How did Barry Seal become a drug smuggler for the Medellín Cartel? Seal's Drug Enforcement Administration file also supports this, noting that he was smuggling marijuana as early as 1976, then adding cocaine to his resume in 1978. Barry's widow, Deborah Seal, says that he began smuggling drugs in 1975, first focusing mainly on marijuana. Upset that he has lost his pension and healthcare at TWA, he embraces the idea of making $2,000 per kilo of cocaine smuggled into the United States. In the film, his abductors take him to a secret airstrip in the Colombian jungle where three businessmen, including Pablo Escobar, make him an offer he can't pass up. The movie proposes that Barry Seal's first foray into smuggling drugs happened in 1980 after he was kidnapped while refueling his plane in Colombia. When did Barry Seal begin smuggling drugs? Using pilots like Barry Seal was a means to an end. needed a way to covertly get the funds and weapons to the rebels. Money from the sale of weapons to Iran was used to help fund the rebels in Nicaragua. plotted to secretly help the rebels (Contras) overthrow Nicaragua's Communist Sandinista government. During the Iran-Contra affair of the 1980s, the U.S. Yet, some believe that Seal was working for the CIA in the 1980s to fly guns and money to Nicaraguan rebels, a detail that the movie embraces. That aspect of who he was has never been disputed.Īs stated in the previous question, there is no strong evidence to confirm that Barry Seal was working with the CIA prior to becoming an informant after his arrest in 1983.
Executing secret missions for the government in the movie might add a sort of patriotism and redeeming quality to his character, but in real life Barry Seal was a drug smuggler first and foremost.
Seal made an estimated $60 million off smuggling drugs into the country and became one of the richest people in America. What is certain is that Barry Seal did work for Pablo Escobar and the Ochoas as a drug smuggler for the Medellín Cartel and single-handedly had one of the largest impacts on the cocaine epidemic in the U.S. In his research for the book, the only confirmed connection Hahn could make between the CIA and Barry Seal was in 1984, after Seal had started working as an informant for the DEA. In the least, his exploits with the CIA and agent Monty Schafer in the movie are largely fictional and based on speculation. Yet, it's also certainly possible that Seal had no involvement with the CIA in the early 1980s at all, given there is nothing to support the claim but rumors. It's certainly possible and it's what the movie proposes. Basically, Seal would fly over the guns and smuggle back drugs on his return trip. However, some still allege the opposite, that the government turned a blind eye to Seal's drug running in order to use him to deliver weapons to the Nicaraguan rebels. In his book, he uses case documents and first-person accounts to dispel this idea and other half-truths about Seal. Hahn was part of the task force that pursued Seal in the 1980s. As author Del Hahn states in his book about Barry Seal's life, Smuggler's End: The Life and Death of Barry Seal, there is no evidence to support claims that Barry Seal worked for the CIA. The extent of Barry Seal's involvement with the CIA in the 1980s has provided fuel for speculation and conspiracy theories.
Smuggler's End: The Life and Death of Barry Seal Customs Service for trying to fly 1,350 pounds of plastic explosives to anti-Castro Cubans via Mexico. Barry Seal was fired from TWA in 1974 for falsely citing medical leave when he was actually off trafficking weapons. Daily Mail Onlineĭid Barry Seal resign as a TWA pilot to carry out covert operations for the CIA? Army Special Forces in Laos just prior to the Vietnam War. Seal said that he started by doing things like flying guns for the CIA to revolution fighters in Cuba in the late 1950s and flying operations for U.S. Operative Monty Schafer (Domhnall Gleeson) approaches Barry Seal (Tom Cruise) and tells him, "We need you to deliver stuff for us." The real Barry Seal claimed that he started running covert operations for various government agencies as early as the late 1950s, while he was a member of the Civil Air Patrol in New Orleans, well before he became a TWA pilot. In the American Made movie, Barry Seal's boredom with piloting commercial flights leads him to perform stunts that cause the oxygen masks to fall and frighten passengers.
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