Barry Seal was a gifted pilot who’s world revolved around avionics from childhood. He received his pilot’s license on his 16th birthday. His legacy began at 17 when he was pulling in very serious money smuggling guns to Latin America. Also began his biggest fault-he liked to brag about his accomplishments, strongly insinuating that he was on the payroll of the US government while smuggling these arms.
US Customs was told to let Seal’s planes fly in and out of the country at will and they were not to be stopped or inspected. (Orders of Oliver North, imagine that.) Barry Seal answered directly to Oliver North and it was documents with Seal’s name on them that North shredded and went to prison for. This was caused by a Seal/CIA sting operation in Nicarauga that went bad and blew the entire top off the Iran/Contra scandal.
"THE CLINTON CONNECTION "
Bill Clinton’s ties to Mena, Arkansas require a separate story, so I will only touch on it for now.
When Clinton became governor of Arkansas, Seal’s operation in Mena was well established. Clinton, though, he’s a cool guy, he said, “No problem. Carry on....however, I’d like about....oh, say ten percent of the money.” There was so much money involved it was done and business never even slowed down.
Soon after receiving his pilot’s license he attended a two week training camp at the Civil Air Patrol at Barksdale Air Force Base in Shreveport, Louisiana. His instructor’s name was David Ferrie and one of his fellow cadets was a fellow called Lee Harvey Oswald - two key figures some years later in the assassination of President John Kennedy in Dallas. I’m just teasing you with this information though. To go into detail now would steer me far off track of my mission to introduce you to Barry Seal. It is it’s own story and will be told another day.
"OTHER INTERESTS"
Barry Seal has managed to be involved in every major historical event in modern history in the United States. He ran guns to Castro in Cuba; then ran guns to anti-Castro factions in Mexico; he flew in the Bay of Pigs Invasion and provided intelligence; he was Air America; and he was lurking in the shadows in Dallas, in Novemeber, 1963. And he may also have either flown personally or provided a plane for David Ferrie to fly the assassins to Canada.
Who the hell was this man?
"MENA, ARKANSAS"
Barry Seal was born in Louisiana and ran his operations from there for a long time. Eventually "his people" moved the operation to a sleepy little town of 5,000 in a remote part of Arkansas. Mena really is a sleepy town, the citizens could not rest with low-flying aircraft hovering their area every night at all hours with no lights on. Duffel bags of cashed rained down on the Arkansas countryside by night - and by day C-123 military cargo planes would land at Mena Airport and unload pallets of cocaine onto the ground, then leave while the drugs were moved by forklift into a hangar.
Also, less than two weeks after the Watergate scandal, Seal was arrested carrying 13,500 pounds of C-4 Plastic Explosives, bound for Mexico and anti-Cuban factions.
Seal was a daredevil pilot and served his country in Viet Nam as a Special Forces veteran. He was also a covert CIA operative, but not in the sense you’d think.
CIA: Central Intelligence Agency. The agency is very secretive and with good reason. Handling intelligence that protect our country from our enemies. Those weren’t the kinds of secrets the CIA was keeping though. They were kept the deep, bottomless kind of secret that you didn’t want to fall into. If you did, you were at very high risk of bizarre kinds of suicide or be involved in a fatal car accident (your fatality!) or your airplane crashes or you die in an "unsolved" murder or simply just to disappear from the planet.
"BIG SHOT "
No doubt about it, Seal was a big shot. By the government’s own estimate he smuggled more than $5 billion worth of high-grade cocaine into the country. Seal himself claimed to have profited by more than $4 million, personally. This money was never mentioned after Seal’s death so it officially didn’t exist, I guess.
No matter how big the big shot is though - nobody is untouchable from the tentacles of The Octopus - not even Adler Barriman “Barry” Seal.
"SMUGGLER’S BLUES"
Barry Seal has also been called a gun runner and a soldier-of-fortune. But more than any other thing, he’s best known for getting rich smuggling tons of cocaine into the US worth an estimated $5 billion (government estimate, no less.) High-quality cocaine, only the best for the Octopus. John Gotti was even a customer of Mena, Arkansas.
This cocaine smuggling wasn’t "sanctioned" by the US government, how could it be? They’re the ones who were having it done! Specifically the CIA but not limited to that agency. The tentacles had to reach into many areas to insure that secrecy was in EVERYONE’s best interest.
Seal’s empire seemed untouchable. When your employers are allowed to set their own rules and/or laws to abide your business, who’s going to stop you? The times Seal had been arrested in the past were all done away with after Seal offering to be an informant to the government. No jail time ever served.
On to Part 2