Destabilizing Venezuela: Gun Smuggling and Money Laundering with the Doral Flying Circus

In this episode, Marshall digs out some old research he did on covert operations to destabilize Venezuela during the Obama and Trump administrations. We focus on a Boeing 767 with the tale number N881YV, that was allegedly discovered on a Venezuelan airstrip laden with guns, ammo, and other military equipment and destined for anti-Maduro Venezuelan insurgents. 

We provide some background to the situation by going into some of the history of PDVSA, the Venezuelan oil company that controls the largest oil reserves in the world and was at one point the largest corporation in South America.
PDVSA was born in 1976 when Venezuela nationalized the oil industry and took it out from under the control of corporations like  Standard Oil, Shell, and Mobil.

Luis Giusti López, a former executive of Shell Oil Company, was named president of PDVSA in 1994. He immediately set about reprivatising PDVSA through a process he called Apertura, or “opening up.” 

Giusti contracted an IT company called Science Applications International Corporation, or SAICO. This company contracted with the CIA,DIA, NSA and included high ranking American intelligence officers on it’s board of Directors. SAICO would later be accused by Chavez of being used to spy on PDVSA and Venezuela. 

After Chavez took control of PDVSA, Luis Giusti López quit or was fired, and he went to work for the Bush administration. 

Had Chavez not succeeded in his revolution, PDVSA, the largest oil reserves in the world, and Venezuela itself would be under the control of American friendly oil corporations. 

We then move on to the late 2010’s to discuss the seizure of flight N881YV. The day after it was seized, there was a blockade of an “aid shipment” to Venezuela that dominated headlines. We talk about the extremely checkered past of Elliott Abrams, US Envoy to Venezuela, and why it made sense that Venezuela would reject the aid. 

 

Flight N881YV belonged to a company owned by Adolpho Moreno, a mysterious figure who seems to be creating numerous “cut-out” or front companies, as does the owner of the company that chartered N881YV,  José Manuel Calvo. Through past businesses, both men were connected to CIA front companies involved in gun smuggling and extraordinary renditions. Moreno and his associate Michael Steinke, were both connected to a CIA company used for extraordinary renditions called Gemini Air Cargo. Jose Manuel Calvo had ties to a man named Nicholas Leach, who was involved in a company called Heavy Lift Air Cargo with a notorious international smuggler and CIA asset named Farhad Azima.
We take a look at the career of Farhad Azima from the Iran Contra days in the early 80’s to the late 2010’s. We talk about Azima’s connection to Wally Hilliard in the 80’s, and how Wally Hilliard went on to the own the Venice Beach aviation company that trained some of the 9-11 high jackers, while at the same owning a plane that was busted in Orlando with 43 lbs of heroin on board and a high level Venezuelan pilot at the helm. 

We then return to the Adolpho Moreno, and point out his company, Solar Air Cargo, that has a connection with a multi-billion dollar money international money laundering ring. 

We then try to tie it all together, speculating that the CIA is almost certainly behind both the gun flight and theft of billions of dollars from the PDVSA and the Venezeulan people.