Born in Cuba, Prado and his family were caught in the midst of the Castro Revolution, and fled
their war-torn home for a better life in the U.S. Fifty years after that daring escape, he retired
from the CIA as the agency’s equivalent of a Two-Star General. During his two-and-a-half
decade career, he was one of the agency’s best and most dedicated Black Ops specialists.
Early in his career he served as a paramilitary officer in the agency’s elite Special Activities
Group, where he fought alongside the Contras in the U.S.’s clandestine war against Nicaragua’s
Sandinistas. Through his heroism and dedicated service there, he was awarded the CIA’s
Intelligence Medal of Merit. As soon as he returned stateside, however, he faced the political
firing squad of the Iran-Contra Scandal.
His career took him around the globe in duty stations in Central and South America as well as
the Philippines. Following those posts, Prado joined the highest echelons of the CIA
headquarters in Langley, VA. Toward the end of 1995, Prado was appointed Deputy Chief of
Station and co-founding member of the Bin Laden Task Force, followed by three years as head
of Korean Operations. It was at that point that he took on one of the most dangerous missions of
his career, re-establishing a once-abandoned CIA station inside a hostile nation long since
considered a front line of the fight against Islamic terrorism. Prado carried out covert operations
and developed assets that proved pivotal in the coming War on Terror. As Chief of Operations
for the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center, he was one of the architects of the agency’s covert war to
destroy Al Qaeda in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.