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Barry Seal lived to break the law. He lived to break the rules. He would smuggle anything from C4 to Quaaludes to cocaine to marijuana. He did it all. It takes a unique type of individual to do that. He was a risk taker. He was an adventurer. He loved adrenaline. He was charming.
He was a bit of a ladies' man. The epitaph on his tombstone says it best. It calls him a rebel adventurer, the likes of whom in previous days made America great. He was a buccaneer, a pirate almost. In the 1980s, smuggling cocaine from Latin America into the United States became big business. Miami went from a relatively quiet southern town
to international front page news the u.s coast guard were inundated with speed boats propeller planes helicopters even submarines loaded with ton upon ton of high-grade highly addictive cocaine in this episode of real narcos we'll follow the extraordinary story of barry seal the self-respecting family man from baton rouge who gave up the dream of a white picket fence to fly light aircraft loaded with contraband into the swamplands of south louisiana
I mean, it takes a pretty big determination and imagination to be a guy living in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to figure out how to hook up with the Medellin cartel and be on a first-name basis with some of the most dangerous and wanted men in the world. We'll hear from the agents and attorneys who knew Seal personally and the experts who studied his crazy life in depth. My name is John Cuban, and each week, Noiser Podcasts will delve deep inside the world of organized crime
and take you undercover with the men and women tasked with capturing criminal masterminds. These guys are the real deal, and this is Real Narcos. ♪
It was said that Barry Seale would buy a $4 hamburger and leave a $20 tip. It was all part of the image that he maintained. You know, he was kind of a high-living guy, you know, adrenaline junkie. And having the cash and flashing it around was something he liked to do. He's the oversized, thrill-seeking pilot from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, who smuggled cocaine for the Colombian cartels.
He had an unusually gifted way of handling the controls and flying a plane. He could keep a plane going straight
like nobody else. I mean, he really had a feel for it. He had a gift for it. He had flown in Vietnam for the U.S. Special Forces, and he was well-trained in being a bush pilot, a jungle pilot. The Vietnam War, like the wars of the current day, have trained a lot of people in military arts and skills. Not everybody wants to go work for a big corporation after that. They still want the adventure.
Barry Seal could fly anywhere. He could land just about anywhere. He knew his craft very well. He was perfect for what the Medellin cartel at its inception needed, which was skilled pilots who were willing and able to go into some very rough territory. He would do anything to avoid jail. When he finally gets caught...
This thrill-seeker persuades the DEA that he can be the best informant they've ever had and bring the DEA into the heart of the Medellin Cartel. Barry Sheal has balls bigger than this room.
He could do anything, but he couldn't do time. And so he went from a bad guy that was a very successful bad guy to a very successful good guy. And he put the same amount of energy into trying to atone for his sins and get himself out of trouble that he'd put into getting himself into trouble. He was flying incredibly dangerous missions into the heart of the cartel in their estates.
He went there. He went into the belly of the beast.
He was really the first informant who penetrated the cartel in her sanctum. He brought them the biggest case they'd ever had. He met with the Ochoas. He filmed Pablo Escobar loading a plane. These were unprecedented feats of daring do and law enforcement ingenuity that the DEA had never seen. So clearly, up until his death, he was the best informant they ever had.
Baton Rouge, Louisiana, 1981. Barry Seal's life starts to unravel the night Randy Beasley comes looking for him. Downtown, on the banks of Mississippi, tourist steamboats are docked for the night. Mist falls over the river. A few blocks inland, Randy Beasley walks into a bar. He's been tipped off that this is the place to find the smartest drug smuggler in Baton Rouge. The doors swing shut behind him. Beasley quickly scans the busy room.
His eyes alight on a man sat at the bar. He's a pretty big guy.
Louis Unglesby was Barry Seal's attorney. Barry was probably about 5'8", 5'9", maybe 5'10", and he was almost as around as he was tall for much of his life. Now, he would lose and gain a lot of weight. I know that during the time he was doing work with the various government agencies, he got real thin. But by nature, he was a pretty big guy, and I know he filled up his cockpit.
