Who Is Alex Saab And Why Are People In Washington Sweating?

Author: A retired senior CIA officer with long experience in Latin and South America.

In view of the shambolic situation in Iran and the Persian Gulf, it is no surprise that few Americans are paying much attention to Venezuela. The snatch operation, which netted Nicolas Maduro (“president” of Venezuela) and his wife, had its fifteen minutes of fame, after which Joe Q. Citizen went back to mowing the lawn, griping about gas prices, and stuffing himself with nutritious high fructose corn syrup-laced processed foods.

However, certain people in Washington and Miami may not be taking such a relaxed view of events in Venezuela.

Exactly what led up to the Maduro operation is not clear, and rumors about back-room deals with Qatari’s and American oil companies and others close to the White House are floating around. Delcy Rodriguez almost certainly played some role in betraying the hapless, hulking Maduro. It takes away nothing from the courage and skill of our airmen, soldiers, and law enforcement personnel who participated in the amazing feat of jerking Maduro out of his bed in his pajamas and dumping him safe and sound in a New York jail, to recognize that pulling this off without “inside” help was always unlikely. You do what you have to do to accomplish the mission.

That Delcy Rodriguez and the others of her cabal, still at large and running Venezuela, are an odiferous band of rogues, thieves, and dope smugglers, needs no further emphasis. The U.S. President, for reasons which no doubt seem adequate to him, has decided to leave these future jailbirds in charge for the time being. We must assume that he intends to shove them on a flight to Madrid one of these days, cash stuffed in their underwear and gold bars in their Louis Vuitton baggage.

In the meantime, the U.S. embassy in Caracas is engaged in a dark comedy routine that could be a Coen Brothers script. For all the boasting and bluster that we “have” Venezuela – we don’t. We have next to no power to do anything, except beg for some scraps from that “wonderful lady”, Delcy.

For now, nothing has changed for the better for the Venezuelan people. The same Colectivo thugs (armed petty and not-so-petty criminals who act as semi-official enforcers for the regime) remain at large, terrifying ordinary citizens while they scoot around on their motorcycles. The massive corruption goes on, though the new recipients of the payoff’s may be U.S. businessmen, oilmen, and the politically connected. Venezuela remains a brutal semi-Communist police state, run by a criminal cartel. The Russians, Chinese, Iranians, and Hezbollah have probably lowered their profiles a bit, waiting for something to turn up and bring better times. You can be sure they have not packed their bags and slipped across the Guyanese border. As for the Colombian drug smugglers and guerrillas, ho-hum. The Maduro operation has done absolutely nothing to cramp their style or hamper their cocaine business or terrorism.

President Trump seems mesmerized by the idea that we now “control” Venezuela’s oil reserves, the much-touted “largest in the world.” He has ignored geology, technical oilfield problems, and, most of all, the right of the Venezuelan people to choose their own government and throw the current gang into prison. The Venezuelans are not “happy”, despite what the president says. They and many other Latin Americans are angry and disgusted by our failure to deal with the Chavez/Maduro/Delcy Rodriguez regime, a regime that has sown untold mischief across the region.

Perhaps a “decent interval” was necessary after the Maduro operation, but that interval is getting long in the tooth. Trump has to move now or risk a chaotic mess that could easily turn violent in the worst way.

Why is Trump stalling on doing the right thing?

In a word, money. In another word, bad advice from an incompetent intelligence community that long ago lost the bubble with regard to Latin America. If this were simply ignorance and stupidity, it would be bad enough. Unfortunately, there is ample evidence that our Latin American foreign policy establishment (CIA, State, DOD) is riddled with left-leaning fools and more than a few actual spies, mostly recruited and handled by the Cubans. We can expect much more on this issue to be exposed in the coming months.

Then there is the money. And that is why many people in Washington, Miami, and Bogota (to name three places) are sweating.

Alex Saab is a Colombian with a dodgy claim to Venezuelan citizenship. As a backup, he is also an “Antiguian citizen.” A native of Barranquilla, on the Colombian Atlantic (Caribbean) Coast, Saab is, to get to the point, an international financial wheeler-dealer of the criminal variety. It would be tedious to go over all of his long and colorful history. It will suffice to say that it includes murdered business associates and multiple investigations by the law enforcement and financial regulatory agencies of several governments. His name appears in the Panama Papers, Pandora Papers, and FinCen files.

