barry seal mena house address

Seal flipped, becoming a valuable government informant. Current Address: HERA E Avalon Dr, Phoenix, AZ. Seal, Brown says, talked knowledgeably about airplanes, and spoke of an operation he was planning. The FBI in Little Rock began investigating Seal's operation at the Mena airport in February 1984, according to the recently released FBI document. Too many secrets have been kept for too long, she wrote, too much important history has been hidden, lost or destroyed. var sc_click_stat=1; Asa Hutchinson was U.S. attorney for Arkansas' Western District in the early 1980s. Yes, at least according to his wife and others who knew him. The scene was actually inspired by something that happened while director Doug Liman and Tom Cruise were training for the movie. That didnt happen. Bill Clintons favorite bodyguard, but also a close friend. Judicial Watch On Issue: The Battle for Election Integrity, Judicial Watch On Issue: Leading the Battle Against Illegal Immigration, Al Qaeda Plans Plane Attacks Using New Techniques and Tactics as Air Marshals Keep Getting Sent to Mexican Border, Biden staying at St. Croix villa of wealthy donors who got state dinner invite, Tom Fitton's Judicial Watch Weekly Update. But of the charges levelled at Brown by the White House, the most unintentionally revealing was that Brown had flunked a CIA examination in the mid-1980s. Under the disguise of an aircraft refurbishing center, Mena was an arms and drug smuggling ring working for President Ronald ReagansContrawar against theSandinistas. "I trusted him so I didn't ask questions," says Debbie. Past Addresses: See available information. He took it out for a test flight and never came back." Seal was shot dead in 1986 at a safe house in Baton Rouge . Terms & conditions/privacy policy apply. "It's my understanding that no drugs ever came to the airport," said Fred Ogden, the current airport manager. Rafael Mena; Arizona; Phoenix; Rafael L Mena; Rafael L Mena, Age 71. aka Rafael J Mena. -Daily Mail Online. Steal $20 Mil in U.S. COVID Relief Funds. Seal, a pilot, moved much of his smuggling operation from Baton Rouge to Rich Mountain Aviation at the Mena Intermountain Airport, according to the May 1986 FBI memo. 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. Not by the United States government. The man said that despite the incident, he was still very fond of Barry. All rights reserved. FITTON: Heavy Lifting Needed By Congress on Corruption! He wasn't. One mission involved a C-123K cargo plane that was outfitted at the Mena airport. Neither these AP materials nor any portion thereof may be stored in a computer except for personal and noncommercial use. They could locate no files on Seal. What is certain is that Barry Seal did work for Pablo Escobar and the Ochoas as a drug smuggler for the Medelln Cartel and single-handedly had one of the largest impacts on the cocaine epidemic in the U.S. in the early 1980s. Clinton also suggested that Brown study Russian, a suggestion Brown took seriously enough to begin making entries in his daybook in Cyrillic. The explosives were supposedly going to anti-Castro Cuban fighters. He had expected to find, he says, a Baron or King Air, the kind of plane in which he sometimes accompanied the Governor, and in which he had some training as a pilot. However, when a drug shipment was seized by the DEA, the Medellin Cartel blamed Seal for the loss. ", Copyright 2023, Northwest Arkansas Newspapers LLC. Patterson said he had overheard conversations about large quantities of drugs being flow into Mena airport, large quantities of guns, that there was an ongoing operation training foreign people in the area. When asked, Were any of these conversations in the presence of Gov. AboutPressCopyrightContact. 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. 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. Past Addresses: See available information. I started it and pursued it but was unable to complete it because I left the office. He was unaware that a Colombian assassin was hiding behind one of the donation drop boxes. In another deposition in the case, John Bender, a mechanic, says he saw Clinton at Mena three times in the summer of 1985. It was no coincidence when Donald TrumpappointedWilliam Barr as his Attorney General. Pablo Escobar and the Ochoas were going to be arrested at a celebration of Seal's successful cocaine transport. -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. Gov. JB is fictional. Scared the s---- out of me just taking off. Brown says that when the plane took off, he was sitting on a bench behind the two pilots. 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. Big Tech Protected Joe Biden o BEST OF: Big Tech Censorship EXPOSED! It's certainly possible and it's what the movie proposes. When he returned to Little Rock, he called his brother Dwayne. ABC was also told that brown had failed a psychological test. 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. 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. Micah Morrison is chief investigative reporter for Judicial Watch. The White House saw the pictures as proof of the communist Sandinista government's corruption and believed that the photos would help to convince the public of the need to support and arm the rebels (Contras) in Nicaragua. 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. apartments in dallas that allow airbnb Uncovering hot babes since 1919. In real life, his first encounter with the Medelln Cartel happened less dramatically. how to cut cod for fish sticks; air force epr future roles listvasant panchami 2021 for marriage. In its review of the 2017 movie "American Made" -- about Seal -- the New York Times called it the Conspiratorial Industrial Complex. Email Address: v EVIO @gmail.com +2 emails. It does seem, however, that Clinton was far less cautious. Its now referred to as theIran-Contrascandal. Vincent G Mena, Age 54. He was not only Gov. Judicial Watch, Inc. is a conservative, non-partisan educational foundation, which promotes transparency, accountability and integrity in government, politics and the law. alan dershowitz cost per hour; what is pak po chicken; sonamukhi powder benefits; -Daily Mail Online, No. At the rear of the plane, by the beaners, he says were palettes on casters. Subsequently, Brown says, Seal called him at home, and set up a meeting at Cajuns Wharf, a popular Little Rock watering hole. In another deposition in the Reed case, Russell Welch, an Arkansas state police investigator who has looked extensively at Mena, says that Young asked him in 1992 if Clintons name had ever come up in connection with Mena. Bushs Attorney General was William Barr. Dan Lasater, of course, was the celebrated Little Rock bond daddy. About 25 pages of that trove refer to Arkansas or Mena. He also referred to Clinton, familiarly, as the guv. The CIA stonewalled the release of information now sought by Judicial Watch on the Mena Airport controversy, said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. 