It alleges, explicitly and implicitly, that an aircraft operated by a CIA front company in 1984 used the airfield at Mena, Arkansas, as a stating point for weapons supply flights to the Contras in Nicaragua; on the return flights from Honduras, the aircraft allegedly carried illegal narcotics to Mena. The DEA felt this would be impossible to explain away, and Seal returned to the U.S. without cargo. Undercover cameras installed on Seal's plane captured photos on the tarmac of a Nicaraguan airport. All three were found guilty and sentenced to life without parole. The Florida sentence meant no jail time for Seal in Louisiana, yet Seal was pleading guilty to buying 200 kilograms of cocaine, already more serious than the Florida charges. . The real Barry Seal claimed that he started running covert operations for various government agencies as early as the late 1950s, while he was a member of the Civil Air Patrol in New Orleans, well before he became a TWA pilot. The explosives were supposedly going to anti-Castro Cuban fighters. While the filmmakers were shooting the movie in South America, a local pilot who was working with them said that he had met Barry. No. Enough cold, hard cash to . Saunders was videotaped paying a bribe to Seal in Miami, and was also successfully prosecuted. In the film, his abductors take him to a secret airstrip in the Colombian jungle where three businessmen, including Pablo Escobar, make him an offer he can't pass up. -Vulture.com, Yes. This draws the attention of the CIA. Watch President Ronald Reagan's address to the nation on Nicaragua and Central America, delivered from the Oval Office on November 13, 1986. Images like the one earlier on this page show Medelln Cartel boss Pablo Escobar with Sandinista government officials and soldiers, who were loading cocaine onto Seal's plane, nicknamed the Fat Lady. [59] Another eyewitness saw Quintero-Cruz outside the car, handing the MAC-10 to the car driver through the window after the murder. The first indictment charged Seal alone with two counts of conspiracy to distribute methaqualone. Ed Duffard, Seals first flight instructor, once recalled how Seal could fly with the best of them, according to Baton Rouges 225 Magazine. Like in the movie, the American Made true story reveals that Barry made a living as a commercial airline pilot for several years. "We're talking about one of the largest drug smugglers in America, and these agents loved him." Esta nota contiene spoilers de la pelcula Barry Seal: solo en Amrica.. Barry Seal fue un piloto estadounidense que vivi 46 aos.Lo mataron a balazos en 1986 tres sicarios contratados por el cartel de Medelln, mientras cumpla una probation en el Ejrcito de Salvacin, en Baton Rouge, Luisiana.. La corta vida de Seal -el capitn ms joven en volar un Boeing 707 y un 747 para la . As a progressive group, we believe that structural reform is ultimately needed to break up the dominant media conglomerates, establish independent public broadcasting and promote strong non-profit sources of information. [3] Seal's career with TWA ended in July 1972, when he was arrested for involvement in a conspiracy to smuggle a shipment of plastic explosives to Mexico using a DC-4. This operation involved a long, complicated cocaine shipment from Bolivia, refueling in Colombia, refueling again in Texas, and delivering the cocaine in Las Vegas. Seal was assigned to the Salvation Army's Community Treatment Center in Baton Rouge.[48]. Yes. ", No. In October 1985 he returned to court over the first indictment in Big Screamer, for which he had originally been sentenced to ten years. But the 1984 investigation got derailed when Seal told his handlers that cocaine was being trans-shipped through Nicaragua with the permission of high-level government officials. Barry Seal - gunrunner, drug trafficker, and covert C.I.A. The White House saw the pictures as proof of the communist Sandinista government's corruption and believed that the photos would help to convince the public of the need to support and arm the rebels (Contras) in Nicaragua. [33], A more detailed account of American efforts in Nicaragua appeared on July 17 in an article by reporter Edmond Jacoby, published on the front page of the Washington Times. Barry Seal. Seal took pictures during a Nicaragua sting operation clearly showing members of the Colombian Cartel