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Title: Who's afraid of Barry Seal?
Source:
Arkansas Times
URL Source: https://m.arktimes.com/arkansas/who ... barry-seal/Content?oid=9950116
Published: Sep 28, 2017
Author: Mara Leveritt
Post Date: 2017-10-06 06:32:52 by Deckard
Keywords: None
Views: 1135
Comments: 10
The poster for the movie "American Made," to be released Friday, Sept. 29, shows a grinning, cocky Tom Cruise as the drug smuggler Barry Seal, hauling a duffle bag bursting with cash. "It's not a felony if you're doing it for the good guys," the poster teases. The film's trailer has Seal casually boasting about his simultaneous work for "the CIA, the DEA and Pablo Escobar." One critic was led to ask: "So, was Seal a triple agent?" Perhaps. The producers say this swaggering story, based mostly in Arkansas, is all "based on a true lie." "American Made" is Hollywood's second film about Seal, the trafficker-turned-government-informant who is fast becoming America's most intriguing outlaw. HBO released the first, "Doublecrossed," starring Dennis Hopper as Seal, in 1991, five years after Seal's controversial murder. When Cruise's film was announced, its title was going to be "Mena," after the town in Arkansas where a local company hid Seal's aircraft and modified them for drug drops. I was a reporter focusing on drugs in the 1980s, but I learned of Seal's three-year presence at Mena only after the night in 1986 when Colombian assassins gunned him down in Baton Rouge, La. I became one of many reporters who tried to untangle Seal's story and, though that task ultimately proved impossible, I did learn a lot about him. But now, the bits and pieces collected about Seal have provided enough material — enough "true lies" — for Hollywood to weave into films that enlarge his legend. But his actual story is littered with dead ends — secrets that are still being carefully kept — especially in Arkansas. And here, I'm sorry to say, some police records that were open to the public 20 years ago are apparently no longer available. I wouldn't know this if it weren't for Cruise's film. When it was announced with a planned release in 2016, Rod Lorenzen, the manager of Butler Center Books, a division of the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, asked me to write a history of Seal's time in Arkansas to correspond with the movie's release. I was honored. The Butler Center is part of the highly respected Arkansas Studies Institute, a creation of the Central Arkansas Library System and the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. I'm a huge admirer of the ASI and consider its staff my friends. Yet I declined. I told Lorenzen that the book he proposed would be too hard to write; that there were still too many people in power — in both political parties — who did not want Seal's full story told. But Lorenzen persisted. I began to waver, recalling the words of some Arkansans who'd known Barry Seal. "I can arrest an old hillbilly out here with a pound of marijuana and a local judge and jury would send him to the penitentiary," a former sheriff at Mena in 1988 had said, "but a guy like Seal flies in and out with hundreds of pounds of cocaine and he stays free." The prosecuting attorney there had avowed: "I believe that the activities of Mr. Seal came to be so valuable to the Reagan White House and so sensitive that no information concerning Seal's activities could be released to the public. The ultimate result was that not only Seal but all of his confederates and all of those who worked with or assisted him in illicit drug traffic were protected by the government." And this, by the Internal Revenue Service agent who'd found evidence of money laundering at Mena: "There was a cover-up." Nothing had changed with regard to Seal since those men spoke those words, except that the savage war on drugs had ground on, while Seal — whatever he was — remained a hidden but important part of its history. Finally, I told Lorenzen I would write the book; I would document as much as I could of Seal's secretive Arkansas years. We agreed that the book would be called "The Mena File: Barry Seal's Ties to Drug Lords and U.S. Officials." Lorenzen commissioned a cover while I began my research by contacting the Arkansas State Police. I knew the agency had an extensive file on Seal because I'd read it decades earlier, shortly after Seal's murder. In fact, I still had a letter from the former director advising me, in case I'd planned to make copies, that the file held some 3,000 pages. But now, three decades after Seal's murder, State Police spokesman Bill Sadler reported that he could locate no files on Seal. None. Arkansas's Freedom of Information Act requires the release of public records, but Sadler said that, in Seal's case, the agency was unable to do that. I protested, and after weeks of back-and-forth, Sadler reported that a file on Seal had been discovered. He eventually provided a packet of 409 pages. He said this was all the agency could release after duplicates and documents that are exempt from public disclosure were removed. Even allowing for duplicates and legal exemptions, I would find the reduction of publicly available records, from 3,000 pages 20 years ago to just over 400 now, disturbing. My concern increases when the case is one of national interest that's also replete with political connections. As Sadler suggested, the state police in the past may have made too much available. On the other hand, if the grip on information about Seal has been tightened, the reason for this extra control might be traced to his earliest days in Arkansas. By late 1982, when Seal moved his aircraft to Mena from his home base in Baton Rouge, federal agents had already identified him as "a major international narcotics trafficker." Police watching Mena's airport notified federal authorities that a fat man from Louisiana had begun frequenting an aircraft modification company there called Rich Mountain Aviation. That same year, President Ronald Reagan appointed Asa Hutchinson, already a tough, anti-drug crusader, as U.S. attorney for the Western District of Arkansas. Wanting to keep tabs on Seal, Hutchinson ordered William Duncan, an investigator for the IRS, to watch for signs of money laundering around Mena resulting from Seal's presence. Another investigator, Russell Welch of the State Police, was assigned to look for evidence of cocaine arriving there. Duncan and Welch both told me that being assigned to Seal ended up ruining their careers. Welch said he began to suspect that something was amiss one night in December 1983, when he and several other law enforcement officers had staked out the airport, watching for Seal. He said they'd seen the smuggler and his co-pilot land and taxi to a hangar at Rich Mountain Aviation, where workers installed an illegal, extra fuel tank in the plane. Welch said that Seal had taken