August 23, 2019 • 58 mins
Across the course of his strange and checkered career, pilot and smuggler Barry Seal was called many things: An informant, a criminal, an asset for America's alphabet soup of intelligence agencies and more. He met an ignoble end in February of 1986, when he was fatally shot outside the Salvation Army facility where he'd been ordered to work in court-mandated public service. However, it turns out the official explanation of his death hasn't convinced everyone -- to this day, journalists, theorists and more continue to ask: Who really killed Barry Seal?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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 I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Welcome back
(00:24):
to the show. My name is Matt, my name they
call me Ben. We were joined as always with our
super producer Paul Mission controlled decade. 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 it, I feel like I'm about to
get into some kind of freestyle or something. There's a
cadence to it. When you did, didn't, didn't do? Do
(00:47):
do 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 was caught.
I was in Vegas. Circumstances found me in Vegas this
past weekend and I almost ended up at at a
(01:08):
weird party with some notable people. But being layne, I
went to my hotel and read a book. Yeah you did,
wink he did? And he totally ran that party. I
think so, yeah, I'm looking at no over here. I
don't think you did, dude. I think he's telling the truth.
How do you guys have a good weekend? Yeah? I
(01:28):
had a great weekend. Hey, I played a lot of
that Detroit Becoming Human. It was the free game on
the PlayStation network. Totally worth it, best gaming I've played
in a long time. Highly recommended. If you're into story,
if you want some complex game play, don't don't do it.
But if you just want to learn about how androids
(01:50):
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, 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 games stuff.
I would love to play a video game called stuff.
(02:12):
They don't want you to know with that weird hand. Yeah,
uh and uh, you know, maybe one day, maybe one
day we'll we'll mess with some video game type folks.
I really like old like video 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
blocking Marty McFly. Yeah, you know remember ET the game.
(02:33):
That was where I was just going to mention that, Yeah,
ET the game one of uh the universally agreed worst
video games ever. Yeah, I think I think there's an
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
(02:54):
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. But what I'm saying is if
you were into playing together, you guys could investigate going
down different leads. You report back. Ben's found out everything
about the Black Hand. I've been busy over here with
an extra trest real angle. For some reason, they're connected.
(03:17):
Then we figure out the next place to go. I'm
telling you this video game rules. Get at me and
Ben and Noel and 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
(03:38):
eight three three st d w y t K. If
you're a long time listener, you can probably tell that
we're all we're all film buffs here or voracious sponges
of story and information. Uh. We we enjoy that in
terms of video games, terms of music, art, and you know,
(04:00):
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 seventeen, the actor Tom Cruise
starred in a film called American Maid. American Maide follows
the highly fictionalized life and times of a real life
(04:23):
pilot named Barry Seal, a pilot amongst other things, a
pilot amongst other things. And we asked, oh, I forget that, Paul,
Mr Control, how are you doing today? All right? We
got a good thumbs up, and Paul, you also gave
a thumbs up to American Maide? 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?
(04:45):
Was that was my fault? I said, how are you
guys doing that? I derailed it and I sent it
to Ben. That was my fault. No, no, no, no,
it's cool. What's up in your life? No? Did you
go on that date we talked about I take you
on a day? It's true. I saw a cast movie
that you guys 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
(05:07):
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
(05:29):
Michelle Gondry kind of vibe. I really recommended highly very dreamlike,
very powerful, very very special movie. I liked a lot
done what 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
(05:51):
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 let's give it to you. Critics
gave it eight 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
(06:13):
than the critics perhaps gave it, 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, what
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.
(06:36):
So here are the facts. We've been throwing this name
around a lot Barry 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 klansman. Yeah, he was a member of the
ku Klux Klan, which um you know that sounds like
(06:59):
on the inspiratorial 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 solar flight at fifteen, one year
before he actually got his legit pilot's license, and then
not too long after that, you work for one of
those companies that have like the banners that were towed
(07:22):
behind the planes for advertising, which is a thing that
I've always been fascinated by, Like who is that person
that does that? And it's a great idea for prank
to It's a my secret list of dream pranks is
to take one of those advertising banners. This is the
most sith lord version taking advertising banner. Hire someone to
fly out a banner that says will you marry me?
(07:43):
And just hear the relationships crumble around the city for
anyone who accidentally looks up and then they're they're 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. You know, in general, it's pretty
inconsiderable super Man ruin ruining everybody's beach day. So to
(08:08):
jump back to Barry Seal really fast, you guys, yes, um,
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 um adventurous, right sure. Yeah,
(08:31):
he's a drilline 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 your parents are
an older person or someone with a license will take
(08:53):
you out to a parking lot, and generally law enforcement
will look the other way as this fourteen year old
is just of being a clutch You know, but 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
(09:13):
ultimately fatal career. He joined the Civil Air Patrol and
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
(09:37):
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 Odom, they
say that Seal actually encountered Mr Lee Harvey Oswald while
(09:59):
he was meaning, oh oh, that's true. But wait, wait,
there's more, as more as Billy Mays was wont to say, yes,
Tosh plum Lee another figure later related to the JFK assassination.
That's a great name, by the way, Gosh plumb Lee.
I love that sounds like a character and clue, Yeah,
it really does. He claims that Barry Seal began working
(10:21):
for the CIA in the mid nineteen fifties. We have
a quote from Tash on this. I think Tosh Plumbly
would sound like a 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 periperal player back then, but he was a CIA
(10:43):
contract pilot all the way back to nineteen fifty six
or fifty seven. Now, remember this is Baton Rouge, doesn't matter.
This is how Plumly sounds, my man. He's an aristocrat
of the highest order. And Seal would later in sworn
test Simoni deny any affiliation with the CIA whatsoever in
(11:08):
any shape, form or fashion. That'll come up later. Let's
keep going. In n he began ferrying weapons to Fidel Castro,
fighting against the Bautista 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,
(11:28):
I guess he was. It was just another contractor, and
maybe maybe Castro had like a four thirty PM appointment
with the CIA and a five fifteen appointment with Barry
Seal who knows, or maybe he wasn't actually meeting. Like,
here's the tough thing. It seems as though if you're
going to be flying weapons in to a group like uh,
(11:52):
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. Um, I guess just what I'm saying is
it was certainly under the radar when it was occurring,
(12:14):
right with authorities, or at leasie would have to be,
unless it was explicitly known that this was occurring as
a mission and part of the CIA. So yeah, that's
that's another part. Because astute listeners, you just heard us
say the CIA was at the time supporting the overthrow
of Batista. However, the policy changed soon after Castro gained power,
(12:37):
and Barry's Seal apparently started taking part in air attacks
on the emergent new government. Either way they like to
he's doing 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
(12:59):
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 ninety 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
(13:22):
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
(13:44):
International Traits Center run by Clay Shaw. Can we just
talk about Aerial Advertising Associates? Sure? In 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.
