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. That aspect of who he was has never been disputed. [24] The cartel provided a new plane, but it lacked the capacity for a direct flight to the U.S., so the cartel arranged a stopover in Nicaragua earlier than one planned at an airfield in Los Brasiles near Managua. He was murdered on February 19, 1986, by contract killers hired by the cartel. Tom Cruise got his pilot's license in 1994. [22] The Colombian government had recently conducted a major raid on the cartel's manufacturing facilities at a remote jungle location called Tranquilandia, and they told Seal that they were making arrangements to set up shipping and production facilities in Nicaragua, where they had struck a deal with the Sandinista government. No one has been able to tell us". In 1981, the pilot made his first flight for the Ochoa brothers, a founding family of the cartel. Tom Cruise is moving on from his Mummy -fied adventures in 2017, with his next big release, American Made, hitting theaters soon. Like in the movie, the American Made true story reveals that Barry made a living as a commercial airline pilot for several years. -Vulture.com, Yes. No. Watch President Ronald Reagan's address to the nation on Nicaragua and Central America, delivered from the Oval Office on November 13, 1986. The pilot flew into Nicaragua with CIA cameras on his plane, taking photos showing Escobar and several other members of the Cartel . [21], Participants at the meeting included Pablo Escobar and Jorge, Fabio Jr., and Juan David Ochoa. On June 26, 1984, Barry Seal boarded a plane equipped with two hidden cameras and flew back to Nicaragua. Adler Berriman "Barry" Seal was an American commercial airline pilot who became a major drug smuggler for the Medelln Cartel. His humble roots certainly didnt foreshadow what would become, quite literally, a blockbuster life. CBS Evening News (7/28/88), the only major network to cover the proceedings, reported on the testimony of DEA agent Ernest Jacobsen, who said that White House officials undermined a DEA probe of the Colombian cocaine kingpins by blowing an undercover informants cover when they leaked information in an attempt to link Nicaragua to the drug trade. On July 28, the House Judiciary subcommittee on crime, chaired by Congressman William Hughes (D-NJ), held the first of a series of hearings into whether Reagan administration officials condoned drug smuggling and other criminal activities to further its Central America policy. Universal Pictures. No. The story included the photograph Seal had taken of Escobar handling the cocaine. The 70s. Oct. 10, 1986 12 AM PT. Barry Seal, The Most Important Witness In The History Of The Drug Enforcement Administration. Liman has referred to the film as "a fun lie based on a true story" (TIME). 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. FAIRs work is sustained by our generous contributors, who allow us to remain independent. Adler Berriman Barry Seal (July 16, 1939 February 19, 1986) was an American airline pilot who became a major drug smuggler for the Medelln Cartel. [37], In February, Seal also played a central role in an undercover operation against Norman Saunders, chief minister of the Turks and Caicos Islands, a former British colony south of the Bahamas. 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. On the trip, Seal managed to snap photos of Nicaraguan soldiers, Sandinista government officials, and even Pablo Escobar himself. (Barry) Seal was a key player at Mena. Some stories are stranger than fiction. Adler Berriman 'Barry' Seal se convirti en el piloto ms joven de los Estados Unidos, destreza que us para hacerse uno de los hombres ms ricos de ese pas en la dcada de los 80's. Ello . [2], In 1964, Seal joined TWA as a flight engineer and was soon promoted to the first officer, then captain, flying a Boeing 707 on a regular Western Europe route. Operative Monty Schafer (Domhnall Gleeson) approaches Barry Seal (Tom Cruise) and tells him, "We need you to deliver stuff for us." [12] The number of planes and the frequency of flights soon attracted the attention of Louisiana State Police and Federal investigators. "One day Barry came in and said there was a contract on him - half a million dead, a million alive," says widow Debbie Seal. American Made is a fascinating biopic about Barry Seal, a commercial pilot who worked with the CIA to run drugs and guns in South America. Government attorneys stated that Seal placed himself in danger by refusing to move his family and enter a witness protection program.