New film detailed amateurish plot led by a gang of mercenaries who couldn’t shoot straight
As the Trump regime deploys the Iwo Jima Amphibious Ready Group—including a nuclear-powered attack submarine, P-8A Poseidon maritime surveillance aircraft, three U.S. Navy destroyers equipped with some of the most advanced air defense, ballistic missile defense, and anti-submarine warfare systems, with 4,500 Marines and sailors—to Venezuela, a new film is being released about a bungled coup attempt there.
Men of War takes viewers inside the ill-fated May 2020 clandestine plot to overthrow Venezuela President Nicolás Maduro that was codenamed Operation Gideon (after a biblical military figure)—but could have been called “The Mercenaries Who Couldn’t Shoot Straight.”
Operation Gideon is one of the “repeated coup attempts backed by the United States” to bring about regime change in Venezuela since Hugo Chávez became president in 1999.
The movement for what Chávez dubbed the “Bolivarian Revolution” and “21st century socialism” which aimed “to ‘assert sovereign control of [Venezuela’s] natural wealth placed Caracas in direct confrontation with the foreign corporate interests that practically owned the country throughout previous decades.’”[1]
Although it is cinematically co-directed by Billy Corben and Jen Gatien and has many elements of an espionage thriller, Men of War is actually a documentary.
At the center of this non-fiction film is Jordan Guy MacDonald Goudreau, a former Green Beret who fought in Afghanistan and Iraq, and parlayed his lethal training and skills into becoming a soldier of fortune, proclaiming: “We’re in the business of war.”
Goudreau founded the Florida-based private security firm Silvercorp USA and seems cut in the Pete Hegseth mold, a deadly concoction of toxic masculinity, a cult-like devotion to the warrior ethos, and inner confusion on an epic scale.
According to Rolling Stone, Goudreau “survived…blunt-force trauma to the head” in Afghanistan, while court documents state that the Special Forces veteran “suffered many concussions.”
Throughout Men of War Goudreau appears to behave maniacally, like someone who is brain (and soul) damaged; he is apparently so deranged that the man obsessed with fighting for the United States does not seem to realize that he was born and raised in Canada.
Spy vs. Spy: Oh, What a Tangled Web We Weave!
According to the documentary and Jordan’s side of the story, the armed and dangerous Goudreau fell in with Venezuelan expatriates and dissidents and their U.S. cohorts, who schemed to topple Maduro and the Bolivarian Revolution.
During Trump’s first presidency, the alleged co-conspirators on the Yanqui imperialist side include Keith Schiller, a long-time Trump aide who was the Trump Organization’s director of security. You remember Schiller: In 2015 he struck a protester outside Trump Tower.
In 2017 the purported Trump fixer was rewarded for his decades-long loyalty by being appointed Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of Oval Office Operations after the real estate/reality TV star was elected to the presidency. Schiller crossed paths with Goudreau through security circles; the ex-Green Beret had provided security services at a 2018 Trump rally in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Goudreau came into contact with Drew Horn, an aide to Vice President Mike Pence, who is shown making vehemently anti-Maduro remarks in Men of War. He also crossed paths with Travis Lucas, a lobbyist who worked for the Trump regime.
Goudreau appears to have acted under the impression that the coup plot being concocted was supported by the Trump administration; in news clips the president is repeatedly shown denouncing Maduro, as did then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, as well as Trump’s then-National Security Adviser John Bolton. “All options are on the table” (vis-à-vis Venezuela) is a common refrain of these arch-reactionaries.
(The hawkish Bolton’s imperialistic rhetoric against Maduro onscreen in Men of War is so belligerent that it is almost enough to make you cheer the removal of his security detail—thus increasing the odds of his getting whacked by Iranian agents in reprisal for his role in the January 2020 assassination of Iranian Major General Qasem Soleimani—and rejoice at the FBI raid of his home on August 22, 2025.)
Goudreau also became ensnared in a shadowy web of Venezuelan exiles and dissidents. They included Major General Cliver Alcalá, who according to the film had supported Hugo Chávez, but after the Bolivarian leader’s untimely death in 2013, opposed Maduro. Alcala met with Goudreau in Bogotá, Colombia.
