No convincing explanation was offered for this act of censorship. Mena, Arkansas, as a staging point for weapons supply flights. "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. "The aircraft flew with various cameras used to obtain photographic evidence of the Sandinistas in the act of smuggling narcotics," Sherwood wrote. Hagan said he didn't know how many pages of material on Seal have yet to be made public by the FBI. attorney.". The real Barry Seal never had a brother-in-law who was killed by a car bomb. In the American Made movie, Barry Seal (Tom Cruise) crash lands a plane in a suburban neighborhood in an effort to escape the DEA who ordered him to land. Rafael Mena; Arizona; Phoenix; Rafael L Mena; Rafael L Mena, Age 71. aka Rafael J Mena. 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. I started it and pursued it but was unable to complete it because I left the office. (323) 771-9819. info@arcadiainc.com. Browns role, after all, was quite limited. Frigon, who says she administers Seal's estate, contends the estate did not consent. Well take it from here. He decided to talk about Mena. He suspected a CIA involvement, although his brother did not confirm it. Back at Mena, Brown says, he and Seal waled to Browns car, a Datsun hatchback, and Seal put one of the duffel bags under the hatchback. "According to some reports, the [Mena] airport, from 1981 to 1985, was a major transit point for the entrance of cocaine and heroin into the United States," Sherwood wrote. His daybook records one visit to Mena by Clinton on May 21, 1984, and he says that he accompanied Clinton to Mena on several other occasions. Three early drafts of the essay contain interpolations in Clintons handwriting. He also says he told Seal he wanted no part of what was happening; then he left. var sc_partition=60; commission charbonneau liste de noms. And the U.S. was covertly backing the Contras. "Despite the availability of evidence sufficient for an indictment on money laundering charges, and over the strong protests of state and federal law enforcement officials, the cases were dropped," according to the report. Subsequently, the special prosecutor investigating Whitewater subpoenaed Brown to disclose what he knew about Clintons connections to David L. Hale. Many of the more baroque allegations emerge from the fever swamps of conspiracy theorists, but certain facts are indisputable. But when he asked his brother, Whos pushing this his brother, Dwayne Brown says, nodded over towards the Governors Mansion. From then on, until he left Clintons security detail in June, Dwayne Brown says, his brother was at a high level of despair. He says he had feared he might be suicidal. The CIA does not talk about these things, and so Browns exact relationship with the agency may never be known. However, the U.S. needed a way to covertly get the funds and weapons to the rebels. Leveritt was reluctant at first, but soon warmed to the task and got to work. alan dershowitz cost per hour; what is pak po chicken; sonamukhi powder benefits; 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. 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.. They shared an interest in books, ideas, and night life. When Bill Clinton became president, Mena got a closer look. 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 . "He thought we had more time. "He put the airplane into a parabolic arc and pinned me against the ceiling, and right in that moment, I had this inspiration. Indeed, when Clinton was a law professor in Fayetteville, Brown was working on an off-campus magazine, the radical Grapevine. Last March, in a legally binding deposition, trooper Larry Patterson also said that Clinton knew about Mena. Material from the Associated Press is Copyright 2023, Associated Press and may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. 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. "Despite the availability of evidence sufficient for an indictment on money laundering charges, and over the strong protests of state and federal law enforcement officials, the cases were dropped," according to the report. Then Brown says, Seal and the kickers returned, carrying four duffel bags. Judicial Watch has launched a new campaign for answers. Thats when he said, You having any fun yet.. She is a brunette, not a blond like Sarah Wright's character in the movie. "The estimated value of the narcotics smuggled through the facility is $3 [billion] to $5 billion. 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. There is no information on Barry Seal's net worth, but it must have been substantial. After Brown told Sealand Clintonthat he would no longer take part in the drug flights, Seal contacted Brown again. Micah Morrison is chief investigative reporter for Judicial Watch. -Daily Mail Online, No. Strange events unfolded at Mena, a small city in remote western Arkansas, in the 1980s. Tom Cruise got his pilot's license in 1994. The gunman hurried into a waiting Buick, which sped away. I started it and pursued it but was unable to complete it because I left the office. 