Instagram Video Try Again Bette Connection
In 1977, the town of Hazen, Arkansas, was distraught to hear that Gary Betzner, a local crop duster with three immature children had plunged to his death off the steep White River Bridge.
A pastor broke the somber news to Polly, Betzner'southward oldest daughter from his kickoff marriage on her 6th altogether. She, like his other two children, was grief-stricken and dislocated.
But nobody took information technology worse than his 2nd wife, Emerge, who became then comfortless she was detained in a psych ward of a nearby infirmary for days.
The entire town was dumbfounded as to why a seemingly happy, financially stable thirty-something human being would leap to his death in broad daylight — especially the authorities, who merely ever recovered clothes and shoes, but no body.
That'south because there was no torso to be found.
Betzner faked his death to live a dangerous double life — as a multimillionaire, international drug smuggler for Pablo Escobar, while also mounting a covert CIA war almost simultaneously.
His fascinating, stranger-than-fiction story is the subject area of a new HBO Max docuseries, "The Invisible Pilot," premiering Mon, Apr iv at nine p.k. The three-part, center-opening tale covers Betzner's unlikely transition from family man to drug maven, wrangling covert The states authorities operations in Central America.
"We run across him as this sort of 'Forrest Gump' grapheme, he'due south everywhere," Ari Mark, who co-directs with Phil Lott told The Post of Betzner, who is still alive and is now in his 80s.
The docuseries, executive produced by Adam McKay who is known for wild anti-establishment stories like "The Big Short," was "a dream come up true" collaboration for the directors.
A real mystery man
Even the directors, who sat down with Betzner a number of times through the course of the project, say it'due south hard to pin down who he really is.
He grew upwardly in the South, with an abusive father who left his mother when Gary was young. Years later, he joined the Navy, where he served in a communications branch. Betzner also says he was trained as a pilot, learning how to fly undetected with precious cargo.
"He is as cagey virtually [his military service] as he is virtually anything and we desperately tried to get his records from the Navy," Lott said. "Whether it was piloting or he was in communications, he definitely picked up something [about evading radar] there."
Subsequently starting a family in Arkansas, the ingather squeegee moved briefly to Alaska in 1976, in the hopes of working in the state'south booming oil industry. Information technology was there he started dabbling in pocket-sized-fourth dimension pot smuggling. A twelvemonth afterwards, Betzner — an anti-establishment hippie whose love of substances was not limited to marijuana — was disrepair in Miami on narcotics charges.
He returned to Arkansas, but was picked upward for possession a 2nd time there. His choice was uncomplicated: spend half his life in jail or disappear.
Telling not a soul but his wife, Emerge, the two hatched the plan to fake Betzner's expiry. She threw his clothes in the river and told authorities that he jumped off the bridge outside their hometown.
Sally was so game that she even took hypnosis classes with her husband to deliver her yearslong performance every bit the grieving widow to the townsfolk. Her nervous breakup, co-ordinate to Sally in the documentary, was part of the act.
Illusive identities
After a yr of being presumed dead, Betzner was hiding out in Hawaii under a fake proper noun and would have his family come visit periodically.
But then he got disrepair yet again in his new, tropical locale. Once again, Betzner had to go along the run to avoid a life in jail — only this fourth dimension, he upped the dues and became truly invisible, fifty-fifty to his loved ones.
Untethered, Betzner entered the underworld of high-profile, international drug smuggling.
By 1980, Gary had moved effectually the US nether several aliases as he began his work as a smuggler for various groups and cartels — putting his ingather-dusting skills and military experience to proficient utilize. He traveled from place to place under the guise of a chiropractor, a car salesman, a real estate broker and many other trades, all the while flight planes for his bosses. Fittingly, it all went downward during the height of President Ronald Reagan'southward war on drugs.
"He'southward a shapeshifter … and he pulled [multiple lives] off," Marking said.
Betzner, who retired his nascency proper name for his nigh frequently used moniker Lucas Harmony, quickly accrued an "astronomical" fortune from his newfound career while living in South Florida, according to Mark.
"Phil and I spent a lot of time with him in the Miami and Coconut Grove surface area retracing steps. 'That guy owes me fifty million, those people owe me 100 1000000' and you're like, 'OK!'" he added. "He has all kinds of stories almost trading cars and giving gifts, he was actually a fairly generous guy. He gave a lot of it abroad."
His motivation for the decease-defying runs — where Betzner said he was one time chased by Cuban MiG fighter jets for flying in their airspace — wasn't actually near making money, the directors said.
"Every flight he brought in, he felt like he was being a patriot. That's a twisted world view that, in his mind, is absolutely 100% right," Lott said. "I think Gary wants to be extraordinary. Information technology's such a quintessentially American idea, correct? It's like: 'I'm a small town crop duster, just … I'm a really good pilot, I'grand really good at what I do, boy, I can do improve than [crop dusting] and I can keep ascending,'" Mark said.
Escobar'southward fly guy
In the early 1980s, Betzner made a new contact to fly for — the notorious Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar.
"Escobar and him seemed to take a mutual respect," Mark said.
"Gary tells a great story of purchasing planes and he created Pablo Escobar's air force. And it was several planes, big planes, non but single engines or twin engines — these were jets," Lott added. "And he tells several stories nigh spending time flight planes to Republic of chile and just flying effectually looking for great valleys and beautiful vistas with Pablo Escobar."
Around the same time, Betzner establish another new employer in the United States government.
After catching wise to his illegal dealings, the CIA leveraged Betzner to practice their muddy work of arming anti-communist, Contra rebels in Nicaragua during a black ops mission. To avoid jail time, Betzner agreed to fly weapons and explosives to the ranch of John Hull, an American contractor in Costa Rica who worked with the CIA.
Specifically, he twice hauled Thousand-16 rifles, mines, and C-4 explosives down to the property, bringing back a near 500 kilograms (1,100 pounds) of cocaine, according to an Associated Press written report.
"That tension is messed upwards. Y'all're dealing with these two kind of superpowers playing them off each other in some kind of style," Mark said of Betzner'south unlikely employers. "I think for him, and I've experienced this firsthand, he is and then incredibly adept at shapeshifting — at rolling with whatever the situation is and making information technology work."
Betzner's incredible run came to an sharp cease in 1984, when he was disrepair in Florida for smuggling Escobar'due south cocaine. Later beingness sentenced to 27 years in jail, Betzner spited the CIA — who he says had guaranteed him immunity from jail — past testifying to the fake flag mission and many more secrets of authorities-known drug smuggling.
He did so publicly in 1988 to a Senate Commission led by John Kerry, where he even pointed to the exact rail he landed on in Costa rica.
Just Betzner's policy-altering testimony also put him at risk of pissing off his other boss.
"[Escobar] knew where I was from, my children, that I 'committed suicide,'" Betzner says in the series. "Plainly he hired somebody [in the US] to investigate who I was equally, like, insurance."
"There was this implication of collateral, the collateral being his family," Marking said. "There was this sort of unspoken surveillance that Escobar and his people made very clear to Gary."
Ultimately, Betzner served his full sentence, and Escobar left his family unit alone. He reconnected with his kids and now lives humbly with his third married woman, and no traces of the many millions that were seized by the feds at the height of his drug trafficking career.
He admits he lives with a degree of remorse.
"His family has conspicuously had its struggles and I think Gary has and volition keep to admit he regrets that," Marking said. "He actually embraces, 'This is who he is' and 'This is the way it is.'"
Source: https://nypost.com/2022/03/31/the-invisible-pilot-life-of-a-drug-smuggler-turned-cia-op/
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