off into the wintry night, fast and without lights. But what he remembered most was how surprised he, the FBI agents and the Arkansas Game and Fish officer who'd joined them had been that, although officers for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration had met them at a motel in Mena, none had gone with them to the stakeout. Bryan Moats Seal had no criminal convictions at the time, but he did have a puzzling record. Ten years earlier, federal agents in Louisiana had caught him attempting to take off from an airport in Shreveport with a planeload of plastic explosives bound for Cuban ex-patriots in Mexico. Seal was charged with being part of a plot to overthrow Fidel Castro. But prosecutors abruptly dropped the case at the start of his trial. That event, relatively early in Seal's career, would later prompt speculation — unquestioned in Cruise's film — that he performed contract work for the Central Intelligence Agency. From later court records, we know that in April 1981, before Seal moved to Mena, DEA agents in Florida had caught him in a drug sting. We know that while his case there was pending, Seal agreed to become an informant for the DEA — but that the circumstances of that deal were also strange. In the summer of 1984, facing possible life in prison if convicted, he'd flown his Lear jet to Washington, D.C., where, in a meeting with top DEA officials, he'd established the terms that would allow him to remain free. Duncan and Welch were not informed of Seal's change of status as they pursued their respective investigations. Throughout 1984, they had no idea that Seal was supposedly working for an agency of the U.S. Department of Justice. So far as they could tell, he was a drug-runner continuing to run drugs, while the DEA remained, as both officers put it, "conspicuously absent" from Mena. The Arkansas lawmen, along with their peers in Louisiana, could scarcely have imagined all that Seal was up to that year. From a variety of surviving court records, we know that DEA officials in Florida cooked up a plan for him to help them round up the leaders of Colombia's Medellín cartel in one dramatic sting. Suffice it to say that the plan turned into a catastrophic failure — one that exposed Seal's status as an informant to his former associates in the cartel. With Seal's usefulness in that regard ended, he was put to another use. This time it was a political one — on behalf of Reagan's White House. Reagan wanted evidence that officials of Nicaragua's Sandinista government, which he opposed, were shipping cocaine into the U.S. After allowing CIA technicians to install hidden cameras in his C-123, Seal flew to Nicaragua and returned with photographs that he said showed Sandinista leaders helping load cocaine onto the plane. But again, Seal was compromised. Someone who knew of the flight leaked word of it to a Washington newspaper. Seal's status as an informant was confirmed, placing his life at still greater risk. After that, the justice department found yet another use for Seal, as U.S. attorneys began calling him to testify about his experiences with major drug dealers whom they were prosecuting. From Seal's testimony at some of those traffickers' trials, we know that he claimed to have grossed $750,000 per flight while he was smuggling for the cartel; that he continued to fly in drugs after becoming an informant; that he had smuggled about 6,000 pounds of cocaine into the U.S. during that period; and that for one of those flights alone the DEA had allowed him to keep the $575,000 he'd been paid. But it's clear that by late 1984, Seal was getting worried. A man who had lived by secrets suddenly made the unthinkable move of agreeing to be interviewed by a reporter. Seal flew Louisiana TV reporter Jack Camp to Mena, where he allowed Camp to film him inside the C-123 as he talked about his work for the DEA, while pointing out the places where the CIA technicians had hidden their cameras. It was only after Camp's interview aired on Baton Rouge television in late 1984 that law enforcement in Louisiana — and, quickly enough, Arkansas — accidentally learned of Seal's dual roles. But even now his status remained unclear, and federal officials weren't trying to help. Seal was still flying, apparently free, in both states, while ground crews, including workers at Rich Mountain Aviation, continued to work with him. Duncan and Welch focused their own investigations on the period before Seal became an informant. In mid-1985, Duncan told Hutchinson that he had sworn statements from employees at Rich Mountain Aviation and Mena bankers about illegal cash deposits being made into area banks. With what he called this "direct evidence of money laundering," Duncan asked Hutchinson to subpoena 20 witnesses, all of whom, he said, were ready to testify before a federal grand jury. But Duncan said that Hutchinson balked and, in contrast to his conduct in other cases where Duncan had requested subpoenas, in this case the U.S. attorney subpoenaed only three. Later, when Duncan was asked under oath in a deposition whether he believed there was a cover-up, he replied, "It was covered up." In August 1985, shortly after Duncan's request for subpoenas, U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese flew to Fort Smith to meet with Hutchinson. DEA Administrator John C. Lawn was with him. While the nation's two drug officials were in town, they held a press conference with Hutchinson to announce a series of raids dubbed "Operation Delta-9," which they said were meant to eradicate home-grown marijuana. Although Fort Smith sits just 70 miles north of Mena, nobody mentioned Seal. No one even mentioned cocaine. By then, though local investigators still did not know it, Seal had become a darling of the Department of Justice. In October 1985, the President's Commission on Organized Crime invited him to be the featured speaker at a symposium in the capital attended by several top U.S. law enforcement officers. The following month Hutchinson announced that, having decided to run for Congress, he would be resigning as U.S. attorney. At first, it looked like Hutchinson's successor, J. Michael Fitzhugh, was ready to act on the cases related to Seal. In December 1985, Fitzhugh announced that he had subpoenaed Seal to testify at a grand jury session to be held in Hot Springs. In preparation, he sent Duncan to Baton Rouge to interview Seal, and the State Police sent Welch. When I interviewed the investigators for my book, they told me that Seal seemed weary. He and his attorney fretted that Seal's deals from Florida would not protect him in Arkansas. But, after some dickering, Seal agreed to be sworn in. "I don't want to waste these men's time," he told his attorney, Lewis Unglesby. "They have come a long way in bad weather and it's Christmas." In the recorded interview that followed, Seal acknowledged some, if not all, of his