Excerpt: Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger

The Mena Intermountain Regional Airport in the west Arkansas foothills of the Ouachita Mountains seems an unlikely locale for spy stories and conspiracy tales. Before the arrival of Barry Seal, Mena was best known for its proximity to the Jot ‘em Down Store in nearby Pine Ridge. The rural relic was made famous by Lum and Abner, popular 1940’s radio characters. The Jot ‘em Down Store was a fictional backdrop for dispensing homespun mountain observations about Washington politics and national affairs. It’s too bad that Lum and Abner were not around when Mena gained mythical notoriety. The zany stories would have provided them months of material for comical commentary. 

The yarn began in June, 1984, when a camouflage-painted C-123K transport plane piloted by Barry Seal landed at the airport with a full cargo of rumors and conjecture. Dubbed “The Fat Lady” in its Vietnam days, the retired military aircraft sat on a tarmac outside the hangar of an airport fabrication shop for six months. Before being sold, it left the ground twice—each time to circle the airport. But the simple presence of the mysterious plane triggered years of speculation that has never gone away. The dimwitted stories continue even today. What made the Mena fable so astonishing was the willingness of supposedly intelligent people to believe the myth. 

Twenty-four years ago today, notorious international drug smuggler/turned informant Barry Seal was assassinated in Baton Rouge by a Colombian hit team outside a Salvation Army halfway house. Then described by the Drug Enforcement Administration as the most important informant in the agency’s history, Seal had been stripped of armed bodyguards by an irate Louisiana federal judge, who was outraged that the smuggler avoided prison in a south Florida case because of his value as a witness against Colombia’s Medellin cocaine cartel. Seal had also plea bargained his way out of a prison sentence in an unrelated Baton Rouge case, prompting a revenge-tainted outburst by the angry judge. As part of Seal’s  probation, he was ordered to spend nights at the halfway house. Despite testimony by lawmen and prosecutors that Barry’s life was in danger, the judge put him on a predictable schedule  

I was well-acquainted with Barry—to close, according to many law enforcement officials. He contacted me in 1984, claiming to be caught in the midst of a turf battle between drug agents in Baton Rouge and and a DEA task force in Miami. Although skeptical at first, I soon established that he was, in fact, an informant whose undercover exploits in Central America were on the verge of disrupting the world’s biggest cocaine operation—the main source of 90% of the cocaine shipped into the United States. Traveling with Seal to Miami and Mena, Arkansas, I secretly videotaped his meetings with drug agents. I also put together a paper trail that re-enforced his bona fides. 

Barry’s motives for working with the DEA were not altruistic. He had been caught smuggling drugs into south Florida and faced the prospect of a long prison term. So he cut a deal. But rather than admit to me that he was a common drug smuggler, Seal tried to foist himself off as a spy working undercover for the CIA. However, the extent of his spy activity was limited to a one time mission in which he secretly snapped pictures of cocaine being loaded onto his C-123 in Nicaragua during a DEA sting operation. After learning of the sting from DEA officials, the CIA asked to install a camera on the plane to gather evidence that Nicaragua had become a trans-shipment point for cocaine processed in Colombia.

Seal’s photographs were later be used by President Reagan in a nationally broadcast speech seeking funds for Nicaragun Contra rebels. By then, Barry was buried in Green Oaks Cemetery in Baton Rouge. But metaphorically, he was not dead. Instead, he became the star of the Mena myth—a conspiracy tale of a CIA guns-for-drugs plot centered at the Mena airport.

In someways, I feel responsible for giving early momentum to conspiracy theories. A few months after meeting Barry, I reported a one-hour investigative documentary giving details of his Nicaraguan undercover mission. Titled, Uncle Sam Wants You, the report criticized lawmen and the U.S. Attorney’s office in Baton Rouge for jeopardizing the south Florida investigation. I was accused of “taking up the banner of a drug smuggler.”

However, the main thrust of the documentary was the ongoing turf battle between jurisdictions. Still, I have regrets about the documentary because I allowed Barry to hint that he was spy. For the benefit of cameras, he maximized his minor CIA role and minimized his activities as a drug smuggler. My skewed judgment in editing the interviews was geared toward dramatic narrative rather than stating explicitly that he was a spy wannabe. 

The previous paragraphs give the basic building blocks on which the Mena myth was built. A mysterious military transport plane  lands in Mena, Arkansas and remains there for several months. The pilot alludes to being a CIA operative on a television show, as well as in conversations with nearly everyone he comes in contact with. After he is mowed down in a contract killing, the President of the United States displays CIA photographs of his Nicaraguan sting operation. And lo and behold, months after Barry Seal’s murder, his C-123 is shot down in Nicaragua during an honest-to-goodness CIA operation to assist Contra Rebels.

Enter onto the scene the Christic Institute.  In the 1980’s, the  left-wing organization was obsessed with CIA operations in Central America. Christic propagated dozens of drugs-for-guns stories and other yarns linked to U.S. intelligence abuses. Some had a ring of truth, others were exaggerated or downright wrong. The institute was later discredited in lawsuits to the point that it was forced to declare bankruptcy. Beforehand, though, it grabbed hold of the Barry Seal saga and managed to convince an array of left-wing journalists to run the story. And as the Iran-Contra scandal unfolded in the Reagan Admininistration, Seal emerged as a player.

In ensuing years, the tale expanded to link him to President’s Reagan and George Herbert Bush. Following the election of Bill Clinton, the right-wing took possession of the Barry Seal saga, accusing Clinton of protecting the Mena drug operation as a favor for cocaine-snorting “Friends of Bill.” And so it went. No rumor was too ridiculous to be discounted.

And it hasn’t stopped yet. Two weeks ago, I received a telephone call from a reporter in Arkansas, who said he was pursuing brand new leads about Seal’s Arkansas activities. I cautioned him to read my book, which provides a huge body of documented evidence contradicting rumors about Barry’s activities.

I remained in contact with Seal from 1984 until a few days before his murder. The last encounter occured when he came to my office to meet a Miami private investigator, who happened to be a friend of mine. The detective—hired by an attorney representing drug kingpin Pablo Escobar—wanted Seal to identify photographs of Escobar taken during the Nicaraguan sting operation. DEA agents in Miami approved the meeting. Even so, U.S. prosecutors in Louisiana questioned me to determine if there was a connection between the meeting and Seal’s death. There wasn’t. By then, the assassins had been arrested. They were convicted and remain in prison.

For me, there was disturbing testimony in the trial.  I learned that my 1984 Barry Seal documentary ended up in the hands of Pablo Escobar, who only knew the pilot by an alias he used in dealing with the Colombian cartel. After watching my program, Escobar reportedly put out the contract on Seal’s life.

I don’t know if I could have dissauded Barry to conceal his identity, even if I tried. He was a self-promoter from the get-go and wanted his face shown. Therefore, he got the publicity he wanted—then and now. I have a hunch that if I walk close enough to Barry’s Baton Rouge gravesite, the ground may quake from his laughter at the conspiracy legacy he left behind. 

I know I laugh loudly when reading crazy stories about his adventures, as well as all the conspiracy tales by “birthers” and others willing to believe similar stories. Keep an eye out for the black helicopters, or flying saucers, or whatever. They are coming to take us away, Ha, Ha!