Copyright 2023, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Inc. An indignant Brown began toying with the idea of exposing the corruption of Arkansas politics. FITTON: #TwitterFiles EXPOSE FBI & CIA Election Interference! "The aircraft flew with various cameras used to obtain photographic evidence of the Sandinistas in the act of smuggling narcotics," Sherwood wrote. 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. It was dark almost black, and had only the minimal tail markings necessary for civilian operation. 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. He had previously been married to Barbara Bottoms (m. 1963-1971) and Lynn Ross (m. 1971-1972). Browns patience had been strained beyond endurance. 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. The pilot of the plane was Barry Seal, a legendary drug trafficker. The August issue ofThe American Spectatortakes up the Mena story in a way that is likely to resonate on the Hill (see attached article). No. 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. In court documents, the family alleged that "lapses in planning, coordinating, scheduling, and flight safety" contributed to the fatal crash in the mountains of Colombia. In the least, his exploits with the CIA and agent Monty Schafer in the movie are largely fictional and based on speculation. 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. "Allegations later surfaced that many of the gun shipments sent to Nicaragua as part of the Iran-Contra Affair were sent from the Mena Intermountain Municipal Airport. And move on, the world did. A Seal associate cut a runway deep in the woods. 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 . Approximately 30 minutes later, Brown says, the C-123K landed in what he later learned what Tegucigalpa, Honduras. 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). Cocainea lot of itflowed in. A 1983 document in the recently released trove referred to a telephone conversation between the FBI and Polk County Sheriff A.L. Then it was refueled while Sale and the kickers got off. 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. 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 . Adler Berriman "Barry" Seal grew up in south Baton Rouge in the 1950s. After being caught in Honduras with 40 kilograms of cocaine in 1979, Barry spent nine months in a Honduran jail. It must be noted now that Clintons efforts to distance himself from Mena have persisted for years. Seal is purported to have flown guns to South America from Mena and drugs back into the United States, according to the memo. Like Clinton, Brown passed through a radical stage when he attended the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. 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. All rights reserved. Arkansas State Trooper L.D. He also says he told Seal he wanted no part of what was happening; then he left. Email Address: v EVIO @gmail.com +2 emails. No one responded when she asked if the newly arisen concerns might be political., In the Arkansas Times article, Leveritt pinned her hopes on the new Cruise movie, which opened in 2017 to good reviews. By 1983, his earnings totaled $60 million, making him one of the wealthiest people in America. Current Address: HERA E Avalon Dr, Phoenix, AZ. -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. 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. I understand that Fred Hitz or someone from his staff, along with other CIA officers will brief Congressman Leach on Friday 21 July in an attempt to address his concerns about these and other allegations. Trooper Bobby Walker has told me that sometime in the mid-1980s he was at Mena with Clinton. In other words: nothing to see here, move on. An entry in Browns daybook indicates that the flight with Seal took place on October 23, 1984. Then, he started the engines, and Brown remembers, ThisI mean just thunderous noise. Mena is the small town in Arkansas where Barry Seal, who was born in Baton Rouge, conducted operations. The name of another person under investigation was redacted. Seal, according to Brown, was familiar with the biographical information he had given the agency. Barry Seal's smuggling operation began in Louisiana, and like in the American Made movie, he sometimes pushed packed duffel bags full of drugs out of his plane and into the Atchafalaya basin, to be collected by associates on the ground. Contributions are received from 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. "Allegations later surfaced that many of the gun shipments sent to Nicaragua as part of the Iran-Contra Affair were sent from the Mena Intermountain Municipal Airport. In 1994, Brown told Daniel Wattenberg of The American Spectator that Jim Guy Tucker, then the Arkansas governor had asked him and trooper Larry Patterson for compromising information on Clintons private life in 1990, when Tucker was contemplating a race for governor. The goal was to expose the involvement of the Nicaraguan Sandinista regime as a major supplier of cocaine from Colombia.". But I was in for a shock, Leveritt writes. Three early drafts of the essay contain interpolations in Clintons handwriting. us. The goal was to expose the involvement of the Nicaraguan Sandinista regime as a major supplier of cocaine from Colombia.". Set in the year 1978, Barry Seal (Tom Cruise) works as a pilot for Trans World Airlines. About 25 pages of that trove refer to Arkansas or Mena. -Smuggler's End: The Life and Death of Barry Seal. 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. 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. 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.. Many names in the documents have been 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. -TIME, As a drug smuggler for Colombia's Medelln Cartel, Barry Seal earned as much as $500,000 per flight smuggling cocaine into the United States. "He would tell me all these wild stories about the missions he had flown. Yes. Please read our Terms of Use or contact us. The book was killed at the last minute. 