MENA0
By David P Beiter
Date: Tue Jul 18, 1995 2:21 pm CST
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"- Ms.Freddi .A.R.."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This is the story that couldn't be suppressed. An investigative report
into a scandal that haunts the reputations of three presidents --
Reagan, Bush, and Clinton.
THE CRIMES OF MENA
Article by Sally Denton and Roger Morris
Penthouse
July, 1995
[ABOUT THIS STORY]
The initial suppression of the Seal-archive story created a small tidal
wave that surged along the internet, gave right-wing radio another
conspiracy to caress, and made headlines from London to San Francisco.
After 11 weeks of line-by-line fact-checking, editing, and legal
vetting, after the text had been laid out in final type, photos and
artwork arrayed, contracts signed, and publication date fixed, at the
last moment -- on January 26, 1995 -- *Washington Post* Managing Editor
Robert Kaiser had put one more nervous hold on the article you now see
in *Penthouse*. We pulled the piece in dismay and disgust. Even the
*Post's* own ombudsman acknowledged "the uproar" over what she called
"the story of the hour."
For us as authors, personally and intellectually, the de facto
suppression and resulting sensation were at best a mixed affair. A
little like Henry Miller's *Tropic* titles, banned in Boston, our
article was, ironically, receiving more attention unprinted that it
might have drawn had it appeared as scheduled. Yet in their inevitable
self-justification, *Post* editors were also impugning us as
journalists, and the still-invisible piece was inevitably caught up in
wild speculation or anti-Clinton mania that in many ways obscured the
deeper, wider importance of what we had reported.
This was, after all, the thoroughly documented story of an enormous
crime -- of billions of dollars in gunrunning and drug smuggling done
with the apparent collusion and cover-up of the U.S. government. It
raised ominous questions not only about Bill Clinton, but about
presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush as well -- not simply a single
set of scoundrels, but a far larger culture of official lawlessness.
And behind the sorry episode at *The Washington Post* was something
nearly as sinister -- the tragic inability or refusal of a major media
institution to confront that malignant dark side of American life and
governance, even when presented with unprecedented evidence.
It had all begun almost by accident. As a member of the Association of
National Security Alumni, a group of onetime CIA, White House, and other
officials devoted to reform in intelligence and foreign policy, Roger
Morris had first read about Mena in the organization's newsletter,
*Unclassified*, where an article early in the 1992 campaign summarized
the fragmentary, largely undocumented accounts of Barry Seal's operation
in western Arkansas in the eighties. By the spring of 1993, Morris had
started a book on Bill and Hillary Clinton, including their Arkansas
background, and had begun to gather a thick file on Mena. Trips and
literally dozens of phone calls back and forth to Arkansas added
significantly to the sources -- many of them sworn, on the record, and
previously unreported.
Still, the sheer detail and exact magnitude of the smuggling and money
laundering lacked hard evidence. With the exception of a lone account
by reporter Bill Plante with producer Michael Singer on the CBS evening
news, and two *Wall Street Journal* editorial-page feature pieces by
Micah Morrison -- all in 1994, and drawing mainly on known sources and
accounts -- the story remained a silhouette, and largely on the
disdained margin of American journalism. Most major papers and networks
ignored the scandal. A few, like *Time* or *The Post* itself, had
written about it only to ridicule the accusations.
Meanwhile, in summer 1993, Morris shared his bulging Mena files with a
close friend and colleague, Sally Denton, whose book on drugs and
political corruption in Kentucky, *The Bluegrass Conspiracy*, was seen
by many investigative reporters as a small classic on its kindred
subject.
Instantly recognizing the gravity of the material, familiar from her own
experience with the censure or aversion of the general media to such
reporting, Denton instantly offered to pursue the story herself while
Morris concentrated on other aspects of his book. Over the next year,
Denton scoured her considerable law-enforcement and underworld sources
throughout the nation, calling in or sending packages of an ever-growing
mass of new evidence. By late summer 1994, what we called the Seal
archive was mostly gathered -- more than 2,000 documents, from the
smallest receipt to whole volumes of investigation, that left no doubt
about at least the seminal crimes in Mena.
Last autumn, we first submitted a brief op-ed version of the piece to
*The New York Times*, which promptly turned it down. This was
essentially a *Wall Street Journal* subject that *The Times* had not
pursued as reportage, op-ed editor Michael Levitas told Morris. While
they had no reason to doubt the documentation or the import of the
story, the great gray *Times*, for now, would pass.
Without hesitation, we went next to *The Washington Post*, obviously
looking for much the same political impact and mainstream authority.
Less than an hour after we had faxed a copy to the *Post's Outlook*
section, Deputy Editor Jeffrey Frank called back with warm acceptance
and support.
It was obviously an extraordinary article, Frank told us, and though it
would have to be thoroughly checked and carefully steered through the
paper, he would do all he could to see it published.
Over the next 11 weeks, from early November 1994 to late January 1995,
there were repeated delays and postponements, most ascribed to the
election aftermath, the new Congress, and the holidays. But Frank and
his staff were steady in their editorial commitment and enthusiasm,
something Denton saw firsthand in a visit in *Outlook* offices before
Christmas.
Meanwhile, as the article was set in galleys, there were numerous faxes
back and forth, shipments of documents, photos, and even stills from
videotape, and weeks of painstaking checking, editing, and legal review
by the *Post's* in-house lawyers, carefully chosen to avoid any
potential conflict of interest with attorneys the paper might share
somehow with the Clintons.
"Just get everybody on board," Frank said Executive Editor Leonard
Downie had told him. And Frank had done just that, as we patiently
answered queries from any number of *Post* editors and reporters who had
been remotely associated with aspects of the story -- far more, we were
told later, than to the usual *Outlook* piece. But then, we recognized
that this was anything but usual.
At last, on January 25, it all seemed done. Everyone had signed off, we
were assured. The galleys were in final form, the contracts signed, and
publication was set for a major splash on Sunday the twenty-ninth.
Often strained over the weeks of work and marshaling, Frank's own voice
seemed audibly relaxed as we began talking about how we would respond to
other media questions.
Then suddenly -- literally at the last moment -- as *Outlook* went to
press on January 26, Frank was on the message machine saying Managing
Editor Robert Kaiser had held the story yet again. At the same moment,
we were being called by the London *Sunday Telegraph*, whose
correspondence had been leaked an early version of the piece (by a
source high up at *The Post*, we were told) and had learned even before
we did that the story was being held once more. He was now planning to
file his own dispatch on the whole episode, perhaps including the piece
itself.
A bit desperate, we called Bob Kaiser directly, not to lobby further for
the story -- which Frank had told us would be in vain -- but to alert
him to the disturbing news of the *Telegraph* leak. But even after
Morris explained all that through a secretary, Kaiser refused to come on
the line. "He doesn't want to talk to you," she said. Frustrated,
furious, convinced that Kaiser was not dealing with the story
professionally -- and likely never would -- we pulled it.
We still don't know why the story was suppressed, though rumors
abound -- of CIA compromises at *The Post*, of calls from the White
House, or some imagined rivalry between Morris's book and a Clinton
biography by a longtime *Post* reporter, soon to be serialized and,
unusually, promoted in the paper.
Whatever the motives, however, the fact remains that once more,
mainstream media had turned away from the dark side, perhaps dreading
what it would find there and what it would have to do as a result,
perhaps afraid of something of its own reflection.
As so often in the past, the public service of airing stores like Mena
would fall to braver outlets, like *Penthouse*. -- Sally Denton and
Roger Morris.
The Crimes of Mena
by Sally Denton and Roger Morris
Penthouse
July, 1995
Barry Seal -- gunrunner, drug trafficker, and covert CIA operative
extraordinaire -- is hardly a familiar name in American politics. But
nine years after he was murdered in a hail of bullets by Medellin cartel
hit men outside a Salvation Army shelter in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, he
has come back to haunt the reputations of three American presidents.
Seal's legacy includes more than 2,000 newly discovered documents that
now verify and quantify much of what previously had been only suspicion,
conjecture, and legend. The documents confirm that from 1981 to his
brutal death in 1986, Barry Seal carried on one of the most lucrative,
extensive, and brazen operations in the history of the international
drug trade, and that he did it with evident complicity, if not
collusion, of elements of the United States government, apparently with
the acquiescence of Ronald Reagan's administration, impunity from any
subsequent exposure by George Bush's administration, and under the
usually acute political nose of then Arkansas governor Bill Clinton.
The newly unearthed papers show the real Seal as far more impressive and
well-connected than the character played by Dennis Hopper in a
made-for-TV movie some years ago, loosely based on the smuggler's life.
The film portrayed the pudgy pilot as a hapless victim, caught in a
cross fire between bungling but benign government agencies and Latin
drug lords. The truth sprinkled through the documents is a richer --
and altogether more sinister -- matter of national and individual
corruption.
It is a tale of massive, socially devastating crime, of what seems to
have been an official cover-up to match, and, not the least, of the
strange reluctance of so-called mainstream American journalism to come
to grips with the phenomenon and its ominous implications -- even when
the documentary evidence had appeared.
The trail winds back to another slightly bruited but obscure name -- a
small place in western Arkansas called Mena.
Of the many stories emerging from Arkansas of the 1980s that was a
crucible to the Clinton presidency, none has been more elusive than the
charges surrounding Mena. Nestled in the dense pine and hardwood
forests of the Oachita Mountains, some 160 miles west of Little Rock,
once thought a refuge for nineteenth-century border outlaws and even a
hotbed of Depression-era anarchists, the tiny town has been the locale
for persistent reports of drug smuggling, gunrunning, and money
laundering tracing to the early eighties, when Seal based his aircraft
at Mena's Intermountain Regional Airport.
>From first accounts circulating locally in Arkansas, the story surfaced
nationally as early as 1989 in a *Penthouse* article called "Snowbound,"
written by investigative reporter John Cummings, and in a Jack Anderson
column, but was never advanced at the time by other media. Few
reporters covering Clinton in the 1992 campaign missed hearing at least
something about Mena. But it was obviously a serious and demanding
subject -- the specter of vast drug smuggling with CIA involvement --
and none of the major media pursued it seriously. During 1992, the story
was kept alive by Sarah McClendon, *The Nation*, and *The Village
Voice*.
Then, after Clinton became president, Mena began to reappear. Over the
past year, CBS News and *The Wall Street Journal* have reported the
original, unquieted charges surrounding Mena, including the shadow of
some CIA (or "national security") involvement in the gun and drug
traffic, and the apparent failure of then governor Clinton to pursue
evidence of such international crime so close to home.
"Seal was smuggling drugs and kept his planes at Mena," *The Wall Street
Journal* reported in 1994. "He also acted as an agent for the DEA. In
one of these missions, he flew the plane that produced photographs of
Sandinistas loading drugs in Nicaragua.
He was killed by a drug gang [Medellin cartel hit men] in Baton Rouge.
The cargo plane he flew was the same one later flown by Eugene Hasenfus
when he was shot down over Nicaragua with a load of contra supplies."
In a mix of wild rumor and random fact, Mena has also been a topic of
ubiquitous anti-Clinton diatribes circulated by right-wing extremists --
an irony in that the Mena operation was the apparent brainchild of the
two previous and Republican administrations.
Still, most of the larger American media have continued to ignore, if
not ridicule, the Mena accusations. Finding no conspiracy in the
Oachitas last July, a *Washington Post* reporter typically scoffed at
the "alleged dark deeds," contrasting Mena with an image as
"Clandestination, Arkansas...Cloak and Dagger Capital of America."
Noting that *The New York Times* had "mentioned Mena primarily as the
headquarters of the American Rock Garden Society," the *Columbia
Journalism Review* in a recent issue dismissed "the conspiracy theories"
as of "dubious relevance."
A former Little Rock businessman, Terry Reed, has coauthored with John
Cummings a highly controversial book, *Compromised: Clinton, Bush, and
the CIA*, which describes a number of covert activities around Mena,
including a CIA operation to train pilots and troops for the Nicaraguan
Contras, and the collusion of local officials. Both the book and its
authors were greeted with derision.
Now, however, a new mass of documentary evidence has come to light
regarding just such "dark deeds" -- previously private and secret
records that substantiate as never before some of the worst and most
portentous suspicions about what went on at Mena, Arkansas, a decade
ago.
Given the scope and implications of the Mena story, it may be easy to
understand the media's initial skepticism and reluctance. But it was
never so easy to dismiss the testimony and suspicions of some of those
close to the matter: Internal Revenue Service Agent Bill Duncan,
Arkansas State Police Investigator Russell Welch, Arkansas Attorney
General J. Winston Bryant, Congressman Bill Alexander, and various
other local law-enforcement officials and citizens.
All of these people were convinced by the late eighties that there
existed what Bryant termed "credible evidence" of the most serious
criminal activity involving Mena between 1981 and 1986.
They also believed that crimes were committed with the acquiescence, if
not the complicity, of elements of the U.S. government. But they
couldn't seem to get the national media to pay attention.
During the 1992 campaign, outside advisers and aides urged former
California governor Jerry Brown to raise the Mena issue against
Clinton -- at least to ask why the Arkansas governor had not done more
about such serious international crime so close to home. But Brown,
too, backed away from the subject. "I'll raise it if the major media
break it first," he told aides. "The media will do it, Governor," one
of them replied in frustration, "if only you'll raise it."
Mena's obscure airport was thought by the IRS, the FBI, U.S. Customs,
and the Arkansas State Police to be a base for Adler Berriman "Barry"
Seal, a self-confessed, convicted smuggler whose operations had been
linked to the intelligence community.