[69]. [43] After listening to summaries of Seal's successful work for the DEA, Judge Norman Roettger sentenced Seal to time served (a little over three months in witness protection) and three years probation. FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation. The photo was taken in Mexico when he was 24. . His cooperation led to many convictions, as well as indictments against Pablo Escobar and Jorge Ochoa, two of the founding members of the Medelln Cartel. This led the U.S. to covertly supply arms to the Contras, the rebels fighting against the Sandinistas. It was in 1973, the year that followed the end of his second marriage that Seal got married to Deborah DuBois and they . But when he was busted in 1984, he decided to double-cross Escobar, and he soon became one of the Drug Enforcement Administrations most important informants. The photo shows Federico Vaughan, who Seal claimed was a top aide to Tomas Borge, the Nicaraguan government's . Facing a heavy sentence, and having been rejected by regional drug task forces in both Florida and Louisiana, Seal decided to try contacting the Vice President's Drug Task Force, a special program in the office of then-Vice President George Bush. [18] Jacobsen was impressed with Seal's connections, especially the ones with the Ochoa family, and on March 28, Seal signed a letter agreeing to serve as a DEA informant. Do your research about it, link the dots, because Democrats were defending the Sandinistas, while they smeared the Contras and the Reagan administration, who they were fighting to prevent the US and USSR from getting the IMD treaty nuclear weapons treaty from being signed. 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. In April 1981, a DEA informant introduced Seal to an undercover DEA agent. Barry Seal made a killing selling drugs for the Ochoa brothers, but after being outed as a key DEA informant, he was a marked man. And by 1978, according to The Gentlemans Journal, he had moved on to cocaine. 'Barry Seal - Traficante Americano' estreia em Portugal esta quinta-feira, dia 31 de agosto. Barry Seal - gunrunner, drug trafficker, and covert C.I.A. "You know, we're not making a biopic," said director Doug Liman. No. -Daily Mail Online, 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 testified that in January 1986, he was ordered by Jorge Ochoa to kill Seal. CBS obtained pages from Col. Oliver Norths diary revealing that the former National Security Council aid communicated frequently with the CIA about the sting operation in the weeks before the photo was leaked to the press despite objections from the DEA. Barry also had a daughter and a son not shown in the movie, Lisa and Alder, with his first wife Barbara Bottoms. He soon told the task force about the contract, and Seal was informed that the cartel was offering $500,000 for his death. Seal made an estimated $60 million off smuggling drugs into the country and became one of the richest people in America. The cameras were rigged so that Seal could use a remote control button hidden in his pocket to snap photos at will. Exclusive: Tom Cruise's portrayal of drug-smuggler-turned-government-informant Barry Seal is a fast-paced visit back to the Reagan era . As part of his reduced sentence, the judge had ordered Barry to spend his nights, from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m., at a Salvation Army halfway house for six months. Nicaragua, where Seal flew a cocaine shipment in a C-123 outfitted with cameras to prove that Nicaragua's Sandinista government was involved with the drug . The narcotics runner, Barry Seal, allegedly . An AP dispatch (Omaha World-Herald, 7/29/88) disclosed that subcommittee staffers called Vaughns phone number in Managua and spoke to a domestic employee who said the house had been continuously rented by a U.S. embassy official since 1981. 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. . Barry Seal was able to get photos of Pablos Escobar himself loading cocaine onto Barry's cargo plane in Nicaragua. Jacoby mentioned Seal's mission as evidence, which effectively outed Seal as a government agent. [1], In 1962, Seal enlisted in the Louisiana Army National Guard for six years: six months of active duty, followed by five and a half years of inactive duty. The plane was hit and Seal had to make an emergency landing at Sandino International Airport in Managua. He would have to operate the rear camera by hand. They had anticipated Seal would serve substantial time in Florida and were now bound by the agreement Florida and Louisiana drug task forces had made in December 1984. Seal took pictures during the Nicaragua sting operation that clearly showed Pablo Escobar, Jorge Luis Ochoa . According to the Washington Post, Seal earned as much as $1.5 million per flight, and by the end, he had accumulated up to $100 million. This doesn't add up with the true story. Seal was originally introduced to the Medelln cartel members as a pilot named Ellis McKenzie. From