When he returned to Little Rock, he called his brother Dwayne. Seal, a pilot, moved much of his smuggling operation from Baton Rouge to Rich Mountain Aviation at the Mena Intermountain Airport, according to the May 1986 FBI memo. Many of the more baroque allegations emerge from the fever swamps of conspiracy theorists, but certain facts are indisputable. Associated Press text, photo, graphic, audio and/or video material shall not be published, broadcast, rewritten for broadcast or publication or redistributed directly or indirectly in any medium. Barry's widow, Deborah Seal, says that he began smuggling drugs in 1975, first focusing mainly on marijuana. He was shot to death by two machinegun-wielding men while behind the wheel of his Cadillac in the . Seal was a DEA informant/operative who was deeply involved in Iran-Contra and Gov. Young has since been made head of the Federal Emergency Management Administration in Denton, Texas. Scared the s---- out of me just taking off. Brown says that when the plane took off, he was sitting on a bench behind the two pilots. For their efforts, their careers were crushed. 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.. Magruder, Brown says, asked him if he would be interested in paramilitary, counterintelligence and narcotics. Brown, who had worked in narcotics enforcement as a police officer, said he was interested. Hadaway said an informant told him a "narcotic smuggling operation" was headquartered out of the Mena airport and that a man named Barry from Baton Rouge was in charge of it. Please read our Terms of Use or contact us. Question: Was Barry Seal's C-123K aircraft (serial number 54-File: Attachment Size; DOC_0001289717.pdf: 37.21 KB: . Phone Number: (602) 256- KDYM +1 phone. His character is inspired by the stories we learned about Barry." This document may not be reprinted without the express written permission of Northwest Arkansas Newspapers LLC. "It's my understanding that no drugs ever came to the airport," said Fred Ogden, the current airport manager. In other words: nothing to see here, move on. He also says he was mindful of the secrecy agreement he had signed with the CIA. 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. But of the charges levelled at Brown by the White House, the most unintentionally revealing was that Brown had flunked a CIA examination in the mid-1980s. But Brown says he is lying. The Mena operation reveals the essential reckless of our present president. foundations, and corporations and are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law. He was murdered on February 19, 1986, by contract killers hired by the cartel. At this juncture, no one, including Brown, can say precisely what Clinton was doing at Mena. var sc_security="740aa5bc". Many names in the documents have been redacted. individuals, Seal made an estimated $60 million off smuggling drugs into the country and became one of the richest people in America. "He put the airplane into a parabolic arc and pinned me against the ceiling, and right in that moment, I had this inspiration. attorney.". According to a 1988 Senate Foreign Relations Committee report, Seal's associates at the Mena airport were also being investigated. All rights reserved. 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. "Prior to his death, Seal admitted to smuggling large quantities of cocaine from South America (Columbia) to United States and testified before Senate investigative committee," according to the FBI memo, which referred to a telephone call between agents in Little Rock and Miami. Pablo Escobar and the Ochoas were going to be arrested at a celebration of Seal's successful cocaine transport. Basically, Seal would fly over the guns and smuggle back drugs on his return trip. The scene was actually inspired by something that happened while director Doug Liman and Tom Cruise were training for the movie. But I was in for a shock, Leveritt writes. A Seal associate cut a runway deep in the woods. Goodwin told me and ABC that Brown had passed it. Not all of Barry Seal's heirs were happy with the making of the movie. He took it out for a test flight and never came back." When asked how, he replied, "Oh, Barry stole an airplane from me. alan dershowitz cost per hour; what is pak po chicken; sonamukhi powder benefits; He concluded by saying that Mena was a federal, not a state, matter. The FBI in Little Rock began investigating Seal's operation at the Mena airport in February 1984, according to the recently released FBI document. "I've heard that stated by a lot of people.". Movies have been made, books have been published, hundreds of articles have been written. Current Address: ZGFJ N 18th St, Phoenix, AZ. The AP will not be held liable for any delays, inaccuracies, errors or omissions therefrom or in the transmission or delivery of all or any part thereof or for any damages arising from any of the foregoing. In essence, not only was the airport used to smuggle illegal drugs into the United States, but it was also a departure point for weapons used to arm the Contras in Nicaragua.". A 1983 document in the recently released trove referred to a telephone conversation between the FBI and Polk County Sheriff A.L. Big Tech Protected Joe Biden o BEST OF: Big Tech Censorship EXPOSED! Email Address: v EVIO @gmail.com +2 emails. An indignant Brown began toying with the idea of exposing the corruption of Arkansas politics. There were no local dignitaries present, Bender says, and Clinton did not seem to be taking part in any official function. Cops and investigators surround Barry Seal's body in 1986. The CIA stonewalled the release of information now sought by Judicial Watch on the Mena Airport controversy, said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. I mean I didnt have a chance to tell him anything about it. They could locate no files on Seal. Mena is a good setting for a mystery, I wrote at the time. However, her real name is Debbie, not Lucy. Debbie, who was 21 at the time, met Barry, 33, while working as a cashier at a restaurant. "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. 