Welcome to tonight's classic episode. You know what, three flavors go great together. Contrast obviously cocaine, great edition and our good friends at the CIA.
Yeaham and Tom Cruise apparently because he starred in the movie about this guy that we're going to talk about today.
Oh that's right. What was the movie Cause it's about like a plane smuggling operation.
Right, it's called American Maid.
That's the one.
Yes, Yes, And this is the true story of pilot and smuggler named Barry Seal.
Let's get to it.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works.
Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Nolan.
They called me Ben. We were joined as always with our super producer Paul Mission Control decand most importantly, you are you. You are here and that makes this stuff they don't want you to know.
Every time you do that, every time you do, I feel like I'm about to get into some kind of freestyle or something. There's a cadence to it when you did did do? Didn't? Didn't? Did do? I get so hyped.
Have you been listening to a lot of hip hop recently?
A little bit?
Yeah? Yeah, yeah. Oh, I've got to send you some stuff as well. I've been listening to some amazing things. I almost caught. I was in Vegas.
Uh.
Circumstances found me in Vegas this past weekend and I almost ended up at at a weird party with some notable people. But being lame, I went to my hotel and read a book.
Yeah you did wink?
He did?
He totally ran that party, I think so. Yeah, I'm looking at Noel over here, you dead dude.
I think he's telling the truth.
How do you guys have a good weekend?
Yeah? A great weekend. Hey, I played a lot of that Detroit Becoming Human. It was the free game on the PlayStation Network in July. Totally worth it, best game I'm played in a long time. Highly recommend it. If you're into story, if you want some complex gameplay, don't do it. But if you just want to learn about how androids will one day, you know, become a free and independent people, go for it.
In Detroit. They'll become human in Detroit.
Yeah, they'll well, in my case, I don't spoil it for anybody. Things turn out. Well, that's good.
I've got to say. It's so it's so weird that we don't do more video game stuff. I would love to play a video game called stuff. They don't want you to know that weird hand and you know, maybe one day, maybe one day, Well, we'll mess with some video game type folks.
I really like old LIKEDEO games that tied in with movies that look nothing like the movie, Like on Nintendo. You know, it would be like back to the future of the game, but you'd just be like this little block game Hardymonfly. Yeah, you know, like remember ET the game.
That was where I was just gonna mention that, yeah, ET the game one of the universally agreed worst video games ever.
Yeah, I think I think there's an.
Yeah exactly, see, but in our video game, you'd get to choose to be one of us or Paul, and you would go through and you'd have to solve conspiracies with the help of the others. It would be a multiplayer game. You could have four people at once playing, right, can you play solo? You can totally play so That's how I would play it, Okay, But what I'm saying is, if you were into playing together, you guys could investigate, go down different leads, you report back. Ben's found out
everything about the Black Hand. I've been busy over here with an extraterrestrial angle for some reason. They're connected. Then we figure out the next place to go. I'm telling you this video game rules. Get at me and Ben and Nol and Paul whoever you are, you video game developers out.
There, Yeah, tell us your idea if you had if you had a video game about your own personal experience, what would it be. You don't have to write it all out. You can call us and give us your three minute pitch.
We are one eight three three std WYTK.
If you're a longtime listener, you can probably tell that we're all we're all film buffs here or voracious sponges of story and information. We enjoy that in terms of video games, in terms of music, art and you know, film and books and so on. And we were talking a little bit off air about Tom Cruise, who will be familiar to all our fans of Tom Cruise Control mentioned in earlier episode in twenty seventeen, the actor Tom
Cruise starred in a film called American Maid. American Maid follows the highly fictionalized life and time of a real life pilot named Barry Seal.
A pilot amongst other things.
A pilot amongst other things. And we asked, oh, I forget that, Paul Michigan control, how you doing today? All right? We got a good thumbs up, and Paul, you also gave a thumbs up to American Made.
Is that correct?
That's official? Double thumbs Wow.
Nobody wants to know how I'm doing.
Wait a second, I asked how you guys were doing. That was my fault, Yeah, said, how are you guys doing that?
I derailed it and I sent it to Ben. That was my fault.
No, no, no, no, no, it's cool.
Tell me what's cool? What's up in your life? Nol? Did you go on that date we talked about?
I take it on a day. It's true. I saw a fantastic movie that you guy should all see, called The Last Black Man in San Francisco. I enjoyed it thoroughly. It's kind of like a weird It kind of fits in with our show because it's got this weird kind of alternative history version of San Francisco, where like everyone that grew up there has been forced out, which is
not made up at all. That's absolutely what's happening. But there's this backdrop of this kind of like toxic event that they never really name, but like the fish are poison and like the water is all poison, and the whole thing has this like kind of crazy Terry Gilliam or like Michelle Gondry kind of vibe. I really recommend it highly, very dreamlike, very powerful, very very special movie. I liked it a lot.
Done were the what were the ratings or reviews?
They were good, They're very good. But I just, yeah, I think it's something it's hard to describe, and I'm not even gonna bother trying too hard, but something that you guys should all see.
I think, Well, the movie we're talking about today, American made, has some pretty dang good ratings, at least according to Rotten Tomatoes.
Right, what are the premier rating sites? Can you lay those numbers on us?
