Barry Seal
Adler Berriman Seal, or "Barry Seal" was a legendary pilot, drug smuggler, gun-runner, CIA "asset" in Central America, and DEA informant. He was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana on July 16, 1939. He married in 1962 and had three children.[1] After a career that mixed military aviation and drug-smuggling, including a role in Iran-Contra, he became a government witness and admitted that he was a Quaalude and cocaine smuggler. He was subsequently gunned down by a team of Colombian assassins in Baton Rouge, Louisiana in February 1986.[2]
Flying Career
On his 16th birthday, Seal got his pilot's license. He soon attended a two-week training camp at the Civil Air Patrol at Barksdale Air Force Base in Shreveport, Louisiana. His instructor was David Ferrie (a pedophile and probable gun-runner to Cuba), one of his fellow cadets was Lee Harvey Oswald. Seal allegedly delivered arms on behalf of Ferrie.[3][4]
Seal allegedly had some involvement in CIA Operation 40. He sent his mother a postcard from the Mayas Excelsior Hotel in Guatemala City in late-March 1961, shortly before the Bay of Pigs invasion. (On 17 May 1960 the CIA station chief in Guatemala City, Bob Davis, had been instructed to build an airport in 30 days, which he did in Retalhuleu, with Guatemalan government permission. The anti-Castro Brigade 2506 trained in Guatemala for the Bay of Pigs invasion. On 8 March 1961, a "great movement of planes" there was written up in local papers.)[5][6]
Barry & 'the Boys' : The CIA, the Mob and America's Secret History by Daniel Hopsicker (2001) details Seal's military history, involvement with Operation 40, and ties to George H.W. Bush's Zapata Corporation. The book shows Seal (in a photo provided by his widow) in the company of Felix Rodriguez, Porter Goss (CIA Director under George W. Bush), and other members of Operation 40, in 1963. The reliability of Hopsicker's book has come under attack.
Seal enlisted in the 1st Special Forces reserves on 31 Aug 1961, four months after the Bay of Pigs. On 15 Dec 1962, he was assigned to the 21st Special Forces Group—Airborne, and went to Fort Benning Jump School. In January of 1963, he was transferred to "Company B" of the 21st Special Forces group. That spring, he was assigned to the 20th Special Forces Group Airborne, Company D Special Ops Detachment. (See also Orders to Kill by William Pepper.)
He left the military in November 1966 and went to work flying for Howard Hughes' company, Trans World Airlines (TWA). At age 26 he became the youngest pilot certified to fly Boeing 707s. While working for TWA, Seal volunteered for hazardous duty to fly into battle zones in Vietnam with explosives and war material.
Smuggler; DEA Informant; CIA "Asset"?
In "black operations", unsavory individuals with criminal ties are often chosen as "assets," because there is no-one else to do the job. On July 1, 1972, two weeks after the Watergate scandal was unearthed, Seal was arrested by US Customs agent Cesario Diosdado in New Orleans for carrying 13,500 pounds of C-4 Plastic Explosives, bound for anti-Castro factions in Mexico. The middle-men included Murray Morris Kessler, with ties to the Mafia, and Richmond C. Harper a wealthy meat-packer/banker from Eagle Pass, Texas. Author Pete Brewton, in The Mafia, CIA & George [HW] Bush (S.P.I. Books, 1992, Pg. 154-160), reports that the C-4 was stored in a warehouse owned by Nixon's aide, Herman K. Beebe. After his trial, Seal stated that Harper "had very deep ties right into the [Nixon] White House." In a four-page statement, Seal wrote that Diosdado "has been proved to have been an ex-CIA agent who worked in the Bay of Pigs invasion." (A decade later, Seal offered sworn testimony that the explosives were for CIA-trained anti-Castro Cubans.)
A judge threw out the case when the government wanted to protect the identity of its informants, including "Francisco 'Paco' Flores", or could not locate them. Nonetheless, Seal was fired from TWA. He turned to smuggling full-time by 1976.
From December 1979-August 1980 Seal served time in a Honduran prison for smuggling marijuana. From then until 1985 he resumed drug-smuggling, along with his brother-in-law William "Billy" Bottoms, operating out of Louisiana, and then out of Mena, Arkansas.
