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Barry Seal "'Fat Man' key to mystery" By Michael Haddigan THE ARKANSAS GAZETTE June 26, 1988 Allegations of cocaine smuggling and international intrigue swirled about the Mena Airport and Seal for years. 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. Later, the CIA turns a blind eye to his drug smuggling in exchange for his delivery of . He flew down to Medelln for the meeting on April 8, accompanied by a Miami based cartel pilot who was unaware of Seal's role as an informant. [46] He warned Seal that he intended to set strict probation provisions and that if Seal violated these, the plea bargain could be revoked and Seal re-sentenced. While at a bar one night, Barry is found by a man saying his name is Monty Schafer (Domhnall Gleeson). Regardless, Jacoby's article led to the abandonment of the final piece of Barry Seal's undercover operation. The movie's title was changed to put less emphasis on the Arkansas connection, including the possibility that Bill Clinton was aware of what was going on. Seal pilote un avin C-123 que llevaba tambin unas cmaras fotogrficas escondidas. No. Some stories are stranger than fiction. "We're talking about one of the largest drug smugglers in America, and these agents loved him." Watch President Ronald Reagan's address to the nation on Nicaragua and Central America, delivered from the Oval Office on November 13, 1986. -Smuggler's End: The Life and Death of Barry Seal, Yes. And Seal never quit his job but was instead fired when Trans World Airlines learned hed been trafficking weapons instead of taking medical leave, as hed claimed. Adler Berriman 'Barry' Seal se convirti en el piloto ms joven de los Estados Unidos, destreza que us para hacerse uno de los hombres ms ricos de ese pas en la dcada de los 80's. Ello . She is a brunette, not a blond like Sarah Wright's character in the movie. [13] Seal's activities in Mena later became the subject of rumor and controversy, but according to Seal's biographer, former FBI agent Del Hahn, Seal did not use Mena as a drug transshipment point. He soon told the task force about the contract, and Seal was informed that the cartel was offering $500,000 for his death. Yes. Pablo . [59], In January 2023, Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards denied Vsquez's request for clemency. Seal took pictures during the Nicaragua sting operation that showed Pablo Escobar, Jorge Luis Ochoa Vsquez, and other members of the Medelln Cartel loading kilos of cocaine onto a C-123 . 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. The film never set out to be a documentary, according to films director Doug Liman, who described the blockbuster as a fun lie based on a true story, according to TIME. The Charmed, Doomed Life of Barry Seal. He stated that IranContra figure Oliver North had attended two meetings about the sting operation and had the motivation to release the information. He testified that Vlez was present when he was given the contract and that Vlez later asked Mermelstein to turn the contract over to him. -Refinery29, Yes. [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. Barry Seal - gunrunner, drug trafficker, and covert C.I.A. Originally planned for mid-April, the flight did not take place until the end of May. An Investigative Obituary. This led the U.S. to covertly supply arms to the Contras, the rebels fighting against the Sandinistas. In reality, there is no evidence that Seal was ever involved with the CIA. Max Mermelstein, a high-level cartel distributor in Miami, later testified in court that he was shown the documentary a few days after it was broadcast and was told that the cartel wanted Seal either captured or killed: the price was $500,000 if Seal was killed, and $1,000,000 if he was captured alive. He also provided testimony that led to drug charges against high-level government officials in Nicaragua and Turks and Caicos. Aterriz en el aeropuerto y junto con las personas que lo esperaban carg unos bultos. They were then picked up by Seal's ground team and transported to the Colombian distributors in Florida. [50] Before Mermelstein had located Seal, however, he was arrested by a federal task force in June 1985. 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. He had already been flying planes for nearly half his life, earning his student pilot . Saunders was videotaped paying a bribe to Seal in Miami, and was also successfully prosecuted. The American Made true story confirms that the real Barry Seal and his wife Debbie had three children (Aaron, Dean and Christina). 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. Then the Washington Post leaked the story, revealing that Seal was working undercover for the CIA. This draws the attention of the CIA. At the beginning of the movie, the fictionalized Seal gets bored on his daily flights with Trans World Airlines and begins performing daredevil stunts with passengers onboard. [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. [51], On the evening of February 19, 1986, Seal was shot to death in front of the Salvation Army Center, three weeks into his probation. The narcotics runner, Barry Seal, allegedly . 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. Set in the early 1980s, to combat the spread of communism . 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 . That aspect of who he was has never been disputed. The DEA agreed to put surveillance equipment on Barry Seals plane and track him on his next flight to Central America. [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. [25] Vaughan was an aide to Tomas Borge, Nicaraguan Minister of the Interior. He had previously been married to Barbara Bottoms (m. 1963-1971) and Lynn Ross (m. 1971-1972). While the filmmakers were shooting the movie in South America, a local pilot who was working with them said that he had met Barry. 