Hadaway. Creating Epstein: Bill Barr Leslie Wexner & the CIA, Bonnie's Clyde: The True Story of Jeffrey Epstein & Ghislaine Maxwell, Revisiting Mena, Bill Clinton, the CIA & Barry Seal. 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. Officials at the Arkansas Studies Institute suggested their concerns were legal and financial, associated with vetting the book, but Leveritt wasnt buying it. "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. I first traveled to Mena in 1994, reporting for the Wall Street Journal editorial page. Seal was a DEA informant/operative who was deeply involved in Iran-Contra and Gov. In the 1980s the smallairportin Arkansas known as Mena became part of the largest covert operation in history. By providing your phone number, you are consenting to receive calls and recurring SMS/MMS messages, including autodialed and automated calls and texts, to that number from the Judicial Watch. Three Colombians eventually were arrested and convicted of the murder. The man said that despite the incident, he was still very fond of Barry. Brown says Clinton told him not to worry. The name of another person under investigation was redacted. Current Address: HERA E Avalon Dr, Phoenix, AZ. When he was deposed, Bender was shown a photograph of Buddy Young. The CIAs inspector general investigated and released a terse statement saying no evidence has been found that the CIA was associated with money laundering, narcotics trafficking, arms smuggling or other illegal activities at or around Mena. There was, however, a classified two-week exercise and some contracting for routine aviation-related services.. var sc_invisible=1; "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. "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.". Despite the movie attempting to pin it on North, Jacoby later said that North was not his source and that it was a deceased Special Forces and CIA guy named Ted Lunger, who at the time worked as a staff member for Representative Dan Daniel. Yet, it's also certainly possible that Seal had no involvement with the CIA in the early 1980s at all, given there is nothing to support the claim but rumors. The memorable scene never happened in real life. Judicial Watch, Inc. is a conservative, non-partisan educational foundation, which promotes transparency, accountability and integrity in government, politics and the law. Frigon, who says she administers Seal's estate, contends the estate did not consent. A 1983 document in the recently released trove referred to a telephone conversation between the FBI and Polk County Sheriff A.L. "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. The goal was to expose the involvement of the Nicaraguan Sandinista regime as a major supplier of cocaine from Colombia.". "I resigned from the office in November of 1985, and my successor took over the investigation. "The DEA agents who worked with Barry loved him," said director Doug Liman. Asa Hutchinson was U.S. attorney for Arkansas' Western District in the early 1980s. In 1996, House Banking Committee Chairman Jim Leach pressed the CIA for answers about its role at Mena. Mena is a good setting for a mystery, I wrote at the time. The interview with Brown, in which he had spoken only about Hale and not about Mena, was killed. Executing secret missions for the government in the movie might add a sort of patriotism and redeeming quality to his character, but in real life Barry Seal was a drug smuggler first and foremost. Past Addresses: See available information. View Alex Mena results in Phoenix, AZ including current phone number, address, relatives, background check report, and property record with Whitepages. "The estimated value of the narcotics smuggled through the facility is $3 [billion] to $5 billion. Yes. "According to some reports, the [Mena] airport, from 1981 to 1985, was a major transit point for the entrance of cocaine and heroin into the United States," Sherwood wrote. If he had in fact been working for the CIA at the time, his connections didn't get him off the hook. Barry Seal was an American-born Trans World Airlines pilot who . They also claimed that the pilot who died lacked the necessary experience for the flight. He also referred to Clinton, familiarly, as the guv. us. He said, according to Brown, Thats Lasaters deal, thats Lasaters deal.. Then, he started the engines, and Brown remembers, ThisI mean just thunderous noise. In 1986, he was convicted of drug distribution, and lost his state securities license. Browns break with Clinton came after Brown made what he says was his second flight from Mena to Central America. In the least, his exploits with the CIA and agent Monty Schafer in the movie are largely fictional and based on speculation. 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. No investigation was blocked.". Debbie became Barry's third wife. var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; Gov. No. Seal made an estimated $60 million off smuggling drugs into the country and became one of the richest people in America. 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. 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 an internal FBI document released last week. Gov. The movie's title was changed to put less emphasis on the Arkansas connection, including the possibility that Bill Clinton was aware of what was going on. Photograph: Evan Agostini/Invision/AP . Pablo Escobar and the Ochoas were going to be arrested at a celebration of Seal's successful cocaine transport. Leveritt was reluctant at first, but soon warmed to the task and got to work. 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. See Rafael L Mena's age, phone number, house address, email address, social media accounts, public records, and check for criminal records on Spokeo. The FBI in Little Rock began investigating Seal's operation at the Mena airport in February 1984, according to the recently released FBI document. In the 2017 Doug Liman-directed movie "American Made," which was previously titled "Mena," Deborah DuBois, the third wife of Barry Seal, was portrayed by the character Lucy. Seal is purported to have flown guns to South America from Mena and drugs back into the United States, according to the memo. He carried out his smuggling operation under the nose of then-Arkansas governor Bill Clinton. He later claimed to have made as much as $50 million running 1,000 pounds of cocaine a month from Colombia. Though the Clinton machine feared him the most, he showed no intention of breaking his silence until a chain of random events made it inevitable. 