Joseph F. Fernandez was a Central Intelligence Agency

Central Intelligence Agency

The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...

 station chief in Costa Rica

Costa Rica

Costa Rica , officially the Republic of Costa Rica is a multilingual, multiethnic and multicultural country in Central America, bordered by Nicaragua to the north, Panama to the southeast, the Pacific Ocean to the west and the Caribbean Sea to the east....

 (operating under the pseudonym Tomás Castillo) and a figure in the Iran-Contra Affair

Iran-Contra Affair

The Iran–Contra affair , also referred to as Irangate, Contragate or Iran-Contra-Gate, was a political scandal in the United States that came to light in November 1986. During the Reagan administration, senior Reagan administration officials and President Reagan secretly facilitated the sale of...

.

Joe Fernandez, a Cuban-American, was a protégé of Duane Clarridge in the early years of the Contra operation. When Clarridge was replaced by Alan Fiers as the CIA's Central American point man, Fernandez allied himself with the National Security Council

United States National Security Council

The White House National Security Council in the United States is the principal forum used by the President of the United States for considering national security and foreign policy matters with his senior national security advisors and Cabinet officials and is part of the Executive Office of the...

's Oliver North

Oliver North

Oliver Laurence North is a retired U.S. Marine Corps officer, political commentator, host of War Stories with Oliver North on Fox News Channel, a military historian, and a New York Times best-selling author....

 rather than Fiers. North and Fernandez sought to revive the anti-Sandinista cause in the south, blaming Edén Pastora

Edén Pastora

Edén Atanacio Pastora Gómez is a Nicaraguan politician and former guerrilla who ran for president as the candidate of the Alternative for Change party in the 2006 general elections...

's erratic leadership for the Democratic Revolutionary Alliance

Democratic Revolutionary Alliance

The Democratic Revolutionary Alliance were the Southern Front guerrillas in Nicaragua that fought against the Marxist elements of the original Sandinista Revolution in 1979...

's moribund state. In early 1986, Fernandez convinced Pastora's field commanders to join Fernando "El Negro" Chamorro, who had allied with the northern-based Nicaraguan Democratic Force

Nicaraguan Democratic Force

The Nicaraguan Democratic Force was one of the earliest Contra groups, formed on August 11, 1981 in Guatemala City. It was formed to oppose Nicaragua's revolutionary Sandinista government following the 1979 overthrow of Anastasio Somoza Debayle...

. However, his efforts with North to build a strong Contra Southern Front, including aerial resupply of rebel forces in the south by Richard Secord

Richard Secord

Major General Richard V. Secord, Retired , is a United States Air Force officer convicted for his involvement with the Iran-Contra scandal only to be exonerated after a 1990 Supreme Court case found the statute used to be illegal....

's "Enterprise," enmeshed him in the Iran-Contra Affair.

Fernandez was originally indicted June 20, 1988 on four counts of obstruction and false statements. The indictment of Fernandez represented the first time that a CIA chief of station had been charged with crimes committed in the course of his duties as a CIA officer. Following a venue change, a new indictment was made April 24, 1989. The case was dismissed November 24, 1989 when Attorney General Richard L. Thornburgh refused to declassify information needed for his defense.

After charges were dropped, he founded Guardian Technologies International with Oliver North.