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Tag: bill richardson
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Former New Mexico governor and diplomat Bill Richardson dies at 75
Former New Mexico governor and diplomat Bill Richardson dies at 75 – CBS News
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A Politician Who Loved Being Courted
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Every so often, someone asks me who my favorite politicians to write about over the years have been. I always place Bill Richardson, the longtime congressman and former governor of New Mexico, near the top of my list. I once mentioned this to Richardson himself.
“How high on the list?” he immediately wanted to know. “Top 10? Top three? I get competitive, you know.”
Richardson died in his sleep on Friday, at age 75. I will miss covering this man, the two-term Democratic governor, seven-term congressman, United Nations ambassador, energy secretary, crisis diplomat, occasional mischief magnet, and freelance hostage negotiator who even holds the Guinness World Record for the politician who’s shaken the most hands—13,392—in an eight-hour period.
“Make sure you mention that Guinness World Record thing,” Richardson urged me the first time I wrote about him, in 2003. “The handshake record is important to me.”
Why? I asked. “Because it shows that I love politics,” he replied. “And I do love politics. I love to campaign. I love parades. I don’t believe I’m pretentious. I’m very earthy.”
But why was the fact that he loved politics important?
“Because I’m sick of all these politicians these days who are always trying to convince you that they are not really politicians,” Richardson went on. I had noticed this phenomenon as well, and it holds up: that the slickest and most unctuous people you encounter in politics are often the ones who spend the most energy trying to convince you they hate politics and are in fact “not professional politicians.”
“I don’t mind being called a ‘professional politician,’” Richardson added. “It’s better than being an amateur, right?”
Richardson was an original. Born to a Mexican mother and an American businessman, he spent much of his childhood in Mexico City and identified strongly as Latino. He served as chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus in the 1980s and was the only Latino governor in America during his two terms in Santa Fe. Richardson spoke often about how his dual ethnic and cultural identities placed him in advantageous and sometimes awkward positions—“between worlds” (which he’d use as the title of his 2005 memoir).
His identities also placed Richardson in big demand as probably the most prominent Latino elected official in the country at the time. He absolutely loved being in big demand, and was milking his coveted status as much as possible when I first encountered him. That September, all of the 2004 Democratic candidates for president—John Kerry, Howard Dean, John Edwards, etc.—were straining to pay respects to Richardson after a debate in Albuquerque.
I was working for the Washington Post Style section at the time, and I found Richardson’s full-frontal “love of the game” quite winning. He was over-the-top and unabashed about the enjoyment he derived from the parade of candidates coming before him. “It’s fun to get your ring kissed,” Richardson told me that night, though he might not have said ring.
We were walking into a post-debate reception for another candidate, Senator Joe Lieberman. Like most of the Democratic VIPs in Albuquerque that night, Lieberman was an old friend of Richardson’s; they’d worked together on the 1992 Democratic Party platform committee.
“I wore this to curry favor with you,” Lieberman told Richardson, pointing to a New Mexico pin on his jacket. “You also saw that I spoke a little Spanish in [the debate].”
“I thought that was Yiddish,” Richardson said. Lieberman then got everyone’s attention and offered a toast to El Jefe.
Richardson let me ride around with him in the back of his SUV while he tried to hit post-debate receptions for all of the candidates. I noted that he’d instructed the state police driver to keep going faster and faster on Interstate 40—the vehicle hit 110 miles an hour at one point. When I mentioned the triple-digit speed in my story, it caused a bit of a controversy in New Mexico. Ralph Nader made a stink. (“If he will do this with a reporter in the car,” Nader said, according to the Associated Press, “what will they do when there’s no reporter in the car?”)
The next time I saw Richardson, a few months later, he shook his head at me and tried to deny that the vehicle was going 110. I held my ground.
“Oh, whatever. Fuck it,” Richardson said. “That was fun, wasn’t it?”
Richardson ran for president in 2008, but he quit after finishing fourth in both Iowa and New Hampshire. I had since moved on to The New York Times and used to run into him on the campaign circuit. A few weeks after he dropped out, I went down to Santa Fe to interview him about the lengths that the two remaining Democratic candidates—Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton—were going to in an attempt to win his endorsement. Another Bill Richardson primary! What could be more fun?