J. J. Rendón was a crisis strategist, a sort of Steve Bannon for the anti-Maduro cause, who appears to have entered into a contractual agreement with Goudreau to depose the Venezuelan leader. Contracts appear onscreen in close ups during the film.
Opposition leader and former Chacao Municipality Mayor Leopoldo López—whom the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) has consistently heralded as a great democrat—is another figure allegedly entangled in the coup plot.
Previously indicted for his role in provoking terrorist acts during a 2013 insurrection, López founded the political party led by the politician who, as far as the Yanquis were concerned, was the heir apparent to replace Maduro.
Juan Guaidó, who was recognized by Trump as Venezuela’s “legitimate” president and invited by Trump to be his honored guest at a State of the Union address (with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi seen in a news clip leaping up out of her chair behind the president to applaud Guaidó), is also implicated in Men of War in the plot to topple Maduro.
The documentary details a series of contractual and payment disputes between Goudreau and purported putsch backers, including a $1.5 million memorandum of understanding. There are denials about any involvement in hatching and carrying out the coup d’état, along with finger-pointing and name-calling.
With its catch-phrase “should you or any of your IM Force be caught or killed, the Secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions,” Mission Impossible is repeatedly invoked by the documentary. This description of the mission to be undertaken at the beginning of each episode of the espionage TV series and later the Tom Cruise movie versions closes with the words: “This tape [or message] will self-destruct.”
However, in Men of War, it is the mission itself that self-destructs.
The Mercenaries Who Couldn’t Shoot Straight
The anti-Maduro opposition is riven by faction fights and, apparently, by corruption as well.
Nevertheless, while Goudreau jockeys for position and funding and has falling-outs with his supposed coup collaborators, he recruits Iraq War combat veterans he fought with—former Sgt. Airan Berry and Staff Sgt. Luke Denman—to fight with exiled Venezuelan commandos training at camps in Colombia.
The latter’s brother, Mark Denman, says in an onscreen interview that it was believed this mission was “a U.S.-backed operation.”
The delusional Goudreau claims he is drawn to the covert action in order to “liberate 30 million people,” and quotes the Special Forces motto: “De Oppresso Liber,” which translated from Latin means “to free the oppressed,” and uses this lofty hyperbole to persuade Berry and Denham to participate in the covert action.
It does not occur to these vets of U.S. military actions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kosovo that they are white imperialist interlopers doing the bidding of the American ruling class by invading Third World and other nations.
Even after Operation Gideon is compromised and the pandemic limits mobility, Goudreau pushes forward with the ill-advised plot to remove Maduro from power, who the U.S. has charged with narcotics trafficking, placing a $15 million bounty [subsequently raised to $30 million] on the head of Hugo Chávez’s successor.
In May 2020 a two-boat amphibious assault with about 60 combatants is launched from Colombia; part of their subversive scenario is to hook up with anti-Maduro generals in Venezuela. Somehow, “gung-ho” Goudreau is not with the invasion force, as he remains behind in Colombia.
The troubled mission is such a farcical fiasco that press reports nicknamed it the “Bay of Piglets,” a reference to the botched 1961 CIA-backed “Bay of Pigs” invasion of Cuba that aimed at overthrowing another leftist Latin American leader, Fidel Castro. Berry and Denham were captured and taken prisoner.
As is his wont, disavowing any knowledge of the invasion attempt, President Trump said, “I know nothing.” (He is the MAGA-vellian Sgt. Schultz of realpolitik.)
Speaking in what is likely an original interview for Men of War, Mark Denham laments that the U.S. takes no responsibility for the mission or the imprisoned American mercenaries and abandons them.
Goudreau also appears in what is probably an original interview, with what I believe is the Washington Monument in the background. He has visibly aged and looks very stressed, complaining “I’m the fall guy” for the planning and execution of the disastrous blunder into which Operation Gideon spiraled down.
Later, the Special Forces vet muses about the soldiers and ex-soldiers “diagnosed with PTSD, traumatic brain injury. I’ve lost more friends to suicide than to wars,” he rather remarkably confesses, ominously adding: “I wish I was killed in combat.” The private military contractor is caught choking up, if not breaking down, on camera.