Saab, early on, became involved in business with Venezuela, next door to Colombia. He was fully involved with the sordid, utterly corrupt mess that is the Chavez/Maduro/Delcy Rodriguez regime, and he made a ton of money off of his connections, such as Maduro’s stepsons.

In 2011, he hit the big time with a 685 million dollar contract to build prefabricated homes for the Venezuelan government’s housing program. He received $159 million for building materials; he delivered $3 million worth of bricks and mortar. The signing ceremony was attended by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, then Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro, and, curiously, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos.

Along the way, both Ecuador and Colombia began investigations of Saab for money laundering. Sadly, the Colombian investigation was closed when the lead investigator resigned and left the country after receiving death threats. His Antigua caper began in 2014 when the prime minister of that Caribbean powerhouse made Saab Antigua’s “special economic envoy” to Venezuela, gave him Antiguan citizenship, and a contract to build a factory to build panels for his housing deal. To nobody’s surprise, the factory never opened.

In August 2015, a midget trucking company called Trenaco (Swiss, but run out of Colombia), which Saab had run between 20212-2014, won a $4.5 billion contract from PDVSA, the Venezuelan state oil company, to drill oil in the Orinoco Belt, which holds the world's largest oil reserves. This stink bomb was too much even for the delicate sensitivities of the upright and prudent men who run Chevron oil and the Russian Rosneft oil company. They pitched a fit over this blooper of corruption, and the contract was cancelled.

In 2016, Saab was again found in the middle of the humorously named CLAP (Local Committees for Supply and Production), a Venezuelan agency set up to import food for the increasing number of poor Venezuelans. Saab managed to sell the food for 112% of what he paid for it in Mexico, thereby ‘helping the poor’. By 2018, Saab was being paid in gold extorted from small time Venezuelan miners. We can assume the poor Venezuelans were suitably grateful for this dose of the CLAP. Saab even stiffed them with poor-quality baby formula. Of course, money was leaking out of CLAP into the pockets of Saab and his friends. The poor were presumably eating cake.

In 2020, Liechtenstein began an investigation into Saab, and then the U.S. government froze $700 million he had stashed in that Alpine country. About the same time, a book published by Colombian journalist Gerardo Reyes claimed that Saab was a “super minister” in the Maduro government and that the United States calculated he had bagged a billion dollars from his various Venezuelan operations.

All of this was garden-variety theft and corruption. By 2016 (and probably much sooner), the DEA had taken notice of Saab. In September 2018, the Colombian DIJIN (Criminal Investigation and Interpol) issued arrest warrants for Saab for money laundering. Tipped off by a corrupt cop, Saab fled to Venezuela. In May 2019, the Colombians charged him again, and in July 2019, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida followed up with more charges, alleging a $350 million money laundering deal.

Saab was arrested on June 12, 2020, in the Cape Verde Islands. He had been on a private jet flying from Venezuela to Iran, where he was to negotiate a Venezuelan gold for Iranian gasoline deal, a “Coals to Newcastle” explanation for the country with “the largest oil reserves,” it would seem.

The USS San Jacinto, a U.S. Navy cruiser, was sent to float around Cape Verde to make sure the Venezuelans or Iranians would not be able to smuggle a file to Saab in a fudge cake. It is unusual, to say the least, for the navy to send a cruiser to ensure the extradition of a character like Saab. This indicates, ah, high-level government interest.

The Russians protested the arrest, Saab claimed torture in a Cape Verde jail (imagine that!), and his Italian model wife moved to Moscow. It will be interesting to see how true her love for this guy is once he is sitting in a Federal prison.

Panic struck the Maduro government as it went to ridiculous lengths to avoid Saab’s extradition to the U.S. A massive fake Internet campaign was launched to “free Alex Saab.” The usual suspects in these kinds of leftist agit-prop campaigns were in a fever pitch to get him sprung. In October 2012, Code Pink started asking people to sign a petition to get him released. Why this U.S. “anti-war, pacifist” organization might care about a slimy Colombian/Venezuelan grifter and narco money launderer is a mystery – or maybe not. It is said to be financed by the sinister Chinese Communist Party ally Neville Roy Singham, the husband of Jodie Evans, Code Pink’s founder. China has huge investments in Venezuela and depends on it for oil, or at least it did before Maduro took his unexpected flight to New York.