Duncan and Welch both spent years building cases against Seal and others
for drug smuggling and money laundering around Mena, only to see their
own law-enforcement careers damaged in the process.
What evidence they gathered, they have said in testimony and other
public statements, was not sufficiently pursued by the then U.S.
attorney for the region, J. Michael Fitzhugh, or by the IRS, Arkansas
State Police, and other agencies. Duncan, testifying before the joint
investigation by the Arkansas state attorney general's office and the
United States Congress in June 1991, said that 29 federal indictments
drafted in a Mena-based money- laundering scheme had gone unexplored.
Fitzhugh, responding at the tie to Duncan's charges, said, "This office
has not slowed up any investigation... [and] has never been under any
pressure in any investigation."
By 1992, to Duncan's and Welch's mounting dismay, several other official
inquiries into the alleged Mena connection were similarly ineffectual or
were stifled altogether, furthering their suspicions of government
collusion and cover-up. In his testimony before Congress, Duncan said
the IRS "withdrew support for the operations" and further directed him
to "withhold information from Congress and perjure myself."
Duncan later testified that he had never before experienced "anything
remotely akin to this type of interference.... Alarms were going off,"
he continued, "and as soon as Mr. Fitzhugh got involved, he was more
aggressive in not allowing the subpoenas and in interfering in the
investigative process."
State policeman Russell Welch felt he was "probably the most
knowledgeable person" regarding the activities at Mena, yet he was not
initially subpoenaed to testify before the grand jury.
Welch testified later that the only reason he was ultimately subpoenaed
at all was because one of the grand jurors was from Mena and "told the
others that if they wanted to know something about the Mena airport,
they ought to ask that guy [Welch] out there in the hall."
State Attorney General Bryant, in a 1991 letter to the office of
Lawrence Walsh, the independent counsel in the Iran-Contra
investigation, wondered "why no one was prosecuted in Arkansas despite a
mountain of evidence that Seal was using Arkansas as his principle
staging area during the years 1982 through 1985."
What actually went on in the woods of western Arkansas? The question is
still relevant for what it may reveal about certain government
operations during the time that Reagan and Bush were in the White House
and Clinton was governor of Arkansas.
In a mass of startling new documentation -- the more than 2,000 papers
gathered by the authors from private and law-enforcement sources in a
year-long nationwide search -- answers are found and serious questions
are posed.
These newly unearthed documents --the veritable private papers of Barry
Seal -- substantiate at least part of what went on at Mena.
What might be called the Seal archive dates back to 1981, when Seal
began his operations at the Intermountain Regional Airport in Mena. The
archive, all of it now in our possession, continues beyond February
1986, when Seal was murdered by Colombian assassins after he had
testified in federal court in Las Vegas, Fort Lauderdale, and Miami for
the U.S. government against leaders of the Medellin drug cartel.
The papers include such seemingly innocuous material as Seal's bank and
telephone records; negotiable instruments, promissory notes, and
invoices; personal correspondence; address and appointment books; bills
of sale for aircraft and boats; aircraft registration, and modification
work orders.
In addition, the archive also contains personal diaries; handwritten
to-do lists and other private notes; secretly tape-recorded
conversations; and cryptographic keys and legends for codes used in the
Seal operation.
Finally, there are extensive official records; federal investigative and
surveillance reports, accounting assessments by the IRS and DEA, and
court proceedings not previously reported in the press -- testimony as
well as confidential pre-sentencing memoranda in federal
narcotics-trafficking trials in Florida and Nevada -- numerous
depositions, and other sworn statements.
The archive paints a vivid portrait not only of a major criminal
conspiracy around Mena, but also of the unmistakable shadow of
government complicity. Among the new revelations:
Mena, from 1981 to 1985, was indeed one of the centers for international
smuggling traffic. According to official IRS and DEA calculations,
sworn court testimony, and other corroborative records, the traffic
amounted to thousands of kilos of cocaine and heroin and literally
hundreds of millions of dollars in drug profits. According to a 1986
letter from the Louisiana attorney general to then U.S. attorney
general Edwin Meese, Seal "smuggled between $3 billion and $5 billion of
drugs into the U.S."
Seal himself spent considerable sums to land, base, maintain, and
specially equip or refit his aircraft for smuggling. According to
personal and business records, he had extensive associations at Mena and
in Little Rock, and was in nearly constant telephone contact with Mena
when he was not there himself. Phone records indicate Seal made
repeated calls to Mena the day before his murder. This was long after
Seal, according to his own testimony, was working as an $800,000-a-year
informant for the federal government.
A former member of the Army Special Forces, Seal had ties to the Central
Intelligence Agency dating to the early 1970s. He had confided to
relatives and others, according to their sworn statements, that he was a
CIA operative before and during the period when he established his
operations at Mena. In one statement to Louisiana State Police, a Seal
relative said, "Barry was into gunrunning and drug smuggling in Central
and South America... and he had done some time in El Salvadore [sic]."
Another added, "It was true, but at the time Barry was working for the
CIA."
In a posthumous jeopardy-assessment case against Seal -- also documented
in the archive -- the IRS determined that money earned by Seal between
1984 and 1986 was not illegal because of his "CIA-DEA employment." The
only public official acknowledgment of Seals's relationship to the CIA
has been in court and congressional testimony, and in various published
accounts describing the CIA's installation of cameras in Seal's C-123K
transport plane, used in a highly celebrated 1984 sting operation
against the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua.
Robert Joura, the assistant special agent in charge of the DEA's Houston
office and the agent who coordinated Seal's undercover work, told *The
Washington Post* last year that Seal was enlisted by the CIA for one
sensitive mission -- providing photographic evidence that the
Sandinistas were letting cocaine from Colombia move through Nicaragua.
A spokesman for then Senate candidate Oliver North told *The Post* that
North had been kept aware of Seal's work through "intelligence sources."
Federal Aviation Administration registration records contained in the
archive confirm that aircraft identified by federal and state narcotics
agents as in the Seal smuggling operation were previously owned by Air
America, Inc., widely reported to have been a CIA proprietary company.
Emile Camp, one of Seal's pilots and a witness to some of his most
significant dealings, was killed on a mountainside near Mena in 1985 in
the unexplained crash of one of those planes that had once belonged to
Air America.
According to still other Seal records, at least some of the aircraft in
his smuggling fleet, which included a Lear jet, helicopters, and former
U.S. military transports, were also outfitted with avionics and other
equipment by yet another company in turn linked to Air America.
Among the aircraft flown in and out of Mena was Seal's C-123K cargo
plane, christened *Fat Lady*. The records show that *Fat Lady*, serial
number 54-0679, was sold by Seal months before his death. According to
other files, the plane soon found its way to a phantom company of what
became known in the Iran-Contra scandal as "the Enterprise," the
CIA-related secret entity managed by Oliver North and others to smuggle
illegal weapons to the Nicaraguan Contra rebels. According to former
DEA agent Celerino Castilo and others, the aircraft was allegedly
involved in a return traffic in cocaine, profits from which were then
used to finance more clandestine gunrunning.
FAA records show that in October 1986, the same *Fat Lady* was shot down
over Nicaragua with a load of arms destined for the Contras. Documents
found on board the aircraft and seized by the Sandinistas included logs
linking the plane with Area 51 -- the nation's top-secret
nuclear-weapons facility at the Nevada Test Site. The doomed aircraft
was co-piloted by Wallace Blaine "Buzz" Sawyer, a native of western
Arkansas, who died in the crash. The admissions of the surviving crew
member, Eugene Hasenfus, began a public unraveling of the Iran-Contra
episode.
An Arkansas gun manufacturer testified in 1993 in federal court in
Fayetteville that the CIA contracted with him to build 250 automatic
pistols for the Mena operation. William Holmes testified that he had
been introduced in Mena by a CIA operative, and that he then sold
weapons to Seal. Even though he was given a Department of Defense
purchase order for guns fitted with silencers, Holmes testified that he
was never paid the $140,000 the government owed him. "After the
Hasenfus plane was shot down," Holmes said, "you couldn't find a soul
around Mena."
Meanwhile, there was still more evidence that Seal's massive smuggling
operation based in Arkansas had been part of a CIA operation, and that
the crimes were continuing well after Seal's murder. In 1991 sworn
testimony to both Congressman Alexander and Attorney General Bryant,
state police investigator Welch recorded that in 1987 he had documented
"new activity at the [Mena] airport with the appearance of... an
Australian business [a company linked with the CIA], and C-130s had
appeared..."
At the same time, according to Welch, two FBI agents officially informed
him that the CIA "had something going on at the Mena Airport involving
Southern Air Transport [another company linked with the CIA]...and they
didn't want us [the Arkansas State Police] to screw it up like we had
the last one."
The hundreds of millions in profits generated by the Seal trafficking
via Mena and other outposts resulted in extraordinary banking and
business practices in apparent efforts to launder or disperse the vast
amounts of illicit money in Arkansas and elsewhere. Seal's financial
records show from the early eighties, for example, instances of daily
deposits of $50,000 or more, and extensive use of an offshore foreign
bank in the Caribbean, as well as financial institutions in Arkansas and
Florida.
According to IRS criminal investigator Duncan, secretaries at the Mena
Airport told him that when Seal flew into Mena, "there would be stacks
of cash to be taken to the bank and laundered." One secretary told him
that she was ordered to obtain numerous cashier's checks, each in an
amount just under $10,000, at various banks in Mena and surrounding
communities, to avoid filing the federal Currency Transaction Reports
required for all bank transactions that exceed that limit.
Bank tellers testified before a federal grand jury that in November
1982, a Mena airport employee carried a suitcase containing more than
$70,000 into a bank. "The bank officer went down the teller lines
handing out the stacks of $1,000 bills and got the cashier's checks."
Law-enforcement sources confirmed that hundreds of thousands of dollars
were laundered from 1981 to 1983 just in a few small banks near Mena,
and that millions more from Seal's operation were laundered elsewhere in
Arkansas and the nation.
Spanish-language documents in Seal's possession at the time of his
murder also indicate that he had accounts throughout Central America and
was planning to set up his own bank in the Caribbean.
Additionally, Seal's files suggest a grandiose scheme for building an
empire. Papers in his office at the time of his death include
references to dozens of companies -- all of which had names that began
with Royale. Among them: Royale Sports, Royale Television Network,
Royale Liquors, Royale Casino, S.A., Royale Pharmaceuticals, Royale
Arabians, Royale Seafood, Royale Security, Royale Resorts... and on and
on.
Seal was scarcely alone in his extensive smuggling operation based in
Mena from 1981 to 1986, commonly described in both federal and state
law-enforcement files as one of the largest drug-trafficking operations
in the United States at the time, if not in the history of the drug
trade. Documents show Seal confiding on one occasion that he was "only
the transport," pointing to an extensive network of narcotics
distribution and finance in Arkansas and other states. After drugs were
smuggled across the border, the duffel bags of cocaine would be
retrieved by helicopters and dropped onto flatbed trucks destined for
various American cities.
In recognition of Seal's significance in the drug trade, government
prosecutors made him their chief witness in various cases, including a
1985 Miami trial in absentia of Medellin drug lords; in another 1985
trial of what federal officials regarded as the largest
narcotics-trafficking case to date in Las Vegas; and in still a third
prosecution of corrupt officials in the Turks and Caicos Islands. At
the same time, court records and other documents reveal a studied
indifference by government prosecutors to Seal's earlier and ongoing
operations at Mena.
In the end, the Seal documents are vindication for dedicated officials
in Arkansas like agents Duncan and Welch and local citizens' groups like
the Arkansas Committee, whose own evidence and charges take on a new
gravity -- and also for *The Nation*, *The Village Voice*, the
Association of National Security Alumni, the venerable Washington
journalists Sarah McClendon and Jack Anderson, Arkansas reporters Rodney
Bowers and Mara Leveritt, and others who kept an all-too-authentic story
alive amid wider indifference.
But now the larger implications of the newly exposed evidence seem as
disturbing as the criminal enormity it silhouettes. Like his modern
freebooter's life, Seal's documents leave the political and legal
landscape littered with stark questions.
What, for example, happened to some nine different official
investigations into Mena after 1987, from allegedly compromised federal
grand juries to congressional inquiries suppressed by the National
Security Council in 1988 under Ronald Reagan to still later Justice
Department inaction under George Bush?
Officials repeatedly invoked national security to quash most of the
investigations. Court documents *do* show clearly that the CIA and the
DEA employed Seal during 1984 and 1985 for the Reagan administration's
celebrated sting attempt to implicate the Nicaraguan Sandinista regime
in cocaine trafficking.
According to a December 1988 Senate Foreign Relations Committee report,
"cases were dropped. The apparent reason was that the prosecution might
have revealed national-security information, even though all of the
crimes which were the focus of the investigation occurred before Seal
became a federal informant."
Tax records show that, having assessed Seal posthumously for some $86
million in back taxes on his earnings from Mena and elsewhere between
1981 and 1983, even the IRS forgave the taxes on hundreds of millions in
known drug and gun profits over the ensuing two-year period when Seal
was officially admitted to be employed by the government.
To follow the IRS logic, what of the years, crimes, and profits at Mena
in the early eighties, before Barry Seal became an acknowledged federal
operative, as well as the subsequently reported drug-trafficking
activities at Mena even *after* his murder -- crimes far removed from
his admitted cooperation as government informant and witness?
