[2] He was assassinated in 1986, a hit rumoured to have been ordered by George H. W. Bush, whose personal telephone number was found on . 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. . This draws the attention of the CIA. They were all sentenced to life in prison. As part of his reduced sentence, the judge had ordered Barry to spend his nights, from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m., at a Salvation Army halfway house for six months. No. What Journalists, Scholars and Activists Are Saying, The State Department Versus US Reporters in El Salvador, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported. 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. DEA Agent Ernest Jacobsen later said the technology they used was the most expensive cryptic radio communications we had ever seen at the time.. MIAMI (AP) _ The plane downed in Nicaragua had been used in Vietnam, a TV movie and possibly in an undercover drug sting that led to the indictment of a Sandinista official, newspapers reported today. [20], The Florida Task Force plan called for Seal to set up a cocaine purchase with the Ochoas and other cartel members, providing the basis for indictments in the U.S. Seal had previously dealt with the cartel through another associate so that they were unaware of his real name. Upset that he has lost his pension and healthcare at TWA, he embraces the idea of making $2,000 per kilo of cocaine smuggled into the United States. 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. Bush's anti-drug task force in hopes of convincing them of his value as an informant. Cruise's Seal gathers intelligence by flying low over Guatemala and Nicaragua and snapping photos from his plane. 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. The most important witnesses were Max Mermelstein and Luis Carlos Uribe-Munera. Yes. The two American . While there, he had a chance meeting with Jorge Ochoa's New Orleans business manager. With his real name unknown to the cartel, Seal was in the perfect position to avoid prosecution by becoming a government informant or so he thought. Please consider donating. Wikimedia CommonsA Fairchild C-123 military cargo plane similar to Barry Seals Fat Lady.. Either Seal take these photos, or go straight to prison. Doug Liman had previously modeled Chris Cooper's villain in The Bourne Identity after North, which reveals Liman's feelings about the controversial figure North. The Fat Lady, over Nicaragua. For example . 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. Executing secret missions for the government in the movie might add a sort of patriotism and redeeming quality to his character, but in real life Barry Seal was a drug smuggler first and foremost. [21], Participants at the meeting included Pablo Escobar and Jorge, Fabio Jr., and Juan David Ochoa. New York, NY 10001. Adler Berriman "Barry" Seal was an American commercial airline pilot who became a major drug smuggler for the Medelln Cartel. Barry and his wife talked about going into witness protection, but like in the movie, he decided against it. They referred him to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). The memorable scene never happened in real life. In 1988, the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing that looked into how Seal's 1984 trip to Nicaragua was leaked to the press. He was married three times throughout his life. Barry Seal vol nuevamente a Nicaragua con una misin secreta de la CIA: tomar fotos de los involucrados en el operativo de narcotrfico en el aeropuerto Los Brasiles. -Court DocumentsThe 2016 Bryan Cranston movie The Infiltrator also depicts Barry Seal's assassination, but it is historically inaccurate. Sep 30, 2017 Stefan Andrews. In court documents, the family alleged that "lapses in planning, coordinating, scheduling, and flight safety" contributed to the fatal crash in the mountains of Colombia. [55] The trial began in April 1987. He soon told the task force about the contract, and Seal was informed that the cartel was offering $500,000 for his death. -Daily Mail Online, No. However, when a drug shipment was seized by the DEA, the Medellin Cartel blamed Seal for the loss. The real Barry Seal never had a brother-in-law who was killed by a car bomb. After refueling, Seal left Los Brasiles flying without lights, and when he came close to Managua, he was fired on by Nicaraguan military units. On the trip, Seal managed to snap photos of Nicaraguan soldiers, Sandinista government officials, and even Pablo Escobar himself. Seal took pictures during the Nicaragua sting operation that clearly showed Pablo Escobar, Jorge Luis Ochoa . Exclusive: Tom Cruise's portrayal of drug-smuggler-turned-government-informant Barry Seal