Barry Seal and Mena
David Goldman
>-----
>Barry Seal and the Mena Connection
> Wednesday, 19 February 1986, had been a typical winter day in south
>Louisiana, overcast and cold, but not unbearable. Barry Seal wasn't concerned
>about the weather anyway; the late model Cadillac Sedan deVille he was driving
>had all of the creature comforts and amenities befitting a big-time drug
>trafficker. Shortly before 6:00 P.M., the forty-six-year-old Seal wheeled the
>yellow Cadillac into the parking lot of the Salvation Army Community
>Treatment Center in Baton Rouge. He had been ordered by a federal judge to
>spend his nights there as part of his sentence after pleading guilty to money-
>laundering and cocaine-trafficking charges, in connection with a $168 million
>drug deal.[1]
>Two days earlier, a Colombian national named Bernardo Antonio Vasquez had
>rented a room at a motel near the halfway house. The balcony of the motel gave
>the second-floor occupants an unobstructed view of the lot where Seal
>customarily parked his car. Two other Colombians, Luis Carlos Quintero-Cruz
>and Miguel Velez, shared Vasquez's room.
> No one knows exactly why, but for some reason, after pulling the Cadillac
>into its normal parking place, Seal, dressed in his customary olive-drab
>flight suit, and wearing his amber Ray Ban aviator sunglasses, sat in the .
>car that evening a lot longer than was his usual custom. As the light of day
>began to fade, a gray Buick driven by Velez raced into the parking lot,
>pulling within a few feet of Seal's vehicle, on the driver's side. Cruz and
>Vasquez were in the Buick with Velez and were armed with 9 millimeter
>automatic weapons. As the car came to a screeching halt, Cruz and Vasquez
>sprang from the front and rear passenger-side seats, spraying the Cadillac
>with bullets, gangland style. They immediately hopped back into the Buick and
>sped away, nearly running over an eyewitness.
> According to the East Baton Rouge Parish Coroner, Dr. Hypolite
>Landry, and the report of detectives with the Baton Rouge City Police, seven
>rounds fired from an automatic weapon known as a Mac-10 struck Seal in the
>head and upper body. He died instantly.[2]
>Who Was Barry Seal?
>Hired by TWA, at age twenty-seven, Adler Berriman "Barry" Seal was the
>youngest pilot in U.S. history to fly a commercial airliner. He was also the
>youngest pilot to be promoted to captain of the crew of a Boeing 707, and
>later of a Boeing 747.[3] A former Green Beret, Seal became one of TWA's top
>pilots.
>Barry Seal, and his younger brothers, Benjy and Wendell, grew up in a typical
>American household. They played ball in the yard of the one-story white frame
>house on Lover's Lane, a shady street in a quiet neighborhood. They also
>souped up old cars in the garage behind the house. But, Barry's first love was
>flying. When he was a boy, he would frequently ride his bicycle to a local
>private airport two miles from his house, where he would lean on the chain-
>link fence and watch small planes take off and land.
>Eventually, Barry joined the local Civil Air Patrol and learned to fly Piper
>Cubs. In high school, while his classmates were riding buses to out-of-town
>football games, Barry would often fly to the games in "barnstorming" fashion,
>landing wherever he could find a smooth, flat surface. He attended Louisiana
>State University for one year, but decided that he didn't need a college
>degree to fly airplanes. After a military hitch, he returned to Baton Rouge
>and started flying again.
>While flying for TWA in the early 1970s, Seal did a little "moonlighting." The
>moonlighting, which involved smuggling operations, earned him a reputation as
>a risktaking soldier of fortune. In 1972, he and eight others were convicted
>in federal court in New Orleans of running guns and explosives to Mexico.[4]
>The conviction was overturned on appeal, but he lost his job with TWA. Between
>his salary as a tenured pilot with TWA and the money he made as a gun runner,
>Seal had gotten used to a rather high standard of living. With the TWA money
>gone, he looked for other means of subsidizing his income. Smuggling drugs was
>the most lucrative business Seal had heard of, and he owned his own airplanes,
>so he offered his services as a contract pilot.
>He started out smuggling marijuana, but he was apprehended and jailed in
>Honduras in December 1979. However, as fate would have it, Seal was placed in
>the same jail cell as Emile Camp, a pilot from Slidell, Louisiana, who had
>also been arrested for smuggling. Obviously, Seal and Camp had a lot in common
>and plenty of time to talk. After their release, Seal contacted Camp, and he
>became Seal's partner, copilot, and best friend. They remained partners until
>Camp's untimely death in a plane crash just north of Mena, Arkansas, on 20
>February 1985. They had worked steadily together, as DEA informants from the
>spring of 1984 till February 1985.[5]
>On the flight home from Honduras, Seal met Carlos Bustamonte, a Miami car
>dealer. Bustamonte was also associated with the Ochoa family of the infamous
>Medellin drug cartel. Bustamonte later explained to Seal that Nicaragua was an
>excellent place to engage in dope smuggling because the Communist Sandinistas
>provided the cartel with a safe harbor for the transfer of Colombian cocaine
>from one airplane to another when the final destination was the United
>States.[6]
>In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Medellin cartel (named after the city
>in Colombia which was the center of activity for most of those associated with
>the drug trade) supplied at least 75 percent of the cocaine smuggled into the
>U.S. One traffic route was through Miami, often by way of Port-au-Prince, the
>capital of Haiti. Another was through the little town of Mena, in western
>Arkansas.
>The Ochoa family cartel, led at the time by Jorge Ochoa-Vasquez, the son of
>Fabio Ochoa-Vasquez, a prominent Colombian cattle farmer, found Seal to be
>such a reliable pilot that they paid him to make dozens of cocaine runs. Seal
>flew fifty cocaine-smuggling and money-laundering missions between 1981 and
>1983 for the Medellin cartel. He normally received a commission for his work.
