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. 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. 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. Basically, Seal would fly over the guns and smuggle back drugs on his return trip. The state really had next to nothing to do with it. I dont want to be getting any more reports from Brown is the statement by Tucker that Colonel Tommy Goodwin, the recently retired head of the Arkansas state police, quoted in explaining the demotion to me in an interview. Dan Lasater, of course, was the celebrated Little Rock bond daddy. He carries it around and begins spending it, which attracts the attention of the local authorities. economic factors affecting media industry, what is lizzo favorite color, delbarton jv soccer roster, sound on sound festival lineup, examples of complementarity of structure and function, barry seal mena house address, christopher hunter son of jeffrey hunter, undefeated documentary where are they now, faran fronczak husband, sacem dico 2 rue . Frankly, it will never be revealed. Jul 04, 2022 12:40 P.M. The scene was actually inspired by something that happened while director Doug Liman and Tom Cruise were training for the movie. He spent his spare time hanging around the old Downtown Airport, now Independence Park, working odd jobs in exchange for flight time. 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. 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. 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. (NWA Media). Seal made an estimated $60 million off smuggling drugs into the country and became one of the richest people in America. "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. While there, he had a chance meeting with Jorge Ochoa's New Orleans business manager. He decided to talk about Mena. No. Gov. Brown? He later claimed to have made as much as $50 million running 1,000 pounds of cocaine a month from Colombia. . _qacct="p-571RmQ-B866HQ";quantserve(); 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. 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. Judicial Watch has launched a new campaign for answers. When ABC News interviewed Brown in the fall of 1994, the White House tried to malign him. 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. As Slate notes, Seal stuck a plea deal, where he testified in three major drug trials and got five years' probation and six months at a halfway house. All rights reserved. The irony is that he might have remained reluctant, but then the White House itself intervened. 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. How could that be? Then both men got into the front set of the car, and Seal reached into the duffel bag, and pulled out a manila envelope with $2,500 in it. Meanwhile, others are now coming forward to confirm a Clinton connection to Mena. The real Barry Seal never had a brother-in-law who was killed by a car bomb. It would later be serviced and financed by Southern Air Transport, a CIA front company, and it was eventually shot down over Nicaragua in a doomed supply effort to the Contras that left an American, Eugene Hasenfus, a prisoner of the Sandinistas and the CIA link to the Contras revealed. Arkansas State Trooper L.D. 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. The name of another person under investigation was redacted. 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. Many names in the documents have been redacted. We had nothing zeroto do with it, and everybody whos ever looked into it knows that.. "The DEA agents who worked with Barry loved him," said director Doug Liman. Later Brown would come to know them as kickers. Strange events unfolded at Mena, a small city in remote western Arkansas, in the 1980s. On Watch: The #COVID19 Crisis on our Southern Border the Media ISN'T Coveri On Watch: Marxism & the Current Insurrection in America. Purwin was a passenger in a plane that went down, killing both Purwin and Venezuelan pilot Carlos Berl. Rayburn House Office Building, Chairman James Leach (R-IA), Committee on Banking and Financial Services, and staffer . Buddy Young that little beady-faced fellow, and said he was with Clinton at Mena. Barry Seal was fired from TWA in 1974 for falsely citing medical leave when he was actually off trafficking weapons. Debbie, who was 21 at the time, met Barry, 33, while working as a cashier at a restaurant. Barry also had a daughter and a son not shown in the movie, Lisa and Alder, with his first wife Barbara Bottoms. UNLOCK PROFILE. Barry Seal "'Fat Man' key to mystery" By Michael Haddigan THE ARKANSAS GAZETTE June 26, 1988 Allegations of cocaine smuggling and international intrigue swirled about the Mena Airport and Seal for years. In 1981, he was making daily deposits of $50,000 into an account at a bank in the Bahamas. Operative Monty Schafer (Domhnall Gleeson) approaches Barry Seal (Tom Cruise) and tells him, "We need you to deliver stuff for us." "He stopped in there and, just like that, he asked me out," says Debbie. Contributions are received from 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. Mena is a good setting for a mystery, I wrote at the time. 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 early as 1982, his firm had been censured by the Arkansas security commissioner for cheating customers. The cartel tells Barry that they'll deal with JB, a suggestion that Barry opposes. Alexander said he has been meeting weekly with the GAO investigating team and has been in touch with the House and Senate subcommittees . After it left Mena, the plane made a refueling stop Nobody got off, Brown says and then resumed flight. Debbie became Barry's third wife. "Tom did all his own flying in the movie," says Liman. Undercover cameras installed on Seal's plane captured photos on the tarmac of a Nicaraguan airport. By 1983, his earnings totaled $60 million, making him one of the wealthiest people in America. 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.. And the U.S. was covertly backing the Contras. "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. But there were still questions regarding the Mena airport and people who worked there, according to the FBI memo. Tips: [emailprotected], Investigative Bulletin is published by Judicial Watch. That charge could only have come from the man then Governor Clinton who knew that his former bodyguard had dealings with the CIA ten years ago. "I initiated a grand jury investigation in relation to money laundering through the Mena airport in 1985," Hutchinson said Friday. Please read our Terms of Use or contact us. Dr. Faucis "SHADY" Gain of Function Research! No investigation was blocked.". Three Colombians supposedly sent by the Ochoas, including Cruz and Velez, were later arrested at the airport. Back at Mena, Brown says, he told Seal he had thought they were going to fly in a plane similar to the ones he had been on with the Governor. 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. 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. Concurrently, they had to make sure not to raise the suspicions of the ruthless Colombian drug lords. 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. -Daily Mail Online. (323) 771-9819. info@arcadiainc.com. He said the money had been brought back from Tegucigalpa. The book was to be called, The Mena File: Barry Seals Ties to Drug Lords and U.S. Officials. Leveritt knew the story well and had researched it earlier, writing about Seals murder and other related events. Arcadia Inc Plant / Vernon. Bill Clinton? he replied: Yes, sir. There were no local dignitaries present, Bender says, and Clinton did not seem to be taking part in any official function. When Wattenberg reported this, an angry Tucker retaliated against Brown by demoting him from white-collar investigations to highway patrol. 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 . Subsequently, the special prosecutor investigating Whitewater subpoenaed Brown to disclose what he knew about Clintons connections to David L. Hale. Bill Clintons favorite bodyguard, but also a close friend. Phone Number: (602) 256- KDYM +1 phone. Clinton also suggested that Brown study Russian, a suggestion Brown took seriously enough to begin making entries in his daybook in Cyrillic. 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. The explosives were supposedly going to anti-Castro Cuban fighters. Adler Berriman "Barry" Seal (July 16, 1939 - February 19, 1986) murdered in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The Ochoa Family, along with Pablo Escobar and others, were the founders of the Medelln Cartel. 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. Then Brown says, Seal and the kickers returned, carrying four duffel bags. Instead, he says, he found this huge military plane that was not actually a military plane. The August issue ofThe American Spectatortakes up the Mena story in a way that is likely to resonate on the Hill (see attached article). Two years later, he would be shot dead in Louisiana. Judicial Watch is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. 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. 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