Beasley takes a seat next to the big guy. His name is Adler Berryman Seal, but everyone calls him Berry. He might not look the part, but he's probably the most skilled pilot in the state, if not the country. One thing he definitely is, is an adrenaline junkie with a big mouth.
Jeff Fline is co-author of Kings of Cocaine. He was a risk taker, he was an adventurer, he loved adrenaline, he was charming, he was a bit of a ladies man. He had the brains, the guts, the will, and he loved the adrenaline and he loved the game with the cops. He knew they were watching him, he knew they were trying to catch him, and he loved the fact that he could do this and they couldn't catch him. Barry Seal's hulking frame is hunched over his drink.
Beasley leans in and initiates conversation. Pretty soon, the small talk gives way to something much hotter. Seal's ears perk up when Beasley says he needs help flying 1,200 pounds of Quaaludes out of South America. When it comes to flying narcotics out of Latin America and into the United States, Beasley has come to the right guy. - Seal was motivated by the thrills and the money. It was the combination. And he was always a guy who didn't think the rules applied to him.
He thought he was smarter than everybody else. He had that arrogance that he could get out of any situation. He could master any situation. And I think he liked the idea of beating the government, of putting something over on them. And he was getting rich. He was making tons of money. So it all came together. And, you know, it came together at a time exactly when the drug smugglers needed these daredevil pilots who were willing to do this. They hadn't perfected their other methods yet,
You know, moving cocaine in a container ship, you can smuggle way more cocaine than you can in a small airplane. They had not got there yet, so they needed people like Barry Seal. Seal's had a few drinks. His tongue is loosened. He boasts about running a million-dollar drug smuggling operation, flying cocaine from Colombia into the U.S. Just your standard barroom drinker, spinning a yarn about a daredevil life. Except in Barry Seal's case, it's true.
Delhan is a former FBI agent and author of Smuggler's End. He told him the routes that he used to bring his aircraft into the United States. That's the way Randy put it. He bragged about it and he gave away a lot of information. The story he's weaving gives him an air of invincibility. He believes his own hype, believes he's untouchable.
I think it's amazing to think that somebody as smart and gifted as Barry Seal would shoot off his mouth and describe his methods. Barry Seal is always a guy who lived on the edge. He courted danger and death in many respects, but it was simply foolish, and it got him caught. And, you know, he shot off his mouth to somebody he shouldn't have trusted, but did.
Seal doesn't know it yet, but he's staring down the barrel at up to 10 years jail time. Because Randy Beasley is no Quaaludes pusher. Seal has just spilled his secrets to an undercover DEA agent working on Operation Screamer, a mammoth sting targeting drug pilots. For Beasley, meeting Seal in this Baton Rouge bar is the culmination of months of hard work and meticulous planning.
He's been working to infiltrate networks of drug smuggling pilots in the southern United States. And Barry Seale is the top of the list.
They basically set themselves up as airline consultants. They set up a fake company to sell and broker services to pilots, i.e. smugglers. And they would broker planes, they would provide support services to these pilot operations, and this allowed them to penetrate the mercenary pilots who were bringing in the cocaine, and ultimately it led them to Barry Seale.
At the bar, Seale drains another glass. He agrees to smuggle the shipment of 1200 pounds of Quaalude tablets. Beasley can't believe his luck. This mercenary pilot has got an ego bigger than his waistline. The two men shake on the deal, and Barry Seale leaves the bar even richer than he was before. Or so he thinks. Back in the early 60s, when Barry Seale starts his career flying for Transworld Airlines, he's got what it takes to go all the way to the top.
