'll house clean and she's pro-America, therefore she's anti-Iran and therefore Hezbollah goes. But the Cártel de los Soles were trying to find her forever. In fact, they went kinetic on her on more than one occasion.

Uh, she had gotten jumped about two years ago, three years ago. They dragged her out of her car, beat the crap out of her deliberately in front of Venezuelan law enforcement traffic cameras that way be captured and framed perfectly. And, um, they beat her up pretty good. You know, and that's all cartel stuff.

Sasha Ingber: So what kinds of security precautions are you taking so that none of these different entities find out about what you're about to do? 

Bryan Stern: We do a lot of defensive stuff and we do a lot of offensive stuff too. I don't wanna get into specific tactics, but we understand the threat real well, so we're able to counter that threat.

And we also do a lot of work with deception. We, we put a lot of stuff on the street that doesn't make sense, and we also don't really trust a lot of people. If you look at some of the media that's come out, we didn't leak this to the press. Others did. We set it up in such a way that it would be perceived as if she was in Europe the whole time.

We didn't expect any attribution. Um, other people compromise this to the media. We expect that to happen also. So we plan for that as one of the things that we do. There's very few people on planet Earth that actually know what happened, including the people that leaked it. These are all psychological operations.

They're deception operations. 

Sasha Ingber: Can you gimme an example of something that you said to someone to get them to do what you wanted? 

Bryan Stern: In this particular operation, we coordinated some stuff with some of our DOD friends who are dropping things from the sky. They're blowing up boats off the coast of Venezuela.

I'm operating a boat off the coast of Venezuela. Most people thought that I was extracting an American citizen and didn't know about Maria. Maria is a high value target, so I share that in vicinity of this lat long. We're gonna be in a boat conducting an operation. Please don't kill us. Everyone thought I was rescuing an American.

Sasha Ingber: What exfiltration options are you considering and what do you end up settling on? 

Bryan Stern: We discussed a lot of different options. We got notified Friday night. She was in Norway by Wednesday afternoon. It's really four days of planning and ops. We considered an error option, which was extremely viable. Still is extremely viable.

It's just not viable for her. We talked about a land option. Land option is also very doable. The problem is there's lots of eyes on the street and the exposure, it's a lot of eyeballs to see her. And also relatively dangerous. You know, bad things happen on the roads too. So, uh, that leaves a maritime option.

Maritime option is good because there's nobody on the water, and we know we're gonna do this at night, but. Our signature is still a little bit tough, and it's also bad things happen in the maritime domain. The maritime domain is the hardest domain to operate in, and uh, so it's scary from that perspective too.

Sasha Ingber: So let's break it down a little bit more. First, Machado gets moved from a safe location outside of Caracas to, uh, fishing village on the coast. Uh, how does she move through the military checkpoints when she's so recognizable? 

Bryan Stern: We moved her by car, so she gets picked up at a specific place at a specific time and brought, uh, along a very specific route to another specific place at a specific time where she gets on the boat.

Met by very specific people at a very specific time. 

Sasha Ingber: Were there checkpoints that she had to get past? 

Bryan Stern: Oh yeah, a hundred percent. The checkpoints everywhere. There's been an increase in checkpoint activity because of the escalation and all that stuff, and also because they're actively looking for Maria.

So there was some debate internal to Venezuela, whether or not she was even there. 

Sasha Ingber: Is she disguised? 

Bryan Stern: Uh, I, I'm not gonna get into tactics the, that we do, but the technology threat, the biometric threat, the just visual ID threat, uh, is extremely, extremely real. I could tell you this, that she was at a checkpoint where it was wild because she drove past a picture of herself.

There was a, a checkpoint at this place that had a picture of her, kind of like a poster on the wall. 

Sasha Ingber: That must have been a pretty stressful moment and almost like a movie moment. 

Bryan Stern: It was a, we'll see how this works out moment. 

Sasha Ingber: Yeah. So now she's getting to the water she gets on the boat. You are on your own boat. The US has been bombing alleged drug boats in the region. How concerned are you that either your vessel or hers could be mistaken and and also bombed? 

Bryan Stern: It was a concern that we had, but we mitigated that risk by through coordination and discussion. And you know, if it wasn't us doing it, I'd feel very concerned because we're operating boats off the coast of Venezuela doing weird things under weird conditions.

You know, our, our signature could have been misperceived as a threat, but we're good at what we do and know who to talk to, and as long as the left hand and the right hand are talking to each other, we should be fine. 

Sasha Ingber: Who did you talk to and how did you make sure that they knew what you were doing? 

Bryan Stern: Because of who we are and what we do, we have deep contacts within every part of the executive branch of government that matters.