Yeah, let's give it to your critics gave it eighty six percent. The audience gave it seventy eight. Now generally gotta say those two numbers are flopped where the critics will give it a slightly lower rating, and then audience members will enjoy a movie a little bit better than the critics perhaps gave it a give it credit for. Yeah, I don't know, but in this movie, in this case, the critics really liked it.
And here's the question, would those ratings change if the film were to follow the true story of Barry Seal, the story that even today runs rife with the stuff they don't want you to know. So here are the facts. We've been throwing this name around a lot. Berry Seal. Who is Barry Seal.
Barry Seal was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana on July sixteenth, nineteen thirty nine, and his father was a candy wholesaler and a clansman. Yeah, he was a member of the Ku Klux Klan, which you know that sounds like on the conspiratorial side today, but at the time it was pretty commonplace for white dudes in Baton Rouge. Sad but true.
So Barry grew up obsessed with airplanes and he took his first solo flight at fifteen, one year before he actually got his legit pilot's license, and then not too long after that, he worked for one of those companies that have like the banners that the toad behind the planes for advertising, which is a thing that I've always been fascinated by, like who is that person that does that?
It was very seal, and it's a great idea for prank two. It's on my secret list of dream pranks, is to take one of those advertising banners. This is the most sith lord version. Take an advertising banner. Hire someone to fly out a banner that says will you marry me? And just hear the relationships crumble around the city for anyone who accidentally looks up and then their their significant other goes, oh my god, yes I will.
Yeah.
I've always thought that was a pretty like blunt instrument way of doing that right, Like, you know, in general.
It's pretty inconsiderate, super.
Ruin everybody's beach day.
So to jump back to very seal really fast, you guys, Yes, it's fascinating. Here is one of the first things we've learned about him is that prior to even getting a pilot's license, he's bending the rules a little bit and taking a solo flight, something that is both irresponsible really dangerous to himself, but also adventurous, right sure, Yeah, he's adrenaline junkie. Adrenaline junkie living on the edge of the rules.
Yeah, and also has myopic obsessions. To be fair, it's safe to say that many many people in this country in the US do something similar when they're learning to drive cars. Right, your parents are an older person or someone with a license will take you out to a parking lot, and generally law enforcement will look the other way as this fourteen year old is just stripping a clutch,
you know. But it's a little different, I would argue with planes, right, and his obsession with flight in general would lead him to the first steps on his long, controversial, conspiratorial, and ultimately fatal career. He joined the Civil Air Patrol in fifty five and he stayed based in Baton Rouge, and he took part in a Civil Air Patrol joint training mission with the New Orleans unit that was run
by a guy named David Ferry. David Ferry later will be a peripheral figure in the JFK assassination.
And that's not all of the connection between this character, Barry Seal and the JFK assassination.
Whatever do you mean?
I mean, there's somebody else that allegedly he met. At least according to another Civil Air Patrol member person named John Odum, they say that Seal actually encountered mister Lee Harvey Oswald while he was training.
Oh oh, that's true. But wait, wait there's more. As more as Billy Mays was wont to say. Yes, Tosh Plumbley, another figure later related to the JFK assassination.
That is a great name, by the way, hash Plumbley. I love that sounds like a character and clue.
Yeah, it really does. He claims that Barry Seal began working for the CIA in the mid nineteen fifties. We have a quote from Toash on this.
I think Tosh Plumbley would sound like Berry. Seal was involved with military intelligence in the early days. Military intelligence was the real game, with the CIA just acting as logistical people. Berry was a periveral player back then. But he was a CIA contract pilot all the way back to nineteen fifty six or fifty seven.
Now remember this is Matton Rouge.
Doesn't matter. This is how Plumbley sounds. My man. He's an aristocrat of the highest order.
And Seal would later in sworn testimony, deny any affiliation with the CIA whatsoever in any shape, form or fashion. That'll come up later. Let's keep going. In nineteen fifty eight, he began ferrying weapons to Fidel Castro fighting against the Batista regime in Cuba. At the same time, a section of the CIA was supporting the overthrow of the Batistas. So if he said he had no involvement, I guess
he was. Who was just another contractor. And maybe maybe Castro had like a four thirty pm appointment with a CIA and a five p fifteen appointment with Barry Seal. Who knows, or.
Maybe he wasn't actually meeting. Here's the tough thing. It seems as though if you are going to be flying weapons in to a group, like at least any member of Fidel Castro's resistance force you are going to, it's going to be a known mission, right, There's gonna be a lot of handling that occurs with that. It's not just oh, hey, I'm gonna I'll be there around three. See see in a little bit, Fidel guys, Fidel's dudes.
I guess just what I'm saying is it was certainly under the radar when it was occurring right with authorities, or at least he would have to be unless it was explicitly known that this was occurring as a mission in part of the CIA.
So yeah, that's another part, because astute listeners you just heard us say the CIA was at the time supporting the overthrow of Bautista. However, the policy changed soon after Castro gained power and Barry Seal apparently started taking part in air attacks on the emergent new government. Either way, they liked what he's doing. Nineteen fifty nine, he became a CIA pilot in Guatemala.
It's true, and we were I'm just trying to point out some things here that have to do with themes with Barry's life. Right, This idea of possibly playing both sides there, of both supplying the new regime with weapons but then also participating in tax once they've gained power, exactly.
