On June 25, 1984, the CIA placed hidden cameras in Seal’s 123K plane that was directed to Los Brasiles, in Nicaragua: the photos that were taken show ‘some Nicaraguan soldiers’, Barry Seal, Pablo Escobar, Federico Vaughn, Emile Camp (‘Seal’s co-pilot’) placing over … Funny how these people missed the”FACT”, now public knowledge, that Pablo Escobar was granted wide and free passage and full protection, by the Sandinistas. Particularly suspicious is the role of Federico Vaughn, the supposed Sandinista official, who appears to have been a US spy all along. Seal took a blurry snapshot which purported to show himself with a high-level Nicaraguan official named Federico Vaughn, and a Colombian drug czar unloading bags of cocaine at an airstrip in Nicaragua. Seal took a blurry snapshot which purported to show himself with a high-level Nicaraguan official named Federico Vaughn, and a Colombian drug czar unloading bags of … This led to photos of key Nicaraguan government officials loading the plane with cocaine. Featured Image: The low-res image of Frederico Vaughn (in the striped shirt) that Ronald Reagan offered as proof of Sandinista drug trafficking, Filed under: Covert Operations, Drugs, Extra! Cannabis Culture and Pot TV have been on the frontlines of cannabis journalism and activism since 1994. Barry’s life was interesting, important, and revealing – his new biopic is not. In an effort to frame the Sandinistas, the CIA installed a hidden camera in Seal’s C-130 cargo plane (the same plane, incidentally, that later crashed in Nicaragua leading to the capture of Eugene Hasenfus in October 1986). There was a leak of Seal’s involvement in a story penned by Edmond Jacoby on the front page of the Washington Times.The story focused on the connection between the Sandinista representatives and the Medellín Cartel, but it revealed the name of Barry Seal as somebody involved in the drug transactions. Captain of the CAP was CIA agent David Ferrie (second from the left) and fellow cadet Lee Harvey Oswald (far right). Seal decided to work for the Medellin Cartel as a drug smuggler, transporting numerous shipments to the United States and making $500,000 each flight. What You Can and Can’t Do at the New Cannabis Cafe in West Hollywood, New Tragedies, Same Tactics: A History of Big Media Blaming Cannabis for Mass Shootings. Primary Sources Barry Seal. 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"The only thing I knew was the CIA had a lot to do with it (Barry's murder.) Among other things, the panel sought to determine if top leaders of the Colombian cocaine cartel escaped arrest because the much ballyhooed “war on drugs” took a back seat to a covert operation designed to discredit the Nicaraguan government– this at a time when the administration was seeking additional aid to the Contras. Schafer recruits Seal to take reconnaissance photos of guerillas operating in Honduras, Nicaragua, and El Salvador, wooing him with a super-fast, super-nimble twin engine plane. Gary Stephen Webb (August 31, 1955 – December 10, 2004) was an American investigative journalist. He was born on July 16, 1939, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to Mary Lou Delcambre and Benjamin Curtis Seal. Behind Rodriguez is Porter Goss – head of the CIA under George W. Bush. Please consider donating. Schafer recruits Seal to take reconnaissance photos of guerillas operating in Honduras, Nicaragua, and El Salvador, wooing him with a super-fast, super-nimble twin engine plane. Legal Case. Did Barry Seal deal directly with Pablo Escobar and the other leaders of Colombia's Medellín Cartel? He later claimed to have made as much as $50 million running 1,000 pounds of cocaine a month from Colombia. This led to photos of key Nicaraguan government officials loading the plane with cocaine. It is inspired by the life of Barry Seal, a former TWA pilot who flew missions for the CIA, and became a drug smuggler for the Medellín Cartel in the 1980s. Barry Seal, alias Ellis McPickle, was an American pilot who worked for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) before smuggling drugs from Colombia into America for the Medellin Cartel. FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation. He later claimed to have made as much as $50 million running 1,000 pounds of cocaine a month from Colombia. “Barry Seal wasn’t an Indiana Jones-type daredevil working with the CIA to bring down the Medellin cartel. Bush’s Role in the Iran-Contra Scandal. He’s bored rigid flying commercial flights, so he takes to performing stunts that trigger the oxygen masks and terrify passengers. Barry Seal was an American pilot who worked for whoever offered him the most; he worked for the CIA, for the DEA, for the Sandinistas, for the traffickers, for everybody. American Made is a 2017 American action comedy film directed by Doug Liman, written by Gary Spinelli, and starring Tom Cruise, Domhnall Gleeson, Sarah Wright, Alejandro Edda, Mauricio Mejía, Caleb Landry Jones, and Jesse Plemons. 