This doesn't add up with the true story. He hands wads of cash to a kid on a bike, telling the boy, "You never saw me." "Doug and I are both aviators, so we both love to fly.". Goodwin told me and ABC that Brown had passed it. Copyright 2023, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Inc. One mission involved a C-123K cargo plane that was outfitted at the Mena airport. -Smuggler's End: The Life and Death of Barry Seal. Barry Seal was an American-born Trans World Airlines pilot who . Leveritt has written convincing book-length studies of the Memphis Three case and the deaths of teenagers Don Henry and Kevin Ives, the Arkansas boys on the tracks. In Whos Afraid of Barry Seal?, in the Arkansas Times, Leveritt wrote that secrets are still being carefully kept, especially in Arkansas. In advance of the recent Tom Cruise movie about Seal, American Made, an official associated with the Arkansas Studies Institute, an affiliate of the University of Arkansas and the Central Arkansas Libraryboth state institutionsconvinced Leveritt to write a book about Mena, as a tie-in to the movie. Brown? The American Made true story confirms that the real Barry Seal and his wife Debbie had three children (Aaron, Dean and Christina). Thats when he said, You having any fun yet.. Yes. 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." But twenty-three years later, Judicial Watch says it is time for answers. No investigation was blocked. By 1983, his earnings totaled $60 million, making him one of the wealthiest people in America. Question: Was Barry Seal's C-123K aircraft (serial number 54-File: Attachment Size; DOC_0001289717.pdf: 37.21 KB: . The accident didn't happen during filming. Tax records show that, having assessed Seal posthumously for some $86 million in back taxes on his earnings from Mena and elsewhere between 1981 and 1983, even the l.R.S. 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. 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 . In his research for the book, the only confirmed connection Hahn could make between the CIA and Barry Seal was in 1984, after Seal had started working as an informant for the DEA. "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.". Neither these AP materials nor any portion thereof may be stored in a computer except for personal and noncommercial use. Eventually, Brown recalls, Seal startled him by yelling, Well, you all hang on. The man who made Baton Rouge headlines in the mid-1980s for the machine-gun killing of drug informant Adler "Barry" Seal died in the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola on Aug. 25, Louisiana. They referred him to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). When he returned to Little Rock, he called his brother Dwayne. the Colombian drug cartel led by Pablo Escobar Biography "The aircraft flew with various cameras used to obtain photographic evidence of the Sandinistas in the act of smuggling narcotics," Sherwood wrote. There is no information on Barry Seal's net worth, but it must have been substantial. attorney.". 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. JB is fictional. 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. When ABC News interviewed Brown in the fall of 1994, the White House tried to malign him. I'm a multi-engine, instrument-rated commercial pilot," Cruise said in a Wired interview. Then, he started the engines, and Brown remembers, ThisI mean just thunderous noise. Judicial Watch has launched a new campaign for answers. 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). This document may not be reprinted without the express written permission of Northwest Arkansas Newspapers LLC. However, when a drug shipment was seized by the DEA, the Medellin Cartel blamed Seal for the loss. Counterrevolutionaries, known as Contras, were battling the Sandinistas. 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. These are the equivalent of Barry Seal in the Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell covert operation. 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. Purwin was a passenger in a plane that went down, killing both Purwin and Venezuelan pilot Carlos Berl. Clinton also suggested that Brown study Russian, a suggestion Brown took seriously enough to begin making entries in his daybook in Cyrillic. 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. As early as 1982, his firm had been censured by the Arkansas security commissioner for cheating customers. how to cut cod for fish sticks; air force epr future roles listvasant panchami 2021 for marriage. The Mena operation reveals the essential reckless of our present president. The state really had next to nothing to do with it. You can trust him, but the network apparently yielded to White House pressure. Then it was refueled while Sale and the kickers got off. Brown says Seal told him theres good money to be had. But Brown, says he was out of that game for good. Photograph: Evan Agostini/Invision/AP . Browns patience had been strained beyond endurance. The poster for the movie "American Made," to be released Friday, Sept. 29, shows a grinning, cocky Tom. alan dershowitz cost per hour; what is pak po chicken; sonamukhi powder benefits; He carried out his smuggling operation under the nose of then-Arkansas governor Bill Clinton. In the least, his exploits with the CIA and agent Monty Schafer in the movie are largely fictional and based on speculation. "It's my understanding that no drugs ever came to the airport," said Fred Ogden, the current airport manager. Owing to a case that Brown was then working on that could have implicated Tucker, Brown believes the demotion was illegal. According to investigative records compiled by the Arkansas State Police and other agencies, the Mena Intermountain Municipal Airport served as a second home for Barry Seal, a. The Ochoa Family, along with Pablo Escobar and others, were the founders of the Medelln Cartel. 