An index was completed and the book was listed in the University of Arkansas Press catalog. Eight months later, Seals C-123 was shot down over Nicaragua with a load of ammunition and supplies for the anti-Sandinista Contra rebels. The CIA does not talk about these things, and so Browns exact relationship with the agency may never be known. An indignant Brown began toying with the idea of exposing the corruption of Arkansas politics. attorney.". The C-123K also had a history. And move on, the world did. He decided to talk about Mena. Phone Number: (602) 256- KDYM +1 phone. He also referred to Clinton, familiarly, as the guv. "He thought we had more time. "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. After Brown told Sealand Clintonthat he would no longer take part in the drug flights, Seal contacted Brown again. Set in the year 1978, Barry Seal (Tom Cruise) works as a pilot for Trans World Airlines. The real Barry Seal never had a brother-in-law who was killed by a car bomb. The photos quickly leaked, boosting Washingtons anti-Sandinista effort but likely putting a target on Seals back: to his drug-running friends in South America, there could be no question where the photos came from. This document may not be reprinted without the express written permission of Northwest Arkansas Newspapers LLC. In another deposition in the Reed case, Russell Welch, an Arkansas state police investigator who has looked extensively at Mena, says that Young asked him in 1992 if Clintons name had ever come up in connection with Mena. According to Del Hahn's book Smuggler's End, Barry Seal was not chummy with the cartel bosses. Buddy Young that little beady-faced fellow, and said he was with Clinton at Mena. Hahn told Vice that Barry was likable but "not as smart and clever as he thought he was. The goal was to expose the involvement of the Nicaraguan Sandinista regime as a major supplier of cocaine from Colombia.". The DEA had been onto him for a long time. He says that Clinton arrived in a Beech aircraft, and was still there when he left for the day. I knew the agency had an extensive file on Seal, Leveritt wrote, because Id read it decades earlier, shortly after Seals murder. Whatever the case, of all the Arkansas troopers who would later admit to knowledge of Clintons high life, Brown was the most hesitant to talk. For their efforts, their careers were crushed. The lawsuit claims that the pilots were overworked and that the crash happened after a 12-hour workday. Hagan said he didn't know how many pages of material on Seal have yet to be made public by the FBI. "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. 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. He was not only Gov. He said parts of it could have been provided to people under previous information requests. He had previously been married to Barbara Bottoms (m. 1963-1971) and Lynn Ross (m. 1971-1972). Barry's widow, Deborah Seal, says that he began smuggling drugs in 1975, first focusing mainly on marijuana. No convincing explanation was offered for this act of censorship. "It's my understanding that no drugs ever came to the airport," said Fred Ogden, the current airport manager. He is married to Lucy (Sarah Wright) and has two children with her, with a third on the way. . While at a bar one night, Barry is found by a man saying his name is Monty Schafer (Domhnall Gleeson). They shared an interest in books, ideas, and night life. Micah Morrison is chief investigative reporter for Judicial Watch. You can trust him, but the network apparently yielded to White House pressure. -Court DocumentsThe 2016 Bryan Cranston movie The Infiltrator also depicts Barry Seal's assassination, but it is historically inaccurate. -Smuggler's End: The Life and Death of Barry Seal. ", Copyright 2023, Northwest Arkansas Newspapers LLC. Two duffel bags were put on board the plane at Tegucigalpa. -Daily Mail Online, No. "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. Yet she pressed on with her writing and finished the book. Subsequently, the special prosecutor investigating Whitewater subpoenaed Brown to disclose what he knew about Clintons connections to David L. Hale. An entry in Browns daybook indicates that the flight with Seal took place on October 23, 1984. "I've heard that stated by a lot of people.". Bill Clinton? he replied: Yes, sir. 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. alan dershowitz cost per hour; what is pak po chicken; sonamukhi powder benefits; During the past few years, the activity at the airstrip has aroused the interest of local law enforcement, who then attempted to conduct some investigations but were blocked by the U.S. These are the equivalent of Barry Seal in the Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell covert operation. He says he feared he was being set up made a conspirator in an operation he despised. In the American Made movie, Barry Seal's boredom with piloting commercial flights leads him to perform stunts that cause the oxygen masks to fall and frighten passengers. He identified him as Capt. ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? A 1983 document in the recently released trove referred to a telephone conversation between the FBI and Polk County Sheriff A.L. "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 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. Fact-checking American Made revealed that Monty Schafer is a fictional character created to represent Barry Seal's contacts at the CIA. 