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: These are the equivalent of Barry Seal in the Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell covert operation. _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); 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. Bill Clinton? he replied: Yes, sir. He took it out for a test flight and never came back." Like in the movie, the American Made true story reveals that Barry made a living as a commercial airline pilot for several years. No. var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); At a press conference in October 1994, for instance, he was asked a rambling question about the remote air strip, and gave an equally rambling answer. -TIME. 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. However, the U.S. needed a way to covertly get the funds and weapons to the rebels. 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. One mission involved a C-123K cargo plane that was outfitted at the Mena airport. All were wearing jeans, T-shirts, and sneakers. It was no coincidence when Donald TrumpappointedWilliam Barr as his Attorney General. Meanwhile, others are now coming forward to confirm a Clinton connection to Mena. 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. And while Clinton would later correctly note that events at Mena were primarily a matter of federal jurisdictionmeaning that Republicans probably had more to lose than Democrats if the truth was exposedits also true that a Clinton friend and supporter named Dan Lasater was under investigation for drug smuggling at the same time Seal was operating in Arkansas. -Refinery29, Yes. Question: Was Barry Seal's C-123K aircraft (serial number 54-File: Attachment Size; DOC_0001289717.pdf: 37.21 KB: . All rights reserved. FITTON: #TwitterFiles EXPOSE FBI & CIA Election Interference! He says that Clinton arrived in a Beech aircraft, and was still there when he left for the day. 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. -Daily Mail Online. 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 . -Daily Mail Online. Yet she pressed on with her writing and finished the book. They could locate no files on Seal. 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. 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. According to Del Hahn's book Smuggler's End, Barry Seal was not chummy with the cartel bosses. 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. Many of the more baroque allegations emerge from the fever swamps of conspiracy theorists, but certain facts are indisputable. He also says he told Seal he wanted no part of what was happening; then he left. In the autumn of 1984, Brown found himself seated on a bench inside a cavernous C-123K cargo plane roaring over a Central American jungle. 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. He says that he wanted to go public with his revelations about Mena, but that he did not know whom to tell. 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. 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 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. 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. Seal's mysterious activities have spawned books, movies and a cornucopia of conspiracy theories. Judicial Watch is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. The Sandinistas overthrew Nicaraguan President Anastasio Somoza Debayle in 1979, ending 46 years of dictatorship by the Somoza family. 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. The gunman was later identified as Luis Carlos Quintero-Cruz. Regardless, Jacoby's article led to the abandonment of the final piece of Barry Seal's undercover operation. The narcotics runner, Barry Seal, allegedly paid off then-Governor Clintons protg, L. D. Brown, and one Dan Lasater, a Clinton contributor. He was not only Gov. The cartel tells Barry that they'll deal with JB, a suggestion that Barry opposes. When Bill Clinton became president, Mena got a closer look. -Daily Mail Online, "Mena" refers to the small town in Arkansas where Barry Seal moved his operation, smuggling in drugs to a clandestine airfield under the nose of then-Governor Bill Clinton. Dwayne Brown says he knew his brother had made some unexplained trips out of the country. 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. In its review of the 2017 movie "American Made" -- about Seal -- the New York Times called it the Conspiratorial Industrial Complex. 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 guess he also thought Colombians would stick out like a sore thumb in Louisiana and they wouldn't come here." Thats when he said, You having any fun yet.. Were suing the CIA for the full inspector general report and we want documents from other agencies as well. "He stopped in there and, just like that, he asked me out," says Debbie. Arkansas State Trooper L.D. I knew the agency had an extensive file on Seal, Leveritt wrote, because Id read it decades earlier, shortly after Seals murder. Brown says he never saw the bags again. . White Kendall, approached ABC, As Time reported, Kendall was working very, very hard to keep Whitewater out of the headlines. Meanwhile, Betsey Wright, a Clinton political fixer, told ABC that Brown was a pathological liar, even though his personnel file in Arkansas abounded with recommendations some from Clinton, and even one from Dr. Joycelyn Elders. In researching the American Made true story, we learned that Barry Seal was arrested by customs officers in Fort Lauderdale, Florida in 1983 as he tried to smuggle 200,000 units of Quaalude, a recreational drug, into the country. 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 February 1986, Seal was killed outside . After Barry spoiler . Mena, Arkansas, as a staging point for weapons supply flights. Seal, Brown says, had also prescribed the dress code, and insisted that no one carry identification, not even keys or jewelry. 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. He was also providing Clinton with the use of a private airplane, and entertaining him at various places, including his New Mexico resort, Angel Fire. But there were still questions regarding the Mena airport and people who worked there, according to the FBI memo. "One day Barry came in and said there was a contract on him - half a million dead, a million alive," says widow Debbie Seal. 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). Mena is the small town in Arkansas where Barry Seal, who was born in Baton Rouge, conducted operations. 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