>It wasn't unusual for him to transport up to $20 million in cash in exchange
>for a commission of 5 percent of that amount.[7]
>But, in February 1984, Seal was convicted in federal court in south Florida
>for possession with intent to distribute Quaaludes. At the time he was also
>under indictment in the same federal jurisdiction on thirteen counts of
>possession with intent to distribute phenobarbitol, Demerol, and Quaaludes.
>With the threat of a lengthy prison term looming ominously over his head, the
>freespirited Seal decided to cooperate with authorities and become an
>informant.
>For some time before his problems surfaced in Florida, Seal had been making
>cocaine and money laundering runs to rural Arkansas.[8] Micah Morrison,
>writing in the 18 October 1994 edition of the Wall Street Journal, says Seal
>actually began operating out of the Mena (Arkansas) Intermountain Regional
>Airport in 1981. Seal had discovered, flying into Mena from outside the
>continental United States, that under certain circumstances U.S. Customs
>agents at the airport did not inspect aircraft. Seal soon purchased a hangar
>and began to operate a new business, Rich Mountain Aviation, Inc.
>According to Russell Welch, Seal admitted in late 1985 that aircraft were
>being "retrofitted" with cargo doors, bladder tands and special plumbing, and
>fuel and navigational system modifications in the Rich Mountain hangar between
>1981 and 1985. The main purpose of the modifications was to facilitate long-
>distance nonstop flights to Central and South America from Arkansas. A
>secondary purpose was to avoid U.S. Customs scrutiny. Crews, passengers, and
>cargo apparently didn't have to go through Customs if the aircraft was landing
>at Mena for retrofitting. Welch was an investigator for the Arkansas State
>Police Criminal Investigations Division, taking part in Seal's prosecution in
>federal court in Baton Rouge on drug-trafficking and money-laundering charges.
>He attended one of Seal's depositions on 27 December 1985, and heard Seal make
>these admissions.[9]
>Barry Seal, Federal Informant
>During 1985, the Ochoa cartel became increasingly concerned about recent
>seizures of their drugs by U.S. government agents and made major adjustments
>in flight schedules, contacts, and drug-drop locations.[10] Jorge Ochoa would
>soon discover that Barry Seal, whom the cartel had long trusted, was playing a
>significant role in the cartel's looming problems.
>Because of the overwhelming evidence against him, Seal had been forced to
>plead guilty in 1984 to drugtrafficking charges in an unrelated federal court
>proceeding in south Florida. Through a rather circuitous route, Seal turned
>DEA informant under the threat of additional prosecution on drug-trafficking
>and moneylaundering charges in the federal cases filed against him in Miami
>and Baton Rouge.
>Seal was indicted by a federal grand jury in Baton Rouge on 20 December 1984.
>He was charged with possession of 462 pounds of cocaine, a Schedule II
>federally controlled narcotic dangerous substance, and for conspiring with
>others to distribute that cocaine between 1 June 1982 and 1 January 1983.
>Those were alleged violations of Title 21, Sections 841 and 846, of the United
>States Code. Seal was also charged with concealing material facts from the
>Internal Revenue Service about the existence, source, or origin, of $51,006.64
>and for failure to file currency transaction reports on amounts in excess of
>$10,000. The failure to report and file the proper forms allegedly violated
>Title 31, Section 1081 of the United State Code; Title 31, Section 103.22 of
>the Code of Federal Regulations; and Title 18, Section 1001-2 of the United
>States Code. According to the indictment, Seal had made unlawful transfers in
>the amount of $51,006.64 by purchasing a cashier's check in that amount with
>$8,656.64 in cash and five cashier's checks in amounts of less than $10,000
>each.[11]
>It is well documented that Seal was one of the top five drug smugglers in the
>United States.[12] He first admitted this under oath before the President's
>Commission on Organized Crime. He next admitted it under oath in DEA
>intelligence reports. And, he admitted it during cross examination in the
>Saunders trial in September 1984.[13] In early 1984, months before the actual
>indictment was handed down in Baton Rouge, Seal had realized that it was only
>a matter of time before the death knell sounded on his $25 million-a-year
>drug-trafficking operation.
>Special drug prosecutors Bradley C. Myers and Albert J. Winters, Jr., with the
>New Orleans office of the U.S. Attorney's Organized Crime Strike Force, knew
>all of that and had been breathing down Seal's neck for months. In March 1984,
>frustrated by numerous vain attempts to talk personally with U.S. Attorney
>Stanford Bardwell, who was prosecuting the case in Baton Rouge, the
>nowdesperate Seal contacted the Vice-Presidential Task Force in Washington,
>D.C., and made arrangements to meet with them a day or two later. On March 24,
>Vice-Presidential Aide Jim Howell met with Seal, as did DEA Special Agents
>Frank White and Bill Kennedy. The DEA was obviously delighted when Seal agreed
>to become an informant. Agents White and Kennedy quickly arranged for Seal to
>meet with DEA Special Agents Robert Jura and Ernest Jacobson in Miami. Seal
>kept his appointment with Jura and Jacobson five days after his meeting with
>the task force. He would work closely with the two agents in setting up a
>sting operation involving the Medellin-based Ochoa cartel.[14]
>Now officially known as Confidential Informant No. SGI-84-0028, Seal told the
>DEA about an upcoming smuggling trip in which he planned to haul "3000 kilos"
>of cocaine "from the Jorge Ochoa smuggling group." During his initial
>conversation with Jura and Jacobson, and to insure against being double-
>crossed, Seal reiterated what he told White and Kennedy during the meeting in
>Washington: he would be "willing to cooperate" with the DEA in exchange "for
>their assistance in helping [him] out with [his] sentences in south Florida.
>"[15] After being reassured by the two special agents, Seal went forward with
>his plans to make the trip to Medellin. He invited fellow drug smuggler Felix
>Dixon Bates to join him.
>Things went smoothly in Medellin, as Seal and Bates met with Jorge Ochoa.
