Inside Mission ‘Rescue María Machado’: ‘…Trying to Stay Alive’
Nobel Peace Prize winner María Corina Machado in Oslo (Image Nobel Prize on X)
Bryan Stern, a U.S. special-forces veteran, tells CBS News that extracting Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado was the most dangerous and high-profile rescue his team has ever executed.
By TRH Foreign Affairs Desk
New Delhi, December 12, 2025 — In a span of a few hours, the US pressed into action high-stakes missions in Venezuela—evacuating Nobel Peace Prize winner María Corina Machado and capturing an oil shipment. The secret mission to evacuate Machado where she received the Nobel honour is getting applause. Capturing the oil shipment, in contrast, is facing flaks as critics called the operation a “piracy.”
US President Donald Trump trusted veterans with the secret mission to evacuate Machado. She is the Opposition leader in Venezuela. On getting the Nobel Peace Prize, she had given credits to Trump. The US President has said that “action on land will soon commence” in possible hints that he would press ahead with his plan to remove the Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro Moros.
US special forces veteran Bryan Stern described the dramatic multi-phase operation that helped covertly evacuate Machado in what he calls the “highest-risk, highest-profile rescue” his team has ever undertaken.
Speaking exclusively to CBS News, Stern said the mission involved a “very significant maritime component,” a land-based network on the ground in Venezuela, and a final aviation leg that flew Machado to safety in Norway. He refused deeper operational details, saying “we still have other work to do in Venezuela.”
Asked why Machado’s arrival did not sync with the award ceremony timeline, Stern rejected that anything went wrong. “It just took time to make sure it would go,” he said. “Her life was the most important. I don’t look at this operation as getting María to a ceremony on time. I look at this as saving a freedom fighter’s life.”
Stern underscored the extraordinary risk surrounding the operation. “María Machado is overwhelmingly the highest-profile person we’ve ever had to extract from anywhere,” he said. “We’ve broken people out of jail from Russia, we’ve handled hostages in Gaza — but generally, we’re rescuing regular people. She is a household name with protests in her favour, billboards with her face everywhere.”
Stern’s team navigated through the threat of state surveillance, mass mobilisation, and global attention. “Nobody cares about the cameras in the middle of a rescue,” Stern said. “We’re just trying to stay alive,” he told the broadcaster.
The high-risk operation now raises deeper questions about escalating political repression under Nicolás Maduro — and the rapidly expanding underground efforts to get dissidents out alive.
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