loading kilos of cocaine onto the plane. The last movie was produced by Imagine Entertainment under Universal Pictures and was made after the company purchased Barry's life rights from Deborah at the cost of $350,000. This led the U.S. to covertly supply arms to the Contras, the rebels fighting against the Sandinistas. Covers; Columnists; . He was assigned to the 20th Special Forces Group and graduated from the United States Army Airborne School selection and training. He was unaware that a Colombian assassin was hiding behind one of the donation drop boxes. [68], Louisiana Attorney General William Guste wrote to United States Attorney General Edwin Meese criticizing the government's failure to protect Seal as a witness. Mermelstein, who had told the DEA of the murder contract after his arrest in 1985, testified that Ochoa, Escobar, and Cardona had asked him to take the contract and provided him with money and weapons to do the job. What Journalists, Scholars and Activists Are Saying, The State Department Versus US Reporters in El Salvador, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported. The cartel was happy, as was Seal, who loved evading law enforcement as much as he loved the money. In researching the American Made true story, we learned that Barry Seal was arrested by customs officers in Fort Lauderdale, Florida in 1983 as he tried to smuggle 200,000 units of Quaalude, a recreational drug, into the country. Seals career as a pilot for Trans World Airlines crashlanded in 1974 when he was caught trying to smuggle explosives to anti-Castro Cubans in Mexico. But nine years after he was murdered in a hail of bullets by Medellin cartel hit men outside a Salvation Army shelter in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, he has come back to haunt the reputations of three American presidents. It's certainly possible and it's what the movie proposes. Seal took a blurry snapshot which purported to show himself with a high-level Nicaraguan official named Federico Vaughn, and a Colombian drug czar unloading bags of cocaine at an airstrip in Nicaragua. Barry emerges from the plane covered in cocaine. The box housing the camera was supposed to be soundproof, but when he took the first picture, it was loud enough for everyone to hear. In fact, it was Seal who provided the DEA with the photos of Escobar that exposed him as a major drug kingpin. Arthur, the chief council, investigated the CIA and questioned Col. Oliver North, who is depicted in American Made. The Haunting Story Of How Sylvia Plath Died And The Tragic Events That Led Up To It, Amateur Metal Detectorist Unearths A 500-Year-Old Pendant Celebrating Henry VIII's First Marriage, What Stephen Hawking Thinks Threatens Humankind The Most, 27 Raw Images Of When Punk Ruled New York, Join The All That's Interesting Weekly Dispatch. Times Staff Writers. Government attorneys stated that Seal placed himself in danger by refusing to move his family and enter a witness protection program.[69]. In an effort to reduce or altogether avoid his 10-year prison sentence, Seal first tried to make a deal with a U.S. attorney, volunteering to give up information on the Ochoa family, but the deal was rejected. Tom Cruise's latest vehicle American Made, directed by Doug Liman, sees the A-lister play the infamous Barry Seal: a pilot who became a drug smuggler, who in turn became an informant, finding . Purwin was a passenger in a plane that went down, killing both Purwin and Venezuelan pilot Carlos Berl. As author Del Hahn states in his book about Barry Seal's life, Smuggler's End: The Life and Death of Barry Seal, there is no evidence to support claims that Barry Seal worked for the CIA. Three Colombians supposedly sent by the Ochoas, including Cruz and Velez, were later arrested at the airport. Lisa Seal Frigon, Barry's daughter from his first marriage, sued Universal, claiming that the studio should have purchased Barry's life rights from her, not his third wife Deborah who they paid $350,000. When Seal was convicted of smuggling charges, he became an informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration and testified in several major drug trials. American Made stars Tom Cruise as Barry Seal, a real-life former airline pilot who embarked on a wildly successful cocaine smuggling operation between Colombia and a tiny airstrip in Mena, Arkansas, in