In 1981 he was arrested for smuggling Quaaludes into the country, through "Operation Screamer". He continued to smuggle, and was indicted again in late-1983 for smuggling Quaaludes, phenobarbs and meperidine (Demerol). On the first Quaalude charge he was convicted on February 17, 1984, by Judge Norman C. Roettger in Fort Lauderdale, FL. He contacted the DEA to turn informant in a plea bargain, and met agent Ernst S. Jacobsen and Bob Joura in late February. He began undercover informing for the DEA, before he was sentenced on 24 May 1984 for two consecutive 5 year terms and jailed. The next day, Agent Jacobson and Assistant US Attorney Kellner appeared before Judge Roettger and told him of Seal's undercover activities. The judge amended the sentence and Seal was released, pending plea agreements. He also pled guilty on 19 November 1984 to smuggling cocaine.[7]
Seal's lawyer at this time was Richard Ben-Veniste. Ben-Veniste told the Wall Street Journal: "I did my part by launching him into the arms of Vice President Bush, who embraced him as an undercover operative."[8] Seal met with Vice President Bush's Task Force on Drugs in March of 1984, and testified before the President's Commission on Organized Crime in October of 1985.
Various conspiracy theories linked Seal to then-governor of Arkansas Bill Clinton. (E.g., Ben-Veniste later served as an attorney on Clinton's impeachment hearings.) These rumours are largely dismissed as not credible and lacking evidence. Likewise, in an unfortunate coincidence for George W. Bush, the Beechcraft King Air 200 airplane with FAA registration number N6308F (Serial Number BB-1014) which was leased by the State of Texas and used to transport then-Gov. George W. Bush had previously been owned by Barry Seal; but no further credible evidence linking Bush Jr. to Seal has been published.[9]
Undercover Informant, Nicaragua
As part of his plea deal with the DEA, Seal was used in a sting operation against the Sandinistan government in Nicaragua and drug king-pin Escobar. Seale agreed to cooperate with the DEA, and testify against his former colleagues. Amongst those Seal testified against were Prime Minister Norman Saunders and members of the Medellín Cartel. He was soon to play a role in the Iran-Contra scandal. According to esteemed scholar William Chamblis, in his 1988 presidential address to the American Society of Criminology: "Barry Seal, an informant and pilot for the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) was ordered by members of the CIA and DEA to photograph the Sandanistas." Dennis Anderson seconds this: "A CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency employee, an adventurer named Barry Seal, flew arms for the Contras to Latin America and brought back cocaine..."
Ollie North stated on a PBS interview: "he [Seal] was enlisted to give us proof that the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua was actually involved in the trafficking of narcotics into this country... This was a clandestine operation undertaken to prove that the Sandinistas, and indirectly the Cubans who were supporting the Sandinistas, were involved in the trafficking of narcotics into the United States. You have to remember that the accusation was being made that it was the Nicaraguan resistance doing it."[10]
In 1984 Seal arrived at Homestead Air Force Base in Florida with a shipment of cocaine that allegedly had been brokered through the Sandinistan government. Seal testified that pictures taken during the trip showed Sandinistan officials brokering a cocaine deal with members of Columbia’s drug cartel, although the poor quality of the pictures meant that Seal’s eyewitness account was the primary evidence for the claim. Oliver North brief briefed a Congresswoman about it, and the story leaked to the press. North told PBS: "When you're told to go brief a United States senator on a covert operation, you go do it. And you trust the information isn't going to leak. But hell, I wasn't the only one who briefed U.S. senators on stuff that leaked. The people who are concerned ought not to point the finger at me. They ought to start pointing the finger at the president of the United States and the chief of staff of the White House and the people in the political directorate and everywhere else..."[11] Others are more critical view of North's role. For example, scholar Eyta Gilboa writes: "In June, Barry Seal, a DEA agent, took a rare picture of Escobar and Sandanista officers loading cocaine into an airplane. A few weeks later, Oliver North, on the staff of the National Security Council, leaked the photo to American newspapers, hoping that the evidence ... would encourage Congress to vote in favor of aid to the contras. The disclosure of the photo ruined the covert operation..." (p.542) See also comments by Billy Bottom, Seal's brother-in-law and a pilot for Seal's smuggling operations.