business with Rich Mountain Aviation. He told Duncan and Welch that he had warned the company's owner that he stood "a good chance of going to jail" for the illegal modifications Rich Mountain Aviation had performed on his planes and that the owner had "better get himself a lawyer and be ready to look at pleading guilty." But five days before the grand jury was set to convene, Fitzhugh suddenly canceled Seal's appearance, due to what he termed Seal's "lack of credibility." Duncan and Welch were incredulous. By now they knew that Seal had been invited to the Washington symposium largely because of the respect he'd won from U.S. attorneys for his testimony at high-profile trials. Duncan and Welch could not understand — and Fitzhugh never explained — why, at the last minute, he'd suddenly deemed Seal's "credibility" insufficient in Arkansas. Seal may not have intended to show up, anyway. The pressures on him had intensified since he'd agreed to testify against Jorge Ochoa, a cartel leader who was soon to be extradited to the U.S. To prevent that from happening, the cartel had placed a half-million-dollar contract on Seal's head. And it worked. On Feb. 19, 1986, a group of Colombian gunmen murdered Seal in the parking lot of a halfway house in Baton Rouge, where a federal judge had ordered Seal to spend nights while on court-imposed probation. Barely four weeks later, Reagan appeared on national television to explain his opposition to Nicaragua's Sandinista government. As part of that explanation, the president held up one of Seal's photographs from inside the C-123. The image was grainy but Reagan said that it showed officials of Nicaragua's Communist government loading cocaine onto a plane that was headed to the United States. Reagan never mentioned Seal, and the photo's authenticity was soon challenged. Nevertheless, that televised moment captured the whirlwind into which Seal flew after his move to Arkansas: the intersection of drugs, Central American politics, the DEA, the CIA and the U.S. president. Bryan Moats We might never have known about any of that except for what happened on Oct. 5, 1986, less than eight months after Seal's murder. The C-123 cargo plane he'd kept at the airport at Mena was once again flying over Central America when a Nicaraguan soldier shot it down. Papers found with the downed aircraft linked it to members of Reagan's White House staff and with that, the political upheaval known as the Iran-Contra scandal burst into world news. Questions about the plane led to questions about Seal, and, inevitably, some of the fallout reached Hutchinson. The former U.S. attorney had lost his initial race for Congress, and by 1996, when he was running again, many Arkansans were trying to sort out his connection to Seal. When someone at a campaign appearance asked the candidate if there'd been a cover-up at Mena, Hutchinson replied: "All I can tell you is I started the investigation. I pursued the investigation, and I was called to run for office. And after that I was out of the loop." Hutchinson won his 1996 congressional race and two subsequent elections. He resigned from Congress in 2001 to accept an appointment by President George W. Bush as head of the DEA. After a subsequent appointment at the Department of Homeland Security, Hutchinson returned to Arkansas, where he became the state's governor in 2015. Soon after taking office, Hutchinson installed veteran DEA agent Bill Bryant as head of the State Police. I came along a few months later, asking to see the agency's file on Seal. When I learned how much less was available than reportedly had been in the past, I wrote to Hutchinson, hoping to ask about the difference, but he did not respond. Bill Clinton, who was governor throughout Seal's time at Mena, has also had little to say about the smuggler's presence. While governor, Clinton was drawn uncomfortably close to questions relating to cocaine after police arrested his half-brother, Roger Clinton, on charges of distributing cocaine, and Roger Clinton reported that he'd gotten the drug from his boss, Dan Lasater, a Little Rock bond trader and financial supporter of Clinton. Seal was dead by late 1986, when Lasater was indicted, but the FBI's investigation of Lasater produced at least one intriguing connection between the two. Billy Earle Jr. had been in the co-pilot's seat on that night in December 1983 when Seal flew into Mena to have an extra fuel tank installed. The following year, when Earle was arrested in Louisiana, Welch went there to interview him. Earle told Welch that immediately after "the new plumbing" was installed, Seal planned to fly "to a place in southern Colombia, bordering Peru, and pick up 200 kilos of cocaine." He said the trip was for an "operation to be staged out of Carver Ranch in Belize." But, Earle said, that plan had fallen through. In the fall of 1986, when FBI agents were investigating Dan Lasater, they questioned his personal pilot. That man reported that he had flown Lasater and his business partner, Patsy Thomasson, "to Belize to look at a horse farm that was for sale by a Roy Carver." He said that flight had taken place on Feb. 8, 1984, within weeks of the aborted trip Seal had reportedly planned to the same location. Lasater and Roger Clinton both pleaded guilty to drug charges and served time in prison. After Bill Clinton's election as president, he placed Thomasson in charge of the White House Office of Administration. Though accusations abound, no link has ever been established between Clinton and Seal. Still, on the few occasions when the smuggler's name has come up, Clinton has sounded as "out of the loop" as Hutchinson. At one point, while Clinton was governor, the local prosecuting attorney for Mena had attempted to act where U.S. attorneys Hutchinson and Fitzhugh had not. Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Charles E. Black wanted to impanel a state grand jury to consider evidence that people at Rich Mountain Aviation had abetted Seal's drug-trafficking operation. Realizing that such a case would cost more than his district could afford, Black had asked the governor's office for a grant of $25,000. But Black said he never received a response. Bill Alexander, one of Arkansas's long-term Democratic congressmen, supported Black's idea. Alexander told me that he wrote to Clinton personally, repeating Black's request and explaining that questions about Seal needed to be "resolved and laid to rest." But he, too, said that he did not recall receiving a response. Yet, later on, when a reporter asked Clinton what he had known about Seal, the governor had a somewhat different recollection. He said that, although he had authorized payment of $25,000 to fund the grand jury Black had requested, "Nothing ever came of that." On the subject of Seal, the usually astute governor had come across as unusually uninformed. A citizens' group called the