Baltasar Garzon, a leftist former Spanish judge who has meddled on behalf of Marxist troublemakers and other criminals all over the world, represented Saab in his extradition fight. As desperation grew to prevent Saab from being grilled by the DEA on the shenanigans of the Maduro regime and its narco friends, Maduro appointed him as Venezuela’s ambassador to Ethiopia. It can be assumed that he was expected to carry out the onerous duties of Venezuela’s ambassador to that African state from his Cape Verde jail cell.

By March 2021, $170,000,000 had been spent on Saab’s “defense.” Of course, the United Nations Human Rights Committee stuck its nose in the case, asked Cape Verde to suspend his extradition, and asked that Saab be given “specialized medical care chosen by him.” a familiar dodge of the guilty, like a Mafia don being rolled into court in a wheelchair with an oxygen bottle.

This farce ended on October 16, 2021, with Saab being stuffed in a U.S. airplane for his appointment with the U.S. justice system.

Lo and behold, it was then revealed that Saab had been a DEA informant since 2018. This ended in 2019 when Saab essentially went on the lam. The DEA does not take kindly to double-crossing jerks, thus the arrest in Cape Verde. Delay after delay followed.

In December 2023, Saab was released from jail and pardoned by President Joe Biden, supposedly in exchange for ten Americans being held in Venezuelan jails. He was immediately sent back to Venezuela. As part of his pardon, he pledged never to enter the U.S. again. Saab was then appointed president of the Venezuelan International Investment Center. Since it is obvious that Joe Biden had no idea who Saab was and why he was pardoning him, who pushed it, and why? Keep reading.

On February 4, 2026, with Biden safely in a beach chair in Delaware, Delcy Rodriguez began the process to turn him over to the U.S. On May 16, 2026, he was back in the land of the free.

OK. Fair enough. Delcy, our friend and a “wonderful woman,” was put in thumb screws by the DOJ and DEA until she agreed to cough up Saab. Fear of what he might say was outweighed – sensibly – by fear of what Trump might do if she refused. She knows a bucket of filth will be thrown in her face, but it beats a Hellfire missile.

Now, why are the noble public servants, selfless patriots, lobbyists, lawyers, and toilers on behalf of the oppressed, swimming in the fleshpots of Washington, having bowel eruptions? Why are certain Colombian and other Latin American politicians reaching for a stiff drink? Why so much concern by the Chinese and Russians and Code Pink over a greaseball bagman for Chavez and Nicolas Maduro?

Treason and money, or money and treason.

One nervous faction consists of those bottom-dwelling Americans who have been doing business with the Chavez/Maduro regime since day one and those who are currently involved with Delcy and her crew right now. Anybody who knows Washington has witnessed the nauseating scene of “contractors” and “businessmen” with murky pasts who swarm to situations like that of Venezuela like flies on fresh dogshit.

The first group, the old timers, may well face federal charges for their illicit money-making with the Chavez/Maduro regime. The second group may feel that since what they are doing is now technically “legal,” they may find out that American voters will see them as the vultures they are and deem their activities simple corruption. If President Trump does not wake up to this, he will regret it. It is an open secret that persons very close to him are up to their necks in pay-to-play games in Venezuela (and in other places) that make Hunter Biden look like a two-bit, coke-addled whoremonger, which he is, of course. If the Feds start looking into the Executive Branch Club, uh-oh. The president can easily deal with this if he chooses to do so. Toss all the ten-percenters and “petroleum merchants” out of Mar-A-Lago, rein in other folks close to him, and let it be known that fly-by-night gladhanding wheeler-dealers are not welcome in his office, or Venezuela.

But this may be dismissed as run-of-the-mill Washington grift. The other part of the story will not be so easily waved away with a platoon of lawyers gumming up the court system.

One of the key things about the Chavez/Maduro regime that has been deliberately underplayed by the media and the U.S. government is the true role of the Cubans. Simply put, the Cubans run Venezuela (or did until their “security guards” were vaporized and sent home in Kleenex boxes). From the day Hugo Chavez took power, the Cubans have had their hands on all the levers of power in Venezuela.

