Monkey Morales

Cuban exile turned CIA operative Ricardo “Monkey” Morales justifies his moniker by orchestrating decades of chaos in the world of international espionage.

The legend of Cuban exile turned US government operative Ricardo Morales Navarrete has been known in espionage circles for decades. Dubbed “The Monkey” for his disruptive and unpredictable escapades, Morales grabbed headlines for decades as tales of his bombings, arrests, assassination attempts (both those he executed and those he suffered), and testimony constructed a real-life spy adventure unlike anything brought to page or screen.

His story delves into diverse aspects of American history, including our nation’s conflict with Cuba, our anti-communism military support overseas, JFK’s story before and after the Bay of Pigs, and the explosion of the illegal narcotics industry in 1970s Miami. Morales was a contract agent for the CIA and a valuable asset for the FBI; he even shared how he’d met Lee Harvey Oswald at a CIA camp in Florida before JFK’s assassination. Morales’s counterintelligence skills-for-hire were also a prized utility for Cuban drug kingpins in Miami, many of whom were discarded ex-CIA operatives.

Monkey Morales blends James Bond, Rambo, and Scarface—a concoction of danger, politics, and family drama told in its entirety for the first time by authors Sean Oliver and Morales’s son, Ricardo Morales, Jr.