>After the two returned, Seal gave a full debriefing to Jura and Jacobson. His
>next DEA-related trip was to Panama. Seal then made a series of drug-smuggling
>flights, all with DEA approval. The information gleaned during these trips led
>to the eventual arrest and extradition arrest of Norman Saunders, Stafford
>Missick, Aulden Smith, Andre Fournier, and, ultimately, the Panamanian
>dictator, Gen. Manuel Noreiga. Seal also gave the DEA valuable additional
>information on Medellin drug lord, Pablo Escobar.[16]
>The Saunders case had enormous implications for the South American drug-
>trafficking trade. At the time of their extradition and prosecution, billions
>of dollars in drug money had already been laundered through banks affiliated
>with and operated by BCCI (the Bank of Commerce and Credit International) in
>the tiny Caribbean island chain known as the Turks and Caicos. Norman Saunders
>and Stafford Missick were high-ranking public officials in the islands.
>Saunders had been the government's chief minister, and Missick was the
>minister of Commerce and Development. Co-defendant Aulden Smith had been a
>police officer in Grand Turk, and codefendant Andre Fournier had assisted the
>others in making connections with BCCI and the Colombian cartels for years.
>The Turks and Caicos Islands lie at the southeast end of the Bahamas. Of the
>thirty islands in the tiny chain, only six are inhabited. Those six islands
>contain a total of 193 square miles of land. About twelve thousand people live
>in the islands, mainly in the capital of Grand Turk. Although the economy is
>officially based on the fishing industry and a few salt mines, the Turks and
>Caicos boasted an exclusive Club Med resort in the eighties.
>Barry Seal had friends in the islands, one of whom was Eric Arthur. Arthur
>lived on South Caicos, where he ran a smuggling-related business. He stored,
>bought, and sold aircraft used in smuggling, introduced smugglers to each
>other, and helped them make connections. According to Seal, he and Arthur had
>made "a couple of hundred thousand [dollars]" together over the years. Arthur
>had a very large airstrip and a clean spacious aircraft hangar on a tract of
>land he leased from the Turks and Caicos government. Seal used both
>frequently. When Arthur was killed in 1984, Seal began paying the lease on the
>property, under the pretext of helping Arthur's widow, who was still liable
>for lease payments. At that point, if they hadn't known it before, the
>government now knew who Seal was and would soon learn what he was about."
>Seal and his copilot, Emile Camp, who had also become a DEA informant in 1984
>to avoid prosecution, flew to Grand Turk Island on 2 January 1985, in part to
>arrange the sale of a Beechcraft 18 airplane to Leocadida Moreno. While in the
>islands, Seal was introduced to Aulden Smith and, at the DEA's behest, paid
>Smith two thousand dollars to be introduced to Norman Saunders. Seal made his
>request all the more convincing by arranging to return to the islands in a
>couple of weeks to look at a DC-3 he might want to buy with Smith's
>assistance.[18]
>When Seal returned to the Turks and Caicos in February, he initially met with
>Smith. During their conversation, it became obvious to Seal that Smith knew he
>was a drug smuggler. Since the cat was out of the bag, Seal asked Smith what
>could be done to better "protect" his airplanes that were being stored
>periodically in the islands. Smith pointed him in Norman Saunders' direction
>and helped arrange a meeting with Saunders at Arthur's hangar.
>The next day, Saunders drove up in a white Lincoln Continental Mark IV,
>accompanied by two bodyguards and a third man dressed in a white seersucker
>suit. After exchanging pleasantries with Saunders, the Turks and Caicos
>government's chief minister, Seal got to the point and asked Saunders if he
>was interested in participating in Seal's drug-smuggling operation, for a
>share of the profits, of course. Seal needed the protection, and Saunders and
>his friends could use the money. At the same time, Seal was introduced to the
>man in the white suit, Stafford Missick, minister of Commerce and Finance in
>the islands. Both Smith and Missick were interested in Seal's proposal and
>were given cash advances on the spot out of what Seal called his "trafficker
>fund" (money 'provided by the DEA for its informants' use) for "transportation
>expenses" associated with a meeting arranged for Miami in March.[19]
>On 3 March 1985, as scheduled, Seal met with Smith, Missick, Andre Fournier,
>and Nigel Bowe at a Miami hotel. Bowe was a well-known lawyer and drug
>smuggler in the region. Seal had known of him for "many, many years." Saunders
>couldn't make the Miami meeting, but Seal was assured he would be part of any
>deals the five men might strike. The entire meeting was videotaped by DEA
>agents in the next room. After the details were discussed and "a division of
>labor" was decided on, Seal promised that the islanders would divide at least
>$1,250,000 annually. Fournier had the most work to do, so he was to receive
>$375,000 a year. He'd had profitable dealings with Colombian drug lord Pablo
>Escobar for a number of years. He agreed to use that connection for the
>benefit of the new joint venture. They agreed that $250,000 would be applied
>to cover expenses, such as fuel, storage, and lease fees, and the balance
>would be divided evenly among Saunders, Smith, Missick, and Bowe, based mainly
>on their promise to prepare and sign documents and to look the other way at
>certain crucial times. The meeting ended, appropriately, with smiles,
>handshakes, and hasta la vistas. Little did the islanders know that the
>evidence elicited from the videotape of this meeting would ultimately lead to
>the arrest, extradition, and conviction of three of the men present.[20]
>"Uncle Sam Wants You"'
>Throughout 1984, Barry Seal continued to fly to Colombia', Nicaragua, Panama,
>the Caymans, and the Turks and Caicos as a DEA informant doing business with
>Jorge Ochoa, Pablo Escobar, and Carlos Lehder, all members of the Medellin
>cartel. Seal admitted under oath smuggling at least fifteen hundred pounds of
>cocaine during the six months between May and November of that year. His
>favorite mode of transportation for these flights was a modified military
>C-123 aircraft he affectionately referred to as The Fat Lady.