(14:04):
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. Uh,
it feels very much like that to me. I'm not
saying it was a CIA friend, just saying sure, it's
like Legitimate Business Partners Associated LLC. Yeah, American, No, not
(14:27):
American Airlines. What was it called? Was the Big One America?
How could you? How could you hate that? 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,
(14:47):
Special Operations Detachment of the twentie Special Forces Group Airborne.
In sixty four, he joins the Engineer Battalion based in St. Louis.
He leaves there in sixty six. He's Sir is in
the Louisiana Army National Guard. The Army Reserve. He joins
t w A trans World Airlines in nineteen sixty eight
(15:07):
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 the it's he's an experienced guy by
(15:33):
the time. He's not that old, yeah, exactly borne yep,
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
(15:53):
was accused of sending C four explosives to anti Castro
Cubans based in Mexico. A DC war that was a
plane news line was seized at the Shreveport Regional Airport,
loaded with around seven tons of plastic explosive, seven thousand
feet of explosive primer cord, and two thousand, six hundred
electric blasting caps. So this was going to be one
(16:15):
hell of a party. And then James Miller, Richmond Harper,
and Marlon Haggler and also somebody Murray Kessler were arrested
along with Celan. Kessler's partner man my name of Manny
Gambino was kidnapped around the same time the others were arrested.
Very fishy, uh and Gambino's course was later found in
(16:36):
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 at this point, yes,
very nice little um because that plane, the d C four,
was actually owned by this guy named James Boy, who
was in fact an associate, a known associate of the CIA.
(17:00):
James Boy, Jim Plumbly and boy Natash Plumly and James
Boy sounds like made up names. I love it. Well
here's again there there are these weird um. This is
a web, there's a string in the web. It's literally
a Gary web. And uh so this guy, James Boy,
(17:21):
his aircraft later was used by Oliver North essentially to
uh 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, but
(17:42):
three points is what you need to climb up a
conspiracy mountain, right. 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, it was
a guy named Cesario Dilstad uh, an official with US Customs.
It took the authorities over two years to bring Seal
(18:03):
and Code to trial, and then things got really fishy.
So the trial finally gets underway June four, but government
prosecutors do something that automatically, without questions, sinks the case.
They introduced 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
(18:26):
unrelated to them, and so a mistrial is declared. Seal
and his buddies are released, no probation, UH, 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
(18:49):
just get let off. Yeah. Uh this, this is also
going to become a pattern in the life of Seal.
This was not to be, of course, his final arrest.
Uh it. What we can see is that evidence indicates
that every step along the way, someone, some suit would
step in and take over the investigation. After Barry's first arrest,
(19:14):
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 tell we'll examine 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 Barry
(19:41):
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. Then he became
one of the government's most valuable informants in the war
(20:03):
against cocaine. The Last Night on Louisiana, Barry steals, animies
caught up with him and killed him. So Barry's murder
ends a d E A investigation, the investigate the drug
enforcement Agency. The investigation was never resolved, has not been
to this day, and according to some sources, the murder
(20:25):
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
sixteen called Banks, Drugs, and Money that was based on
a film called The Infiltrader. Right, Yeah, And Barry Steal
(20:47):
appears in The Infiltrader, 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 in the series, we're talking to Robert Maser, right,
and he was this d A agent who went under
cover and he ended up busting up part at least
(21:10):
of Pablo Escobar's drug trafficking cartel and then sinking an
international bank that was connected to the to that cartel.
And in this movie, there there's a scene where Robert
Mazer's character is being driven around by Barry Seal, and
Barry Seal's character is complaining, essentially complaining about Ronald Reagan
(21:32):
and Nancy Reagan and the anti drug movement um, talking
about his high level connections with government officials essentially and
how he's been doing this stuff, um, trafficking drugs for
the government essentially. I didn't clock it. All of that
was him in the movie. Interesting, Yeah, it's he's introduced,
and it's kind of shown that way. But then instead
(21:52):
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 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 Steal's death where he wasn't just in his car
(22:13):
or getting out of his vehicle. He was actually driving
while it was occurring. So to our mind, and to
I guess, to your mind, you should at least know
that that's probably not what happened to him. Um. 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
(22:35):
he had already talked about Barry Steal, and then we
discussed how in covering Gary Webb, um who who was
the other guy? Robert Maser and I think there was
one other main story that we've spoken about before. Where
was c I a drug trafficking? Um? Just how common
this feels to us? So if that's not really what happened,
(22:58):
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 his career changed after his first arrest
in nineteen seventy four, when Barry got off scott free,
(23:20):
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 kutzbah had attracted
the attention of the Medine cartel and their leader, Boblo Escobar,
who many of us may recognize from Netflix. It was
(23:40):
on Escobar's suggestion that Barry Seal moved his airstrip from
Louisiana to uh 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.
(24:02):
And he started out, as far as we can tell,
kind of smuggling marijuana on his own, and then he
realized the pound for pound cocaine is where you get
the most gas money. Is he depicted in that Netflix
show Narcos Berry Seal is Yes, Okay, I'm only in
the first season. It's been a spoiler alert. His death
is also portrayed in Narcos. I thought that rang about.
(24:24):
It's been a lot of time as 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 eighty three, was charged with conspiracy
to distribute get this, four hundred and sixty two pounds
of coke. That's an estimated street value in three of
(24:48):
a hundred and sixty eight million. So just for just
for giggles, let's look at how much a hundred and
sixty eight million dollars in nineteen eight. Three is worth
in twenty nineteen. We're gonna pull up the number with
some help from Mission control. Can we get a drum roll? Please?
(25:08):
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 my god, that's why.
That's why you're a super producer. We're gonna we have
to take out to Apple Piece to apologize. Here's the answer.
(25:31):
A hundred and sixty eight million dollars 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 a billionaire today. Wow, you something else,
mickey chuckle? What's that? Barry seals alias or one of
(25:54):
them was Ellis mckpickle. No, not not Ellis, Ellis mcpickle.
He so it seems 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
(26:15):
with a 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 workings. Got flipped, yeah hard,
You got flips hard. So the d A crack this
deal with him. They said, all right, Barry, keep carrying
on your business as usual, keep flying your smuggling roots.
(26:38):
We're going to 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 d e A
agent Ernest Jacobson. And it and it paid off. It delivered.