Arkansas Committee suspected that state and federal authorities had agreed to protect Seal in Arkansas. Disturbed by Clinton's apparent disinterest, members of the group at one point unfurled a 10-foot-long banner at the state Capitol that asked: WHY IS CLINTON PROTECTING BUSH? In 1992, when Clinton and George H.W. Bush opposed each other for president, neither candidate mentioned Seal. After Clinton's election as president, when White House correspondent Sarah McClendon asked him what he knew about Mena, he remained adamant but vague as he mischaracterized Black's investigation. "It was primarily a matter for federal jurisdiction," he said. "The state really had next to nothing to do with it. "The local prosecutor did conduct an investigation based on what was in the jurisdiction of state law. The rest of it was under the jurisdiction of the United States attorneys who were appointed successively by previous administrations. We had nothing — zero — to do with it, and everybody who's ever looked into it knows that." Almost a decade after Seal's death, U.S. Rep. James A. Leach (R-Iowa) took an interest in what one of the people he questioned, CIA Director John Deutch, later described as "allegations of money laundering and other activities" in Mena. As chairman of the House Banking Committee, Leach was well positioned to investigate such claims. He told reporters: "We have more than sufficient documentation that improprieties occurred at Mena. This isn't a made-up issue. There are grounds to pursue it very seriously." In a letter to the DEA, Leach asked the agency to provide all documents relating to "possible ties between activities at Mena Airport and the use of a private airstrip at a similarly remote location near Taos, New Mexico, at a ski resort called Angel Fire" — a resort owned by Lasater. Leach wrote: "Published reports indicate that DEA conducted at least two separate investigations of alleged money laundering and drug trafficking in or around Angel Fire, the first in approximately 1984, and the second in 1988-1989." He said the second investigation was triggered by allegations from former Angel Fire employees "that the resort was the focal point for 'a large controlled substance smuggling operation and large-scale money laundering activity.' " Leach added: "The alleged activity at Angel Fire was roughly contemporaneous with the money laundering and narcotics trafficking alleged to have taken place in or around Mena Airport during the period 1982-1986." Leach sent congressional investigators to Arkansas. And he asked the U.S. Customs Service what it knew about "the disposition of potentially ill-gotten gains by Seal or his associates," especially with regard to "a piece of property in Belize known variously as the Cotter, Cutter or Carver Ranch," because, "Barry Seal allegedly used this property in his narcotics trafficking operations and attempted to buy it in 1983." Little more was heard of Leach's investigation for the next three years. Finally, in 1999, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal inquired about its status. Leach's spokesman responded that investigators were "putting the finishing touches" on their report. But that was the last the public heard. The House Banking Committee's investigation into what Leach called the "improprieties" relating to Mena has never been released. And my book, "The Mena File?" It was not published, either. I'd completed the manuscript, with hundreds of supporting notes, by this time last year. Lorenzen, who had prepared the index, was pleased. The book was listed in the University of Arkansas Press catalog and for presale on sites such as Amazon.com. It was time for an attorney to read the manuscript to make sure it contained nothing libelous. This vetting process is standard for books of contemporary nonfiction, especially those involving crimes. Having been through the process with publishers of my other books, I understood the need and was ready. I was also unconcerned, in part because I'd been careful, but also because the most serious allegations — those concerning Rich Mountain Aviation — had already been vetted years ago for a section about Seal in my book, "The Boys on the Tracks." But I was in for a shock. Lorenzen told me that his boss, David Stricklin, the ASI's director, had suddenly expressed some "concerns" about the book. Lorenzen further reported that, while these concerns were legal in nature, Stricklin had said the ASI could not afford to have the manuscript vetted. Neither the decision nor Lorenzen's explanation that "we're just a shoestring press" made sense. From the start, the book was intended to be a solid work of Arkansas history buoyed by a major Hollywood film. What's more, Random House had already contracted to buy its audio rights and paid an advance. From a business point of view, the ASI's position defied logic. I asked Lorenzen if the newly arisen concerns might be political rather than financial, but was told nothing more. Lorenzen proposed rescinding our contract. Seeing no reasonable way forward, I agreed. As I'd written the book without an advance, the deal's undoing was simple. ••• By now I've had a year to reflect on my experiences in writing about Seal, as well as those of Duncan, Welch, Black, Alexander, members of the Arkansas Committee, and others who've tried to shed light on his time in Arkansas. None of us much succeeded. So I'm glad that at least Hollywood has found Seal's "true lies" worth exploring. Too many secrets have been kept for too long; too much important history has been hidden, lost or destroyed. Let's hope that Cruise's high-powered version of Seal prompts an equally high-powered demand for disclosure of all government records on him, especially after his move to Mena. Mara Leveritt is author of "The Boys on the Tracks," "Devil's Knot" and "Dark Spell." 
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#1. To: Deckard (#0)
The movie will be a steaming pile of horseshit. Madcow Morning News' Daniel Hopsicker has a lot about it, and it's a whitewash of the extent of corruption involved in CIA smuggling. 'What kind of man gives cigarettes to trees?'
Madcow Morning News' Daniel Hopsicker has a lot about it, and it's a whitewash of the extent of corruption involved in CIA smuggling. Yeah, I pretty much figured if Tom Cruise was in it, the movie had to be propaganda. The 2014 movie "Kill The Messenger" which was about Gary Webb was pretty accurate. Liked that movie a lot. Have you checked out MadCow? Some of the stuff is pretty out there, but a lot is solid. When he or anyone conjectures and strays from facts, I tend to shut down. I can draw my own conclusions. 'What kind of man gives cigarettes to trees?'
I remember when this came into view back in '86. I was watching the Iran-contra hearings and just knew that Reagan was heavily involved in this drug scandal. So was Bush Sr. involved.