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. In real life, his first encounter with the Medelln Cartel happened less dramatically. Inside the plane, according to Brown, were another pilot and two beaners common laborers who looked like Central American Indians. Also, view a news story about Barry Seal's death. After Barry spoiler . "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. Its now referred to as theIran-Contrascandal. He was shot to death by two machinegun-wielding men while behind the wheel of his Cadillac in the . In essence, not only was the airport used to smuggle illegal drugs into the United States, but it was also a departure point for weapons used to arm the Contras in Nicaragua.". After Brown told Sealand Clintonthat he would no longer take part in the drug flights, Seal contacted Brown again. "You know, we're not making a biopic," said director Doug Liman. Like in the movie, the American Made true story reveals that Barry made a living as a commercial airline pilot for several years. Although, the truth, as it happened has never been revealed to the public. "I've heard that stated by a lot of people.". Approved for Release Date:September 28, 2009. The respected Arkansas journalist Mara Leveritt recently outlined what appears to be a continuing effort to cover up the Mena affair. Browns role, after all, was quite limited. People in Mena say the drugs never got there, that the drugs were jettisoned over drop zones in the Louisiana swamps before Seal's planes made it back to Mena. Three Colombians supposedly sent by the Ochoas, including Cruz and Velez, were later arrested at the airport. The lawsuit claims that the pilots were overworked and that the crash happened after a 12-hour workday. When he returned to Little Rock, he called his brother Dwayne. It does seem, however, that Clinton was far less cautious. Bushs Attorney General was William Barr. Meanwhile, Brown says, he confronted Clinton, asking him if he knew that Seal was dealing in drugs and unreported currency. The first is a CIA internal memo on an article written about Mena in 1995. var sc_click_stat=1; I first traveled to Mena in 1994, reporting for the Wall Street Journal editorial page. jewish british actresses; how old is meryl lipstein 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. And the U.S. was covertly backing the Contras. He also referred to Clinton, familiarly, as the guv. And for thirty years, every attempt to get to the bottom of events at Menafederal, state, judicial, journalistichas failed. The New York Times and "West 57th," a CBS television news show, were working on stories about CIA activities at the Mena airport, according to a 1987 FBI memo released last week. Tom Cruise is set to play murdered DEA informant Barry Seal in Doug Liman's film Mena. When ABC News interviewed Brown in the fall of 1994, the White House tried to malign him. Bill Clintons favorite bodyguard, but also a close friend. -Vulture. It's certainly possible and it's what the movie proposes. The is the latest repackaging of allegations previously made by the Wall Street Journal. Brown, a narcotics cop, got upset. In an effort to reduce or altogether avoid his 10-year prison sentence, Seal first tried to make a deal with a U.S. attorney, volunteering to give up information on the Ochoa family, but the deal was rejected. Msg&data rates may apply. Barry arrived that evening at approximately 6 p.m. and backed his white Cadillac into a parking space. 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.. 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. Even before he graduated from Baton Rouge High School in 1957, Seal had already earned his private pilot's wings. I knew the agency had an extensive file on Seal, Leveritt wrote, because Id read it decades earlier, shortly after Seals murder. The story took on a new life when Bill Clinton ran for president. "Little Rock [FBI] is attempting to establish that [redacted] modified, maintained and stored Seal's aircraft with the knowledge that he was involved in cocaine smuggling activities prior to Seal's plea bargaining agreement on March 24, 1984," according to the memo. Micah Morrison is chief investigative reporter for Judicial Watch. Terms & conditions/privacy policy apply. Images like the one earlier on this page show Medelln Cartel boss Pablo Escobar with Sandinista government officials and soldiers, who were loading cocaine onto Seal's plane, nicknamed the Fat Lady. 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. In 1986, he was convicted of drug distribution, and lost his state securities license. In essence, not only was the airport used to smuggle illegal drugs into the United States, but it was also a departure point for weapons used to arm the Contras in Nicaragua.". No. "Little Rock [FBI] is attempting to establish that [redacted] modified, maintained and stored Seal's aircraft with the knowledge that he was involved in cocaine smuggling activities prior to Seal's plea bargaining agreement on March 24, 1984," according to the memo. No. _qacct="p-571RmQ-B866HQ";quantserve(); Seal, Brown says, had also prescribed the dress code, and insisted that no one carry identification, not even keys or jewelry. Leveritt was reluctant at first, but soon warmed to the task and got to work. Brown recalls that on the morning of this particular flight, Seal had told him to drive to Mena Intermountain Regional Airport, a remote air strip near the Oklahoma border. I never saw drugs, that's for sure." Judicial Watch has launched a new campaign for answers. Magruder, Brown says, asked him if he would be interested in paramilitary, counterintelligence and narcotics. Brown, who had worked in narcotics enforcement as a police officer, said he was interested. 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. Neither these AP materials nor any portion thereof may be stored in a computer except for personal and noncommercial use. Seal, Brown says, talked knowledgeably about airplanes, and spoke of an operation he was planning. "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. 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. The AP will not be held liable for any delays, inaccuracies, errors or omissions therefrom or in the transmission or delivery of all or any part thereof or for any damages arising from any of the foregoing. And the U.S. was covertly backing the Contras. 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. "He put the airplane into a parabolic arc and pinned me against the ceiling, and right in that moment, I had this inspiration. Vincent G Mena, Age 54. This doesn't add up with the true story. In 1986, Colombian hitmen caught up with Seal in Baton Rouge, shooting him to death in his white Cadillac. The New York Times and "West 57th," a CBS television news show, were working on stories about CIA activities at the Mena airport, according to a 1987 FBI memo released last week. According to a 1988 Senate Foreign Relations Committee report, Seal's associates at the Mena airport were also being investigated. Barry's widow, Deborah Seal, says that he began smuggling drugs in 1975, first focusing mainly on marijuana. 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. Liman has referred to the film as "a fun lie based on a true story" (TIME). 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." Officials at the Arkansas Studies Institute suggested their concerns were legal and financial, associated with vetting the book, but Leveritt wasnt buying it. However, the U.S. needed a way to covertly get the funds and weapons to the rebels. Cops and investigators surround Barry Seal's body in 1986. A July 17, 1984 front-page Washington Times article by Edmund Jacoby described a link between Nicaragua's Sandinista government and the Medelln drug cartel. The other troopers called him Clintons Fair-haired boy. 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