Marcos Aguado

Marcos Aguado was a Central Intelligence Agency-trained Nicaraguan pilot and business associate of Norwin Meneses who managed drug trafficking logistics for the Contra forces, first in Costa Rica and later at Ilopango Air Force Base in El Salvador. He was identified in 1987 congressional testimony as a CIA agent.¹

Costa Rican Operations

Aguado was the chief pilot for Eden Pastora's ARDE Contra forces in Costa Rica. He was instrumental in arranging the Contras' 1984 arms-and-drugs deals with Colombian trafficker George Morales. Aguado moved between the Contra war zones and Colombian drug operations, flying weapons and cocaine as part of the covert supply network. He was formally accused of cocaine trafficking in Costa Rica and became unwelcome in the country.¹

Ilopango and the Drug Pipeline

After Oliver North set up his resupply operation at Ilopango, Aguado moved there permanently, working as an aide to a high-ranking Salvadoran air force commander. Enrique Miranda testified that Aguado "became a colonel in the Salvadoran Air Force, sharing all the privileges of a high-ranking military officer in El Salvador and was accepted by subordinate ranks as Deputy Commander of the Salvadoran Air Force." Miranda said Aguado directed flights that "went as far as Colombia, where they were loaded with cocaine and then redirected to the United States, to a U.S. Air Force base located in the state of Texas."¹

Miranda and former Nicaraguan antidrug czar Roger Mayorga identified the base as near Fort Worth—likely the now-closed Carswell Air Force Base, home of a Strategic Air Command bomber squadron. The U.S. Air Force told FOIA requesters that all flight records that may have shown arrivals and departures of Salvadoran military aircraft during the mid-1980s were destroyed years ago.¹

Miranda testified that at Ilopango, Aguado and Norwin Meneses supervised the loading of cocaine onto U.S.-bound aircraft owned by the Salvadoran Air Force and, on occasion, the Miami-based CIA contractor Southern Air Transport. Miranda met Aguado for dinner at Meneses's mansion in Managua in 1991, where Aguado boasted of flying for the Colombian cartels—including once taking a Salvadoran Air Force bomber to level a warehouse full of Medellín cartel cocaine on behalf of the rival Cali cartel, and making plans to bomb the prison where Medellín cartel chief Pablo Escobar was briefly imprisoned. Aguado also boasted of flying weapons from the Salvadoran military to the Colombian cartels, a story Miranda said he doubted until a Salvadoran Air Force colonel and associates were arrested in 1992 for selling bombs and high explosives to Colombian drug dealers.¹

Role in the Meneses Network

Aguado was a key operative in Norwin Meneses's drug organization, identified as a business associate and logistics coordinator. Miranda testified that "Norwin was selling drugs and tunneled the benefits to the Contras with help of high-ranking military officials of the Salvadoran Army, especially with the help of the head of the Salvadoran Air Force and a Nicaraguan pilot named Marcos Aguado."¹