The Cubans guarded Chavez and Maduro – and made sure they had no thoughts about backtracking on their “Bolivarian Revolution.” They controlled the cedula system (Venezuela’s national identity card), which every Latin American has, and without which you can’t do anything but live in a hut in the jungle. They controlled the Venezuelan passport system and handed them out to every terrorist and criminal who asked for one. They purged the Venezuelan military of any officer who might have had misgivings about wrecking their country. They ran the intelligence system that arrested, intimidated, tortured, and murdered anybody with the courage to confront the regime.

Venezuela would be the goose that laid the golden eggs for Cuba, and Fidel Castro had it in his sights for many years. He knew that it was an inherently unstable country with a vast number of miserably poor lumpen living in “casas de carton”, while a sybaritic, arrogant, utterly debauched, thoroughly corrupt upper class – many of them fairly recent foreign immigrants – plundered Venezuela’s oil wealth. Castro knew if he could get his hands on Venezuela, his financial woes would be all but over. The fall of the Soviet Union made this a matter of critical national security interest for Cuba.

The election of Hugo Chavez, a crackpot former army colonel and coupster, was Fidel’s dream come true. Now he not only had the cash he needed from Venezuela, but the man running the place was an adoring acolyte who would enthusiastically follow Fidel’s every command. There was no need for threats or pressure. Chavez desperately wanted his “Bolivarian Revolution” to spread over all of South America.

The real Bolivar would have been appalled by a character like Chavez, a sinister murdering clown. Bolivar himself gave up on a South American union, famously saying that trying to accomplish anything like that was like ploughing the sea. As for Fidel Castro, who was really a Cuba-born Spaniard, Bolivar was a mere footnote in history, of less than passing interest.

Venezuela’s oil wealth, though, interested him very much, as did using the “Bolivarian” movement to spread the Marxist-Leninist gospel the Fidelistas have been preaching since they took power. Other than ensuring the survival of their own Communist dictatorship, the Cubans were very much aware of the damage they could do to the United States, working in partnership with their Venezuelan “younger brothers.” And destroying the United States is the only true goal of the Cuban regime. It may seem absurd to many that this small Caribbean island could have such titanic ambitions, but they have been far more successful at this task than we are willing to accept.

Chavez and Maduro spread money around all of Latin America and the Caribbean. Not all of it was oil money. A huge amount was from cocaine trafficking. From the start, Chavez was allied with the Stalinist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the Cuban-backed Colombian National Liberation Army (ELN), as well as the Colombian cocaine cartels. Venezuela is not a major producer of cocaine, but along with Ecuador, it is one of the main corridors for the onward shipment of cocaine from Colombia to Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and, of course, the United States.

The Chavez/Maduro money put leftist governments in power in several Latin American countries, Colombia, Ecuador, and Bolivia being three important examples. Regarding Colombia, it is now widely believed that Juan Manuel Santos, the former Colombian president who pushed through a “peace treaty” with the FARC in 2016 and thus won a Nobel Peace Prize, was handsomely paid by the Maduro government, the FARC, and the drug traffickers for his work on behalf of peace. The “peace treaty” has proven to be a tragic farce that led to an explosion of coca cultivation in Colombia, the emergence of a so-called “dissident FARC” guerrilla group, a greatly expanded ELN, and the growth of dozens of violent criminal gangs and cartels across the country. Santos partisans are now openly supporting presidential candidate Ivan Cepeda in his election bid; Cepeda is an outright Communist who has done the usual post-Soviet tango of denying it. His father, Manuel Cepeda, was gunned down in 1994. Manuel Cepeda was a hard-core Stalinist Colombian Communist Party Central Committee member. The FARC guerrillas (generally considered the armed wing of the Colombian Communist Party) had hatched a scheme to continue their guerrilla war but at the same time launch a “legitimate” political party, the Union Patriotica (UP). Cepeda was part of this effort. Colombian rightists were not fooled and carried out what amounted to an extermination campaign against the UP. The election of Cepeda would result in either civil war or a collapse of Colombia as a democratic state.

The election of former M-19 terrorist Gustavo Petro to the Colombian presidency was almost certainly a result of money provided to his campaign by Maduro and drug traffickers, including the “dissident FARC” (the FARC has essentially dropped its political window dressing and is an outright mafia).