“Oh, the full-court press is on like you wouldn’t believe,” he told me. The “political anthropology” of this was quite interesting too, he added. “Barack is very precise,” like a “surgical bomb,” Richardson said. “The Clintons are more like a carpet bomb.” He relished my interest in the pursuit of him.
“I want to make it clear that I’m not annoyed by any of this,” Richardson said of the repeated overtures he was getting from the candidates and their various emissaries. I quoted him saying this in the Times, but not what I said in response to him in the moment: “No shit, governor.”
I’ll admit that the notion of a pol who loves the game seems quite at odds with the tenor of politics today. People now routinely toss out phrases like our democracy is at stake and existential threat to America, and it’s not necessarily overheated. Fun? Not so much.
But thinking about Richardson makes me nostalgic for campaigns and election nights that did not feel so much like political Russian roulette. Presidency or prison? Suspend the Constitution or preserve it? Let’s face it: Death threats, mug shots, insurrections, and white supremacists are supreme buzzkills.
Richardson made it clear to me that he’d loved running for president—it was one of the best times of his life, he said—and he missed the experience of it almost as soon as he got out. But what he really wanted was, you know, the job. “I would have been a good president,” he said in Santa Fe in 2008. “I still believe that. Please put that in there, okay?”
If nothing else, the Clinton-Obama courtship was a nice cushion for Richardson as he tried to ease back into life in the relative quiet of his governor’s office. It also, he said, might get him a gig in the next administration. Richardson was 60 at the time and said he envisioned “a few more chapters” for himself in public life. Richardson told me he would have loved to be someone’s running mate or secretary of state.
“I’m not pining for it, and if it doesn’t happen, I’ve had a great life,” he told me. “I’m at peace with myself.”
He wound up endorsing Obama, who, after he was elected, nominated Richardson to be his secretary of commerce—only to have Richardson withdraw over allegations of improper business dealings as governor (no charges were filed).
Richardson devoted the last stage of his career to his work as a troubleshooting diplomat and crisis negotiator. He would speak to thugs or warlords, drop into the most treacherous sectors of the globe—North Korea, Myanmar—if he thought it might help secure the release of a hostage. Among the many tributes to Richardson this past weekend from the highest levels (Joe Biden, Obama, the Clintons), I was struck most by the ones from some of the people who knew directly the ordeals he worked to end: the basketball star Brittney Griner and the Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian, who called Richardson “a giant—the first giant—in American hostage diplomacy.”
The last time I saw Richardson was a few years ago, in the pre-pandemic Donald Trump years—maybe 2018 or 2019. We had breakfast at the Hay-Adams hotel, near the White House. I remember asking him what he called himself those days, what he considered his current job title to be.
Richardson shrugged. “‘Humanitarian,’ maybe?” he said. But he worried that it sounded pretentious.
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Mark Leibovich
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Former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson dead at 75
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Bill Richardson, the former New Mexico governor, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and Secretary of Energy under President Bill Clinton, has died. Richardson was 75.
Mickey Bergman, Vice President of the Richardson Center, commented in a statement on Saturday, “Governor Richardson passed away peacefully in his sleep last night. He lived his entire life in the service of others — including both his time in government and his subsequent career helping to free people held hostage or wrongfully detained abroad,” Bergman said.
“There was no person that Governor Richardson would not speak with if it held the promise of returning a person to freedom. The world has lost a champion for those held unjustly abroad and I have lost a mentor and a dear friend.”
Richardson was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize last month in recognition of his work saving Americans, most recently WNBA player Brittney Griner, who was arrested at a Moscow airport when authorities found hash oil in her luggage. Griner was released last December after being detained for nearly ten months.
Over the last three decades, Richardson traveled the world negotiating and securing the release of Americans detained overseas in Bangladesh, North Korea, Sudan, Colombia, and Iraq. Richardson traveled to danger zones including the Congo, then called Zaire in 1997, and Afghanistan in 1998 to broker peaceful power transfers and met with infamous dictators Saddam Hussein, Fidel Castro, and Kim Jong-il respectively.
