--- title: Barry Seal aliases: - Barry Seal - Adler Berriman Seal - Adler Barriman Seal - Adler Barriman "Barry" Seal - A. B. Seal - Barry Seale - El Gordo - Eric Arthur - Ellis McKenzie - Joseph Warren Church created: 2026-05-01 updated: 2026-10-05 category: "Organized Crime" tags: - Person - DarkAllianceInvestigation - Mena - IranContra - Contras - MedellinCartel - CIADrugTrafficking - DEA - 1980s born: 1939-07-16 died: 1986-02-19 location: "Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA" summary: "Louisiana pilot who flew cocaine for the Medellin Cartel from Mena, Arkansas, became a DEA informant in 1984, flew the CIA-camera-equipped Nicaragua sting, and was shot in Baton Rouge on February 19, 1986." relations: - type: member_of with: "[[Medellin Cartel]]" start: 1978 end: 1984 role: "pilot and smuggler flying cocaine from Colombia and Central America; he testified to about 60 trips before 1982 and 3,000 further kilograms as an informant" fn: 2 - type: informant_for with: "[[DEA]]" start: 1984-03 end: 1986-02-19 role: "informant; the DEA's Miami office handled him; he flew the June 1984 Nicaragua sting with CIA-installed cameras" fn: 5 - type: subject_of with: "[[Internal Revenue Service]]" start: 1983 role: "criminal investigator William Duncan assigned to watch for money laundering around Mena" fn: 2 - type: subject_of with: "[[Arkansas State Police]]" start: 1982 role: "investigator Russell Welch assigned to look for cocaine arriving at Mena" fn: 2 - type: participant_in with: "[[Los Brasiles Airfield]]" start: 1984-06 role: "flew to Managua with CIA-installed cameras in the aircraft; photographs of Federico Vaughan and cocaine loading released 1986" fn: 5 --- Adler Berriman "Barry" Seal was a pilot from [[Baton Rouge, [[Louisiana]]]] who flew cocaine for the [[Medellin Cartel]] from [[Colombia]] and [[Nicaragua]] into the American South in the early 1980s, based his aircraft at [[Mena, Arkansas]] from late 1982, became a [[DEA]] informant in 1984, flew the 1984 sting in which cameras the [[Central Intelligence Agency]] installed photographed cocaine being loaded in [[Managua]], and was shot to death on February 19, 1986. His C-123K, nicknamed "Fat Lady," is the aircraft the DEA and the CIA's Inspector General identify with the one lost over Nicaragua with [[Eugene Hasenfus]] on October 5, 1986. ### Louisiana, 1972 and the early record In 1972 federal agents in Louisiana caught Seal attempting to take off from an airport in [[Shreveport]] with a planeload of plastic explosives bound for [[Cuba|Cuban]] exiles in [[Mexico]]. He was charged with taking part in a plot against [[Fidel Castro]], and prosecutors abruptly dropped the case at the start of his trial. The journalist Mara Leveritt, who reported on Seal in the 1980s, wrote that this episode prompted later speculation that he performed contract work for the CIA.[^1] The CIA stated in 1995 and 1996 that it had found no record of contact with him before the 1984 sting (see "The CIA records" below). In April 1981, according to later court records Leveritt summarized, DEA agents in [[Florida]] caught Seal in a drug sting, and while the case was pending he agreed to become an informant. In his own later testimony he claimed to have grossed $750,000 per flight smuggling for the cartel, to have made about 60 trips to Central America in the two years before 1982 and brought back 18,000 kilograms, and, after becoming an informant, to have smuggled in a further 3,000 kilograms (about 6,000 pounds), including one flight for which the DEA allowed him to keep $575,000.[^1][^2] [[Gary Webb]] wrote in *Dark Alliance* that Seal flew about 56 tons of cocaine worth $3 billion to $5 billion and earned up to $500,000 a flight; the November 1986 Miami indictment of the cartel leaders charged at least 58 tons smuggled between 1981 and 1985.[^3][^4] ### Mena, 1982 to 1984 By late 1982, when Seal moved his aircraft from [[Baton Rouge]] to the airport at Mena, federal agents had already identified him as "a major international narcotics trafficker," and police watching the airport reported that a heavy man from Louisiana had begun visiting an aircraft-modification company, [[Rich Mountain Aviation]]. That year President [[Ronald Reagan]] appointed [[Asa Hutchinson]] United States attorney for the Western District of Arkansas, and Hutchinson assigned the IRS investigator William Duncan to watch for money laundering around Mena; the Arkansas State Police assigned Russell Welch to look for cocaine arriving there.