is a fast-paced visit back to the Reagan era . No. The real Barry Seal claimed he had been working for agencies . [49] Although the newspaper report and the arrest of their Miami distributors confirmed that their pilot was DEA, it was not until the cartel members received a copy of Seal's television documentary that they learned McKenzie was Seal. On Feb. 19, 1986, Barry Seal, a very prominent CIA drug smuggler and ace pilot, was murdered outside his halfway house in Baton Rouge, LA. Seal's story is the focus of the . Nicaragua, where Seal flew a cocaine shipment in a C-123 outfitted with cameras to prove that Nicaragua's Sandinista government was involved with the drug . He was then shot 5 times by cartel gunmen, but survived and eventually sought asylum at the U.S. embassy in Bogota. "Doug and I are both aviators, so we both love to fly.". From the get-go, he was a talented aviator, and before he graduated from high school in 1957, Seal had earned his private pilot wings. [10][11] By 1982, Seal was using over a dozen aircraft in his smuggling operation. However, there was a moment when the pilot thought he had given himself up. Barry Seal was an ace pilot and a drug smuggler of such proportions that he has been called "the biggest drug smuggler in American History". LAKE CHARLES, LA., MAY 13 -- Three Colombians were convicted of first-degree murder today in the machine-gun slaying of informer Adler (Barry) Seal, whose undercover work had led to the indictment . [66] Jacoby later denied that North was the source of his story and attributed it to a deceased staff member for Representative Dan Daniel. [50] Before Mermelstein had located Seal, however, he was arrested by a federal task force in June 1985. He had already been flying planes for nearly half his life, earning his student pilot's license at age 15 and pilot's license at 16. As stated in the previous question, there is no strong evidence to confirm that Barry Seal was working with the CIA prior to becoming an informant after his arrest in 1983. They also claimed that the pilot who died lacked the necessary experience for the flight. Adler Berriman "Barry" Seal (July 16, 1939 February 19, 1986) was an American commercial airline pilot who became a major drug smuggler for the Medelln Cartel. The narcotics runner, Barry Seal, allegedly . [29], The drugs could not be distributed, and the immediate arrest of those handling the vehicle would suggest to the Colombians that Seal had betrayed them, so DEA agents staged an accident with the camper, allowing the driver to escape. FAIRs work is sustained by our generous contributors, who allow us to remain independent. Barry's widow, Deborah Seal, says that he began smuggling drugs in 1975, first focusing mainly on marijuana. The gunman hurried into a waiting Buick, which sped away. No. Barry Seal's apparent piloting of a JFK assassin getaway plane points, again, to Bush Sr. and his cronies (the Biderman part of the DuPont family, Rockefellers, and more). -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. [13], To avoid this unwanted attention, Seal moved his aircraft to Mena Intermountain Regional Airport in Mena, Arkansas, where he did maintenance and modifications to improve the planes' carrying capacity and avionics. When did you first hear about Barry Seal?. What is certain is that Barry Seal did work for Pablo Escobar and the Ochoas as a drug smuggler for the Medelln Cartel and single-handedly had one of the largest impacts on the cocaine epidemic in the U.S. in the early 1980s. TwitterBarry Seal, the drug smuggler-turned-DEA informant who helped take down Pablo Escobar. And it was there, according to The Gentlemans Journal, that he was arrested by the DEA in 1984 with 462 pounds of Escobars cocaine on his plane. In an effort to frame the Sandinistas, the CIA installed a hidden camera in Seals C-130 cargo plane (the same plane, incidentally, that later crashed in Nicaragua leading to the capture of Eugene Hasenfus in October 1986). On the morning of June 25, Seal, Camp and their mechanic, Peter Everson, landed . The true story of Barry Seal, a TWA pilot who became a drug smuggler and government informant, played by Tom Cruise in "American Made." . While at a bar one night, Barry is found by a man saying his name is Monty Schafer (Domhnall Gleeson). [28], Seal returned to the Los Brasiles airfield in Nicaragua on June 25. Watch President Ronald Reagan's address to the nation on Nicaragua and Central America, delivered from the Oval Office on November 13, 1986. Barry Seal's smuggling operation began in Louisiana, and like in the American Made movie, he sometimes pushed packed duffel bags full of drugs out of his plane and into the Atchafalaya basin, to be collected by associates on the ground. Wikimedia CommonsBarry Seal started his career as a pilot for Trans World Airlines but he soon turned to the more profitable life of drug smuggling. Times Staff Writers. A leak regarding the operation came to light before Seal's second trip. He took it out for a test flight and never came back." I guess he also thought Colombians would stick out like a sore thumb in Louisiana and they wouldn't come here." 