No of Kids with Barry: Dean, Aaron, and Christina Seal. 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. [21], Participants at the meeting included Pablo Escobar and Jorge, Fabio Jr., and Juan David Ochoa. [30] Unfortunately, the driver was arrested by local police, and the circumstances of the seizure raised the suspicions of the cartel. After this look at the brazen smuggler Barry Seal, check out how the Medelln cartel became one of the most ruthless crime syndicates in history. Facing a heavy sentence, and having been rejected by regional drug task forces in both Florida and Louisiana, Seal decided to try contacting the Vice President's Drug Task Force, a special program in the office of then-Vice President George Bush. Seal was assigned to the Salvation Army's Community Treatment Center in Baton Rouge.[48]. 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. [28], Seal returned to the Los Brasiles airfield in Nicaragua on June 25. The plane Seal acquired was a C-123K, a large aircraft used primarily for military transport. I'm a multi-engine, instrument-rated commercial pilot," Cruise said in a Wired interview. Even criminals have a love life and Barry Seal was no different. In many ways, the movie American Made does a faithful job of portraying Seals larger-than-life personality. He is familiar with Barry's work as a pilot, but . Undercover cameras installed on Seal's plane captured photos on the tarmac of a Nicaraguan airport. Then, flip through these wild Narco Instagram posts. This, transporting cocaine for the Ochoa brothers, Pablo Escobar's associates who helped him found the Medelln Cartel. But the CIA were determined. 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. 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. They referred him to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). He had already been flying planes for nearly half his life, earning his student pilot . . His non-active duty was served in the 245th Engineer Battalion, where his MOS was radio telephone operator. Hed work at the drop of a hat, and he didnt care, a fellow smuggler later recalled of Seal. No word of the Hughes hearings appeared in the Washington Post or the New York Times. 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. To muffle the sound, Seal turned on all the planes generators and he got his photographic evidence. Adler "Barry" Seal's third wife and the three children she had with him did not violate the slain drug smuggler-turned-government informant's privacy rights when they sold the story of his life to . However, when a drug shipment was seized by the DEA, the Medellin Cartel blamed Seal for the loss. 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. [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. "He thought we had more time. We expose neglected news stories and defend working journalists when they are muzzled. [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. 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. An FBI sting. 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. 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 Barry Seal. [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. I was young and it was impressive." 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. "He would tell me, 'I'm going to such and such places,' and I wouldn't see him for days. Three of them, Luis Carlos Quintero-Cruz, Miguel Vlez, and Bernardo Antonio Vsquez, were indicted on state charges for capital murder. The story of Barry Seal has since been made into films such as Doublecrossed (1991), Infiltrator (2016) and American Made (2017). -The Hollywood Reporter, Debbie Seal insists that she was unaware of what her husband was up to. He was hired by Trans World Airlines (TWA) in 1964 and at age 26 became one of the youngest Captains operating a Boeing 707. The Charmed, Doomed Life of Barry Seal. Both rejected any deals, even though Seal told them a little about his involvement with the Ochoa family. However, some still allege the opposite, that the government turned a blind eye to Seal's drug running in order to use him to deliver weapons to the Nicaraguan rebels. Saunders was videotaped paying a bribe to Seal in Miami, and was also successfully prosecuted. . -Daily Mail Online. The man said that despite the incident, he was still very fond of Barry. A principio de los aos 80 comenz a estar al servicio del Cartel de Medelln para transportar la cocana y en 1984 le . In 2017, Seal's life became the subject of a second Hollywood adaptation titled American Made and starred Tom Cruise. 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. -Daily Mail Online. He was assigned to the 20th Special Forces Group and graduated from the United States Army Airborne School selection and training. The scene was actually inspired by something that happened while director Doug Liman and Tom Cruise were training for the movie. The DEA had been onto him for a long time. The office referred Seal to DEA headquarters, which assigned DEA agent Ernst Jacobsen to debrief Seal and evaluate his potential as an informant. 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. 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). TwitterBarry Seal, the drug smuggler-turned-DEA informant who helped take down Pablo Escobar. Indeed, at age 26, Seal became one of the youngest pilots to ever fly for Trans World Airlines. -Good Morning America. by Allie Gemmill. He took it out for a test flight and never came back." hiding a camera on Seal's plane to catch photos and confirmed the Nicaragua-Medellin link, Jacobsen said. Barry Seal was one of the biggest drug smugglers in America in the 1970s and 80s. -Daily Mail Online, 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. 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. FAIRs work is sustained by our generous contributors, who allow us to remain independent. Either Seal take these photos, or go straight to prison. 