>A C-123 is so large that vehicles can be driven into its fuselage for
>transport. In Seal's words, "You could easily drive a couple of jeeps and
>bigger vehicles into [The Fat Lady] and be on your way." The Fat Lady was
>camouflaged. In addition to flying the huge aircraft in and out of the Mena,
>Arkansas, Intermountain Regional Airport, Seal used a private airport in Opa-
>Locka, Florida, from time to time, for the same basic reason that had
>initially attracted him to Mena: no U.S. Customs agents were there to examine
>crews, passengers, or cargo if the aircraft was landing for retrofitting.[21]
>The absence of Customs agents in Mena also meant illegal retrofitting could
>take place with little or no concern for the repercussions normally associated
>with unlawful activity. According to both Seal and Terry Reed, who claims to
>have been a CIA "asset" in the 1980s and who flew with Seal in and out of Mena
>on numerous occasions, The Fat Lady was equipped by the CIA with surveillance
>cameras for a sting operation in Nicaragua involving the Sandinistas and the
>Medellin cartel. A drug shipment transfer in Nicaragua was in fact videotaped
>with The Fat Lady's surveillance camera. President Reagan used some of the
>footage on national television to reveal the involvement of the Sandinistas
>and the Medellin cartel in drug trafficking and to demonstrate the need for
>stronger drug enforcement.[22]
>Although he spent most of his time out of state, Barry Seal maintained close
>ties with friends and family in Louisiana. He owned a camp on the oak-studded
>banks of the Amite River, in swampy Ascension Parish, near the village of
>French Settlement. He also bought over a thousand acres of land across a
>gravel road from the camp and had a large portion of it cleared of trees and
>brush, leveled, and sodded with a carpet of thick Bermuda grass. The cleared
>area is over a mile long and is between five hundred and seven hundred feet
>wide. A sign located at one end of the property, bearing the standard FAA
>announcement that the field is an aircraft landing strip, and forbidding
>trespassing or tampering with aircraft, remains to this day. The sign boldly
>reflects that "A.B. Seal" is the owner of the airstrip. Seal specifically
>bought the property and made the improvements to accommodate The Fat Lady.
> When he was cross-examined in the Saunders trial, Seal didn’t deny that
>he "had worked on CIA-sponsored activities in Nicaragua," and he admitted that
>"the CIA installed the cameras in the C-123," which were used in the
>Sandinista sting operation.[23] In fact, in November 1984, Seal released an
>hour-long videotape publicizing his CIA and DEA-related smuggling activities.
>The tape, entitled "Uncle Sam Wants You," was narrated by John Camp, who is
>now an investigative reporter for CNN.[24] At the time, Camp was an
>investigative reporter for WBRZ-TV, the Baton Rouge ABC affiliate.
>Seal testified in the Saunders trial that "Uncle Sam Wants You" was produced
>to publicize his covert activities because he was afraid that if he continued
>to work in the obscurity of the drug-trafficking trade, he might be killed by
>the CIA or DEA, and those investigating his death might try to create the
>illusion that thugs hired by some Medellin drug lord had assassinated him. In
>fact, in the federal proceedings in Baton Rouge, Seal's lawyers filed
>pleadings containing the following language:
>The defendant [Seal] has been restrained by Court order in Florida, and so has
>the prosecutor here, from fully outlining to the Court the danger to the-
>defendant and the activities of the defendant on behalf of various Federal
>agencies, including the D.E.A. and C.I.A., and this has prevented frank
>discussion regarding the plea bargain and terms of probation.[25]
>The "plea bargain" and "probation" referred to the plea agreement Seal was
>finally able to reach with federal prosecutors in Baton Rouge, in November
>1984, just before the grand jury indictment was formally handed down. U.S.
>Attorney Stanford Bardwell prepared a letter on 19 November 1984. Some of the
>more pertinent portions of the letter are as follows:
>The Government anticipates bringing an indictment to a grand jury ... charging
>the defendant [Seal] with a violation of one count of conspiracy to possess
>with intent to distribute cocaine.... In addition, the indictment will contain
>one count of causing financial institutions not to file currency transaction
>reports (CTRs).... Should the grand jury return the indictment, the Government
>agrees to allow the defendant to plead guilty to the two-count indictment.
>This plea agreement is predicated upon the fact that the defendant cooperates
>totally, including agreeing to submit to debriefing whenever and wherever
>requested by Special Agents of the Government and Department of Justice
>attorneys investigating criminal matters.
>***
>The Government and defense further agree ... that the defendant will receive a
>concurrent sentence as to Count 1 not to exceed the ultimate sentence he
>receives in a pending proceeding ... in the Southern District of Florida.[26]
>On 20 December 1984, the grand jury did in fact return an indictment, and U.S.
>District judge Frank Polozola signed a Judgment and Probation/Commitment Order
>in Seal's criminal proceeding. That order, which for reasons discussed below
>would ultimately become Seal's death warrant, reflected that he wouldn't do
>any jail time for the cocaine charges, but instead would pay a fine of twenty-
>five thousand dollars. As to count two (the tax-related charges), the court's
>order placed Seal on probation for five years and fined him ten thousand
>dollars. Seal was also ordered to report address changes to the U.S. attorney,
>and his right to travel outside the court's jurisdiction was restricted.[27]
>At the time the order was signed, and in the weeks that followed, Seal
>continued to work with the government as an informant, although his smuggling
>activity had been substantially curtailed by judge Polozola's order. In
>response to a complaint by his federal probation officer, Lionell Jardell,
>that Seal wasn't cooperating enough in the pre-sentencing investigation, one
>of Seal's lawyers, Lewis Unglesby, reminded Jardell that Seal was working
>constantly "under government supervision in dangerous and difficult
>situations."[28]
>Polozola's order also contained certain "special conditions." These required
>Seal to carry a telephone paging device, file monthly financial reports, and
>abstain from all contact with a co-defendant named Gary Seville. However, it
>was the final special condition that Seal's lawyers would object to most
>strenuously, and for good reason. That condition was as follows:
>(6) The defendant [Seal] shall reside at the Salvation Army Community
>Treatment Center, 7361 Airline Highway, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, for a period
>of six (6) months.