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. All three trials resulted in convictions for all defendants. Now thats excitement.. Alder Berriman, or Barry Seal, was one of America's most notorious drug smugglers. Seal was originally introduced to the Medelln cartel members as a pilot named Ellis McKenzie. Her character in the American Made movie is much more aware and suspicious of her husband's activities, stating that she flat out doesn't trust him, which is the opposite of Seal's real-life wife. Facing a heavy sentence, and having been rejected by regional drug task forces in both Florida and Louisiana, Seal decided to try contacting the Vice President's Drug Task Force, a special program in the office of then-Vice President George Bush. Adler Berriman "Barry" Seal (July 16, 1939 - February 19, . The DEA initially tried to protect Seal, but he refused to go into the Witness Protection Program. He stated that IranContra figure Oliver North had attended two meetings about the sting operation and had the motivation to release the information. The photo shows Federico Vaughan, who Seal claimed was a top aide to Tomas Borge, the Nicaraguan government's . As Barry opened the driver's side door to get out of the car, the gunman rushed from behind the drop box and fired a .45 caliber Mac-10 machine gun, hitting Barry in the head and body several times. According to Del Hahn's book Smuggler's End, Barry Seal was not chummy with the cartel bosses. [39] Seal attempted to push back against the investigation by appearing in a television news series broadcast by WBRZ in Baton Rouge in November 1984. Money from the sale of weapons to Iran was used to help fund the rebels in Nicaragua. When it did, the overloaded plane crashed at the Colombia airfield on takeoff. There is no information on Barry Seal's net worth, but it must have been substantial. . Universal Pictures. Debbie became Barry's third wife. Seal took pictures during a Nicaragua sting operation clearly showing members of the Colombian Cartel loading kilos of cocaine onto the plane. Sep. 28, 2017. It is believed that the Colombians put a hit out on Barry after they learned he was going to help the feds with the extradition of Jorge Ochoa from Spain, one of the heads of the Medelln Cartel. Undercover cameras installed on Seal's plane captured photos on the tarmac of a Nicaraguan airport. Born: 19-Jul-1939 Birthplace: Baton Rouge, LA Died: 19-Feb-1986 Location of death: Baton Rouge, LA Cause of death: Murder Remains: Buried, Greenoaks Memorial Park, Baton Rouge, LA Gender: Male Race or Ethnicity: White Sexual orientation: Straight Occupation: Criminal, Government Nationality: United States Executive summary: DEA informant, CIA contract pilot "You know, we're not making a biopic," said director Doug Liman. [56] Mermelstein also knew the defendant Vlez. Although Seal had pleaded guilty, with the support of his DEA supervisors, he was sentenced to five years of unsupervised probation. -Daily Mail Online, The movie proposes that Barry Seal's first foray into smuggling drugs happened in 1980 after he was kidnapped while refueling his plane in Colombia. 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. 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 . Discerning fact from fiction about Barry Seal, who was killed Feb. 19, 1986, in Baton Rouge by machine gun-wielding Colombian hit men, is a difficult endeavor. In addition to implicating Escobar as a drug kingpin, Seals photos provided evidence that the Sandinistas, Nicaraguan revolutionaries who overthrew the countrys dictator in 1979, were being funded by drug money. . No. 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. Yet, it's also certainly possible that Seal had no involvement with the CIA in the early 1980s at all, given there is nothing to support the claim but rumors. 