by Ran
Adler Berriman "Barry" Seal was born to Mary Lou Seal and Benjamin Curtis Seal (reportedly, a member of the Ku Klux Klan), a candy wholesaler, on July 16, 1939 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Barry was one of three brothers, including Benjy and Wendell.
On July 16, 1955, he earned his pilot's license. Within weeks, he joined the Baton Rouge branch of the Civil Air Patrol -- the federally supported civilian auxillary of the United States Air Force. While on a joint training exercise with the New Orleans branch, he met Lee Harvey Oswald.
In 1957, Seal graduated from Baton Rouge High School and attended Louisiana State University for one semester before dropping out.
On August 10, 1958, Seal crashed the rented Piper PA-22 Tri-Pacer he was piloting onto the grounds of Baton Rouge's Pike Burden Plantation. He sustained injuries that necessitated a week-long hospital stay, lost five teeth and had to have his jaw wired shut for a month. Seal's father, Benjamin, filed a suit against the owner of the plane, LSU chemistry professor Dr. Philip West, seeking $115, 855 in damages.
Seal's suit against Dr. West was dismissed in April of 1960.
On August 31, 1961, Seal enlisted in the Louisiana Army National Guard. He was assigned to Company B, 21st Special Forces. His basic training with Company C, 2nd Battalion, 3rd Training Regiment began on July 3, 1962, at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri. On September 14, he was assigned to Company B, 1st Battalion, 1st Training Regiment, Engineers and was trained as a radio telephone operator. On November 11, he was transferred to Fort Benning near Columbus, Georgia, where he received paratrooper training at the U.S. Army Airborne School. On January 3, 1963, Seal was promoted to promoted to private first class and reassigned to Company D, 2nd Operation Detachment, 20th Special Forces before ultimately being assigned to the 245th Engineer Batttalion.
In March of 1963, Seal married Barbara Bottoms. They had two children: a boy and a girl.
Seal was given an honorable discharge on July 31, 1967 and shortly afterwards, he was hired as a commercial pilot for TWA (Trans World Airlines).
Seal filed for divorce in November of 1968 but he and Barbara reunited until she filed for divorce in March of 1970.
Seal and seven others were arrested by U.S. Customs agents in New Orleans on July 1, 1972 for attempting to smuggle 1,350 pounds of C-4 into Mexico. The DC-4 aircraft that he intended to fly was seized at the Shreveport Regional Airport in Louisiana. The explosives were intended for CIA-trained Cubans seeking to unseat Fidel Castro. The arrest took place while Seal was on a medical leave of absence from TWA.
Seal's second wife, Linda, filed for divorce on November 17, 1972.
TWA fired Seal two years later. His June 1974 trial for the smuggling incident ended in a mistrial.
In November of 1974, Seal married Deborah Ann DuBois. The couple eventually had three children: Aaron, Dean and Christina.
In 1977, Seal began to transport marijuana to the U.S.
On December 10, 1979, Seal was arrested in Honduras in possession of a machine gun and 17 kilograms of cocaine. However, he was never formally charged with any criminal misconduct. During Seal's incarceration, he befriended another American pilot who smuggled narcotics for a living, Emile Harold Camp, Jr. Camp would eventually become Seal's co-pilot. Seal also met William Roger Reeves, who was employed by the Medellin drug cartel -- named after the Colombian city in which it was based -- and managed their operations in New Orleans, during his detention in Honduras. The cartel, headed by Pablo Escobar, reportedly controlled over 70% of the cocaine transported to the U.S. After reportedly bribing several Guatemalan officials, Seal was released in September of 1980. In 1981, after being introduced to Miami drug-trafficker Felix Dixon Bates by Reeves, Seal began transporting shipments of cocaine into the U.S., unloading the cargo by making airdrops. He gave the cartel the alias Ellis McKenzie and made upwards of $500,000 per trip, usually charging $5,000 for each kilogram he delivered. In April of 1982, he moved his base of operations from Opelousas, Louisiana to the Mena Intermountain Regional Airport in western Arkansas. By that time, the 5'9" Seal had grown to 240 pounds.
In 1983, one of Seal's smuggling associates was arrested after his network was infiltrated by undercover DEA agent Randy Beasley, as a part of the DEA's "Operation Screamer" -- an 18-month undercover probe that targeted southern Florida drug-traffickers. The smuggler gave the DEA information on Seal as part of a deal he made with the government.
