Ricardo Morales

Ricardo Morales Navarrete (June 14, 1939 – December 20, 1982), also known by the moniker "El Mono" or "Monkey",

Biography Ricardo Morales was born in Havana, Cuba on June 14, 1939. He fled Cuba and came to the United States in 1960. He worked for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for a period, including a stint in the Congo in 1964, where he claimed to have killed hundreds while serving as a mercenary. He also worked in Miami while the CIA was looking to destabilize the Fidel Castro government in Cuba, and took part in the Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba in 1961. A report in the New York Times said that within the CIA, Morales was known for his "quick wits and courage".

Informant activity In 1968, Cuban exile militant Orlando Bosch was arrested and tried for firing a bazooka at a Polish freighter. Morales, as an informant for the FBI, had infiltrated Bosch's group "Cuban Power", described by the government as a terrorist group. Morales taped his conversations with Bosch, and also gave him bogus explosives that were later used in a bomb placed on a British freight ship. As an FBI informant, Morales was among those who testified against Bosch at the trial, and the recordings of their conversations showed Bosch's knowledge of explosions on board foreign ships. and soon after, Bosch and fellow Cuban exile Luis Posada Carriles were implicated in the attack and arrested in Venezuela.

Morales claimed that the plane, which carried the entire Cuban fencing team, secretly carried Cuban DGI operatives.