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. [25] The drugs were unloaded by the military and Seal and his co-pilot were taken to detention in downtown Managua, where they were released to the cartel's Nicaraguan contact, Federico Vaughan. After a discussion about how to move the increased flow of cocaine, Escobar decided to keep the first shipment in Nicaragua and have Seal return to the States and buy a larger plane. If not, they would continue on to drop sites over the Louisiana bayou, where duffel bags full of cocaine were tossed into the swamp. Covers; Columnists; . No word of the Hughes hearings appeared in the Washington Post or the New York Times. [59], In January 2023, Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards denied Vsquez's request for clemency. [5] By 1978, he had expanded to flying significant loads of cocaine, pound-for-pound a much more profitable enterprise than marijuana smuggling. 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. "I helped rig that camera on the 123." (The C-123 "Fat Lady" was the aircraft Seal used on a government-sanctioned drug run to Nicaragua.) After being caught in Honduras with 40 kilograms of cocaine in 1979, Barry spent nine months in a Honduran jail. Although Seals first foray into smuggling failed, by 1975, he had started trafficking marijuana between the U.S. and Central and South America. by Allie Gemmill. The DEA had been informed before the publication of the Jacoby article, so they were still able to have Seal set up a meeting with the chief cartel supervisor in Miami, Carlos Bustamonte, and arrested him on July 17, along with other cartel employees. Also, Mr. Seal, who also went by the name Bill Elders as well as variations of his real name, "testifies he made 6 or 7 hundred thousand dollars in trafficking drugs after he went to work for . Advertisement As a child in the 1950s, Seal worked odd jobs around the citys old airport in exchange for flight time. Before returning to Nicaragua, the DEA arranged for CIA technicians to install hidden cameras inside the plane. While the filmmakers were shooting the movie in South America, a local pilot who was working with them said that he had met Barry. Once he flew into U.S. airspace, Seal would drop his plane to 500 feet and slow to 120 knots to mimic a helicopter on the radar screen of anyone who was watching, as the small aircraft frequently flew between oil rigs and the coast. On July 28, the House Judiciary subcommittee on crime, chaired by Congressman William Hughes (D-NJ), held the first of a series of hearings into whether Reagan administration officials condoned drug smuggling and other criminal activities to further its Central America policy. WASHINGTON . The truth behind the CIA/Mena Conspiracy!Notorious Louisiana drug smuggler Barry Seal made countless runs from Central America to the United States, flying thousands of pounds of cocaine and marijuana into the country and making millions of dollars. In fact, in early 1986 Barry Seal was threatening GHW Bush to get the IRS off his back or he (Seal) was going to blow the whistle on the Contra scheme and CIA drug smuggling. Daniel Rennie is a freelance writer residing in Melbourne, Australia. In the American Made movie, Barry Seal (Tom Cruise) crash lands a plane in a suburban neighborhood in an effort to escape the DEA who ordered him to land. On 1st July, 1972, Barry Seal was arrested in New Orleans and accused of sending C4 explosives to anti-Castro Cubans in Mexico. In his book, he uses case documents and first-person accounts to dispel this idea and other half-truths about Seal. [65] In an interview with Frontline, North said he was told by his superiors on the National Security Council to brief Senator Paula Hawkins about the operation, but he denied leaking the report. However, the U.S. needed a way to covertly get the funds and weapons to the rebels. No. It was likely the longest day of his entire life. Exposure of Nicaraguan undercover operation, Criticism of U.S. failure to protect Seal, President's Commission on Organized Crime, "Barry Seal murder in Baton Rouge 25 years ago helped expose Iran-Contra debacle", "Louisiana governor denies parole for man who helped kill Barry Seal for Escobar's cartel", "Slain drug smuggler Barry Seal's daughter sues to halt movie on her father's life", "Family of murdered drug smuggler sue Universal over Tom Cruise film Mena", "North's name bandied about on news leak", "Special Reports - Interview - Drug Wars", "Informants murder puts head on authorities", "TV Reviews: 'Doublecrossed': Story of Drugs and Politics", "Who Killed Barry Seal? Adler Berriman 'Barry' Seal became the youngest pilot in the United States, a skill he used to become one of the richest men in that country in the 1980s. 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. They put out a contract to kidnap or murder Seal. [30] Unfortunately, the driver was arrested by local police, and the circumstances of the seizure raised the suspicions of the cartel. 