"Joe [name deleted] works for Seal and cannot be touched because Seal
works for the CIA," a Customs official said in an Arkansas investigation
into drug trafficking during the early eighties. "A CIA or DEA
operation is taking place at the Mena airport," an FBI telex advised the
Arkansas State Police in August 1987, 18 months after Seal's murder.
Welch later testified that a Customs agent told him, "Look, we've been
told not to touch anything that has Barry Seal's name on it, just to let
it go."
The London *Sunday Telegraph* recently reported new evidence, including
a secret code number, that Seal was also working as an operative of the
Defense Intelligence Agency during the period of the gunrunning and drug
smuggling.
Perhaps most telling is what is so visibly missing from the voluminous
files. In thousands of pages reflecting a man of meticulous
organization and planning, Barry Seal seems to have felt singularly and
utterly secure -- if not somehow invulnerable -- at least in the
ceaseless air transport and delivery into the United States of tons of
cocaine for more than five years. In a 1986 letter to the DEA, the
commander and deputy commander of narcotics for the Louisiana State
Police say that Seal "was being given apparent free rein to import drugs
in conjunction with DEA investigations with so little restraint and
control on his actions as to allow him the opportunity to import drugs
for himself should he have been so disposed."
Seal's personal videotapes, in the authors' possession, show one scene
in which he used U.S. Army paratroop equipment, as well as
military-like precision, in his drug-transporting operation. Then, in
the middle of the afternoon, after a number of dry runs, one of his
airplanes dropped a load of several duffel bags attached to a
parachute. Within seconds, the cargo sitting on the remote grass
landing strip was retrieved by Seal and loaded onto a helicopter that
had followed the low-flying aircraft. "This is he first daylight
cocaine drop in the history of the state of Louisiana," Seal narrates on
the tape. If the duffel bags seen in the smuggler's home movies were
filled with cocaine -- as Seal himself states on tape -- that single
load would have been worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Perhaps the videos were not of an actual cocaine drop, but merely the
drug trafficker's training video for his smuggling organization, or even
a test maneuver. Regardless, the films show a remarkable, fearless
invincibility. Barry Seal was not expecting apprehension.
His most personal papers show him all but unconcerned about the very
flights and drops that would indeed have been protected or "fixed,"
according to law-enforcement sources, by the collusion of U.S.
intelligence.
In an interview with agent Duncan, Seal brazenly "admitted that he had
been a drug smuggler."
If the Seal documents show anything, an attentive reader might conclude,
it is that ominous implication of some official sanction. Over the
entire episode looms the unmistakable shape of government collaboration
in vast drug trafficking and gunrunning, and in a decade-long cover-up
of criminality.
Government investigators apparently had no doubt about the magnitude of
those crimes. According to Customs sources, Seal's operations at Mena
and other bases were involved in the export of guns to Bolivia,
Argentina, Peru, and Brazil, as well as to the Contras, and the
importation of cocaine from Colombia to be sold in New York, Chicago,
Detroit, St. Louis, and other cities, as well as in Arkansas itself.
Duncan and his colleagues knew that Seal's modus operandi included
dumping most of the drugs in other southern states, so that what
Arkansas agents witnessed in Mena was but a tiny fragment of an
operation staggering it its magnitude.
Yet none of the putative inquiries seems to have made a serious effort
to gather even a fraction of the available Seal documents now assembled
and studied by the authors.
Finally, of course, there are somber questions about then governor
Clinton's own role vis-a-vis the crimes of Mena.
Clinton has acknowledged learning officially about Mena only in April
1988, though a state police investigation had been in progress for
several years. As the state's chief executive, Clinton often claimed to
be fully abreast of such inquiries. In his one public statement on the
matter as governor, in September 1991, he spoke of that investigation
finding "linkages to the federal government," and "all kinds of
questions about whether he [Seal] had any links to the CIA... and if
that backed into the Iran-Contra deal."
But then Clinton did not offer further support for any inquiry, "despite
the fact," as Bill Plante and Michael Singer of CBS News have written,
"that a Republican administration was apparently sponsoring a Contra-aid
operation in his state and protecting a smuggling ring that flew tons of
cocaine through Arkansas."
As recently as March 1995, Arkansas state trooper Larry Patterson
testified under oath, according to the London *Sunday Telegraph*, that
he and other officers "discussed repeatedly in Clinton's presence" the
"large quantities of drugs being flown into the Mena airport, large
quantities of money, large quantities of guns," indicating that Clinton
may have known much more about Seal's activities than he has admitted.
Moreover, what of the hundreds of millions generated by Seal's Mena
contraband? The Seal records reveal his dealings with at least one
major Little Rock bank. How much drug money from him or his associates
made its way into criminal laundering in Arkansas's notoriously
freewheeling financial institutions and bond houses, some of which are
reportedly under investigation by the Whitewater special prosecutor for
just such large, unaccountable infusions of cash and unexplained
transactions?
"The state offers an enticing climate for traffickers," IRS agents had
concluded by the end of the eighties, documenting a "major increase" in
the amount of large cash and bank transactions in Arkansas after 1985,
despite a struggling local economy.
Meanwhile, prominent backers of Clinton's over the same years --
including bond broker and convicted drug dealer Dan Lasater and chicken
tycoon Don Tyson -- have themselves been subjects of extensive
investigative and surveillance files by the DEA or the FBI similar to
those relating to Seal, including allegations of illegal drug activity
that Tyson has recently acknowledged publicly and denounced as "totally
false." "This may be the first president in history with such close
buddies who have NADDIS numbers" says one concerned law-enforcement
official, referring to the Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs Intelligence
System numbers assigned those under protracted investigation for
possible drug crimes.
The Seal documents are still more proof that Clinton, the Arkansas of
the eighties and the company that he kept there will not soon disappear
as a political or even constitutional liability.
"I've always felt we never got the whole story there," Clinton said in
1991.
Indeed. But as president of the United States, he need no longer
wonder -- and neither should the nation. On the basis of the Seal
documents (copies of which are being given to the Whitewater special
prosecutor in any case), the president should ask immediately for a full
report on the matter from the CIA, the DEA, the FBI, the Justice
Department, and other relevant agencies of his own administration --
including the long-buried evidence gathered by IRS agent Duncan and
Arkansas state police investigator Welch. President Clinton should also
offer full executive-branch cooperation with a reopened congressional
inquiry, and expose the subject fully for what it says of both the
American past and future.
Seal saw himself as a patriot to the end. He had dictated his own
epitaph for his grave in Baton Rouge: "A rebel adventurer the likes of
whom in previous days made America great." In a sense, his documents may
now render that claim less ironic than it seems.
The tons of drugs that Seal and his associates brought into the country,
officials agree, affected tens of thousands of lives at the least, and
exacted an incalculable toll on American society. And for the three
presidents, the enduring questions of political scandal are once again
apt: What did they know about Mena? When did they now it? Why didn't
they do anything to stop it?
The crimes of Mena were real. That much is now documented beyond
doubt. The only remaining issues are how far they extended, and who was
responsible.
~END ~
----- End Included Message -----
Date: Sun Aug 27, 1995 7:26 pm CST
From: Richard Clark
EMS: INTERNET / MCI ID: 376-5414
MBX: cardin@slip.net
TO: * David Beiter / MCI ID: 635-1762
Subject: Re: A review of the Mena coke operation
The secretaries employed at the Mena airport have testified that when
Barry Seal flew into Mena "there would be stacks of cash to be taken to
the bank and laundered." One secretary told IRS investigator Bill
Duncan that she was ordered to obtain numerous cashier's checks, each
in an amount just under $10,000, at various banks around Mena. Why?
--- So that federal Currency Transaction Reports would not have to be
filed. Bank tellers testified before a federal grand jury about an
instance when a Mena airport employee carried a suitcase into their
bank that was stuffed with $70,000 in cash. The bank officer calmly
proceeded from one teller to the next, handing out stacks of hundred
dollar bills to each one, so that the proper cashier's checks could be
drawn up without delay. (The best customers get the best service.)
Between 1981 and 1983, hundreds of thousands of dollars were in this
way laundered just in the few small banks near Mena, according to law-
enforcement sources. Millions more were laundered throughout
Arkansas. [According to other sources there is also evidence that then-
governor Clinton was able to siphon off some of these proceeds, putting
them to use in the purchase of political advantage not otherwise
available. Apparently much of Arkansas was benefiting from this
operation, especially the Arkansas Development Finance Authority
(AFDA), which helped launder (and disburse) much of the money.
Political payoffs were rampant.] Of special interest here, to the
Whitewater special prosecutor, were the huge and completely
unaccountable infusions of cash into various Arkansas financial
institutions. IRS records show a "major increase" in the amount of
large cash and bank transactions in Arkansas around this period,
despite a rather poor and struggling local economy. It would seem that
unless the Whitewater investigation is somehow corrupted or stopped,
some very upsetting truth is likely to emerge. Note: many of the
recently unearthed Barry Seal documents have been forwarded to the
Whitewater special prosecutor because they are believed to have great
relevance to that investigation.
What happened to the nine different investigations into Mena after
1987? Mainly it was a matter of compromised federal grand juries and
congressional inquiries that were suppressed by the National Security
Council under Ronald Reagan's directives. Then there was Justice
Department sand-bagging under George Bush. The whole story had to
be quashed for reasons of "national security." It seems that Reagan,
Bush and Clinton can't imagine a nation in which the truth about this
would come out. Why? Perhaps because it would be a nation in which
they would be in jail.
Curiously, as governor of Arkansas in 1991, Clinton publicly
acknowledged that the Mena investigation had found "linkages to the
federal government," and had come up with "all kinds of questions
about whether he [Barry Seal] had any links to the CIA" and about
whether or not this was tied into "the Iran-Contra deal." But then
Clinton apparently decided it would not be to his advantage to press for
any further inquiry. Meanwhile his principal political backers in
Arkansas are under FBI investigation and have been assigned case
numbers under the Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs Intelligence
System.
Clinton's failure, as governor, to press for an investigation of this is
mighty strange, according to Bill Plante and Michael Singer of CBS
News. They write that "a Republican administration was apparently
sponsoring a Contra-aid operation in his state and protecting a
smuggling ring that flew tons of cocaine through Arkansas."
Now, for the time being, one can only speculate as to why _president_
Bill, now that he has the power, does not immediately ask for a full
report from the CIA, IRS, DEA, and FBI about their rather abundant
and long-surpressed records having to do with the Mena operation.
Why must the cover-up continue, Bill? Why not bring the whole truth
out into the open? Could the answer to this question possibly have
something to do with the tens of thousands of lives that have been
destroyed by these tons of coke that were flown into Arkansas? Could it
possibly have something to do with the tens of thousands of young black
men whose souls rot in the proliferating numbers of penitentiaries that
have had to be constructed to house them all? Worst of all, could these
be the people who unwittingly made it possible for Bill Clinton to
become president?
Richard Clark
Date: Sun Aug 27, 1995 7:28 pm CST
From: Randy Benes
EMS: INTERNET / MCI ID: 376-5414
MBX: DFFC45B@prodigy.com
TO: * David Beiter / MCI ID: 635-1762
Subject: Impending Crisis Over Whitewater
IMPENDING CRISIS OVER WHITEWATER
by Paul Craig Roberts
The liberal media and Moderate Rebublicans are trying to
psych-out Gingrich and Company in order to prevent any
fundamental changes. The argument is that if the Repub-
licans go too far, President Clinton will veto their
measures. It is better, say the liberals and the moderates,
to compromise in behalf of limited change inplace of none
at all.
The truth is the opposite. If Mr. Clinton cooperates with
the Republican agenda, he may be spared Whitewatergate im-
peachment. There is no question that Mr. Clinton is at least
as vulnerahle as was Mr. Nixon. Sen. Alfonse D'Amato, chair-
man of the Senate Banking Committee, could easily drive Mr.
Clinton from office with Whitewater hearings. Indeed, many
people believe that the only thing that will keep Mr.
Clinton from being indicted is that he is more valuable to
Republicans in office.
One often hears in Republican circles that " Jimmy Carter
gave us Reagan, and Clinton gave us a Republican Congress.
Clinton is destroying the Democratic Party. Why do we want
to evict him? "
Keeping Mr. Clinton in office might not be a bad strategy,
but the problem for Republicans is that Whitewater may be
too explosive for them to sit on. Serious discrepancies
between the testimony of eyewitnesses and the official
report on Deputy White Counsel Vincent Foster's death have
forced Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr to reopen the
inquiry.
Two rescue workers, George Gonzalez and Todd Hall, summoned
to Fort Marcy Park when Mr. Foster's body was discovered
have told authorities that they saw Mr. Foster's briefcase
in his car in the Fort Marcy parking lot. This is big
trouble for the official report that places the briefcase
in Mr. Foster's White House office with a torn-up suicide
note.
This discrepancy gives new weight to the witness who found
Mr. Foster's body and has testified under oath that no gun
or weapon was present on the scene. Something is seriously
amiss when the official report is so totally at odds at
crucial points with eyewitness accounts.
Whitewater is proving explosive for another reason as well.
It is increasingly pointing to Mena, Ark., the site of gun-
running and drug-smuggling operations in the 1980s. A former
Air Force intelligence officer has published a book charging
that Clinton friends laundered drug money through the
Arkansas Development Finance Authority, a state agency under
Gov. Clinton's direct control.
