Two years later, he would be shot dead in Louisiana. Seal, he says, laughed, and told Brown that all he had wanted him to do was sit back for the ride. Then he gave Brown an envelope with $2,500 in cash not marked money, not banded money, just twenties, fifties, mostly twenties, used money, like you just went out and spent.. He had already been flying planes for nearly half his life, earning his student pilot's license at age 15 and pilot's license at 16. var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; Set in the year 1978, Barry Seal (Tom Cruise) works as a pilot for Trans World Airlines. "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. Past Addresses: See available information. Walker said a huge dark-green military plane was parked there, and that when he expressed surprise at seeing a military plane at Mena, Clinton said it was not military; it served another purpose. Yes. 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. -Daily Mail Online. In its review of the 2017 movie "American Made" -- about Seal -- the New York Times called it the Conspiratorial Industrial Complex. var _gaq = _gaq || []; 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. But Brown says he is lying. Still unknown at the time, the cartel would go on to make hundreds of millions from the explosion of cocaine use in the U.S. Barry Seal, who became known as "El Gordo" (The Fat Man), ended up being an integral part of that success. The scene was actually inspired by something that happened while director Doug Liman and Tom Cruise were training for the movie. He took it out for a test flight and never came back." This doesn't add up with the true story. The state really had next to nothing to do with it. "I fly airplanes. It was originally an Air Force transport plane Seal dubbed it the Fat Lady. The irony is that he might have remained reluctant, but then the White House itself intervened. Arthur, the chief council, investigated the CIA and questioned Col. Oliver North, who is depicted in American Made. After being caught in Honduras with 40 kilograms of cocaine in 1979, Barry spent nine months in a Honduran jail. "You know, we're not making a biopic," said director Doug Liman. "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. Rayburn House Office Building, Chairman James Leach (R-IA), Committee on Banking and Financial Services, and staffer . 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. Three early drafts of the essay contain interpolations in Clintons handwriting. -Daily Mail Online. Copyright 2023, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Inc. 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. 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. The arrests never happened since Seal's cover was blown. "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 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.". Dwayne Brown says he knew his brother had made some unexplained trips out of the country. Dan Lasater, of course, was the celebrated Little Rock bond daddy. -Daily Mail Online, No. Other photos like the one below show Federico Vaughan (center, striped shirt), a man that Seal claimed was a top aide of Tomas Borge, the Sandinista Minister of the Interior. How much did Clinton know about what he called Lasaters deal in that conversation with L.D. "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. "I resigned from the office in November of 1985, and my successor took over the investigation. . 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. -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. I first traveled to Mena in 1994, reporting for the Wall Street Journal editorial page. Liman has referred to the film as "a fun lie based on a true story" (TIME). Seal's mysterious activities have spawned books, movies and a cornucopia of conspiracy theories. Clinton had been asking him a similar question for months, ever since, with Clintons encouragement, he had applied for a job with the CIA. Photograph: Evan Agostini/Invision/AP . 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. 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 an internal FBI document released last week. Undercover cameras installed on Seal's plane captured photos on the tarmac of a Nicaraguan airport. When Brown returned to the Governors mansion, he recalls, Clinton greeted him jovially, You having any fun yet? he asked. Judicial Watch: Fighting for Clean Elections. "There are also allegations that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency used the airport as a base of operations to help train pilots and troops for the intervention in the Nicaraguan uprising by the Contras during the 1980s," according to the encyclopedia entry, which was written by Robert Sherwood of Georgia Military College. "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. But I was in for a shock, Leveritt writes. She says that she thought he was an airplane broker and also that he rented out old anti-aircraft lighting for various promotional events. Counterrevolutionaries, known as Contras, were battling the Sandinistas. 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. And move on, the world did. When asked how, he replied, "Oh, Barry stole an airplane from me. It does seem, however, that Clinton was far less cautious. The Sandinistas overthrew Nicaraguan President Anastasio Somoza Debayle in 1979, ending 46 years of dictatorship by the Somoza family. According to investigative records compiled by the Arkansas State Police and other agencies, the Mena Intermountain Municipal Airport served as a second home for Barry Seal, a. Some facts, however, are indisputable. He decided to talk about Mena. The narcotics runner, Barry Seal, allegedly paid off then-Governor Clintons protg, L. D. Brown, and one Dan Lasater, a Clinton contributor. The goal was to expose the involvement of the Nicaraguan Sandinista regime as a major supplier of cocaine from Colombia.". I have re-typed two documents that were scrubbed off the internet. 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. Mena, Arkansas, as a staging point for weapons supply flights. Clinton also suggested that Brown study Russian, a suggestion Brown took seriously enough to begin making entries in his daybook in Cyrillic. Barry Seal was an American-born Trans World Airlines pilot who . Brown has identified him as Dan Magruder, and says that he spoke admiringly of Clinton. Material from the Associated Press is Copyright 2023, Associated Press and may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. -Smuggler's End: The Life and Death of Barry Seal. American Made stars Tom Cruise as Barry Seal, a real-life former airline pilot who embarked on a wildly successful cocaine smuggling operation between Colombia and a tiny airstrip in Mena, Arkansas, in the 1980s. Hagan said he didn't know how many pages of material on Seal have yet to be made public by the FBI. 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. In Mena, meanwhile, things were getting stranger. Over a quarter of a century ago, George H.W. He said the money had been brought back from Tegucigalpa. No convincing explanation was offered for this act of censorship. _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); They were all sentenced to life in prison. UNLOCK PROFILE. jewish british actresses; how old is meryl lipstein The cartel tells Barry that they'll deal with JB, a suggestion that Barry opposes. The gunman was later identified as Luis Carlos Quintero-Cruz. var sc_security="740aa5bc". More than 1.2 million registrants have been removed from the voter rolls in Los Angeles County, California, since 2022 as part of a settlement agreement with Judici Al Qaeda Plans Plane Attacks Using New Techniques and Tactics as Air Mars Hackers Tied to Chinas Govt. 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. 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. I started it and pursued it but was unable to complete it because I left the office. 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. 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. They referred him to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). An indignant Brown began toying with the idea of exposing the corruption of Arkansas politics. 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. FITTON: #TwitterFiles EXPOSE FBI & CIA Election Interference! 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?" : Then the plane dropped to what Brown calls an altitude a hell of a lot lower than what youd think youd fly. He suspected Seal was trying to evade radar. The second is the article they reference. View Alex Mena results in Phoenix, AZ including current phone number, address, relatives, background check report, and property record with Whitepages. FITTON: Heavy Lifting Needed By Congress on Corruption! He said parts of it could have been provided to people under previous information requests. Subsequently, the special prosecutor investigating Whitewater subpoenaed Brown to disclose what he knew about Clintons connections to David L. Hale. The goal was to expose the involvement of the Nicaraguan Sandinista regime as a major supplier of cocaine from Colombia.". He said parts of it could have been provided to people under previous information requests. The explosives were supposedly going to anti-Castro Cuban fighters. At this juncture, no one, including Brown, can say precisely what Clinton was doing at Mena. 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