From the special operations world to the intelligence world, to the diplomatic world, the military world, the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, we know who to talk to, how to talk to them, and what they need to know to. We shared lat longs. Lat longs, a date and a time, and in a general kind of scope of the operation without listing Maria's need.

Sasha Ingber: So you had previously told me that while you were reaching the rendezvous point, you were sailing against the wind. It was brutal. You were waiting for hours on the water. What went wrong? 

Bryan Stern: These are normal contingency things. We plan for this sort of stuff. We plan for loss of comms. We planned for GPS denied environments, but one had some navigation challenges, but we thought that there would be, so we were actually set up for it.

Turns out it was a technical issue, not a offensive issue, but either way, the result of we don't have navigation, we're ready for that problem. Same thing for comms, same thing for all these things. So, um, you know, the, the way this thing has to work logistically is what's known as just in time logistics.

Meaning it has to be linear, meaning we can't go back. We can't guarantee that if we went back that it'd be safe as we arrived, that there wouldn't be a platoon of Venezuelan Navy seals waiting for us. So once this party starts. The train starts, it has to keep going. And if that means we have to branch in sequel along the way, so be it.

But what we can't do is go in reverse. 

Sasha Ingber: You've also told me in previous conversations that moments of transition are where there is the most vulnerability. So what are you thinking about what's going on with Machado in this moment if we just slow it down?

Bryan Stern: She's just sitting there trying to keep calm. So what's she thinking?

She's think, she's thinking she's cold, she's wet. When's this gonna end? I'm miserable. Who are these people? They seem like really nice people, but, and we see this all the time with our evacuees. When you're stuck, you don't care if you're rescued by. Seal Team Two, the State Department, Ground Branch, the Ladies Auxiliary of the VFW or Gray Bull Rescue.

What she's thinking is, is I hope I live, I hope I get to see my children. She prayed. 

Sasha Ingber: When you see her for the first time, what is that moment like? 

Bryan Stern: It was super cool. She's a hero of mine, so I was starstruck. I thought it was the coolest thing ever. I've been following Maria for many, many years. I'm into everything.

She's all about how she does it and why she does it and all those things. So to be able to extract a hero for me was awesome. And the idea that this is working well, that the plan is working well and things are working and we're not there yet. But, um, it does speak to the danger of the operation, though people have the wrong idea about these ops.

These ops are not warzone Uber. They are hard, they're dangerous. People get hurt, people get killed. This is not pleasant. 

Sasha Ingber: Machado ended up being injured in the midst of this operation. 

Bryan Stern: Yeah, we didn't know that she had a fracture for everybody. Why would we? Well, she wasn't like I'm in pain or anything like that.

All of us are beat up pretty good. I'm still in pain right now. People get hurt on these things all the time. Uh, people get killed doing these things all the time. We've been chased by fighter planes and helicopters, right? This is not a calm fishing trip. This is a daring, horrible 5 to 10 foot seas in very small boats.

Soar. People are throwing up. It is a horrible, horrible experience. So it's not surprising to me that she has an injury. She was ambulatory and walking and talking, but normal with an injury like that. Frankly, with adrenaline pumping and fear and cold that you don't feel it as much. 

Sasha Ingber: So what did she say when you finally got to see her face to face?

Bryan Stern: I introduced myself first. I said, my name is Bryan. Good to meet you. And she says, hi, my name is Maria. Pleasure to meet you too. 

Sasha Ingber: You had also told me that you flashed flashlights into the eyes of the people on her boat. Uh, can you explain why? 

Bryan Stern: So when boat one, which is a small boat, got to the final rendezvous point, boat two, which is the boat that I'm on, which is a slightly bigger boat.

We were at sea. We actually left before they did. That way we can link up with each other. I, I was afraid the whole time that we had a penetration because of who she is and who her inner, inner circle are. And also that, uh, people change their minds sometimes, right? I never believe that we're safe until we're safe.

So as we approached. We lit up their boats with these really bright flashlights, and the reason why is I wanna see their hands and that way I can see if there's any weapons. 'cause these guys should be unarmed. So if I see a gun, I know I have a problem. The other thing I need to do is positively identify Maria.

I know she got on a boat and it looks just like this boat, but for all I know is they could have killed her, dumped her overboard, and are trying to get to us. And arrest us for espionage or narcotics or who knows what. Uh, it's just business and I don't trust them, so I treat them nicely, cordially and hopefully, and all the nice things.

But at the end of the day. We don't really trust anybody.

Sasha Ingber: And explain the difference between being in international waters versus sovereign waters. 

