In yet another conspiracy-stoking morsel, the C-123 used by Seal was the same one later piloted by Eugene Hasenfus when he was shot down over Nicaragua while piloting illegal U.S. arms shipments . [61], Seal was married three times. The American Made true story confirms that the real Barry Seal and his wife Debbie had three children (Aaron, Dean and Christina). Later, after Seal's cover was suspiciously blown, President Reagan used the photo shown below in a 1986 television address to the nation. 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. The photos quickly leaked, boosting Washington's anti-Sandinista effort but likely putting a . . [56] Mermelstein also knew the defendant Vlez. -Daily Mail Online, No. 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. "Tom did all his own flying in the movie," says Liman. He was the primary witness in three trials: the trial of Saunders and the other Turks and Caicos officials in July; the trial of the cartel distributors in Miami in August; the trial of the cartel distributors who had arranged the shipment of cocaine from Bolivia to Las Vegas, also in August. 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 . Seal surrendered to federal authorities at the end of April 1983 and attempted to make a deal, first with the Florida task force, then with the Baton Rouge task force. The scene was actually inspired by something that happened while director Doug Liman and Tom Cruise were training for the movie. In fact, it was Seal who provided the DEA with the photos of Escobar that exposed him as a major drug kingpin. In 1981, Seal set up shop at Mena. Photo credit: Peter Sutton. Before returning to Nicaragua, the DEA arranged for CIA technicians to . It was Reaves who provided Seal with his first connection to the Medelln cartel. [55] The trial began in April 1987. [13] Seal's activities in Mena later became the subject of rumor and controversy, but according to Seal's biographer, former FBI agent Del Hahn, Seal did not use Mena as a drug transshipment point. [66][67] Hawkins told Frontline that neither she nor her staff leaked the information after the briefing. Undercover cameras installed on Seal's plane captured photos on the tarmac of a Nicaraguan airport. [7], To expand his smuggling capacity, Seal also hired William Bottoms, his ex-brother-in-law, as a pilot. Set in the early 1980s, to combat the spread of communism . Saunders was videotaped paying a bribe to Seal in Miami, and was also successfully prosecuted. -Daily Mail Online. Sep. 28, 2017. Tom Cruise is moving on from his Mummy -fied adventures in 2017, with his next big release, American Made, hitting theaters soon. Barry met Debbie while he was on his way to a hearing after he was caught in 1972 trying to smuggle military explosives out of the country. CASA NO MINUTO. Helicopters would pick up the contraband and transport it to off-loading sites and then on to Ochoa distributors in Miami by car or truck. Exclusive: Tom Cruise's portrayal of drug-smuggler-turned-government-informant Barry Seal is a fast-paced visit back to the Reagan era . [36], The evidence acquired from the arrest, plus the evidence gathered by Seal, provided the basis for the first drug trafficking indictment in the U.S. against Escobar and the Ochoas. 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. In 1973, he married Deborah DuBois. 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. "We're talking about one of the largest drug smugglers in America, and these agents loved him." 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. Despus de haber trabajado como piloto de TWA, la mayor. 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. Barry emerges from the plane covered in cocaine. They were then picked up by Seal's ground team and transported to the Colombian distributors in Florida. 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?" UPI reported: "By linking the Sandinistas with drug traffic aid to the rebels accused of human rights violations might seem more palatable". He flew down to Medelln for the meeting on April 8, accompanied by a Miami based cartel pilot who was unaware of Seal's role as an informant. [35], Following the exposure of the Nicaraguan investigation, the DEA had to move quickly to arrest the cartel distributors in Miami. His flight instructor described him as a naturally gifted pilot. [34] Although not a complete account, it gave enough information to spell an end to Seal's work with the cartel, and to the DEA's hopes of capturing the cartel leaders outside of Colombia. 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. -TIME. The case against the cartel had been engineered by Barry Seal, a convicted drug dealer turned informant who worked closely with Vice President George Bushs anti-drug task force in Washington. [57], Uribe-Munera was a Colombian drug smuggler for the cartel. Aterriz en el aeropuerto y junto con las personas que lo esperaban carg unos bultos. [4], Seal admitted that he started smuggling small amounts of marijuana by air in early 1976. 