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.. -The Independent, In the movie, Barry Seal (Tom Cruise) starts working for the Medelln Cartel after they abduct him while he is refueling his plane and then make him an offer he can't refuse. Trooper Bobby Walker has told me that sometime in the mid-1980s he was at Mena with Clinton. Officials at the Arkansas Studies Institute suggested their concerns were legal and financial, associated with vetting the book, but Leveritt wasnt buying it. Then, he started the engines, and Brown remembers, ThisI mean just thunderous noise. Neither these AP materials nor any portion thereof may be stored in a computer except for personal and noncommercial use. 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. var sc_security="740aa5bc". Corporate Office Arcadia Inc. 2301 East Vernon Ave. Vernon, CA 90058. It may also never be known whether CIA officials approved or knew of Seals activities, or whether he was operating on his own. attorney.". Barry and his wife talked about going into witness protection, but like in the movie, he decided against it. Arkansas State Trooper L.D. 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. 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 a fruitless effort to curb irregular migration from Central America the Biden administration is sending the region hundreds of millions of dollars in humanitarian funding with From Breitbart: Because no one Dr. Faucis "SHADY" Gain of Function Research! Embracing his entrepreneurial spirit, as a teenager he started a small business flying ads from his airplane. It is believed that the Colombians put a hit out on Barry after they learned he was going to help the feds with the extradition of Jorge Ochoa from Spain, one of the heads of the Medelln Cartel. View Alex Mena results in Phoenix, AZ including current phone number, address, relatives, background check report, and property record with Whitepages. The respected Arkansas journalist Mara Leveritt recently outlined what appears to be a continuing effort to cover up the Mena affair. An entry in Browns daybook indicates that the flight with Seal took place on October 23, 1984. It aborted the scheduled trial of Casper W. Weinberger which had been schedule to begin on January 5, 1993. 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. (323) 771-9819. info@arcadiainc.com. Debbie, who was 21 at the time, met Barry, 33, while working as a cashier at a restaurant. Connor Hagan, a spokesman for the FBI in Little Rock, said the release of so much information into the FBI's public "vault" doesn't mean that the documents haven't previously been made public. 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. 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. No, in real life he had five children and was married three times. The second is the article they reference. Dwayne Brown says he knew his brother had made some unexplained trips out of the country. Approximately 30 minutes later, Brown says, the C-123K landed in what he later learned what Tegucigalpa, Honduras. An interesting fact we learned while researching the true story was that while training for the Civil Air Patrol in Baton Rouge, Barry Seal met President John F. Kennedy's assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. Brown says Clinton told him not to worry. 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.. Bill Duncan, an IRS investigator, told me that he had numerous reports of automatic weapons fire, men of Latin American appearance in the area, people in camouflage moving quietly through streams with automatic weapons, aircraft drops, twin-engine airplane traffic. Duncan, along with Arkansas State Police investigator Russell Welch, started digging into Seal and the Mena connection, suspecting a drug smuggling and money laundering operation. He gathered information on Medellin cartel kingpins and participated in at least two drug runs to Nicaragua, where the Reagan administration was ramping up operations against the Sandinista government. This doesn't add up with the true story. Seal's mysterious activities have spawned books, movies and a cornucopia of conspiracy theories. And the U.S. was covertly backing the Contras. 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. Conspiracy theorists have gone as far as suggesting that the government ordered the hit on Seal, not the cartel, a suggestion that has never been supported by any proof. . And for thirty years, every attempt to get to the bottom of events at Menafederal, state, judicial, journalistichas failed. She is a brunette, not a blond like Sarah Wright's character in the movie. Advertisement. 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?" _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); 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 . Material from the Associated Press is Copyright 2023, Associated Press and may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. "The estimated value of the narcotics smuggled through the facility is $3 [billion] to $5 billion. Subsequently, the special prosecutor investigating Whitewater subpoenaed Brown to disclose what he knew about Clintons connections to David L. Hale. They also claimed that the pilot who died lacked the necessary experience for the flight. "The estimated value of the narcotics smuggled through the facility is $3 [billion] to $5 billion. Suddenly, though, the Arkansas State Police were uncooperative. We had nothing zeroto do with it, and everybody whos ever looked into it knows that.. No. For their efforts, their careers were crushed. In her suit, Lisa, who is not depicted in the movie, also claimed that there were factual inaccuracies in the script, including the fact that Barry had five children, not three, and that the movie falsely suggests he was an alcoholic and a reckless pilot. About 25 pages of that trove refer to Arkansas or Mena. See Rafael L Mena's age, phone number, house address, email address, social media accounts, public records, and check for criminal records on Spokeo. It was dark almost black, and had only the minimal tail markings necessary for civilian operation. There is no real-life Monty. 