I would imagine the movie will lack a lot of accuracy, but looks like it will be an exciting movie. Si vis pacem, para bellum Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God. Never Pick A Fight With An Old Man He Will Just Shoot You He Can't Afford To Get Hurt "If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went." (Will Rogers)
I just wonder how much of it will involve that fake CGI bullshit. Since he is dead, I doubt anyone is ! Si vis pacem, para bellum Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God. Never Pick A Fight With An Old Man He Will Just Shoot You He Can't Afford To Get Hurt "If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went." (Will Rogers)
Do you mean "Mancow Muller" the radio guy? Years ago when I still listened to Alex Jones I heard him being interviewed. Other than that I can't say that I'm familiar with his show. I'll have to check it out if I can. Since he is dead, I doubt anyone is ! Someone apparently is - why else would police records that were open to the public 20 years ago are no longer available?. Poppy Bush and Bill Clinton still have those skeletons in their closets. He is another Arkansas story from back in the day. http://www.elfie.org/~croaker/arkexec1.html A FATAL RAID Pubdate: Sun, 25 Feb 2001 MAYFLOWER -- Tammy Wilson's windup alarm clock jangled her from a deep sleep at 6:30 a.m. As far as she could tell, her husband, Carl, was still slumbering undisturbed in his own room. Tammy, 42, worked at a local day-care center and was usually awake before daylight. Carl, on the other hand, often sat up into the wee hours of the morning, watching television or videos. Since retiring, he had the luxury of sleeping in. After more than two decades together, the Wilsons were still a passionate couple who frequently shared the queen-size bed in Carl's room. But most nights, they slept apart, especially if Tammy had to work the next morning. On Jan. 12, Tammy woke up alone. She turned on the bedside lamp, chasing the darkness from her small room. "At that point, all hell broke loose," she recalls. "I heard a firecracker sound and then I realized there was gunfire." Within a few panic-stricken moments, Carl was dead and Tammy -- barefoot, handcuffed and still in her nightgown -- was led to a police car outside. "Only by the grace of God, I wasn't cuddled up with him that night," she says. "There's no doubt I would have been dead too." Carl Wilson, 60, was shot at least five times in an exchange of gunfire with police. The shootout occurred when federal authorities raided the four-time convicted felon's rural Faulkner County home in search of a .30-.30 Winchester rifle. The gun, which Carl's family and friends say he had owned for more than 30 years, was wanted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Before carrying out the raid in the chilly pre-dawn hours of Jan. 12, the agency was granted a "no-knock" search warrant, which allows law enforcement officers to enter a home without announcing themselves. The search warrant was the culmination of a two-month investigation conducted by the ATF. Bill Buford, the ATF agent-in-charge, says he cannot yet say why Carl was being investigated. Nor can he comment on the shootout until the Arkansas State Police finishes its inquiry. The other agencies involved also cannot comment. The case has been sealed in federal court, so many lingering questions remain unanswered. Tammy says she won't let the matter drop until she knows what police thought her husband was up to when they came looking for his rifle. "I know the law is going to say a lot of bad things, and I'm trying to prepare myself for them. If there was something so crazy -- right or wrong, good or bad -- I want to know why. I can take it, but I've got to know why." Accounts of the raid differ between police and family members who were in the house. Police say Carl shot first. The family says officers did. On the day of the shooting, Buford told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that officers were slowed by the long muddy driveway leading to the house and had trouble approaching Wilson's home. Carl began firing as they neared the house, Buford said. "[Officers] returned fire, and Mr. Wilson was killed." According to a statement issued by the Arkansas State Police, which is investigating the shooting, the gunbattle began after the SWAT team deployed a "distraction device," and officers announced themselves. "Upon entry, officers were fired upon by [the] suspect, defensive shots were returned," the statement says. Tammy and a niece who was there that morning say the shooting didn't start until the special weapons and tactics team entered through two unlocked back doors, one to the porch and the other leading into the house, and set off a distraction device. Singed flooring and a sooty residue on the refrigerator indicate that the device, also known as a "flash-bang," went off in the hall next to Carl's bedroom. Tammy says it's obvious Carl fired his .44 Magnum revolver -- at least four spent casings were found after the shootout. He kept the gun in his bedroom, a few feet away from the foot of his bed in the antique radio his television sat on. Carl wouldn't have hesitated to shoot anyone he believed was breaking into his home, Tammy says, particularly if he were startled from sleep. "Carl did love and protect his family. I have no doubt that he shot back." No-knock raids have long been a point of contention and have been argued repeatedly in U.S. courts. Under Arkansas law, this element of surprise is allowed if officers believe that announcing their presence would endanger themselves or the people inside. No-knocks also are permitted if there's a possibility evidence might be destroyed in the time it takes for police to gain entry. In planning the Wilson raid, authorities decided to ask for a no-knock warrant because of Carl's criminal background and the suspicion that he might be armed, says Lt. Bob Berry of the Conway Regional Drug Task Force. But Tammy says if Carl had known he was wanted by authorities, he would have surrendered voluntarily. "No one should have been shot at -- my husband or the officers," Tammy says. "This was senseless. Why did it take that kind of excessive force for one gun? "Yes, he has a criminal history, but in that criminal history he's always been notorious for cooperating with authorities. ... When Tommy Robinson [former Pulaski County sheriff] came out here, Carl didn't greet them with a pistol. He sat out on the porch and had a cup of coffee with them." He would have done the same on Jan. 12, she contends. During the exchange of gunfire, two members of the SWAT team were slightly injured. Carl died in his bedroom. The blood from his wounds seeped through his covers, soaking the mattress beneath. "It may be completely foolhardy for a cop to raid no-knock, but for some reason they do it," says Little Rock defense attorney John Wesley Hall Jr., who has represented several people