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. -Smuggler's End: The Life and Death of Barry Seal, Yes. Seal began to fly as a teenager, earning a student pilot certificate at 16 and a private pilot's certificate at 17. 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. "We're talking about one of the largest drug smugglers in America, and these agents loved him." His cooperation led to many convictions, as well as indictments against Pablo Escobar and Jorge Ochoa, two of the founding members of the Medelln Cartel. Featured Image:The low-res image of Frederico Vaughn (in the striped shirt) that Ronald Reagan offered as proof of Sandinista drug trafficking. Watch President Ronald Reagan's address to the nation on Nicaragua and Central America, delivered from the Oval Office on November 13, 1986. Yes. When asked how, he replied, "Oh, Barry stole an airplane from me. Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting124 W. 30th Street, Suite 201 The Fat Lady, over Nicaragua. It was Reaves who provided Seal with his first connection to the Medelln cartel. No. 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. In exploring the American Made true story, we discovered that Doug Liman's father, lawyer Arthur L. Liman, ran the Senate investigation into Iran-Contra. Jacoby mentioned Seal's mission as evidence, which effectively outed Seal as a government agent. . Not all of Barry Seal's heirs were happy with the making of the movie. 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. 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. Some stories are stranger than fiction. Seal also made a public appearance before the President's Commission on Organized Crime, recounting his experiences as a drug smuggler. 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 pilot flew into Nicaragua with CIA cameras on his plane, taking photos showing Escobar and several other members of the Cartel . Barry Seal was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the son of Mary Lou (ne Delcambre) and Benjamin Curtis Seal, a candy wholesaler. 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 was taken in Mexico when he was 24. . 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. The real Barry Seal never had a brother-in-law who was killed by a car bomb. 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. [66][67] Hawkins told Frontline that neither she nor her staff leaked the information after the briefing. He then was able to get a meeting with Vice President George H.W. 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 also had a daughter and a son not shown in the movie, Lisa and Alder, with his first wife Barbara Bottoms. 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. A work of Doug Liman, previously known for Bourne Identity and Mr. & Mrs. Smith, the new film, American Made, could turn out to be the crime drama of the year in its telling of Seal's story. Seal used his knowledge of aviation to aid in his life of crime. Seal became a federal informant in March 1984. 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 . Enough cold, hard cash to . He was born on July 16, 1939, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. 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. Do your research about it, link the dots, because Democrats were defending the Sandinistas, while they smeared the Contras and the Reagan administration, who they were fighting to prevent the US and USSR from getting the IMD treaty nuclear weapons treaty from being signed. Seal had six children; two from his first wife, one from a relationship he had in between marriages, and three more with Deborah.[62][63]. [15] The investigation into Seal was part of a major undercover operation called Operation Screamer in which over 80 pilots were eventually indicted. [50] Before Mermelstein had located Seal, however, he was arrested by a federal task force in June 1985. Despite differences in body type To mCruise is not the 300-pound man that the Medelln cartel referred to as El Gordo, or Fat Man Seal was just as charismatic and took many of the extreme risks portrayed in the film. 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 . [66] Jacoby later denied that North was the source of his story and attributed it to a deceased staff member for Representative Dan Daniel. Also, view a news story about Barry Seal's death. 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. [7] At his peak, he earned as much as $500,000 per flight transporting shipments of cocaine from Colombia to the United States. The American Made true story confirms that the real Barry Seal and his wife Debbie had three children (Aaron, Dean and Christina). Through his cartel contacts in Miami, Seal arranged a meeting using the name Ellis McKenzie (the real name of another Seal associate). Set in the year 1978, Barry Seal (Tom Cruise) works as a pilot for Trans World Airlines. Concurrently, they had to make sure not to raise the suspicions of the ruthless Colombian drug lords. No one has been able to tell us". ", 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. [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. 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. Although newspapers published his name after his arrest, Seal was known to the Ochoas as Ellis MacKenzie. 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. [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]. Barry arrived that evening at approximately 6 p.m. and backed his white Cadillac into a parking space. But the 1984 investigation got derailed when Seal told his handlers that cocaine was being trans-shipped through Nicaragua with the permission of high-level government officials. . [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. Seal told friends that the judge "made me a clay pigeon. Aterriz en el aeropuerto y junto con las personas que lo esperaban carg unos bultos. In reality, there is no evidence that Seal was ever involved with the CIA. It is not clear whether Seal and his crew were informed of this before they returned to Nicaragua. "[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.