the 1980s. "Barry Seal was a friend of mine," Plumlee says. He once said in an interview, The exciting thing to me is to get yourself into a life threatening situation. [7] At his peak, he earned as much as $500,000 per flight transporting shipments of cocaine from Colombia to the United States. Concurrently, they had to make sure not to raise the suspicions of the ruthless Colombian drug lords. Still unknown at the time, the cartel would go on to make hundreds of millions from the explosion of cocaine use in the U.S. Barry Seal, who became known as "El Gordo" (The Fat Man), ended up being an integral part of that success. He was murdered on February 19, 1986, by contract killers hired by the cartel. November 15, 2017. [53], In addition to the state charges against the killers, federal charges were filed against Fabio Ochoa, Pablo Escobar, and a third cartel member, Rafael Cardona, for conspiring to violate Seal's civil rights by murdering him.[54]. A DC-4 was seized at the Shreveport Regional Airport loaded with almost seven tons of plastic C-4 explosives, 7,000 feet of explosive primer cord and 2,600 electric blasting caps. The story of Barry Seal, an American pilot who became a drug-runner for the CIA in the 1980s in a clandestine operation that would be exposed as the Iran-Contra Affair. Unfortunately, this meant that angry cartel members would know exactly where to find him. In 2017, Seal's life became the subject of a second Hollywood adaptation titled American Made and starred Tom Cruise. It was Reaves who provided Seal with his first connection to the Medelln cartel. "He would tell me all these wild stories about the missions he had flown. The DEA eventually took him up on his offer because of his knowledge and connections to the cartel. Author Del Hahn, a former FBI agent who wrote the book about Seal titled Smuggler's End: The Life and Death of Barry Seal, told Vice, "Seal thought he was smarter and cleverer than the Ochoas," who are one of the founding families of the Medelln Cartel. 1986, President Ronald Reagan showed one of the photos Seal had taken of Pablo Escobar and Nicaraguan government official Federico Vaughan loading cocaine onto Seal's C-123 cargo plane, The Fat Lady. -The Independent, In the movie, Barry Seal (Tom Cruise) starts working for the Medelln Cartel after they abduct him while he is refueling his plane and then make him an offer he can't refuse. He wasn't. From 1980 on, Bottoms was the main pilot in Seal's smuggling enterprise, often flying with Camp while Seal oversaw planning and operations. In many ways, the movie American Made does a faithful job of portraying Seals larger-than-life personality. -Daily Mail Online. He relocated to a small regional airport in Mena, Arkansas, which had a population of only 5,000. That last statement was quite the understatement. In total, he had illegally imported $3 to $5 billion worth of drugs and an estimated 56 tons of cocaine into the U.S., making over 100 flights. The Fat Lady, over Nicaragua. Comenz a volar aviones a temprana edad y segn su instructor de vuelo, Seal tena un talento innato. -Daily Mail Online, No. He testified that in January 1986, he was ordered by Jorge Ochoa to kill Seal. Seal was hit six times and died almost instantly. They also claimed that the pilot who died lacked the necessary experience for the flight. Photos; Visual Stories; Sub Menu 1. Barry Seal modern day outlaw, adventurer, and drug smuggler, full of fun, full of folly . FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation. During Bill Clinton's campaign to become president of the United States in 1992, his biggest financial contributor was a billionaire businessman named Jackson Stevens. [5] By 1978, he had expanded to flying significant loads of cocaine, pound-for-pound a much more profitable enterprise than marijuana smuggling. Widespread publicity and the general public outcry caused a delay of several months before Seal's murder trial began. YouTubeThe photograph taken by Barry Seal that outed Pablo Escobar as the Medelln cartels drug kingpin. Barry Seal, the drug smuggler-turned-DEA informant who helped take down Pablo Escobar. In 2017, Seals life became the subject of a Hollywood adaptation titled American Made, starring Tom Cruise. The cameras were rigged so that Seal could use a remote control button hidden in his pocket to snap