Photo 1: This is a photo taken July 23, 1955. Instead, he testified against Pablo Escobar, Carlos Lehder, and Jorge Ochoa in front of a federal grand jury. 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. Things became worse when a report in the Washington Times on July 17 . No, in real life he had five children and was married three times. He was unaware that a Colombian assassin was hiding behind one of the donation drop boxes. He made four trips to Nicaragua that year, allegedly to document the complicity in cocaine trafficking. -Daily Mail Online, No. -The Independent, Not likely. [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. 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. In the movie, Lucy's brother JB (Caleb Landry Jones) steals money from Barry (Tom Cruise). No. [1], In 1962, Seal enlisted in the Louisiana Army National Guard for six years: six months of active duty, followed by five and a half years of inactive duty. 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 Seal was a friend of mine," Plumlee says. His father was a candy wholesaler and an alleged KKK member, according to Spartacus Educational. 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. 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. This led the U.S. to covertly supply arms to the Contras, the rebels fighting against the Sandinistas. The state narcotics agents who were investigating Seal in Baton Rouge sued over their depiction in the series, but the lawsuit was dismissed. Barry Seal (Photo: Facebook) . The explosives were supposedly going to anti-Castro Cuban fighters. Exclusive: Tom Cruise's portrayal of drug-smuggler-turned-government-informant Barry Seal is a fast-paced visit back to the Reagan era . The scene was actually inspired by something that happened while director Doug Liman and Tom Cruise were training for the movie. The plane Seal acquired was a C-123K, a large aircraft used primarily for military transport. . Ed Duffard, Seals first flight instructor, once recalled how Seal could fly with the best of them, according to Baton Rouges 225 Magazine. The life of the most important witness in the history of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration had come to a brutal end. He took it out for a test flight and never came back." Barry also got lucky and captured photos of the communist leader of the Sandinistas . During the Iran-Contra affair of the 1980s, the U.S. plotted to secretly help the rebels (Contras) overthrow Nicaragua's Communist Sandinista government. Hahn was part of the task force that pursued Seal in the 1980s. FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation. 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. He then was able to get a meeting with Vice President George H.W. New York, NY 10001. DEA Agent Ernest Jacobsen later said the technology they used was the most expensive cryptic radio communications we had ever seen at the time.. Photo credit: Peter Sutton. 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. Although Seal had pleaded guilty, with the support of his DEA supervisors, he was sentenced to five years of unsupervised probation. The DEA felt this would be impossible to explain away, and Seal returned to the U.S. without cargo. The story of Barry Seal has since been made into films such as Doublecrossed (1991), Infiltrator (2016) and American Made (2017). The Fat Lady, over Nicaragua. [15] The investigation into Seal was part of a major undercover operation called Operation Screamer in which over 80 pilots were eventually indicted. [44], When Seal received only time served and probation, Louisiana state and federal drug investigators were faced with a dilemma. [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. Soon, Seal relocated his smuggling operations to Mena, Arkansas. And by 1978, according to The Gentlemans Journal, he had moved on to cocaine. His first marriage, to Barbara Dodson, lasted from 1963 to 1971. 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 . The photo shows Federico Vaughan, who Seal claimed was a top aide to Tomas Borge, the Nicaraguan government's . This draws the attention of the CIA. [1] In this capacity, he worked for both the CIA and Pablo Escobar. He was born on July 16, 1939, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Barry Seal was a pilot for TWA and later became a drug smuggler. FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation. He was one of the youngest 707 command pilots in the TWA fleet. Later, after Seal's cover was suspiciously blown, President Reagan used the photo shown below in a 1986 television address to the nation. 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. Photos; Visual Stories; Sub Menu 1. American Made is one of many "so crazy, it must be real" stories that have hit Hollywood in the form of a major action movie in recent years. [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. [37], In February, Seal also played a central role in an undercover operation against Norman Saunders, chief minister of the Turks and Caicos Islands, a former British colony south of the Bahamas. 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. 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. a secret camera in Seal's C-123 cargo plane snapped photos of an alleged Sandinista official loading cocaine aboard the aircraft. [66][67] Hawkins told Frontline that neither she nor her staff leaked the information after the briefing. [55] The trial began in April 1987. When you see the photos, you will understand why. Hahn told Vice that Barry was likable but "not as smart and clever as he thought he was. Bush's anti-drug task force in hopes of convincing them of his value as an informant. Seal's active duty began in July 1962. An Investigative Obituary. 