When the Washington Times and the Wall Street Journal printed the story it exposed Seal’s identity and the involvement of his Columbian associates. Soon even President Reagan displayed the picture on national television in an attempt to get Congress to restore aid to the Contras. Escobar reportedly placed a $500,000 bounty on Seal's head. North told PBS: "I know what it's like to be there. The fact of the matter is that it was not in the case of the Barry Seal operation an effort to in any way destroy their operation or put them [DEA agents] in jeopardy. ... The people in the field need to know that the government of the United States has within it people who really do care about them. And unfortunately, when cases like this happen, they're often left feeling holding the bag and thinking nobody does." Seal feared for his life.
(The C-123 plane he flew to Nicaragua was sold to Harry Doan, who resold it to Southern Air Transport, who used it to supply the Nicaraguan Contras. This was the plane that Eugene Hasenfus would be shot down in, eight months after Seal's murder.)
Murder of, Investigation
On 19 February 1986, Seal was murdered by Colombian cartel hit men who were waiting for him at the Salvation Army halfway house, where he had been sentenced for six months by Judge Roettger. He left behind his wife and three small children.
Seven Colombians thought to be members of the Medellin Cartel were arrested in connection with Seal's assassination; only four men were charged with the crime, and only three were convicted.
Sam Dalton, the New Orleans attorney who represented the Colombian hit men who killed Seal in the penalty phase of their trial, subpoenaed the CIA about what he suspected was its complicity in Seal's assassination. "We were trying to subpoena the CIA because we felt like they had documents, exhibits, and evidence that would indicate complicity in Seal's assassination," Dalton said.[12]
Connection to George H.W. Bush's Office
Beyond the comments of Ben-Veniste and North, above, additional evidence links Seal to Bush's office. (No concrete evidence has been found linking Seal to Bush's Zapata Corporation in the early 1960s, when Seal was still in the military.)
Through discovery, Dalton's investigation gained access to the contents of the trunk of Barry Seal's Cadillac on the night he was killed. Dalton stated that the FBI "had missed a few things that indicated just how valuable that trunk was. Because that's where that phone number was. That's where we found George [H.W.] Bush's private phone number... Barry Seal was in direct contact with George [H.W.] Bush." (From 1997 TV documentary, "The Secret Heartbeat of America". It seems probable that Dalton meant the Bush White House office number. Oliver North served in that office.)[13]
As reported by Hopsicker in The Washington Weekly on Aug. 18, 1997, Lewis Unglesby, an attorney in Louisiana who represented Barry Seal in 1986, agreed with the Dalton's defense team: Seal was in direct personal contact with then Vice-President Bush. So both the plaintiff and defense agree on this. Unglesby claims he was initially skeptical of some of Seal's sensational claims until Seal gave him a phone number, and according to Unglesby he: "dialed the number, a little dubiously, and a pleasant female voice answered: 'Office of the Vice President.'" "This is Barry Seal," Unglesby said into the phone. "Just a moment, sir," the secretary replied. "Then a man's voice came on the line, identifying himself as Admiral somebody, and said to me, 'Barry, where have you been?'" "Excuse me, Sir, "Unglesby replied, "but my name is Lewis Unglesby and I'm Barry Seal's attorney." Unglesby says the Admiral immediately hung up, but this incident helped him gain trust in his client. Unglesby later learned the office of the Vice President did include an Admiral, Daniel J. Murphy, Bush's chief of staff until 1985.[14](In 1987, in retirement, Murphy flew to Panama with Tongsun Park to meet with Manuel Noriega.)
Further reading
- "Iran-Contra's Untold Story," by Robert Parry and Peter Kornbluh, Foreign Policy, No. 72 (Autumn, 1988), pp. 3-30
- "Below the Beltway," Dennis M. Anderson, Presidential Studies Quarterly, 1 January 1997
- Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in Central America, PD Scott, J Marshall (1998)
- "The Kingpin and his many connections" Michael Haddigan, The Arkansas Gazette
- PBS interviews Ollie North]
- "The Godfather of Cocaine" (Escobar)
- PBS’s Frontline: Thirty Years of America’s Drug War: A Chronology
- "The Barry Seal and Mena Story", Billy Bottoms
- High Times "Inside the Octopus: The Barry Seal Story" June 2002
- "The Panama Invasion Revisited: Lessons for the Use of Force in the Post Cold War Era", Eytan Gilboa, Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 110, No. 4 (Winter, 1995), pp. 539-562
- Daniel Hopsicker, Barry & 'the Boys': The CIA, the Mob and America's Secret History (the reliability of this source is disputed)
- William J. Chamblis, "1988 Presidential Address," Criminology, Volume 27, Issue 2, Page 183 - May 1989
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