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. Past Addresses: See available information. 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. Leveritt has written convincing book-length studies of the Memphis Three case and the deaths of teenagers Don Henry and Kevin Ives, the Arkansas boys on the tracks. In Whos Afraid of Barry Seal?, in the Arkansas Times, Leveritt wrote that secrets are still being carefully kept, especially in Arkansas. In advance of the recent Tom Cruise movie about Seal, American Made, an official associated with the Arkansas Studies Institute, an affiliate of the University of Arkansas and the Central Arkansas Libraryboth state institutionsconvinced Leveritt to write a book about Mena, as a tie-in to the movie. Seal was a DEA informant/operative who was deeply involved in Iran-Contra and Gov. 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. "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. Brown was 28 years old in 1984. The FBI in Little Rock began investigating Seal's operation at the Mena airport in February 1984, according to the recently released FBI document. Were suing the CIA for the full inspector general report and we want documents from other agencies as well. As part of his reduced sentence, the judge had ordered Barry to spend his nights, from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m., at a Salvation Army halfway house for six months. UNLOCK PROFILE. That didnt happen. The memorable scene never happened in real life. Terms & conditions/privacy policy apply. 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. "Prior to his death, Seal admitted to smuggling large quantities of cocaine from South America (Columbia) to United States and testified before Senate investigative committee," according to the FBI memo, which referred to a telephone call between agents in Little Rock and Miami. This document may not be reprinted without the express written permission of Northwest Arkansas Newspapers LLC. 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.. When he returned to Little Rock, he called his brother Dwayne. 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. No. Then, Brown says, Seal reached again into the duffel bag and pulled out a kilogram of cocaine. Welsh said it had not, but Youngs concern was intriguing. He said the money had been brought back from Tegucigalpa. 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 fired from TWA in 1974 for falsely citing medical leave when he was actually off trafficking weapons. 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. The DEA eventually took him up on his offer because of his knowledge and connections to the cartel. According to a 1988 Senate Foreign Relations Committee report, Seal's associates at the Mena airport were also being investigated. The pine and hardwood forests of the Ouachita Mountains surrounding it have long been an outlaws paradise, home to generations of moonshiners and red-dirt marijuana farmers. It was also just seventy miles south of the sprawling Fort Chaffee Army Base at Fort Smith, Arkansas. Corporate Office Arcadia Inc. 2301 East Vernon Ave. Vernon, CA 90058. 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. Seal, a government informant, was murdered outside a halfway house on Airline Highway in Baton Rouge. She says that she thought he was an airplane broker and also that he rented out old anti-aircraft lighting for various promotional events. "It's my understanding that no drugs ever came to the airport," said Fred Ogden, the current airport manager. As part of the application process, Brown had written an essay: Marxist Influence in Central America. He then, he says, signed a secrecy agreement, and was told he would be contacted further. 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. 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. Seal's mysterious activities have spawned books, movies and a cornucopia of conspiracy theories. Tax records show that, having assessed Seal posthumously for some $86 million in back taxes on his earnings from Mena and elsewhere between 1981 and 1983, even the l.R.S. Mena is the small town in Arkansas where Barry Seal, who was born in Baton Rouge, conducted operations. 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. The movie's loose interpretation of the true story is echoed in the trailer when a voice-over by Tom Cruise as Barry Seal tells us that only "some of this sh*t really happened." -TIME. Purwin was a passenger in a plane that went down, killing both Purwin and Venezuelan pilot Carlos Berl. He said parts of it could have been provided to people under previous information requests. In the 2017 Doug Liman-directed movie "American Made," which was previously titled "Mena," Deborah DuBois, the third wife of Barry Seal, was portrayed by the character Lucy. Using pilots like Barry Seal was a means to an end. pennymac insurance claim check tracker. The poster for the movie "American Made," to be released Friday, Sept. 29, shows a grinning, cocky Tom. 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