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: Lisa Seal Frigon, Barry's daughter from his first marriage, sued Universal, claiming that the studio should have purchased Barry's life rights from her, not his third wife Deborah who they paid $350,000. Browns break with Clinton came after Brown made what he says was his second flight from Mena to Central America. When Wattenberg reported this, an angry Tucker retaliated against Brown by demoting him from white-collar investigations to highway patrol. Purwin was a passenger in a plane that went down, killing both Purwin and Venezuelan pilot Carlos Berl. Then, Brown says, Seal reached again into the duffel bag and pulled out a kilogram of cocaine. "Doug and I are both aviators, so we both love to fly.". Its now referred to as theIran-Contrascandal. "Tom Cruise doesn't look like Barry Seal. The Sandinistas overthrew Nicaraguan President Anastasio Somoza Debayle in 1979, ending 46 years of dictatorship by the Somoza family. The pilot of the plane was Barry Seal, a legendary drug trafficker. 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. Later, after Seal's cover was suspiciously blown, President Reagan used the photo shown below in a 1986 television address to the nation. How much did Clinton know about what he called Lasaters deal in that conversation with L.D. 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 total, he had illegally imported $3 to $5 billion worth of drugs and an estimated 56 tons of cocaine into the U.S., making over 100 flights. "I resigned from the office in November of 1985, and my successor took over the investigation. Instead, he says, he found this huge military plane that was not actually a military plane. It turns out Barry flew the plane all the way back to the United States. But there were still questions regarding the Mena airport and people who worked there, according to the FBI memo. The pilot of the plane was Barry Seal, a legendary drug trafficker. Question: Was Barry Seal's C-123K aircraft (serial number 54-File: Attachment Size; DOC_0001289717.pdf: 37.21 KB: . (NWA Media). The pine and hardwood forests of the Ouachita Mountains surrounding it have long been an outlaws paradise, home to generations of moonshiners and red-dirt marijuana farmers. It was also just seventy miles south of the sprawling Fort Chaffee Army Base at Fort Smith, Arkansas. Last March, in a legally binding deposition, trooper Larry Patterson also said that Clinton knew about Mena. But there were still questions regarding the Mena airport and people who worked there, according to the FBI memo. 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. Not by the United States government. 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. Things became worse when a report in the Washington Times on July 17 . "He stopped in there and, just like that, he asked me out," says Debbie. 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.. is above the law! He said parts of it could have been provided to people under previous information requests. In the American Made movie, Barry Seal (Tom Cruise) crash lands a plane in a suburban neighborhood in an effort to escape the DEA who ordered him to land. Officials at the Arkansas Studies Institute suggested their concerns were legal and financial, associated with vetting the book, but Leveritt wasnt buying it. 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. Inside the plane, according to Brown, were another pilot and two beaners common laborers who looked like Central American Indians. Hadaway. The Sandinistas overthrew Nicaraguan President Anastasio Somoza Debayle in 1979, ending 46 years of dictatorship by the Somoza family. 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. Barry Seal, courtesy of the Baton Rouge Advocate. In the years that followed his split from Clinton, Brown investigated white-collar crime for the Arkansas State Police. In 1981, Seal set up shop at Mena. -The Independent, In the movie, Barry Seal (Tom Cruise) starts working for the Medelln Cartel after they abduct him while he is refueling his plane and then make him an offer he can't refuse. The other troopers called him Clintons Fair-haired boy. Bill Clinton's Mena, Arkansas drug smuggling and money laundering operation through the Arkansas Development Finance Authority (ADFA).. Seal was a Green Beret in the Vietnam war and later a pilot for TWA. Yes. Her character in the American Made movie is much more aware and suspicious of her husband's activities, stating that she flat out doesn't trust him, which is the opposite of Seal's real-life wife. "I resigned from the office in November of 1985, and my successor took over the investigation. When Bill Clinton became president, Mena got a closer look. The memorable scene never happened in real life. They married in 1974. forgave the taxes on hundreds of millions in known drug and gun profits over the ensuing two-year period when Seal was officially admitted to be employed by the government. -The Independent, Not likely. 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 . "He would tell me, 'I'm going to such and such places,' and I wouldn't see him for days. Brown? Please read our Terms of Use or contact us. 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. The scene was actually inspired by something that happened while director Doug Liman and Tom Cruise were training for the movie. 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