photos at will. It turns out Barry flew the plane all the way back to the United States. Liman has referred to the film as "a fun lie based on a true story" (TIME). Barry Seal was one of the biggest drug smugglers in America in the 1970s and 80s. If he had in fact been working for the CIA at the time, his connections didn't get him off the hook. It was likely the longest day of his entire life. His first marriage, to Barbara Dodson, lasted from 1963 to 1971. And Tomas Borges, the Ortega brothers equivalent of the Gestapo chief, was one of the overseers of drug shipments of planeloads destined to Mena air strip, in Arkansas, in 1983. "[47], The probation conditions prohibited Seal from leaving Baton Rouge without written permission from Judge Polozola, who ordered Seal to spend every night at a halfway house from 6PM to 6AM for the first six months of his probation. [35], Following the exposure of the Nicaraguan investigation, the DEA had to move quickly to arrest the cartel distributors in Miami. In exploring the American Made true story, we discovered that Doug Liman's father, lawyer Arthur L. Liman, ran the Senate investigation into Iran-Contra. "Tom did all his own flying in the movie," says Liman. [6] Also, after his release from prison Seal met William Roger Reaves on the flight back to the U.S. Although newspapers published his name after his arrest, Seal was known to the Ochoas as Ellis MacKenzie. Sep 30, 2017 Stefan Andrews. Overall, though, the film captures just how incredible Seals life really was. September 29, 2017 12:18 PM EDT. [40], Soon after the broadcast, the heads of the Florida and Louisiana task forces met to work out an agreement that would allow Seal to continue working with the Florida task force and testify as a witness at trial. Stevens was the largest investment banker in the entire state of Arkansas. (Barry) Seal was a key player at Mena. After this look at the brazen smuggler Barry Seal, check out how the Medelln cartel became one of the most ruthless crime syndicates in history. Helicopters would pick up the contraband and transport it to off-loading sites and then on to Ochoa distributors in Miami by car or truck. Do your research about it, link the dots, because Democrats were defending the Sandinistas, while they smeared the Contras and the Reagan administration, who they were fighting to prevent the US and USSR from getting the IMD treaty nuclear weapons treaty from being signed. a secret camera in Seal's C-123 cargo plane snapped photos of an alleged Sandinista official loading cocaine aboard the aircraft. [42], Following his testimony in the Miami trials, Seal appeared in Florida court again over his second indictment in the Big Screamer operation. CASA NO MINUTO. The cartel tells Barry that they'll deal with JB, a suggestion that Barry opposes. In the American Made movie, Barry Seal's boredom with piloting commercial flights leads him to perform stunts that cause the oxygen masks to fall and frighten passengers. Ochoa was arrested in Spain on a U.S. warrant, but due to pressure from the cartel was never extradited to the U.S. -Court Documents (STATE of Louisiana v. Miguel VELEZ, Bernardo Vasquez, and Luis Carlos Quintero-Cruz), Yes. American Made: Directed by Doug Liman. The 70s. He carries it around and begins spending it, which attracts the attention of the local authorities. "Barry Seal, the charismatic narcotics air smuggler of the early . Yes. Seal made an estimated $60 million off smuggling drugs into the country and became one of the richest people in America. Seal took pictures during the Nicaragua sting operation that clearly showed Pablo Escobar, Jorge Luis Ochoa . Seal surrendered to federal authorities at the end of April 1983 and attempted to make a deal, first with the Florida task force, then with the Baton Rouge task force. I was young and it was impressive." [27], The plane Seal acquired was a C-123K, a large aircraft used primarily for military transport. A July 17, 1984 front-page Washington Times article by Edmund Jacoby described a link between Nicaragua's Sandinista government and the Medelln drug cartel. Universal Pictures. The Charmed, Doomed Life of Barry Seal. [32], However, the Nicaragua undercover operation came to an end soon after Seal's return from his second trip when it was reported in the press. Barry Seal liked to use pay