The_Info_Web/60 - PLACES/MILITARY_INSTALLATIONS/Ilopango Airbase.md

title	aliases	created	updated	category	tags	summary	location	relations
Ilopango Airbase	Ilopango Airbase Ilopango Air Force Base Ilopango	2026-05-17	2026-10-12	Military Installation	Geography ElSalvador Military 1980s ContraWar DarkAllianceInvestigation	Salvadoran military air base that served as the hub for Oliver North's illegal Contra resupply operation and a center for Contra-connected cocaine trafficking during the 1980s.	El Salvador	type with role start end fn participant_in NHAO Used Hangar 4 in 1985 and 1986 after CIA moved out, per the CIA Inspector General 1985 1986 6

Ilopango Air Force Base is a military airfield outside San Salvador, El Salvador, that served as the hub for Oliver North's illegal Contra resupply operation and a center for Contra-connected cocaine trafficking during the 1980s. Situated atop a plateau surrounded by imposing cliffs, the base had a restricted military side tightly guarded by the Salvadoran military and a civilian side used for private aviation.¹

Contra Resupply Hub

According to Gary Webb, the Contras had been using Ilopango with Salvadoran Air Force commander General Juan Rafael Bustillo's blessing since 1983, when Norwin Meneses's friend, the pilot Marcos Aguado, arranged to base Eden Pastora's ARDE air force there.² The CIA Inspector General gives Aguado a Sandinista Air Force and Aeronica career until his 1983 defection and records him as Chief of Air Operations for the Sandino Revolutionary Front and ARDE by September 1984.³ Most accounts date the Contras' intensified use to September 1985, when North wrote to Felix Rodriguez asking him to use his influence with Bustillo to secure hangar space. Rodriguez "greased the skids" with Bustillo and became overseer of North's Contra resupply operation. Rodriguez recruited Luis Posada Carriles as his day-to-day manager, operating under the alias "Ramon Medina."¹

In October 1986 the Christian Science Monitor reported that the Contras had used Ilopango "at least since 1984, and probably earlier," to ship supplies to Pastora in Costa Rica, and that Bustillo "has been a major contact person for aiding the contra shipments, according to diplomats and other informed sources."⁴ Senate subcommittee records show some 156,000 pounds of material moved from Ilopango to Costa Rican airfields between October 18, 1984 and February 12, 1986 on a C-47 that had been transferred to Aguado for one dollar, on 24 flights, eleven of them to La Penca.⁵

The operation was run openly. The assistant regional security officer for the U.S. embassy in San Salvador told Iran-Contra investigators in 1991: "The woman selling tortillas at the gate of Ilopango could tell you what was going on. Anyone who ever flew into or over Ilopango air base could see something like that was going on. When looking down at Ilopango from the air, one could see one side of the airfield having a ragtag operation of inferior planes, dilapidated buildings and the like. On the other side of the airport were nice facilities, lift trucks unloading supplies from more sophisticated and bigger aircraft, and gringos running around." The modern facilities "all belonged to the American operation."¹

Hangars 4 and 5

Gary Webb wrote that Central Intelligence Agency records showed Hangar No. 4 was used by the Agency for covert Contra operations until it was turned over in 1985 to the National Security Council and Oliver North's illegal arms network, "The Enterprise." CIA agent Felix Rodriguez also used Hangar No. 4 for his helicopter-based counterinsurgency program. The adjoining Hangar No. 5 continued to be used by the CIA in support of the Contra project.¹ The CIA Inspector General's report gives a different sequence. In 1984 the CIA occupied a newly constructed warehouse and hangar, Hangar 5, and moved to it activities that had been conducted in the smaller Hangar 4. The report states that "After CIA had moved out of Hangar 4, it was used in 1985 and 1986 by NHAO and the Private Benefactors in support of their Contra-related operations."⁶

