Current Address: ZGFJ N 18th St, Phoenix, AZ. No investigation was blocked. He had previously been married to Barbara Bottoms (m. 1963-1971) and Lynn Ross (m. 1971-1972). It was dark almost black, and had only the minimal tail markings necessary for civilian operation. Three early drafts of the essay contain interpolations in Clintons handwriting. I knew the agency had an extensive file on Seal, Leveritt wrote, because Id read it decades earlier, shortly after Seals murder. In 1981, Seal set up shop at Mena. Evidence emerged suggesting that the CIA was operating in the area in the early 1980s; that a major cocaine and gun smuggler was based at the airfield; and that the U.S. military was somehow involved. Using pilots like Barry Seal was a means to an end. Dwayne Brown says his brother seemed terribly upset, and that he immediately drove over to the Governors Mansion to meet him. _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-17438127-1']); "Tom did all his own flying in the movie," says director Doug Liman, who is a pilot himself (Vulture.com). I didnt make the connection then, but it seems significant now: if youre going to secretly run arms to controversial U.S. allies, youll likely want some military support. 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. Mena is the small town in Arkansas where Barry Seal, who was born in Baton Rouge, conducted operations. The gunman was later identified as Luis Carlos Quintero-Cruz. "He would tell me all these wild stories about the missions he had flown. Yes. Even before he graduated from Baton Rouge High School in 1957, Seal had already earned his private pilot's wings. Follow him on Twitter @micah_morrison. Yes. 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. Eight months later, Seals C-123 was shot down over Nicaragua with a load of ammunition and supplies for the anti-Sandinista Contra rebels. Like in the American Made movie, Barry Seal was allowed to fly out of the country and return with illegal drugs that the feds made sure never reached their targets. 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. When asked how, he replied, "Oh, Barry stole an airplane from me. Bill Duncan, an IRS investigator, told me that he had numerous reports of automatic weapons fire, men of Latin American appearance in the area, people in camouflage moving quietly through streams with automatic weapons, aircraft drops, twin-engine airplane traffic. Duncan, along with Arkansas State Police investigator Russell Welch, started digging into Seal and the Mena connection, suspecting a drug smuggling and money laundering operation. Suddenly, though, the Arkansas State Police were uncooperative. 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. In 1981, Seal set up shop at Mena. "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. Arthur, the chief council, investigated the CIA and questioned Col. Oliver North, who is depicted in American Made. 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. The real Barry Seal never had a brother-in-law who was killed by a car bomb. Meanwhile, Brown says, he confronted Clinton, asking him if he knew that Seal was dealing in drugs and unreported currency. About 25 pages of that trove refer to Arkansas or Mena. Barry Seal, courtesy of the Baton Rouge Advocate. 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. At this juncture, no one, including Brown, can say precisely what Clinton was doing at Mena. Judicial Watch: Fighting for Clean Elections. During the Iran-Contra affair of the 1980s, the U.S. plotted to secretly help the rebels (Contras) overthrow Nicaragua's Communist Sandinista government. In fact, even the Wikipedia links Ive included in this paragraph are mostly lies. 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. Yet, some believe that Seal was working for the CIA in the 1980s to fly guns and money to Nicaraguan rebels, a detail that the movie embraces. Gov. 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). Seal Texaco.located corner Acadian Thruway andGoverment Street ,Baton Rouge La.Father Benjamin C Seal and the Sons Benjy Jr,Dean ,Jason ,Aaron, Curtis R,Wendell K, work the gas . Its now referred to as theIran-Contrascandal. The goal was to expose the involvement of the Nicaraguan Sandinista regime as a major supplier of cocaine from Colombia.". The mysteries of Mena revolve around a drug-smuggling pilot named Barry Seal. 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. You can trust him, but the network apparently yielded to White House pressure. Advertisement. Barry arrived that evening at approximately 6 p.m. and backed his white Cadillac into a parking space. Browns patience had been strained beyond endurance. 