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. When the cartel caught wind of Seals betrayal, they sent three hitmen to gun him down in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, bringing a bloody end to his work as an informant. -Smuggler's End: The Life and Death of Barry Seal. When asked who his source was, Jacoby implied that it was "an aide in the White House" and that Oliver North had the most motivation to release the information. "He thought we had more time. Donate today to be a part of this important mission. Armed with machine guns, they shot him to death outside the building. -Daily Mail Online, "Mena" refers to the small town in Arkansas where Barry Seal moved his operation, smuggling in drugs to a clandestine airfield under the nose of then-Governor Bill Clinton. [24] The cartel provided a new plane, but it lacked the capacity for a direct flight to the U.S., so the cartel arranged a stopover in Nicaragua earlier than one planned at an airfield in Los Brasiles near Managua. The explosives were supposedly going to anti-Castro Cuban fighters. operative extraordinaire - is hardly a familiar name in American politics. That last statement was quite the understatement. Before returning to Nicaragua, the DEA arranged for CIA technicians to . Other photos like the one below show Federico Vaughan (center, striped shirt), a man that Seal claimed was a top aide of Tomas Borge, the Sandinista Minister of the Interior. Yes. He was murdered on February 19, 1986 by contract killers hired by the cartel. All three were found guilty and sentenced to life without parole. And by 1978, according to The Gentlemans Journal, he had moved on to cocaine. He ultimately offered to act as an informant, passing along information about Escobar, the Medelln cartel, and high-level government officials in Central America who were involved in trafficking drugs to the U.S. Liman has referred to the film as "a fun lie based on a true story" (TIME). [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. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. After several months of contacts, the agent negotiated a deal with Seal to smuggle 1,200 pounds of methaqualone tablets into the United States (the tablets were counterfeits, made of chalk). Seal's exploits brought him into close contact with infamous figures like Medelln cartel kingpins Pablo Escobar and Jorge Ochoa and Panama dictator Manuel Noriega and he was . -Good Morning America. The Ochoa Family, along with Pablo Escobar and others, were the founders of the Medelln Cartel. Fact-checking American Made revealed that Monty Schafer is a fictional character created to represent Barry Seal's contacts at the CIA. Just prior to the movie's release, news broke that the family of deceased stunt pilot Alan Purwin was suing American Made's producers for wrongful death. "We're talking about one of the largest drug smugglers in America, and these agents loved him." I never saw drugs, that's for sure." He was murdered on February 19, 1986, by contract killers hired by the cartel. Despite the movie attempting to pin it on North, Jacoby later said that North was not his source and that it was a deceased Special Forces and CIA guy named Ted Lunger, who at the time worked as a staff member for Representative Dan Daniel. No one has been able to tell us". "Barry Seal was a friend of mine," Plumlee says. The Nicaragua drug story first appeared in the Washington Times (7/17/84) and was immediately given big play by all the major papers, wire services and TV networks. Hed work at the drop of a hat, and he didnt care, a fellow smuggler later recalled of Seal. [61], Seal was married three times. Adler "Barry" Seal's third wife and the three children she had with him did not violate the slain drug smuggler-turned-government informant's privacy rights when they sold the story of his life to . Ed Duffard, Seals first flight instructor, once recalled how Seal could fly with the best of them, according to Baton Rouges 225 Magazine. As the cocaine was being loaded onto his plane, Seal noticed that the remote control for the camera was malfunctioning. 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. Subcommittee chairman William J. Hughes strongly suggested that North was the source of the leak, but Representative Bill McCollum said, "we don't know who leaked this. "The DEA agents who worked with Barry loved him," said director Doug Liman. Purwin was a passenger in a plane that went down, killing both Purwin and Venezuelan pilot Carlos Berl. The plane Seal acquired was a C-123K, a large aircraft used primarily for military transport. Soon, Seal relocated his smuggling operations to Mena, Arkansas. Additionally, the movie version of Seal quits his job with the airline to pursue a life of crime. Like in the movie, the American Made true story reveals that Barry made a living as a commercial airline pilot for several years.