On his first trip, Oh yeah, he got some photographs
(27:00):
of Cuban officials, Nicaraguan 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. Um. He even
(27:21):
brought back a picture of this guy, this kind of
ghost or this myth that exists out there, Pablo Escobar.
But he was, um, he was in one of those
striped polo shirts that I can't remember if he was
portrayed this way in the infiltrader, but you've seen media
or depictions of Pablo Escobar in this shirt down there,
(27:47):
and uh, Seals Intel then transformed him into literally the
most significant witness in the US is 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
(28:09):
not a long term situation. It was not 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 administration, not in terms of this project,
but in terms of the history of the administration. Can
(28:29):
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. I can know how much he slept. Well,
if you think he was getting high his on supply, yes, well,
(28:52):
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 functioning lack of s
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
(29:16):
the Washington Times by journalist Edmund Jacoby which seems to
out Seal as a government agent. This is also one
of the first public statements that later led to the
Iran Contra scandal, and the d A said, well, a
known snitch is a no good snitch to us. Yeah, yep,
(29:36):
So they caught him loose, and not long after, the
FBI arrest him in Louisiana and the Baton rouge u
s 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
(29:57):
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 he
had to do 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
(30:20):
ended up at that Salvation Army on Airline Highway. That
was part of his probation, and that's where he was
murdered in February. And he was murdered, But who actually
murdered him? We will give you our best guests and warning, Uh,
this is a little bit off the edges of the map,
(30:40):
so there's some speculation involved, but you learn more after
a word from our sponsor. Okay, two things, let's divide
it two ways, dividing conquert. 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
(31:00):
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
(31:23):
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. Two folks
that you know, leave the life. Right not to mention
that are like cooperating with any kind of law enforcement
is Yeah. The cartels, even back then were infamous for
(31:45):
their brutality, they're in humanity, their cruelty, and being an informant,
regardless of which cartel is. This was medie related, but
being an informant is a tremendous, profound sin in the
culture of cartel's. This means that if you are caught snitching, you, uh,
the the thought of a quick, clean death is an
(32:08):
unreasonably happy outcome. Pigs will fly before. The cleanest way
you can die is by your own hand. That's it.
If Yeah, well it's almost it would be. If you
could control how this person dies, it would not be
a fast death, right, that's the that's the idea, right,
because they the cartel at plans, right, they didn't just
(32:30):
want him dead for informing or cost him millions and
lost products. And let's be honest, that's compounded on millions
and bribes because now the the government officials they're bribing
have more leverage to say, oh, well, things are getting
a little hot right now. You know, I wouldn't want
the US president finding out about this. And they're like,
come on, Oliver, be cool, Oliver North, Yeah, exactly. Well,
(32:54):
and then let's talk about the situation. He's alone in
his car at the Salvation Army some and approaches him
and shoots the bullets into him while he's sitting there
in his car. If this were a 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
(33:17):
stuff internally, as they'll put out a bounty, and the
bounty will have a pricing schedule 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 report or something.
(33:37):
Cartel wanted him kidnapped so they can slowly torture him,
not just to get their giggles and their jollies, but
also as an example for other potential turn coach who
are also pilots or government affiliates, and maybe even get
some information about who he talked to him without what
he told them, so they could get a sense of
how to get ahead of it. Right, Yeah, exactly, that's
(33:58):
assuming that they're not all already in cahoots with Uncle Sam. Right. So,
as you said, Matt, here here's the evidence. So Colombian
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 seals murderers were hired by
(34:19):
the Achoa brothers. These three assassins were indicted on March.
In May of seven, these three men are convicted of
first degree murder and Seal's death. They are sentenced to
life in prison without parole. Their names are Louise Carlos
Glintedo Cruz, Miguel Videz and Bernardo Antonio Vasquez. And on
(34:44):
March sixteenth, 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 is taken
during his time as an informant. Reagan suggests that a
top ranking Sandinista official is involved in drugs smuggly, which
(35:07):
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's in physical comedy in the in the
movies back in the day, right, Yeah, I mean he
does that's pretty comedic things in uh, in his time
as president too. So okay, should we talk about how
we feel about this one? Ye? Should we just go?
(35:28):
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 will
lay out here for you about you know, the weapons
(35:50):
that were used in 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. Uh, now we're entering
the realm of what is still oddly enough considered conspiracy theory.
(36:14):
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, uh, this guy was
an informant and bad for business and could make business
even worse if, as you said, old, they got information
from him and he could testify, and he could testify. Yeah,
Uncle Sam's motivation for those who believe that the US
(36:37):
was involved in this assassination was that he could he could, Uh,
those benefiting from the snitch would become the victims of
the snitch, and that that Barry Steal wouldn't just give
intel to the d e A about the cartel operations,
but he would eventually be in a public court of
(36:58):
law saying yeah, let me name some names and people
on the CIA's uh 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
and with the plane for real, Let's let's go over
all this stuff first. Then I just want to talk
(37:19):
about it. 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
(37:42):
that the murder was coming and they actually wanted to
prevent it. That's plum trees 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, Deborrah, Barry Seal flew a ghetto way
playing out of Dallas after JFK was murdered. WHOA, that's intense,
(38:05):
and we have more descriptions. Tosh Plumbly pops up again,
giving us some details about Barry Steal's previous activity with
illegal government projects. Bers Berry Seal did a lot of
damn good stuff in the late sixties and sixties. Seven
and sixty eight, he was with the American South Vietnam
(38:26):
and LAOS doing search and destroy and special ops with
Ted Shackley's boys. Uh, he'd been recruiting, recruited even for
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
(38:46):
the front are America in South Vietnam? Yeah, I mean
remember how he got out Scott free for that first arrested. Well,
according to Uh, I'm a gentleman named Pete Bruton who
wrote a book called The Mafia Cia and George Bush. Uh.
He says, as soon as Seal was freed, he quote
began working full time for the c i A, traveling
(39:09):
back and forth from the U S to Latin America.
And then we have a statement from Daniel hop Sicker.
Hop Sicker claims that Seal was now sheep dipped into
the d e A as an agent for the Special
Operations Group. Seal worked under a guy named Lucien Coning,
who ran secret missions for the d e A. Sheep
(39:30):
dipped is intelligence community slang which means to give someone
a pretty water proof, if not iron clad, alternate identity,
so make pickles or whatever. There you go. Hopefully it
was better than that one. Uh 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,
(39:53):
which I think is one of the most difficult to deny,
is that despite being apparently a very very very valuable
ass and witness, he had absolutely no protection when he
was out in the field. He had He was out
in the wild with no guards and no monitoring. And
the local legal machinery caught wind of this and they
(40:13):
were livid. After Seal died, Louisiana Attorney General William Goost
hand delivered a letter to U S Attorney General Edwin
Mee in protest of the government's failure to protect Seal.
