SMUGGLER: Barry Seal

Barry Seal grew up during the 1950s in Baton Rouge, La., a small college town set on the banks of the Mississippi River. At 15, when most boys his age were just getting a handle on driving a car on their own, Barry Seal took his first solo flight in an airplane. Less than a year later he earned his pilot's license.

Barry was a natural in the air, one of the most gifted pilots anyone in Baton Rouge could remember. "He could fly with the best of them," said Ed Duffard, Seal's first flight instructor. "That boy was first cousin to a bird."

While still in high school, Seal reportedly landed a helicopter on a football field during a game. He was that confident.

In 1955, Seal joined a Civil Air Patrol unit at Lakefront Airport in New Orleans. The unit's commander was David Ferrie, then a pilot for Eastern Airlines, who would later figure prominently in New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison's conspiracy investigation into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

One of Seal's fellow CAP cadets was a kid named Lee Harvey Oswald.