involved in search-and-seizure cases. But Berry says the execution of the search warrant was carried out professionally and in the same manner other no-knock search warrants have been served. His agency, along with a local SWAT team, assisted the ATF in both the investigation and the raid. "I don't see anything that could have possibly been done differently," Berry adds. "We put long hours into planning this before carrying it out." No-knocks are most commonly used in drug investigations, when there's a chance that evidence might be destroyed. But, Hall says, "You can't flush a .30-.30 rifle down the toilet, so that's not an issue. If they're looking for a rifle, why don't they stake out the house and wait for him to leave?" Berry says it's better to corner suspects at home. Attempting to catch someone during his daily routine is just too dangerous. "Anytime you try to do something like that, you run the risk of some innocent person getting hurt or killed," he says. As for putting the family members of a suspect in peril by raiding a home, he says, "that's the one reason we do as much planning as we do." And in the Wilson case, he notes, "The two other occupants were unhurt." But Hall says the extreme methods used in surprise raids, though sometimes necessary, can be what gets somebody shot. "When they sneak in like that at six o'clock in the morning, they're just asking for trouble. Then the only question is, 'Who's going to be shot? Is it going to be them or is it going to be us?' " Berry says getting a no-knock warrant isn't easy. A judge must first be convinced that the risk is worth it, especially if a raid is going to be carried out before daylight. In the Wilson raid, officers met at 2 a.m. to review their strategy, which had been mapped out days before. Meanwhile, a surveillance team was watching the home so officers would know who was where and whether any unexpected visitors had shown up, Berry says. That Tammy and Carl usually slept in separate bedrooms wasn't known, he says, adding, "We weren't sure on that." As the gunfire broke out that morning, Tammy says she ran toward Carl's bedroom, which was separated from hers by a spare room and bathroom. On the way, she collided with Dottie McKenzie, Carl's 20-year-old niece who had been staying with them since the Christmas holidays. Dottie was sleeping in the spare bedroom. Tammy thrust the frightened Dottie behind her just before she was ordered by masked SWAT team members to hit the floor. "They hollered, 'Get down! Get down! Don't look at us!' " As Tammy lay on floor, facing Carl's room, she strained to catch a glimpse of her husband. Officers had their guns pointed at him, she says, and were ordering him to get up. "I can't. I can't," Carl replied. From her position on the floor, Tammy could see her husband, propped on a bloody elbow, trying to raise himself off the bed. Then she and Dottie, still barefoot, were hastily led through the house, dodging shards of glass from fallen picture frames, which were scattered across the hall and kitchen floors. As Dottie was escorted out the back door, she saw Carl kneeling at the foot of his bed. His arms were stretched in front of him, and his boxers were around his ankles, she says. After leaving the house, the women were put in separate police cars. For Tammy, it was a surreal ending to a 23-year relationship that no one, not even she, ever fully understood. Years ago, after learning Carl was an ex-con, she repeatedly cautioned herself: "You better buckle your britches, girl. You're in for the long haul." But once someone "falls into my heart," Tammy says, she is loyal. "I honored that man until the day he died. That was my husband and he might not be precious to anyone else, but he was precious to me." When they went to the Wilson home, officers were looking for the Winchester, ammunition and any papers pertaining to the gun's purchase. As a convicted felon, Carl wasn't supposed to have the gun. But no one can yet say why it suddenly became imperative that the rifle be seized. That Carl was an avid gun collector had never been any secret to anyone, including local authorities, Tammy says. Tammy thinks maybe the ATF believed the gun had once been used in a crime. Or, she says, it could have been an excuse to get into the Wilsons' house, just to see what else might be found there. Seized from the Wilson home were the Winchester, seven other guns and ammunition, a bong, a pipe, scales, a plastic bag containing a fourth of a gram of "white powder," a large Ziploc bag containing smaller bags of marijuana, a pill bottle of marijuana seeds and burned marijuana cigarettes, according to an inventory list prepared by ATF agents. Also taken was a "paper note signed by Wilson," the list stated. Tammy says the note was tacked to the closet door and was meant to discourage visiting family members who might be tempted to poke around in Carl's closet, where he kept his guns. It read: "If you open this door, the whole house will blow up. Try me -- Wilson." The probable cause affidavit, which would explain why the ATF was investigating Wilson, remains sealed in federal court. "The main thing the ATF was looking for was the weapons," Berry says, adding that he can't comment any further on another agency's investigation. The task force became involved because there was a possibility drugs might be involved, he says. On Jan. 23, the Democrat-Gazette sent a letter to U.S. Magistrate J. Thomas Ray, requesting that all documents pertaining to the case be made public. In his own letter to the judge, dated Jan. 25, U.S Attorney Michael Johnson said it would be all right for the court to unseal the inventory list of what was seized from the Wilson home. However, he "strenuously" objected to unsealing the probable cause affidavit. "No legitimate purpose is served in unsealing the application for the search-and-seizure warrant and the accompanying attachments," the prosecutor wrote. The judge responded by unsealing the inventory list. But if the newspaper wanted the affidavit, he said, it would need to file a motion with the court. He also said that the U.S. attorney has thus far offered "no grounds to support his position" in keeping the probable cause affidavit sealed. The Democrat-Gazette filed a motion on Feb. 15, asking that all documents in the case be unsealed. A ruling is pending. In its motion, the newspaper argues numerous reasons the case should be unsealed. "First the subject of the search warrant is dead, and no criminal investigation concerning him can be on-going," it states. "A civilian was killed and two law enforcement officers were injured during the execution of this search warrant. The public is entitled to know the circumstances and manner in which state and federal law enforcement officials carried out their public duties." The Arkansas State Police was assigned to investigate the anatomy of the raid. Four days after the gunbattle, the agency issued a statement: "The Arkansas State