Goose called him a heinous criminal, but he added at
the same time, of all his own purposes, he had
(40:34):
made himself an extremely valuable witness and infollmant in the
conscious fight against illegal drugs. Barris 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
(40:58):
no answer to this question today, because if you are,
if you are an informant like that or 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
window list flower van down the street. Oh for sure,
(41:18):
but no one was there sleep at the switch. You know,
there's even uh, there's an attorney who who gives you
kind of It's a great picture of probably what occurred
within Barry seals life numerous times where he was caught
red hand in smuggling drugs. The d e A, the
(41:39):
c i A 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 d A and c c
i A come through out, Yeah, and they take over
the operation. Then who knows what actually occurs to very deal,
(42:00):
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,
(42:20):
one of them has already died in prison. But it
does seem strange if you think about the way organized
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
(42:42):
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
(43:03):
had some sort of internal logic or calculation, because they
are a rational actor, they must have said, uh, 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
(43:23):
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.
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
(43:47):
this guy. It's a combination of the skill and also
that hood spot 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 you know, scared of the consequences. Right, Yeah, So,
I mean I think that's a valid point, and it's
something that he supported to in interviews that people had
with him before his death. He said, you know, putting
(44:08):
yourself in life and endangering 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 U. S. Government take no
real action against the cartel Because they did get caught,
the cartel may have had a green light from the U. S. Government.
(44:31):
That's what a lot of people believe. The medine Hits
story always had this big flaw. Who would try to
kill one of the CIA's own. And then this means
that we inevitably trace back the bread crumbs along you know,
the strings along the web and ask ourselves could this
be related to the story of the octopus and Danny
(44:54):
Castelero or related investigators like Gary Webb, both of those men,
by the way, who died under what are arguably mysterious circumstances.
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
(45:15):
them working with drug cartels using this money to finance
essentially conflict in other countries in South America and other
places for coups like this money maker. 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
(45:36):
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 is for sure,
they keep dying before the word gets out. Yeah, we're
(45:59):
I mean, we are only not trying to do that.
Women do not have a big picture. No, we do
not know an 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 them. I'll never tell So it's it's
(46:19):
strange because we draw to an unhappy conclusion. During the
bulk of Barry Steal'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. Uh,
(46:42):
the idea that the government would be at all aware
of that was treated as anathema in 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 NBC S, the CBS s, and so on, were
(47:04):
participating in the very conspiracy they purported to investigate and
dismiss and even now mentioned this at the top. Some
people will argue Seal was never involved with the c
i A. 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
(47:26):
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 d
e A. Seal sworn testimony was that he had no
(47:48):
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 d e A. Our task force
never developed any evidence that the CIA was involved with
Seal in drug smuggling. There is not one iota of
(48:09):
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 him,
and the CIA said they didn't do anything. Of course
they did, why would they do anything? So we do
have to note that Han does admit at least four
(48:32):
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 hand,
what do you think you listening now, would a government
(48:54):
agency actually cooperate with a drug cartel to murder one
of their own For believers of certain GfK conspiracy theories,
the answer is obvious, but we want to hear from
you and 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,
(49:16):
all signs point to that, you know, but it was
actually us making it look like those 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
(49:40):
just put it this way. Is the d e A
going to send a crapload of C four in a
plane over to assist either side with Cuba? D A,
probably not c I A shrug, Dot Gift. I mean,
shrug for sure, Dodd Gift. But I guess what I'm saying,
is this this idea that he wasn't working for them
(50:03):
in some way that would entail him working I guess
for himself directly with you know, Fidel Castro's crew to
bring all that the 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
(50:23):
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
(50:45):
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 stop to it. Um, that's just me talking, by
(51:05):
the way. I'm gonna say personally my opinion, and I
don't want to color I don't want to influence anybody
writing into us what we want. 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 factions within related government agencies
absolutely greenlit this staff and in in the way in
(51:29):
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,
(51:51):
how did the how did the cartels do it? Why?
I don't know if it feels like I'm not saying
the ce I told him to do it. But at
the very least, as we say in the South, the C,
the CIA, and the U S 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.
(52:14):
The elso didn't retaliate, Yeah, which is weird because we
were pretty pro retaliation culture here in the US. I
don't know, what do you think? No, No, I agree
with you guys completely, Like it's there's just no logical
way of explaining this whole thing without there being some
(52:34):
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 we mentioned
it for sure, his possible involvement with the JFK assassination. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah,
(52:56):
what if that's the reason. I don't know, you know,
the plumbly story about the CIA attempting to prevent the
assassination was fascinating to me. 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
(53:18):
competitive at that level, their rivals. I'm sure there's more
than a bit of ego involved. Anyone is corruptible, and
people who seem to in public speaking and so on,
get get along, well maybe working backstage for directly um,
directly contradictory forces, you know. Well, And we just have
(53:38):
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 um. I don't know how to
how to put this correctly, That the doing A is
(54:00):
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, um, that you could
have factions who are simultaneously within the CIA attempting to
this is just hypothetic factions within the CIA attempting to
(54:22):
assassinate the president, whi at the same time, a faction
of the CIA is attempting to stop the the other
part of the CIA from assassinating the president, whether they
know the other one is doing, whether 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 uh, private and public entities cooperating,
(54:46):
which is just the drug cartels a business. It's it's uh,
it's products may differ from Halliburton, but that doesn't mean
it's also they're not both international businesses and the FAI
earlier to realize that leads to a great many problems
and discourse today. If you see those congressional testimonies, they're
(55:07):
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 yeah,
it's disgusting and reprehensible to see it justified quote unquote
as like oh, we're we're fighting communism. That's why I
(55:30):
need a million dollars or whatever. And it's it's just
a it's a macro cosmic view of what happens in
a micro cosmic way every single day of 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,
(55:53):
like no one thinks that of the bad guy. It's
all for the greater good all the time. The person
who steals handicapped parking space says, the psychological engine is
the same. It's a me, me me thing. Sure, And
I guess the scary thing is that you can convince
people with the perhaps false motivation there of finding communism,
you can convince people that that is the true thing
(56:14):
you're fighting for, and then you can get people to
do things for you for our interest, for national security.
I don't know what what do you folks think? Yes,
please write to us. We you can find us on
Twitter and on Facebook. Were conspiracy stuff. We are conspiracy
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You can find me on Instagram at how now Noel
(56:35):
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(56:57):
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(57:21):
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(58:21):
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your favorite shows.
