Despite his successful career, Seal had his eye on more exhilarating endeavors. WASHINGTON . Yes. 5 Jackson Stevens. 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. No. 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. He carries it around and begins spending it, which attracts the attention of the local authorities. "One day Barry came in and said there was a contract on him - half a million dead, a million alive," says widow Debbie Seal. -The Independent, Not likely. The lawsuit claims that the pilots were overworked and that the crash happened after a 12-hour workday. 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. A leak regarding the operation came to light before Seal's second trip. The second marriage, to Lynn Ross, lasted from 1971 to 1972. The extent of Barry Seal's involvement with the CIA in the 1980s has provided fuel for speculation and conspiracy theories. ", No. [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. 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. Barry also had a daughter and a son not shown in the movie, Lisa and Alder, with his first wife Barbara Bottoms. 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. The state narcotics agents who were investigating Seal in Baton Rouge sued over their depiction in the series, but the lawsuit was dismissed. . [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. 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 soon told the task force about the contract, and Seal was informed that the cartel was offering $500,000 for his death. 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. For example . I was young and it was impressive." His first marriage, to Barbara Dodson, lasted from 1963 to 1971. [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. Daniel Rennie is a freelance writer residing in Melbourne, Australia. [21], Participants at the meeting included Pablo Escobar and Jorge, Fabio Jr., and Juan David Ochoa. 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 . And by 1978, according to The Gentlemans Journal, he had moved on to cocaine. Seal told friends that the judge "made me a clay pigeon. The ultimate hope was to arrest the cartel leaders in a jurisdiction where it would be easy to extract them. New York, NY 10001. 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. -The Hollywood Reporter, Debbie Seal insists that she was unaware of what her husband was up to. His non-active duty was served in the 245th Engineer Battalion, where his MOS was radio telephone operator. This doesn't add up with the true story. Alder Berriman, or Barry Seal, was one of America's most notorious drug smugglers. She is a brunette, not a blond like Sarah Wright's character in the movie. He took it out for a test flight and never came back." He is familiar with Barry's work as a pilot, but . 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. He made four trips to Nicaragua that year, allegedly to document the complicity in cocaine trafficking. The pilot flew into Nicaragua with CIA cameras on his plane, taking photos showing Escobar and several other members of the Cartel . On July 17, 1984, an article detailing Seals infiltration of the Medelln cartel hit the front page of the Washington Times. When Seal landed in the airfield, he was immediately surrounded by armed soldiers. The Fat Lady, over Nicaragua. Synopsis. 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. . We rely on your support to keep running. . Saunders was videotaped paying a bribe to Seal in Miami, and was also successfully prosecuted. It was likely the longest day of his entire life. 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. [9], Seal's smuggling method was to use low-flying planes and airdrop drug packages in remote areas of Louisiana. In 1981, he was making daily deposits of $50,000 into an account at a bank in the Bahamas. [4], Seal admitted that he started smuggling small amounts of marijuana by air in early 1976. 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. FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation. 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 . Then the Washington Post leaked the story, revealing that Seal was working undercover for the CIA. Another shipment was also planned at this time, but under instructions from the DEA, Seal told Escobar his landing site was under DEA surveillance and unsafe for transport to avoid the need to seize a second load. "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. 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. [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. 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 was a pilot for TWA and later became a drug smuggler. [66][67] Hawkins told Frontline that neither she nor her staff leaked the information after the briefing. "He would tell me, 'I'm going to such and such places,' and I wouldn't see him for days. Pablo Escobar and the Ochoas were going to be arrested at a celebration of Seal's successful cocaine transport. "He put the airplane into a parabolic arc and pinned me against the ceiling, and right in that moment, I had this inspiration. He then was able to get a meeting with Vice President George H.W. Concurrently, they had to make sure not to raise the suspicions of the ruthless Colombian drug lords. [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. [15] The investigation into Seal was part of a major undercover operation called Operation Screamer in which over 80 pilots were eventually indicted. [7], To expand his smuggling capacity, Seal also hired William Bottoms, his ex-brother-in-law, as a pilot. "We're talking about one of the largest drug smugglers in America, and these agents loved him." 