Police investigation has revealed no evidence of wrongdoing on the part of the Metro SWAT team or any other agency." This was a preliminary finding based on what investigators were told immediately after arriving at the scene, said state police Sgt. Don Birdsong. The two SWAT team members injured in the raid -- Conway police officer Larry Hearn, who hit his head while diving to avoid the gunfire, and Faulkner County sheriff's Sgt. Jason Young, who was hit in the upper left arm by a piece of shrapnel -- have both returned to work. It's unclear whether the state police investigation is actually finished. Last week, detectives said the results of their inquiry had been turned over to the prosecutor. But Faulkner County Prosecuting Attorney H.G. Foster said on Thursday that police are still waiting for information from the medical examiner, and the case hasn't been given to him yet. When the inquiry is finished, Foster will decide whether to close the case, press charges or ask the state police to investigate further. Once the case is closed, the investigative file becomes public, and authorities involved in the shootout say they'll be allowed to talk. So at this time, the silence surrounding the events of that January morning is impenetrable. "I know there are so many officers who want to tell their part," Berry says. They believe their inability to discuss the shootout makes everybody involved "look bad," he adds. "I've been in the narcotics part [of law enforcement] for nine years and have executed numerous search warrants," Berry says. "This is the first time anything like this has happened." Asked what made this raid deadly, he pauses. "I'd like to comment on it, but I can't until after the investigation is over." Carl was well-known to local authorities, even though all of his criminal convictions occurred in the 1960s. Carl did time for burglary, robbery and stealing a car. All told, he served 5 1/2 years in Oklahoma and Arkansas prisons. He was paroled from the Cummins Unit in 1968. Since then, the man dubbed a "reformed outlaw" by one Pulaski County prosecutor had been linked to two of Arkansas' biggest and most infamous murder cases and was accused on three occasions of shooting people, including his wife and best friend. Of the three shooting victims, only his friend died. Carl was never charged in any of the incidents. Tammy refused to press charges. The other shootings were ruled accidental and self-defense. After all of Carl's brushes with notoriety -- whether it was when he testified in murderess Mary Lee Orisini's trial, or when he nearly became a suspect in the death of pool contractor Johnny Burnett -- it is baffling to his family that he died over a long-cherished hunting rifle. Carl always had a "mysterious side," Tammy says. But she can't imagine what he might have been involved in that would have put their home and lives under surveillance. There were signs, Tammy says, that Carl had started using drugs again after 12 years of sobriety. But when she confronted him about a syringe she had found in a rarely used drawer, Carl told her she was being paranoid. The syringe, he said, was simply a remnant of his past. Tammy was still troubled. "I told him, 'I'm not going back there,' " she says. Trouble did seem to follow Carl, no matter where he went or whom he befriended. Many of his problems with the law were of his own making. A few were just plain bad luck. In October 1974, while he was working as a construction foreman at a job in Saline County, Carl shot a co-worker in the thigh. The shooting was ruled self-defense. Eight years later, Carl emerged as a pivotal witness in the investigation into the July 1982 slaying of Alice McArthur. Alice, the wife of prominent Little Rock attorney Bill McArthur, was murdered by two gunmen. A few months before her death, someone tried to kill her by putting a bomb under her car. The explosives used to make the device were later traced to Carl Wilson. The man who bought them was Eugene "Yankee" Hall, a friend of Carl's. Yankee and Larry McClendon would later be convicted of first-degree murder in Alice McArthur's death. The hitmen were hired by Mary Lee Orsini, who was convicted of capital murder. Carl testified against Orsini in her 1982 trial. He told the jury that Yankee and Orsini drove out to his home in Mayflower to pick up the explosive that was later used to build the bomb planted in Alice McArthur's car. At that time, Tammy was living there, but the couple weren't yet married. While Orsini and Tammy rode three-wheelers, Carl and Yankee smoked marijuana and took a walk to a hunting cabin on the property, Carl gave his buddy a shampoo bottle filled with Tovex, a plastic explosive used in construction. Carl said Yankee told him he wanted the explosive to blow up some stumps. During the lengthy investigation and grand jury proceedings involved in the McArthur case, Carl testified that he had few visitors to his out-of-the-way home. "I just try to stay off up there by myself," Carl testified. "Even got a sign down there where you come in across the cattle guard: 'Leave Me Alone.' " When asked if he had any enemies, he replied: "No. I don't do people wrong." Two days after testifying against Orsini, Carl found himself the subject of another shooting investigation after he killed his best friend, William E. "Sonny" Evans. Carl told detectives that Evans was showing him a .22-caliber rifle in the bedroom of Evans' home and had taken out the clip when the telephone rang. While Evans went to answer it in the living room, Carl and Tammy examined the gun. The rifle had a unique safety lock on the trigger, and Carl told detectives he was pulling the lock back and forth when the gun fired. Although the clip had been removed, there was a bullet in the chamber. Authorities ruled the shooting accidental. Five years later, on March 18, 1988, Carl shot Tammy at their home. In the midst of a fight about visiting Tammy's parents, a drunken Carl pointed a .22 rifle at his wife and fired. He missed the first time. On his second try, he didn't. The bullet entered Tammy's left side, hitting her liver and then ricocheting through her body. As she lay bleeding on the floor of their home, Carl was running around "like a wild man," she says. Finally, he leaned over his injured wife. "My God, what do I do?" he asked. "Get me some help," Tammy begged. "As far as I was concerned, he could go to hell in a handbasket," she says, recalling the three months she spent in the hospital. "I hated him." From his jail cell, Carl begged for a second chance. Against the advice of many, including her father, Tammy took him back, but with strict stipulations, she says. "You take another drink, you hit me, you don't go to church -- then this is over," she told him. Police dropped the case against Carl after Tammy refused to press charges. That same year, Carl went to work for Johnny Burnett's pool and spa contracting business. Four years later, on July 21, 1992, Burnett was