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. [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]. On Feb. 19, 1986, three Colombian hitmen that had been hired by the Medelln cartel tracked Seal down at the Salvation Army. "You know, we're not making a biopic," said director Doug Liman. [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 . He testified that in January 1986, he was ordered by Jorge Ochoa to kill Seal. CBS Evening News (7/28/88), the only major network to cover the proceedings, reported on the testimony of DEA agent Ernest Jacobsen, who said that White House officials undermined a DEA probe of the Colombian cocaine kingpins by blowing an undercover informants cover when they leaked information in an attempt to link Nicaragua to the drug trade. 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. [52], Six Colombians were quickly arrested in connection with the murder. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. 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 . Barry Seal made a killing selling drugs for the Ochoa brothers, but after being outed as a key DEA informant, he was a marked man. Seal also made a public appearance before the President's Commission on Organized Crime, recounting his experiences as a drug smuggler. It was Reaves who provided Seal with his first connection to the Medelln cartel. 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. Alder Berriman Berry Seals life has become somewhat distorted over the years, and it isnt really a mystery why: such an exciting and controversial story is bound to be reproduced or exaggerated. Barry Seal, at the time he died, may have been the . He then was able to get a meeting with Vice President George H.W. Investigators are still trying to separate myth from reality. You can also support FAIR on Patreon! In Tom Cruise's latest film he plays the pilot, drug smuggler, and informant Barry Seal. [29], Seal made one more trip to Nicaragua on July 7, bringing money to Escobar to pay the Nicaraguans for landing rights. He was murdered on February 19, 1986 by contract killers hired by the cartel. The case was eventually dismissed in 1974 for prosecutorial misconduct, but in the meantime TWA fired Seal, who had falsely taken medical leave to participate in the scheme. Even criminals have a love life and Barry Seal was no different. All three trials resulted in convictions for all defendants. 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. The Story Behind an Infamous Escobar Cartel Assassination. Despus de haber trabajado como piloto de TWA, la mayor. TwitterBarry Seal, the drug smuggler-turned-DEA informant who helped take down Pablo Escobar. 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. ", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Barry_Seal&oldid=1141963050, Drug Enforcement Administration informants, People murdered by Colombian organized crime, Short description is different from Wikidata, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, Seal is portrayed by the actor Sebastin Snchez in, Seal is portrayed by theater director Thaddeus Phillips under his real name also of his nickname Ellis McKenzie in the 2013 TV series, This page was last edited on 27 February 2023, at 20:01. That film finds Seal (portrayed by Michael Par) being assassinated in a motorcycle drive-by shooting while he is driving and Robert Mazur (Cranston) is his passenger. But he did become one of the most important DEA informants, infiltrating the Medelln cartels inner circle. Yet, some believe that Seal was working for the CIA in the 1980s to fly guns and money to Nicaraguan rebels, a detail that the movie embraces. The real Barry Seal never had a brother-in-law who was killed by a car bomb. This doesn't add up with the true story. [22] The Colombian government had recently conducted a major raid on the cartel's manufacturing facilities at a remote jungle location called Tranquilandia, and they told Seal that they were making arrangements to set up shipping and production facilities in Nicaragua, where they had struck a deal with the Sandinista government. Seal told friends that the judge "made me a clay pigeon. Like in the movie, the American Made true story reveals that Barry made a living as a commercial airline pilot for several years. Conspiracy theorists have gone as far as suggesting that the government ordered the hit on Seal, not the cartel, a suggestion that has never been supported by any proof. 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. "[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. Yes. Concurrently, they had to make sure not to raise the suspicions of the ruthless Colombian drug lords. Money from the sale of weapons to Iran was used to help fund the rebels in Nicaragua. In fact, it was Seal who provided the DEA with the photos of Escobar that exposed him as a major drug kingpin. The second indictment charged Seal and three others with multiple counts of possession and distribution of methaqualone, phenobarbital, and meperidine.[16]. Photo 1: This is a photo taken July 23, 1955. 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. Jacoby mentioned Seal's mission as evidence, which effectively outed Seal as a government agent. ", No. 