Barry Seal was one of the youngest pilots in the history of TWA. He was a command pilot when he was in his mid-20s. From all accounts, he was a very good pilot. He flew 707s. On one occasion, he got to fly a 747. That wasn't his usual plane. You know, he could have had a very good career with TWA, very dependable, paycheck, everything else, if he hadn't gotten involved in smuggling. For Barry Seal...
Flying a 707 for TWA was like driving a bus. You get in it, you know, the flying you could do in your sleep, there was no challenge to that. And you go from one destination to another. It's always changing, but your job is pretty much the same. And I think that wasn't enough for a guy like Seal. He needed more than that. He needed more excitement than that. Louis Hunklesby, I'm a lawyer in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. I represented Barry Seal for several years.
during all of these investigations and then up until his death. He was the youngest TWA captain they ever had, which has to do with his capacity as a pilot. And everyone that knew Barry Seal would agree that he was an extraordinary pilot. He might be set up with a stable job, but pretty soon, Seal is fed up with the routine.
Barry Seal lived to break the law. He lived to break the rules. He knew what he was doing. Nobody corrupted him. He was the corrupter. He was the one who broke the law, broke the rules, and he reveled in it. In 1972, when he's 32 years old, a new acquaintance presents Seal with a unique opportunity. He jumps at the chance to make an extra buck. He won't be smuggling drugs. That'll come later. He'll be smuggling explosives. Seal calls in sick at his airline job.
They put him on a medical leave of absence. Now, he's got all the time he needs to moonlight. The plan is to smuggle a payload of plastic explosives, seven tons to be precise, out of the United States and into Mexico, where they'll be picked up by a gang of Cubans. When you can fly a plane like Barry can, how hard can it be? It's the morning of the job. Syl sits on the edge of the mattress in a suburban motel room in Kenner, a suburb of Baton Rouge.
By the window stands his accomplice, a guy named Murray Morris Kessler, all the way from Brooklyn, New York. The goods are all packaged up and ready to go. When the phone rings, it means the plane has arrived. The motel room door crashes open and cops charge in. Guns drawn, busted. The handcuffs click on Seal and Kessler's wrists. Turns out the buyer of these explosives is actually an undercover agent. It's the first time Seal's been arrested. This time, he's a lucky boy.
The judge throws the case out for prosecutorial misconduct. But even though he's technically innocent, Seal's career as a commercial airline pilot is dead in the water. When the case hits the pages of the Baton Rouge Advocate, his bosses at TWA fire him on the spot. His medical leave of absence has turned into a permanent departure. Del Han. He couldn't get a job with an airline again with his past experience and his record. Back in those days, he was pretty well paid. And when he lost his job,
His lifestyle had to remain the same. He had a wife and kids, and he was a good pilot. And I guess the timing was right. There was a market for good pilots, and he was in the smuggling industry, if you want to call it that. He's been burned, but his brush with smuggling contraband has given him the taste. There are other ways he could make an honest buck, but why settle for less? Seal's got bills to pay and mouths to feed. This is how he's going to provide for his devoted family.
Barry was a man who, you know, he'd been married twice, he had two children, alimony, and I think that, you know, he was a guy who needed that kind of money.
Smuggling gave him an easy route to money, so I think providing a living for his family was part of it. As a pilot, as somebody who liked to fly, liked to have his own planes, he got to use his pilot skills and he got his adrenaline fix. Barry Seal was the kind of smuggler with a twinkle in his eye, you know.
He seemed to be breaking the rules, but he didn't seem like a terrible drug lord killing people with his hands in the blood. He was transporting the product. So he felt and seemed a little different, at least to some people, but not to the law enforcement who was trying to catch him. As he embarks on his new career, Barry Seal is in the right place at the right time with exactly the right skill set.
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And with Bluehost Cloud, your sites can handle surges in traffic no matter how big. Plus, you automatically get daily backups and world-class security. Get started now at Bluehost.com. Elaine Shannon is author of Desperados. He came along at the time that the drug trade in South Florida was really taking off. And there were a lot of people coming into the trade just for the fun of it, just to see if they could beat the man.