>Seal was ordered to report to the Salvation Army center on a future date to be
>determined by the federal probation office. Seal's lawyers immediately
>protested by filing motions averring that, in an effort to fulfill the terms
>of the plea bargain, Seal was engaged in activities which could place him in
>serious danger if he were housed at a halfway house.
>Despite the plea agreement, U.S. Attorney Stanford Bardwell had to prepare for
>the worst. If he ultimately had to prosecute Seal, he wanted Albert J.
>Winters, Jr., the supervisory trial attorney for the federal government's New
>Orleans Organized Crime Strike Force, to testify against Seal. But, because
>Winters was participating in a trial on 4 January, the arraignment date
>initially set by the court, Bardwell sought and was given a continuance until
>the next week, 8 January 1985. Seal's arraignment proceeded as scheduled on
>that date.
>Al Winters did in fact testify at the arraignment. regarding Seal's criminal
>activities, telling the court that the charges in the indictment were based on
>solid evidence. A minute entry on that date reflected that Seal would "remain
>at liberty under the terms of his original bond."[29] Unfortunately, the very
>liberty Barry Seal sought, and for which he had posted a $250,000 unsecured
>bond, made him an easy target for assassins.
>In light of the manner in which Seal was killed, what is perhaps most
>incredible about the way his prosecution in federal courts in Florida and
>Louisiana was handled, is that key DEA and CIA agents in both locales
>apparently didn't know much about each others' activities, contacts, or plans;
>unless, of course, Seal's assassination in February 1986 was advanced and
>facilitated by the very agencies for which he'd agreed to furnish information.
>That was certainly Seal's fear when he produced "Uncle Sam Wants You," and it
>may have been well founded.
>The Mena Connection
>Ambrose Evans-Pritchard reported in the 9 October 1994 London Sunday Telegraph
>that the diary of former Arkansas State Police Investigator Russell Welch
>contained the following entry on 4 June 1985: "[An agent from the DEA]
>informed me in strictest confidence that it was believed, within his
>department, that Barry Seal is [sic] flying weapons to Central and South
>America. In return he is [sic] allowed to smuggle what he wanted back into the
>United States."
>In his cross-examination in the Saunders trial, Seal stopped short of
>admitting culpability for anything more than smuggling explosives into Mexico
>in the early 1970s.[30] However, it was commonly rumored (and with good
>reason) in both Louisiana and Arkansas in the 1980s that Barry Seal was
>engaged in the arms trade as well as being a cocaine trafficker. Some, like
>Terry Reed, who claims to have been a CIA "asset" himself in the 1980s, have
>gone much further.[31]
>According to Reed and his coauthor, John Cummings, retired U.S. Marine Lt.
>Col. Oliver North was working for the CIA in Oklahoma and Arkansas in the
>1980s. Using the code name John Cathey, North is said to have orchestrated a
>complicated scheme by which the Nicaraguan Contra Rebels' freedom-fighting
>activities could be financed, and by which they could be armed with fully
>automatic M-16-type rifles.
>The financing scheme was essentially as follows. Individuals who wanted to
>help the Contras would allow big-ticket items like boats, helicopters, small
>planes, and sport/utility vehicles to mysteriously disappear. The CIA or its
>contractors would actually abscond with the items and convert them for use by
>the Contras. Through a prearranged agreement, the insured property owner would
>file a loss claim, be paid by his insurance carrier (so his only loss was of
>the item, not its value), and the insurance carrier would then get the benefit
>of certain "tax breaks" which allegedly increased the "net income for the
>losing insurance company" due to increased underwriting losses. Insurance
>companies with loss reserves could sell future claims to other companies,
>"giving the first company immediate income from the purchase, and from the
>unused claim money." In purchasing the future claims, the second company would
>be provided with "instant tax write-offs through mandatory, tax-exempt cash
>set aside requirements."[32] Ironically, if such a scheme really was in place,
>the federal government was in effect subsidizing the Contras through tax
>deductions, in violation of its own laws.
>The reason the scheme was so complicated, according to Reed and Cummings, is
>that the federal government couldn't legally fund the Contras without
>congressional approval, as such actions were prohibited by the Boland
>Amendment.[33] Of course, there were other ways to fund the Freedom Fighters,
>including the National Endowment for the Preservation of Liberty, Gomez
>International, Miller Communications, International Business Communications,
>and Lake Resources, all organizations involved at one level or another in
>receiving and redistributing money for Nicaragua.[34]
>Although there are conflicting reports, it appears Seal was originally
>recruited by the CIA as a "subcontractor" to fly arms and other contraband to
>the Nicaraguan Freedom Fighters, beginning sometime in 1983 after he allegedly
>met with Terry Reed to discuss gun-smuggling activities. Reed claims the
>meeting with Seal was arranged by Oliver North (aka John Cathey).[35]
>According to Reed and Cummings, during this first meeting, Seal advised that
>Iver Johnson's Arms, Inc., a New Jersey company that manufactured weapons and
>weapons parts, had moved to Arkansas. Another company, Brodix Manufacturing,
>had the machinery to cast the parts (lower receiver housings and carrier
>assemblies) necessary to convert semiautomatic into automatic rifles,
>especially M-16s. Johnson's could make everything but the special parts.
>Brodix would take the greater risk and manufacture the conversion kits.[36]
>For his part, Seal may not have known that a number of weapons-manufacturing
>and sales firms were operating in Arkansas in the 1980s. These included
>Nessard Gun Parts, an Illinois company dealing in semiautomatic weapons;
>Sarco, Inc., a New Jersey company known mainly as a retailer, but which also
>sold conversion kits in Arkansas in the 1980s; Olympic Arms, Inc., a
>Washington retailer handling semiautomatics; Center Fire Systems, of Kentucky,
>which continues to do business in Arkansas to this day; and Shooters
>Equipment, a South Carolina manufacturer handling conversion kits in the
>eighties.