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. 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 . Oct. 10, 1986 12 AM PT. They also claimed that the pilot who died lacked the necessary experience for the flight. The story of Barry Seal has since been made into films such as Doublecrossed (1991), Infiltrator (2016) and American Made (2017). Barry Seal was fired from TWA in 1974 for falsely citing medical leave when he was actually off trafficking weapons. He received a phone call from Fabio Ochoa and Escobar, who both thanked him for his help, and was given $100,000 for any costs he incurred. When asked who his source was, Jacoby implied that it was "an aide in the White House" and that Oliver North had the most motivation to release the information. Purwin was a passenger in a plane that went down, killing both Purwin and Venezuelan pilot Carlos Berl. -Smuggler's End: The Life and Death of Barry Seal. The photo shows Federico Vaughan, who Seal claimed was a top aide to Tomas Borge, the Nicaraguan government's . [23], These arrangements were not yet complete, so Seal's first shipment was to be a direct flight to the U.S. Times Staff Writers. 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. It's certainly possible and it's what the movie proposes. Escobar decided to keep the first shipment in Nicaragua and have Seal return to the States and buy a larger plane. [50] He had seen Cardona test-fire the murder weapon in Mermelstein's garage and bullets that matched the murder weapon were later extracted from the garage wall by FBI forensics. Adler (Barry) Seal, a pilot and drug smuggler from Baton Rouge, La., who became an undercover informant for the Drug Enforcement Agency, flew the plane to the Rickenbacker Air National Guard Base . Debbie, who was 21 at the time, met Barry, 33, while working as a cashier at a restaurant. Operative Monty Schafer (Domhnall Gleeson) approaches Barry Seal (Tom Cruise) and tells him, "We need you to deliver stuff for us." 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. Barry Seal modern day outlaw, adventurer, and drug smuggler, full of fun, full of folly . Using pilots like Barry Seal was a means to an end. Like in the movie, the American Made true story reveals that Barry made a living as a commercial airline pilot for several years. [9], Seal's smuggling method was to use low-flying planes and airdrop drug packages in remote areas of Louisiana. "Barry Seal was a friend of mine," Plumlee says. The DEA agreed to put surveillance equipment on Barry Seals plane and track him on his next flight to Central America. All three were found guilty and sentenced to life without parole. . Watch President Ronald Reagan's address to the nation on Nicaragua and Central America, delivered from the Oval Office on November 13, 1986. Exposure of Nicaraguan undercover operation, Criticism of U.S. failure to protect Seal, President's Commission on Organized Crime, "Barry Seal murder in Baton Rouge 25 years ago helped expose Iran-Contra debacle", "Louisiana governor denies parole for man who helped kill Barry Seal for Escobar's cartel", "Slain drug smuggler Barry Seal's daughter sues to halt movie on her father's life", "Family of murdered drug smuggler sue Universal over Tom Cruise film Mena", "North's name bandied about on news leak", "Special Reports - Interview - Drug Wars", "Informants murder puts head on authorities", "TV Reviews: 'Doublecrossed': Story of Drugs and Politics", "Who Killed Barry Seal? While there, he had a chance meeting with Jorge Ochoa's New Orleans business manager. 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. WASHINGTON . Then, flip through these wild Narco Instagram posts. The DEA had been onto him for a long time. Pablo Escobar and the Ochoas were going to be arrested at a celebration of Seal's successful cocaine transport. [46] He warned Seal that he intended to set strict probation provisions and that if Seal violated these, the plea bargain could be revoked and Seal re-sentenced. The case was eventually dismissed in 1974 for prosecutorial misconduct, but in the meantime TWA fired Seal, who had falsely taken medical leave to participate in the scheme. It turns out Barry flew the plane all the way back to the United States. 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. Seal pilote un avin C-123 que llevaba tambin unas cmaras fotogrficas escondidas. Barry Seal was an ace pilot and a drug smuggler of such proportions that he has been called "the biggest drug smuggler in American History". 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 . 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. 