The nonprofit organization the Richardson Center was created to support the former governor’s work facilitating dialogue and global peace, particularly between countries with strained diplomatic relations. He positioned himself as an alternative to traditional diplomatic channels, particularly for countries adverse to established diplomatic powers.
In his 2013 book, “How to Sweet-Talk a Shark: Strategies and Stories from a Master Negotiator,” Richardson advised, “Respect the other side. Try to connect personally. Use sense of humor. Let the other side save face.”
Richardson was born William Blaine Richardson in Pasadena, California. He was raised in Mexico City living with his Mexican mother. His father was an American banker.
Richardson came to New Mexico in 1978 and chose to run for political office in the state because of its Hispanic roots. He is credited with transforming New Mexico politics.
During his tenure as governor, he put in place a minimum $50,000 annual salary for the most qualified teachers statewide, an increase in the state minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.50 an hour, pre-K programs for 4-year-olds, and a $400 million commuter rail system from Albuquerque to Santa Fe.
Among other accomplishments, on the campaign trail for the 2002 gubernatorial New Mexico race, Richardson set a Guinness World record for most handshakes by a politician in eight hours: 13,392 handshakes.
Richardson ran for president in 2008, later dropping out and endorsing Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton. Obama named Richardson as his pick for secretary of commerce, but a grand jury investigation into an alleged pay-to-play scheme with a political donor who received a lucrative contract led Richardson to bow out of consideration.
State politicians praised Richardson’s legacy following news of his death.
Rep. Gabe Vasquez shared a heartfelt message calling Richardson a “titan in New Mexico and abroad.”
“I mourn the passing of this New Mexico legend, one of the most powerful Hispanics in politics that this nation has seen. Today, we reflect on his decades of service and for always proudly representing New Mexico,” Vazquez continued.
Sen. Ben Ray Luján referred to Richardson as a “giant in public service and government.”
“Here in New Mexico, we will always remember him as our Governor. He never stopped fighting for the state he called home,” Luján wrote.
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Brittney Griner arrives in the US after being released from Russian custody in a prisoner exchange | CNN
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San Antonio
CNN
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Brittney Griner, the American basketball star detained by Russian authorities in February, has safely returned to the United States after being released from custody in a prisoner exchange.
US officials who met Griner on the ground Friday morning said she was “in good spirits and incredibly gracious,” one told CNN. A person who appeared to be Griner stepped off the plane shortly after 5:30 a.m. ET Friday at Kelly Field in San Antonio.
“So happy to have Brittney back on US soil. Welcome home BG!” tweeted Roger Carstens, a State Department official traveling with Griner, Friday morning.
LIVE UPDATES: Brittney Griner’s release, Russia’s war in Ukraine
One of her first stops is expected to be “at a treatment facility where she can get the medical care that she might need after 10 months in detention,” the National Security Council’s John Kirby told CNN on Thursday.
Griner’s release was secured after a prisoner swap between the US and Russia that involved international arms dealer Viktor Bout, who was arrested in 2008 in Thailand and extradited to the US in 2010.
The exchange was conducted Thursday in Abu Dhabi, senior Biden administration officials said. A joint statement from the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia said the Gulf countries played a role mediating the exchange between the US and Russia.
It is not a sign of improvements in US-Russian relations, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Friday.
Griner’s arrest and conviction played out against the backdrop of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and added further attention to the plights of other Americans in Russian custody, including Paul Whelan and Trevor Reed. Whelan’s release could not be secured in the latest prisoner swap, while Reed returned to the US in April after a nearly three-year ordeal.
The Biden administration will continue negotiating with Russia to secure Whelan’s release, it said Friday. Russians “have things they want in this world,” and Moscow knows ultimately the two sides will reach “a mutually acceptable arrangement if they keep talking to us,” a senior administration official told CNN.
President Joe Biden said efforts to bring Griner home took “painstaking and intense negotiations” as he thanked members of his administration who were involved.
“This is a day we’ve worked toward for a long time. We never stopped pushing for her release,” he said Thursday.
The final deal came together over 48 hours, the officials said, launching the process of moving Griner from the penal colony where she was serving a lengthy sentence.
Biden gave final approval for the prisoner swap freeing Griner over the past week, an official familiar with the matter said.
