Gary Berntsen, Tren de Aragua, and the Coming UW Assessment by NC Scout

One of my contacts passed me this over the weekend and asked my thoughts. As longtime readers and listeners of Radio Contra know, I’ve been one of the handful of voices over the years consistently pointing out the very serious situation unfolding with the invading army of military age males (MAMs) springing from countries tied deeply to the Russian-CCP hegemony in Central and South America. Venezuela quite literally pulled the Mariel boatlift, this time dumping their castoffs on the entirety of the US rather than just Miami. In both cases it was a form of gray zone warfare in an effort to overwhelm the ability of the targeted nation to handle the ramifications.

Gary Berntsen is a well respected retired member of the IC, best known for having led the Jawbreaker team into Afghanistan after 9/11 and detailed his memoirs in a book of the same name. He had been living a mostly quiet life until coming back on the grid recently, just prior to the election, pointing out his concerns about the activities happening south of the border. His thoughts:

“Former CIA officer Gary Berntsen, one of the most highly decorated intelligence veterans in recent U.S. history, has come forward to confirm that the Venezuelan criminal gang Tren de Aragua (TdA) has been deliberately deployed into the United States by the Venezuelan regime, with the express intent of destabilizing the country through sabotage and violence.

According to Berntsen, Tren de Aragua is no longer just a violent street gang. While they may wear the face of criminality, their core leadership and operational cells have undergone paramilitary training under the guidance of Venezuelan intelligence and military officials, aided in part by Cuban intelligence operatives and narco-terrorist networks throughout Latin America.

Quoting Berntsen, Miami Herald journalist Antonio Delgado wrote:

“The Venezuelan regime has assumed operational control of these guys [Tren de Aragua] and has trained 300 of them; they have given them paramilitary training, training them to fire weapons and how to conduct sabotage. They have given them all like a four- to six-week course. They put these 300 guys through that course, and then they were deploying them into the United States to 20 separate states.”

Berntsen explained that sabotage includes acts such as arson, and that recent patterns of mysterious industrial fires, wildfires, and urban blazes—notably in Los Angeles and other key areas—could plausibly be linked to these foreign-trained operatives.

“Many of these wildfires, industrial fires, the Los Angeles fires, taking advantage of wind and the local conditions, were started by arsonists. How many of them were paid or coerced by TdA or their surrogates?” Berntsen asked.

Even more disturbing than the operation itself is the claim that elements within the CIA have deliberately ignored or buried this intelligence. Berntsen revealed that two current CIA officials recently leaked false information to The New York Times, claiming there is no intelligence connecting Tren de Aragua to the Venezuelan government.

But Berntsen says otherwise—and he has proof.

“The CIA doesn’t have the information because they refused to look at it,” Berntsen said. “We tried to brief them about this three years ago, but they were directed by the Biden Administration to ignore it. And now those officials are trying to undermine President Trump.”

According to Berntsen, he has already shared intelligence and source material with “elements of the U.S. government,” showing deep and sustained relationships between Tren de Aragua, Venezuelan and Cuban intelligence services, and high-level narcoterrorist operations.”

My response: “I agree completely with his assessment re: Venezuela. They’re being run by the Russians and Chinese, its a coordinated effort. The Agency likely ignored it due to internal political pressure to do so. Two things are running in parallel at once, yet mutually exclusive from one another. The Russians/CCP have set up a criminal underground to facilitate the logistics of a coming Unconventional War, while domestically the DC power structure is hamstrung to any measurable response because it’d admit a longstanding policy failure. In addition, it would expose what the general public now knows regarding the criminal money laundering by USAID, NGOs, and then back to Democrat (and to a lesser degree, Republican) coffers.

We’re in deep shit and today it just got a whole lot deeper. I think this summer is going to be fun.”

Keep in mind that organized crime networks directly support unconventional warfare as a logistics support, intelligence collection, and in some cases, a direct action role. While they are criminal in nature rather than political, it has long been my theory that TdA specifically was framed to support future CCP operations in lieu of attempting to recruit other criminal elements (such as MS13), whose loyalty may be questionable at best. TdA is fiercely loyal to Venezuela and play into Latin American ethnic and cultural division as well. They’re the new kids on the block, so to speak, and the only friend they have is the CCP (and Russian) elements in their corner.

On the American Leftist end, as I stated above, it would be a massive policy failure admission should the open border policy have been reversed under the Biden Administration (or in previous admins). This is also taking into account the very strong internal bias in the bureaucratic state as is. Any admission that there’s even a problem is verboten, with careerists clutching their pearls should they even be questioned with the dreaded and career ending “R” word. After all, its a greater sin to be considered a racist among this class than even getting your people killed.

You couple a brewing storm of social dissatisfaction, economic strife, and an enemy that’s become entrenched and looking for a way to exploit the chaos, you’ve got deep problems. Maybe not a color revolution, but then again, why does chaos need a name? -NCS