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. Debbie became Barry's third wife. "He would tell me all these wild stories about the missions he had flown. The first is a CIA internal memo on an article written about Mena in 1995. Brown still has books that Clinton gave him, one being a bar exam study book in which the politician had made some ironic under-linings. 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. Hadaway. I started it and pursued it but was unable to complete it because I left the office. "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. No investigation was blocked.". The photos quickly leaked, boosting Washingtons anti-Sandinista effort but likely putting a target on Seals back: to his drug-running friends in South America, there could be no question where the photos came from. According to author Del Hahn, who wrote the book Smuggler's End, next to Barry's yearbook photo was the description, "Full of fun, full of folly" (TIME). A Baton Rouge, Louisiana native, Barry Seal was eventually forced to move his drug smuggling operation after he drew the attention of Louisiana authorities. All rights reserved. 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." "Tom Cruise doesn't look like Barry Seal. Frankly, it will never be revealed. Seal's mysterious activities have spawned books, movies and a cornucopia of conspiracy theories. Asa Hutchinson was U.S. attorney for Arkansas' Western District in the early 1980s. Tom Cruise is set to play murdered DEA informant Barry Seal in Doug Liman's film Mena. According to Del Hahn's book Smuggler's End, Barry Seal was not chummy with the cartel bosses. CIA and DEA activities flowed out of Mena in the Clinton years. Barry's widow, Deborah Seal, says that he began smuggling drugs in 1975, first focusing mainly on marijuana. In 1981, Seal set up shop at Mena. How could that be? is above the law! With the publication of The American Spectator article, we expect more. I knew the agency had an extensive file on Seal, Leveritt wrote, because Id read it decades earlier, shortly after Seals murder. "The apparent reason was that the prosecution might have revealed national security information, even though all of the crimes which were the focus of the investigation occurred before Seal became a federal informant.". 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. In the 1980s the smallairportin Arkansas known as Mena became part of the largest covert operation in history. She was an experienced writer and had prepared for the legal review. In 1986, he was convicted of drug distribution, and lost his state securities license. -Smuggler's End: The Life and Death of Barry Seal. Doug Liman had previously modeled Chris Cooper's villain in The Bourne Identity after North, which reveals Liman's feelings about the controversial figure North. Evidence emerged suggesting that the CIA was operating in the area in the early 1980s; that a major cocaine and gun smuggler was based at the airfield; and that the U.S. military was somehow involved. Fact-checking American Made revealed that Monty Schafer is a fictional character created to represent Barry Seal's contacts at the CIA. The other troopers called him Clintons Fair-haired boy. 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; As author Del Hahn states in his book about Barry Seal's life, Smuggler's End: The Life and Death of Barry Seal, there is no evidence to support claims that Barry Seal worked for the CIA. Then it was refueled while Sale and the kickers got off. No convincing explanation was offered for this act of censorship. 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. Brown has identified him as Dan Magruder, and says that he spoke admiringly of Clinton. 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. 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. He said the money had been brought back from Tegucigalpa. 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. In exploring the American Made true story, we discovered that Doug Liman's father, lawyer Arthur L. Liman, ran the Senate investigation into Iran-Contra. 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. -The Hollywood Reporter, Debbie Seal insists that she was unaware of what her husband was up to. Were taking other steps, tooFreedom of Information actions against the DEA, FBI, and Arkansas state institutions. The lawsuit claims that the pilots were overworked and that the crash happened after a 12-hour workday. Documents and a surviving crew member tied the shipment to the CIA and the White House, dragging a Seal connection into the Iran-Contra affair. Three Colombians supposedly sent by the Ochoas, including Cruz and Velez, were later arrested at the airport. 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.. Phone Number: (602) 256- KDYM +1 phone. Approved for Release Date:September 28, 2009. ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? According to a 1988 Senate Foreign Relations Committee report, Seal's associates at the Mena airport were also being investigated. Some facts, however, are indisputable. Miguel Velez was the man driving the getaway car. Young has since been made head of the Federal Emergency Management Administration in Denton, Texas. Then, he says, they regained altitude, by then they descended again, and thats when these two crazy bastards got these palettes and roll them out on casters. Parachutes opened from the palettes. Seal became a federal informant in March 1984. Tips: [emailprotected], Investigative Bulletin is published by Judicial Watch. In his research for the book, the only confirmed connection Hahn could make between the CIA and Barry Seal was in 1984, after Seal had started working as an informant for the DEA. He says that Clinton arrived in a Beech aircraft, and was still there when he left for the day.

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