Bout has returned home to Russia, the Russian foreign ministry said Thursday. The prisoner exchange with Griner was “completed successfully at Abu Dhabi Airport” on Thursday, the ministry said.
Griner’s family thanked Biden and his administration Thursday in a statement, as well as former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, whose Richardson Center worked on behalf of the family to help secure Griner’s release. They also expressed gratitude for the outpouring of public support they’ve received.
“We sincerely thank you all for the kind words, thoughts and prayers – including Paul and the Whelan family who have been generous with their support for Brittney and our family during what we know is a heartbreaking time,” the statement said.
“We pray for Paul and for the swift and safe return of all wrongfully-detained Americans.”
While the safe return of Griner has been heralded by some as a diplomatic achievement, disappointment has been expressed by officials and supporters alike that Whelan was not able to return home.
Whelan, a US, Irish, British and Canadian citizen, was detained at a Moscow hotel in December 2018 by Russian authorities who alleged he was involved in an intelligence operation. He was sentenced to 16 years in prison on espionage charges he has vehemently denied. The US State Department has declared him wrongfully detained.
The Russians signaled recently that they were only willing to negotiate for Griner and not Whelan, a US official said, because Russia said it has been handling their cases differently based on what each has been accused of.
The Biden administration repeatedly made offers to get Whelan released as part of this deal, even after Russia made clear only Griner was acceptable.
In the end, when it was clear Russia was going to refuse on Whelan, the US had to accept it.
“It was a choice to get Brittney or nothing,” the US official said, adding that was a “difficult decision” for Biden, but again, one he felt he had to make.
Biden acknowledged that Griner’s release was occurring while Whelan remained imprisoned, saying that Whelan’s family “have to have such mixed emotions today.”
“This was not a choice of which American to bring home,” Biden said. “Sadly, for totally illegitimate reasons, Russia is treating Paul’s case differently than Brittney’s. And while we have not yet succeeded in securing Paul’s release, we are not giving up. We will never give up.”
In a statement, Griner’s family said, “We sincerely thank you all for the kind words, thoughts and prayers – including Paul and the Whelan family who have been generous with their support for Brittney and our family during what we know is a heartbreaking time.”
Whelan told CNN in an exclusive phone call from the penal colony where is being held in a remote part of Russia that he was “disappointed” the Biden administration has not done more to secure his release. Whelan said he was happy that Griner was released, but that he “was led to believe that things were moving in the right direction, and that the governments were negotiating and that something would happen fairly soon.”
“I don’t understand why I’m still sitting here,” he said.
Whelan had been carrying out his sentence at a labor camp in Mordovia, an eight-hour drive from Moscow, where he told CNN in June 2021 he spent his days working in a clothing factory that he called a “sweatshop.”
The Biden administration has ideas about “new forms of offers” they are going to try with the Russians in an effort to secure Whelan’s release, a senior administration official told CNN on Thursday.
The official said there is a recognition that the US needs to make available “something more, something different” from what they have offered to the Russians thus far – and didn’t rule out offering a Russian spy in US custody in a potential prisoner swap.
“There is a willingness to pay even a very big price on the part of this president,” the official said. “We have made clear to the Russians, that we at least are open to talking about that which is at our disposal, that which we could actually deliver. It would be somebody in our custody.”
Richardson said he hopes Whelan will be returned home by the end of the year.
“We have tried, my foundation, for four years to get Whelan out and somehow it always falls short. … Possibly because of the espionage charge, because he’s a Marine, he’s wrongfully detained, the Russians hold on to him at the very end. And this is what happened again, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a possibility that we can get him out. I think we can,” Richardson told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer.
Whelan’s family expressed happiness at the news that Griner is on her way home but said Thursday they are “devastated” that he was left behind.
“It’s a great day for the families of the wrongfully detained and we feel wonderful for them,” David Whelan, Paul’s brother, said on “CNN This Morning.” “But we do worry about what’s in Paul’s future. I think it’s become clear that the US doesn’t have any concessions that the Russian government wants for Paul. So I’m not really sure what the future holds.”
The Biden administration told Whelan’s family ahead of the Griner announcement, David Whelan said.