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 . He was then shot 5 times by cartel gunmen, but survived and eventually sought asylum at the U.S. embassy in Bogota. [8], In 1981, Seal began smuggling cocaine for the Medelln Cartel. Though hed done his job as an informant, Seal was still sentenced to six months of house arrest at a Salvation Army halfway house in Baton Rouge. And by 1978, according to The Gentlemans Journal, he had moved on to cocaine. (Barry) Seal was a key player at Mena. Domhnall Gleeson, right, stars in director Doug Liman's crime drama 'American Made,' based loosely on the story of Baton Rouge native Barry Seal, a pilot-turned-smugger-turned-federal-informant. 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. Widespread publicity and the general public outcry caused a delay of several months before Seal's murder trial began. It turns out Barry flew the plane all the way back to the United States. No other name is perhaps more associated with the Iran-Contra affair than Oliver North, but his involvement in exposing Barry Seal's mission and blowing his cover is unknown and entirely speculation. American Made is a fascinating biopic about Barry Seal, a commercial pilot who worked with the CIA to run drugs and guns in South America. They agreed to a sentence for Seal's Louisiana activities no greater than the sentence he received for his Florida smuggling, with both sentences to run concurrently. 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 . [59] Another eyewitness saw Quintero-Cruz outside the car, handing the MAC-10 to the car driver through the window after the murder. 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. In 1988, the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing that looked into how Seal's 1984 trip to Nicaragua was leaked to the press. 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. The extent of Barry Seal's involvement with the CIA in the 1980s has provided fuel for speculation and conspiracy theories. An interesting fact we learned while researching the true story was that while training for the Civil Air Patrol in Baton Rouge, Barry Seal met President John F. Kennedy's assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. At Guste's request, Meese launched an investigation to determine whether or not attorneys in Louisiana, Miami, and Washington had mishandled the case, and to determine whether or not Seal should have been forced into protective custody. Click the button below! The first indictment charged Seal alone with two counts of conspiracy to distribute methaqualone. 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 . Donate today to be a part of this important mission. As the cocaine was being loaded onto his plane, Seal noticed that the remote control for the camera was malfunctioning. Barry Seal immediately became a marked man. Born in Baton Rouge in 1939 . Indeed, at age 26, Seal became one of the youngest pilots to ever fly for Trans World Airlines. Three Colombians supposedly sent by the Ochoas, including Cruz and Velez, were later arrested at the airport. This leads to the CIA recruiting him to take reconnaissance photos in Central America. -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. Barry Seal was able to get photos of Pablos Escobar himself loading cocaine onto Barry's cargo plane in Nicaragua. [43] After listening to summaries of Seal's successful work for the DEA, Judge Norman Roettger sentenced Seal to time served (a little over three months in witness protection) and three years probation. -TIME. AKA Adler Berriman Seal. -Daily Mail Online. . From 1980 on, Bottoms was the main pilot in Seal's smuggling enterprise, often flying with Camp while Seal oversaw planning and operations. [18] Jacobsen was impressed with Seal's connections, especially the ones with the Ochoa family, and on March 28, Seal signed a letter agreeing to serve as a DEA informant. 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. But when he was busted in 1984, he decided to double-cross Escobar, and he soon became one of the Drug Enforcement Administrations most important informants. In 2017, Seal's life became the subject of a second Hollywood adaptation titled American Made and starred Tom Cruise. American Made, the new Tom Cruise crime drama out Sept. 29, has all the makings of a romp: drug running and arms smuggling. The guns were then flown to the contras in Nicaragua, the suit said. He received a phone call from Fabio Ochoa and Escobar, who both thanked him for his help, and was given $100,000 for any costs he incurred. Barry arrived that evening at approximately 6 p.m. and backed his white Cadillac into a parking space. -The Independent, Not likely. He was murdered on February 19, 1986, by contract killers hired by the cartel. After refueling, Seal left Los Brasiles flying without lights, and when he came close to Managua, he was fired on by Nicaraguan military units. -Daily Mail Online. 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. 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. The plane was hit and Seal had to make an emergency landing at Sandino International Airport in Managua. Universal Pictures. [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. In real life, his first encounter with the Medelln Cartel happened less dramatically. [21], Participants at the meeting included Pablo Escobar and Jorge, Fabio Jr., and Juan David Ochoa. If he had in fact been working for the CIA at the time, his connections didn't get him off the hook. . . 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. . Seal took pictures during a Nicaragua sting operation clearly showing members of the Colombian Cartel loading kilos of cocaine onto the plane. 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.