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 entry on the airport. var sc_partition=60; When I got back from that first trip he knew I had been out doing something, Brown insists. He wasn't. Subsequently, Brown says, Seal called him at home, and set up a meeting at Cajuns Wharf, a popular Little Rock watering hole. Indeed, Clinton had taken an active role in helping Brown. As stated in the previous question, there is no strong evidence to confirm that Barry Seal was working with the CIA prior to becoming an informant after his arrest in 1983. Judicial Watch is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Welsh said it had not, but Youngs concern was intriguing. var sc_click_stat=1; Election Law Update, Heavy Lifting Ne NYC Cleans Voter Rolls Thanks To Judicial Watch. A 1983 document in the recently released trove referred to a telephone conversation between the FBI and Polk County Sheriff A.L. 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. In Mena, meanwhile, things were getting stranger. After Brown told Sealand Clintonthat he would no longer take part in the drug flights, Seal contacted Brown again. 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. barry seal mena house address. View Alex Mena results in Phoenix, AZ including current phone number, address, relatives, background check report, and property record with Whitepages. Adler Berriman "Barry" Seal grew up in south Baton Rouge in the 1950s. One mission involved a C-123K cargo plane that was outfitted at the Mena airport. "I trusted him so I didn't ask questions," says Debbie. FBI agents in Miami wanted to know what Seal might have told people at Rich Mountain Aviation regarding his smuggling activities, according to the document. Bush's anti-drug task force in hopes of convincing them of his value as an informant. There were no local dignitaries present, Bender says, and Clinton did not seem to be taking part in any official function. In 1986, he was convicted of drug distribution, and lost his state securities license. Barry met Debbie while he was on his way to a hearing after he was caught in 1972 trying to smuggle military explosives out of the country. var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); The second is the article they reference. Weinberger faced charges of lying to Congress about his knowledge of the arms and drug smuggling that President George W. Bush had endorsed. "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. Yes. It turns out Barry flew the plane all the way back to the United States. Seal, a government informant, was murdered outside a halfway house on Airline Highway in Baton Rouge. In February 1986, Seal was killed in a hail of machine-gun fire outside a Baton Rouge Salvation Army halfway house after allegedly crossing Pablo Escobar and the Medellin drug cartel. Back at Mena, Brown says, he and Seal waled to Browns car, a Datsun hatchback, and Seal put one of the duffel bags under the hatchback. Brown still has books that Clinton gave him, one being a bar exam study book in which the politician had made some ironic under-linings. is above the law! Reprints and media inquiries: [emailprotected]. . In another deposition in the case, John Bender, a mechanic, says he saw Clinton at Mena three times in the summer of 1985. Hadaway. And move on, the world did. The scene was actually inspired by something that happened while director Doug Liman and Tom Cruise were training for the movie. Seal, Brown says, had also prescribed the dress code, and insisted that no one carry identification, not even keys or jewelry. Hahn told Vice that Barry was likable but "not as smart and clever as he thought he was. Its now referred to as theIran-Contrascandal. 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. Approved for Release Date:September 28, 2009. "Despite the availability of evidence sufficient for an indictment on money laundering charges, and over the strong protests of state and federal law enforcement officials, the cases were dropped," according to the report. He also says he told Seal he wanted no part of what was happening; then he left. })(); His daybook records one visit to Mena by Clinton on May 21, 1984, and he says that he accompanied Clinton to Mena on several other occasions. After being caught in Honduras with 40 kilograms of cocaine in 1979, Barry spent nine months in a Honduran jail. Indeed, when Clinton was a law professor in Fayetteville, Brown was working on an off-campus magazine, the radical Grapevine. Barry emerges from the plane covered in cocaine. var _gaq = _gaq || []; The Louisiana attorney general would tell the Justice Department that Seal had "smuggled between $3 billion and $5 billion in drugs into the U.S." The mysteries of Mena revolve around a drug-smuggling pilot named Barry Seal. All rights reserved. Operative Monty Schafer (Domhnall Gleeson) approaches Barry Seal (Tom Cruise) and tells him, "We need you to deliver stuff for us." 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. As part of the application process, Brown had written an essay: Marxist Influence in Central America. -Vulture. Officials at the Arkansas Studies Institute suggested their concerns were legal and financial, associated with vetting the book, but Leveritt wasnt buying it. Yet she pressed on with her writing and finished the book. In his book, he uses case documents and first-person accounts to dispel this idea and other half-truths about Seal. Three early drafts of the essay contain interpolations in Clintons handwriting. Past Addresses: See available information. var sc_invisible=1; And for thirty years, every attempt to get to the bottom of events at Menafederal, state, judicial, journalistichas failed. Barr opposed the independent counsels investigation of wrongdoing in the White House and facilitated Bushs famous1992 Christmas Eve pardonsof six of the co-conspirators of Iran-Contra. The CIA stonewalled the release of information now sought by Judicial Watch on the Mena Airport controversy, said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. It must be noted now that Clintons efforts to distance himself from Mena have persisted for years. No. On Watch: The #COVID19 Crisis on our Southern Border the Media ISN'T Coveri On Watch: Marxism & the Current Insurrection in America. Rafael Mena; Arizona; Phoenix; Rafael L Mena; Rafael L Mena, Age 71. aka Rafael J Mena. His character is inspired by the stories we learned about Barry." 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