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US officials have repeatedly met with renegade Venezuelan military officers in the past year after Venezuelan officials made contact, but Washington has finally decided not to support the coup, according to the two sources.
The United States gave no support to Venezuelan officers and plans for the coup ultimately failed, the sources said.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. CNN also contacted the press service of the Venezuelan Ministry of Defense, which said they would not comment until they received instructions to do so.
The White House told the Times in a statement that it was important to engage in a "dialogue with all Venezuelans who manifest a desire for democracy" to "bring positive change to a country that has suffered so much under Maduro ".
"We have plenty of options for Venezuela, and I will not rule out a military option," Trump said last August.
Asked about the possibility of military intervention in response to the growing crisis in the country, the president said it was something the US "could certainly pursue".
Taking military action against Venezuela would be a dramatic escalation of the only diplomatic and focused response to US sanctions in the face of the political and economic crisis in the South American country.
Meeting Details
The Times report included details of secret meetings, citing 11 former and current US officials and a former Venezuelan military commander sanctioned by the US government who attended secret meetings.
According to the Times, the Venezuelan military commander is one of the many Venezuelan government officials accused of serious crimes.
The former commander told the Times that at least three factions of the Venezuelan army were plotting against the Maduro government.
The Times reported that one of these rebel groups had made initial contact with the US government through an American embassy in the capital of a European city.
White House officials in Washington initially feared that the meeting request would be a set up to register a US official seeming to conspire against the Maduro government, the Times reported.
But US officials have finally said the meetings were worth the risk as they watched the crisis in the Latin American country worsen, the Times reported.
The Trump administration has sent a career diplomat with instructions to attend meetings "purely for listening" and not negotiating, said a senior administration official at the Times.
Since his first meeting abroad in autumn 2017, the diplomat said the Venezuelan rebels did not seem to have a detailed plan, but hoped the US government would provide advice or ideas, the Times reported.
The former Venezuelan commander told The Times that the officers had never tried US military intervention: "I never agreed or proposed to carry out a joint operation," he told the newspaper.
At a second meeting last year, the agents asked for encrypted radios for secure communications, the Times reported.
But senior officials have declined the demand, according to the newspaper.
A third meeting was held earlier this year, but the talks resulted in pledges of material support or clear signs that Washington was supporting rebel plans, the Times reported.
Attempts of a coup d'etat by Venezuelan rebels
According to the Venezuelan commander, the rebels have repeatedly tried to organize a coup d'etat.
They envisioned a strike last July, when elections were held to replace the National Assembly with a new pro-Maduro legislature called the National Constituent Assembly, the Times reported.
Plans to stage a coup d'état have been postponed until March and then to the May 20 elections. However, both attempts were thwarted after plans leaked, according to the Times.
The Times reported that the amount of detail that the Venezuelans shared with the Americans was unclear, yet there are indications that Maduro was aware of the secret meetings.
CNN's Abel Alvarado contributed to this report.
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