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. Ed Duffard, Seals first flight instructor, once recalled how Seal could fly with the best of them, according to Baton Rouges 225 Magazine. Barry Seal, the drug smuggler-turned-DEA informant who helped take down Pablo Escobar. Seal began to fly as a teenager, earning a student pilot certificate at 16 and a private pilot's certificate at 17. [50] He had seen Cardona test-fire the murder weapon in Mermelstein's garage and bullets that matched the murder weapon were later extracted from the garage wall by FBI forensics. Miguel Velez was the man driving the getaway car. 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. Twitter/VICEBarry Seal likely never worked for CIA, as shown in American Made. Seal was originally introduced to the Medelln cartel members as a pilot named Ellis McKenzie. Mermelstein testified that he accepted the contract, believing that a refusal would mean death. The arrests never happened since Seal's cover was blown. He flew tons of cocaine and marijuana into the United States until he was busted in 1983 and became one of the DEA's most important informants. Hed get in his plane and hed go down there and throw 1,000 kilos on the plane and come back to Louisiana.. 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. Barry Seal, at the time he died, may have been the . He had been arrested in 1972 by the U.S. Customs Service for trying to fly 1,350 pounds of plastic explosives to anti-Castro Cubans via Mexico. 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. [31], The DEA plan was to keep Seal working with the cartel on other parts of the supply chain, such as moving cocaine base into Nicaragua from Colombia and inspecting smuggling airfields in Mexico and the U.S. 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. which had installed itself in Nicaragua; Seal claimed the Sandinistas had made a deal with the Medellin Cartel, and proof of such could lend justification to the . The photo shows Federico Vaughan, who Seal claimed was a top aide to Tomas Borge, the Nicaraguan government's . The DEA eventually took him up on his offer because of his knowledge and connections to the cartel. Additionally, the movie version of Seal quits his job with the airline to pursue a life of crime. Times Staff Writers. Featured Image:The low-res image of Frederico Vaughn (in the striped shirt) that Ronald Reagan offered as proof of Sandinista drug trafficking. 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. Regardless, Jacoby's article led to the abandonment of the final piece of Barry Seal's undercover operation. Using pilots like Barry Seal was a means to an end. The most important witnesses were Max Mermelstein and Luis Carlos Uribe-Munera. An FBI sting. 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). Starring Tom Cruise, Domhnall Gleeson, Sarah Wright, Copyright 2023 HistoryvsHollywood.com, CTF Media, Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile. The real Barry Seal claimed he had been working for agencies . Debbie, who was 21 at the time, met Barry, 33, while working as a cashier at a restaurant. This operation involved a long, complicated cocaine shipment from Bolivia, refueling in Colombia, refueling again in Texas, and delivering the cocaine in Las Vegas. Like in the movie, the American Made true story reveals that Barry made a living as a commercial airline pilot for several years. [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. The memorable scene never happened in real life. hiding a camera on Seal's plane to catch photos and confirmed the Nicaragua-Medellin link, Jacobsen said. 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. Both rejected any deals, even though Seal told them a little about his involvement with the Ochoa family. Photos; Visual Stories; Sub Menu 1. But before he died, the photographs he captured made Pablo Escobar a wanted criminal and ultimately played an important part in the drug kingpins downfall in 1993. The mysteries of Mena revolve around a drug-smuggling pilot named Barry Seal. He was hired by Trans World Airlines (TWA) in 1964 and at age 26 became one of the youngest Captains operating a Boeing 707. -Daily Mail Online. His father was a candy wholesaler and an alleged KKK member, according to Spartacus Educational. "Tom did all his own flying in the movie," says Liman. . [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. -Refinery29, Yes. Adler Berriman Seal (July 16, 1939 - February 19, 1986), better known as Barry Seal, was a United States drug smuggler and aircraft pilot who flew covert flights for the Central Intelligence Agency and the Medelln Cartel. "The DEA agents who worked with Barry loved him," 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 . In 2017, Seal's life became the subject of a second Hollywood adaptation titled American Made and starred Tom Cruise. An AP dispatch (Omaha World-Herald, 7/29/88) disclosed that subcommittee staffers called Vaughns phone number in Managua and spoke to a domestic employee who said the house had been continuously rented by a U.S. embassy official since 1981. 