If Juan Manuel Santos did solicit and then accept a pay-off for the FARC “peace treaty,” it was worth every penny to Maduro, the FARC, and the drug cartels. Rumors in Bogota are that his money landed in the Vatican bank, and as a favor to the FARC, Santos has been constructing a money laundering operation to repatriate the billions of dollars the FARC has stashed in European banks.

That the Cubans and the Chavez/Maduro regime would use Venezuela’s oil money and money from the drug cartels to undermine Latin American democracy (and fill their own pockets) is no surprise. It is what the Cubans do and do very well. Venezuela, as it was not an overtly Communist state like Cuba and did not carry the stench of Fidel and Company, had far more room for maneuver than the Havana cabal.

For Americans, the real threat from these two “socialist” allies strikes much closer to home. This is why there are so many people in Washington nervously keeping an eye on the developments in the Maduro case and the case of Hugo “El Pollo” Carvajal, the former Venezuelan military intelligence chief; both are now sitting in a Federal jail in Manhattan.

And now comes Alex Saab to keep them company.

With these three in U.S. custody and facing years in prison, a flood of information on the very worst crimes of the Cubans and Chavez/Maduro regime will soon be coming out, either leaked or in court documents.

There are people and organizations in Washington frantic to keep this from happening. In some cases, it is because they were involved in shady business deals, accepted “lobbying” or “lawyer” fees from Chavez and Maduro, or engaged in sanctioned trade with Venezuela. These things are serious and often criminal, but take a back seat to the real dirt.

Under Barry Obama (the name he commonly used until he was put up to run for president by people like the 1970’s Chicago terrorist Bill Ayers), we established diplomatic relations with the Cuban regime, and there was a notable loosening of U.S. pressure. Obama was careful not to go too far, of course. It would have risked exposing where the real damage his administration did, followed by the four distracted years of Trump’s first term, and then the administration of whoever was really running the country while Puddin’ Head Joe wandered through the lonely halls of the White House.

Hugo Chavez was elected president of Venezuela in 1999 and held that office until he died in 2013. Nicolas Maduro took over the reins after that, until he “left office” in January 2026.

In this 26-year period nothing of substance was done by the United States to halt Cuban and Venezuelan subversion in Latin America, through the mechanisms of various “Bolivarian” organizations and, most importantly, the Foro de Sao Paulo, an umbrella group of far left mostly Latin American and European political parties and groups, some closely linked to violence; it is essentially an arm of the Cuban Communist Party Central Committee.

Aside from an aborted coup attempt in 2002 (probably actually run by the Cubans through their agents and used to detect disloyal members of the Chavez regime), the sad tale of Juan Guaido, propped up by the U.S. as an alternative to Chavez, and the usual sanctions and diplomatic tut-tutting, no effective U.S. response to the Chavez/Maduro/Cuban offensive against Latin America and the United States was ever developed. The intelligence community relentlessly minimized what was happening in Latin America and paid no attention at all to the combined drug and illegal immigration attacks on the United States itself.

This is not to say that no intelligence officers or analysts reported on these things. They did. They were largely ignored. The sanctions and other measures taken against the Chavez/Maduro regime were more laughable than is usually the case. After all, Chevron in Venezuela engaged in business as usual the whole time. China, Russia, Iran, and most of the rest of the world ignored the harumphing of the United States, thumbed their noses at us, and set up building their own beachheads in South America, complete with intelligence collection centers aimed at the U.S.

Thanks to the election of Gustavo Petro in Colombia – greased by Maduro money and with an assist from Juan Manuel Santos, the new godfather of the FARC – the Colombian security structure, painfully built up from the early 2000’s with billions in aid from Plan Colombia, collapsed. The country is now back about where it was in 1998, when the guerrillas or other armed groups dominated half of the country. Thanks, Santos and Maduro!

But the real “dirt” alluded to above is this. The Cubans and Venezuelans, fortified by billions in drug money, embarked on a campaign to take their hate-fueled war to the heart of the beast, the good old USA.

Drugs and illegal immigration were key parts of this strategy. The part was the support of subversive Marxist organizations in the United States and the corruption or compromise of American politicians, media figures, academicians, military officers, the intelligence community, and think tanks. This effort reached down in some cases to the state, country, or city level.