[^1] Welch said that in December 1983 he and other officers, including [[Federal Bureau of Investigation|FBI]] agents and a Game and Fish officer, staked out the airport and watched Seal and a co-pilot land and taxi to Rich Mountain Aviation, where workers installed an extra fuel tank, after which Seal took off without lights. DEA officers who had met the group at a motel in Mena did not join the stakeout. The co-pilot, Billy Earle Jr., later told Welch that after the tank was installed Seal planned to fly to southern Colombia for 200 kilos of cocaine for an operation to be staged from the Carver Ranch in [[Belize]]; Leveritt noted that on February 8, 1984 the pilot of the [[Little Rock]] bond dealer [[Danny Ray Lasater]] flew Lasater and his partner Patsy Thomasson to Belize to look at a horse farm for sale by Roy Carver.[^1] The Arkansas lawmen were not told that Seal had become a DEA informant. Leveritt wrote that in the summer of 1984, facing a possible life sentence, Seal flew his Lear jet to Washington and met top DEA officials to set the terms of his release, and that Welch and Duncan believed throughout 1984 that he was an active smuggler and noted the DEA remained "conspicuously absent" from Mena.[^1] The *[[Arkansas Times]]* reported in 1995 that Seal met two members of the Vice President's drug task force in Washington before he became an informant; it also reported that his assigned DEA handler never set foot in Arkansas.[^2] ### The 1984 sting, the cameras and the Washington leak The DEA's Miami office planned a sting of the cartel's leaders that failed and exposed Seal's status, and the Reagan administration then used him for the Nicaragua operation.[^1] The [[Senate Foreign Relations Committee|Kerry subcommittee]]'s report stated that Seal's task was documenting the relationship of Colombian traffickers and Nicaraguan officials "by using cameras installed in a plane he flew as part of an undercover operation," that Seal flew to Nicaragua and photographed [[Federico Vaughn]], whom U.S. authorities identified as a Nicaraguan government official, and [[Pablo Escobar]] loading the plane, and that the material became the central evidence officials cited for Sandinista involvement in narcotics. The subcommittee also reported that after the operation was exposed, Vaughn disappeared, and that the [[House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime]] found that the telephone number Vaughn used in calls received from Seal had been controlled by the U.S. Embassy since 1985.[^5] The *[[The Washington Times|Washington Times]]* reported on November 19, 1986 that an indictment unsealed in Miami, returned in August 1986 and sealed at the State Department's request, charged Vaughan, a former assistant to Interior Minister [[Tomas Borge]], with arranging cocaine laboratories and a fuel stop for cartel aircraft and with directing soldiers to load cocaine; the Miami prosecutor Richard Gregorie said Seal refused witness protection.[^6] The CIA's own records on who installed the cameras are set beside one another here. A CIA memorandum for the record of May 3, 1988 on a House Judiciary Crime Subcommittee staff interview of [[Duane Clarridge]], former chief of the Latin America Division, states that the DEA operation was in June 1984, that "the hidden cameras were installed by the Agency on the plane in Miami," that Clarridge recalled being asked by the DEA to install a hidden camera, that the photographs showed Vaughan, and that not long afterward the DEA arranged a briefing in [[Oliver North]]'s office, which Clarridge attended without knowing why; a few weeks later the pictures reached the *Washington Times*, and Clarridge recalled that Senator [[Paula Hawkins]] used them in her re-election campaign.