Kind of a fair weather friend at the very least exactly.
So let's go let's go to nineteen fifty nine. Now he's in Guatemala and he's officially a CIA pilot.
He has officially a CIA pilot in Guatemala. It's also believed He was involved in training Cuban exiles on No Name Key Another Excellent Name in Florida and on the north shore of Lake Ponch Train in Louisiana. He also ran a couple of companies based in his hometown, Baton Rouge, Seal Sky Service and Aerial Advertising Associates. That's the banner thing we talked about earlier. He had an office in the International Trade Center run by Clay Shaw.
Can we just talk about Aerial Advertising Associates? Sure, Triple A. I mean, first of all, you're gonna get in trouble just with those a's, right, you can't. You can't just use all three a's. Come on, there's a big company out there. They're gonna take you down. But the other thing is it sounds like some kind of CIA front, doesn't it. When we've over the course of this show, every CIA FBI front has the most banal name to it of the most This is exactly what this thing is.
It feels very much like that to me, not saying it was a CIA front, just saying.
Sure, it's like Legitimate Business Partners Associated LLC.
Yeah, American No, not American Airlines. What was it called? Was the big one are America?
Yeah, how could you hate that? Do you hate America? So in nineteen sixty two December, he joins the twenty first Special Forces Group. He attends the Fort Benning Jump School in sixty three. The next year, he's assigned to Company D, Special Operations Detachment of the twentieth Special Forces Group Airborne. In sixty four, he joins the two hundred and forty fifth Engineer Battalion based in Saint Louis. He leaves there in sixty six. He serves in the Louisiana
RB National Guard the Army Reserve. He joins TWA trans World Airlines in nineteen sixty eight as a flight engineer and later becomes one of the youngest command pilots in the entire fleet. So he loves flying. He's good at it. You just can't entirely trust that he will have your back with the chips are down.
Yeah, and he has had a lot of involvement with various military groups. It's he's an experienced guy by the time. He's not that old.
Yeah exactly?
Was he born thirty nine?
Yep?
Wow, so not even thirty.
And his shady and at times contradictory career finally caught up with Barry Seal. On July one, nineteen seventy two, he was arrested in New Orleans. He was accused of sending C four explosives to anti Castro Cubans based in Mexico. A DC four on the plane news Line was seized at the Shreveport Regional Airport, loaded with around seven tons of plastic explosives, seven thousand feet of explosive primer cord,
and two thousand, six hundred electric blasting caps. So this was going to be one hell of a party.
And then James Miller, Richmond Harper, and Marlon Hagler and also somebody Murray Kessler were arrested along with Cel and Kessler's partner, man by the name of Manny Gambino, was kidnapped around the same time the others were arrested. Very fishy in Gambino's course, was later found in a New Jersey garbage jump some mob stuff right here, right, This is that Gambino clearly exactly.
Yeah, Well, then the plot just continues to thicken after that because rue at this point, yes, very nice little because that plane, the DC four, was actually owned by this guy named James Boy who was in fact an associate, a known associate of the CIA.
James Boy, a terrible terrible Jim Jimmy Boy, Jim plumbley and Boy and James Boy.
Great the sounds like made up names. I love it.
Well here's again, there there are these weird.
This is a web. This is a string in the web.
It's literally a Gary Webb. And uh so this guy, James Boy, his aircraft laid was used by Oliver North essentially to send mercenaries hired by him to fly in and out of Honduras. Which again we've got three points of connection here already that are just mind.
Blowing right right, Maybe not enough connections to jump to a conclusion, no, but three points is what you need to climb up a conspiracy mountain. Right there you go. So the man who organized the entrapment of Seal, the reason he got caught with all these explosives and that his friends got caught as well, was a guy named Csario dil Stado, an official with US Customs. It took the authorities over two years to bring Seal and co. To trial, and then things got really fishy. So the
trial finally gets underway June nineteen seventy four. But government prosecutors do something that automatically, without questions, sinks the case. They introduce into evidence an automatic weapon that has nothing to do with the charges against the defendants. None of them have ever touched. The chain of custody is completely unrelated to them, and so a mistrial is declared. Seal and his buddies are released, no probation, no monitoring, no sentencing. This was not to be his first arrest.
And this is about a plane filled to the brim with explosives. Okay, not quite that large, but enough explosives, like we said, to do serious damage somewhere, and they just get let off.
Yeah, this is also going to become a pattern in the life of Seal. This was not to be, of course, his final arrest. But what we can see is that evidence indicates that at every step along the way, someone, some suit would step in and take over the investigation. After Barry's first arrest, his career takes off, or maybe it's more appropriate to say it veers off in a darker, more sinister direction, and we'll we'll ex i am in a little bit about that, but first let's talk about
his death. This is the hinge of today's episode, and we'll.
Talk about it right after a quick word from our sponsor.
On February nineteenth, nineteen eighty six, Barry Seal was shot to death by a machine gun in front of a Salvation Army facility located on Airline Highway in his hometown of Baton Rouge. And I believe we can play a little clip of the reporting.
Yeah, this will be a really short clip from NBC.