Webb wrote that in March 1986 a cable from the Costa Rican DEA office reported that a pilot named Carlos Amador intended to fly into Ilopango, pick up cocaine at Hangar No. 4, and transport it to Miami. The Justice Department Inspector General quotes a DEA Costa Rica cable dated March 20, 1986, which reported that a source said Amador intended to fly cocaine from Costa Rica through El Salvador to Miami, possibly picking it up at Hangar No. 4.⁷ The CIA Inspector General's report describes a cable of April 1986 that reported a March 18, 1986 DEA report that Amador had recently flown from Costa Rica to San Salvador, where he had access to Hangar 4.⁸ The report also records that the drafter of one 1986 cable was not certain of the nature or affiliation of another entity that had operated from Hangar 4, and surmised that it "may have been associated either with Oliver North, the Private Benefactors, or the Nicaraguan Humanitarian Assistance Office (NHAO)."⁹ Amador had been working with the CIA for years, flying missions for the Costa Rican Contras. The CIA had collected information for at least a year indicating Amador was also flying drug planes between Costa Rica, Panama, Belize, and Miami for a pair of major cocaine traffickers, the Sarcovic brothers, at the same time he was flying for the White House.¹

Drug Trafficking

DEA agent Celerino Castillo's informant Murga, who wrote flight plans for private planes on the civilian side of the base, reported that Contra pilots were brazenly flying drugs to the United States and money to Panama, sometimes leaving with kilos in plain view or arriving with boxloads of money. When Castillo ran pilot names through DEA computers, nearly all came back as documented narcotics traffickers. Among the busiest pilots was Francisco Guirola Beeche, who was later observed zooming in and out of Ilopango hauling drugs in and carrying cash to the Bahamas.¹

Former Meneses aide Enrique Miranda testified at the 1991 Nicaraguan trial that cocaine from Colombia arrived at various Costa Rican airstrips, including one on CIA operative John Hull's farm, and was placed aboard Contra planes flown into Ilopango. There, according to Miranda, Aguado and Meneses supervised loading the cocaine onto U.S.-bound aircraft owned by the Salvadoran Air Force and, on occasion, the Miami-based CIA contractor Southern Air Transport. Miranda said Meneses told him U.S. military hardware stockpiled at Ilopango was loaded onto Salvadoran transport planes and flown south, where guns were traded for cocaine and flown back.¹

In February and March 1988 a CIA station cable reported that the Guatemalan suspected trafficker Reyner Veliz Cruz flew into Ilopango with Aguado in a twin-engine aircraft, the second time after customs officers had left, and that customs personnel at Ilopango "assume that Aguado has connections with drug trafficking."¹⁰

The Justice Department Inspector General reports that on December 14, 1988 Bustillo met DEA agent Celerino Castillo to discuss Castillo's suspicions that Salvadoran Air Force officers were using Ilopango for drug trafficking; Castillo named, among others, Air School Director Lieutenant Colonel Manfredo Koenigsberg, and according to a State Department cable of January 3, 1989, Bustillo said he would investigate and seek to transfer the officer. In 1989 Castillo and DEA Group Supervisor Thomas deTriquet went to Ilopango about an allegation concerning Hangar 5. A Salvadoran security officer denied them access, and a CIA officer told them they could not enter Ilopango for that purpose. At the embassy the CIA chief of station assured them there was no drug activity associated with Hangar 5.¹¹¹²

The Inspector General reports that in February 1989 the CIA station in El Salvador sent the DEA a cable describing the Panamanian Miguel Antonio Rodriguez, a suspected trafficker, using Ilopango to repair his aircraft, which the station said was suspicious given the high cost of repairs in El Salvador. Stia's memorandum later said that the Guatemala office could not develop the most important information on Ilopango, which related to the allegations and intelligence about the air base, and that he intended to have Castillo and deTriquet request access again.¹²

CIA Obstruction of Investigations

When Celerino Castillo's investigation began probing the hangars, the CIA El Salvador station sent a cable on April 25, 1986, in reply to a Costa Rica station cable of April 23 about Amador: "Based on that information, [El Salvador] Station would appreciate [Costa Rica] Station advising [DEA] not to make any inquiries to anyone re: hangar no. 4 at Ilopango since only legitimate [CIA] supported operations were conducted from this facility."⁷ The same cable stated that station air operations had moved from Hangar 4 into Hangar 5, which the station still occupied.⁷ The CIA official who wrote that cable later conceded "the language in the cable could be read to suggest a meaning he did not intend" but acknowledged that was the effect it had.¹

