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 April 1981, a DEA informant introduced Seal to an undercover DEA agent. They referred him to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). Barry Seal liked to use pay phones. [61], Seal was married three times. 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. No one has been able to tell us". [66] Jacoby later denied that North was the source of his story and attributed it to a deceased staff member for Representative Dan Daniel. When asked how, he replied, "Oh, Barry stole an airplane from me. JB is fictional. Barry Seal was fired from TWA in 1974 for falsely citing medical leave when he was actually off trafficking weapons. It is not clear whether Seal and his crew were informed of this before they returned to Nicaragua. Yes. Daniel Rennie is a freelance writer residing in Melbourne, Australia. Overall, though, the film captures just how incredible Seals life really was. The state narcotics agents who were investigating Seal in Baton Rouge sued over their depiction in the series, but the lawsuit was dismissed. We expose neglected news stories and defend working journalists when they are muzzled. However, when a drug shipment was seized by the DEA, the Medellin Cartel blamed Seal for the loss. [41], Seal was taken into federal custody in June 1985 and spent several months testifying in court. [51], On the evening of February 19, 1986, Seal was shot to death in front of the Salvation Army Center, three weeks into his probation. 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. Particularly suspicious is the role of Federico Vaughn, the supposed Sandinista official, who appears to have been a US spy all along. Barry Seal was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the son of Mary Lou (ne Delcambre) and Benjamin Curtis Seal, a candy wholesaler. [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. On July 17, 1984, an article detailing Seals infiltration of the Medelln cartel hit the front page of the Washington Times. In 1981, he was making daily deposits of $50,000 into an account at a bank in the Bahamas. 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. 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. As a progressive group, we believe that structural reform is ultimately needed to break up the dominant media conglomerates, establish independent public broadcasting and promote strong non-profit sources of information. 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. American Made: Directed by Doug Liman. Undercover cameras installed on Seal's plane captured photos on the tarmac of a Nicaraguan airport. Universal Pictures (@UniversalPicsPT) 5 de junho de 2017. Debbie, who was 21 at the time, met Barry, 33, while working as a cashier at a restaurant. 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. 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." Three Colombians supposedly sent by the Ochoas, including Cruz and Velez, were later arrested at the airport. 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]. [18] Jacobsen was impressed with Seal's connections, especially the ones with the Ochoa family, and on March 28, Seal signed a letter agreeing to serve as a DEA informant. However, the film takes certain liberties in regard to Seals life as well. Barry also got lucky and captured photos of the communist leader of the Sandinistas . In American Made, facts matter less than fiction. Barry Seal (Photo: Facebook) . He would have to operate the rear camera by hand. 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. 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. He was murdered on February 19, 1986, by contract killers hired by the cartel. It was Reaves who provided Seal with his first connection to the Medelln cartel. . Helicopters would pick up the contraband and transport it to off-loading sites and then on to Ochoa distributors in Miami by car or truck. 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. Yes. Mermelstein testified that he accepted the contract, believing that a refusal would mean death. The Nevada aviator killed when a cargo plane was shot down in Nicaragua last weekend served as one of the CIA's chief pilots in . 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. 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. Barry Seal, at the time he died, may have been the . On the morning of June 25, Seal, Camp and their mechanic, Peter Everson, landed . Yes. Armed with machine guns, they shot him to death outside the building. His flight instructor described him as a naturally gifted pilot. The photos quickly leaked, boosting Washington's anti-Sandinista effort but likely putting a . A July 17, 1984 front-page Washington Times article by Edmund Jacoby described a link between Nicaragua's Sandinista government and the Medelln drug cartel. Regardless, Jacoby's article led to the abandonment of the final piece of Barry Seal's undercover operation. Also, before the agreement was reached, the Louisiana task force investigation had been looking into Seal's involvement in