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. I never saw drugs, that's for sure." Universal Pictures. Before returning to Nicaragua, the DEA arranged for CIA technicians to . UPI reported: "By linking the Sandinistas with drug traffic aid to the rebels accused of human rights violations might seem more palatable". 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. They were then picked up by Seal's ground team and transported to the Colombian distributors in Florida. 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. "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.) At the height of his career, he was under investigation by the DEA in Mena, Arkansas, and New Orleans, Louisiana, in addition to being under the watchful eye of the FBI. The photos quickly leaked, boosting Washington's anti-Sandinista effort but likely putting a . Like in the American Made movie, Barry Seal was allowed to fly out of the country and return with illegal drugs that the feds made sure never reached their targets. The case against the cartel had been engineered by Barry Seal, a convicted drug dealer turned informant who worked closely with Vice President George Bushs anti-drug task force in Washington. He soon began using his flight skills for another purpose: smuggling. The DEA had been onto him for a long time. -Daily Mail Online, No. Also, view a news story about Barry Seal's death. From 1980 on, Bottoms was the main pilot in Seal's smuggling enterprise, often flying with Camp while Seal oversaw planning and operations. In fact, it was Seal who provided the DEA with the photos of Escobar that exposed him as a major drug kingpin. Sep. 28, 2017. Set in the year 1978, Barry Seal (Tom Cruise) works as a pilot for Trans World Airlines. [10][11] By 1982, Seal was using over a dozen aircraft in his smuggling operation. He relocated to a small regional airport in Mena, Arkansas, which had a population of only 5,000. 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. Later, the CIA turns a blind eye to his drug smuggling in exchange for his delivery of . 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: Directed by Doug Liman. Stevens was the largest investment banker in the entire state of Arkansas. In her suit, Lisa, who is not depicted in the movie, also claimed that there were factual inaccuracies in the script, including the fact that Barry had five children, not three, and that the movie falsely suggests he was an alcoholic and a reckless pilot. He ultimately escaped prosecution, and some believe this was because he was secretly working as an informant for the CIA, though there is no real proof that he ever worked for the agency. 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). American Made, the new Tom Cruise crime drama out Sept. 29, has all the makings of a romp: drug running and arms smuggling. Barry Seal was one of the biggest drug smugglers in America in the 1970s and 80s. He was born on July 16, 1939, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. 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." 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. [59], In January 2023, Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards denied Vsquez's request for clemency. Barry Seal - gunrunner, drug trafficker, and covert C.I.A. According to author Del Hahn, who wrote the book Smuggler's End, next to Barry's yearbook photo was the description, "Full of fun, full of folly" (TIME). He is married to Lucy (Sarah Wright) and has two children with her, with a third on the way. He was then shot 5 times by cartel gunmen, but survived and eventually sought asylum at the U.S. embassy in Bogota. -Smuggler's End: The Life and Death of Barry Seal, Yes. "Barry Seal was a friend of mine," Plumlee says. 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. JB is fictional. [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. Yes. 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. Barry Seal modern day outlaw, adventurer, and drug smuggler, full of fun, full of folly . . Indeed, at age 26, Seal became one of the youngest pilots to ever fly for Trans World Airlines. recalled how "The one time I flew with him [Seal] to Nicaragua . In his research for the book, the only confirmed connection Hahn could make between the CIA and Barry Seal was in 1984, after Seal had started working as an informant for the DEA. Barry Seal, The Most Important Witness In The History Of The Drug Enforcement Administration. 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. Even criminals have a love life and Barry Seal was no different. Barry Seal's widow, Debbie Seal, and others have wondered why the government didn't do more to protect Seal, whether he wanted the protection or not. 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. In his book, he uses case documents and first-person accounts to dispel this idea and other half-truths about Seal.