Brian Sternformer American soldier, said in several interviews that the rescue organization he leads, Gray Bull Rescue, participated in the final phase of the operation which allowed María Corina Machado to be expelled from Venezuela on Tuesday and transferred to a safe place. … from where he was able to travel to Oslo.
According to his account, he accepted the mission Friday evening and the operation had to overcome strong tides and total darkness. He assures that he himself took her in a fishing boat to the place where he took his flight. He also claims that the Chavista regime had activated facial recognition systems to locate her and that the operation was financed by private donors and not by US government funds.
Stern is the founder of Rescue of the gray bulla Tampa, Florida-based organization that combines a nonprofit arm, funded exclusively by donations, with a commercial corporation dedicated to helping governments and entities rescue citizens in situations of risk. He presents himself as a specialist in extraction operations in hostile environments and maintains an openly critical position towards the regime. Nicolas Maduro.
According to his biography, he was born in Queens (New York), into a family with no military tradition. Son of a lawyer and judge, he first thought of devoting himself to law or architecture, until he entered the New York Military Academy, where his military vocation was awakened. He served in combat in the United States Army and Navy, with several overseas deployments, and was awarded the Purple Heart.
Before focusing on civilian rescues, he worked for years within the U.S. intelligence community. He said he had participated in different agencies and was part of the global effort that led to the location of Osama bin Ladenan operation prolonged for almost two decades. In the Netflix documentary series American Manhunt, he appears as one of several agents involved, emphasizing that his role was that of another cog in a vast, largely anonymous network.
After leaving the armed forces, he settled in Tampa and founded Project Dynamo in 2021, convinced that in many extreme crises the American government does not arrive on time or lacks room for action. This initiative then gave birth to the Gray Bull Rescue Foundation, designed as a last resort for evacuate people trapped in warsinstitutional collapses or natural disasters.
Rescue of the gray bull
During the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, Stern claims to have evacuated 117 people in a single day.
The US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 was a turning point. Seeing the Americans and their allies trapped while the Taliban regained control, Stern decided to act. Alongside former members of the special forces and intelligence community, he organized rapid rescue operations amid the chaos. During their first mission, they claim to have evacuated 117 Americans in a single day. Since then, his team says it has carried out more than 600 missions and rescued more than 7,000 people, with operations in Ukraine, Sudan, Haiti, Israel and Gaza, as well as interventions in the United States during the Maui fires and Hurricane Ian.
Stern defines his organization as apolitical and focused exclusively on saving lives, and maintains that it acts “at the speed of need, not the speed of government.” He acknowledges that financing is one of the main challenges of his work and noted that Project Dynamo operated on very tight margins in its early years.
His next goal, as he explained, is to expand the commercial side of Gray Bull to help companies with American employees in at-risk areas. Regarding Machado’s rescue, he claims to have designed and executed the deep-sea extraction, resorting to disguises and deception even within his own environment to avoid escape. She claims that they passed through Curaçao without her entering the country and describes the operation as extreme riskpresenting her as the most high-profile person he has saved.
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