Whatever was going on in Mena was big enough that powerful
interests in both political parties are determined to keep
the lid on. Rep. Bill Alexander, who represented Arkansas
for 24 years in the House, was unable to get anywhere with
his efforts to investigate Mena. "There was enough evidence
to begin cracking it open," says Mr. Alexander, " and sud-
denly nobody wanted to touch it. I want to know why. "
Mr. Alexander notes that despite having "the highest
possible clearance that the government can provide for
secrecy," he was "denied access to information in a criminal
investigation in my own state."
Bill Duncan and Russell Welch, respectively Internal Revenue
Service and Arkansas State Police investigators, marshalled
evidence of money-laundering connected to the Mena activit-
ies and managed to get a case before a federal grand jury,
but it was botched. Several grand jurors complained of "some
type of government intervention" that resulted in a coverup.
The book by the former Air Force intelligence officer drags
so many prominent names through the mire that it almost
looks like an attempt to convince the public that Mena is
nothing but a wild conspiracy theory. An excess of kooky
charges is one way to kill an investigation.
If Mena proves to be about anything, I predict it will be a
story of the corruption of U.S. politics by drug money.
Recently Hernan Cubillos, former foreign minister of Chile,
wrote in the Wall Street Journal that "armies that fight
drug traffickers become corrupted by them." He notes that
"by pushing Latin America's armies into a war on drugs" the
United States has caused two South American countries to
"have parallel government financed by drug money."
Mr. Cubillos says there are only two solutions to the drug
problem, drastic Singapore-style punishments or legalizat-
ion. "Either would destroy the drug lords. What the U.S. is
now doing empowers them.
The best way to avoid a political crisis when the Mena
story finally breaks is for Gingrich and Company to have
already pulled off a political revolution in Washington.
Paul Craig Roberts is a columnist for the Washington Times
and is nationally syndicated.
Date: Sun Aug 27, 1995 6:33 pm CST
From: Martin Anderson
EMS: INTERNET / MCI ID: 376-5414
MBX: anderso1@ix.netcom.com
TO: * David Beiter / MCI ID: 635-1762
Subject: Fwd: Re: Clinton/Bush: Co-conspirators in CIA Drug Smuggling (part 4 of 5)
---- Begin Forwarded Message
220 14023 <41qi6f$q40@ixnews4.ix.netcom.com> article
Path: ix.netcom.com!netnews
From: anderso1@ix.netcom.com (Martin Anderson )
Newsgroups: alt.current-events.clinton.whitewater
Subject: Re: Clinton/Bush: Co-conspirators in CIA Drug Smuggling (part
4 of 5)
Date: 27 Aug 1995 19:48:31 GMT
Organization: Netcom
Lines: 31
Message-ID: <41qi6f$q40@ixnews4.ix.netcom.com>
References: <41ps1t$284@news.cais.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: ix-dc14-04.ix.netcom.com
In <41ps1t$284@news.cais.com> nemo writes:
>
>From:
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
------. But in any case, we've collected just about everything
> that's publicly available about Mena and all of its
ramifications.
> It's a tremendous story, and I'd like to emphasize, right now,
> that Governor Clinton's part in this is very minor. The real
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> big fish in this story is President George Bush.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
This, folks, is what is called a trial balloon.
Its place of birth is the Oval Office and its genesis was not
immaculate.
The Mena heat is building up, Senator Dole notwithstanding, and a fall
back position is being constructed.
This will be only the latest version of the ongoing "it wasn't my
fault" footnoting of Clintonista history.
That should be obvious to all save the average Republican Senator who,
of course, will again be blindsided.
Martin
---- End Forwarded Message
Date: Mon Aug 28, 1995 7:27 am CST
From: John Q. Public
EMS: INTERNET / MCI ID: 376-5414
MBX: capmicro@inxpress.net
TO: * David Beiter / MCI ID: 635-1762
Subject: Terry Reed Lawsuit: Court Date Delayed till 1/16/96
Washington Weekly, 8/28 edition, reports that Terry Reed has been
granted a delay in bringing his lawsuit against Raymond "Buddy" Young
et al until 1/16/96. Apparently, Mr. Reed sought the delay because
witnesses who didn't wish to be deposed were not showing up
for interviews, etc.
Date: Mon Aug 28, 1995 7:38 am CST
From: ezehr
EMS: INTERNET / MCI ID: 376-5414
MBX: ezehr@capaccess.org
TO: * David Beiter / MCI ID: 635-1762
Subject: Re: DEA at Mena?
In Message-ID:
chauptma@netcom.com (Charles Hauppman) wrote:
>Strange indeed that Larry all of a sudden has cleared the Republicans of
>any connection to Mena. I find that Terry Reeds book is more credible
>than some of Larry's comments have been in the past, but still Larry is
>on the ground and SHOULD know what happened in the past.
Well, it's not really so strange if you have followed Nichols' comments
for the past six months or so. He stated his reasons openly in his
August 24 interview with Mike Reagan:
NICHOLS: Oh absolutely - once, I believe, the Republicans lose the
fear that they're gonna get themselves in trouble, then I think
you'll see the gates open. You know, that's been one of the major
drawbacks to the Republicans - they've been afraid to go after
ADFA, because to get to ADFA, you've got to have a source of money.
The source of money was Mena. And then if they opened up Mena, they
were afraid that they would be getting a whole bunch of Republicans.
Nichols believes that the Republicans' fear of uncovering something at
Mena that would incriminate some of their own has inhibited them from
pursuing the Clinton scandals - from money laundering by ADFA to the
death of Vince Foster. Given their timidity in this summer's hearings,
he may have a point. Apparently he believes the article to which he
referred will support Oliver North's contention that all illicit drug
activity in the Contra operation had been reported to the DEA. He hopes
that this will remove whatever inhibitions the GOP may have about going
after Clinton.
Oliver North raises an interesting point about the drug-running allegations
in his book *Under Fire*:
Very little in my life has angered me as much as the allegations
that I or anyone else involved with the resistance had a drug
connection. I hate to put it in these terms, but since December
1986, the office of the special prosecutor [Lawrence Walsh] has
spent tens of millions of dollars investigating us - and me in
particular. If there was even a grain of truth to these stories,
it surely would have come out.
On the face of it, North would seem to have a point - unless Walsh was
reluctant to open that can of worms. Part of the problem is that Mena
is not the only place illicit drugs are alleged to have been brought
into the country in connection with a covert CIA operation. (See, for
example, Sally Denton's book *The Bluegrass Conspiracy* that deals with
such a scandal in Kentucky during the 1980s).
The deeper one digs into the Mena story and its implications, the broader
they appear to be. What, for example, did Ross Perot have against George
Bush that made him so antagonistic as to run against him in 1992? Perot
is enough of a realist to understand that he had no chance to win -
but had a definite opportunity to deny Bush a second term. But why did
he do it? It was monstrously expensive, both in terms of money and lost
prestige for Perot, who was generally well thought of before he entered
the presidential race.
To understand this, one must recall that Perot supported Reagan in 1980,
and after the election Reagan gave Perot a broad mandate to investigate
rumors that American POWs had been abandoned when the U.S. pulled out
of Vietnam. Perot was frustrated at every turn by the entrenched
bureaucracy.
I quote from the book *Kiss the Boys Goodbye*, written by Monika Jensen-
Stevenson and William Stevenson and published in 1990:
Relations between Bush and Perot had gone downhill ever since the
Vice President had asked Ross Perot how his POW/MIA investigations
were going.
"Well, George, I go in looking for prisoners," said Perot, "but
I spend all my time discovering the government has been moving
drugs around the world and is involved in illegal arms deals...
I can't get at the prisoners because of the corruption among our
own covert people."
This ended Perot's official access to the highly classified files
as a one-man presidential investigator. "I have been ordered to
cease and desist," he had informed the families of missing men early
in 1987.
Of course, this book treats Perot in a favorable light. The quotation
obviously came from Perot and was no doubt "remembered" in such a way
as to place him at an advantage. Nevertheless, this excerpt suggests
the extent to which widespread corruption within the government has
poisoned every aspect of its operation and tainted those who chose as
their career a life of "public service."
Through continuous neglect by all concerned this wound has been allowed
to fester until gangrene set in. We have now reached the stage that no
thoughtful person is able to believe the lies and cover stories told
by government officials who appear desperate to cover their tracks.
Unfortunately, many knowledgeable persons within the government and
the establishment media (which have become little more than a branch of
the government) still pretend to believe the lies. If this situation is
not corrected soon, it will destroy the legitimacy of the government.
Date: Mon Aug 28, 1995 11:27 am CST
From: John Q. Public
EMS: INTERNET / MCI ID: 376-5414
MBX: capmicro@execpc.com
TO: * David Beiter / MCI ID: 635-1762
Subject: John Crudele, NY Post 8/28 (via Mr. Ken R. Cook)
forwarded, without permission
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 1995 12:00:57 EDT
From: VJDB56A@prodigy.com (MR KEN R COOK)
Subject: WW Mailing - 7/28/95
This mailing is going out to all those on my WW mailing list.
Here is the latest from John Crudele. It appeared in today's New York
Post on page 5. This article, coupled with the Mena-related columns
printed by the Washington Times last week should really begin making
Mena a household word in America. In Britain, where Mena is a household
word, the British equivalent of "60 Minutes" had a film crew in Mena
and should have an expose on British television soon - the "telly" as
they call it over there.
Meanwhile on the FOSTERGATE front, stay tuned. Jim Norman just did
two hours on the Jack Christy show yesterday and had some amazing
things to say. I hope to get a report out to you all shortly.
Read on the Internet that Newsweek (Michael Isikoff) is planning an
attack on this article, tying it to "conspiracy theorists." The
strategy here will obviously be to turn people off to this article
before they even get a chance to read it for themselves. Isikoff is
reportedly contacting all reporters who are covering Foster (Ruddy,
Pritchard, etc.) for his story.
As I've said a million times before, I do not necessarily buy into
all the elements of Jim Norman's FOSTERGATE story. But I do feel that
Jim Norman sacrificed a lot (he lost his job at Forbes) to get this
story out and that he deserves to be heard. I also feel that Norman
believes in his story and if it does turn out to be inaccurate, then he
was duped by others. Bottom line is that I feel that Norman's motives
are pure in this whole matter.
Stay tuned, I have some information re: FOSTERGATE that could be
earthshattering. There is a chance that a very prominent person may
confirm what Norman has reported. I either have to check it out and be
sure of myself first before I post it, or I will just have to wait for
this person to identify himself.
Here's the John Crudele article from todays NY Post:
WHITEWATER PROBE MAY EYE ARKANSAS DRUG RING
by John Crudele
A massive drug-running operation out of Mena, Ark., apparently had a
guardian angel.
And congressional investigators are now trying to find out who
interfered with the ability of law-enforcement authorities to stop the
flow of Latin American cocaine into that state and why.
The matter is also likely to soon be incorporated into the massive
probe of Arkansas state corruption now being conducted by Special
Prosecutor Kenneth Starr.
The drug-running venture poured hundreds of millions of dollars into
Arkansas during the mid-1980s. And many believe it was at the root of
substantial financial corruption now being uncovered in that state.
According to two Arkansas State troopers who I've interviewed by
telephone this week, law-enforcement authorities were within minutes of
confiscating an aircraft they thought was being used by Barry Seal to
smuggle cocaine.
Seal was believed to have been a CIA operative who had been enlisted
to smuggle guns from Mena, Ark., to Contra rebels in Nicaragua. It was
on return flights from Latin America that authorities suspect drugs
were stashed on the planes.
Seal was killed while working for the government on an undercover
operation in the mid-1980s.
The troopers say they were ready to confiscate the plane one day in
the winter of 1984 when they were suddenly told by someone working for
the FBI to leave the aircraft alone. Eleven years later, neither could
provide the exact date, but they still have official log books which
they say would contain the entry.
Neither of these troopers has ever stepped forward with accusations
before. And both have been interviewed by an investigator for Iowa
Republican Congressman Jim Leach's office.
As I said last week, Leach's recent hearings on the Whitewater
scandal will probably be expanded to look into the operations of the
Arkansas Development and Finance Authority (ADFA) as well as the events
that took place at Mena. There have been accusations that ADFA -
possibly unknown to its officials - may have been used to launder drug
money.
Starr isn't permitted to officially look into Mena unless a link
between it and the corruption in the Arkansas banking system can be
found.
One of the troopers, Steve Clements, told me that he was relatively
new to the force and was working on the narcotics detail in 1984 when
he and partners came upon a suspicious aircraft in Mena.
Clements and his partners were waiting in a hotel room, he says, for
permission to seize the plane.
"All I remember is what my boss told me," said Clements. "He said
someone called and told him we could seize it if we want, but they'd
get it back in a few minutes."
His boss was a man named Finus Duvall, who was the company commander
at the criminal investigations division of the state police. Duvall is
now retired and says the decision not to take the aircraft was his
biggest mistake.
"I should have seized it. The worst mistake I ever made was not
seizing it because I let the government override the state," he said.
"We made a call. We called an outfit called Group 7. It was the DEA
(Drug Enforcement Administration) operation in Miami. They told us that
if we took the airplane down, they would be up there in three hours and
take it away from us. That particular plane was smuggling cocaine."
Duvall couldn't explain why the DEA would quash an operation that
could have stopped the flow of narcotics.
Bill Clinton, the governor of Arkansas at the time, was "aware that
we were investigating but he never knew the minute details because it
was too complicated," said Duvall, adding that nobody in the Arkansas
government ever interfered with his Mena investigation.