He used to smuggle drugs and he got caught and he became one of the government's most valuable informants in the war against cocaine. But last night in Louisiana, Barry Seal's enemies caught up with him and killed him tonight.
So Barry's murder ends a DEA investigation. The investigator drug Enforcement Agency, the investigation was never resolved, has not been to this day, and according to some sources, the murder was never truly solved either.
And just to continue with this web motif that we're already starting to create here and all of the themes, we realized that Barry's death connected directly to a two part series we made in twenty sixteen called Banks, Drugs and Money that was based on a film called The Infiltrader.
Right, Yeah, and Barry Seal appears in The Infiltrator, which is inspired by true events. I believe he has a different sort of death in this story though, Is that correct?
Yeah? Yeah, because you know in the series we're talking to Robert Maser, right, and he was this DA agent who went undercover and he ended up busting up part at least of Pablo Escobar's drug trafficking cartel and then sinking an international bank that was connected to that cartel.
And in this movie, there's a scene where Robert Maser's character is being driven around by Barry Seal, and Barry Seal's character is complaining, essentially complaining about Ronald Reagan and Nancy Reagan and anti drug movement, talking about his high level connections with government officials essentially, and how he's been doing this stuff trafficking drugs for the government essentially.
I didn't clock at all of that was him in the movie.
Interesting, Yeah, he's introduced and it's kind of shown that way. But then instead of the way we've described it before, where Barry being shot to death in front of the Salvation Army facility, just in his car or as he's getting out of his car he's killed within a drive by a motorcycle assassin essentially comes by and shoots him while he's driving the car. And we noticed that this was the only depiction of Barry Seal's death where he wasn't just in his car or getting out of his vehicle.
He was actually driving while it was occurring. So to our mind, and I guess to your mind, you should at least know that that's probably not what happened to him. But at the same time, we I think it's just
interesting to note these connections we've been making here. Before we started this episode, Noel pointed out that he felt like he had already talked about Barry Seal, and then we discussed how in covering Gary Webb, who was the other guy, Bob Robert Maser and I think there was one other main story that we've spoken about before where it was CIA drug trafficking. Many just how common this feels to us.
So if that's not really what happened, if it wasn't really a motorcycle drive by, then what did actually occur? Who killed Barry Seal and why? Here's where it gets crazy. So we talked about that first arrest, and we mentioned that his career changed after his first arrest in nineteen seventy four, when Barry got off scott Free, he went face first into drug smuggling, both for drug cartels and apparently eventually for factions of Uncle Sam the US government.
His talent, his bravado, his hutzba had attracted the attention of the Median cartel and their leader, Bablo Escobar, who many of us may recognize from Netflix. It was on Escobar's suggestion that Barry Seal moved his airstrip from Louisiana to kind of a podunk place in West Arkansas, and by the early nineteen eighties he had orchestrated the importation of thousands of pounds of cocaine and marijuana into the
US via this middle of nowhere strip in Arkansas. And he started out, as far as we can tell, kind of smuggling marijuana on his own, and then he realized that pound for pound cocaine is where you get the most gas.
Funding is he depicted in that Netflix show Narcos.
Alert Barry Seal is in Narcos.
He is okay I once in the first season. It's been a while.
Spoiler alert, his death is all also portrayed in Narcos.
I thought that rang a ball. It's been a lot times I've seen that, but that makes sense.
His death has been actually depicted multiple times, which is surprising because he's not a huge public figure today and arguably he should be. He was busted again in Florida in nineteen eighty three, who was charged with conspiracy to distribute get this, four hundred and sixty two pounds of coke. That's an estimated street value in nineteen eighty three of
one hundred and sixty eight million. So just for just for giggles, let's look at how much one hundred and sixty eight million dollars in nineteen eighty three is worth in twenty nineteen. We're gonna pull up the number with some help from Mission ConTroll. Do we get a drum roll? Please?
Just a sound of someone snorting something on a table?
Even better?
Perfect.
I don't know how you found the happy, happy medium between those, Paul, But by god, that's why, that's why you're a super producer.
Is that's so hard, right? I know?
Wen, we'd have to take ol to Applebeast to apologize. Here's the answer. One hundred and sixty eight million dollars in nineteen eighty three has the purchasing power of over four hundred and thirty two million dollars in twenty nineteen, so it's more than doubled over that time. He was on the way to becoming a what we would consider it a billionaire today.
Wow, you want here's something else in Miamic You chuckle?
What's that?
Barry seals alias or one of them was Ellis mcpickle, No.
Not Ellis Ellis mcpickll. He seemed like such a good stand up guy. It's weird because you wonder why he would need an alias, right, Smugglers often do. But he turned and started working for the FEDS as an informant.
Yeah, because he got caught with one hundred and sixty eight million dollars worth of cocaine. So he was either just gonna go away forever or he was gonna turn and start working for the FEDS.
Got flipped, yeah hard, You got flips hard. So the DEA cracked this deal with him. They said, all right, Barry, keep carrying on your business as usual, keep flying your smuggling roots. We're gonna give your plane the exhibit treatment.
You know what I mean. We're going to put high tech surveillance equipment in there, and we're gonna pimp your ride to include the most expensive cryptic radio communications we had ever seen at the time, according to DEA agent Ernest Jacobson, and and it paid off.
It delivered.