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. The office referred Seal to DEA headquarters, which assigned DEA agent Ernst Jacobsen to debrief Seal and evaluate his potential as an informant. "We're talking about one of the largest drug smugglers in America, and these agents loved him." 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. -Vulture.com, Yes. Barry Seal liked to use pay phones. No one has been able to tell us". When faced with criminal prosecution, Seal turned snitch for the DEA, but he continued to smuggle drugs into the US. Within U.S. airspace, Seal would have people on the ground monitor for any signs his planes were being tailed. Comenz a volar aviones a temprana edad y segn su instructor de vuelo, Seal tena un talento innato. [8], In 1981, Seal began smuggling cocaine for the Medelln Cartel. The cameras were rigged so that Seal could use a remote control button hidden in his pocket to snap photos at will. Money from the sale of weapons to Iran was used to help fund the rebels in Nicaragua. 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. [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. [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. On June 25, 1984, the CIA placed hidden cameras in Seal's 123K plane that was directed to Los Brasiles, in Nicaragua: the photos that were taken show 'some Nicaraguan soldiers', Barry Seal, Pablo Escobar, Federico Vaughn, Emile Camp ('Seal's co-pilot') placing over one thousand kilos of cocaine onto the plane (Peet 2002). In many ways, the movie American Made does a faithful job of portraying Seals larger-than-life personality. The two American . 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. The incredible story of Barry Seal - the man who worked for both the CIA and Pablo Escobar. The American Made true story confirms that the real Barry Seal and his wife Debbie had three children (Aaron, Dean and Christina). -Vulture.com Barry Seal was a ballsy and confident risk taker, who rarely acknowledged the possibility of failure, and that's just how Tom Cruise portrays him in the American Made movie. He was brought to the U.S. where he agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy to import and distribute cocaine. 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 . Later, the CIA turns a blind eye to his drug smuggling in exchange for his delivery of . [46] Before returning to Nicaragua, the DEA arranged for CIA technicians to . Then, flip through these wild Narco Instagram posts. 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. Times Staff Writers. "He stopped in there and, just like that, he asked me out," says Debbie. The photo was in a cardboard frame of the kind used by nightclubs and tourist attractions, with the date it was taken, January 22,1963, stamped on the back. He carries it around and begins spending it, which attracts the attention of the local authorities. And though the tale of Barry Seal - drug smuggler, double-crosser, pilot extraordinaire - has now been transformed into a raucous Hollywood caper with Tom Cruise at the helm, the true story would be too . YouTubeThe photograph taken by Barry Seal that outed Pablo Escobar as the Medelln cartels drug kingpin. The case against the cartel had been engineered by Barry Seal, a convicted drug dealer turned informant who worked closely with Vice President George Bush's anti-drug task force in Washington. Barry's widow, Deborah Seal, says that he began smuggling drugs in 1975, first focusing mainly on marijuana. 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. Although Seals first foray into smuggling failed, by 1975, he had started trafficking marijuana between the U.S. and Central and South America. The Charmed, Doomed Life of Barry Seal. Three Colombians supposedly sent by the Ochoas, including Cruz and Velez, were later arrested at the airport. Even criminals have a love life and Barry Seal was no different. The accident didn't happen during filming. He relocated to a small regional airport in Mena, Arkansas, which had a population of only 5,000. 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. In his book, he uses case documents and first-person accounts to dispel this idea and other half-truths about Seal. Twitter/VICEBarry Seal likely never worked for CIA, as shown in American Made. 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. [28], Seal returned to the Los Brasiles airfield in Nicaragua on June 25. In 1961, he joined the Louisiana Army National Guard and served with the 20th Special Forces Group for six years. . [42] Following his testimony in Las Vegas, Seal spent another month in a witness protection center. Click the button below! Barry and his wife talked about going into witness protection, but like in the movie, he decided against it. -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. 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. The most important witnesses were Max Mermelstein and Luis Carlos Uribe-Munera. Born in Baton Rouge in 1939 . He had previously been married to Barbara Bottoms (m. 1963-1971) and Lynn Ross (m. 1971-1972). 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 unnamed embassy official, according to Hughes, was among the group of U.S. officials recently expelled by the Nicaraguan government after a violent political demonstrations in July. A witness identified Vlez as the driver of the vehicle in the halfway house parking lot. 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. 