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 I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Welcome back
(00:24):
to the show. My name is Matt, my name they
call me Ben. We were joined as always with our
super producer Paul Mission controlled decade. 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 it, I feel like I'm about to
get into some kind of freestyle or something. There's a
cadence to it. When you did, didn't, didn't do? Do
(00:47):
do 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 was caught.
I was in Vegas. Circumstances found me in Vegas this
past weekend and I almost ended up at at a
(01:08):
weird party with some notable people. But being layne, I
went to my hotel and read a book. Yeah you did,
wink he did? And he totally ran that party. I
think so, yeah, I'm looking at no over here. I
don't think you did, dude. I think he's telling the truth.
How do you guys have a good weekend? Yeah? I
(01:28):
had a great weekend. Hey, I played a lot of
that Detroit Becoming Human. It was the free game on
the PlayStation network. Totally worth it, best gaming I've played
in a long time. Highly recommended. If you're into story,
if you want some complex game play, don't don't do it.
But if you just want to learn about how androids
(01:50):
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, 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 games stuff.
I would love to play a video game called stuff.
(02:12):
They don't want you to know with that weird hand. Yeah,
uh and uh, you know, maybe one day, maybe one
day we'll we'll mess with some video game type folks.
I really like old like video 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
blocking Marty McFly. Yeah, you know remember ET the game.
(02:33):
That was where I was just going to mention that, Yeah,
ET the game one of uh the universally agreed worst
video games ever. Yeah, I think I think there's an
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
(02:54):
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. But what I'm saying is if
you were into playing together, you guys could investigate going
down different leads. You report back. Ben's found out everything
about the Black Hand. I've been busy over here with
an extra trest real angle. For some reason, they're connected.
(03:17):
Then we figure out the next place to go. I'm
telling you this video game rules. Get at me and
Ben and Noel and 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
(03:38):
eight three three st d w y t K. If
you're a long time listener, you can probably tell that
we're all we're all film buffs here or voracious sponges
of story and information. Uh. We we enjoy that in
terms of video games, terms of music, art, and you know,
(04:00):
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 seventeen, the actor Tom Cruise
starred in a film called American Maid. American Maide follows
the highly fictionalized life and times of a real life
(04:23):
pilot named Barry Seal, a pilot amongst other things, a
pilot amongst other things. And we asked, oh, I forget that, Paul,
Mr Control, how are you doing today? All right? We
got a good thumbs up, and Paul, you also gave
a thumbs up to American Maide? 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?
(04:45):
Was that was my fault? I said, how are you
guys doing that? I derailed it and I sent it
to Ben. That was my fault. No, no, no, no,
it's cool. What's up in your life? No? Did you
go on that date we talked about I take you
on a day? It's true. I saw a cast movie
that you guys 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
(05:07):
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
(05:29):
Michelle Gondry kind of vibe. I really recommended highly very dreamlike,
very powerful, very very special movie. I liked a lot
done what 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
(05:51):
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 let's give it to you. Critics
gave it eight 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
(06:13):
than the critics perhaps gave it, 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, what
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.
(06:36):
So here are the facts. We've been throwing this name
around a lot Barry 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 klansman. Yeah, he was a member of the
ku Klux Klan, which um you know that sounds like
(06:59):
on the inspiratorial 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 solar flight at fifteen, one year
before he actually got his legit pilot's license, and then
not too long after that, you work for one of
those companies that have like the banners that were towed
(07:22):
behind the planes for advertising, which is a thing that
I've always been fascinated by, Like who is that person
that does that? And it's a great idea for prank
to It's a my secret list of dream pranks is
to take one of those advertising banners. This is the
most sith lord version taking advertising banner. Hire someone to
fly out a banner that says will you marry me?
(07:43):
And just hear the relationships crumble around the city for
anyone who accidentally looks up and then they're they're 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. You know, in general, it's pretty
inconsiderable super Man ruin ruining everybody's beach day. So to
(08:08):
jump back to Barry Seal really fast, you guys, yes, um,
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 um adventurous, right sure. Yeah,
(08:31):
he's a drilline 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 your parents are
an older person or someone with a license will take
(08:53):
you out to a parking lot, and generally law enforcement
will look the other way as this fourteen year old
is just of being a clutch You know, but 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
(09:13):
ultimately fatal career. He joined the Civil Air Patrol and
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
(09:37):
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 Odom, they
say that Seal actually encountered Mr Lee Harvey Oswald while
(09:59):
he was meaning, oh oh, that's true. But wait, wait,
there's more, as more as Billy Mays was wont to say, yes,
Tosh plum Lee another figure later related to the JFK assassination.
That's a great name, by the way, Gosh plumb Lee.
I love that sounds like a character and clue, Yeah,
it really does. He claims that Barry Seal began working
(10:21):
for the CIA in the mid nineteen fifties. We have
a quote from Tash on this. I think Tosh Plumbly
would sound like a 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 periperal player back then, but he was a CIA
(10:43):
contract pilot all the way back to nineteen fifty six
or fifty seven. Now, remember this is Baton Rouge, doesn't matter.
This is how Plumly sounds, my man. He's an aristocrat
of the highest order. And Seal would later in sworn
test Simoni deny any affiliation with the CIA whatsoever in
(11:08):
any shape, form or fashion. That'll come up later. Let's
keep going. In n he began ferrying weapons to Fidel Castro,
fighting against the Bautista 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,
(11:28):
I guess he was. It was just another contractor, and
maybe maybe Castro had like a four thirty PM appointment
with the CIA and a five fifteen appointment with Barry
Seal who knows, or maybe he wasn't actually meeting. Like,
here's the tough thing. It seems as though if you're
going to be flying weapons in to a group like uh,
(11:52):
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. Um, I guess just what I'm saying is
it was certainly under the radar when it was occurring,
(12:14):
right with authorities, or at leasie would have to be,
unless it was explicitly known that this was occurring as
a mission and part of the CIA. So yeah, that's
that's another part. Because astute listeners, you just heard us
say the CIA was at the time supporting the overthrow
of Batista. However, the policy changed soon after Castro gained power,
(12:37):
and Barry's Seal apparently started taking part in air attacks
on the emergent new government. Either way they like to
he's doing 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
(12:59):
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 ninety 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
(13:22):
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
(13:44):
International Traits Center run by Clay Shaw. Can we just
talk about Aerial Advertising Associates? Sure? In 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.
