Breakout is a 1975 action film from Columbia Pictures starring Charles Bronson, Jill Ireland, Robert Duvall, John Huston, Sheree North and Randy Quaid.
The film ends with a runway incursion as Cable and Colton fight among departing airplanes at Brownsville Airport.
[6] The original director was Michael Ritchie, but he did not like the idea of the female lead being played by Charles Bronson's wife Jill Ireland.
The film was loosely based on an actual event that took place in August, 1971 (see List of helicopter prison escapes).
Kaplan Fund (named after the elder of the two) was found in a 1964 Congressional investigation to be a conduit for funneling CIA money to Latin America, including through the Institute of International Labor Research (IILR) headed by Norman Thomas, six-time presidential candidate for the Socialist Party of America.
[10] These funds were used in Latin America by figures like José Figueres Ferrer, Sacha Volman, and Juan Bosch.
[11] The CIA gave Figures money to publish a political journal, Combate, and to found a left-wing school for Latin American opposition leaders.
[12] He used the contacts with Bosch, Volman, and Figueres for a new purpose — as the United States moved to rally the hemisphere against Cuba's Fidel Castro, Rafael Trujillo, the strongman (caudillo) that ran the Dominican Republic for 30 years had become expendable.
[12] For over a year, the CIA had been in contact with dissidents inside the Dominican Republic who argued that assassination was the only certain way to remove Trujillo.
[13] Richard N. Goodwin, Assistant Special Counsel to the President, who had direct contacts with the rebel alliance, argued for intervention against Trujillo.
[14] An internal CIA memorandum states that a 1973 Office of Inspector General investigation into the murder disclosed "quite extensive Agency involvement with the plotters."
In November 1961, Mexican police found a corpse they identified as Luis Melchior Vidal Jr., godson of Trujillo.
[citation needed] He was held at the Santa Martha Acatitla prison in the Iztapalapa borough of the Mexico City D.F.
His sister, Judy Kaplan, attempted to secure his release in numerous ways, finally developing an audacious plot.
[10] In a plan hatched by San Francisco attorney Vasilios Basil "Bill" Choulos (1928–2003), a Bell Helicopter with its bottom painted in colors similar to that of the Mexican attorney general's would land in Mexico City's Santa Maria Acatitla prison and conduct a daring prisoner escape.
[22] Part of its box-office success was due to the then-novel strategy of "saturation booking", in which Columbia released 1,350 prints simultaneously, combined with a heavy advertising campaign costing $3.6 million on the opening week.