Overview

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.

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Reviews

“A riveting and illuminating deep dive into the anti-Castro movement in the US, which has had a formative impact on right-wing politics from Miami to the Nation’s Capital and beyond. Monkey Morales was the proverbial man without a country, and his willingness to use any means necessary to achieve his goals (including bombings, murder, and other terrorist acts) makes for an outrageously entertaining saga of counter-revolutionary hubris gone horribly wrong.” -- T.J. English, <I>New York Times</I> best selling author of <I>The Last Kilo</I>, <I>The Corporation</I>, and <I>Havana Nocturne</I> “Anyone who knows anything about Miami’s mythic webs of intrigue knows Monkey Morales lay at the heart of them all. Finally, a pacy biography that sorts fact from fiction—and needless to say the facts are much, much stranger than the tallest of tales.” -- Nicholas Griffin, author of <I>The Year of Dangerous Days: Riots, Refugees, and Cocaine in Miami 1980</I> “John le Carré and Ian Fleming together could not have invented a more compelling real life spook than what is found here in the pages of this definitive biography of the legendary Ricardo ‘Monkey’ Morales. His most closely guarded secrets and undercover exploits in espionage all are revealed here for the first time, finally providing the missing puzzle pieces that help resolve some of the biggest historical jigsaws of 20th century spy craft.” -- Fernand Amandi, MSNBC analyst “I’ve been trying to understand Ricardo Monkey Morales for thirty years. He left us all these clues—in police records, on the lips of exiles, across international press, in hours of surreal testimony. Fact. Fiction. Hyperbole. Heartbreak. You could never quite put his story down. Finally, Rick, Jr. and Sean Oliver connect it all for me.  This book—decades overdue—is a gift.” -- Roben Farzad, author of <I>Hotel Scarface: Where Cocaine Cowboys Partied and Plotted to Control Miami</I>, CNN, NPR Radio “The authors have done a masterful job putting all these elements together so cogently; I don’t know how anyone could’ve done it, but they’ve certainly done the job. I can’t say enough how impressed I am. Masterful job, just outstanding, masterful…over and over.” -- Jerome Sanford, former Assistant US Attorney

Author Information

Sean has never carried out a contract bombing, but he is the author of eight books and a 2021 Writer’s Competition winner in the script category. He is an actor and voice artist with over a hundred major motion picture and TV credits. He currently teaches in New Jersey where he lives with his wife and two daughters. Rick is the second of Ricardo Morales Navarrete’s four children. He has appeared on radio and podcasts for NPR, Actualidad Radio 1040 AM, Spyscape, The Opperman Report, and Rob Reiner and Soledad O’Brien’s Who Killed JFK. He is a father of two and lives in Michigan with his wife Cheri and cat Buddy.

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