"The information indicates that Seal was an informant for DEA at the time but also working as an operative of the CIA. This draws the attention of the CIA. "He would tell me all these wild stories about the missions he had flown. Leveritt was reluctant at first, but soon warmed to the task and got to work. Approved for Release Date:September 28, 2009. 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. Later Brown would come to know them as kickers. Two years later, he would be shot dead in Louisiana. Fact-checking American Made revealed that Monty Schafer is a fictional character created to represent Barry Seal's contacts at the CIA. He also referred to Clinton, familiarly, as the guv. "The original information dates back to the activities of a pilot, Barry Seal (now deceased), who is purported to have flown guns to South America from Mena and drugs back into the United States," according to the memo. But twenty-three years later, Judicial Watch says it is time for answers. Weinberger faced charges of lying to Congress about his knowledge of the arms and drug smuggling that President George W. Bush had endorsed. (Brown maintains that he never flunked the test; in fact, he was nominated four months after taking it for employment with the agency.). Benjamin /Mary Seal son Adler M 1940 census address 315 Lovers Lane Baton.Rouge Louisiana (next hwy73/North blvd).lovers lane White house Barry was the 1st son.Seal Entrepreneur.Texaco Service station .called B.C. The extent of Barry Seal's involvement with the CIA in the 1980s has provided fuel for speculation and conspiracy theories. No convincing explanation was offered for this act of censorship. It aborted the scheduled trial of Casper W. Weinberger which had been schedule to begin on January 5, 1993. As early as 1982, his firm had been censured by the Arkansas security commissioner for cheating customers. Barry Seal was an American-born Trans World Airlines pilot who . And the U.S. was covertly backing the Contras. Seal's mysterious activities have spawned books, movies and a cornucopia of conspiracy theories. No. JB is fictional. Suddenly, though, the Arkansas State Police were uncooperative. "We're talking about one of the largest drug smugglers in America, and these agents loved him." At present, although there is no reason to believe any of the allegations, we are declining to comment publicly, pending exhaustive searches of DO files, as tasked by ICA. Three Colombians eventually were arrested and convicted of the murder. Strange events unfolded at Mena, a small city in remote western Arkansas, in the 1980s. While the filmmakers were shooting the movie in South America, a local pilot who was working with them said that he had met Barry. "At the time Seal started cooperating with DEA Miami, he had an established base at Rich Mountain Aviation and had frequent contact with subjects," according to the document. BEST OF: Left Targets Elon Musk, FBI Investigated Fauci Agency, CA Court Vi BEST OF: Twitter Changed Rules to Ban Trump! When asked how, he replied, "Oh, Barry stole an airplane from me. And move on, the world did. The real Barry Seal never had a brother-in-law who was killed by a car bomb. Then, Brown says, Seal reached again into the duffel bag and pulled out a kilogram of cocaine. File: Attachment Size; Connor Hagan, a spokesman for the FBI in Little Rock, said the release of so much information into the FBI's public "vault" doesn't mean that the documents haven't previously been made public. Seal made an estimated $60 million off smuggling drugs into the country and became one of the richest people in America. He says that he wanted to go public with his revelations about Mena, but that he did not know whom to tell. The life of the former TWA pilot, Barry Seal, inspired the film. Then, he says, they regained altitude, by then they descended again, and thats when these two crazy bastards got these palettes and roll them out on casters. Parachutes opened from the palettes. -Daily Mail Online. Phone Number: (602) 256- KDYM +1 phone. Cocainea lot of itflowed in. . -Vulture.com, Yes. Past Addresses: See available information. In fact, even the Wikipedia links Ive included in this paragraph are mostly lies. commission charbonneau liste de noms. 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. 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?" In a fruitless effort to curb irregular migration from Central America the Biden administration is sending the region hundreds of millions of dollars in humanitarian funding with From Breitbart: On one CIA-involved mission in 1984, a secret camera in Seals C-123 cargo plane snapped photos of an alleged Sandinista official loading cocaine aboard the aircraft. -The Hollywood Reporter, Debbie Seal insists that she was unaware of what her husband was up to. This doesn't add up with the true story. Copyright 2023, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Inc. The gunman hurried into a waiting Buick, which sped away. Seal, Brown says, had also prescribed the dress code, and insisted that no one carry identification, not even keys or jewelry. It must be noted now that Clintons efforts to distance himself from Mena have persisted for years. When he was deposed, Bender was shown a photograph of Buddy Young. After it left Mena, the plane made a refueling stop Nobody got off, Brown says and then resumed flight. 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. 