Bryan Stern: So sovereign waters are basically an extension of the land border of a country. So international waters are where all the bad things happen because no one has primacy there legally.

Where we're operating is right on the fence between sovereign waters of Venezuela and international waters. Both of those from our perspective, are hazardous and dangerous. It's not until we get to sovereign waters of another country. Where things become a little better. 

So with the Curaçao under Dutch intelligence, are there any concerns about foreign infiltration?

No, except for, again, the Cubans of the Venezuelans have a very large presence throughout the Caribbean. So they have eyes on the street, they have eyes at the ports, they have eyes all over the place. So, uh, lit literally where we pulled in. Was a place that nobody could get access to. 

Sasha Ingber: And how much time did she spend there before flying to Oslo?

Bryan Stern: Two and a half hours. 

Sasha Ingber: What were those two, two and a half hours like?

Bryan Stern: Those two and a half hours were calm. The hard part is now done. If that makes sense. Now we have some administrative things that we have hurdles that have to get done, but those are all easy to deal with. The fear of us getting shot in the face has, has now subsided.

Uh, we made it safely to shore. We made it safely to where we need to be. She ate, she took a shower, she went to the bathroom. Normal stuff. 

Sasha Ingber: When we come back, Brian discusses how other groups had unsuccessfully tried to exfiltrate Machado and whether he's had to make changes to his life for security reasons.

She is also talked about how she wants to return to Venezuela. Is that, you know, how do you feel about that? Would you ever bring her back in and would you bring up for taking her out again? 

Bryan Stern: I get asked this question a lot and I never have a good answer. I get why she wants to go back. She likes to lead her people from the front.

She's not an armchair quarterback. She's not like so many leaders that are self-proclaimed geniuses who have actually done very little on the street. You know, she likes to be with the people in Spanish. She'd say, you'd say por la gente, for the people. She's very much. Like that. So I told her I don't think she should go back.

We need her, we love her and we don't want anything bad to happen to her. And if she gets caught going back, it's gonna be very horrible for her, her family, and whoever else she's with. Um, if I were with her in the car coming back, they would absolutely they would take their time on me probably. So I really don't like the way that sounds, but I understand why she wants to go back.

I really do. I get it. It’s for the same exact reason that I've led 794 of our 800 missions, its the same exact reason why she wants to be on the ground of Venezuela is that she doesn't wanna put her people at risk without her being at risk too. Same reason.

Sasha Ingber: but would you help her again? 

Bryan Stern: Sure. Getting in is a lot easier than getting out.

We haven't been asked, and I maintain that she shouldn't go back. She has a country to lead and a people to lead. 

Sasha Ingber: What did you learn from this operation that could help you in rescuing others from Venezuela? 

Bryan Stern: We, we learn that they're very good at what they do, but they're also susceptible like everybody else.

People believe what they're told. They believe reliable sources and make decisions based off those reliable sources. And if you can understand how their system works and who those sources are that they trust, and how you can influence those sources, which are straight out of counter Intel 1 0 1 stuff, they're not impervious.

The way I know is, is because we did it. What kinds of narratives are they likely to believe? The Venezuelan security forces. I mean, I could tell you it seems like they believed everything we threw at them, which is pretty comical from my perspective. But there was a bunch of bad guys that believed that she was moving by land.

They moved all kinds of people around trying to intercept her, which was a figment to my imagination. There are people who believe that the CIA did this, like they were an agency platform, which is really funny. Uh, there are people that believe Donald Trump did this. There are people who believe that FA-18s were dispatched to cover our movement, and here's the flight aware screen grab of the FA-18s flying.

They were like 90 miles away. They were north of us. They were between the Caribbean and Florida. We were all the way south near Venezuela. And believe me, I told 'em that it was true. 

Sasha Ingber: You have gotten a lot of media attention for this operation, and of course, foreign intelligence services and security forces, they know who you are. Have you had to change aspects of your life as a result of this and, and what? 

Bryan Stern: Uh, a little bit, um, or actually a lot of bit, I'm not gonna get into what we do to, uh, protect me, but my team is on the other side of the camera laughing. People don't even believe my name is Bryan half the time. But the reality is, is I am an irritant at most.

I didn't kill any Venezuelans. I didn't have any Venezuelans killed. I didn't kill any SEBIN guys or Cubans or Russians or anybody else. 

Sasha Ingber: Um, but you took out this very high profile woman who poses an existential threat to Nicholas Maduro.

Bryan Stern: Sure. But I didn't spill any blood doing it. I'm an irritant, I'm an annoyance, I'm an embarrassment.