On his first trip, Oh yeah, he got some photographs of Cuban officials, Nicaraguan's soldiers and Sandinista government officers hauling duffel bags of cocaine. Hauling duffel bags. These are officials. They're just picking them up and loading on the plane. You can see a little bit of footage in this from that NBC clip we played earlier. You can find it on the YouTube video. It's insane. He even brought back a picture of this guy, this kind of ghost
or this myth that exists out there, Pablo Escobar. But he was he was in one of those striped polo shirts that I can't remember if it was portrayed this way in the infiltrator, but you've seen media or depictions of Pablo Escobar in this shirt.
Hot down there.
And seals Intel then transformed him into literally the most significant witness in the US's war on drugs almost overnight. We literally that's what occurred. This this thing we've kind of told you about, where he got arrested with all this stuff, got flipped, got his plane, pimps, went out there and started doing this stuff. It was not a long term situation.
It was a slow burn, You're right, Matt. In fact, the Philadelphia Inquirer later called Seal quote the most important witness in the history of the US Drug Enforcement edmundration. Wow, not in terms of this project, but in terms of the history of the administration.
Can we just talk about the stakes at which he's playing his life right now? Sure, after you know, having a military career through all that stuff, then flipping to become a drug smuggler, then flipping back to being an agent.
Out of control. Can you imagine, like how this guy slept at night?
No, I really.
Care how much he slept.
Well, I mean you think.
He was getting high on his own supply?
Yes?
Well? But still though, wouldn't that bring about wouldn't that enhance the paranoia that you would probably feel in that situation if you're anywhere near a normally function Sure, and the lack of.
Sleep, paired with the effects of the narcotics themselves. I'm sure he was a mess.
Yeah yeah, I mean I would imagine just the stress. Not long into his career as an informant, trouble begins. There's a front page story in the Washington Times by journalist Edmund Jacobi which seems to outsee you as a government agent. This is also one of the first public statements that later led to the Iran Contra scandal. And the DEA said, well, a known snitch is a no
good snitch to us. Yeah, yep. So they cut him loose, and not long after, the FBI arrest him in Louisiana and the Baton Rouge US Attorney's office says we're gonna We're gonna put this guy away for being a kingpin.
He's like, what brutal, I'm just flying planes for y'all.
And they somehow in a country that will put people under the prison for like small time possession, you know, like barely intend to distribute. He was slapped for five years probation and then they had to six months at a local halfway house. This is kind of like the drug dealer version of a Jeffrey Epstein quote unquote deal and that's why he ended up at that Salvation Army on Airline Highway. That was part of his probation, and that's where he was murdered in February of nineteen eighty six.
And he was murdered, But who actually murdered him? We will give you our best guess and warning, this is a little bit off the edges of the map, so there's some speculation involved, but you'll learn more afterword from our sponsor. Okay, two things, let's divide it two ways, dividing conquer. First, there is the official story. You can't see it here, folks, but I'm sort of waving my right hand in the air. And then there are the conspiracy theories. I'm waving my left hand in the air.
Who would have killed Barry Seal? And why? The official story is pretty clear? Legally speaking, this is solved.
Yeah, I mean, it was obviously having something to do with his involvement with these drug cartels and essentially assisting in bringing them down and you know, going to give testimony against them, right.
But I mean, even if he wasn't going to testify drug cartels, don't take kindly to folks that, you know, leave the life, right not to mention that are like cooperating with any kind of law enforcement.
Yeah. Yeah. The cartels, even back then were infamous for their brutality, their inhumanity, their cruelty, and being an informant, regardless of which cartel it is. This was medane related, but being an informant is a tremendous, profound sin in the culture of cartels. This means that if you are caught snitching, you the thought of a quick, clean death is an unreasonably happy outcome. Pigs will fly before. The cleanest way you can die is by your own hand.
That's it, you know, well, it's almost it would be. If you could control how this person and dies, it would not be a fast death. Right, that's the.
Idea, right, because the cartel at plans, right, they didn't just want him dead for informing or cost him millions of lost product. And let's be honest, that's compounded on millions and bribes because now the government officials they're bribing have more leverage to say, oh well, things are getting a little hot right now. You know, wouldn't want the US president finding out about this, And they're like, come on, Oliver, be cool, Oliver North.
Yeah, exactly well, and then let's talk about the situation he's alone in his car at the Salvation Army. Someone approaches him and shoots bullets into him while he's sitting there in his car. If this were situation where it was preferable to kidnap him, it seems like that would have been an easy situation to accommodate that.
Right because the way cartels do it, the way cartels handle this stuff internally, as they'll put out a bounty, and the bounty will have a pricing schedule will based on the person being delivered alive which is preferable, the person being delivered sort of alive but maimed, which is a little bit less, or the person being dead, which is proof of death. You know, you have a body
part or a port or something. Cartel wanted him kidnapped so they could slowly torture him, not just to get their giggles and their jollys, but also as an example for other potential turncoats who were also pilots or government affiliates, and.
Maybe even get some information about who he talked to and what he told them, so they could get a sense of how to get ahead of it, right.