4 - July/August, Iran-Contra Affair. WASHINGTON . Hed work at the drop of a hat, and he didnt care, a fellow smuggler later recalled of Seal. Overall, though, the film captures just how incredible Seals life really was. "The DEA agents who worked with Barry loved him," said director Doug Liman. It was probably shortly before the operation or thereabouts when he was enlisted to give us proof that the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua was actually . [41], Seal was taken into federal custody in June 1985 and spent several months testifying in court. Armed with machine guns, they shot him to death outside the building. [58], There was also extensive eyewitness and forensic evidence against Quintero-Cruz, Vlez, and Vsquez. He testified that in January 1986, he was ordered by Jorge Ochoa to kill Seal. Synopsis. . No. He was then shot 5 times by cartel gunmen, but survived and eventually sought asylum at the U.S. embassy in Bogota. 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. Jacoby mentioned Seal's mission as evidence, which effectively outed Seal as a government agent. Seal took pictures during the Nicaragua sting operation that clearly showed Pablo Escobar, Jorge Luis Ochoa . He was murdered on February 19, 1986 by contract killers hired by the cartel. Yes. Yes. 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. . Investigators are still trying to separate myth from reality. [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. "I trusted him so I didn't ask questions," says Debbie. [57], Uribe-Munera was a Colombian drug smuggler for the 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. An FBI sting. 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 The story included the photograph Seal had taken of Escobar handling the cocaine. Pablo Escobar and the Ochoas were going to be arrested at a celebration of Seal's successful cocaine transport. He had already been flying planes for nearly half his life, earning his student pilot . He was the primary witness in three trials: the trial of Saunders and the other Turks and Caicos officials in July; the trial of the cartel distributors in Miami in August; the trial of the cartel distributors who had arranged the shipment of cocaine from Bolivia to Las Vegas, also in August. In real life, his first encounter with the Medelln Cartel happened less dramatically. He once said in an interview, The exciting thing to me is to get yourself into a life threatening situation. 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?" 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 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. If they were, the mission was aborted. by Allie Gemmill. By 1983, his earnings totaled $60 million, making him one of the wealthiest people in America. The man said that despite the incident, he was still very fond of Barry. [23], These arrangements were not yet complete, so Seal's first shipment was to be a direct flight to the U.S. 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. Tom Cruise got his pilot's license in 1994. The ultimate hope was to arrest the cartel leaders in a jurisdiction where it would be easy to extract them. Three of them, Luis Carlos Quintero-Cruz, Miguel Vlez, and Bernardo Antonio Vsquez, were indicted on state charges for capital murder. Originally planned for mid-April, the flight did not take place until the end of May. UPI reported: "By linking the Sandinistas with drug traffic aid to the rebels accused of human rights violations might seem more palatable". Tom Cruise is moving on from his Mummy -fied adventures in 2017, with his next big release, American Made, hitting theaters soon. Funny how these people missed theFACT, now public knowledge, that Pablo Escobar was granted wide and free passage and full protection, by the Sandinistas. 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 . 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. In 1988, the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing that looked into how Seal's 1984 trip to Nicaragua was leaked to the press. Yes. Filed under: Covert Operations, Drugs, Extra! [21], Participants at the meeting included Pablo Escobar and Jorge, Fabio Jr., and Juan David Ochoa. In 1981, the pilot made his first flight for the Ochoa brothers, a founding family of the cartel. 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. The guns were then flown to the contras in Nicaragua, the suit said. [4], Seal admitted that he started smuggling small amounts of marijuana by air in early 1976. [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. Mermelstein testified that he accepted the contract, believing that a refusal would mean death. When asked how, he replied, "Oh, Barry stole an airplane from me. Fact-checking American Made revealed that Monty Schafer is a fictional character created to represent Barry Seal's contacts at the CIA. 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. Government attorneys stated that Seal placed himself in danger by refusing to move his family and enter a witness protection program.[69]. JB is fictional. [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. All three were found guilty and sentenced to life without parole. In imposing sentence, Polozola further stipulated that Seal could not carry a gun or hire armed bodyguards as this would be possession or constructive possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. 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. The narcotics runner, Barry Seal, allegedly . 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. As a child in the 1950s, Seal worked odd jobs around the citys old airport in exchange for flight time. While the filmmakers were shooting the movie in South America, a local pilot who was working with them said that he had met Barry. Barry Seal started his career as a pilot for Trans World Airlines but he soon turned to the more profitable life of drug smuggling. [5], Ironically, Seal's operations received an important boost when he was arrested and jailed in Honduras on the return leg of a drug-smuggling trip to Ecuador. To muffle the sound, Seal turned on all the planes generators and he got his photographic evidence.
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