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. Barry Seal, alias Ellis McPickle, was an American pilot who worked for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) before smuggling drugs from Colombia into America for the Medellin Cartel. In his address, Reagan talks about a photo taken by a hidden camera on Barry Seal's plane. Behind him is Barry Seal. Schafer recruits Seal to take reconnaissance photos of guerrillas operating in Honduras, Nicaragua, and El Salvador, wooing him with a super-fast, super-nimble twin engine plane. The assassination of Barry Seal was very likely even not the first attempt on Seal's life by North, we were told by CIA electronics expert Red Hall, on the ground in Nicaragua with Seal on the Sandinista drug sting.... "The only thing I knew was the CIA had a lot to do with it (Barry's murder.) On Feb. 19, 1986, Barry Seal, a very prominent CIA drug smuggler and ace pilot, was murdered outside his halfway house in Baton Rouge, LA. Seal flipped, becoming a valuable government informant. The 1970 bust of this operation – known as “Operation Eagle” – was the biggest drug bust in history. Barry Seal’s age was 46 when he was killed. The person who “owned” the Mena strip was former airline pilot and drug and weapons smuggler Barry Seal. If the claims and investigations are to be believed, the intelligence services had the full support of Governor Clinton. On February 19, 1986, while working outside a Salvation Army facility as part of his court order, Seal was machine-gunned to death by … On the morning of June 25, Seal, … Vancouver, BC Barry Seal (16 June 1939-19 February 1986), also known as Ellis McPickle, was an American pilot who worked for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) before smuggling drugs from Colombia into America for the Medellin Cartel.. Instead the Times ran a brief item in its Sunday national edition (7/31/88) quoting President Reagan’s weekly radio broadcast about how Sandinista officials are still involved in drug trafficking. We expose neglected news stories and defend working journalists when they are muzzled. Seal's exploits brought him into close contact with infamous figures like Medellín cartel kingpins Pablo Escobar and Jorge Ochoa and Panama dictator Manuel Noriega — and … This is a group of assassins, gun runners and drug smugglers known as “Operation 40” – a special assassination squad originally formed to kill Fidel Castro. Seal being accosted by the two DEA agents. Barry Seal was a pilot for TWA and later became a drug smuggler. He had a small fleet of planes and helicopters, two ships, 60 employees, and a seemingly unlimited supply of cash. The person who “owned” the Mena strip was former airline pilot and drug and weapons smuggler Barry Seal. As longtime trusted leaders in cannabis media, we proudly provide news about politics, growing, arts & culture, medicine and more. Most people don’t know who Barry Seal is – especially film critics, who don’t spend their days reading CIA history books. By Tom Aswell Saturday, February 19, will mark the 25th anniversary of one of the most sensational high-profile killings to rock Baton Rouge since the 1935 assassination of U.S. Sen. Huey Long. The late investigative journalist, The Challenge Of Building Credit In The Cannabis Industry, A Guide For Canadians Looking To Try Cannabis This Valentine’s Day, How One Social Equity Advocate Helped Land $4 Million To Rectify Colorado’s War On Drugs, Jamaica Faces Marijuana Shortage As Farmers Struggle, Sustainability In The Cannabis Industry: Truly Going Green, Manitoba Man Challenges Province’s Recreational Cannabis Growing Ban, Multiple Non-Violent Cannabis Offenders Pardoned on Trump’s Last Day, European Medical Cannabis Sector, Mapped For The First Time. Could Cannabis Be Better At Treating Kids With Autism Than Traditional Meds? Barry Seal was a CIA agent and a very successful cocaine smuggler. Seal's father was a member of the Ku Klux Klan.. Seal became obsessed with aircraft and took his first solo flight at the age of fifteen and was soon making a living towing advertising banners. Barry Seal: The real-life story behind Tom Cruise's character in American Made. The photo shows Federico Vaughan, who Seal claimed was a top aide to Tomas Borge, the Nicaraguan government's Minister of the Interior. This undercover photo taken from a secret camera mounted in Barry Seal's plane shows Pablo Escobar (left) and Barry Seal (right) on a tarmac in Nicaragua, where drugs were loaded onto Seal's plane. The Nicaragua drug story first appeared in the Washington Times (7/17/84) and was immediately given big play by all the major papers, wire services and TV networks. Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting124 W. 30th Street, Suite 201 But the media showed much less interest when subcommittee chairman Hughes recently disclosed he had new evidence that the entire Sandinista connection was a US intelligence fabrication. He made more than $50 million smuggling drugs into the United … The cameras were rigged so that Seal could use a remote control button hidden in his pocket to snap photos at will. I thought I would share some photos of Seal in the early days, to give you a picture of how involved this guy was in espionage, and just. In it you can find an comprehensive overview of Barry’s life, including this summation of it’s relevance to American history: “…Seal participated in many of the signal events in America During the second half of the 20th Century… Running guns to Fidel Castro in the mountains of Cuba … flying at the Bay of Pigs invasion … piloting a get-away plane after the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy … fling into the Golden Triangle during America’s Secret War in Laos … Barry Seal even had a cameo role in the Watergate Scandal.” Barry And The Boys, p. 19. In 1981, Seal set up shop at Mena. The series examined the origins of the crack cocaine trade in Los Angeles and claimed that members of the anti-communist Contra rebels in Nicaragua had played a major role in … In reality, the airstrip was given to Seal by intelligence services which would use him for various operations. Barry Seal, the son of a candy wholesaler, was born in Baton Rouge on 16th July, 1939. The main source of information about Seal’s life would be the book “Barry and the Boys” by Daniel Hopsicker. A 1991 television movie based on Barry Seal’s life story first aired three years before the publication of Reed’s book Comporomised. The unnamed embassy official, according to Hughes, was among the group of U.S. officials recently expelled by the Nicaraguan government after a violent political demonstrations in July. Born to Fly. An FBI sting. Will We See Mexico Legalize Cannabis In 2021? 4 - July/August, Iran-Contra Affair. The 109 minute film highlights Seal’s transition from an outlaw drug pilot to a star informant who risks his life for the DEA and CIA. Two back from Seal is Juan Restoy, a man who organized some of his fellow Bay of Pigs veterans into a drug smuggling operation responsible for a large percentage of cocaine and the lion’s share of the heroin coming into the U.S. But by announcing to the world Barry Seal’s precise location for the next sixth months, the judge had effectively signed a death warrant, too. Biography. It is a photo of the Civil Air Patrol Seal joined. American Made is a 2017 American action comedy film directed by Doug Liman, written by Gary Spinelli, and starring Tom Cruise, Domhnall Gleeson, Sarah Wright, Alejandro Edda, Mauricio Mejía, Caleb Landry Jones, and Jesse Plemons. On July 17, 1984, an article detailed Seal’s infiltration of the Medellin cartel hit the front page of the Washington Times. 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 informant’s cover when they leaked information in an attempt to link Nicaragua to the drug trade. Fake News Coming from CBC on Cannabis and Teens – Can Anything Be Done About It? But the 1984 investigation got derailed when Seal told his handlers that cocaine was being trans-shipped through Nicaragua with the permission of high-level government officials. Here are a few details from Barry Seal’s wiki. With CIA-mounted cameras hidden in the nose and cargo bay of Seal's C-123K plane, Seal flew to Los Brasiles civilian airfield in Nicaragua on June 25, 1984. Discerning fact from fiction about Barry Seal, who was killed Feb. 19, 1986, in Baton Rouge by machine gun-wielding Colombian hit men, is a difficult endeavor. 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. The best of Cannabis Culture and Pot TV, delivered to your inbox! The Lowell Cafe is a new restaurant and bar in West Hollywood that will allow... CANNABIS CULTURE – *This article contains images and subject matter that may disturb some readers.... CANNABIS CULTURE MAGAZINE He was murdered in 1986 by contract killers hired by the cartel. Rodriguez helped the CIA capture and kill Che Guevara, flew guns and drugs with Seal in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War, and (like Seal himself) has ties to Iran Contra and Bush Sr.. Enough cold, … You ll discover why a young Arkansas Attorney named Bill Clinton signed a "get-out-of-jail-free" personal recognizance bond for Barry Seal, after Seal had been jailed for drug smuggling in Mena in the 70 s. And you ll learn of the suspicious and long-lasting link between smuggler Barry Seal and the Bush Family, Senior and Junior. The poster for the movie “American Made,” to be released Friday, Sept. 29, shows a grinning, cocky Tom Cruise as the drug smuggler Barry Seal, hauling a duffle bag bursting with cash. Let’s Talk About George H.W. Barr… Collected Articles About The Mena Airport "Plane downed in Nicaragua once owned by Adler `Barry' Seal" By John Semien THE BATON ROUGE MORNING ADVOCATE October 10, 1986 A supply plane shot down over Nicaragua this week was dubbed "the fat lady" by one of its former owners, slain drug informant Adler "Barry" Seal. Seal had always loved flying, it was a passion that began early on in life. He also helped launder that drug money in some of the Arkansas banks tied to the Clinton family. The mysteries of Mena revolve around a drug-smuggling pilot named Barry Seal. With CIA-mounted cameras hidden in the nose and cargo bay of Seal's C-123K plane, Seal flew to Los