(14:04):
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. Uh,
it feels very much like that to me. I'm not
saying it was a CIA friend, just saying sure, it's
like Legitimate Business Partners Associated LLC. Yeah, American, No, not
(14:27):
American Airlines. What was it called? Was the Big One America?
How could you? How could you hate that? 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,
(14:47):
Special Operations Detachment of the twentie Special Forces Group Airborne.
In sixty four, he joins the Engineer Battalion based in St. Louis.
He leaves there in sixty six. He's Sir is in
the Louisiana Army National Guard. The Army Reserve. He joins
t w A trans World Airlines in nineteen sixty eight
(15:07):
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 the it's he's an experienced guy by
(15:33):
the time. He's not that old, yeah, exactly borne yep,
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
(15:53):
was accused of sending C four explosives to anti Castro
Cubans based in Mexico. A DC war that was a
plane news line was seized at the Shreveport Regional Airport,
loaded with around seven tons of plastic explosive, seven thousand
feet of explosive primer cord, and two thousand, six hundred
electric blasting caps. So this was going to be one
(16:15):
hell of a party. And then James Miller, Richmond Harper,
and Marlon Haggler and also somebody Murray Kessler were arrested
along with Celan. Kessler's partner man my name of Manny
Gambino was kidnapped around the same time the others were arrested.
Very fishy, uh and Gambino's course was later found in
(16:36):
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 at this point, yes,
very nice little um because that plane, the d C four,
was actually owned by this guy named James Boy, who
was in fact an associate, a known associate of the CIA.
(17:00):
James Boy, Jim Plumbly and boy Natash Plumly and James
Boy sounds like made up names. I love it. Well
here's again there there are these weird um. This is
a web, there's a string in the web. It's literally
a Gary web. And uh so this guy, James Boy,
(17:21):
his aircraft later was used by Oliver North essentially to
uh 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, but
(17:42):
three points is what you need to climb up a
conspiracy mountain, right. 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, it was
a guy named Cesario Dilstad uh, an official with US Customs.
It took the authorities over two years to bring Seal
(18:03):
and Code to trial, and then things got really fishy.
So the trial finally gets underway June four, but government
prosecutors do something that automatically, without questions, sinks the case.
They introduced 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
(18:26):
unrelated to them, and so a mistrial is declared. Seal
and his buddies are released, no probation, UH, 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
(18:49):
just get let off. Yeah. Uh this, this is also
going to become a pattern in the life of Seal.
This was not to be, of course, his final arrest.
Uh it. What we can see is that evidence indicates
that every step along the way, someone, some suit would
step in and take over the investigation. After Barry's first arrest,
(19:14):
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 tell we'll examine 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 Barry
(19:41):
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. Then he became
one of the government's most valuable informants in the war
(20:03):
against cocaine. The Last Night on Louisiana, Barry steals, animies
caught up with him and killed him. So Barry's murder
ends a d E A investigation, the investigate the drug
enforcement Agency. The investigation was never resolved, has not been
to this day, and according to some sources, the murder
(20:25):
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
sixteen called Banks, Drugs, and Money that was based on
a film called The Infiltrader. Right, Yeah, And Barry Steal
(20:47):
appears in The Infiltrader, 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 in the series, we're talking to Robert Maser, right,
and he was this d A agent who went under
cover and he ended up busting up part at least
(21:10):
of Pablo Escobar's drug trafficking cartel and then sinking an
international bank that was connected to the to that cartel.
And in this movie, there there's a scene where Robert
Mazer's character is being driven around by Barry Seal, and
Barry Seal's character is complaining, essentially complaining about Ronald Reagan
(21:32):
and Nancy Reagan and the anti drug movement um, talking
about his high level connections with government officials essentially and
how he's been doing this stuff, um, trafficking drugs for
the government essentially. I didn't clock it. All of that
was him in the movie. Interesting, Yeah, it's he's introduced,
and it's kind of shown that way. But then instead
(21:52):
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 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 Steal's death where he wasn't just in his car
(22:13):
or getting out of his vehicle. He was actually driving
while it was occurring. So to our mind, and to
I guess, to your mind, you should at least know
that that's probably not what happened to him. Um. 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
(22:35):
he had already talked about Barry Steal, and then we
discussed how in covering Gary Webb, um who who was
the other guy? Robert Maser and I think there was
one other main story that we've spoken about before. Where
was c I a drug trafficking? Um? Just how common
this feels to us? So if that's not really what happened,
(22:58):
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 his career changed after his first arrest
in nineteen seventy four, when Barry got off scott free,
(23:20):
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 kutzbah had attracted
the attention of the Medine cartel and their leader, Boblo Escobar,
who many of us may recognize from Netflix. It was
(23:40):
on Escobar's suggestion that Barry Seal moved his airstrip from
Louisiana to uh 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.
(24:02):
And he started out, as far as we can tell,
kind of smuggling marijuana on his own, and then he
realized the pound for pound cocaine is where you get
the most gas money. Is he depicted in that Netflix
show Narcos Berry Seal is Yes, Okay, I'm only in
the first season. It's been a spoiler alert. His death
is also portrayed in Narcos. I thought that rang about.
(24:24):
It's been a lot of time as 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 eighty three, was charged with conspiracy
to distribute get this, four hundred and sixty two pounds
of coke. That's an estimated street value in three of
(24:48):
a hundred and sixty eight million. So just for just
for giggles, let's look at how much a hundred and
sixty eight million dollars in nineteen eight. Three is worth
in twenty nineteen. We're gonna pull up the number with
some help from Mission control. Can we get a drum roll? Please?
(25:08):
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 my god, that's why.
That's why you're a super producer. We're gonna we have
to take out to Apple Piece to apologize. Here's the answer.
(25:31):
A hundred and sixty eight million dollars 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 a billionaire today. Wow, you something else,
mickey chuckle? What's that? Barry seals alias or one of
(25:54):
them was Ellis mckpickle. No, not not Ellis, Ellis mcpickle.
He so it seems 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
(26:15):
with a 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 workings. Got flipped, yeah hard,
You got flips hard. So the d A crack this
deal with him. They said, all right, Barry, keep carrying
on your business as usual, keep flying your smuggling roots.
(26:38):
We're going to 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 d e A
agent Ernest Jacobson. And it and it paid off. It delivered.
On his first trip, Oh yeah, he got some photographs
(27:00):
of Cuban officials, Nicaraguan 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. Um. He even
(27:21):
brought back a picture of this guy, this kind of
ghost or this myth that exists out there, Pablo Escobar.