phones. Soon, Seal caught the attention of none other than Pablo Escobar and his Medelln cartel. . They had anticipated Seal would serve substantial time in Florida and were now bound by the agreement Florida and Louisiana drug task forces had made in December 1984. [45], At Seal's sentencing hearing in January 1986, Judge Frank Polozola acknowledged that he was bound by the agreement, but informed Seal and his lawyer of his dissatisfaction with Seal's failure to receive jail time in Florida, forcing Polozola to sentence Seal to probation on much more serious charges in Louisiana. We rely on your support to keep running. Things became worse when a report in the Washington Times on July 17 . A work of Doug Liman, previously known for Bourne Identity and Mr. & Mrs. Smith, the new film, American Made, could turn out to be the crime drama of the year in its telling of Seal's story. Barry Seal was fired from TWA in 1974 for falsely citing medical leave when he was actually off trafficking weapons. Wouldn't it be fun if they were fooling around in a plane and the plane went into the same kind of parabolic arc and they got pinned against the ceiling?" Vasquez was identified as the purchaser of the halfway house vehicle by the car agency salesman and paid for hotel rooms and rental cars using his name. [38], While Seal had come to an agreement with the DEA and the Florida drug task force in March 1984, he was still under active investigation by state and federal authorities in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Little Rock, Arkansas. . Seal frequently smuggled 1,000 to 1,500 kilos of the illicit substance between Nicaragua and Louisiana, and he quickly earned a reputation in the world of drug trafficking. The DEA refused to let Seal leave the country due to the danger he was in, so Seal arranged for his ex-brother-in-law William Bottoms to make the flight. . The office referred Seal to DEA headquarters, which assigned DEA agent Ernst Jacobsen to debrief Seal and evaluate his potential as an informant. "He put the airplane into a parabolic arc and pinned me against the ceiling, and right in that moment, I had this inspiration. TwitterBarry Seal, the drug smuggler-turned-DEA informant who helped take down Pablo Escobar. UPI reported: "By linking the Sandinistas with drug traffic aid to the rebels accused of human rights violations might seem more palatable". No. In real life, his first encounter with the Medelln Cartel happened less dramatically. Then, flip through these wild Narco Instagram posts. The gunman was later identified as Luis Carlos Quintero-Cruz. [36], The evidence acquired from the arrest, plus the evidence gathered by Seal, provided the basis for the first drug trafficking indictment in the U.S. against Escobar and the Ochoas. Adler Berriman Seal, o como era mejor conocido Barry Seal, naci en Baton Rouge, Louisiana, el 16 de julio de 1939.Sus padres fueron Mary Lou y Benjamin Curtis Seal. The memorable scene never happened in real life. Born in Baton Rouge in 1939 . [36], Despite the exposure, Seal was able to put together a second major undercover operation for the DEA later that year. . Sixteen year-old Baton Rouge Civil Air Patrol cadet Barry Seal boards a U.S. Air Force plane on July 23, 1955 to fly to a two week training camp at Barksdale Air Force Base in Shreveport, Louisiana, where he will meet fellow cadet Lee Harvey Oswald . The movie's loose interpretation of the true story is echoed in the trailer when a voice-over by Tom Cruise as Barry Seal tells us that only "some of this sh*t really happened." Polozola took the occasion to say that people like Seal were "the lowest, most despicable people I can think of." [34] Although not a complete account, it gave enough information to spell an end to Seal's work with the cartel, and to the DEA's hopes of capturing the cartel leaders outside of Colombia. Surprisingly, American Made actually downplayed just how integral an asset Seal was to the DEA especially when it came to taking down the Medelln cartel. Questioned about the identity of the source, DEA agent Ernst Jacobson replied, "I heard that the leak came from an aide in the White House". Instead the Times ran a brief item in its Sunday national edition (7/31/88) quoting President Reagans weekly radio broadcast about how Sandinista officials are still involved in drug trafficking.