[^7] On October 10, 1986 *[[The New York Times]]* quoted a DEA spokesman in Miami, Jack Hood, saying the C-123 shot down in Nicaragua was the plane used in the Seal operation, and said CIA experts installed the cameras at Rickenbacker Air National Guard Base in Ohio in 1984.[^8] The Kerry subcommittee concluded that the operation was disclosed prematurely by an administration official who leaked to the press evidence supposedly collected in an effort to influence a Congressional vote on Contra aid, and that North "decided to play politics with the issue"; it recorded that law enforcement officials were furious and agents' lives jeopardized.[^5] A CIA directorate of operations memorandum of June 30, 1994, written when the *[[Wall Street Journal]]* raised Mena, states "It is believed Mr. Seal had an aircraft equipped by CIA to photograph Nicaraguan drug lords. Seal was at the time a DEA asset and the camera was installed at the request of DEA."[^9] A Baton Rouge reporter, Jack Camp, filmed an interview in late 1984 in which Seal, aboard the C-123 at Mena, pointed out where the CIA technicians had hidden the cameras; Leveritt wrote that the broadcast is how Louisiana and then Arkansas law enforcement learned of his dual role.[^1] In October 1985 the [[President's Commission on Organized Crime]] invited Seal to speak at a Washington symposium, and he testified before it that his own organization had laundered between $10 million and $20 million.[^1][^2] ### The grand jury that did not meet Duncan told Hutchinson in mid-1985 that he had sworn statements from Rich Mountain Aviation employees and Mena bankers about illegal cash deposits, and asked for 20 subpoenas; Hutchinson issued three. Asked later under oath whether he believed there was a cover-up, Duncan said "It was covered up." Hutchinson's successor, J. Michael Fitzhugh, subpoenaed Seal for a grand jury at [[Hot Springs]], Duncan and Welch interviewed Seal in Baton Rouge in December 1985, and five days before the session Fitzhugh canceled his appearance for "lack of credibility." The *Arkansas Times* obtained a 1986 FBI memorandum from Hot Springs stating that Fitzhugh would be "withholding presentation" of the Mena investigation from the grand jury, dated days before Seal's death.[^1][^2] The Kerry subcommittee wrote that associates of Seal operating aircraft service businesses at Mena were targets of grand jury probes into narcotics trafficking; "despite the availability of evidence sufficient for an indictment on money laundering charges, and over the strong protests of State and federal law enforcement officials, the cases were dropped," the apparent reason being that a prosecution might reveal national security information, though the crimes preceded his work as an informant.[^5] ### Assassination Seal was ordered to spend nights at a [[Salvation Army]] community treatment center in Baton Rouge while on probation. On February 19, 1986 Colombian gunmen shot him with a MAC-10 in the parking lot, four weeks before Reagan held up one of his photographs on television.[^1] Three Colombians, [[Miguel Velez]], Bernardo Antonio Vasquez and Luis Carlos Quintero-Cruz, were convicted of first-degree murder in Louisiana in 1987 in a case moved to [[Lake Charles]]; the appellate opinion places Seal's DEA informant agreement in March 1984, the cartel indictments in July 1984 and the murder contract in December 1984.[^10] Seal's lawyer Lewis Unglesby said the cartel had Seal killed to stop [[Spain]] sending [[Jorge Ochoa]] to the United States.[^1] Seal was killed before the cartel indictment was unsealed; the Kerry chronology records that on December 2, 1986 the [[U.S. Department of Justice|Justice Department]] prosecutor Feldman was told to stay away from the Jose Coutin matter, where Coutin was held as the supplier of the weapon used to kill Seal.[^11] A federal prosecutor in the later tax case said the government found $1.5 million to $2 million in assets and asked "Where is the other tens of millions of dollars? We don't know."[^2] On March 16, 1986 Reagan displayed the Vaughan photograph in an address on Nicaragua without naming Seal, saying it was "secretly taken at a military airfield outside Managua."