Brasiles civilian airfield in Nicaragua on June 25, 1984. Did Barry Seal deal directly with Pablo Escobar and the other leaders of Colombia's Medellín Cartel? (Barry) Seal also talked big and did big things. When you see the photos, you will understand why. It is inspired by the life of Barry Seal, a former TWA pilot who flew missions for the CIA, and became a drug smuggler for the Medellín Cartel in the 1980s. Photo 3: This is a photo taken January 22nd, 1963. Please consider donating to our media fund — help us continue to educate and inspire the world! On June 26, 1984, Seal embarked on an undercover trip that would have him bringing 1,465 pounds of cocaine from Nicaragua to the US Air Force base in Homestead, Fla. Contact Us ». In the middle of one of these missions, members of Pablo Escobars Medellin Cartel pick him up and tell him to smuggle cocaine with him on retur… CBS obtained pages from Col. Oliver North’s 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. David Ferrie. Barry Seal, the DEA’s most important informant, had helped, indirectly, to blow the Iran-Contra Affair wide open with his photograph. The real-life Seal seems to have joined up with the CIA much earlier. The photo was taken at Abita Springs, Louisiana. New York, NY 10001. The photo shows Federico Vaughan, who Seal claimed was a top aide to Tomas Borge, the Nicaraguan government's Minister of the Interior. Seal agreed to have hidden cameras installed on the plane. No word of the Hughes hearings appeared in the Washington Post or the New York Times. That last statement was quite the understatement. With Tom Cruise, Domhnall Gleeson, Sarah Wright, Jesse Plemons. It is taken in the Mexico City nightclub, La Reforma. The real-life Seal seems to have joined up with the CIA much earlier. Despite the heat surrounding Seal, he made a drug run to Nicaragua in 1984, where he picked up 1 Adler Berriman “Barry” Seal had a brief, but spectacular, career as a cocaine smuggler-turned DEA informant. Sixteen year-old Baton Rouge Civil Air Patrol cadet Barry Seal boards a U.S. Air Force plane on July 23, 1955 to fly to a two week training camp at Barksdale Air Force Base in Shreveport, Louisiana, where he will meet fellow cadet Lee Harvey Oswald and Capt. Photo 1: This is a photo taken July 23, 1955. Advertisement On the morning of June 25, Seal… HBO’s Doublecrossed stars Dennis Hopper as Seal. Seal decided to work for the Medellin Cartel as a drug smuggler, transporting numerous shipments to the United States and making $500,000 each flight. 307 West Hastings Street Let’s Talk About George H.W. However, as interesting as the life of Barry Seal was, very few people expect or pray to live the kind of life he lived, certainly not his parents when they welcomed him into their lives on the 16th of July 1939 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in the United States of America. The cameras were rigged so that Seal could use a remote control button hidden in his pocket to snap photos at will. Among its long list of dubious "achievements," Southern Air had owned the C123 used by Seal in the Nicaragua sting operation which made Barry Seal famous. President Reagan displayed Seal’s photo in a nationally televised speech in March 1986. FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation. Collected Articles About The Mena Airport "Plane downed in Nicaragua once owned by Adler `Barry' Seal" By John Semien THE BATON ROUGE MORNING ADVOCATE October 10, 1986 A supply plane shot down over Nicaragua this week was dubbed "the fat lady" by one of its former owners, slain drug informant Adler "Barry" Seal. Photograph taken by Barry Seal that outed Pablo Escobar as the Medellin cartel’s drug kingpin. Advertisement CANNABIS CULTURE – The new Tom Cruise action film has been released: American Made. Leaning over the table in the left front is long time CIA agent Felix Rodriguez. An AP dispatch (Omaha World-Herald, 7/29/88) disclosed that subcommittee staffers called Vaughn’s 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. The State Department Versus US Reporters in El Salvador, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported. In 1981, Seal set up shop at Mena. The story included a photograph of Escobar handling drugs. Webb is best known for his "Dark Alliance" series, which appeared in San Jose The Mercury News in 1996. Bush’s Role in the Iran-Contra Scandal. In the film, directed by Doug Liman (Edge of Tomorrow), Cruise depicts Seal as a hot-shot pilot bored by his life as a commercial airline pilot. 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. 