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Today in History: November 15, Sherman’s “March to the Sea”
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Today in History
Today is Tuesday, Nov. 15, the 319th day of 2022. There are 46 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On Nov. 15, 1864, during the Civil War, Union forces led by Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh (teh-KUM’-seh) Sherman began their “March to the Sea” from Atlanta; the campaign ended with the capture of Savannah on Dec. 21.
On this date:
In 1777, the Second Continental Congress approved the Articles of Confederation.
In 1806, explorer Zebulon Pike sighted the mountaintop now known as Pikes Peak in present-day Colorado.
In 1937, at the U.S. Capitol, members of the House and Senate met in air-conditioned chambers for the first time.
In 1942, the naval Battle of Guadalcanal ended during World War II with a decisive U.S. victory over Japanese forces.
In 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt laid the cornerstone of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C.
In 1959, four members of the Clutter family of Holcomb, Kansas, were found murdered in their home. (Ex-convicts Richard Hickock and Perry Smith were later convicted of the killings and hanged in a case made famous by the Truman Capote book “In Cold Blood.”)
In 1961, former Argentine President Juan Peron, living in exile in Spain, married his third wife, Isabel.
In 1966, the flight of Gemini 12, the final mission of the Gemini program, ended successfully as astronauts James A. Lovell and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin Jr. splashed down safely in the Atlantic after spending four days in orbit.
In 1969, a quarter of a million protesters staged a peaceful demonstration in Washington against the Vietnam War.
In 1984, Stephanie Fae Beauclair, the infant publicly known as “Baby Fae” who had received a baboon’s heart to replace her own congenitally deformed one, died at Loma Linda University Medical Center in California three weeks after the transplant.
In 2003, two Black Hawk helicopters collided and crashed in Iraq; 17 U.S. troops were killed.
In 2019, Roger Stone, a longtime friend and ally of President Donald Trump, was convicted of all seven counts in a federal indictment accusing him of lying to Congress, tampering with a witness and obstructing the House investigation of whether Trump coordinated with Russia during the 2016 campaign. (As Stone was about to begin serving a 40-month prison sentence, Trump commuted the sentence.)
Ten years ago: The Justice Department announced that BP had agreed to plead guilty to a raft of charges in the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill and pay a record $4.5 billion, including nearly $1.3 billion in criminal fines. Four veterans were killed and 13 people injured when a freight train slammed into a parade float carrying wounded warriors and their spouses at a rail crossing in Midland, Texas.
Five years ago: Zimbabwe’s military was in control of the country’s capital and the state broadcaster and held 93-year-old President Robert Mugabe and his wife under house arrest; the military emphasized that it had not staged a takeover but was instead starting a process to restore the country’s democracy. (The military intervention, hugely popular in Zimbabwe, led to impeachment proceedings against Mugabe, who was replaced.) Eight members of a family who were among more than two dozen people killed in a shooting at a small Texas church were mourned at a funeral attended by 3,000 people.
One year ago: President Joe Biden and China’s Xi Jinping spoke for more than three hours by video amid mounting tensions in the U.S.-China relationship. Biden signed his hard-fought $1 trillion infrastructure deal into law before a bipartisan, celebratory crowd on the White House lawn. A Connecticut judge found Infowars host and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones liable for damages in lawsuits brought by parents of children killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting; the parents sued Jones over his claims that the massacre was a hoax. Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont said he wouldn’t seek reelection in 2022 to the seat he’d held since 1975.
Today’s Birthdays: Singer Petula Clark is 90. Actor Sam Waterston is 82. Classical conductor Daniel Barenboim is 80. Pop singer Frida (ABBA) is 77. Actor Bob Gunton is 77. Former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson is 75. Actor Beverly D’Angelo is 71. Director-actor James Widdoes is 69. Rock singer-producer Mitch Easter is 68. News correspondent John Roberts is 66. Former “Tonight Show” bandleader Kevin Eubanks is 65. Comedian Judy Gold is 60. Actor Rachel True is 56. Rapper E-40 is 55. Country singer Jack Ingram is 52. Actor Jay Harrington is 51. Actor Jonny Lee Miller is 50. Actor Sydney Tamiia (tuh-MY’-yuh) Poitier-Heartsong is 49. Rock singer-musician Chad Kroeger is 48. Rock musician Jesse Sandoval is 48. Actor Virginie Ledoyen is 46. Actor Sean Murray is 45. Pop singer Ace Young (TV: “American Idol”) is 42. Golfer Lorena Ochoa (lohr-AY’-nah oh-CHOH’-uh) is 41. Hip-hop artist B.o.B is 34. Actor Shailene Woodley is 31. Actor-dancer Emma Dumont is 28.
