Barry Seal

His non-active duty was served in the 245th Engineer Battalion, where his MOS was radio telephone operator.

Adler Berriman "Barry" Seal (July 16, 1939 – February 19, 1986) was an American commercial airline pilot who became a major drug smuggler for the Medellín Cartel.

When Seal was convicted of smuggling charges, he became an informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration and testified in several major drug trials.

In 1962, Seal enlisted in the Louisiana Army National Guard for six years: six months of active duty, followed by five and a half years of inactive duty.

Seal's active duty began in July 1962.

He was assigned to the 20th Special Forces Group and graduated from the United States Army Airborne School selection and training.

In 1964, Seal joined TWA as a flight engineer and was soon promoted to the first officer, then captain, flying a Boeing 707 on a regular Western Europe route.

He was one of the youngest 707 command pilots in the TWA fleet.

Seal's career with TWA ended in July 1972, when he was arrested for involvement in a conspiracy to smuggle a shipment of plastic explosives to Mexico using a DC-4.

The case was eventually dismissed in 1974 for prosecutorial misconduct, but in the meantime TWA fired Seal, who had falsely taken medical leave to participate in the scheme.

Seal admitted that he started smuggling small amounts of marijuana by air in early 1976.

By 1978, he had expanded to flying significant loads of cocaine, pound-for-pound a much more profitable enterprise than marijuana smuggling.

Seal's operations received an important boost when he was arrested and jailed in Honduras on the return leg of a drug-smuggling trip to Ecuador.

Seal made important connections while in prison in Honduras, including Emile Camp, a fellow Louisiana pilot and smuggler who became one of Seal's closest associates, and Ellis McKenzie, a local Honduran smuggler.

Also, after his release from prison Seal met William Roger Reaves on the flight back to the U.S. It was Reaves who provided Seal with his first connection to the Medellín Cartel.

To expand his smuggling capacity, Seal also hired William Bottoms, his ex-brother-in-law, as a pilot.

From 1980 on, Bottoms was the main pilot in Seal's smuggling enterprise, often flying with Camp while Seal oversaw planning and operations.

In 1981, Seal began smuggling cocaine for the Medellín Cartel.

At his peak, he earned as much as $500,000 per flight transporting shipments of cocaine from Colombia to the United States.

Seal's smuggling method was to use low-flying planes and airdrop drug packages in remote areas of Louisiana.

They were then picked up by Seal's ground team and transported to the Colombian distributors in Florida.

By 1981, DEA agents in Florida were aware of Seal's smuggling activities.

In April 1981, a DEA informant introduced Seal to an undercover DEA agent.

After several months of contacts, the agent negotiated a deal with Seal to smuggle 1,200 pounds of methaqualone tablets into the United States (the tablets were counterfeits, made of chalk).

The investigation into Seal was part of a major undercover operation called Operation Screamer in which over 80 pilots were eventually indicted.

By 1982, Seal was using over a dozen aircraft in his smuggling operation.

The number of planes and the frequency of flights soon attracted the attention of Louisiana State Police and Federal investigators.

To avoid this unwanted attention, Seal moved his aircraft to Mena Intermountain Regional Airport in Mena, Arkansas, where he did maintenance and modifications to improve the planes' carrying capacity and avionics.

Seal's activities in Mena later became the subject of rumor and controversy, but according to Seal's biographer, former FBI agent Del Hahn, Seal did not use Mena as a drug transshipment point.

Two indictments were returned against Seal in March 1983.

The first indictment charged Seal alone with two counts of conspiracy to distribute methaqualone.

The second indictment charged Seal and three others with multiple counts of possession and distribution of methaqualone, phenobarbital, and meperidine.

Seal surrendered to federal authorities at the end of April 1983 and attempted to make a deal, first with the Florida task force, then with the Baton Rouge task force.

Both rejected any deals, even though Seal told them a little about his involvement with the Ochoa family.

Without a deal, Seal was tried in February 1984 and after a month-long trial was convicted on all the counts in the first indictment.

He was murdered on February 19, 1986, by contract killers hired by the cartel.

Barry Seal was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the son of Mary Lou (née Delcambre) and Benjamin Curtis Seal, a candy wholesaler.

Seal began to fly as a teenager, earning a student pilot certificate at 16 and a private pilot's certificate at 17.

His flight instructor described him as a naturally gifted pilot.

An "extensive joint investigation" by the FBI, Arkansas State Police and IRS revealed in 2020 that Barry Seal had used the Mena airport for "smuggling activity" from late 1980 until March 1984.