Another trooper named L.D. Brown recently said that he told Clinton
around 1984 that drugs were being smuggled into Mena. Brown has said a
number of times - including during an interview with The Post - that
Clinton had not appeared surprised about his accusations of drug
smuggling. But he was surprised that Brown had been shown some of the
cargo.
Duvall says that L.D. Brown never told the Mena investigators of his
suspicions.
Duvall said he was "mad as hell" when the raid wasn't carried out.
Later, he said, he handed over all his files on the case to Lawrence
Walsh, the special prosecutor assigned to the Iran-Contra
investigation.
"I shipped Walsh a complete case file of the Mena investigation,"
Duvall said. "It weighed 400 pounds. Where the hell is the case file?"
The Arkansas state police started investigating Mena in 1982, says
Duvall. Others, including investigators from the Internal Revenue
Service, later tracked several hundred dollars that were being
laundered in Mena.
But Duvall indicates that the money coming from the Mena operations
was much more substantial than that. In fact, he says that Seal made a
video "that shows Barry Seal at the Mena airport counting $1 million.
That's been documented."
'I don't have any idea where the money went," says Duvall.
As bizarre as it might seem, investigators believe that Barry Seal
bank accounts may still exist in the banking havens in the Carribean.
In fact, one source claims that the government recently seized one of
Seal's bank accounts.
END OF ARTICLE BY JOHN CRUDELE FOR NY POST - 8/28/95
Date: Mon Aug 28, 1995 10:16 pm CST
From: Jamianne [Ms. Freddi ".A.R.." Reddi]
EMS: INTERNET / MCI ID: 376-5414
MBX: jamiv@verilink.com
TO: * David Beiter / MCI ID: 635-1762
CC: jamiv
EMS: INTERNET / MCI ID: 376-5414
MBX: jamiv@verilink.com
Subject: list/ufos/Mena-Gate is overflowing
David
Sorry I don't have the bounce message from your server.
It said something like: machine unreachable for 2 or 3 days.
What is the syntax to subscribe to
snet-l run
from ?
subscribe snet-l run
?
or without the "run"
I may want to check it out.
I went through a phase of interest in UFOs. I read every book
I could get for several months. It was interesting but
inconclusive and illusive. The VHS on the anti-matter
power and transmission plant by the guy who worked at
Hanger 18 Area 51, Dreamland was somewhat plausible.
The saucer worked by distorting gravity and thereby snapping
itself along in pulses. The electrical power was generated by
an anti-matter reactor based on type of stable isotope not
available locally (some ungodly atomic number).
I found Strieber's books (Communion, etc) imaginative
but probably works of fiction or hallucination.
Thanks for the Bluegrass news items.
I rough-processed the files by taking out a whole
lot of ascii codes that somehow got put in at some
boundaries.
I enclose some mena articles from the Clinton Scandals (CS) list
I ordered the laser disc "Cover-up" from Tower records.
I will make you a VHS copy if you like, when I get it.
I saw part of this when i rented it. It was well done.
I had to take it back when I ran out of time.
I also ordered "the Mena Connection" by Terry Reed in VHS from the
number given in the CS list. I cannot copy VHS to VHS right
now since I do not have two VCRs.
-Ms. Freddi ".A.R.." Reddi, "the Columbian Camou-Frogess"
3rd EXECUTE-ive VP for Stations WMNA AND KMNA,
"your `Mena-Gate' stations on the net"
"You mess with the 2nd amendment, and you
mess with me."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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From owner-cs@oak.oakland.edu Tue Aug 22 11:15:25 1995
Path: news1.oakland.edu!vtc.tacom.army.mil!ulowell.uml.edu!
europa.chnt.gtegsc.com!howland.reston.ans.net!
news-e1a.megaweb.com!newstf01.news.aol.com!
newsbf02.news.aol.com!not-for-mail
From: theknep@aol.com (TheKnep)
Newsgroups: alt.current-events.clinton.whitewater
Subject: : Mena again folks/was :The Gramm Factor--Will Democrats Panic?
Lines: 16
References: <4182jo$3oi@ixnews5.ix.netcom.com>
Reply-To: theknep@aol.com (TheKnep)
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Resent-Date: Tue, 22 Aug 1995 14:02:51 -0400 (EDT)
Resent-From: "David J. Sussman"
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Read the latest issue of Strategic Investment, which I hope someone will
be kind enough to post here. James Dale Davidson, who I respect greatly,
feels it's no accident Dole has been such a foot dragger on uncovering the
Crimes of Mena. In fact he was endorsed last month for President by those
Arkansas godfathers Don Tyson and Jackson Stephens. Davidson figures they
were especially grateful that Dole went along with Field Marshal Janet
Reno's decision to block Special Prosecutor Smaltz's investigation of
Tyson.
Davidson makes a good case for pessimism that the truth will ever come
out about why Vince Foster was killed. The major media has clamped the lid
on, all Republican Congressional investigations so far have studiously
avoided the subject of Foster's death. Now all journalists, and they are
few in number, who question the party line, despite its patent absurdity,
are being marginalized and branded as lunatic right-wingers. Our
government is being Stalinized before our very eyes, and Republicans are
going along with it. That is what cuts me to the quick.
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From jamiv Wed Aug 23 19:56:27 1995
From: jamiv ([Jamianne [Ms. Freddi ".A.R.." Redi]])
To: jamiv
Subject: The Mena Connection VHS video terry reed
Content-Length: 1957
X-Lines: 44
>From ca-firearms-owner@shell.portal.com Fri May 12 19:09:44 1995
From: Brad Parsons
Subject: ** The Mena Connection **
To: roc@xmission.com, libernet@dartmouth.edu, libernet-d@dartmouth.edu,
c-news@world.std.com, ca-firearms@shell.portal.com,
constitution@earthlink.net, cybernews-publish-l@cornell.edu,
michigun@css.itd.umich.edu, noban@mainstream.com, patriots@kaiwan.com,
texas-gun-owners@zilker.net, alt-conspiracy@cs.utexas.edu
Cc: alt-activism@cs.utexas.edu
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Sender: ca-firearms-owner@shell.portal.com
Reply-To:
Followup-To: ca-firearms@shell.portal.com
Newsgroups: alt.current-events.clinton.whitewater
Subject: ** The Mena Connection **
Date: 12 May 1995 20:34:01 -0500
"The Mena Connection" ($19.95) 1-800-888-9999 ( call 24.hrs)
I got Terry Reed's video tape yesterday and viewed it.
IT IS OUTSTANDING. Better than his book. I highly
recommend that everyone here get it. It has a bunch
of news footage from a Ft. Smith, AR TV station, from
a major Chicago network TV station, and the CBS Eye
on America report on the matter. There is also a very
interesting recording in the tape of a phone conversa-
tion between Hubbell and a Time reporter. Terry's wife
Jan also give a great interview in the tape. And much
more. There is a lot of video footage in this tape
that I had not seen before, and I have been following
this issue for two years, have read Terry Reed's book,
and been following this newsgroup since the day it
began. You can order "The Mena Connection" for $19.95
at 1-800-888-9999 (24 hrs). This is FYI only, I have no
connection with the producers/sellers of this excellent
video tape. After viewing the tape a few times and
sharing it with family and close friends, you might
also consider donating the video to your local cable
access station. ;)
"The Mena Connection" ($19.95) 1-800-888-9999 (24.hrs)
----- End Included Message -----
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From owner-cs@oak.oakland.edu Sat Aug 26 12:46:58 1995
Path: news1.oakland.edu!simtel!news.sprintlink.net!howland.reston
.ans.net!usc!news.service.uci.edu!taurus.oac.uci.edu!eaou669
From: Duane Roberts
Newsgroups: alt.current-events.clinton.whitewater
Subject: Re: DEA at Mena?
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Resent-Date: Sat, 26 Aug 1995 15:41:42 -0400 (EDT)
Resent-From: "David J. Sussman"
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In a previous message, "John Q. Public" wrote the following:
> Last night, larry Nichols told Michael Reagan that an article
> would likely be published today that would reveal DEA involvement
> with the Mena cocaine operation. Has anyone seen such an article?
I haven't seen the article.
But I do want to confirm that the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)
was involved with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in an alleged sting
operation conducted against the Medellin Cartel by the late Adler Berriman
"Barry" Seal. This alleged sting operation was the one where Seal
supposedly collected evidence that the Nicaraguan government was letting
the Medellin Cartel use airstrips in their country to ship cocaine to the
United States. Barry Seal launched this alleged sting operation from the
Intermountain Regional Airport in Mena, Arkansas during the middle of
1984 (A congressional hearing conducted by the House Judiciary Committee
in 1988 on Seal's role as a "confidential informant" for the DEA confirms
this).
However I disagree with Mr. Nichol's suggestion that Lt. Col. Oliver North
and other high-ranking Reagan Administration officials weren't involved
in overseeing a contra resupply operation at the Intermountain Regional
Airport in Mena, Arkansas; and I don't agree with his claim that most of
the activities taking place at Mena were primarily the result of a sting
operation being conducted by the DEA.
During the early 80s, Seal's gunrunning and drug smuggling activities
(apparently with the tacit approval of the CIA) were beginning to attract
the attention of law enforcement agencies in Florida, Louisiana, and
other states. When Seal was arrested by the DEA for smuggling drugs
into Ft. Lauderdale, Florida in April of 1983, his mounting legal problems
threatened to jeopardize his efforts to arm the Nicaraguan Contras
with weapons purchased with drug money. Hence, Seal flew off to Washington,
D.C. in his LearJet and spoke with Reagan administration officials (e.g.,
Vice-President George Bush), who subsequently pressured the DEA to reduce
the charges against him and enlist Seal as a "confidential informant" for
sting operations. Seal's role as a "confidential informant" for the DEA
enabled him to continue working for the CIA in their efforts to supply the
Nicaraguan Contras with weapons. This was his "cover," so to speak. And it
gave him a license to continue running a contra resupply operation for
the Reagan administration - and finance it with drug money - without any
interference from law enforcement agencies in other states. For example, if
law enforcement agencies in Louisiana uncovered evidence that Seal was
smuggling cocaine into Arkansas through their state, they wouldn't be able to
do much of anything about it because of his status as a "confidential
informant." If the Louisiana State Police asked the Reagan administration
why Seal was being allowed to smuggle drugs into the country, all the
Reagan administration needed to do is claim that Seal was doing this as
part of a "secret sting operation" being conducted by the DEA. Of course,
this explanation serves the useful purpose of hiding the fact that
high-ranking Reagan administration officials (apparently in collusion
with the governor of Arkansas) were allowing a major drug trafficker like
Seal to freely import drugs into the United States in return for using a
portion of the profits to finance the purchase of weapons and
supplies for the Nicaraguan Contras.
Sincerely,
Duane J. Roberts
eaou669@ea.oac.uci.edu
Undergraduate Student
Criminology, Law, and Society
School of Social Ecology
University of California, Irvine
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From owner-cs@oak.oakland.edu Mon Aug 28 10:29:33 1995
Path: news1.oakland.edu!news.concourse.com!ragnarok.oar.net!
malgudi.oar.net!news.sprintlink.net!in1.uu.net!spool.mu.edu!
daily-planet.execpc.com!usenet
From: capmicro@execpc.com (John Q. Public)
Newsgroups: alt.current-events.clinton.whitewater
Subject: mena fostergate John Crudele, NY Post 8/28 (via Mr. Ken R. Cook)
Lines: 135
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forwarded, without permission
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 1995 12:00:57 EDT
From: VJDB56A@prodigy.com (MR KEN R COOK)
Subject: WW Mailing - 7/28/95
This mailing is going out to all those on my WW mailing list.
Here is the latest from John Crudele. It appeared in today's New York
Post on page 5. This article, coupled with the Mena-related columns
printed by the Washington Times last week should really begin making
Mena a household word in America. In Britain, where Mena is a household
word, the British equivalent of "60 Minutes" had a film crew in Mena
and should have an expose on British television soon - the "telly" as
they call it over there.
Meanwhile on the FOSTERGATE front, stay tuned. Jim Norman just did
two hours on the Jack Christy show yesterday and had some amazing
things to say. I hope to get a report out to you all shortly.
Read on the Internet that Newsweek (Michael Isikoff) is planning an
attack on this article, tying it to "conspiracy theorists." The
strategy here will obviously be to turn people off to this article
before they even get a chance to read it for themselves. Isikoff is
reportedly contacting all reporters who are covering Foster (Ruddy,
Pritchard, etc.) for his story.
As I've said a million times before, I do not necessarily buy into
all the elements of Jim Norman's FOSTERGATE story. But I do feel that
Jim Norman sacrificed a lot (he lost his job at Forbes) to get this
story out and that he deserves to be heard. I also feel that Norman
believes in his story and if it does turn out to be inaccurate, then he
was duped by others. Bottom line is that I feel that Norman's motives
are pure in this whole matter.
Stay tuned, I have some information re: FOSTERGATE that could be
earthshattering. There is a chance that a very prominent person may
confirm what Norman has reported. I either have to check it out and be
sure of myself first before I post it, or I will just have to wait for
this person to identify himself.
Here's the John Crudele article from todays NY Post:
WHITEWATER PROBE MAY EYE ARKANSAS DRUG RING
by John Crudele
A massive drug-running operation out of Mena, Ark., apparently had a
guardian angel.
And congressional investigators are now trying to find out who
interfered with the ability of law-enforcement authorities to stop the
flow of Latin American cocaine into that state and why.
The matter is also likely to soon be incorporated into the massive
probe of Arkansas state corruption now being conducted by Special
Prosecutor Kenneth Starr.