But he was, um, he was in one of those
striped polo shirts that I can't remember if he was
portrayed this way in the infiltrader, but you've seen media
or depictions of Pablo Escobar in this shirt down there,
(27:47):
and uh, Seals Intel then transformed him into literally the
most significant witness in the US is 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
(28:09):
not a long term situation. It was not 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 administration, not in terms of this project,
but in terms of the history of the administration. Can
(28:29):
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. I can know how much he slept. Well,
if you think he was getting high his on supply, yes, well,
(28:52):
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 functioning lack of s
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
(29:16):
the Washington Times by journalist Edmund Jacoby which seems to
out Seal as a government agent. This is also one
of the first public statements that later led to the
Iran Contra scandal, and the d A said, well, a
known snitch is a no good snitch to us. Yeah, yep,
(29:36):
So they caught him loose, and not long after, the
FBI arrest him in Louisiana and the Baton rouge u
s 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
(29:57):
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 he
had to do 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
(30:20):
ended up at that Salvation Army on Airline Highway. That
was part of his probation, and that's where he was
murdered in February. And he was murdered, But who actually
murdered him? We will give you our best guests and warning, Uh,
this is a little bit off the edges of the map,
(30:40):
so there's some speculation involved, but you learn more after
a word from our sponsor. Okay, two things, let's divide
it two ways, dividing conquert. 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
(31:00):
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
(31:23):
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. Two folks
that you know, leave the life. Right not to mention
that are like cooperating with any kind of law enforcement
is Yeah. The cartels, even back then were infamous for
(31:45):
their brutality, they're in humanity, their cruelty, and being an informant,
regardless of which cartel is. This was medie related, but
being an informant is a tremendous, profound sin in the
culture of cartel's. This means that if you are caught snitching, you, uh,
the the thought of a quick, clean death is an
(32:08):
unreasonably happy outcome. Pigs will fly before. The cleanest way
you can die is by your own hand. That's it.
If Yeah, well it's almost it would be. If you
could control how this person dies, it would not be
a fast death, right, that's the that's the idea, right,
because they the cartel at plans, right, they didn't just
(32:30):
want him dead for informing or cost him millions and
lost products. And let's be honest, that's compounded on millions
and bribes because now the the government officials they're bribing
have more leverage to say, oh, well, things are getting
a little hot right now. You know, I wouldn't want
the US president finding out about this. And they're like,
come on, Oliver, be cool, Oliver North, Yeah, exactly. Well,
(32:54):
and then let's talk about the situation. He's alone in
his car at the Salvation Army some and approaches him
and shoots the bullets into him while he's sitting there
in his car. If this were a 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
(33:17):
stuff internally, as they'll put out a bounty, and the
bounty will have a pricing schedule 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 report or something.
(33:37):
Cartel wanted him kidnapped so they can slowly torture him,
not just to get their giggles and their jollies, but
also as an example for other potential turn coach who
are also pilots or government affiliates, and maybe even get
some information about who he talked to him without what
he told them, so they could get a sense of
how to get ahead of it. Right, Yeah, exactly, that's
(33:58):
assuming that they're not all already in cahoots with Uncle Sam. Right. So,
as you said, Matt, here here's the evidence. So Colombian
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 seals murderers were hired by
(34:19):
the Achoa brothers. These three assassins were indicted on March.
In May of seven, these three men are convicted of
first degree murder and Seal's death. They are sentenced to
life in prison without parole. Their names are Louise Carlos
Glintedo Cruz, Miguel Videz and Bernardo Antonio Vasquez. And on
(34:44):
March sixteenth, 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 is taken
during his time as an informant. Reagan suggests that a
top ranking Sandinista official is involved in drugs smuggly, which
(35:07):
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's in physical comedy in the in the
movies back in the day, right, Yeah, I mean he
does that's pretty comedic things in uh, in his time
as president too. So okay, should we talk about how
we feel about this one? Ye? Should we just go?
(35:28):
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 will
lay out here for you about you know, the weapons
(35:50):
that were used in 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. Uh, now we're entering
the realm of what is still oddly enough considered conspiracy theory.
(36:14):
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, uh, this guy was
an informant and bad for business and could make business
even worse if, as you said, old, they got information
from him and he could testify, and he could testify. Yeah,
Uncle Sam's motivation for those who believe that the US
(36:37):
was involved in this assassination was that he could he could, Uh,
those benefiting from the snitch would become the victims of
the snitch, and that that Barry Steal wouldn't just give
intel to the d e A about the cartel operations,
but he would eventually be in a public court of
(36:58):
law saying yeah, let me name some names and people
on the CIA's uh 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
and with the plane for real, Let's let's go over
all this stuff first. Then I just want to talk
(37:19):
about it. 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
(37:42):
that the murder was coming and they actually wanted to
prevent it. That's plum trees 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, Deborrah, Barry Seal flew a ghetto way
playing out of Dallas after JFK was murdered. WHOA, that's intense,
(38:05):
and we have more descriptions. Tosh Plumbly pops up again,
giving us some details about Barry Steal's previous activity with
illegal government projects. Bers Berry Seal did a lot of
damn good stuff in the late sixties and sixties. Seven
and sixty eight, he was with the American South Vietnam
(38:26):
and LAOS doing search and destroy and special ops with
Ted Shackley's boys. Uh, he'd been recruiting, recruited even for
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
(38:46):
the front are America in South Vietnam? Yeah, I mean
remember how he got out Scott free for that first arrested. Well,
according to Uh, I'm a gentleman named Pete Bruton who
wrote a book called The Mafia Cia and George Bush. Uh.
He says, as soon as Seal was freed, he quote
began working full time for the c i A, traveling
(39:09):
back and forth from the U S to Latin America.
And then we have a statement from Daniel hop Sicker.
Hop Sicker claims that Seal was now sheep dipped into
the d e A as an agent for the Special
Operations Group. Seal worked under a guy named Lucien Coning,
who ran secret missions for the d e A. Sheep
(39:30):
dipped is intelligence community slang which means to give someone
a pretty water proof, if not iron clad, alternate identity,
so make pickles or whatever. There you go. Hopefully it
was better than that one. Uh 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,
(39:53):
which I think is one of the most difficult to deny,
is that despite being apparently a very very very valuable
ass and witness, he had absolutely no protection when he
was out in the field. He had He was out
in the wild with no guards and no monitoring. And
the local legal machinery caught wind of this and they
(40:13):
were livid. After Seal died, Louisiana Attorney General William Goost
hand delivered a letter to U S Attorney General Edwin
Mee in protest of the government's failure to protect Seal.