To be sure, the Cubans had always run a highly effective and productive espionage operation in the United States. The foreign policy and intelligence establishment in Washington is rotten with actual Cuban agents or witless sympathizers who, like DIA chief Cuba analyst, Ana Belen Montes, or former U.S. ambassador to Bolivia Manuel Rocha, were so lacking in common sense, moral fiber, and political sophistication, that they swallowed the usual Cuban line of a tiny, put upon island nation, asking only to be left alone.

Their new campaign was far different in its ultimate goals, the resources poured into it, and the astonishing success it has enjoyed. The Cubans had traditionally never paid their spies; these fools risked their lives and reputations – as well as their souls – because they “believed.” If that was not enough, they kept a well-stocked stable of nubile young Cubanas and Cubanos, enough to satisfy any taste.

With the flood of cocaine and oil money now in their hands, the Cubans (with their Venezuelan sidekicks, Festus to Matt Dillon) could start living large, and they did.

First, they used the existing network of Marxist subversives in the United States, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) being a core participant. They expanded this to encompass virtually every Communist, semi-Communist, pinko, or deranged leftist in the country. The Foro de Sao Paulo served as a useful organizing advisor for the American leftists, though there was no shortage of home-grown talent.

Second, discovering that Americans stupid enough to work with groups such as the DSA are thin on the ground, but Americans venal enough to be bought can be found by knocking on almost any door. The Cubans and Venezuelans started knocking on doors.

We will never know how many righteous, noble Democrat and Republican politicians and opinion molders refused to play the game. We will soon know how many played the game, however.

Maduro, Carvajal, and, above all, Alex Saab, are going to talk. Saab will talk sooner rather than later, and it is likely that much of the money funneled to groups and individuals passed through his hands. He was, after all, the bagman for Maduro.

Saab has no apparent political convictions and, as a Colombian (and, ahem, Antiguan), he has no skin in the game in Venezuela. The DEA will squeeze him like a lemon.

The explosion of the extreme left in the Democratic Party is not a natural, organic event. It is the result of a carefully planned, well-financed, and brilliantly executed Cuban and Venezuelan covert action program. Time will tell if it extended to changing the outcome of the 2020 election and many others at the state level.

The majority of the people involved in the extreme left in the United States are merely ignorant dupes, semi-educated, gullible, angry, frustrated, directionless souls. Some, especially the young, have good reasons for their inchoate anger. They see a country where the well-connected get an easy ride and pile up wealth, while the average American falls behind every day. Our “corporate and political leaders” sold off their future, and they know it.

Trump must move decisively against the extreme left in the United States, using every tool at our disposal. If these ties to hostile foreign actors are proven, DSA activists and other leftist subversives should be unceremoniously arrested and held on national security grounds, like hostile infiltrators in wartime. Anybody who tries to spring them needs to go into the bag as well.

This is no time to engage in legal blather. Lincoln didn’t during the Civil War. Washington hanged Troy spies and agitators without a second thought, and God help anybody who tried to stand in his way. The extreme left in the United States is no longer just a collection of kooks we can safely ignore. The great majority of the elected officials of the Democratic Party are in thrall to it, either through conviction or fear. More than a few Republicans have disgraced themselves by a sham “bipartisanship” with these vipers.

In his “negotiations” with the Cubans and Venezuelans, Trump must demand the delivery of their intelligence archives to a multi-agency Federal intelligence and law enforcement commission. Under no circumstances should any one agency be given the job of deciphering what the Cubans and their friends have done over the past decades. Some agencies have much to either hide or be ashamed of, and they know it. I would put more trust in the Tuscaloosa, Alabama police department to do this job than I would put in many senior people in Washington. And I am dead serious. This plot must be ripped up by the roots.

While he is at it, the president needs to listen to the young adults in this country who can’t find decent entry-level jobs, who are being laid off to make room for H-1 B foreigners, and who are denied even basic job security and benefits (like my generation had) by billionaires for whom too much is never enough. You are only young once, and you can never get that time back. We owe it to our children and grandchildren to give them an America that fulfills the promise. If we do that, we can again consign the Marxists to their Lower East Side soap boxes and forget about them. If not, a storm is coming.