>Many individuals in Arkansas, and elsewhere, bought weapons and conversion
>kits from those companies, sometimes in large quantities. But, the obvious
>difference between Nessard, Sarco, and the others and Iver Johnson's and
>Brodix was that the physical plants of the last two were located in Arkansas.
>In theory, that meant the state of Arkansas was able to exact tax revenues
>from them. In practice, it meant they would be given a few tax breaks, in
>addition to other incentives, for cooperating with people like Seal. A great
>deal of corporate naivete and ignorance on the part of state government was to
>be expected in Bill Clinton's Arkansas, with respect to certain business
>transactions where Barry Seal, Iver Johnson's, and Brodix were involved., as
>long as the appropriate fees were paid to the right parties.
>Gun smuggling, especially the brand the CIA and Seal were engaged in in
>Arkansas and elsewhere in the 1980s, was risky business. Not only did the
>smuggler have to be careful in terms of how he dealt with those on the
>receiving end of each shipment, he had to constantly look over his shoulder to
>see what the ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms) was doing.
>Converting a Colt AR-15 semiautomatic rifle into a fully automatic M-16 is a
>relatively easy task. It's a matter of modifying the receiver and replacing
>the internal parts in the carrier assembly. That was what the white
>supremacist cult, CSA, was doing in Arkansas in the early to-mid-1980s. It's
>also what the Branch Davidians were doing at Mt. Carmel, their compound
>outside Waco, Texas, until early 1993.[37]
>The National Firearms Act establishes a fairly comprehensive tax and
>registration system governing the manufacture, transfer, and possession of
>certain firearms including, especially, "machineguns."[38] The federal
>Criminal Code prohibits the "transfer or possession of machineguns" unless
>they were lawfully registered before 19 May 1986.[39] What that means is the
>only "machinegun" (automatic weapon) the average American citizen has been
>allowed to own, by law, since May 1986 is one which was lawfully registered
>before that time.[40] That also means anyone attempting to purchase automatic
>weapons before May 1986 could only do so lawfully by registering the weapons
>with the federal government.[41] All other automatic weapons are illegal.
>To Seal, and others involved in weapons smuggling, what made the business
>risky was that the registration law applied not only to the purchase and
>transportation of automatic weapons, but also to the kits used to convert
>semiautomatic into automatic weapons. The type of conversion kit, or CAR, that
>has been most widely used for the Colt AR-15 rifle is the M-16 E-2 .42 Various
>parts for such kits were being manufactured at several small plants and
>machine shops in Arkansas in the early-to-mid-1980s, including Iver Johnson's
>and Brodix, all of which was perfectly legal at the time.
>However, another federal law, the Boland Amendment, came into play where the
>Contras were concerned. The Boland Amendment was one of those federal laws the
>CIA held in particular disdain. It prohibited the exportation of arms like
>M-16s and kits, like the CARs used to convert semiautomatic weapons, without
>congressional approval. In the 1980s, the Reagan administration was well aware
>of the fact that the chances of obtaining congressional approval for such
>covert CIA activities as arming military and paramilitary groups, like the
>freedom fighters, were slim to none. Reagan and the CIA also understood the
>threat posed by the existence of another Communist regime in Latin America, to
>American interests in that area and to the interests of democracy in general.
>Operation Centaur Rose was the name of the CIA gun-running project Seal was
>involved in, according to Reed and Cummings.[43] Seal is credited with having
>made approximately three flights per week between 1983 and 1986, from Mena and
>Nella (another Arkansas hamlet with an airstrip, a few miles from Mena) to
>Central and South America. On each trip Seal, and until his death in 1985,
>Emile Camp would haul crates of weapons, CARs, miscellaneous weapons parts,
>and ammunition to some prearranged location, usually in Nicaragua or Panama,
>unload the armaments, and either pick up a load of drugs or head for Colombia
>to do so. At times, some of the big-ticket items obtained through the
>insurance loss claim scam were also transported in The Fat Lady. At the same
>time, incredible amounts of cash were transported to and from Latin America,
>representing payment for drugs, arms, and equipment.[44]
>Seal's exploits as a soldier of fortune made him a very wealthy man. But, they
>also made him a marked man. As long as the Agency got any monies it was
>entided to, some CIA agents involved in Centaur Rose were apparently not
>concerned about the other things Seal transported from Latin America,
>including cocaine, marijuana, and heroin. Between 1980 and 1986, Seal is
>believed to have smuggled at least 36 metric tons of cocaine, 104 tons of
>marijuana, and 3 tons of heroin into Arkansas alone. It is also documented
>that at the time of his death in February 1986, Seal had several sizeable
>accounts in BCCI-affiliated banks, including a branch of the Fuji Bank in the
>Cayman Islands. According to Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, an investigative
>reporter for a London newspaper, one interest-bearing account opened by Seal
>at the Fuji Bank in the Caymans had a balance of $1.645 billion at the time
>one of his articles was written in 1994.[45]
>Former Arkansas State Police Investigator Russell Welch has been quoted as
>saying he believed Arkansas was a main thoroughfare into which most of the
>flow of drugs from Central America entered the United States in the 1980s. In
>Welch's words, "Now we know that there were hundreds of millions of dollars
>worth of cocaine coming into the small state of Arkansas [in the 1980s]."[46]
>By 1984, Barry Seal found himself in a "catch-22." The DEA, long aware of his
>drug-smuggling activities, had finally caught up with him in Florida, where
>federal prosecutors had a field day. Seal was convicted on numerous charges.
>Soon, federal prosecutors in Louisiana were breathing down his neck. After his
>trip to Washington where he met with the Vice-Presidential Task Force, Seal
>had become the DEA's prize informant. The problem, for Seal anyway, was that,
>during this entire period, government agents at various levels were working
>independently of each other to hit the same target. That target was the
>Medellin cartel.