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. On June 26, 1984, Barry Seal boarded a plane equipped with two hidden cameras and flew back to Nicaragua. Yes. He added, That boy was first cousin to a bird.. Indeed, at age 26, Seal became one of the youngest pilots to ever fly for Trans World Airlines. Starring Tom Cruise, Domhnall Gleeson, Sarah Wright, Copyright 2023 HistoryvsHollywood.com, CTF Media, Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile. . 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. He hands wads of cash to a kid on a bike, telling the boy, "You never saw me." He was murdered on February 19, 1986 by contract killers hired by the cartel. No. He soon told the task force about the contract, and Seal was informed that the cartel was offering $500,000 for his death. After this look at the brazen smuggler Barry Seal, check out how the Medelln cartel became one of the most ruthless crime syndicates in history. Sep 30, 2017 Stefan Andrews. Despite the heat surrounding Seal, he made a drug run to Nicaragua in 1984, where he picked up 1,465 pounds of . Donate today to be a part of this important mission. [2] He was assassinated in 1986, a hit rumoured to have been ordered by George H. W. Bush, whose personal telephone number was found on . However, the U.S. needed a way to covertly get the funds and weapons to the rebels. The Fat Lady, over Nicaragua. Also, view a news story about Barry Seal's death. Hed get in his plane and hed go down there and throw 1,000 kilos on the plane and come back to Louisiana.. Universal Pictures. [51], On the evening of February 19, 1986, Seal was shot to death in front of the Salvation Army Center, three weeks into his probation. 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. 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. Seal became a federal informant in March 1984. "One day Barry came in and said there was a contract on him - half a million dead, a million alive," says widow Debbie Seal. Within U.S. airspace, Seal would have people on the ground monitor for any signs his planes were being tailed. 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. Ochoa was arrested in Spain on a U.S. warrant, but due to pressure from the cartel was never extradited to the U.S. -Court Documents (STATE of Louisiana v. Miguel VELEZ, Bernardo Vasquez, and Luis Carlos Quintero-Cruz), Yes. [1] In this capacity, he worked for both the CIA and Pablo Escobar. The gunman was later identified as Luis Carlos Quintero-Cruz. 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. As Barry opened the driver's side door to get out of the car, the gunman rushed from behind the drop box and fired a .45 caliber Mac-10 machine gun, hitting Barry in the head and body several times. Domhnall Gleeson, right, stars in director Doug Liman's crime drama 'American Made,' based loosely on the story of Baton Rouge native Barry Seal, a pilot-turned-smugger-turned-federal-informant. On July 17, 1984, an article detailing Seals infiltration of the Medelln cartel hit the front page of the Washington Times. The real Barry Seal claimed that he started running covert operations for various government agencies as early as the late 1950s, while he was a member of the Civil Air Patrol in New Orleans, well before he became a TWA pilot. The Charmed, Doomed Life of Barry Seal. [49] Although the newspaper report and the arrest of their Miami distributors confirmed that their pilot was DEA, it was not until the cartel members received a copy of Seal's television documentary that they learned McKenzie was Seal. The assassination happened on February 19, 1986 in the parking lot in front of the Salvation Army building on Airline Highway (U.S. 61) in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The state narcotics agents who were investigating Seal in Baton Rouge sued over their depiction in the series, but the lawsuit was dismissed. 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. The Ochoa Family, along with Pablo Escobar and others, were the founders of the Medelln Cartel. That aspect of who he was has never been disputed. 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. While at a bar one night, Barry is found by a man saying his name is Monty Schafer (Domhnall Gleeson). [13], To avoid this unwanted attention, Seal moved his aircraft to Mena Intermountain Regional Airport in Mena, Arkansas, where he did maintenance and modifications to improve the planes' carrying capacity and avionics. 