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. In 1981, Seal set up shop at Mena. Three early drafts of the essay contain interpolations in Clintons handwriting. -Refinery29, Yes. In fact, I still had a letter from the former director advising me, in case Id planned to make copies, that the file held some 3,000 pages.. The CIA stonewalled the release of information now sought by Judicial Watch on the Mena Airport controversy, said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. About 25 pages of that trove refer to Arkansas or Mena. The Mena operation reveals the essential reckless of our present president. Three Colombians supposedly sent by the Ochoas, including Cruz and Velez, were later arrested at the airport. In American Made, Barry Seal's family consists of his wife and their three children, two boys and one girl, all seen at various stages in their lives throughout the film. It's certainly possible and it's what the movie proposes. 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. When Brown returned to the Governors mansion, he recalls, Clinton greeted him jovially, You having any fun yet? he asked. 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. The DEA had been onto him for a long time. But when he asked his brother, Whos pushing this his brother, Dwayne Brown says, nodded over towards the Governors Mansion. From then on, until he left Clintons security detail in June, Dwayne Brown says, his brother was at a high level of despair. He says he had feared he might be suicidal. Brown says Seal told him theres good money to be had. But Brown, says he was out of that game for good. Pablo Escobar and the Ochoas were going to be arrested at a celebration of Seal's successful cocaine transport. Yet she pressed on with her writing and finished the book. Fact-checking American Made immediately revealed that Tom Cruise looks nothing like the real Barry Seal, who weighed around 280lbs and was nicknamed "El Gordo" (The Fat Man) by his bosses. "He thought we had more time. He carries it around and begins spending it, which attracts the attention of the local authorities. The goal was to expose the involvement of the Nicaraguan Sandinista regime as a major supplier of cocaine from Colombia.". Not all of Barry Seal's heirs were happy with the making of the movie. Back at Mena, Brown says, he told Seal he had thought they were going to fly in a plane similar to the ones he had been on with the Governor. "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. In its review of the 2017 movie "American Made" -- about Seal -- the New York Times called it the Conspiratorial Industrial Complex. He concluded by saying that Mena was a federal, not a state, matter. He wasn't. -Daily Mail Online. I have re-typed two documents that were scrubbed off the internet. "I fly airplanes. Yes. They shared an interest in books, ideas, and night life. 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. She is a brunette, not a blond like Sarah Wright's character in the movie. He said, according to Brown, Thats Lasaters deal, thats Lasaters deal.. The FBI in Little Rock began investigating Seal's operation at the Mena airport in February 1984, according to the recently released FBI document. The gunman was later identified as Luis Carlos Quintero-Cruz. ", Copyright 2023, Northwest Arkansas Newspapers LLC. Micah Morrison is chief investigative reporter for Judicial Watch. Even before he graduated from Baton Rouge High School in 1957, Seal had already earned his private pilot's wings. Bill Duncan, an IRS investigator, told me that he had numerous reports of automatic weapons fire, men of Latin American appearance in the area, people in camouflage moving quietly through streams with automatic weapons, aircraft drops, twin-engine airplane traffic. Duncan, along with Arkansas State Police investigator Russell Welch, started digging into Seal and the Mena connection, suspecting a drug smuggling and money laundering operation. "The apparent reason was that the prosecution might have revealed national security information, even though all of the crimes which were the focus of the investigation occurred before Seal became a federal informant.". -Good Morning America. Arkansas State Trooper L.D. A C-123K cargo plane, like this one, was out tted at the Mena airport and ew with various cameras to obtain photographic evi- dence of the Sandinistas in the act of smuggling narcotics, according to an entry in the Encyclopedia of Arkansas(Arkansas Democrat-Gazette file photo). 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). Basically, Seal would fly over the guns and smuggle back drugs on his return trip. They could locate no files on Seal. Set in the year 1978, Barry Seal (Tom Cruise) works as a pilot for Trans World Airlines. He had previously been married to Barbara Bottoms (m. 1963-1971) and Lynn Ross (m. 1971-1972). His character is inspired by the stories we learned about Barry." 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. For a portion of this time, the alleged ringleader of the drug smuggling, Seal, appeared to have been working with the CIA and the Drug Enforcement Agency. Seal flipped, becoming a valuable government informant. However, the U.S. needed a way to covertly get the funds and weapons to the rebels. Too many secrets have been kept for too long, she wrote, too much important history has been hidden, lost or destroyed. All were wearing jeans, T-shirts, and sneakers. He was shot to death by two machinegun-wielding men while behind the wheel of his Cadillac in the . Contributions are received from He also says he told Seal he wanted no part of what was happening; then he left. 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. At this juncture, no one, including Brown, can say precisely what Clinton was doing at Mena. He is married to Lucy (Sarah Wright) and has two children with her, with a third on the way. us. Email Address: v EVIO @gmail.com +2 emails. In other words: nothing to see here, move on. 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