In March of 1983, Seal was arrested again -- this time in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He was charged with money laundering and smuggling Quaaludes. Seal attempted to negotiate a deal with assistant U.S. Attorney Bruce Zimet, promising to give information on high-ranking Medellin cartel members Jorge Luis Ochoa Vasquez and his brothers Juan David Ochoa Vasquez and Fabio Ochoa Vasquez. When Zimet refused, Seal contacted the office of Baton Rouge U.S. Attorney Stanford O. Bardwell, Jr., who attended Baton Rouge High during the same time as Seal, but Bardwell refused to meet with him.
On February 14, 1984, Seal's Florida trial began and ended in a guilty verdict on March 17. His sentencing hearing was scheduled for May 23 by Judge Norman Roettger and he faced a potential 10-year prison term.
According to Seal's later testimony, he piloted his Lear jet to Washington, D.C. on March 25, where he met with two members of then-Vice President George H.W. Bush's drug task force, on a street in D.C., who in turn introduced him to DEA agent Kenneth R. Kennedy. Kennedy introduced Seal to agents Robert Joura and Ernest "Jake" Jacobsen of the Miami branch of the DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency). On March 28, appeared before Judge Jose A. Gonzalez, Jr., where he pleaded guilty. As part of a plea deal he arranged with the DEA, Seal agreed to testify that the Sandinista government was involved in cocaine-trafficking with the Medellin cartel. Because the deal also required him to participate in a DEA sting operation targeting the cartel, Seal resumed his career as a drug-smuggler, under the supervision of the DEA and ultimately, Miami's chief assistant U.S. attorney, Richard Gregorie.
Seal flew to Medellin, Colombia on April 8, with Felix Bates serving as his co-pilot, and met with Escobar and the Ochoa brothers to make plans to ship a 1,500-kilogram load to the U.S. During the meet, Jorge Ochoa divulged to Seal that the Sandinistas had sold him a 6,000-foot landing strip in Nicaragua and had agreed to allow him use the location as a refueling stop during trips from Colombia to the states.
On May 23, Judge Norman Roettger sentenced Seal to two consecutive five-year terms in prison. After Judge Roettger denied bond, Seal was taken into custody by U.S. Marshals before the DEA informed the judge that he part of an ongoing operation.
On May 28, Seal and Camp made a run to Colombia where Medellin cartel co-founder Carlos Ledher supervised the loading of 3,500 kilograms of cocaine onto their twin-engine Lockheed Lodestar. However, the overloaded plane crashed shortly after takeoff. Part of the cargo, 660 kilograms, was transferred to a smaller plane, a twin-engine Cessna Titan 404, provided by Jorge Ochoa, on June 4. They were later shot down by anti-aircraft fire while attempting to fly out of Nicaragua. They'd landed at Nicaragua's Los Brasiles air base on their way back from Colombia in order to refuel before continuing the journey to the U.S. The cocaine was seized by local authorities, who also arrested the two pilots and their mechanic, Peter Everson. When the trio was released the next day, they rented another plane and flew back to the states.
Upon his return, Seal purchased a surplus U.S. Air Force Fairchild C-123K Provider cargo plane that he named "The Fat Lady", and gave a camouflage paint-scheme.
After realizing Seal's potential for intelligence-gathering regarding drug-trafficking activity in Nicaragua, and thus reinforcing President Reagan's anti-Sandinista agenda, the CIA appealed to the DEA to take part in the operation.
On June 24, the trio returned to Managua, Nicaragua's capital, to retrieve the cocaine, and Seal procured photos of Escobar overseeing Nicaraguan soldiers loading 1,200 kilograms of cocaine onto the plane for transport. The craft had been outfitted with two hidden 35-millimeter cameras by the CIA at Ohio's Rickenbacker Air Force Base in Ohio on June 23.
A subsequent trip to Nicaragua to purchase cocaine for $1,000,000 was cancelled when the DEA learned of the Washington Times' plan to publish a story about Seal's smuggling.
In July of 1984, high-ranking cartel members Escobar and Jorge Ochoa were indicted, in part, as a result of Seal's information. Ochoa was subsequently arrested in Spain.