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 . Tom Cruise got his pilot's license in 1994. -The Independent, Not likely. No word of the Hughes hearings appeared in the Washington Post or the New York Times. Then the Washington Post leaked the story, revealing that Seal was working undercover for the CIA. "He would tell me, 'I'm going to such and such places,' and I wouldn't see him for days. . The real Barry Seal claimed he had been working for agencies . Adler Berriman "Barry" Seal was an American commercial airline pilot who became a major drug smuggler for the Medelln Cartel. He made more than $50 million smuggling drugs into the United States from South America between 1977 and 1986. . [45], At Seal's sentencing hearing in January 1986, Judge Frank Polozola acknowledged that he was bound by the agreement, but informed Seal and his lawyer of his dissatisfaction with Seal's failure to receive jail time in Florida, forcing Polozola to sentence Seal to probation on much more serious charges in Louisiana. -Daily Mail Online. Both rejected any deals, even though Seal told them a little about his involvement with the Ochoa family. Wikimedia CommonsA Fairchild C-123 military cargo plane similar to Barry Seals Fat Lady.. The DEA eventually took him up on his offer because of his knowledge and connections to the cartel. Barry Seal vol nuevamente a Nicaragua con una misin secreta de la CIA: tomar fotos de los involucrados en el operativo de narcotrfico en el aeropuerto Los Brasiles. Seal made important connections while in prison in Honduras, including Emile Camp, a fellow Louisiana pilot and smuggler who became one of Seal's closest associates, and Ellis McKenzie, a local Honduran smuggler. Barry Seal - gunrunner, drug trafficker, and covert C.I.A. [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. Like in the movie, the American Made true story reveals that Barry made a living as a commercial airline pilot for several years. Jacoby mentioned Seal's mission as evidence, which effectively outed Seal as a government agent. No. 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 DEA agents who worked with Barry loved him," said director Doug Liman. There is no information on Barry Seal's net worth, but it must have been substantial. Barry Seal was able to get photos of Pablos Escobar himself loading cocaine onto Barry's cargo plane in Nicaragua. Barry Seal, The Most Important Witness In The History Of The Drug Enforcement Administration. Yes. Seal was originally introduced to the Medelln cartel members as a pilot named Ellis McKenzie. [27], The plane Seal acquired was a C-123K, a large aircraft used primarily for military transport. [5] By 1978, he had expanded to flying significant loads of cocaine, pound-for-pound a much more profitable enterprise than marijuana smuggling. 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. Pablo . 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. If they were, the mission was aborted. Barry Seal: El traficante (2017) Primer Triler Oficial Espaol1 de septiembre de 2017Dcada de 1980. The second indictment charged Seal and three others with multiple counts of possession and distribution of methaqualone, phenobarbital, and meperidine.[16]. 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 . While the filmmakers were shooting the movie in South America, a local pilot who was working with them said that he had met Barry. From 1980 on, Bottoms was the main pilot in Seal's smuggling enterprise, often flying with Camp while Seal oversaw planning and operations. We rely on your support to keep running. In his address, Reagan talks about a photo taken by a hidden camera on Barry Seal's plane. A Baton Rouge, Louisiana native, Barry Seal was eventually forced to move his drug smuggling operation after he drew the attention of Louisiana authorities. 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. 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. He made four trips to Nicaragua that year, allegedly to document the complicity in cocaine trafficking. ", No. Barry Seal was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the son of Mary Lou (ne Delcambre) and Benjamin Curtis Seal, a candy wholesaler. [42], Following his testimony in the Miami trials, Seal appeared in Florida court again over his second indictment in the Big Screamer operation. . 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. The life of the most important witness in the history of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration had come to a brutal end. There is no real-life Monty. Source - educationforum.ipbhost.com "Texas Gov. Not all of Barry Seal's heirs were happy with the making of the movie. DEA Agent Ernest Jacobsen later said the technology they used was the most expensive cryptic radio communications we had ever seen at the time.. The man said that despite the incident, he was still very fond of Barry. After a discussion about how to move the increased flow of cocaine, Escobar decided to keep the first shipment in Nicaragua and have Seal return to the States and buy a larger plane. "He put the airplane into a parabolic arc and pinned me against the ceiling, and right in that moment, I had this inspiration. Two weeks after his argument with Vice President GHW Bush, Barry Seal was pumped full of bullets and murdered outside his Baton Rouge halfway house on Feb. 19, 1986. 