Goose called him a heinous criminal, but he added at
the same time, of all his own purposes, he had
(40:34):
made himself an extremely valuable witness and infollmant in the
conscious fight against illegal drugs. Barris 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
(40:58):
no answer to this question today, because if you are,
if you are an informant like that or 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
window list flower van down the street. Oh for sure,
(41:18):
but no one was there sleep at the switch. You know,
there's even uh, there's an attorney who who gives you
kind of It's a great picture of probably what occurred
within Barry seals life numerous times where he was caught
red hand in smuggling drugs. The d e A, the
(41:39):
c i A 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 d A and c c
i A come through out, Yeah, and they take over
the operation. Then who knows what actually occurs to very deal,
(42:00):
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,
(42:20):
one of them has already died in prison. But it
does seem strange if you think about the way organized
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
(42:42):
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
(43:03):
had some sort of internal logic or calculation, because they
are a rational actor, they must have said, uh, 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
(43:23):
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.
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
(43:47):
this guy. It's a combination of the skill and also
that hood spot 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 you know, scared of the consequences. Right, Yeah, So,
I mean I think that's a valid point, and it's
something that he supported to in interviews that people had
with him before his death. He said, you know, putting
(44:08):
yourself in life and endangering 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 U. S. Government take no
real action against the cartel Because they did get caught,
the cartel may have had a green light from the U. S. Government.
(44:31):
That's what a lot of people believe. The medine Hits
story always had this big flaw. Who would try to
kill one of the CIA's own. And then this means
that we inevitably trace back the bread crumbs along you know,
the strings along the web and ask ourselves could this
be related to the story of the octopus and Danny
(44:54):
Castelero or related investigators like Gary Webb, both of those men,
by the way, who died under what are arguably mysterious circumstances.
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
(45:15):
them working with drug cartels using this money to finance
essentially conflict in other countries in South America and other
places for coups like this money maker. 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
(45:36):
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 is for sure,
they keep dying before the word gets out. Yeah, we're
(45:59):
I mean, we are only not trying to do that.
Women do not have a big picture. No, we do
not know an 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 them. I'll never tell So it's it's
(46:19):
strange because we draw to an unhappy conclusion. During the
bulk of Barry Steal'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. Uh,
(46:42):
the idea that the government would be at all aware
of that was treated as anathema in 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 NBC S, the CBS s, and so on, were
(47:04):
participating in the very conspiracy they purported to investigate and
dismiss and even now mentioned this at the top. Some
people will argue Seal was never involved with the c
i A. 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
(47:26):
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 d
e A. Seal sworn testimony was that he had no
(47:48):
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 d e A. Our task force
never developed any evidence that the CIA was involved with
Seal in drug smuggling. There is not one iota of
(48:09):
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 him,
and the CIA said they didn't do anything. Of course
they did, why would they do anything? So we do
have to note that Han does admit at least four
(48:32):
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 hand,
what do you think you listening now, would a government
(48:54):
agency actually cooperate with a drug cartel to murder one
of their own For believers of certain GfK conspiracy theories,
the answer is obvious, but we want to hear from
you and 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,
(49:16):
all signs point to that, you know, but it was
actually us making it look like those 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
(49:40):
just put it this way. Is the d e A
going to send a crapload of C four in a
plane over to assist either side with Cuba? D A,
probably not c I A shrug, Dot Gift. I mean,
shrug for sure, Dodd Gift. But I guess what I'm saying,
is this this idea that he wasn't working for them
(50:03):
in some way that would entail him working I guess
for himself directly with you know, Fidel Castro's crew to
bring all that the 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
(50:23):
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
(50:45):
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 stop to it. Um, that's just me talking, by
(51:05):
the way. I'm gonna say personally my opinion, and I
don't want to color I don't want to influence anybody
writing into us what we want. 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 factions within related government agencies
absolutely greenlit this staff and in in the way in
(51:29):
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,
(51:51):
how did the how did the cartels do it? Why?
I don't know if it feels like I'm not saying
the ce I told him to do it. But at
the very least, as we say in the South, the C,
the CIA, and the U S 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.
(52:14):
The elso didn't retaliate, Yeah, which is weird because we
were pretty pro retaliation culture here in the US. I
don't know, what do you think? No, No, I agree
with you guys completely, Like it's there's just no logical
way of explaining this whole thing without there being some
(52:34):
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 we mentioned
it for sure, his possible involvement with the JFK assassination. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah,
(52:56):
what if that's the reason. I don't know, you know,
the plumbly story about the CIA attempting to prevent the
assassination was fascinating to me. 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
(53:18):
competitive at that level, their rivals. I'm sure there's more
than a bit of ego involved. Anyone is corruptible, and
people who seem to in public speaking and so on,
get get along, well maybe working backstage for directly um,
directly contradictory forces, you know. Well, And we just have
(53:38):
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 um. I don't know how to
how to put this correctly, That the doing A is
(54:00):
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, um, that you could
have factions who are simultaneously within the CIA attempting to
this is just hypothetic factions within the CIA attempting to
(54:22):
assassinate the president, whi at the same time, a faction
of the CIA is attempting to stop the the other
part of the CIA from assassinating the president, whether they
know the other one is doing, whether 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 uh, private and public entities cooperating,
(54:46):
which is just the drug cartels a business. It's it's uh,
it's products may differ from Halliburton, but that doesn't mean
it's also they're not both international businesses and the FAI
earlier to realize that leads to a great many problems
and discourse today. If you see those congressional testimonies, they're
(55:07):
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 yeah,
it's disgusting and reprehensible to see it justified quote unquote
as like oh, we're we're fighting communism. That's why I
(55:30):
need a million dollars or whatever. And it's it's just
a it's a macro cosmic view of what happens in
a micro cosmic way every single day of 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,
(55:53):
like no one thinks that of the bad guy. It's
all for the greater good all the time. The person
who steals handicapped parking space says, the psychological engine is
the same. It's a me, me me thing. Sure, And
I guess the scary thing is that you can convince
people with the perhaps false motivation there of finding communism,
you can convince people that that is the true thing
(56:14):
you're fighting for, and then you can get people to
do things for you for our interest, for national security.
I don't know what what do you folks think? Yes,
please write to us. We you can find us on
Twitter and on Facebook. Were conspiracy stuff. We are conspiracy
stuff show on Instagram. You guys have your own Instagrams, right, Yeah?
You can find me on Instagram at how now Noel
(56:35):
Brown and you can find me at Ben Bolan on
Instagram and at then bolan hsw on Twitter. If you
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Your comments might get on the air. Tell us about
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(56:57):
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That's that's the whole thing. Here's our number one eight
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(57:21):
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