Barry Seale was very much an adrenaline junkie. A lot of people, actually all the people that you meet in the drug trade are. They wouldn't be in it if they wanted to be selling insurance or e-commerce or something like that. He wanted excitement. He didn't want to sit at home. Up to now, cocaine's been around, but only for those with lots of money. But in the 1970s, cocaine is well on its way to becoming America's number one narcotic of choice.
The 60s were really the decade of marijuana in the United States. And, you know, LSD was around too. Cocaine started coming in, but it was very expensive. It was in small quantities. It was cut severely. And it was really sort of the rock star drug. It was really for rich people.
in the most elite circles. What happened in the '70s is the cartel with pilots like Barry Seal and others pioneered the transportation of cocaine on small airplanes in the United States.
That changed the game, because suddenly cocaine was far more available, it was cheaper, and it was pure. It didn't have to be cut so much. And so more and more people started using cocaine, and cocaine's the drug that makes you feel great. It makes you feel powerful, it makes you feel alive, it makes you feel intelligent. Then it has all these downsides that catch up with you. So in the 1970s, people thought
cocaine was a safe drug. It's hard for people to believe that now. But because the quantities were small and rare, because the product was cut, because it was devoted to elite use, you didn't have people overdosing from cocaine all the time. That came later, and when the purity got higher in the 1980s.
And so people thought it was a safe drug, a fun drug, a sexy drug. Somebody said doing cocaine is like flying to Paris for breakfast. Doing cocaine is God's way of telling you you have too much money. People said things like that back then. And that image just perpetuated and grew. It grew geometrically. And before you knew it, cocaine became the drug, became the drug of the late 1970s.
early 1980s. And everybody was trying to get their hands on it and suddenly it was everywhere thanks to the Medellin cartel and people like Barry Seale. Seale tests the water with a few shipments of marijuana, but he soon graduates to cocaine. It's a no-brainer. For a pilot, smuggling is just transporting a product. It can be any product. And if you're a good pilot,
You just go somewhere, they load it up, you take it. It can be guns, it can be explosives, it can be marijuana, cocaine, heroin, it can be anything.
And I don't think most smuggler pilots care or discriminate as long as they're getting paid. And that's definitely Barry Seal's position. I mean, he smuggled marijuana, he smuggled Quaaludes, he smuggled cocaine. He was willing to transport whatever made him the most money. Cocaine, just by volume, is so much more lucrative than marijuana.
300 kilos of marijuana, that's not bad, but 300 kilos of cocaine is millions of dollars. And so that's why these gifted pilots all ended up moving in the '70s from marijuana to cocaine. The money was just too great. In just three years, Seal builds up a first-class drug smuggling operation. By 1982, his handful of light aircraft has blossomed into a fleet of private jets.
Twenty miles southeast of the city of Baton Rouge, hidden from sight in the middle of a dense woodland, is a strip of finely cut grass 3,000 feet long. This is Barry Seal's private airstrip.
This is where the magic happens. He had a private airship south of Baton Rouge. It started out to be, and it still was, a housing development where people who had airplanes had a runway like in their backyard and there was houses around it. It was kind of remote and he had a big sign posted that
Basically said, "Keep out aircraft operations 24 hours a day." So that was his private runway. - Barry's drug is adrenaline. That's his vice. Underneath it all, he's a sage businessman. He knows to keep the product at arm's length.
They said that his two passions were smuggling and women. As far as I can see, that was it. He had enough discipline that he didn't get involved in the product. He certainly had the opportunity if he wanted to at an unlimited supply.
But the best smugglers don't get involved in their supply. There's an old line, "Don't get high on your own supply." And, you know, Barry Seal followed that. And, you know, he was a ladies' man, but he was also a family man. I mean, judging from the size of him, he loved to eat. I mean, you know, he can't... And maybe some of that was the adrenaline and the stress, but, no, he didn't have the drug, drink, and smoke vice.