That November, investigative reporter John Camp's documentary, "Uncle Sam Wants You", which detailed Seal's activities as a drug runner and federal informant, was broadcast on American television.
In December, Medellin cartel associate and former Miami shoe importer Max Mermelstein attended a meeting at the Miami residence of cartel member Raphael Cardona-Salazar, where the two viewed a video of Camp's documentary. Mermelstein was subsequently ordered to either murder Seal, for which he'd be paid $500,000, or kidnap him and transport him to Colombia, for which he'd be paid $1,000,000. Mermelstein, however, was subsequently arrested for drug smuggling and became a federal informant himself.
That same month, Seal was arrested for smuggling marijuana into Louisiana. He was released after posting a $250,000 bond.
In February of 1985, Emile Camp died when the one-man plane he was piloting crashed into Arkansas' Fourche Mountain.
On July 30, Seal was the first witness called in the narcotics conspiracy trial of former Venezuelan navy officer Lazardo Marquz Perez, Colombian national Carlos Bustamante, Colombian-born Paul Elzel and Seal's former associate Felix Dixon Bates.
In August of 1985, Seal testified before U.S. District Judge Howard McKibben that Norman Saunders, the prime minister of Turks and Caicos, had accepted a $20,000 bribe in exchange for permitting Seal to use South Caicos' Salt Cay as a stop during drug runs.
On October 24, Seal appeared in a hearing in Miami before Judge Norman C. Roettger. After Agent Joura spoke on Seal's behalf, the judge reduced his 10-year sentence to four months time served.
On December 20, Seal appeared before United States District Judge Frank Polozola in Baton Rouge for a hearing following his guilty plea to conspiracy to possess cocaine. On January 24, Judge Polozola sentenced Seal to five years probation and fined him $35,000. The terms of his probation required him to report to the Baton Rouge Salvation Army Community Treatment Center -- a halfway house -- every day from 6 PM until 6 the following morning. He was also barred from carrying firearms or employing anyone else to do so. He was restricted to the Baton Rouge area and ordered to carry a pager so he'd be accessible to probation officials at all times. Seal refused to enter the Federal Witness Protection Program.
Seal began his sentence on January 24, 1986. On February 19, he was killed in the parking lot of the halfway house. He was found shot to death, seated in his white Cadillac Fleetwood. Seal was struck six times with .45-caliber rounds fired from a Mac-10 machine gun equipped with a silencer -- in his chest, neck and head. He was interred in a sky-blue casket at the Greenoaks Memorial Park in Baton Rouge.
Ochoa, who was scheduled to be extradited to Miami in January to face federal drug charges pending Seal's testimony, was instead transported to Colombia and released following the latter's murder.
On March 26, then-President Ronald Reagan displayed one of the photographs captured by Seal's hidden camera during a televised address. He cited the photo as evidence of the Nicaraguan government's particiaption in the international drug trade, stating, "I know that every American parent concerned about the drug problem will be outraged to learn that top Nicaraguan government officials are deeply involved in drug trafficking. This picture, secretly taken at a military airfield outside Managua, shows Federico Vaughan, a top aide to one of the nine commandants who rule Nicaragua, loading an aircraft with illegal narcotics bound for the United States." However, subsequent investigations have cast doubt on Vaughan's purported position as a top aide to Nicaraguan leadership.
In October of 1986, "The Fat Lady" crashed in Nicaragua during a trip to provide supplies to the nation's Sandista-opposed Contras.
On May 13, 1987, following a five week trial, Colombian nationals Miguel Velez, 37; Luis Carlos Quintero-Cruz, 34; and Bernardo Vasquez, 33, were each found guilty of first degree murder in connection to Seal's death. Velez's attorney, Richard Sharpstein, alleged in court that Seal was in the employ of the CIA and smuggling guns to Nicaraguan rebels during the same time that he worked as a DEA informant. Later that month, all three were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
It's estimated that during his smuggling career, Barry Seal maintained a fleet of four planes, flew over $3 billion worth of cocaine into the U.S. for the Medellin cartel and personally made in excess of $60 million. The government reportedly allowed Seal to keep monies in excess of $600,000 made during his time as an informant -- to cover expenses.
Seal's Airport in Mena, Arkansas