Yeah, exactly, And that's assuming that they're not already in cahoots with Uncle Sam. Right. Yeah, So, as you said, Matt, here's the evidence. So Columbian assassins were sent by the Medine cartel. They were apprehended while trying to leave Louisiana shortly after Seal's murder. That's true. The authorities then reasonably concluded Seal's murderers were hired by the Achoa brothers. These three assass since we're indicted on March twenty seventh, nineteen
eighty six. In May of nineteen eighty seven, these three men are convicted of first degree murder in Seal's death. They are sentenced to life in prison without parole. Their names are Louis Carlos Quinto Cruz, Miguel Velez, and Bernando Antonio Vasquez. And on March sixteenth, nineteen eighty six, one month after Seal is assassinated, then President Ronald Reagan tries to get more congressional support for the contrast, and he is showing off some photographs Seal has taken during his
time as an informant. Reagan suggests that a top ranking Sandinista official is involved in drug smuggling, which is hilarious, and I'm really sad that Reagan's comedy career didn't take off. Then he was a man ahead of his time.
He did some physical comedy in the movies back in the.
Day, right, Yeah, I mean he did some pretty comedic things in his time as president too.
Also true.
So okay, should we talk about how we feel about this one yet or should we just go?
I mean, legally speaking, that's true.
They were convicted, Well, they were convicted showing that they actually pulled the trigger and knowing that they were trying to leave the country after this guy died. It feels like two very different things. But I guess if they were convicted, I don't know the full details. We don't have the full details that'll lay out here for you about you know, the weapons that were used and the bullets that were found, and trajectory and all of the
forensics on that scene. But you know, okay, that feels plausible.
Yes, Now we'll enter the realm of what is still oddly sorry, let me be serious when I say this. Now we're entering the realm of what is still oddly enough considered conspiracy theory. What if Uncle Sam was somehow involved. What if the FEDS were somehow involved, what would their motivation be. The motivation for the cartel is that this guy was new informant and bad for business and could make business even worse if, as you said, no, they got information from.
Him and he could testify it, and he could testify.
Yeah, Uncle Sam's motivation for those who believe that the US was involved in this assassination was that he could. He could those benefiting from the snitch would become the victims of the snitch, and that Barry Seal wouldn't just give intel to the DEA about the cartel operations, but he would eventually be in a public court of law saying yeah, let me name some names people on the
CIA's you know their payroll. Let me name some names of the people in the FBI who got me out of all those times I got caught red and with the plane.
For real, Let's let's go over all this stuff first. Then I'll just want to talk about it.
Yeah. Yeah, And one other thing possible involvement in the JFK assassination because Tosh plum Lake, who we mentioned earlier, stated numerous times that he flew a secret flight taking the CIA to the assassination site because the CIA knew that the murder was coming and they actually wanted to prevent it. WHOA, that's Plumtree's statement according to let's look at the evidence though. Okay, so involvement in state sponsored
drug deals and maybe JFK assassination. According to one of Seal's three wives, Deborah, Barry Seal flew a getaway plane out of Dallas after JFK was murdered. WHOA, that's intense, and we have more descriptions. Tosh Plumbley pops up again and giving us some details about Barry Seal's previous activity with illegal government projects.
Barry Seal did a lot of damn good stuff in the late sexties and sixty sixty eight. He was with the Air America and South Vietnam and LAOS during search and destroy and special ops with Ted Shackley's boys. He'd been recruiting, recruited even for a special ops because of the Cuban thing.
Can we just jump in here and talk about his involvement right there with Air America.
Hello, let's do it.
Hello, everybody, that's the front Air America in South Vietnam.
Yeah, I mean, remember how he got off scott free after that first arrest.
Well, according to a gentleman named Pete Bruton who wrote a book called The Mafia, CIA and George Bush, he says, as soon as Seal was freed, he quote began working full time for the CIA, traveling back and forth from the US to Latin America.
And then we have a statement from Daniel Hopsacker. Hopsacer claims that Seal was now sheep dipped into the DEA as an agent for the Special Operations Group. Seal worked under a guy named Lucien Cohening, who ran secret missions for the Deaight sheep dipped his intelligence community slang which means to give someone a pretty water proof, if not ironclad, alternate identity. So mcpickles or whatever.
There you go.
Hopefully it was better than that one. So this is weird though. Here's another piece. So those are three pieces of evidence that Uncle Sam may have been involved. The fourth piece, which I think is one of the most difficult to deny, is that despite being apparently a very very very valuable asset and witness, he had absolutely no protection when he was out in the field. He was out in the wild with no guards and no monitoring, and the local legal machinery caught wind of this, and
they were livid. After Seal died, Louisiana Attorney General William Goost hand delivered a letter to US Attorney General Edwin mess in protest of the government's failure to protect Seal. Goose called him a heinous criminal, but he added at the same time, for his own purposes, he had made himself an extremely valuable witness and infallment in the conscious fight against illegal drugs. Bariss Seal's murder suggests the need for an in depth but rapid investigation into a number
of areas. Why was such an important witness not given protection, whether he wanted it or not. There's still no answer to this question today because if you are if you are an informant like that or an important witness, you don't get to a shoe protection like you can say no, you can't come in my house, for instance, but you can't you can't stop somebody from parking that windowless flower van down the street, Oh for sure, But no one was there sleep at the switch.