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.When Seal was convicted of smuggling charges, he became an informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration and testified in several major drug trials. The Ochoa Family, along with Pablo Escobar and others, were the founders of the Medelln Cartel. In 1983, the DEA arrested him on drug smuggling charges. Judicial Watch, Inc. is a conservative, non-partisan educational foundation, which promotes transparency, accountability and integrity in government, politics and the law. "The estimated value of the narcotics smuggled through the facility is $3 [billion] to $5 billion. He hands wads of cash to a kid on a bike, telling the boy, "You never saw me." 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. -Vulture.com, Yes. UNLOCK PROFILE. "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. And move on, the world did. "It's my understanding that no drugs ever came to the airport," said Fred Ogden, the current airport manager. Why arent these pilots who flew trafficked minors arrested and charged? The real Barry Seal never had a brother-in-law who was killed by a car bomb. Seal flipped, becoming a valuable government informant. -The Independent, Not likely. Counterrevolutionaries, known as Contras, were battling the Sandinistas. One mission involved a C-123K cargo plane that was outfitted at the Mena airport. 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. . While at a small airport in rural Mena, Arkansas, the notorious smuggler Barry Seal was given protection by Governor Bill Clinton to continue his drug-smuggling, gun-running, money laundering operation but now as a DEA informant and a CIA contract pilot, also set up by Bush. The Judicial Watch lawsuit seeks the report of a November 1996 CIA investigation into drug running, money laundering and intelligence gathering at Mena. "Tom Cruise doesn't look like Barry Seal. Clinton had been asking him a similar question for months, ever since, with Clintons encouragement, he had applied for a job with the CIA. barry seal mena house address. When Wattenberg reported this, an angry Tucker retaliated against Brown by demoting him from white-collar investigations to highway patrol. Brown recalls that on the morning of this particular flight, Seal had told him to drive to Mena Intermountain Regional Airport, a remote air strip near the Oklahoma border. Gov. Two years later, he would be shot dead in Louisiana. Patterson said he had overheard conversations about large quantities of drugs being flow into Mena airport, large quantities of guns, that there was an ongoing operation training foreign people in the area. When asked, Were any of these conversations in the presence of Gov. No one responded when she asked if the newly arisen concerns might be political., In the Arkansas Times article, Leveritt pinned her hopes on the new Cruise movie, which opened in 2017 to good reviews. The state really had next to nothing to do with it. He says that Clinton arrived in a Beech aircraft, and was still there when he left for the day. (Brown maintains that he never flunked the test; in fact, he was nominated four months after taking it for employment with the agency.). In the 1980s, the Mena airport was the reported base of a drug-smuggling, money-laundering and arms-smuggling ring run by Adler Berriman "Barry" Seal, according to an Encyclopedia of Arkansas . 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. However, when a drug shipment was seized by the DEA, the Medellin Cartel blamed Seal for the loss. 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 life of the former TWA pilot, Barry Seal, inspired the film. There is no information on Barry Seal's net worth, but it must have been substantial. 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. While there, he had a chance meeting with Jorge Ochoa's New Orleans business manager. Were suing the CIA for the full inspector general report and we want documents from other agencies as well. Judicial Watch has launched a new campaign for answers. Strange events unfolded at Mena, a small city in remote western Arkansas, in the 1980s. They shared an interest in books, ideas, and night life. "There are also allegations that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency used the airport as a base of operations to help train pilots and troops for the intervention in the Nicaraguan uprising by the Contras during the 1980s," according to the encyclopedia entry, which was written by Robert Sherwood of Georgia Military College. -Smuggler's End: The Life and Death of Barry Seal, Yes. -Daily Mail Online. 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. 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. 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). "Allegations later surfaced that many of the gun shipments sent to Nicaragua as part of the Iran-Contra Affair were sent from the Mena Intermountain Municipal Airport. 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