Former senior U.S. hostage negotiator Roger Carstens— who works with dictators Nicolás Maduro Free Americans imprisoned in Venezuela – told 60 minutes On Sunday, he dismissed the strongman as a “bloodthirsty madman”.
cbs news Scott Pelley Carstens said he persuaded Maduro to release 20 hostages and got to know the dictator during his five years as the presidential envoy for hostage affairs.
“The government will paint Maduro as a bloodthirsty drug dealer,” Pelley said. “Is that the guy you know?”
“I don’t think so,” Carstens began. “To a certain extent, I can say that I am not naive about the crimes that this regime has committed. If you are the president of a country, of course you are responsible for what happens … in your government.”
Carstens continued, “On the other hand, I would say that as someone who has President Maduro in the room, it’s my job to bring Americans back, and the best way to do that is to have a very human relationship. In doing that, I didn’t find him to be a bloodthirsty lunatic. I found him to be a pragmatic guy. A guy who wanted to find solutions to the problems the country was facing.”
Carstens said he was not particularly surprised when he heard Maduro had been captured by U.S. forces.
“In a way, I’m not shocked,” Carstens said. “I think it could be as early as August or September, and in looking at early military operations and diplomatic moves, it seems that unless he is willing to come to some kind of agreement or accommodation with the United States, I feel like the possibility of Delta Force showing up at 2 o’clock in the morning is very real.”
He served during Trump’s first term and under former Pres. Joe Biden Between 2020 and 2025.
President Donald Trump announced on Saturday that U.S. forces had ousted Maduro from power and sent him to the United States to face trial on narco-terrorism charges. The federal indictment against Maduro, his wife and four others accuses them of conspiring to “import large quantities of cocaine into the United States.”
By watching the clip above 60 minutes CBS News.
A U.S. hostage negotiator who works closely with Maduro told 60 Minutes that he did not find Maduro to be a “bloodthirsty maniac.”