You know, there's even a there's an attorney who who gives you kind of it's a great picture of probably what occurred within Barry Seal's life numerous times where he was caught red handed smuggling drugs. The DEA the CIA get involved that when they show up the people who actually were there, who said, you know, put your hands up, we've found all your drugs. You're under arrest. Those guys get told to get the heck out of there while the DEA and CIA come through. He's out of here, yeah,
and they take over the operation. Then who knows what actually occurs to Barry Seal, But it doesn't appear that he's being charged with anything.
Nope, So.
Are we complicit here?
What gifts?
Yeah? At this point again to be absolutely and I would argue overly fair. The three Cartel assassins are legally considered the guilty parties here. One of them has already died in prison. But it does seem strange if you think about the way organize crime works in this, in this, you know, in this theater of underground war, it seems very strange that the cartel might risk an assassination when there's already so much heat on Seal and so much
media attention. Why would you risk angering the world's most dangerous and largest military governmental apparatus if you could find any other possible way to do it, like because that that could easily spark a war. So that means that the cartel must have had some sort of internal logic or calculation, because they are a rational actor, they must have said this is somehow worth it.
Well for a while there he is sending a ton of product over into a market for it to be sold right for these cartels, So he is certainly valuable to them. He has whatever connections he needs to have, and he's a skilled enough pilot to where he is the guy that they're looking for.
But they're looking to they already had plenty of skilled pilots that they could find.
They did, but he had some special sauce with connections with people or something, right, I mean it has you have to imagine that he there is something special to this guy.
It's a combination of the skill and also that hootspot you were talking about at the top of the show, Ben, I mean it takes a special kind of bravado to make these flights so regularly and not be scared of the consequences.
Right, Yes, So, I mean I think that's a valid point, and it's something that he supported too. In interviews that people had with him before his death, he said, you know, putting yourself in life, in danger and situations is what I'm all about. But again, it's it's a question why would the cartel do such a blatant, obvious hit and get caught and then not why did the US government take no real action against the cartel Because they did get caught, the cartel may have had a green light
from the US government. That's what a lot of people believe. The Median hit story always had this big flaw. Who would try to kill one in the CIA's own And then this means that we inevitably trace back the bread crumbs along or you know, the strings along the web and ask ourselves, could this be related to the story of the octopus and Danny Cassilero or related investigators like Gary Webb, both of those men, by the way, who died under what are arguably mysterious circumstances.
Yeah, it really feels like it's connected up to all of these things that we've talked about before. This concept of the US military and intelligence agencies, at least factions of them, working with drug cartels, using this money to finance essentially conflict in other countries in South America and other places for.
Coups like his moneymaker.
You know, it's it's crazy. It feels like there's something much, much bigger. I mean, we kind of get we we get these tiny little windows right through all these men's stories of the investigators who seem to have found something or have worked in some capacity but end up losing their lives. But it really does feel like somebody needs to come forward and give a really big picture to what this really looks like.
People have said they were about to and you know, we don't know if they all have the same big picture, but one thing's for sure, they keep dying before the word gets out.
Yeah, we're I mean, we are certainly not trying to do that.
We do not have a big picture.
No, we do not know any essay.
In turn, we do not.
We are just some guys reading stuff on the internet and watching some movies. That's all. Except well Paul knows a little more. But he's oh no, no, he's saying he doesn't.
He'll never tell that, you'll never tell.
So it's it's strange because we draw to an unhappy conclusion during the bulk of Barry Seal's career. At the time, most people and media outlets refused to acknowledge the CIA's deep involvement in the Central and South American drug trade. You know, the idea that someone was bringing cocaine that would later be made into crack into urban areas in
the eighties. The idea that the government would be at all aware of that was treated as anathema in mainstream media, and instead these accusations would be dismissed as conspiracy theories, which is odd when you think about it, because dismissing that stuff as a conspiracy theory meant those same authorities, the NBCs, the CBS's and so on, were participating in the very conspiracy they purported to investigate and dismiss and even now mention this At the top, some people will
argue Seal was never involved with the CIA, and that's based on entirely on a statement in court and the fact that those statements were considered sworn testimony, which is like they put their hand on a book, they said they would tell the truth, and so an ergo, everything they say after that point must be true.
What a broken system.
But we have a statement from former FBI agent Del Han explaining this.
The only federal agency Seal ever worked with was the DEA. Seal's sworn testimony was that he had no knowledge of ever working for the CIA. In debriefings after his plea bargain, he never told me or anyone else he was a CIA asset or had worked for any agency other than the DEA. Our task force never developed any evidence that the CIA was involved with Seal in drug smuggling. There is not one iota of credible evidence that Seal ever worked for the CIA or assisted them in any operations.
And the CIA denied any connection with Seal.
Oh, okay, so that solves it.
Yeah, I mean he's under oath and I guess we believe them.
And the CIA said they didn't do anything.
Well, of course they didn't. Why would they do anything.
So we do have to note that Han does emit at least four CIA associated pilots also smuggled various things into and out of South America, so he knew it happened. He's not saying it didn't happen. He's just saying that the CIA and Seal both denied involvement, and they couldn't
find anything, so he thinks it's not true. But enough about Agent Han, what do you think you listening now, would a government agency actually cooperate with a drug cartel to murder one of their own for believers of certain JFK conspiracy theories, the answer is obvious, but we want to hear from you. And also, what do you guys think.