The drug-running venture poured hundreds of millions of dollars into
Arkansas during the mid-1980s. And many believe it was at the root of
substantial financial corruption now being uncovered in that state.
According to two Arkansas State troopers who I've interviewed by
telephone this week, law-enforcement authorities were within minutes of
confiscating an aircraft they thought was being used by Barry Seal to
smuggle cocaine.
Seal was believed to have been a CIA operative who had been enlisted
to smuggle guns from Mena, Ark., to Contra rebels in Nicaragua. It was
on return flights from Latin America that authorities suspect drugs
were stashed on the planes.
Seal was killed while working for the government on an undercover
operation in the mid-1980s.
The troopers say they were ready to confiscate the plane one day in
the winter of 1984 when they were suddenly told by someone working for
the FBI to leave the aircraft alone. Eleven years later, neither could
provide the exact date, but they still have official log books which
they say would contain the entry.
Neither of these troopers has ever stepped forward with accusations
before. And both have been interviewed by an investigator for Iowa
Republican Congressman Jim Leach's office.
As I said last week, Leach's recent hearings on the Whitewater
scandal will probably be expanded to look into the operations of the
Arkansas Development and Finance Authority (ADFA) as well as the events
that took place at Mena. There have been accusations that ADFA -
possibly unknown to its officials - may have been used to launder drug
money.
Starr isn't permitted to officially look into Mena unless a link
between it and the corruption in the Arkansas banking system can be
found.
One of the troopers, Steve Clements, told me that he was relatively
new to the force and was working on the narcotics detail in 1984 when
he and partners came upon a suspicious aircraft in Mena.
Clements and his partners were waiting in a hotel room, he says, for
permission to seize the plane.
"All I remember is what my boss told me," said Clements. "He said
someone called and told him we could seize it if we want, but they'd
get it back in a few minutes."
His boss was a man named Finus Duvall, who was the company commander
at the criminal investigations division of the state police. Duvall is
now retired and says the decision not to take the aircraft was his
biggest mistake.
"I should have seized it. The worst mistake I ever made was not
seizing it because I let the government override the state," he said.
"We made a call. We called an outfit called Group 7. It was the DEA
(Drug Enforcement Administration) operation in Miami. They told us that
if we took the airplane down, they would be up there in three hours and
take it away from us. That particular plane was smuggling cocaine."
Duvall couldn't explain why the DEA would quash an operation that
could have stopped the flow of narcotics.
Bill Clinton, the governor of Arkansas at the time, was "aware that
we were investigating but he never knew the minute details because it
was too complicated," said Duvall, adding that nobody in the Arkansas
government ever interfered with his Mena investigation.
Another trooper named L.D. Brown recently said that he told Clinton
around 1984 that drugs were being smuggled into Mena. Brown has said a
number of times - including during an interview with The Post - that
Clinton had not appeared surprised about his accusations of drug
smuggling. But he was surprised that Brown had been shown some of the
cargo.
Duvall says that L.D. Brown never told the Mena investigators of his
suspicions.
Duvall said he was "mad as hell" when the raid wasn't carried out.
Later, he said, he handed over all his files on the case to Lawrence
Walsh, the special prosecutor assigned to the Iran-Contra
investigation.
"I shipped Walsh a complete case file of the Mena investigation,"
Duvall said. "It weighed 400 pounds. Where the hell is the case file?"
The Arkansas state police started investigating Mena in 1982, says
Duvall. Others, including investigators from the Internal Revenue
Service, later tracked several hundred dollars that were being
laundered in Mena.
But Duvall indicates that the money coming from the Mena operations
was much more substantial than that. In fact, he says that Seal made a
video "that shows Barry Seal at the Mena airport counting $1 million.
That's been documented."
'I don't have any idea where the money went," says Duvall.
As bizarre as it might seem, investigators believe that Barry Seal
bank accounts may still exist in the banking havens in the Carribean.
In fact, one source claims that the government recently seized one of
Seal's bank accounts.
END OF ARTICLE BY JOHN CRUDELE FOR NY POST - 8/28/95
----- Begin Included Message -----
From owner-cs@oak.oakland.edu Sat Aug 26 16:39:09 1995
Newsgroups: alt.current-events.clinton.whitewater,alt.conspiracy,
alt.politics.economics,soc.rights.human,alt.society.revolution,
soc.culture.usa,alt.politi
Subject: Clark: A review of the Mena coke operation
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soc.culture.usa:84610
Resent-Date: Sat, 26 Aug 1995 19:35:45 -0400 (EDT)
Resent-From: "David J. Sussman"
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As I've said, this report came very, very close to being published in the
_Washington Post_ in late January of this year. Revealed are both
state and federal law-enforcement files containing solid evidence of
one of the largest drug trafficking operations in U.S. history. Until
now these files have been kept secret.
Literally tons of cocaine were shipped into the U.S. over a period of 5
or 6 years, through Bill Clinton's Arkansas. The operation was
overseen by a former officer of the U.S. Army Special Forces, Barry
Seal, who court records show was an employee of both the CIA and
the DEA. This was an operation that was carried out with the
collusion and cover-up of the United States government.
Mena, of course, is not a new story. The highly esteemed journalist
Sarah McClendon has dealt with it; so has CBS, the _Wall St.
Journal_, _The Nation_, and the _Village Voice_. Elements of the
story have been in print, one place or another, now and then, since
1989, when Jack Anderson first broke it. But never before have so
many of the documented facts been put together in such compelling
fashion.
Consider the article that appeared in the _Wall St. Journal_ in 1994.
Here's a quote:
"(Barry) Seal was smuggling drugs and kept his planes at Mena
(Arkansas). . . The cargo plane he flew was the same one later flown
by Eugene Hasenfus when he was shot down over Nicaragua with a
load of Contra supplies."
Next, let's consider the principal and most credible people who have
thus far testified, and who have, in doing so, implicated the President
of the United States. First there is IRS investigator Bill Duncan,
followed by Arkansas State Police investigator Russell Welch,
Arkansas Attorney General Winston Bryant, Congressman Bill
Alexander, and various other law enforcement officials. In 1991, Bill
Duncan testified at a joint investigation by the Arkansas state attorney
general's office and the U.S. Congress. At that time he referred to 29
federal indictments having to do with a Mena-based money laundering
scheme that was in operation when Clinton was governor of the state.
The problem was, Duncan said, that the U.S. Attorney for the region,
as if because of orders from above, had refused to act on these
indictments. Then too, there was the matter that the IRS had
specifically instructed him---its own investigator---to "withhold
information from Congress and to perjure (himself)." This Duncan
stated before Congress. He further testified that the U.S. Attorney for
the region had stopped the subpoenas in this investigation and had
blocked the entire investigation.
Meanwhile, Arkansas Attorney General Winston Bryant wrote to
independent counsel Lawrence Walsh in 1991, expressing his
bewilderment as to "why no one was prosecuted in Arkansas despite a
mountain of evidence that (Barry) Seal was using Arkansas as his
principle staging area (for drug smuggling) during the years 1982
through 1985." The fact that Mena was indeed one of the centers for
international drug smuggling is confirmed by official IRS and DEA
records, sworn court testimony, and other corroborative records. In
fact Seal later admitted to IRS investigator Duncan that he had indeed
been a drug smuggler!
So why was he allowed to continue? The answer, perhaps, lies in U.S.
Customs evidence that Seal surreptitiously exported huge arms
shipments to the repressive governments of Bolivia, Argentina, Peru,
and Brazil, as well as to the Contras. In a sense, Barry Seal was an
instrument of U.S. foreign policy, and was appropriately (if illegally
and improperly) rewarded for his assistance.
Remember, though, we're talking about many thousands of kilos of
cocaine and literally hundreds of millions of dollars in drug profits.
According to a 1986 letter from the Louisiana attorney general to then
U.S. attorney general Edwin Meese, this former U.S. military officer
Barry Seal (with well established CIA connections, flying CIA charter
planes) "smuggled between $3 billion and $5 billion of drugs into the
U.S." In addition to the $50,000 a day in drug-money greenbacks that
Seal's people were depositing into banks around Mena between 1981
and 1985---they have testified to this---Seal was also receiving
$800,000 a year from the U.S. government---so he testified---because
of the valuable information and evidence he was providing the gov't
about the Sandinista/Columbian involvement in this drug trafficking.
Then, after he was murdered by a Medellin hit squad, Seal's relatives
and friends all testified to police that he had told them he was working
for the CIA when he established his smuggling operations at Mena.
Even the IRS had determined, in its investigations, that the millions
"earned" by Seal between 1984 and 1986 was not illegal, because of
his "CIA-DEA employment" at the time. It was the CIA, after all, that
had installed cameras in one of Seal's planes, so as allow him to get
photographic evidence, much touted by Ronald Reagan, of the
Sandinistas loading Colombian cocaine onto a plane, for shipment into
the U.S. Perhaps most compelling of all, court documents show
clearly that Seal was indeed employed both by the CIA and the DEA
in 1984 and 1985.
In addition, a spokesman for Oliver North actually told the
_Washington Post_ that North had been kept aware of Seal's work
through "intelligence sources." Indeed one of Seal's planes was
purchased by North's Iran-Contra operation, known as "The
Enterprise," and was used to smuggle still more cocaine back into the
U.S. on each return trip, after guns were delivered to the Contras.
This according to sworn testimony by former high-ranking DEA agent
Celerino Castillo. Finally there is the Arkansas gun manufacturer
who, in 1993, testified in federal court that the CIA contracted with
him to build 250 automatic pistols, equipped with silencers, for the
Mena operation. At that time, he testified, he was personally
introduced to Barry Seal, in Mena, by a CIA operative, and then sold
weapons to Seal.
Interestingly the gun manufacturer was provided with a U.S.
Department of Defense purchase-order for some of the weapons he
sold at this time, but was never paid the $140,000 that the government
owed him, due to the fact that when the Hasenfus CIA plane was shot
down over Nicaragua, Mena's population was suddenly reduced by half
and he was unable to collect.
And who, according to telephone records, was the first person that the
Central American CIA operative in charge of this smuggling operation
telephoned, after this plane went down? None other than George
Bush, our then beloved Vice President.
More evidence from the article appears in the next post.
Richard Clark
----- End Included Message -----
----- Begin Included Message -----
From owner-cs@oak.oakland.edu Sun Aug 27 18:45:19 1995
From: cardin@slip.net (Richard Clark)
Newsgroups: alt.current-events.clinton.whitewater,alt.conspiracy,
alt.politics.economics,soc.rights.human,alt.society.revolution,
soc.culture.usa,alt.politi
Subject: more?: A review of the Mena coke operation
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soc.culture.usa:84690
Resent-Date: Sun, 27 Aug 1995 21:18:26 -0400 (EDT)
Resent-From: "David J. Sussman"
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The secretaries employed at the Mena airport have testified that when
Barry Seal flew into Mena "there would be stacks of cash to be taken to
the bank and laundered." One secretary told IRS investigator Bill
Duncan that she was ordered to obtain numerous cashier's checks, each
in an amount just under $10,000, at various banks around Mena. Why?
--- So that federal Currency Transaction Reports would not have to be
filed. Bank tellers testified before a federal grand jury about an
instance when a Mena airport employee carried a suitcase into their
bank that was stuffed with $70,000 in cash. The bank officer calmly
proceeded from one teller to the next, handing out stacks of hundred
dollar bills to each one, so that the proper cashier's checks could be
drawn up without delay. (The best customers get the best service.)
Between 1981 and 1983, hundreds of thousands of dollars were in this
way laundered just in the few small banks near Mena, according to law-
enforcement sources. Millions more were laundered throughout
Arkansas. [According to other sources there is also evidence that then-
governor Clinton was able to siphon off some of these proceeds, putting
them to use in the purchase of political advantage not otherwise
available. Apparently much of Arkansas was benefiting from this
operation, especially the Arkansas Development Finance Authority
(AFDA), which helped launder (and disburse) much of the money.
Political payoffs were rampant.] Of special interest here, to the
Whitewater special prosecutor, were the huge and completely
unaccountable infusions of cash into various Arkansas financial
institutions. IRS records show a "major increase" in the amount of
large cash and bank transactions in Arkansas around this period,
despite a rather poor and struggling local economy. It would seem that
unless the Whitewater investigation is somehow corrupted or stopped,
some very upsetting truth is likely to emerge. Note: many of the
recently unearthed Barry Seal documents have been forwarded to the
Whitewater special prosecutor because they are believed to have great
relevance to that investigation.
What happened to the nine different investigations into Mena after
1987? Mainly it was a matter of compromised federal grand juries and
congressional inquiries that were suppressed by the National Security
Council under Ronald Reagan's directives. Then there was Justice
Department sand-bagging under George Bush. The whole story had to
be quashed for reasons of "national security." It seems that Reagan,
Bush and Clinton can't imagine a nation in which the truth about this
would come out. Why? Perhaps because it would be a nation in which
they would be in jail.
Curiously, as governor of Arkansas in 1991, Clinton publicly
acknowledged that the Mena investigation had found "linkages to the
federal government," and had come up with "all kinds of questions
about whether he [Barry Seal] had any links to the CIA" and about
whether or not this was tied into "the Iran-Contra deal." But then
Clinton apparently decided it would not be to his advantage to press for
any further inquiry. Meanwhile his principal political backers in
Arkansas are under FBI investigation and have been assigned case
numbers under the Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs Intelligence
System.