There's no denying, Barry Seal is a bona fide smuggling genius. He's a student of the drugs trade. He looks at those before him and around him and thinks, "How can I do it better?" He won't repeat their mistakes. He studies historic and ongoing drug conspiracy cases. He even shows up incognito at several narco-trafficking trials. He's drinking in all the information that's out there.
The result? Seal's own drug system is almost entirely foolproof. Well, he was a stickler for details and his planes were all kept in top shape, so they usually didn't have any problems. I think that most pilots are. They're very careful. They account for all possible contingencies and they brief their people and they instruct their people on what to do and what not to do. So I think all that contributed to his success.
He could have run an airline, probably. In fact, well, he was running an airline. Let's put it that way. At the Grass Airstrip in the South Louisiana woodland, the propellers start to turn on the wings of a light aircraft until they're blurred into one. It's the dead of night, and Barry Seal is about to take off, bound for South America. Airborne, Seal switches off all the lights, those on board and on the aircraft's exterior. To the naked eye, the plane is completely blended into the pitch black.
Good thing he's wearing night vision goggles then. Seal follows the Louisiana coastline as it blends into the Mississippi, then Alabama, then curves down southwards into Florida. Then the plane begins to cross the Gulf of Mexico. An hour or so later, it's above the landmass of Central America, then finally into Colombian airspace.
Timing is vital. SEAL suppliers have paid out thousands of dollars in bribes to the Colombian military. At certain times of day or night, they'll look the other way and allow uncharted aircraft to land. Barry SEAL's smuggling operation was a small plane operation. He used propeller planes, Cessnas, Piper Navajos with the Panther conversion, meaning they had more powerful engines.
They would go down to Colombia. They would be loaded with duffel bags with cocaine. It would be in waterproof packaging. He was taking loads of about 300 kilos, which is, you know, 660 pounds. And, you know, that would be broken up in, you know, several duffel bags. The plane lands safely in a clearing in the depths of the rainforest. It's loaded up with contraband and refueled. Now it's time for the return flight. This is the tricky part.
Customs officials aren't too bothered about aircraft leaving US airspace. It's the ones coming in they're after. The Gulf of Mexico spread out beneath them. Seal flies low, very low, over the ocean surface. This is the best way to go under the radar.
Literally. The United States has radars and they're aware of planes that come in and out of the airspace of the United States. And the DEA and other people try to track them, particularly if they're coming from South America. So Barry had the capacity to fly his plane at what they call prop wash, which means you're so low, you're so close to the ocean,
You're underneath the radar and the engine and the props from your plane and all are splashing water on your windshield. So just imagine flying a big airplane that close to the Gulf of Mexico. It's a pretty amazing thing. SEAL is traveling at a speed of just 120 knots. To put that in perspective, plenty of private planes go over 500 knots.
But at this reduced speed, Seal is likely to avoid detection. On radar screens, his plane looks just like another helicopter coming ashore from the oil rigs. He knew when to come into the country. When he came off of the Mexican Peninsula to cross the Gulf, his planes flew low and were often mistaken for helicopters. There's a lot of drilling rigs out in the Gulf. There's a lot of helicopter traffic between the rigs and shore.
So he had a good chance of nobody paying much attention to another blip, which was one of his dope planes or a helicopter. Nobody knew the difference. He said he had a spotter on the coast of Louisiana where the plane would interdict to come into the country.
And if it was being followed, these pilots had instructions on where to go. Only he and the pilot and the ground crew that picked up the cocaine would know where the drop zone was. That's another reason. It was usually out in the wilderness. One of his claims was that he did a lot of delivery of cocaine on federal holidays because he knew the federal agents weren't working on holidays.
Seal makes it safely over the Gulf of Mexico and around Louisiana's Gulf Coast. Now it's time to make the drop. Moonlight glints off the surface of the South Louisiana swamps. The waters around here teem with shrimp destined for gumbo pots all around the state. The perfect stillness is ruptured. Seal's low-flying plane is coming in overhead.