Is this also kind of almost like a false flag attack where it's like not an attack, like in the sense of a war, but it's like a subterfuge right where it's like, of course it was the cartel that killed him, all signs point to that, you know, but it was actually us making it look like those were the cartels that killed him, because that was the easiest thing to you know, that was the easiest, most logical explanation. I guess right, Well, the.
Whole thing is a proxy war that he's getting involved with, whether he knows it or not, and he's playing both sides. It's so tough. It's so tough you're asking what we think, ben so so who Let's let's just put it this way. Is the DEA going to send a crapload of C four in a plane over to assist either side with Cuba.
DA probably not CIA. Shrug, dot Giff.
I mean, shrug for sure, DoD Giff. But I guess what I'm saying is this this idea that he wasn't working for them in some way that would entail him working I guess for himself directly with you know, Fidel Castro's crew to bring all that C four over to them.
Was he just like a patsy? Was he just kind of like a pawn because he got screwed and then kind of had to continue playing both sides for his own well being. I guess, you know what I mean. I don't know, like he was just it seemed like he was at one point being super clever and then something went wrong and then he kind of didn't have control over his own destiny anymore. Right Well.
Also, former FBI agent that we talked about earlier, Haunt said the evidence indicated if he had not been shot, he already had plans to jump jump probation, leave town, live in Costa Rica, and start cocaine operations up again the next day. He was leaving the next day.
Interesting, So it makes you wonder if someone found out about that FBI and put a stuff to it. That's just me talking.
By the way, I'm going to say personally my opinion, and I don't want to color I don't want to influence anybody writing into us. We do want to hear your takes. But my opinion, based on the stuff we found, is that maybe not the CIA proper, but factions within the CIA or fact actions within related government agencies absolutely greenlit this death and in the way in such a way that there would be plausible deniability. You know what I mean.
I would have to agree with you, Ben, because it I mean, we've kind of outlined exactly why. I mean, it doesn't make sense to just shoot a guy sitting there where he was, you know, in his car, where he was, if you really wanted to get revenge on him. How it feels more like shutting him up?
Yeah, well, how did the how did the cartels do it? Why? I don't know if it feels like I'm not saying the CI told him to do it. But at the very least, as we say in the South, the CIA and the US government did not hurt their neck looking for the responsible parties, and they didn't.
They also didn't protect an asset that they had in him.
They also didn't retaliate, Yeah, which is weird because we're we're pretty pro retaliation culture here in the US. I don't know, No, what do you think?
Yeah, now, I agree with you guys completely, Like it's there's just no logical way of explaining this whole thing without there being some kind of weird double dealing by our government.
The biggest question for me, and you actually have put this in the end of the outline here Ben the biggest thing that we kind of glossed over, but we mentioned it for sure. His possible involvement with the JFK assassination. Yes, yeah, yeah, what if that's the reason?
I don't know, you.
Know, the plumb Lea story about the CIA attempting to prevent the assassination was fascinating to me.
Yeah.
I think also at times it's tempting for We've talked about this in the past, it's tempting for us to think of these agencies as monolithic entities. They most certainly are not. Things are very competitive at that level, their rivals. I'm sure there's more than a bit of e go involved. Anyone is corruptible, and people who seem to in public speaking and Sewan get along well, maybe working backstage for directly directly contradictory forces, you know, well.
And we just have to mention here that a human being can be convinced fairly easily that one course of action is not only the best course of action, but it is also either just or it is I don't know how to put this correctly, that it doing A is the right thing to do, and we have to do A in order to achieve our goals, right, and the greater good argument, the greater good argument can be
so many different things. For one situation that you could have factions who are simultaneously within the CIA attempting to this is just hypothetical. Sure, sure, factions within the CIA attempting to assassinate the president while the same time a faction of the CIA is attempting to stop the other part of the CIA from assassinating the president, whether they know the other one is doing rather or not.
There's some true blue idealists or patriots. And then I don't know the scary thing about so much congressional testimony, especially when you get to private and public entities cooperating, which is just the drug cartel's a business. It's products may differ from Halliburton, but that doesn't mean it's also they're not both international businesses, and the failure to realize that leads to a great many problems and discourse today.
If you see those congressional testimonies, they're chilling because a lot of what people describe as they're greater good means taking something that will be good for me and making it great other people. Be damned. There's a ton of narcissism and this kind of stuff, and yet it's disgusting and reprehensible to see it justified quote unquote as like, oh, we're we're fighting communism, that's why I need a million
dollars or whatever. And it's just a it's a macrocosmic view of what happens in a microcosmic way every single day of a person's life. I'm not saying that every person listening does that sort of thing. I'm saying that you certainly know someone who has screwed you or people you care about over because they saw a greater good and they thought, like no one thinks that the bad guy, it's all for the greater good all the time. The
person who steals handicapped parking spaces. The psychological engine is the same. It's a Mimi me.
Thing, sure, And I guess the scary thing is that you can convince people with the perhaps false motivation there of fighting communism. You can convince people that that is the true thing you're fighting for, and then you can get people to do things for you.
For our interest for national security. And that's our classic episode for this evening. We can't wait to hear your thoughts.
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