Roving Periscope: How a US firm smuggled out Venezuelan woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize?

Virendra Pandit

New Delhi: It may become the stuff of a Hollywood movie: an American company, with support from the US military, smuggling out a Nobel Peace Prize awardee from Venezuela, against which President Donald Trump is waging a war!

Even after months of multiple ceasefire claims, manipulated nominations, and an active campaign, Trump missed the Nobel Peace Prize this year. But he was happy and thanked when Maria Corina Machado, a Venezuelan Opposition leader, dedicated her Prize to him. Of course, the White House had already criticized the Nobel Committee for selecting her over Trump.

The US is currently waging a war—almost—upon Venezuela, whose President Nicolas Maduro, Trump alleges, has been in league with drug cartels. So, the US unofficially helped Machado, the chief anti-Maduro Opposition leader, organize a daring escape to Norway to receive the Nobel this week, the media reported on Saturday.

An American firm with experience in special operations spirited Machado out of Venezuela in a secretive land, sea and air operation.

María Corina Machado, 58, was determined to make it to Oslo to accept the Nobel Peace Prize in person. Emerging from hiding and finding a safe route to Norway would require skirting multiple military checkpoints, enduring hours of rough seas, and making it to a Caribbean island where a private plane was waiting, NYT reported.

She arrived in Norway too late for the prize ceremony. But her dangerous escape exhilarated her supporters and underlined how Machado — who spent the last year in hiding from the Maduro regime — remains a key player in the intensifying standoff between Caracas and Washington.

The Plot

The emerging details of her evacuation shed light on the usually secretive operations of a company run by US veterans with special operations and intelligence training, who orchestrated the effort to slip one of Venezuela’s most recognizable political figures out of the country without getting caught.

“We were not the first people to try this,” Bryan Stern, the combat veteran who leads the firm, Gray Bull Rescue, said. Machado’s rescue was the 800th for his Tampa-based group, which was organized in the wake of the chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. But it posed a unique challenge, even for operatives with long experience in being hired to evacuate clients from risky environments.

“All of our infrastructure is designed for nobodies, and Maria is a somebody…The challenge with this operation was her.”

Venezuelan operatives were trying for weeks to spirit Machado, a former lawmaker and election-monitoring activist, out of the country so she could make it to Oslo.

Gray Bull Rescue named Machado’s rescue operation “Golden Dynamite” — after the 18-karat gold medal she would receive, and dynamite, in homage to the most famous invention of Alfred Nobel, who established the Peace Prize.

She had a long history in Venezuelan opposition politics before she became a hunted woman. In 2023, she won an opposition primary to challenge Maduro in the 2024 presidential election. But when she became the front-runner, the country’s highest court barred her from running.

In mid-2024, independently verified vote counts showed that Machado’s chosen replacement, retired diplomat Edmundo González, had beaten Maduro by a wide margin. But officials declared Maduro the victor, and his government launched a campaign against critics.

Before her arrival in Oslo, Machado was last seen in public on January. 9, the day before the Maduro inauguration.

The Venezuelan government said Machado would be considered a fugitive if she left the country. It is, therefore, unclear if she will be allowed to return without being arrested. Venezuela has already imprisoned hundreds of her supporters.

Escape

The first leg of her escape was by land. Machado and her handlers had to travel from the suburb of Caracas where she had been hiding out to a coastal fishing village. Along the way, they encountered 10 military checkpoints. Despite her face being visible on campaign billboards across the country, she evaded capture.

Then, a fishing skiff carried her from the coast of Venezuela to another boat. Using a series of boats, they spent more than 10 hours navigating choppy waters and high waves as they crossed the Caribbean Sea, heading to the island nation of Curaçao.

Whipping winds, turbulent waters and dark skies posed only one set of problems, however. The stretch of sea they traversed had been under heavy US military surveillance, as the Trump administration accelerated efforts to counter international drug trafficking by carrying out military strikes on the boats of people suspected of smuggling.

Machado has been an adamant supporter of the US military campaign in the Caribbean, which included 22 boat strikes, killing at least 87 people. Her insistence that US military pressure was needed to force Maduro from power touched off a wave of protests after her Nobel win was announced.

Before they hit the water this week, the US government needed to be looped in. While Stern stressed that the administration had no role in planning or executing Machado’s rescue, his team alerted US federal agencies about the mission to avoid being fired on as they ferried Machado across the Caribbean.

It was unclear whether the US military took any proactive steps to aid the rescue mission.

American officials were told that Machado planned to leave Venezuela by water, so that the US would not mistakenly target her boat or the vessel of her rescuers.

Finally, they reached Curaçao on Wednesday morning.

About three hours later, Machado was safely nestled in a private plane, wheels up and bound for Oslo.