He's navigated his way to this drop point using radar beacons. He's at the front line of smuggling technology. The planes would fly in without their lights. They would fly in low and slow so they wouldn't pop up on radar. They'd be hard to see on radar. And the pilots would have night vision goggles, which cost $5,000 a piece, but they would allow for night flying.
And using radio frequencies, walkie-talkies, and GPS location, they would drop the duffel bags out of, you know, hatches in the small plains into waiting confederates of Barry Seal in swamps. As Seal passes overhead, several large objects are thrown out of the plane. They come flying through the air and land with a splash. Quite a surprise for the sleeping swamp life.
He devised all these methods. He used GPS, he used radio frequencies, and they would airdrop the cocaine into the swamps. And people would be waiting for it, and they would take it, and they were never caught. It was a brilliant method, and he had all the details narrowed down. Stillness returns as the aircraft recedes out of earshot. The duffel bags bob in the water. Then, the whir of propeller engines. A helicopter is incoming. It hovers overhead. The noise is deafening.
The herons and cormorants are just getting back to sleep. They can forget about that. A hatch opens in the belly of the helicopter. A line is dropped out. It hooks the duffel bags one by one and winches them up. Then, as quickly as it arrived, the helicopter is out of there. A fortune has come and gone to this swampy corner of Louisiana, almost in the blink of an eye. Because these duffel bags are full to the brim with cocaine.
I mean, law enforcement had been tracking him for a long time and been trying to catch him for a long time because they heard the stories, you know, and things leak out. When you have an operation like this, things leak out. I mean, the genius of Barry Seale was he was able to keep smuggling big loads of cocaine when law enforcement knew he was a smuggler. And they just couldn't catch him because they couldn't catch those planes that came in low and slow and airdropped the cocaine into the swamps.
It was really a brilliant method that they could never crack. You know, it was all done without lights.
It was all done on a schedule with all kinds of security around their communications. Barry Seal used pay phones to communicate. He also was very careful about what he spoke about. Everybody was on a schedule, people had pagers, people all knew their jobs. The cocaine would be recovered and it would be driven to a location, put in the trunks of cars,
and driven to Miami for distribution. They would come into the state, wherever the drop zone was, and the timing was always done probably like an airline schedule for him. And so the ground crew would be ready, the helicopter would be ready to pick up cocaine and haul it to the place where the cars were, where it was loaded, and then the drivers would start on their way to Florida.
The final leg of the journey, Louisiana to Florida by road. The drugs weren't picked up here to be distributed. They had to go down to Florida first. And that was another one of his...
ideas, I guess, that like the three cars heading north to south wouldn't attract anybody's attention. Because he figured we, the government agents, all thought the drugs were going from the south up to the north if they were being followed. And only he and the pilot and the ground crew that picked up the cocaine would know where the drop zone was. And it was usually out in the wilderness.
Seal always transports the coke in the same model of car. Four-door sedans with Florida license plates. 1979 Mercury Grand Marquise. With an especially deep trunk, it's an ideal model for smuggling. A few hours later, two states over in Florida, Seal covertly exchanges the drugs for a suitcase full of cash. Job done. Until next time. In the next episode of Real Narcos...
After several close shaves, Barry Seal, America's most wanted drug smuggling airplane pilot, does the unthinkable. He flips. He no longer wants to be the greatest smuggler pilot. Now he wants to be the greatest DEA informant.
Real Narcos is a Noiser podcast and World Media Rights co-production hosted by me, John Cuban. The series is created by Pascal Hughes, produced by Joel Duddle. It's been edited by Katrina Hughes. Music by Oliver Baines from Flight Brigade. The sound mixer is Tom Pink. And this is Noiser's first ever podcast, so we would love to know what you think. If you have a moment, please leave us a review on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. ♪