>The fact that Seal had cut a deal with the DEA in exchange for DEA assistance
>in his federal prosecution in Louisiana, was apparently never conveyed to the
>CIA. It also appears that the DEA in Louisiana was not contacted by the DEA in
>Florida, regarding Seal's status as an informant, until it was too late.
>Moreover, state agencies, like the Arkansas State Police Criminal
>Inviestigation Division, and federal agencies, including U.S. Customs, the
>FBI, and the Criminal Investigation Division (CID) of the IRS, were
>investigating Seal's operations in Arkansas and elsewhere, apparently
>independent of each other for the most part.[47] It may well be that the CIA
>was hesitant to divulge Seal's activities on its behalf for fear that a leak
>would jeopardize its effectiveness in aiding the Contras. Likewise, the DEA in
>Florida may have been concerned about losing its key informant if information
>about Seal's DEA-related activities was conveyed to anyone else. It isn't
>every day that one of the top five drug smugglers in the country turns
>informant. At any rate, by 1986, Barry Seal found himself wearing three very
>uncomfortable hats; those of key man, straw man, and scapegoat.
>The Last Sting
>In February 1986, Barry Seal was preparing to be the government's chief
>witness in the pending trial of Colombian drug-lord Jorge Luis Ochoa Vasquez,
>head of the notorious Ochoa family of the Medellin cartel. According to the
>DEA, Ochoa was "the world's largest cocaine dealer."[48] At the time, he was
>in custody in Spain, fighting extradition to Florida.
>Seal and Ochoa had been doing business for years. The pot-bellied daredevil
>once boasted that he could make $1.5 million in a matter of hours dealing with
>Ochoa as long as he had his pocket pager, two payphones to call Colombia and
>Miami, and fuel for The Fat Lady.[49] But, since 1984, Seal's luck had been
>running out. That was the year Seal was first convicted on major drug-
>trafficking charges in Florida. It was also the year certain authorities in
>Arkansas began investigating the Mena operation.
>Edward Jay Epstein, writing in the Wall Street Journal in 1994, said the
>increased level of activity at the Mena complex in 1984 led to its
>investigation by certain individuals with the Arkansas State Police CID.
>Special Agent Russell Welch was particularly interested in the increase in
>cash transactions in local banks. He was well aware of the drug-smuggling
>activity and logically concluded it was creating a problem that only a money-
>laundering scheme of gargantuan proportions could ameliorate.
>Soon, IRS CID Special Agent William Duncan was asking questions; and Barry
>Seal was perhaps the one man on earth who could answer those questions. Even
>though his testimony was critical to the government's case against Ochoa, as
>one writer has suggested, Seal knew far more about drug trafficking in
>Arkansas, and "where the bodies were buried," than he knew about Colombia, and
>he could have helped put a number of prominent American politicians and
>officials behind bars.[50]
>As Seal sat in his car in the parking lot of a Baton Rouge halfway house on
>that cold overcast day in February 1986, he must've suspected he was in an
>extremely vulnerable position. The CIA was protecting its turf. The DEA was
>doing the same. The FBI and IRS were pulling up the rear, and at least one
>special agent with the Arkansas State Police CID was scratching around for
>information. And, because of judge Frank Polozola's gross negligence in
>forcing Seal to adjust his lifestyle to fit into an orderly and completely
>predictable routine, everyone knew exactly where Barry Seal would be after
>5:00 P.m. each day.
>Who really hired Vasquez, Quintero-Cruz, and Velez to assassinate America's
>number one drug informant? Was it Ochoa? Was it Escobar? Was it Noreiga? Why
>not the CIA? One thing is for sure: Barry Seal was never able to testify
>against any of them. He was never able to testify against William Jefferson
>Blythe Clinton either.
>Endnotes
>1. Much of the factual information about Seal is based on the author's
>personal knowledge. He grew up three blocks from the Seal family, in the same
>neighborhood in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The author's oldest brother knew Seal
>in high school. Both learned to fly from the same Civil Air Patrol instructor
>at the same private airport. Some of the facts related to Seal's death are
>also based on the author's personal knowledge; the rest were gleaned from
>articles in the New Orleans Times Picayune and States Item, published between
>November 1985 and May 1986. Some of the facts regarding the trial of Seal's
>killers are from the Baton Rouge Morning Advocate and State Times, in addition
>to the New Orleans papers. Where necessary, the stories are specifically
>referred to.
>2. From official records of the death of Adler Berriman Seal, on file with the
>Baton Rouge, Louisiana, City Police, 21 February 1986.
>3. Terry Reed and John Cummings, Compromised (NY: S.P.I. Books, 1994), 58.
>4. Seal and the others were arrested for alleged violations of the Mutual
>Security Act of 1954, a federal law barring the exportation of explosives
>without prior State Department approval. Seal's airplane, with a cargo of some
>thirteen thousand pounds of C-4 explosives, was seized in Louisiana in 1972.
>Ibid.
>5. In his cross-examination, in the trial of United States v. Norman Saunders,
>et al., Cr. no. 85-165-Spellman, United States District Court, Southern
>District of Florida, in September 1985, Seal testified that the DEA allowed
>him to make six hundred thousand dollars to seven hundred thousand dollars
>from drug-smuggling while acting as an informant. The DEA called the money
>"trafficker funds." The DEA also allowed Seal to pay Emile Camp and other
>pilots like Roger Reeves, out of the trafficker funds. See, transcript of
>Seal's cross-examination, pp. 506-508. The Saunders case was consolidated with
>criminal actions against Stafford Missick, Aulden Smith, and Andre' Fournier,
>and tried before judge John H. Moore, II, and a jury, in September 1985.
>6. Bustamonte was ultimately prosecuted by the U.S. attorney in Miami, along
>with Pablo Escobar, Carlos Lehder, Felix Dixon Bates, and Rodriguez Garcia.