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. ... recalled how “The one time I flew with him [Seal] to Nicaragua [transporting guns, supposedly on … The story of Barry Seal has since been made into films such as Doublecrossed (1991), Infiltrator (2016) and American Made (2017). The story of Barry Seal, an American pilot who became a drug-runner for the CIA in the 1980s in a clandestine operation that would be exposed as the Iran-Contra Affair. Adler (Barry) Seal, a pilot and drug smuggler from Baton Rouge, La., who became an undercover informant for the Drug Enforcement Agency, flew … That same aircraft was later shot down over Nicaragua in 1986 and the lone survivor Eugene Hasenfus was captured alive by Sandinista soldiers.. Barry Seal was born on 16 June 1939 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and he began flying at the age of fifteen. The brutal murder of Barry Seal, 46, at a Baton Rouge halfway house in 1986 would send shock waves up and down the… As a progressive group, we believe that structural reform is ultimately needed to break up the dominant media conglomerates, establish independent public broadcasting and promote strong non-profit sources of information. Seal agreed to have hidden cameras installed on the plane. In reality, the airstrip was given to Seal by intelligence services which would use him for various operations. But more importantly, his photographs had made Pablo Escobar a wanted criminal and ultimately played an important part in the drug kingpin’s downfall in 1993. This undercover photo taken from a secret camera mounted in Barry Seal's plane shows Pablo Escobar (left) and Barry Seal (right) on a tarmac in Nicaragua, where drugs were loaded onto Seal's plane. Schafer recruits Seal to take reconnaissance photos of guerrillas operating in Honduras, Nicaragua, and El Salvador, wooing him with a super-fast, super-nimble twin engine plane. The case against the cartel had been engineered by Barry Seal, a convicted drug dealer turned informant who worked closely with Vice President George Bush’s anti-drug task force in Washington. 5. We work to invigorate the First Amendment by advocating for greater diversity in the press and by scrutinizing media practices that marginalize public interest, minority and dissenting viewpoints. Seal was a trusted courier for cartel leader Jorge Ochoa-Vasquez, who Seal said was pioneering a new cocaine distribution route through Nicaragua with the help of the Sandinistas. We all hope to lead interesting lives, to grow old and look back at our lives, knowing that a recount will not bore us and those who we might give the account of our lives to. 1988 Ed. In 1983, the DEA arrested him on drug smuggling charges. V6B 1H6 Canada On the other side of the table in the front sits CIA agent William Seymour and either CIA agent Tosh Plumlee or CIA agent Frank Sturgis, it’s hard to tell because his face is partially covered. 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. American Made, the new Tom Cruise crime drama out Sept. 29, has all the makings of a romp: drug running and arms smuggling. Hes contacted by a CIA agent (Domhnall Gleeson), who asks him to become a courier between the CIA and Panamas General Manuel Noriega. Seal was a naturally gifted pilot and started learning to fly planes at the age of 16. His aviation skills and reputation for sailing close to the wind lead to an approach from Schafer, a CIA agent (or possibly a composite of several) played by Domhnall Gleeson (whose father, actor Brendan Gleeson, resembles the stocky real Seal much more than sleek Tom Cruise does). The mysteries of Mena revolve around a drug-smuggling pilot named Barry Seal. The last movie was produced by Imagine Entertainment under Universal Pictures and was made after the company purchased Barry’s life rights from Deborah at the cost of $350,000.. But I do – I have one room of my house dedicated to CIA drug history – and from having read many, many books on the subject, I can assure you, Barry Seal’s life is WAY more interesting than they let on in the movie. The real Barry Seal found himself at the centre of the Iran-Contra scandal of Ronald Regan's era. In 1983, the DEA arrested him on drug smuggling charges. In his address, Reagan talks about a photo taken by a hidden camera on Barry Seal's plane. At almost 300 pounds, Adler B. Photo 2: This is a photo taken August 7, 1955. He helped facilitate the exchange of drugs for arms in support of the Contras in Nicaragua. I highly recommend picking up the book – it’s way, way more interesting than the “American Made” Tom Cruise film. We rely on your support to keep running. Adler Berriman "Barry" Seal (July 16, 1939 – February 19, 1986) was a commercial airline pilot who became a major drug smuggler for the Medellín Cartel.When Seal was convicted of smuggling charges, he became an informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration and testified in several major drug trials. If the claims and investigations are to be believed, the intelligence services had the full support of Governor Clinton. Directed by Doug Liman. Seal flipped, becoming a valuable government informant. In the movie, Seal is an ace pilot whose daredevil streak leads him from TWA to the CIA. And Tomas Borges, the Ortega brothers equivalent of the Gestapo chief, was one of the overseers of drug shipments of planeloads destined to Mena air strip, in Arkansas, in 1983. Seal was a trusted courier for cartel leader Jorge Ochoa-Vasquez, who Seal said was pioneering a new cocaine distribution route through Nicaragua with the help of the Sandinistas.