found shot to death in his Little Rock home, and Carl was again involved in a high-profile murder case. While police charged Burnett's wife, Scharmel Burnett, in her husband's murder, her defense attorneys pointed to Carl as a potential suspect. One of the documents they used to back up their assertion was a nine-page handwritten report by a Little Rock detective detailing a conversation with a Faulkner County law enforcement source. "According to the source, Carl Wilson was a shady character, and if he wasn't the triggerman, he probably knew who was," detective Ronnie Smith wrote. "Wilson is a drug user and probably involved in drug trafficking, according to the source." Adding to the suspicion was Carl's soured relationship with his former boss when Burnett fired him. The two men also were in a dispute over a worker's compensation claim Carl made against Burnett's company. Burnett was killed before the claim was resolved. Prosecutors questioned Wilson about the Burnett murder but determined that he had an alibi. Scharmel Burnett was tried twice but was never convicted. No one else has ever been charged. Carl's name didn't appear in newspapers again until he was killed. "I got the impression that he was an old outlaw who had reformed," prosecutor Melody Piazza recalled on the day of the shootout. "He had a new wife and ... seemed to have changed his life." Once an alcoholic who sometimes lost himself in violent rages, Carl became a new man after shooting his wife, longtime friends say. That was almost 13 years ago. "Carl was so proud that he never took another drink," says Stan Joyner, Carl's boss at a construction company for several years. After Tammy's shooting, Carl appeared to make good on his promise to reform, say the dozen or so friends who have known the couple in both good times and bad. Carl was eventually forced to retire after several light strokes and heart surgery. He wandered around Mayflower and Conway during they day, coffee thermos always in hand. In the evenings, he played dominoes and watched television well into the early-morning hours. His dresser is covered with stacks of videotapes. Still known for a sharp wit and a rough-edged demeanor, Carl seemed to be slipping gratefully -- if not always gracefully -- into his retirement. In their many years together, Tammy says, this period was definitely the couple's most peaceful era. "If this had happened 15 years ago, I wouldn't have questioned it," she says of the raid. Standing in Carl's bedroom, which is still pockmarked with bullet holes, Tammy wonders what her husband could have been up to that would have piqued the interest of the ATF. "I'm willing to accept whatever it is. I just need to know. I hope that with all my heart there are no surprises. But good or bad, I'll take what they hand me." Tammy has a few theories of her own. A family vendetta may have prompted some of Tammy's relatives to go to the police with stories about Carl, she says. Tales of drugs, weapons and the note tacked onto his closet door may have been enough to open an investigation, she muses. She also thinks that perhaps some longtime law enforcement authorities, frustrated by their inability to do no more than link Carl to various crimes, might have been waiting for an opportunity -- no matter how small -- to strike. "Carl always had a past that haunted him," Tammy says. "Society never pardoned him, but I know God did." She describes a long-ago encounter with Buford, saying that during the McArthur trial, the ATF agent approached Carl in a courthouse hallway, telling him, "I'll get you." Buford says he cannot comment, adding that he would very much like to. Tammy's life with Carl, as well as the nature of his death, have made her suspicious of law enforcement. After the shooting, she and Carl's friends scoured the house, collecting slugs, shell casings and taking photos. All of these items have been turned over to Tammy's attorney, she says. She also went to the funeral home before anything was done to Carl's body and took pictures of all his wounds. "When I saw his face wasn't distorted, God gave me the strength to take those pictures." As she sat in the state trooper's car, waiting for word of her husband's fate, Tammy occupied herself by counting vehicles. Twenty-six unmarked cars. Four state police cars. Four hours passed. The officers milling about were nice to her, she says. "None of them were mean or rude or ugly. The SWAT team was what scared the hell out of me." Tammy finally dredged up the nerve to ask a trooper about Carl. "Is he alive or dead?" "Well, ma'am, I don't think it's fair to keep you in the dark," she says the trooper told her. "He's dead." As Tammy's handcuffs were removed, another trooper asked her, "Ma'am, is there anyone I can call to come comfort you?" Tammy asked for her mother, but she wasn't home. Her grandfather, Daddy John, came instead. When he arrived, they sat there for two more hours. Finally, a white pickup with a camper shell arrived. "And that's what they took Carl Ray Wilson out in," Tammy says. Still barefoot and clad in her white, flower-sprigged nightgown, Tammy clutched her grandfather's hand and turned away from her house. He drove her away in a white Cadillac, telling her that everything was going to be OK. But everything isn't, Tammy says. It won't be, she says, until she knows what happened and why.
#2. To: Dead Culture Watch (#1)
(Edited)
The movie will be a steaming pile of horseshit.
“Truth is treason in the empire of lies.” - Ron Paul
Those who most loudly denounce Fake News are typically those most aggressively disseminating it.
#3. To: Deckard (#2)
#4. To: Deckard (#0)
Papers found with the downed aircraft linked it to members of Reagan's White House staff and with that, the political upheaval known as the Iran-Contra scandal burst into world news.
#5. To: Deckard (#2)
" I pretty much figured if Tom Cruise was in it, the movie had to be propaganda. "
#6. To: Stoner (#5)
I would imagine the movie will lack a lot of accuracy, but looks like it will be an exciting movie.
“Truth is treason in the empire of lies.” - Ron Paul
Those who most loudly denounce Fake News are typically those most aggressively disseminating it.
#7. To: Deckard (#0)
" Who's afraid of Barry Seal? "
#8. To: Dead Culture Watch (#3)
Have you checked out MadCow? Some of the stuff is pretty out there, but a lot is solid.
“Truth is treason in the empire of lies.” - Ron Paul
Those who most loudly denounce Fake News are typically those most aggressively disseminating it.
#9. To: Stoner (#7)
" Who's afraid of Barry Seal? "
“Truth is treason in the empire of lies.” - Ron Paul
Those who most loudly denounce Fake News are typically those most aggressively disseminating it.
#10. To: Deckard (#9)
Abuses of the BATF
Source: Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (AR)
Author: Jim Brooks, Cathy Frye, Amy Upshaw
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
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