earning his pilots license at the age of 16 to his blood-soaked end at the hands of a notorious cartel, Seal certainly got the life of excitement that he so desired. [27], The plane Seal acquired was a C-123K, a large aircraft used primarily for military transport. Seal's Drug Enforcement Administration file also supports this, noting that he was smuggling marijuana as early as 1976, then adding cocaine to his resume in 1978. Aterriz en el aeropuerto y junto con las personas que lo esperaban carg unos bultos. Daniel Rennie is a freelance writer residing in Melbourne, Australia. Although newspapers published his name after his arrest, Seal was known to the Ochoas as Ellis MacKenzie. Barry Seal was a pilot for TWA and later became a drug smuggler. The flight, in January 1985, was successful and led to arrests and convictions. [5], Ironically, Seal's operations received an important boost when he was arrested and jailed in Honduras on the return leg of a drug-smuggling trip to Ecuador. 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. [30] Unfortunately, the driver was arrested by local police, and the circumstances of the seizure raised the suspicions of the cartel. "Tom did all his own flying in the movie," says director Doug Liman, who is a pilot himself (Vulture.com). Indeed, at age 26, Seal became one of the youngest pilots to ever fly for Trans World Airlines. [33], A more detailed account of American efforts in Nicaragua appeared on July 17 in an article by reporter Edmond Jacoby, published on the front page of the Washington Times. Bush's anti-drug task force in hopes of convincing them of his value as an informant. -Daily Mail Online, No. 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 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. 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. The photos quickly leaked, boosting Washington's anti-Sandinista effort but likely putting a . In 2017, Seals life became the subject of a Hollywood adaptation titled American Made, starring Tom Cruise. However, her real name is Debbie, not Lucy. Although Seal had pleaded guilty, with the support of his DEA supervisors, he was sentenced to five years of unsupervised probation. Despus de haber trabajado como piloto de TWA, la mayor. When Seal pulled into the center's lot and parked, a man got out of a car behind the center's donation drop boxes and opened fire with a suppressed MAC-10 submachine gun. Now thats excitement.. When he learned that he would probably be killed afterward, he refused. He was then shot 5 times by cartel gunmen, but survived and eventually sought asylum at the U.S. embassy in Bogota. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. [5] By 1978, he had expanded to flying significant loads of cocaine, pound-for-pound a much more profitable enterprise than marijuana smuggling. Sep 30, 2017 Stefan Andrews. Also, view a news story about Barry Seal's death. -Daily Mail Online, No. [25] Vaughan was an aide to Tomas Borge, Nicaraguan Minister of the Interior. Click the button below! Please consider donating. Esta nota contiene spoilers de la pelcula Barry Seal: solo en Amrica.. Barry Seal fue un piloto estadounidense que vivi 46 aos.Lo mataron a balazos en 1986 tres sicarios contratados por el cartel de Medelln, mientras cumpla una probation en el Ejrcito de Salvacin, en Baton Rouge, Luisiana.. La corta vida de Seal -el capitn ms joven en volar un Boeing 707 y un 747 para la . In 1961, he joined the Louisiana Army National Guard and served with the 20th Special Forces Group for six years. In reality, there is no evidence that Seal was ever involved with the CIA. When Seal was convicted of smuggling charges, he became an informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration and testified in several major drug trials. Once he flew into U.S. airspace, Seal would drop his plane to 500 feet and slow to 120 knots to mimic a helicopter on the radar screen of anyone who was watching, as the small aircraft frequently flew between oil rigs and the coast. No. Despite the heat surrounding Seal, he made a drug run to Nicaragua in 1984, where he picked up 1,465 pounds of cocaine and took photos of Sandinista soldiers loading the drugs. Adler Berriman Seal (July 16, 1939 - February 19, 1986), better known as Barry Seal, was a United States drug smuggler and aircraft pilot who flew covert flights for the Central Intelligence Agency and the Medelln Cartel. Also, before the agreement was reached, the Louisiana task force investigation had been looking into Seal's involvement in smuggling thousands of kilograms of cocaine. Barry Seal's apparent piloting of a JFK assassin getaway plane points, again, to Bush Sr. and his cronies (the Biderman part of the DuPont family, Rockefellers, and more).