U.S. Ambassador Edwin Corr sent a secret "back channel" cable to the State Department requesting an internal DEA review of Castillo's allegations. Webb's account has the DEA telling Corr that Castillo's information was "totally inaccurate," Castillo being told to close his investigation, and Corr personally ordering him to "stop the witch hunt." Corr told the Justice Department Inspector General that DEA headquarters replied that the Grasheim case would be closed, and that he told Castillo he would have to stop the "witch hunt" if he had no evidence.¹¹³ Webb wrote that three years later, when Castillo opened another investigation into drug trafficking at Hangar No. 5, the CIA refused to allow him on the base.¹

Alan Fiers, the former CIA official who headed the Contra program from 1984 to 1988, testified in United States v. George on July 31, 1992, in testimony Webb quotes: "We had a capability and indeed a responsibility for reporting what had been happening at Ilopango."¹ Webb wrote that the DEA claimed under the Freedom of Information Act that it had no reports from Castillo about drug trafficking at Ilopango, and that the Inspector General located and quoted from them.¹⁴

Bombs from the Airport Battalion, 1992

Five 500-pound bombs were taken from a battalion at the San Salvador airport on February 26, 1992. Semana reported on April 12, 1992 that the arrested men, among them a Salvadoran army colonel, Roberto Antonio Leiva Jacobo, confessed that members of the Cali Drug Cartel had hired them and paid four million dollars for the bombs, and that the bombs were meant for a plan to kill Pablo Escobar in the Envigado prison.¹⁵

Footnotes

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1. Webb, Gary. Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion. Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 13: "The wrong kind of friends" ↩︎

2. Gary Webb, Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion (Seven Stories Press, 1998), Chapter 13, "The wrong kind of friends," and Cast of Characters. ↩︎

3. CIA Inspector General, Allegations of Connections Between CIA and the Contras in Cocaine Trafficking to the United States, Volume II (October 8, 1998), Marcos Antonio Aguado section of the Southern Front chapter, https://irp.fas.org/cia/product/cocaine2/south.html ↩︎

4. "Salvador airport said to be transfer point for arms to contras," Christian Science Monitor, October 10, 1986, https://proof.csmonitor.com/1986/1010/omerc.html ↩︎

5. U.S. Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations, Drugs, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy, S. Prt. 100-165 (December 1988), pp. 37, 50 to 52, https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras ↩︎

6. CIA Office of Inspector General, Report of Investigation on allegations of connections between CIA and the Contras in cocaine trafficking, para. 1023. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-06974497 ↩︎

7. U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, Chapter X, part 2, section C.2 (Carlos Amador: DEA Costa Rica cable of March 20, 1986; CIA cables of April 23 and April 25, 1986). https://oig.justice.gov/special/9712/ch10p2.htm ↩︎

8. CIA Office of Inspector General, Report of Investigation, para. 447. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-06974497 ↩︎

9. CIA Office of Inspector General, Report of Investigation, para. 453. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-06974497 ↩︎

10. CIA Inspector General, Allegations of Connections Between CIA and the Contras in Cocaine Trafficking to the United States, Volume II (October 8, 1998), Marcos Antonio Aguado section and the pilots chapter (March 23, 1988 cable on Reyner Veliz Cruz), https://irp.fas.org/cia/product/cocaine2/south.html and https://irp.fas.org/cia/product/cocaine2/pilots.html ↩︎

11. U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, The CIA-Contra-Crack Cocaine Controversy (December 1997), Chapter X, sections D and E, https://irp.fas.org/agency/doj/oig/c4rpt/ch10p3.htm ↩︎

12. U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, Chapter X, part 3, section E (Castillo's later interactions with Salvadoran personnel, the deTriquet interview, the Stia memorandum). https://oig.justice.gov/special/9712/ch10p3.htm ↩︎

13. U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, Chapter X, part 2, section C.1.b(2) (interview of Edwin Corr). https://oig.justice.gov/special/9712/ch10p2.htm ↩︎

14. Webb, Gary. Dark Alliance, chapter 13; U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, Chapter X, part 4, section I, and part 2, section C.1.a. https://oig.justice.gov/special/9712/ch10p4.htm ↩︎

15. "¿Bombas contra Escobar?", Semana, April 12, 1992, https://www.semana.com/nacion/articulo/bombas-contra-escobar/17208-3. The Cali cartel buyers are Semana's report of the arrested men's confessions and of an unnamed Salvadoran government source. ↩︎