Joshua Goodman, Jim Mustian and Eric Tucker used deep sourcing and fast teamwork to break the news of the arrest of a former U.S. Green Beret on federal charges related to his role in a failed 2020 raid to remove Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
While in Venezuela covering the disputed presidential election in which Maduro is once again facing pressure over his authoritarian moves, Goodman, AP’s Latin America correspondent, got a tip that the key figure in the case, former Green Beret Jordan Gourdeau, had just been arrested. To turn that tip into a story as fast as possible, Goodman reached out to Investigative Reporter Jim Mustian and National Security Reporter Eric Tucker.
Mustian and Tucker scoured the latest federal court filings to discover a newly unsealed federal indictment detailing the charges. AP’s complete story was on the wire two hours before the Justice Department eventually relented and issued a news release on the Goudreau arrest. The story also garnered 104,000 page views on the APNews app, and top competitors were forced to match AP’s reporting with credit.
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