In a moment of clarity, the ex-Green Beret-turned-hired-gun comes to the realization that “this government is not worth fighting for.” Goudreau’s confessions raise disturbing questions that the bourgeois press rarely if ever examine. Why do so many U.S. soldiers and veterans commit suicide and/or undergo substance abuse?
Of course, as General William Tecumseh Sherman pithily put it back during the Civil War: “War is hell.”
True, but the insight that one is fighting and dying not to defend the American people but to further the interests of the mostly white ruling class and corporate interests intent on pillaging the resources of Third World countries like Venezuela makes that experience all the more hellish.
During World War II, the U.S. firebombed Dresden and Tokyo, and A-bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing tens of thousands of civilians—and that’s what Americans did when we were the “good guys”! Since 1945, the U.S. military has rarely (if ever) been on the right side of history, using covert actions and brute force to impose Washington’s imperial will on the world, suppressing national liberation movements and thwarting the legitimate aspirations of people around the world.
As Marine Major General Smedley Butler (portrayed by Robert De Niro in 2022’s Amsterdam) revealed in the 1930s: “I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high-class muscle man for big business, for Wall Street, and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer; a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.”
Since the draft was abolished, most Americans who enlist in the volunteer armed services do so for economic reasons—which, in effect, makes them mercenaries.
Some join out of a misguided sense of patriotism, but what happens to them when they invade a country because of weapons of mass destruction that prove to be just fairy tales? Or because those people want to determine their fate in a way Washington does not want them to?
During the Vietnam War Muhammad Ali rather famously resisted the draft, declaring: “No Viet Cong ever called me ‘nigger.’” What happens when the disproportionately non-white personnel in the military willy-nilly invade Third World countries that haven’t attacked America?
The disillusionment caused by subserviently risking one’s life and limb for an oppressive power elite can be overwhelming and, when in a moment of clarity, Trump’s chumps see that their service is a disservice and a colossal lie, this cognitive dissonance can lead to substance abuse, suicide or lead them onto the Ron Kovic path of anti-war activism.
Goudreau, Berry and Denman may have deluded and deceived themselves into believing they were joining a heroic crusade to liberate 30 million Venezuelans, but they backed a very corrupt horse. (To be sure, these soldiers of fortune were also motivated by their thirst for, well, fortune.)
Operation Gideon Onscreen
The 98-minute Men of War is a taut, tightly paced film full of international intrigue that, as said, unspools like a spy thriller. The filmmakers had wide access to some of the key players in the documentary, and these original interviews bestow an intimate, insider ambiance and are skillfully interwoven with news clips, archival footage plus scenes from features including Apocalypse Now, Rambo, Valkyrie, Band of Brothers, a Captain America movie, and more.
This is the directorial debut for Jen Gatien, while her co-director Billy Corben is a veteran documentarian who also helmed 2024’s From Russia, With Lev, about Odessa-born Lev Parnas, a central figure linked to Rudi Giuliani and Trump’s Ukraine scandal that led to his first impeachment during Trump’s first term in office.
Perhaps because Operation Gideon and other coup attempts against Chávez and then Maduro have flopped so badly, Trump has turned from covert actions to America’s other traditional means of attaining regime change: Sending the Navy and the Marines! Hence, the deployment of the Iwo Jima Amphibious Ready Group—which has caused Maduro to mobilize 4.5 million Venezuelans to resist the naval strike force and any Yanqui invasion.[2]
As yet another showdown with Venezuela looms, Men of War is available on premium VOD.
See https://covertactionmagazine.com/2024/07/09/venezuela-shows-solidarity-for-bolivia-after-failed-coup-attempt/ and Bentley Dean’s 2002 documentary Anatomy of a Coup: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ee_W-9tdGR8. ↑
Only someone as mentally ill and self-deluded as the deranged Donald would imagine that threatening to invade Venezuela, a sovereign country that has not attacked America, would burnish his credentials and enhance his quixotic/chaotic crusade to win that Nobel Peace Prize he craves. ↑
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About the Author
Ed Rampell is an L.A.-based film historian and critic who also reviews culture, foreign affairs and current events.
Ed can be reached at edrampel@gte.net.