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. Seal was hit six times and died almost instantly. Set in the year 1978, Barry Seal (Tom Cruise) works as a pilot for Trans World Airlines. Adler Berriman "Barry" Seal (July 16, 1939 February 19, 1986) was an American commercial airline pilot who became a major drug smuggler for the Medelln Cartel. As the cocaine was being loaded onto his plane, Seal noticed that the remote control for the camera was malfunctioning. -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. The marriage ended with his death in 1986. On 1st July, 1972, Barry Seal was arrested in New Orleans and accused of sending C4 explosives to anti-Castro Cubans in Mexico. The first indictment charged Seal alone with two counts of conspiracy to distribute methaqualone. November 15, 2017. No one has been able to tell us". No of Kids with Barry: Dean, Aaron, and Christina Seal. [46] No. Universal Pictures (@UniversalPicsPT) 5 de junho de 2017. He didn't meet Pablo Escobar and the Ochoa brothers in person until 1984, after his arrest when he was working as an informant for the DEA on an undercover operation. New York, NY 10001. Just prior to the movie's release, news broke that the family of deceased stunt pilot Alan Purwin was suing American Made's producers for wrongful death. If he had in fact been working for the CIA at the time, his connections didn't get him off the hook. -Court DocumentsThe 2016 Bryan Cranston movie The Infiltrator also depicts Barry Seal's assassination, but it is historically inaccurate. In 2017, Seal's life became the subject of a second Hollywood adaptation titled American Made and starred Tom Cruise. LAKE CHARLES, LA., MAY 13 -- Three Colombians were convicted of first-degree murder today in the machine-gun slaying of informer Adler (Barry) Seal, whose undercover work had led to the indictment . 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. When the cartel caught wind of Seals betrayal, they sent three hitmen to gun him down in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, bringing a bloody end to his work as an informant. The explosives were supposedly going to anti-Castro Cuban fighters. What Journalists, Scholars and Activists Are Saying, The State Department Versus US Reporters in El Salvador, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported. The movie's title was changed to put less emphasis on the Arkansas connection, including the possibility that Bill Clinton was aware of what was going on. It was in 1973, the year that followed the end of his second marriage that Seal got married to Deborah DuBois and they . The flight, in January 1985, was successful and led to arrests and convictions. No. Seal took pictures during the Nicaragua sting operation that showed Pablo Escobar, Jorge Luis Ochoa Vsquez, and other members of the Medelln Cartel loading kilos of cocaine onto a C-123 . During Bill Clinton's campaign to become president of the United States in 1992, his biggest financial contributor was a billionaire businessman named Jackson Stevens. The film stars Tom Cruise as Barry . Instead, he testified against Pablo Escobar, Carlos Lehder, and Jorge Ochoa in front of a federal grand jury. [7] At his peak, he earned as much as $500,000 per flight transporting shipments of cocaine from Colombia to the United States. FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation. -The Hollywood Reporter, Debbie Seal insists that she was unaware of what her husband was up to. [30] Unfortunately, the driver was arrested by local police, and the circumstances of the seizure raised the suspicions of the cartel. [17] Without a deal, Seal was tried in February 1984 and after a month-long trial was convicted on all the counts in the first indictment. Another shipment was also planned at this time, but under instructions from the DEA, Seal told Escobar his landing site was under DEA surveillance and unsafe for transport to avoid the need to seize a second load. Barry's widow, Deborah Seal, says that he began smuggling drugs in 1975, first focusing mainly on marijuana. [25] The drugs were unloaded by the military and Seal and his co-pilot were taken to detention in downtown Managua, where they were released to the cartel's Nicaraguan contact, Federico Vaughan. . Miguel Velez was the man driving the getaway car. Barry Seal. He was then shot 5 times by cartel gunmen, but survived and eventually sought asylum at the U.S. embassy in Bogota. He had already been flying planes for nearly half his life, earning his student pilot . In reality, there is no evidence that Seal was ever involved with the CIA. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. Yes. Particularly suspicious is the role of Federico Vaughn, the supposed Sandinista official, who appears to have been a US spy all along. Polozola took the occasion to say that people like Seal were "the lowest, most despicable people I can think of."