Clinton's failure, as governor, to press for an investigation of this is
mighty strange, according to Bill Plante and Michael Singer of CBS
News. They write that "a Republican administration was apparently
sponsoring a Contra-aid operation in his state and protecting a
smuggling ring that flew tons of cocaine through Arkansas."
Now, for the time being, one can only speculate as to why _president_
Bill, now that he has the power, does not immediately ask for a full
report from the CIA, IRS, DEA, and FBI about their rather abundant
and long-surpressed records having to do with the Mena operation.
Why must the cover-up continue, Bill? Why not bring the whole truth
out into the open? Could the answer to this question possibly have
something to do with the tens of thousands of lives that have been
destroyed by these tons of coke that were flown into Arkansas? Could it
possibly have something to do with the tens of thousands of young black
men whose souls rot in the proliferating numbers of penitentiaries that
have had to be constructed to house them all? Worst of all, could these
be the people who unwittingly made it possible for Bill Clinton to
become president?
Richard Clark
----- Begin Included Message -----
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From: abigreen@inx.net
Newsgroups: alt.current-events.clinton.whitewater
Subject: Re: TYRRELL: L.D. Brown/Mena/Clinton/Bush
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I am moving this thread forward because for some reason it has been virtually
ignored. Yet it is the most important piece of writing to appear in the national
media and it sets forth just how precarious a hold the Clintons now have on
the White House, dependent totally upon the willful dereliction of professional
duty by all of the major news organizations in this country. The article that
follows, posted yesterday by Edward Zehr, marks a turning point not only in
the Whitewater-Foster-Mena scandal, but a no-turning-back point for Bob
Tyrrell, its author, who is also the editor of The American Spectator. It
appeared in yesterday's Washington Times. If you want to forward something
to your favorite politician, media type, or independent counsel, consider this
outstanding piece of commentary.
--Martin McPhillips
> ezehr@CapAccess.org (Edward W. Zehr) writes:
> August 25, 1995
>
> FURTIVE DRUG FLIGHTS
>
> By R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr.
>
> Last month, a most amazing thing happened in American Journalism,
> demonstrating how easily intimidated and politically sensitive the
> supposedly bold American press is. A witness came forward and
> reported to me - and shortly thereafter in depositions - that the
> long-rumored American intelligence operation to resupply the
> Contras in the 1980s was carried out through flights out of
> Arkansas. On the return flights, drugs were brought into the state.
> Gov. Clinton knew about both legs of these flights. As president,
> he has lied about this activity repeatedly -and he has attempted to
> intimidate this witness. The Wall Street Journal, which has been
> following this story for several years, editorialized on the
> importance of this witness' revelations to me. Now for the amazing
> thing: No other major media source even reported the story. Today,
> I think I know why. There is more to the story.
>
> The witness, a former narcotics investigator and erstwhile
> confidant of Mr. Clinton, has testified in legally binding
> deposition that in 1984 with the encouragement of his boss, then-
> Gov. Clinton, he traveled on two flights from Arkansas' Mena
> airport to Central America. On those flights, for which the Central
> Intelligence agency paid him $5,000, arms were dropped to the
> Contras. The witness, Arkansas state trooper L.D. Brown, discovered
> that on the return leg of these flights, the pilot, Barry Seal, was
> carrying large quantities of cocaine. Seal was a convicted drug
> trafficker who later was shot dead in Louisiana.
>
> Three Columbians have been convicted of the crime. At the time of
> the flights, Seal was an operative with the Drug Enforcement
> Administration and a contract employee with the Central
> Intelligence Agency. After Mr. Brown's second flight with Seal, the
> pilot showed Mr. Brown both cocaine and money he had picked up in
> Central America. Alarmed and angered, Mr. Brown returned to the man
> who had gotten him onto these flights, Mr. Clinton, to warn him of
> the drug shipments. Mr. Clinton's blase response was, "That's [Dan]
> Lasater's deal, that's Lasater's deal." Lasater, a Clinton
> supporter in Arkansas, was eventually convicted of drug
> distribution. He was a benefactor of another drug user, Bill
> Clinton's brother Roger.
>
> There is more to this story, which perhaps explains the press's
> reluctance to report it. After Mr. Clinton said, "That's Lasater's
> deal," he went on to say "and your buddy Bush knows about it." Or
> it could have been "your hero Bush knows about it" - Mr. Brown is
> not certain about the precise wording. Mr. Brown had met then-Vice
> President Bush with Mr. Clinton a year before and admired him.
>
> In the months before Mr. Brown's flights, Mr. Clinton reminded Mr.
> Brown that Mr. Bush had once headed the CIA. Mr. Clinton's mention
> of Mr. Bush's old position was made while he was helping Mr. Brown
> with his application for employment with the CIA. I have copies of
> the correspondence that took place at this time between Mr. Brown
> and the agency. More importantly, an essay Mr. Brown submitted to
> the CIA bears Mr. Clinton's handwritten interpolations. Mr. Brown's
> testimony that Mr. Clinton told him about Mr. Bush's knowledge of
> Mena is to be included in a corrected version of Mr. Brown's recent
> deposition. The deposition results from a false arrest and
> defamation suit against, among others, the former chief of security
> to then-Gov. Clinton. Similar testimony by Mr. Brown has been given
> to the independent counsel probing Whitewater, Kenneth Starr.
>
> The L.D. Brown story is not going to go away.People in the press
> who believe they can or should protect a Republican or a Democratic
> president are kidding themselves. Indeed the story is spreading,
> and fast. I have legal depositions from witnesses refuting Mr.
> Clinton's claim that he had little knowledge of Mena airport. Now
> two more witnesses have come forward corroborating Mr. Brown's
> story that he flew to Central America and that he associated with
> Barry Seal. Both of these sources are going to be subpoenaed. In
> the Wall Street Journal's July 10 editorial the editors wrote,
> "Mena cries out for investigation. A congressional committee with
> resources, subpoena power, and the perseverance displayed by some
> past chairmen should look into this. If some chips fall on the
> Republican side, so be it. Important questions need to be
> answered."
>
> Well, I have word that the important questions have multiplied
> since last month's revelations. Reliable sources have told me that
> the independent counsel has been informed of attempts by the White
> House to intimidate the witness, L.D. Brown, and to obstruct
> justice. Other equally reliable sources have told me that since Mr.
> Brown's story came out, Mr. Clinton told an Arkansas senator that
> he was having the Internal Revenue Service investigate Mr. Brown's
> tax returns. Moreover I am told that someone acting directly or
> indirectly on behalf of the president has gotten a copy of the 1971
> death certificate of Joann Brown, Mr. Brown's mother who died in a
> gun accident. The last time Mr. Clinton tried to shut down a media
> investigation of Mr. Brown, his lawyer implied to ABC News that Mr.
> Brown played a sinister role in his mother's death.
>
> Quite by accident a couple of weeks back I had the opportunity to
> ask Mr. Clinton for his response to Mr. Brown's claim that, as
> governor, Mr. Clinton had knowledge of Mena being a shipping point
> for illegal arms, drugs trafficking and money laundering. He called
> Mr. Brown a "pathological liar," though in no instance have any
> investigators been able to find Mr. Brown's lying. And the
> president's record in this department is well, spotty. The
> president's legendary anger then surged as he grumbled, "Lies,
> lies, lies." We have all heard of his tantrums. As I was the target
> of this one, I must say that I found his anger curious. He is a
> large mann and in fact rugged looking, but his tantrum was
> strangely feckless, tinny and petulant. What came to mind was not
> the anger of a statesman but rather Tinkerbell in a snit. Mr.
> Clinton's was anger without force. It really is time for the media
> to review Mr. Brown's original charges. And now there are new
> charges of the White House intimidating a witness and obstructing
> justice.
>
>
>>>>
More commentary: Bob Tyrrell (R. Emmett Tyrrell) is not a man given to
hyperbole.
He is indeed a very conservative writer, but he is very natural about his
conservatism. He is no neophyte. The American Spectator has followed the
Whitewater/Clinton debacle from the beginning. The thing I like about this
article is--and this may surprise you--is that it has the same rock hard serious
tone that finally became a part of the New York Times coverage of
Whitewater right after the last set of indictments.
Another thing I like about this article is that Tyrrell is opening a new front on
the criminal--and I use the word criminal advisedly--negligence of the news
media in failing to cover the real story. I am very close to wondering what it
would take to file a class action suit against the major networks and the major
national newspapers for failing to diligently investigate the extraordinary
charges that people are now bringing forward against a sitting President of
the United States.
I know the First Amendment does guarantee a free press, but one has to
wonder whether or not the across-the-board failure of the major news media
to cover these stories does not constitute some kind of fundamental breach
of contract with the American people. The New York Times, for instance,
carries the motto "All the news that's fit to print." Certainly one could make a
good case that that represents a certain kind of warranty of product, and that
whereas there are many stories about which there can be a debate over
newswothiness, but in the case of a criminal presidency, there can be no
such debate.
Therefore, the New York Times is in breach of its warranty and contract with
its readers by not aggressively providing the facts about who, what, when,
where, why and how these scandals have come about.
And, of course, I continue to be astounded by the fact that Tyrrell, and, as he
pointed out, the July 10 lead editorial in the Wall Street Journal have been
ignored by other media interests. Imagine if the WSJ ran an editorial claiming
that Newt's book deal had in fact been a backchannel deal with Rupert
Murdock; here is how Tom Brokaw would lead off the NBC Nightly News:
"And now the embattled Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, is being
accussed by a traditional ally of conservative Republicans, the editorial page
of the Wall Street Journal. And it's that same book deal with Rupert Murdock
that has the Speaker in trouble again. Brian Williams reports from New York."
Then Williams would come on, and in a very solemn Watergate-like tone,
read excerpts from the powerfully written editorial. Clinton could cut the paws
off of a Panda bear at the zoo and it would be turned into a human interest
story about the stresses of the Presidency.
This has gone too far, this gigantic silence on the part of journalists, even as
they reposition themselves daily for the eventual end of the Clinton
Presidency. I for one, and I have been a long-time critic of the big media,
have never seen anything like this. I read a post over in AOL that said
something like, if Watergate had been covered like this, there would not
have been a Watergate. To which I responded, if the whole 1970s had been
covered like this, there wouldn't have been any 1970s.
Now I am beginning to wonder whether or not the media could have kept the
public from knowing about World Wars I and II if they had covered it the way
they cover Clinton. So when this is all over the media will have not a shred of
whatever morsel of credibility it ever had in my mind. It has just become one
big awful sick joke.
So as we approach the next century, I advise all of my colleagues in this
newsgroup to begin honing your skills as journalists. It is not a deep field; you
can discover all of its principles in about one week (I mean the real principles
of journalism not the politically correct biases of the mainstream press), and
then you can master the techniques of newsgathering, reporting and writing
in the span of a month or so. Any good basic journalism text will do. And then
we will have the foundation of a national news service, the independent
citizens news service, just like those that sprung up in Eastern Europe before
the fall of communism.
The hell with these Ivy League pampered and perfumed sycophants. They
are just a bunch of lying bastards with the ethics of a pack of stray dogs and
the intellectual achievment of clerks at the motor vehicle departments across
the land. They just buy their suits at Brooks Brothers and still comb their hair
like they did when they were twelve years old.
The most disturbing thing about the mainstream press, however, is it's
growing sophistication at making less-than-news into more-than-news. Take
the OJ trial. To be sure it is one of the big stories of our times, of this century.
But does it really require that Brokaw introduce two experts--Ira Reiner and
Jack Ford--to analyze the days events at a trial that has already gone on for
over 220 days? Where were the legal experts to analyze what might be the
next move of the Independent Counsel after the last huge round of
indictments? Experts? NBC did not even give it the treatment of a 30-second
story. They breezed over it with about six seconds of news around the nation
time.
The President's business partners and his successor as governor of
Arkansas are indicted in a scandal that has been before the national eye off
and on for about two years and it is treated like a non-story. This is
scandalous. It is beyond scandalous. When the truth comes out, when the
instant histories of this period are written, the role the press has played in all
of this may be even more of a scandal than a criminal presidency. It is just
beyond belief that we have come to this.
So in addition to urging you all to learn the rudimentary arts and craft of
journalism, I urge you all to get on the phone tonight and read Tyrrell's column
to ten friends, and then ask them to each tell ten friends and then fax the
column to ten friends and then take the column and make a hundred xerox
copies of it and hand it out at your church or synagogue or at the local diner
or on the corner. This shit has just gone too far. The goddamn Nazis couldn't
have done a better job than the Brokaws, Rathers, Jennings, Woodruffs,
Doles, and their masters. The Nazis were not this good at hiding the truth. I
have friends and relatives who still have no grasp at all of just how serious
are the charges against the clown in the Oval O. "Well it's not being covered
out here. We haven't heard a thing about it." This, my friends, is the ultimate
poison created by the fact, which has been casually repeated over and over
again for the last decade and a half, that most Americans get most of their
news from television. Well here is the fruit of that great transformation. An
America of 250,000,000 people who are unaware, for the most part, that the
President of the United States, and his lovely wife, is a career criminal. And a
press that diverts attention by talking up how "partisan" DC politics has
become, and how Whitewater is just another example of that. In other words,
par for the course!