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Former Gov. Bill Richardson suggests Brittney Griner and Paul Whelan may be released by end of year | CNN Politics
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CNN
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Former Gov. Bill Richardson said Sunday he is “cautiously optimistic” that two Americans wrongfully detained by Russia will be released and suggested they could be freed by the end of the year.
Richardson, a former Democratic governor of New Mexico, and his namesake center privately work on behalf of families of hostages and detainees. He recently traveled to Russia to discuss with Kremlin officials the possible release of basketball star Brittney Griner and former US Marine Paul Whelan, and he said Sunday that he’s working with the families of both Americans and coordinating with the White House for their release.
“I do think so. Now, I hate making predictions, but yes,” Richardson told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union” when asked if he believed Griiner and Whelan may be released before the end of this year.
“I know (the families are) very emotional and this is a very emotional time. All I can say is that the Biden administration is working hard on it,” added Richardson, who served as US ambassador to the United Nations in the Clinton administration. “So am I. We coordinate, but not always agree on every tactical decision. But I’m not going to interfere in their process. I’m just giving you my assessment after two visits to Russia on behalf of American hostages.”
Griner was sentenced in August to nine years in a Russian jail after pleading guilty to drug-smuggling. The two-time US Olympic basketball gold medalist had been arrested at a Moscow airport and accused by Russian prosecutors of trying to smuggle less than 1 gram of cannabis oil in her luggage – which she said she had accidentally packed while in a hurry.
Whelan was detained at a Moscow hotel in December 2018 and arrested on espionage charges, which he has consistently and vehemently denied. He was convicted and sentenced in June 2020 to 16 years in prison in a trial US officials denounced as unfair.
President Joe Biden met separately with the families of Griner and Whelan at the White House last month, marking his first time personally meeting with them since their loved ones were detained in Russia.
On Sunday, Richardson characterized his meetings in Russia as being with “senior Russian officials, individuals close to President (Vladimir) Putin.”
“I am cautiously optimistic,” Richardson said of the negotiations over Griner and Whelan’s release.
“I got the sense that the Russian officials that I met with, that I’ve known over the years, are ready to talk,” he said. “I got a good sense from the Russians – the vibrations – but I’m not a government official.”
The Biden administration had previously distanced itself from Richardson’s efforts. Last month, a senior administration official told CNN that anyone “who’s going to Russia is going as a private citizen and they don’t speak for the US government.”
“I’m not part of the government, the government channel. I’ve always made that clear. I respect that. I think any decision, for instance, a release, a prisoner exchange, has to be made by the President. And I think the administration has done a good job on that,” Richardson said on Sunday.
Richardson on Sunday acknowledged the White House’s trepidation at him being involved in prisoner release negotiations, but cited his experience in past prisoner negotiations, including his role in the release of Trevor Reed from Russian custody earlier this year.
A source familiar with the situation previously told CNN that members of the Richardson Center had traveled to Moscow in February, in the days immediately before the Russian war in Ukraine began, to meet with Russian leadership. Following that visit, the Richardson Center came away with a clear sense of what the Russians were willing to do and how they were willing to do it, which was presented to the White House. Reed was freed in a prisoner swap in April.
“I’ve coordinated with the White House. I’ve coordinated as much as I can, but you know, sometimes they’re a little nervous about my doing this on my own,” he said.
“But at the same time, we’ve had success recently with Trevor Reed, the American hostage in Russia some months ago. Danny Fenster, a journalist in Myanmar at the end of last year,” Richardson added. “So, I know what I’m doing.”
Earlier this month, Biden announced the return of seven Americans who had been detained in Venezuela. The detainees were released in exchange for the release of two Venezuelans imprisoned in the US for conspiring to smuggle cocaine into the country, both nephews of the Venezuelan first lady.
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