>See, Barry Seal's cross-examination in United States v. Norman Saunders, et
>al., Cr. no. 85-165-Spellman, United States District Court, Southern District
>of Florida, September 1985.
>7. New Orleans Times Picayune, 6 March 1986, reported that Seal's brother, Ben
>(also known as "Benjy"), had commented that there was nothing Barry Seal
>couldn't fly. "He never had a lesson on a helicopter, he just took one up one
>day after watching a few times."
>8. Ibid.
>9. The criminal case against Seal was entitled, United States of America v.
>Adler Berriman Seal, criminal docket number 84-77, section B, United States
>District Court, Middle District of Louisiana.
>10. Times Picayune, 6 March 1986.
>11. From the official record in United States of America v. Adler Berriman
>Seal.
>12. According to a story by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, in the 9 October 1994,
>issue of the London Sunday Telegraph, one interest-bearing account opened by
>Seal in the Cayman Islands had a balance of over $1.6 billion at the time the
>article was written.
>13. See, transcript of cross-examination of Adler Berriman Seal, in United
>States v. Norman Saunders, et al., Cr. no. 85-165-Spellman, U.S. District
>Court, Southern District of Florida, pp. 340, 341. See, also, "Government's
>Response to Defendant's Rule 32 Motion to Correct Pre-Sentence Report," United
>States of AMerica v. Adler Berriman Seal, Crim. no. 84-77-B, U.S. District
>Court, Middle District of Louisiana, filed 21 January 1986.
>14. Transcript of Barry Seal's cross-examination in September 1985, in United
>States v. Norman Saunders, et al., Cr. no. 85-165-Spellman, U.S. District
>Court, Southern District of Florida, p. 462.
>15. Ibid., 357, 377.
>16. Ibid.; see, also, New Orleans Times Picayune, 6 March 1986.
>17. From transcript of Seal's cross-examination, U.S. v. Saunders, et al., pp.
>517-520.
>18. Ibid., 484-495.
> 19. Ibid., 521-531.
>20. Ibid., 542-557.
>21. Ibid., 573-575.
>22. Ibid., 521; Reed and Cummings, Compromised, 221, 223.
>23. From transcript of Seal's cross-examination, U.S. v. Saunders, et al., pp.
>584-585.
>24. "ABC News," in association with Kuhnhart Productions, put together a
>documentary a few years ago entitled "The Informers," about federally
>protected witnesses. Several clips from "Uncle Sam Wants You," were included
>in the film, which has been aired on cable television networks in recent
>years.
>25. "Motion to Correct Sentence and to Enforce Plea Agreement," filed in U.S.
>v. Seal, Crim. no. 84-77-B, U.S. District Court, Middle District of Louisiana,
>filed 30 December 1985 (emphasis added).
>26. Letter of 19 November 1985, prepared by U.S. Attorney Stanford 0.
>Bardwell, on file of record in U.S. v. Seal, Crim. no. 84-77-B, U.S. District
>Court, Middle District of Louisiana.
>27. U.S. v. Seal.
>28. Seal's lawyer wrote the U.S. Probation Office on 18 February 1986. A copy
>of the letter is in the Court's record, in U.S. v. Seal.
>29. Minute entry, 8 January 1986, U.S. v. Seal.
>30. See, transcript of Seal's cross-examination in U.S. v. Saunders, et al.
>31. Despite the fact that the parts of the Reed and Cummings book,
>Compromised, which are obviously written by Reed, contain mostly flattering
>autobiographical hyperbole, often about his exploits in Southeast Asia during
>the Vietnam conflict (he carefully avoids references to Vietnam itself, never
>having set foot on Vietnamese soil), a few of Reed's statements about Seal and
>the CIA seem fairly accurate, if for no other reason than having been
>confirmed by other, more reliable sources.
>32. Reed and Cummings, Compromised, 43.
>33. Ibid.
>34. Ibid., 50.
>35. Ibid., 50-54.
>36. Ibid.
>37. "Official Report of the Department of the Treasury on the Bureau of
>Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms Investiga-tion of Vernon Wayne Howell," also
>known as "David Koresh," September 1993.
>38. See, Title 26 U.S. Code, chapter 53, section 5845(b). 39. Title 18, U.S.
>Code, section 922(o).
>40. Qualified Americans could, until recently, apply for and receive a license
>to sell automatic weapons and conversion kits.
>41. Since May 1986, the law has flatly prohibited the transfer or possession
>of automatic weapons not registered before the May 1986 cut-off date.
>42. The CAR kit includes a complete upper rear and barrel assembly, buttstock,
>recoil spring and buffer, M-16 hammer, trigger, disconnector, selector, M-16
>auto sear, pins, springs, trigger guard, magazine release, and bolt holdopen.
>See, "Report of the Department of the Treasury on the Bureau of Alcohol,
>Tobacco, and Firearms Investigation of Vernon Wayne Howell," September 1993.
>43. Reed and Cummings, Compromised, 108.
>44. Ibid., 144.
>45. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, London Sunday Telegraph, 9
>October 1994. —
>46. Matrisciana, Clinton Chronicles, 51.
>47. Reed and Cummings, Compromised, 106-108.
>48. New Orleans Times Picayune, 21 February 1986.
>49. Ibid., 6 March 1986.
>50. Patrick Matrisciana, The Clinton Chronicles Book (Hemet, CA: Jeremiah
>Books, 1994).
>PP. 59-86
Bear Bottoms
David Goldman wrote in message <36334362...@news.erols.com>...
>From [CIA-DRUGS] Digest No. 47
>
>
>>-----
>>Barry Seal and the Mena Connection
>
I am sure many of you have too. Almost always, when
I have first hand knowledge and I read a "story" about
that event, it is wrong in details...but generally accurate
in the big picture. This isn't even close compared to
the actual events.
I am working long hours right now, but I will go over
this article and point out the flaws in a week or so.