--Martin McPhillips
----- End Included Message -----
----- End Included Message -----
----- Begin Included Message -----
From owner-cs@oak.oakland.edu Mon Aug 28 06:40:15 1995
From: ezehr@CapAccess.org (Edward W. Zehr)
Newsgroups: alt.current-events.clinton.whitewater
Subject: DEA at Mena? NICHOLS interview with Mike Reagan comment
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Resent-Date: Mon, 28 Aug 1995 09:38:55 -0400 (EDT)
Resent-From: "David J. Sussman"
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In Message-ID:
chauptma@netcom.com (Charles Hauppman) wrote:
>Strange indeed that Larry all of a sudden has cleared the Republicans of
>any connection to Mena. I find that Terry Reeds book is more credible
>than some of Larry's comments have been in the past, but still Larry is
>on the ground and SHOULD know what happened in the past.
Well, it's not really so strange if you have followed Nichols' comments
for the past six months or so. He stated his reasons openly in his
August 24 interview with Mike Reagan:
NICHOLS: Oh absolutely - once, I believe, the Republicans lose the
fear that they're gonna get themselves in trouble, then I think
you'll see the gates open. You know, that's been one of the major
drawbacks to the Republicans - they've been afraid to go after
ADFA, because to get to ADFA, you've got to have a source of money.
The source of money was Mena. And then if they opened up Mena, they
were afraid that they would be getting a whole bunch of Republicans.
Nichols believes that the Republicans' fear of uncovering something at
Mena that would incriminate some of their own has inhibited them from
pursuing the Clinton scandals - from money laundering by ADFA to the
death of Vince Foster. Given their timidity in this summer's hearings,
he may have a point. Apparently he believes the article to which he
referred will support Oliver North's contention that all illicit drug
activity in the Contra operation had been reported to the DEA. He hopes
that this will remove whatever inhibitions the GOP may have about going
after Clinton.
Oliver North raises an interesting point about the drug-running allegations
in his book *Under Fire*:
Very little in my life has angered me as much as the allegations
that I or anyone else involved with the resistance had a drug
connection. I hate to put it in these terms, but since December
1986, the office of the special prosecutor [Lawrence Walsh] has
spent tens of millions of dollars investigating us - and me in
particular. If there was even a grain of truth to these stories,
it surely would have come out.
On the face of it, North would seem to have a point - unless Walsh was
reluctant to open that can of worms. Part of the problem is that Mena
is not the only place illicit drugs are alleged to have been brought
into the country in connection with a covert CIA operation. (See, for
example, Sally Denton's book *The Bluegrass Conspiracy* that deals with
such a scandal in Kentucky during the 1980s).
The deeper one digs into the Mena story and its implications, the broader
they appear to be. What, for example, did Ross Perot have against George
Bush that made him so antagonistic as to run against him in 1992? Perot
is enough of a realist to understand that he had no chance to win -
but had a definite opportunity to deny Bush a second term. But why did
he do it? It was monstrously expensive, both in terms of money and lost
prestige for Perot, who was generally well thought of before he entered
the presidential race.
To understand this, one must recall that Perot supported Reagan in 1980,
and after the election Reagan gave Perot a broad mandate to investigate
rumors that American POWs had been abandoned when the U.S. pulled out
of Vietnam. Perot was frustrated at every turn by the entrenched
bureaucracy.
I quote from the book *Kiss the Boys Goodbye*, written by Monika Jensen-
Stevenson and William Stevenson and published in 1990:
Relations between Bush and Perot had gone downhill ever since the
Vice President had asked Ross Perot how his POW/MIA investigations
were going.
"Well, George, I go in looking for prisoners," said Perot, "but
I spend all my time discovering the government has been moving
drugs around the world and is involved in illegal arms deals...
I can't get at the prisoners because of the corruption among our
own covert people."
This ended Perot's official access to the highly classified files
as a one-man presidential investigator. "I have been ordered to
cease and desist," he had informed the families of missing men early
in 1987.
Of course, this book treats Perot in a favorable light. The quotation
obviously came from Perot and was no doubt "remembered" in such a way
as to place him at an advantage. Nevertheless, this excerpt suggests
the extent to which widespread corruption within the government has
poisoned every aspect of its operation and tainted those who chose as
their career a life of "public service."
Through continuous neglect by all concerned this wound has been allowed
to fester until gangrene set in. We have now reached the stage that no
thoughtful person is able to believe the lies and cover stories told
by government officials who appear desperate to cover their tracks.
Unfortunately, many knowledgeable persons within the government and
the establishment media (which have become little more than a branch of
the government) still pretend to believe the lies. If this situation is
not corrected soon, it will destroy the legitimacy of the government.
Date: Sun, 27 AUG 95 20:26:00 -0500
From: Financial Opportunities
Newgroups: alt.current-events.clinton.whitewater
Subject: US Soldier Refuses UN Uniform!
Content-Length: 2563
X-Lines: 69
Status: RO
There's hope yet :)....
>Date: Sun, 27 Aug 1995 05:47:29 -0400
>From: joyce1@ix.netcom.COM (Joyce Rosenwald )
> (by way of Charles Zeps )
>Subject: US soldier refuses UN uniform!
>
>
>Date: Sat, 26 Aug 1995 13:17:02 -0400
>
>Subject: US soldier refuses UN uniform!
>More on soldier's woes...
>
>Specialist Michael New, medic with the 3rd Infantry Division
>in Germany, has indicated his refusal to wear a blue beret
>or blue helmet in October when his unit is deployed to
>Macedonia (Yugoslavia) to conduct a UN "peacekeeping mission"
>there.
>
>New says, "I took an oath to the Constitution of the United
>States, and I can find no reference to the United Nations in
>it anywhere."
>
>The Army says, "You took an oath to obey legal orders and
>you WILL comply, or you will face possible court martial,
>possible imprisonment, and certainly a less-than-honorable
>discharge.
>
>New says, "It is not clear to me why I have to change my
>uniform in order to represent my country."
>
>The Army says, "You are not there to represent your country.
>You are there to represent the U.N."
>
>New says, "By what authority can you transfer my loyalty
>without my permission?"
>
>Etc., etc. On Monday, 28 August, New will meet with a JAG
>lawyer (military) and discuss his options. His future looks
>bleak unless there is an outcry of anger from constituents
>to Congressmen over this issue.
>
>Please ask your Congressman to take a public stand on this
>issue -- and to explain by what CONSTITUTIONAL authority can
>an American citizen and soldier be forced to serve in the
>UN or any other foreign army?
>
>Is Presidential Decision Directive #25 behind all this? How
>can we know? President Clinton has classified it. Yet it
>is supposed to the be rules of deployment of American soldiers
>under UN auspices.
>
>This is reminiscent of Nazi Germany, or the Soviet Union,
>where men are told to forget their consciences and to obey
>any and all orders without regard for their previous oaths.
>
>Privately, many officers and non-coms agree with Michael New.
>Publicly, they all have careers and retirement to consider.
>
>Please write to your Congressman, or to your favorite
>candidate for President and ask him to take a stand on this
>issue, not for Spec. Michael New's sake, but for the sake of
>freedom and American sovereignty -- an old fashioned idea
>which has come back -- at least to one American soldier!
>
>.. The concept of national sovereignty is becoming obsolete.
>.. -- Strobe Talbott, Deputy Secretary of State under Clinton
Date: Sun, 27 AUG 95 20:26:00 -0500
From: Financial Opportunities
Newgroups: alt.current-events.clinton.whitewater
Subject: US Soldier Refuses UN Uniform!
Content-Length: 2788
X-Lines: 74
Status: RO
There's hope yet :)....
>Date: Sun, 27 Aug 1995 05:47:29 -0400
>From: joyce1@ix.netcom.COM (Joyce Rosenwald )
> (by way of Charles Zeps )
>Subject: US soldier refuses UN uniform!
>
>
>Date: Sat, 26 Aug 1995 13:17:02 -0400
>
>Subject: US soldier refuses UN uniform!
>More on soldier's woes...
>
>Specialist Michael New, medic with the 3rd Infantry Division
>in Germany, has indicated his refusal to wear a blue beret
>or blue helmet in October when his unit is deployed to
>Macedonia (Yugoslavia) to conduct a UN "peacekeeping mission"
>there.
>
>New says, "I took an oath to the Constitution of the United
>States, and I can find no reference to the United Nations in
>it anywhere."
>
>The Army says, "You took an oath to obey legal orders and
>you WILL comply, or you will face possible court martial,
>possible imprisonment, and certainly a less-than-honorable
>discharge.
>
>New says, "It is not clear to me why I have to change my
>uniform in order to represent my country."
>
>The Army says, "You are not there to represent your country.
>You are there to represent the U.N."
>
>New says, "By what authority can you transfer my loyalty
>without my permission?"
>
>Etc., etc. On Monday, 28 August, New will meet with a JAG
>lawyer (military) and discuss his options. His future looks
>bleak unless there is an outcry of anger from constituents
>to Congressmen over this issue.
>
>Please ask your Congressman to take a public stand on this
>issue -- and to explain by what CONSTITUTIONAL authority can
>an American citizen and soldier be forced to serve in the
>UN or any other foreign army?
>
>Is Presidential Decision Directive #25 behind all this? How
>can we know? President Clinton has classified it. Yet it
>is supposed to the be rules of deployment of American soldiers
>under UN auspices.
>
>This is reminiscent of Nazi Germany, or the Soviet Union,
>where men are told to forget their consciences and to obey
>any and all orders without regard for their previous oaths.
>
>Privately, many officers and non-coms agree with Michael New.
>Publicly, they all have careers and retirement to consider.
>
>Please write to your Congressman, or to your favorite
>candidate for President and ask him to take a stand on this
>issue, not for Spec. Michael New's sake, but for the sake of
>freedom and American sovereignty -- an old fashioned idea
>which has come back -- at least to one American soldier!
>
>.. The concept of national sovereignty is becoming obsolete.
>.. -- Strobe Talbott, Deputy Secretary of State under Clinton
>*************************************************************************
>UCC 1-207 Unsubscribe info - send to usa-forever-request@webcom.com the
>word unsubscribe in the body of the message. | Listowner pc-man@pobox.com
----- End Included Message -----
Date: Tue Aug 29, 1995 9:17 am CST
From: Carolyn Rubright
EMS: INTERNET / MCI ID: 376-5414
MBX: clloyd@ix.netcom.com
TO: * David Beiter / MCI ID: 635-1762
Subject: Reporting from Arkansas
FROM: MAXINE ALEXANDER (NKYF03A) Prodigy
From Arkansas Democrat-Gazette - August 26, 1995
BRITISH TV JOURNALIST FINISHED FILMING MENA AIRPORT
'SECRETS'
Reporter calls tale of drugs, arms for Contras
"fascinating"
by Rodney Bowers
Democrat-Gazette State Reporter
MENA -- A British journalist said Friday that he found the
"secrets and allegations" of drugs and arms smuggling at the
Mena airport "fascinating."
"It's a fascinating story that we think will interest
British viewers," said David Baxter, an associate producer
for the independent film company 20-20. "If that sort of
thing happened in the United Kingdom, it would be amazing"
and warrant extensive national media reporting, which he
said "strangely" has not occurred here.
Baxter's London-based film crew spent three weeks in
Arkansas this month investigating allegations that convicted
drug smuggler Barry Seal shipped "hundreds of pounds" of
cocaine into the state through the Mena airport in the early
1980s. They also investigated allegations that Seal flew
illegal firearms out of the airport to the Nicaraguan
Contras during Bill Clinton's tenure as governor. The film
crew also looked into allegations that Seal
funneled his drug money through Clinton associates and
state agencies.
Seal, who cooperated as a federal Drug Enforcement
Administration witness, died in a hail of gunfire in
February 1986 as he returned to a halfway house in Baton
Rouge, La., where he was serving a sentence in a federal
drug case. Authorities later arrested and convicted a
group of Columbians in the assassination.
It also was the October 1986 crash of one of Seal's cargo
airplanes - a
C-123K based for a time at Mena - that led to the unraveling
of a covert U.S. operation to arm Contra rebels against the
communist government in Nicaragua.
Baxter said he expects the report to air Sept. 7 or 14 as
part of "The Big Story," a "60 Minutes" type program on the
British television network ITV.
Baxter said he found the account of a former Clinton
security guard particularly interesting, adding, "We're very
pleased with our interview with L.D.Brown." Brown has
claimed he left the governor's security force in 1984 to
work for the CIA and that he participated in Seal's drugs
flights at Mena.
"Obviously, if L.D. Brown is to be believed - and he
certainly comes across to me as honest - Clinton knew about
what was going on," Baxter said. "I'm certainly startled by
that."
Clinton, however, has disputed Brown's story, calling him
a "pathological liar."
During the course of the group's investigation, Baxter
said, "We spoke to people who claimed they were interviewed
by (Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth) Starr ...
concerning the Arkansas Development and Finance Authority"
and the possibility that Seal and others laundered drug
money through that organization.
Others interviewed by the British crew for their
television report included:
*Terry Reed, a former Little Rock businessman who recently
claimed that Iran-Contra figure Oliver North recruited him
to train Contra pilots at Mena and that Clinton knew of the
drugs and arms smuggling at the airport.
*Bill Dunca, a former IRS agent who investigated Seal's
admitted money-laundering at Mena.
*Russell Welch, a state police investigator who looked
into Seal's smuggling activities at the airport.
*John Brown,a former Saline County sheriff's Deputy who
investigated the 1987 deaths of Bryant teen-agers Don G.
Henry and Larry K. Ives and thought them to be linked to the
Mena operation.
A federal grand jury meeting in the late 1980s in western
Arkansas did not return any indictments in its Mena investi-
gation. Several people associated with the investigation
have claimed th