smuggling thousands of kilograms of cocaine. Among other things, the panel sought to determine if top leaders of the Colombian cocaine cartel escaped arrest because the much ballyhooed war on drugs took a back seat to a covert operation designed to discredit the Nicaraguan government this at a time when the administration was seeking additional aid to the Contras. [43] After listening to summaries of Seal's successful work for the DEA, Judge Norman Roettger sentenced Seal to time served (a little over three months in witness protection) and three years probation. And Tomas Borges, the Ortega brothers equivalent of the Gestapo chief, was one of the overseers of drug shipments of planeloads destined to Mena air strip, in Arkansas, in 1983. [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. The extent of Barry Seal's involvement with the CIA in the 1980s has provided fuel for speculation and conspiracy theories. The Ochoa Family, along with Pablo Escobar and others, were the founders of the Medelln Cartel. -Daily Mail Online. 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). "Tom did all his own flying in the movie," says Liman. -TIME. [45], At Seal's sentencing hearing in January 1986, Judge Frank Polozola acknowledged that he was bound by the agreement, but informed Seal and his lawyer of his dissatisfaction with Seal's failure to receive jail time in Florida, forcing Polozola to sentence Seal to probation on much more serious charges in Louisiana. The assassination happened on February 19, 1986 in the parking lot in front of the Salvation Army building on Airline Highway (U.S. 61) in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Hed get in his plane and hed go down there and throw 1,000 kilos on the plane and come back to Louisiana.. 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. George W. Bush was literally being flown around in what had been the favorite plane of the murdered CIA asset and drug runner Barry Sealon the exact same day (2/19/86) Barry Seal was murdered in Baton Rouge, his mistress "Barbara" was also murdered in Miami; two other men also affiliated with the Medellin drug cartel, Pablo Carrera . 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. He was born on July 16, 1939, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. "Barry Seal, the charismatic narcotics air smuggler of the early . Soon after, JB is killed by a car bomb. According to Del Hahn's book Smuggler's End, Barry Seal was not chummy with the cartel bosses. Photo credit: Peter Sutton. He made four trips to Nicaragua that year, allegedly to document the complicity in cocaine trafficking. 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. 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. 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 relocated to a small regional airport in Mena, Arkansas, which had a population of only 5,000. He took it out for a test flight and never came back." -Daily Mail Online. The guns were then flown to the contras in Nicaragua, the suit said. Then the Washington Post leaked the story, revealing that Seal was working undercover for the CIA. Adler Berriman "Barry" Seal was an American commercial airline pilot who became a major drug smuggler for the Medelln Cartel. The most important witnesses were Max Mermelstein and Luis Carlos Uribe-Munera. 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. [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. -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. Starring Tom Cruise, Domhnall Gleeson, Sarah Wright, Copyright 2023 HistoryvsHollywood.com, CTF Media, Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile. [10][11] By 1982, Seal was using over a dozen aircraft in his smuggling operation. That aspect of who he was has never been disputed. The pickup went as planned this time, and the cameras successfully photographed Seal and several Nicaraguan soldiers loading cocaine, aided by Pablo Escobar, Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha (another important cartel member), and Federico Vaughan. In the movie, Lucy's brother JB (Caleb Landry Jones) steals money from Barry (Tom Cruise). Wikimedia CommonsA Fairchild C-123 military cargo plane similar to Barry Seals Fat Lady.. Government attorneys stated that Seal placed himself in danger by refusing to move his family and enter a witness protection program.[69]. The American Made true story confirms that the real Barry Seal and his wife Debbie had three children (Aaron, Dean and Christina). A fourth man was indicted separately on lesser charges, and evidence of direct involvement was insufficient for two, who were released and deported. It was likely the longest day of his entire life. [66][67] Hawkins told Frontline that neither she nor her staff leaked the information after the briefing. At the beginning of the movie, the fictionalized Seal gets bored on his daily flights with Trans World Airlines and begins performing daredevil stunts with passengers onboard. Photo 1: This is a photo taken July 23, 1955. 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.