Speaking at a national televised address, Mahamadou Issoufou said the coup plotters had been planning to use aerial firepower to force him from office.
Establishing a clandestine channel with coup plotters in Venezuela was a big gamble for Washington, given its long history of covert intervention across Latin America.
Still, the Venezuelan plotters could view the meetings as tacit approval of their plans, argued Peter Kornbluh, a historian at the National Security Archive at George Washington University.