5.2 KiB
| title | aliases | created | updated | category | tags | summary | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Octaviano Cesar |
|
2026-05-17 | 2026-10-08 | Organized Crime |
|
CIA asset and former social director of Norwin Meneses's VIP nightclub in Managua who arranged drug deals with Colombian trafficker George Morales to fund Eden Pastora's Contra army. |
Background
Octaviano Cesar was the former social director of Norwin Meneses's VIP nightclub in Managua. The Central Intelligence Agency acknowledged that Cesar was one of its intelligence operatives: "Agency officers met occasionally with Cesar - usually in the United States - to gather information and to promote unity among the Southern Front groups," the CIA Inspector General found.1
Drug Deals for the Contras
In March 1984, Cesar and two other Contra officials close to the CIA, ARDE logistics chief Adolfo Chamorro and ARDE air force commander Marcos Aguado, met with Colombian drug trafficker George Morales at his offices in Fort Lauderdale and asked him to contribute to Eden Pastora ARDE Contra 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 the Senate subcommittee, on July 15, 1987 and again on April 7, 1988.123
Cesar assured Morales that if he assisted the Contras, his pending cocaine indictment would be resolved through CIA intervention. Cesar "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," Morales testified.1
CIA Approval
In a 1996 interview with the Washington Post, Cesar said the CIA was fully aware of his involvement with the Colombian drug trafficker and had approved of it beforehand. Cesar informed a CIA officer stationed at Ilopango Airbase in El Salvador. Pilot Fabio Ernesto Carrasco testified that Cesar and Chamorro assured Morales the flights were CIA-protected: "Octaviano and Popo tell George, 'Listen, these people supposed to work for the CIA, those people are supposed to have, you know, everything under control.'"1
When money from drug sales was collected, Carrasco delivered it to Cesar and Chamorro, "sometimes in the United States, sometimes in Costa Rica. . .I paid a lot of money, maybe millions." After the exposure of Pastora's involvement with drug dealers, Cesar quickly joined forces with the CIA's new Contra army replacing Pastora.1
The 1984 Bahamas Trip
A Customs Service record given to the Senate subcommittee showed Morales entering the United States from the Bahamas on October 13, 1984 with Cesar, Aguado and Chamorro, and the three declared $400,000 in cash and checks, which they said had been returned to Morales after clearing customs. Cesar's videotaped deposition of October 31, 1987 in San José was played at the April 1988 hearing; the subcommittee reported that Cesar, Aguado and Karol Prado each denied receiving more than $10,000 from Morales personally and each confirmed elements of Morales's account.4 In April 1987 CIA Security interviewed Cesar about his association with Morales. Cesar said the purpose of the Bahamas trip was to test Aguado's flying skills, and that he knew of no other purpose until the return flight, when Morales asked Cesar and Chamorro to claim several checks as theirs when clearing U.S. Customs. He said he had suspected Morales was involved with drug money, but that his wish to help the Southern Front drove him to work with Morales.5
Footnotes
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Webb, Gary. Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion. Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 11: "They were looking in the other direction" ↩︎
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U.S. Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Drugs, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy: Hearings ... May 27, July 15, and October 30, 1987, Part 1 (1988), testimony of Jorge Morales, July 15, 1987, https://archive.org/details/micro_IA41152832_0003 ↩︎
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U.S. Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Drugs, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy: The Cartel, Haiti and Central America, Part 3, hearing of April 7, 1988, testimony of Jorge Morales (pp. 297 to 300) and videotaped depositions of October 31, 1987, https://archive.org/details/micro_IA41152832_0005. Gary Webb, in Dark Alliance (1998), dates the "CIA agents" statement to 1986 congressional testimony, and his chapter notes give April 7, 1986 and March 27, 1987. ↩︎
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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 ↩︎
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CIA Inspector General, Allegations of Connections Between CIA and the Contras in Cocaine Trafficking to the United States, Volume II (October 8, 1998), Octaviano Cesar section of the Southern Front chapter, https://irp.fas.org/cia/product/cocaine2/south.html ↩︎