The_Info_Web/10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/John Hull.md

category	updated	tags	summary
Intelligence & Government	2026-10-15	Person Person/Intelligence CIA Costa_Rica 1980s Contra_War	John Hull was a CIA operative whose ranch in northern Costa Rica served as a training area and weapons depot for Contra forces and a transit point for drug flights.

John Hull was an American Central Intelligence Agency operative who lived on a ranch in northern Costa Rica during the Contras war, posing as a midwestern farmer managing plantations for wealthy investors. In reality, Hull's ranch served as a training area and hiding place for Contra soldiers; it was where the Legion of September 15 gathered before its bungled raid on the Argentine radio station in 1980.¹

Hull was the CIA's unofficial liaison to the Contras in northern Costa Rica and according to Gary Webb a close associate of Marcos Aguado, whom Webb calls a CIA-trained pilot and business associate of Norwin Meneses.² Colombian trafficker George Morales and his pilots flew planeloads of weapons to Hull's ranch, where after dropping off arms, large green duffel bags full of cocaine belonging to the Contras were loaded aboard for return flights to the United States, usually to Opa Locka, Florida.¹

Drug Flight Evidence

Former CIA official Alan Fiers, who oversaw the Contra program from Washington, was convinced that Hull's ranch was being used for Contra drug flights. "There is no doubt in Fiers's mind that Pastora's men trans-shipped drugs out of the airstrip on Hull's ranch," investigators for Iran-Contra prosecutor Lawrence Walsh reported in 1991. "Fiers realized this around 1986 when he heard all the evidence from Senator John Kerry hearings and from the newspapers." Hull, when told of Fiers's statement, responded: "Hell, here I thought that all this time the people spreading rumors like that were the Sandinistas and the Communists. Now I find out it's my own government."¹

Pilot Fabio Ernesto Carrasco, who flew drug missions for Morales in and out of Hull's ranch, testified that one of Eden Pastora commanders assured him the CIA was protecting the flights from Costa Rica all the way into Florida.¹

On July 31, 1987, Fiers briefed the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on Hull's alleged relationship with Morales. According to the committee transcript as quoted by the CIA Inspector General, Fiers said that Morales "saw John Hull in his, Morales' office, with [Marcos] Aguado in 1983. However, Morales didn't meet him. He didn't want to." The Inspector General also reports that on March 7, 1989 a Costa Rican judge charged Hull with "hostile acts" and "drug trafficking," and that Costa Rican court documents claimed Hull and Contra pilot Gerardo Duran had met Morales in Miami to discuss the sale of drugs and weapons, and that planes piloted by Duran and Aguado had landed at Hull's airstrips carrying military supplies and, with Hull's knowledge, left loaded with drugs. The Inspector General quotes Hull's reply to the allegations of Gary Betzner: "not true, not true! He made it up. He was coached."³

On April 6, 1987, the CBS program West 57th Street broadcast Gary Wayne Betzner's statement that "I took two loads, small aircraft loads of weapons to John Hull's ranch in Costa Rica and returned back to Florida with approximately a thousand kilos of cocaine."⁴ On the same program Betzner said that personnel working for Hull "would load the aircraft" and that Hull "physically saw the bags" of cocaine, and he described a whistle used to signal the strip before landing. Hull denied the allegations on the program, saying "There's never been any drug movement through this zone or through any of our farms," and that his strips had no air-to-ground communication system.⁴

Hull told investigators that his grass airstrip had only about 1,600 usable feet, with hills at one end and a river at the other, and that a Cessna 402B loaded as Betzner described would have been about 800 pounds over its gross weight for a takeoff from a grass strip.⁴ Betzner testified in 1988 that the strip he landed on was "a little over 3,000 feet long" and ran along the river.⁵

At the April 7, 1988 hearing John Kerry introduced a letter from the U.S. Customs Service to Ralph Martin, Department of Justice public integrity attorney, reporting that a Treasury Enforcement Communications System check of names from the 1986 subcommittee report returned 21 matches, and that "the name John Hull resulted in 293 possible matches." Kerry told the hearing that Hull continued to operate with impunity after that finding.⁶

Morales said a Cessna 404 Titan had been bought for the Contras and turned over to Adolfo Chamorro; Federal Aviation Administration records showed the aircraft purchased by a Costa Rican company, Cultivos Experimentales, listing Chamorro as vice-president, with a transfer in October 1984. Jack Blum, counsel to the Senate subcommittee, said the committee would not pursue Betzner's allegations because his credibility "could be easily attacked."⁷

The Kelso Visit

In August 1986, Joseph Kelso, a CIA and U.S. Customs informant fleeing DEA agents in Costa Rica, arrived at Hull's ranch seeking refuge. Kelso told Hull and Robert Owen that DEA agents had maps of cocaine lab locations but were protecting them, including "one large lab located in southern Nicoya. And another in Talamanca region." Hull wrote a detailed report and gave it to Owen to deliver to Oliver North, noting: "If the DEA people are in the drug business it should be stopped." Hull eventually concluded Kelso was telling the truth: "He was giving me locations of cocaine labs in Costa Rica and who they belonged to and then a week later one of them was busted and it was right where he said it was."⁸

The next morning, Costa Rican Rural Guards awakened Kelso with automatic rifle fire and beat him with rifle butts. A colonel told Hull the embassy said Kelso "should be shot if he resisted arrest." Hull's Contras surrounded the guards with 12-gauge riot guns. Hull broke up the standoff but permitted the guards to take Kelso away.⁸

Footnotes

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1. 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" ↩︎

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), chapter on other individuals (John Hull; March 7, 1989 reporting; July 31, 1987 SSCI briefing transcript), https://irp.fas.org/cia/product/cocaine2/other.html ↩︎

4. CIA Inspector General, Allegations of Connections Between CIA and the Contras in Cocaine Trafficking to the United States (96-0143-IG), Volume II (October 8, 1998), passages quoting the CBS West 57th Street broadcast of April 6, 1987 and Hull's responses. https://irp.fas.org/cia/product/cocaine2/other.html ↩︎

5. U.S. Senate, Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations, Drugs, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy: Hearings, S. Hrg. 100-773, Part 3 (April 1988), testimony of Gary Betzner, April 7, 1988, p. 263. https://archive.org/details/micro_IA41152832_0005 ↩︎

6. S. Hrg. 100-773, Part 3, pp. 270 to 271 (Kerry's statement and the Customs letter). https://archive.org/details/micro_IA41152832_0005 ↩︎

7. "Committee probes smugglers' claims," Tampa Tribune, September 3, 1987, p. 1B. ↩︎

8. Webb, Gary. Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion. Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 17: "We're going to blow your fucking head off" ↩︎