Maybe I'm those kinds of things, but I'm not kinetically a threat. Not really. We talk about the intelligence services and how, how, how sophisticated they are. If you hear me talk about the enemy, I'm actually complimentary. I respect them. They [00:24:00] are good at what they do and I would argue that we should probably take in a couple of pages outta their book, outta their books a little bit, uh, to up our game.

So what do we do to keep me safe is not make them so mad that they'll do something about it. The reality is, is we do all this media stuff, uh, because we're a nonprofit. 

Sasha Ingber: Is there ever a point where you get tired of this or is the adrenaline rush something that you feel will never get old? 

Bryan Stern: I don't think either is true.

We have hi a higher demand signal than we've ever had. We have operations ongoing right now that we can't afford. We're telling, we're turning people away, where Americans are held at risk right now. 

Sasha Ingber: You had previously told me that there had been multiple attempts before Grey Bull to get Machado out of the country.

Bryan Stern: We're told that we were number six. I know there's more. One of those was done very smart, but that a failure to launch. They had a left hand, right hand problem where actually that operation I, I, I saw what they were gonna do, would have worked. But the, the, the, the clock never started. So, uh, that, that op never went, which is really annoying.

But we know of another private group. I guess similar to us. I don't know who it is, but they took all this money and went on vacation to the Caribbean and kept everyone's money and stiffed Maria's team, frankly, which is kind of gross. These things take time. That put us in a very dangerous spot as it relates to the Nobel Prize.

Peace, we were on a clock. That clock could have had more runway. We were the last call, not the first call, and then there was at least one operation that we know where a bunch of people got hurt and and shot up pretty good.

Sasha Ingber: And who told you about these operations? You said many people. Were they from Machado's team?

Bryan Stern: Yeah, the Americans don't know much. These are from sources on the ground of Venezuela. They're from, so Machado's team. Machado's team has been trying to get her out for about two months to get to Norway in time to receive her Nobel Prize. We were actually a day late. Her daughter had to receive it. The operational conditions weren't sufficient on Monday to initiate. We had to initiate on Tuesday. I was a day late, which stinks, still pretty good. I'm proud of us and my team, but if we would've had another day and a half, she could have made it on time. But they didn't call us until Friday night if they would've called us Friday morning.

We were actually in the neighborhood we had just left and it took us time to come all the way back. We burned a half a day in travel. 

Sasha Ingber: You have some pretty good excuses for showing up late. You've also explained how you communicated with the US military.

Will we ever see a formal relationship where hostage rescue is privatized to organizations like Gray Bull Rescue? 

Bryan Stern: I think there should be. I think it's kind of stupid that there's this hard wall between us and them, because informally that all doesn't exist. We see this day in and day out all over the world with not just this operation 800 missions later.

We talk to everyone that matters. From the ground all the way to the top. We've broken 12 people out of jail from Russia, not negotiated, Americans. Now, that's okay. That's our system. But I would argue that in 2025 that we need to embrace the private sector, not reject it. The private sector isn't just about manufacturing.

I can do things faster, cheaper. More effective in many cases. 

When was the last time any unit in the military rescued an American hostage? It's a very sticky subject, very quickly sticky subject. 

Sasha Ingber: So as a last question, are you trying to build lines of communication at the White House at the Pentagon to try to work with the government now on these rescue operations?

Bryan Stern: Of course we, we've been trying, we tried in the last administration for, for years. I think we're not the first option. That's diplomacy. We're not the second option either. That's the military. We're not the third option. We're the fourth option. Are we the best? I don't know about all that. Are we the brightest?

I don't know about all that, but we're an option nonetheless. 

Sasha Ingber: What's the latest with this administration? 

Bryan Stern: Same thing. The government doesn't look at us as an advantageous relationship because in some ways we're a threat to what should be their show. And that interagency fight has been going on between the intelligence community and the military and the law enforcement community for forever.

So that's not news. But now we're private sector, so how do we even fit in to any of that? So it's not, it's not surprising to me that there's this weird divide. I just submit that it's pretty silly because the bad guys do not have this divide at all. 

Sasha Ingber: Bryan, really appreciate you taking the time to talk about how you extracted María Corina Machado. Thank you. 

Bryan Stern: Thanks so much. Appreciate you. 

Sasha Ingber: Thanks for listening to this episode of Spycast. If you like the episode, give us a follow on Apple, Spotify. Or wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a rating or review. It really helps if you have any feedback or you wanna hear about a particular topic, you can reach us by email at spycast@spymuseum.org.

I'm your host, Sasha Ingber, and the show is brought to you by N2K Networks, Goat Rodeo, and the International Spy Museum in Washington, DC.