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 . Leveritt was reluctant at first, but soon warmed to the task and got to work. But I was in for a shock, Leveritt writes. (Brown maintains that he never flunked the test; in fact, he was nominated four months after taking it for employment with the agency.). BEST OF: Left Targets Elon Musk, FBI Investigated Fauci Agency, CA Court Vi BEST OF: Twitter Changed Rules to Ban Trump! Ultimately, we may find out, as Brown tells us that he has been repeatedly questioned by lawyers working for the Whitewater independent counsel about Clintons association with Lasater at a time when illicit drugs allegedly were flowing into Mena airport. -Vulture.com Barry Seal was a ballsy and confident risk taker, who rarely acknowledged the possibility of failure, and that's just how Tom Cruise portrays him in the American Made movie. -Daily Mail Online, No. commission charbonneau liste de noms. Browns role, after all, was quite limited. However, her real name is Debbie, not Lucy. 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. Buddy Young that little beady-faced fellow, and said he was with Clinton at Mena. "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.". 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. Dwayne Brown says he knew his brother had made some unexplained trips out of the country. In 1981, he was making daily deposits of $50,000 into an account at a bank in the Bahamas. Seal became a federal informant in March 1984. 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. About 25 pages of that trove refer to Arkansas or Mena. Seemingly panicked, the White House mistakenly presumed that Brown was talking to ABC News about his involvement with Mena when he was actually discussing Whitewater. -Vulture. They were all sentenced to life in prison. Clinton appeared to have pressured Hale, the head of an Arkansas lending agency, into making loans to Susan McDougal, the Clintons Whitewater real estate partner. Corporate Office Arcadia Inc. 2301 East Vernon Ave. Vernon, CA 90058. Judicial Watch Sues Air Force Academy for Records about Critical Race Theor DOJ & FBI Target Biden Political Opponents, Judicial Watch Warns: Critical Race Theory Rising. The CIA stonewalled the release of information now sought by Judicial Watch on the Mena Airport controversy, said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. Seal, Brown says, talked knowledgeably about airplanes, and spoke of an operation he was planning. 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 gunman hurried into a waiting Buick, which sped away. In 1986, he was convicted of drug distribution, and lost his state securities license. Question: Was Barry Seal's C-123K aircraft (serial number 54-File: Attachment Size; DOC_0001289717.pdf: 37.21 KB: . I first traveled to Mena in 1994, reporting for the Wall Street Journal editorial page. After a barrage of requests from different people and media outlets under the federal Freedom of Information Act, on Wednesday the FBI released more than 1,000 pages of its file on Seal: vault.fbi.gov/recently-added. It was originally an Air Force transport plane Seal dubbed it the Fat Lady. Material from the Associated Press is Copyright 2023, Associated Press and may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Lets hope that Cruises high-powered version of Seal prompts an equally high-powered demand for disclosure of all government records on him, especially after his move to Mena.. No. "The DEA agents who worked with Barry loved him," said director Doug Liman. "The aircraft flew with various cameras used to obtain photographic evidence of the Sandinistas in the act of smuggling narcotics," Sherwood wrote. "One day Barry came in and said there was a contract on him - half a million dead, a million alive," says widow Debbie Seal. Counterrevolutionaries, known as Contras, were battling the Sandinistas. 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: 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. No. When he was deposed, Bender was shown a photograph of Buddy Young. The American Made true story confirms that the real Barry Seal and his wife Debbie had three children (Aaron, Dean and Christina). Hahn told Vice that Barry was likable but "not as smart and clever as he thought he was. Concurrently, they had to make sure not to raise the suspicions of the ruthless Colombian drug lords. He gathered information on Medellin cartel kingpins and participated in at least two drug runs to Nicaragua, where the Reagan administration was ramping up operations against the Sandinista government. 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. alan dershowitz cost per hour; what is pak po chicken; sonamukhi powder benefits; Jeffrey Epstein: Predator, Spy plus FULL access to all newsletters. The C-123K also had a history. The narcotics runner, Barry Seal, allegedly paid off then-Governor Clintons protg, L. D. Brown, and one Dan Lasater, a Clinton contributor. The book was killed at the last minute. . He says he feared he was being set up made a conspirator in an operation he despised. He suspected a CIA involvement, although his brother did not confirm it. These are the equivalent of Barry Seal in the Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell covert operation. 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