Barry Seal

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Adler Berriman Seal, or "Barry Seal" was a pilot, allegedly with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and later drug smuggler turned Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) informant. After a 1984 arrest in Fort Lauderdale, Florida for money laundering and Quaalude smuggling, Seal negotiated a plea bargain that included him becoming an informant for the DEA and testifying against his former Colombian employers, putting several of them in jail. He was murdered on February 19, 1986 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

[edit] Undercover Informant

In an attempt to lessen his sentence from his 1984 arrest in Florida, Seal agreed to cooperate with the DEA, and testify against his former colleagues. Amongst those Seal testified against were Prime Minister Norman Saunders and members of the Medellín Cartel. Seal also testified before the President's Commission on Organized Crime in October of 1985.

Seal had also been used by the DEA and CIA in an attempted sting operation against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. In 1984 Seal arrived at Homestead Air Force Base in Florida with a shipment of cocaine that had been allegedly brokered through the Sandinista government. Seal testified that pictures taken during the trip showed Sandinista officials brokering a cocaine deal with members of Colombia’s drug cartel, although the poor quality of the pictures meant that Seal’s eyewitness account was the primary evidence for the claim. The story was later broken by both The Washington Times and The Wall Street Journal, exposing Seal’s identity and involvement of his former Colombian associates.

As part of his plea agreement, Seal was ordered to a halfway house in Baton Rouge, where he was murdered.

As another minor historical and coincidental note, the same C-123 Provider that was leased by a CIA front company (Southern Air Transport) that was used in the sting operation was later shot down by Sandinista 12.7 mm machine gun fire while air dropping supplies to Contras forces in Nicaraguan air space and the sole survivor, Eugene H. Hasenfus, was captured by the Nicaraguan government, bringing to light the international drug- and weapons-trafficking scandal dubbed the Iran-Contra Affair.

[edit] Further reading

• Page on Seal
• PBS’s Frontline: Thirty Years of America’s Drug War: A Chronology
• "The Kingpin and his many connections" Michael Haddigan, The Arkansas Gazette
• Terry Reed and John Cummings, Compromised: Clinton, Bush, and the CIA (Clandestine Publishing, 1995) ISBN 1-883955-02-5