[^12] ### The CIA records and the Mena inquiries In 1994 the CIA's operations directorate replied to the Wall Street Journal's "Mysterious Mena" by saying it had never had a proprietary at Mena, that its records "also show support in terms of" a training operation at Mena airfield (text partly withheld), and that the book *Compromised* described "a conspiracy which exists only in the minds of the authors."[^9] In May 1995 Representative [[James Leach]] asked the House intelligence committee for access to Iran-Contra files on whether the CIA had "any contractual or other relationship" with Seal, and on June 9, 1995 the CIA's Office of General Counsel confirmed that all components tasked on June 7 had responded "no records."[^13] At a July 21, 1995 briefing the CIA told Leach it "was aware of Barry Seal, but had no relationship with him nor any records regarding his activities in Mena," while listing as open the question whether the Agency had any connection to Seal's cargo plane, serial number 54-0679.[^14] A September 8, 1995 memorandum from the DCI Crime and Narcotics Center said "CIA's OTS may have installed cameras on the aircraft used in the 1984 operation."[^15] The Inspector General opened case 96-0036-IG on February 26, 1996, asking components for documents on Seal under the aliases A. B. Seal, FNU Billings, Eric Arthur, Ellis McKenzie, "El Gordo" and Joseph Warren Church; on the C-123K; on a Convair C-131A, N5575A; on 22 named Mena companies and individuals; and on the former state trooper L. D. Brown.[^16] The unclassified summary of the November 1996 report, as reported by the *[[Arkansas Democrat-Gazette]]*, stated that CIA had "limited contact" with Seal during the DEA sting, providing "technical support" in the form of cameras, and that there was "no evidence" CIA knew his true identity.[^17] A December 24, 1996 memorandum in the case file examined whether Seal's C-123K (N4410F, "Fat Lady") had a Vietnam-era link to the CIA as suggested by an officer whose name is redacted; the review found no document indicating a CIA link with N4410F and no document showing that [[Southern Air Transport]] owned, operated or leased a C-123K, and listed further file review and a reinterview as remaining actions.[^18] A 1998 letter from the Inspector General to Leach said all information developed on Mena and Seal was in the November 1996 report.[^19] ### The aircraft The CIA's Inspector General treats N4410F as Seal's aircraft. A CIA memorandum for the record of October 10, 1986 on a Senate Foreign Relations Committee briefing states that information developed to date indicated the downed C-123 "was sold as U.S. military surplus in 1983" and that its purchaser had not been determined; *The [[Christian Science Monitor]]* reported the same day that news reports said the plane was bought six months earlier by a California company, Four Aces Inc., and leased to Southern Air Transport.[^20][^21] The independent counsel's report recorded that Southern Air Transport received $1,935,596 in 1985 and 1986 for contra-related services including the purchase of a C-123.[^22] The [[Federal Aviation Administration]]'s registry now lists N4410F only as deregistered, and N5575A the same.[^23] ### Footnotes [^1]: Mara Leveritt, "Who's afraid of Barry Seal?" *Arkansas Times*, September 28, 2017. https://arktimes.com/news/cover-stories/2017/09/28/whos-afraid-of-barry-seal (Leveritt is the claimant for the interview accounts of Duncan, Welch, Earle and Unglesby and for the court-record summaries.) [^2]: Mara Leveritt, "Mena rides again," *Arkansas Times*, August 25, 1995. https://arktimes.com/news/cover-stories/1995/08/25/mena-rides-again [^3]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. The Louisiana attorney general letter to Edwin Meese that Webb cites is not carried in the Kerry report. [^4]: Michael Hedges, "Nicaraguan Official Tied to Cocaine Ring," *The Washington Times*, November 19, 1986 (CIA Reading Room, CIA-RDP90-00965R000402790019-3). https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp90-00965r000402790019-3 [^5]: U.S. Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations, *Drugs, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy* (Committee Print, December 1988), Cuba and Nicaragua chapter, pp. 68-69 (citing Jacobsen testimony, House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, July 28, 1988), and "Barry Seal and the Cartel," pp. 121-122. https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras [^6]: Washington Times, November 19, 1986, cited in footnote 4. [^7]: CIA Office of Congressional Affairs, memorandum for the record, "Interview of Dewey Clarridge by House Judiciary Committee Staff," OCA 88-1404, May 3, 1988 (CIA Reading Room 0001289872). https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-0001289872 [^8]: Richard Halloran, "Plane Downed in Nicaragua Was in a U.S. Drug 'Sting,'" *The New York Times*, October 10, 1986 (CIA Reading Room, CIA-RDP90-00965R000402690007-7). https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp90-00965r000402690007-7 [^9]: CIA Directorate of Operations, memorandum for the Executive Assistant to the Director of Central Intelligence, "Wall Street Journal Allegations of Possible CIA Operations in Arkansas," June 30, 1994, paragraphs 2 to 7 (CIA Reading Room 0001289708). https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-0001289708 [^10]: *State v. Velez*, 588 So. 2d 116 (La. Ct. App. 3d Cir. October 2, 1991). https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/1767808/state-v-velez/ [^11]: Kerry report, chronology (entry for December 2, 1986). https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras [^12]: Ronald Reagan, "Address to the Nation on the Situation in Nicaragua," March 16, 1986, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/speech/address-nation-situation-nicaragua [^13]: Letter, Rep. James A. Leach to Rep. Larry Combest, May 9, 1995, and CIA Office of General Counsel memoranda OGC-95-51546 (June 7, 1995) and OGC-95-51574 (June 9, 1995), "Confirmation of Records Search, Adler Barriman 'Barry' Seal" (CIA Reading Room 0001289830; case record 0001289687). https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-0001289830 [^14]: CIA Office of Congressional Affairs, memorandum for the record, OCA 95-2274, August 16, 1995, on the briefing of Rep. Leach on July 21, 1995 (CIA Reading Room 0001289684; also 0001289686 and 0001289820). https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-0001289684 [^15]: CIA, DCI Crime and Narcotics Center, "Records Searches: Mena, Arkansas and Related Topics," September 8, 1995 (CIA Reading Room 0001289705). https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-0001289705 [^16]: CIA Inspector General Frederick P. Hitz, memorandum IG 96-0302, "Request for Documents Relating to Possible Agency Knowledge of Certain Activities in or Around Mena, Arkansas," February 26, 1996 (CIA Reading Room 0001289863). https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-0001289863 [^17]: Kathy Kiely, "CIA admits training at Mena," *Arkansas Democrat-Gazette*, November 9, 1996. https://archivesspace.wilkes.edu/files/normanmailer/65.9_HG2_HarlotsGhostSequelResearch_ArkansasDemocraticGazetteArticles_1996November9.pdf [^18]: CIA Inspector General, memorandum for the record, "C-123K - Review of Additional Records," December 24, 1996, case Mena 96-0036-IG (CIA Reading Room 0001289850). https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-0001289850 [^19]: Letter, CIA Inspector General to Rep. James A. Leach, 1998 (CIA Reading Room 0001289865). https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-0001289865 [^20]: CIA Office of Congressional Affairs, memorandum for the record, "Briefing on the C-123 Crash in Nicaragua: Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 10 October," OCA 86-3575, paragraph 14. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-00788192 [^21]: Warren Richey and George D. Moffett III, "Credibility crisis over downed plane," *The Christian Science Monitor*, October 10, 1986. https://www.csmonitor.com/1986/1010/ashot.html [^22]: Final Report of the Independent Counsel for Iran/Contra Matters (August 4, 1993), chapter 8. https://irp.fas.org/offdocs/walsh/chap_08.htm [^23]: Federal Aviation Administration, Aircraft Registry N-Number Inquiry results for N4410F and N5575A, accessed October 5, 2026. https://registry.faa.gov/AircraftInquiry/Search/NNumberResult?nNumberTxt=N4410F