George Morales

George Morales was a major Colombian cocaine trafficker who operated during the early 1980s. In early 1984, despite having just been indicted by a federal grand jury on conspiracy and cocaine trafficking charges, Morales was approached by Central Intelligence Agency-linked Contra officials seeking financial and logistical assistance for Eden Pastora's ARDE Contra army.¹

Support to the Contras

In March 1984, three Contra officials with close CIA ties (Octaviano Cesar, ARDE logistics chief Adolfo "Popo" Chamorro, and ARDE air force commander Marcos Aguado) met with Morales at his offices in Fort Lauderdale and asked him to contribute to Pastora's army. "During our conversation they told me they were CIA agents. Two of them said they were, Octaviano Cesar and Marcos Aguado," Morales testified before Congress in 1986. Cesar assured Morales that if he assisted the Contras, his legal problems from the pending cocaine indictment would disappear: "He told me he had plenty of friends, being him, the CIA, can advise the superiors about my financial support and airplane and training and therefore they will finally, eventually, will take care of my problem, which they did." During the entire time Morales worked with the Contras on drug deals, no action was taken on his pending indictment. When he started talking to U.S. Senate investigators about his Contra dealings two years later, the case moved quickly to trial and conviction.¹

Morales later passed a DEA-administered lie detector test about his drug dealings with the Contras. Two pilots who flew the Contra drug missions for him—Fabio Ernesto Carrasco and Gary Wayne Betzner—confirmed his story under oath as U.S. government witnesses.¹

Drug Flights

Morales and his pilots flew planeloads of weapons to a ranch in northern Costa Rica owned by CIA operative John Hull, which served as a training area and hiding place for Contra soldiers. After dropping off arms, large green duffel bags full of cocaine belonging to the Contras were loaded aboard and flown back into the United States, usually to the public airport at Opa Locka, Florida. "Every one of the flights I make to Costa Rica, the cocaine was the Contras', not mine," Morales testified. "I have my suppliers in Colombia. I don't need to go to Costa Rica."¹

Aircraft Donations

Morales gave the Contras an aged C-47 cargo plane stored in Haiti, plus $10,000 for operating costs. The airplane was officially transferred from Morales to Marcos Aguado for $1 on October 1, 1984. Between October 18, 1984 and February 12, 1986, the C-47 moved 156,000 pounds of material from Ilopango Air Force Base in El Salvador to airfields in Costa Rica. Investigative reporter Jonathan Kwitny obtained the refueling receipts and confirmed the plane "was repeatedly piloted into and out of Ilopango Air Force Base in El Salvador by Marcos Aguado." Morales contended the C-47 continued from Ilopango to Colombia, where it was reloaded with drugs before flying back to Florida.¹

When Aguado quit the war in May 1986, he sold the airplane to Norwin Meneses for $30,000. In 1997, Aguado said the C-47 was still being used by Meneses in Venezuela.¹