The real Barry Seal never had a brother-in-law who was killed by a car bomb. 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. An "extensive joint investigation" by the FBI, Arkansas State Police and IRS revealed that Barry Seal used the Mena airport for "smuggling activity" from late 1980 until March 1984, according to an internal FBI document released last week. Instead, he says, he found this huge military plane that was not actually a military plane. Associated Press text, photo, graphic, audio and/or video material shall not be published, broadcast, rewritten for broadcast or publication or redistributed directly or indirectly in any medium. "According to some reports, the [Mena] airport, from 1981 to 1985, was a major transit point for the entrance of cocaine and heroin into the United States," Sherwood wrote. Current Address: HERA E Avalon Dr, Phoenix, AZ. "Allegations later surfaced that many of the gun shipments sent to Nicaragua as part of the Iran-Contra Affair were sent from the Mena Intermountain Municipal Airport. "Tom did all his own flying in the movie," says Liman. According to Del Hahn's book Smuggler's End, Barry Seal was not chummy with the cartel bosses. When ABC News interviewed Brown in the fall of 1994, the White House tried to malign him. Bush's anti-drug task force in hopes of convincing them of his value as an informant. Leveritt was reluctant at first, but soon warmed to the task and got to work. attorney.". He carried out his smuggling operation under the nose of then-Arkansas governor Bill Clinton. Watch an interview with the real Barry Seal where he discusses his undercover mission, and listen to President Ronald Reagan talk about the photos Seal obtained on the mission. Under the disguise of an aircraft refurbishing center, Mena was an arms and drug smuggling ring working for President Ronald ReagansContrawar against theSandinistas. FBI agents in Miami wanted to know what Seal might have told people at Rich Mountain Aviation regarding his smuggling activities, according to the document. 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. 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.When Seal was convicted of smuggling charges, he became an informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration and testified in several major drug trials. In its review of the 2017 movie "American Made" -- about Seal -- the New York Times called it the Conspiratorial Industrial Complex. He then was able to get a meeting with Vice President George H.W. 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. (function() { In its review of the 2017 movie "American Made" -- about Seal -- the New York Times called it the Conspiratorial Industrial Complex. It must be noted now that Clintons efforts to distance himself from Mena have persisted for years. Hahn told Vice that Barry was likable but "not as smart and clever as he thought he was. He spent his spare time hanging around the old Downtown Airport, now Independence Park, working odd jobs in exchange for flight time. "Allegations later surfaced that many of the gun shipments sent to Nicaragua as part of the Iran-Contra Affair were sent from the Mena Intermountain Municipal Airport. The scene was actually inspired by something that happened while director Doug Liman and Tom Cruise were training for the movie. : Then the plane dropped to what Brown calls an altitude a hell of a lot lower than what youd think youd fly. He suspected Seal was trying to evade radar. "I initiated a grand jury investigation in relation to money laundering through the Mena airport in 1985," Hutchinson said Friday. Soon after, JB is killed by a car bomb. How could that be? Brown has identified him as Dan Magruder, and says that he spoke admiringly of Clinton. 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. He had previously been married to Barbara Bottoms (m. 1963-1971) and Lynn Ross (m. 1971-1972). The explosives were supposedly going to anti-Castro Cuban fighters. MENA NOIR: Aircraft pilot Barry Seal, a Baton Rouge native who smuggled drugs into the U.S. for the Medellin Cartel during the 1980s, used this airport in Me. Seal was shot dead in 1986 at a safe house in Baton Rouge . By 1983, his earnings totaled $60 million, making him one of the wealthiest people in America. A Seal associate cut a runway deep in the woods. The pilot of the plane was Barry Seal, a legendary drug trafficker. Officials at the Arkansas Studies Institute suggested their concerns were legal and financial, associated with vetting the book, but Leveritt wasnt buying it. 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. "There are also allegations that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency used the airport as a base of operations to help train pilots and troops for the intervention in the Nicaraguan uprising by the Contras during the 1980s," according to the encyclopedia entry, which was written by Robert Sherwood of Georgia Military College. At the rear of the plane, by the beaners, he says were palettes on casters. 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. He said the money had been brought back from Tegucigalpa. AboutPressCopyrightContact. The New York Times and "West 57th," a CBS television news show, were working on stories about CIA activities at the Mena airport, according to a 1987 FBI memo released last week. He said parts of it could have been provided to people under previous information requests. In 1983, the DEA arrested him on drug smuggling charges. In 1981, Seal set up shop at Mena. Seal's Drug Enforcement Administration file also supports this, noting that he was smuggling marijuana as early as 1976, then adding cocaine to his resume in 1978. They married in 1974. Rayburn House Office Building, Chairman James Leach (R-IA), Committee on Banking and Financial Services, and staffer . Seal, a government informant, was murdered outside a halfway house on Airline Highway in Baton Rouge. But Brown says he is lying. Trooper Bobby Walker has told me that sometime in the mid-1980s he was at Mena with Clinton. "In other words, the charges of drug smuggling and money laundering were not enough to warrant the release of information about the use of the airport in the Iran-Contra Affair," wrote Sherwood for the Arkansas encyclopedia. Bill Clinton's Mena, Arkansas drug smuggling and money laundering operation through the Arkansas Development Finance Authority (ADFA).. Seal was a Green Beret in the Vietnam war and later a pilot for TWA. Like Clinton, Brown passed through a radical stage when he attended the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. Although, the truth, as it happened has never been revealed to the public. Fact-checking American Made revealed that Monty Schafer is a fictional character created to represent Barry Seal's contacts at the CIA. In February 1986, Seal was killed outside . Question: Was Barry Seal's C-123K aircraft (serial number 54-File: Attachment Size; DOC_0001289717.pdf: 37.21 KB: . Tom Cruise is set to play murdered DEA informant Barry Seal in Doug Liman's film Mena. During the past few years, the activity at the airstrip has aroused the interest of local law enforcement, who then attempted to conduct some investigations but were blocked by the U.S. Seal's mysterious activities have spawned books, movies and a cornucopia of conspiracy theories. Dwayne Brown says his brother seemed terribly upset, and that he immediately drove over to the Governors Mansion to meet him. Later, after Seal's cover was suspiciously blown, President Reagan used the photo shown below in a 1986 television address to the nation. However, her real name is Debbie, not Lucy. He says that Clinton arrived in a Beech aircraft, and was still there when he left for the day. "There are also allegations that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency used the airport as a base of operations to help train pilots and troops for the intervention in the Nicaraguan uprising by the Contras during the 1980s," according to the encyclopedia entry, which was written by Robert Sherwood of Georgia Military College. Yet she pressed on with her writing and finished the book. ", No. Debbie became Barry's third wife. The respected Arkansas journalist Mara Leveritt recently outlined what appears to be a continuing effort to cover up the Mena affair. "Despite the availability of evidence sufficient for an indictment on money laundering charges, and over the strong protests of state and federal law enforcement officials, the cases were dropped," according to the report. Hagan said he didn't know how many pages of material on Seal have yet to be made public by the FBI. Barry also had a daughter and a son not shown in the movie, Lisa and Alder, with his first wife Barbara Bottoms. Steal $20 Mil in U.S. COVID Relief Funds. They were all sentenced to life in prison. Election Law Update, Heavy Lifting Ne NYC Cleans Voter Rolls Thanks To Judicial Watch. When he was deposed, Bender was shown a photograph of Buddy Young. Owing to a case that Brown was then working on that could have implicated Tucker, Brown believes the demotion was illegal. He was hired by Trans World Airlines (TWA) in 1964 and at age 26 became one of the youngest Captains operating a Boeing 707. Lasater went to jail for a cocaine connection, as did his friend, Roger Clinton, Bill Clintons brother. 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. According to a 1988 Senate Foreign Relations Committee report, Seal's associates at the Mena airport were also being investigated. Leveritt has written convincing book-length studies of the Memphis Three case and the deaths of teenagers Don Henry and Kevin Ives, the Arkansas boys on the tracks. In Whos Afraid of Barry Seal?, in the Arkansas Times, Leveritt wrote that secrets are still being carefully kept, especially in Arkansas. In advance of the recent Tom Cruise movie about Seal, American Made, an official associated with the Arkansas Studies Institute, an affiliate of the University of Arkansas and the Central Arkansas Libraryboth state institutionsconvinced Leveritt to write a book about Mena, as a tie-in to the movie. Current Address: ZGFJ N 18th St, Phoenix, AZ. They shared an interest in books, ideas, and night life. Miguel Velez was the man driving the getaway car. "Despite the availability of evidence sufficient for an indictment on money laundering charges, and over the strong protests of state and federal law enforcement officials, the cases were dropped," according to the report. Why arent these pilots who flew trafficked minors arrested and charged? He was shot to death by two machinegun-wielding men while behind the wheel of his Cadillac in the . Seal said that he started by doing things like flying guns for the CIA to revolution fighters in Cuba in the late 1950s and flying operations for U.S. Army Special Forces in Laos just prior to the Vietnam War. -Vulture. He had expected to find, he says, a Baron or King Air, the kind of plane in which he sometimes accompanied the Governor, and in which he had some training as a pilot. He later claimed to have made as much as $50 million running 1,000 pounds of cocaine a month from Colombia. This document may not be reprinted without the express written permission of Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Inc. Material from the Associated Press is Copyright 2023, Associated Press and may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. "I can state absolutely that Oliver North had nothing to do with my story as far as I knew, or as far as I know today," said Jacoby. Then Brown says, Seal and the kickers returned, carrying four duffel bags. 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. Over a quarter of a century ago, George H.W. "You know, we're not making a biopic," said director Doug Liman. _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-17438127-1']); Then, Brown says, Seal reached again into the duffel bag and pulled out a kilogram of cocaine. The Ochoa Family, along with Pablo Escobar and others, were the founders of the Medelln Cartel. He took it out for a test flight and never came back." Seal, a pilot, moved much of his smuggling operation from Baton Rouge to Rich Mountain Aviation at the Mena Intermountain Airport, according to the May 1986 FBI memo. Purwin was a passenger in a plane that went down, killing both Purwin and Venezuelan pilot Carlos Berl. Approved for Release Date:September 28, 2009. var sc_security="740aa5bc". In his book, he uses case documents and first-person accounts to dispel this idea and other half-truths about Seal. Barry Seal was an American-born Trans World Airlines pilot who . JB is fictional. Seal became a federal informant in March 1984. Brown says Seal told him theres good money to be had. But Brown, says he was out of that game for good. Associated Press text, photo, graphic, audio and/or video material shall not be published, broadcast, rewritten for broadcast or publication or redistributed directly or indirectly in any medium. Tips: [emailprotected], Investigative Bulletin is published by Judicial Watch. "Prior to his death, Seal admitted to smuggling large quantities of cocaine from South America (Columbia) to United States and testified before Senate investigative committee," according to the FBI memo, which referred to a telephone call between agents in Little Rock and Miami. 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. Dwayne Brown says he knew his brother had made some unexplained trips out of the country. 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. 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. In other words: nothing to see here, move on. Arthur, the chief council, investigated the CIA and questioned Col. Oliver North, who is depicted in American Made. 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