Subject: Evidence Clinton knew about Mena

From:       dona@totcon.com (Don Allen)
Reply-to:   ciadrugs@mars.galstar.com (The ciadrugs mailing list)
To:         ciadrugs@mars.galstar.com
Date:       96-10-17 22:54:57 EDT

I highly recommend the ftp://pencil.cs.missouri.edu/pub/mena site. It
has a large archive of articles on Mena. Lots o' goodies there. :-)

I can only speak for myself, but this topic really ticks me off. What
ticks me off even more, is reading Oliver North's recent hyprocritical 
blather to Rep. Maxine Waters.  

"You dishonor their efforts and memory..."

Sure, Ollie we all believe you. The CIA would never be involved
in drug smuggling ops. (cough, cough). Just pray I don't find your
unsecure email address.

I think before long, some effort into putting together a chronology on 
Mena and the sordid cast of characters would be most helpful to the
whole list.

Does anyone really believe that Bill Clinton didn't have any part
in what happenned in his own home state?

======================================================================

URL -

ftp://pencil.cs.missouri.edu/pub/mena/lar-jen/Clinton_Knew_And_Did_Nothing

=========================================================================

Evidence Clinton knew about Mena
(compiled by lar-jen@interaccess.com from other files in this archive)

For those skeptical that Clinton was knowledgeable about Mena, 
consider the following evidence.   Since Clinton clearly knows about
how CIA cocaine has damaged his state, why has he done nothing
about this problem since becoming President?

Larry

--------------------------------------------------
The following text is from a photocopy of a letter
that was originally sent to Arkansas Governor Bill
Clinton by Arkansas Congressman William Alexander
on January 26, 1989.
--------------------------------------------------

BILL ALEXANDER, M.C.                         233 CANNON HOUSE OFFICE
BUILDING
     ARKANSAS                                       WASHINGTON, DC 20515
                                                        (202) 225-4078
   COMMITTEE ON
  APPROPRIATIONS

                    CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES

                          January 26, 1989

   Gov. Bill Clinton
   State Capitol
   Little Rock, Arkansas

   Dear Bill:

   The investigation into alleged drugs and gun smuggling at Mena
   airport can be cleared up by a local grand jury that will require
   state funds. Deputy Prosecutor Charles Black of Mt. Ida, the state
   police and congressional investigators are interested in convening
   such a grand jury, which is probably the only way that the matter
   will be resolved and laid to rest once and for all.

   Black estimates that about $25,000 will be required, because
   witnesses will have to be brought in from out of state. This figure
   cannot be paid for out of local resources. Black knows of witnesses
   who will testify that planes loaded with guns went to Central America
   and returned loaded with drugs.

   Certain DEA agents have stated that the late convicted smuggler Barry
   Seal was flying weapons to Central America in violation of U.S.
   foreign policy and in return, the federal government secretly allowed
   Seal to smuggle drugs back into the United States. Congressman Bill
   Hughes' Subcommittee on Crime has learned independently that at the
   time Seal was working on the famous Nicaraguan "sting" operation for
   the DEA and the CIA in 1984, he was still running drugs. Sources in
   Mena indicate that smuggling activities at Mena continued after
   Seal's murder in 1986 and are still continuing.

   My involvement in the case stems from two sources: I initiated a
   General Accounting Office investigation into drug trafficking from
   Latin America to the United States, and secondly, because of my
   position as the senior ranking Democrat on the Appropriations
   Subcommittee that handles Justice Department funding.

   Prosecutor Black, State Police Investigator Russell Welch, and others
   who have been involved in the investigation have done an exemplary
   job, but they have been frustrated by the failure of some federal
   officials to proceed with the case. The only way to get the matter
   cleared up is to convene the local grand jury. Otherwise it will
   continue to fester and be a thorn in the side of local, state and
   congressional resources. I hope you will grant Mr. Black's request
   for funding in this matter.
 
   With kindest regards, I am.
 
                                  Sincerely,

                                  BILL ALEXANDER
                                  Member of Congress
**************************************

"Clinton: State did all it could in Mena case"
By  Scott Morris
THE ARKANSAS GAZETTE 
September 11, 1991

        Gov. Bill Clinton said Tuesday that the state did all it could to
investigate allegations that the Mena Airport was used to run drugs and
guns.

      However, he said he was pleased the issue had been raised again.
Attorney General Winston Bryant and U.S. Rep. Bill Alexander say
they will present the Iran-Contra special investigator at Washington
with "credible evidence" next week that the CIA used the airport to
export guns to the Nicaraguan rebels and bring back drugs in the
1980s.
        "I've always felt we never got the whole story there, and
obviously if the story was that the {federal Drug Enforcement Agency}
was using Barry Seal as a drug informant ... then they ought to come
out and say that because he's dead," Clinton said.
        Seal, a convicted cocaine smuggler, worked out of the airport as
a government informant before being slain in 1986 in Baton Rouge,
ostensibly by Colombian gunmen.
       At the urging of a group of University of Arkansas students,
Bryant and Alexander have interviewed a former CIA pilot, a former
IRS agent, a state policeman who investigated the Mena Airport
activities and others, Bryant said Monday.
        Bryant said he and Alexander will meet with Craig Gillen, chief
investigator on the staff of Lawrence Walsh, the Iran-Contra special
investigator, at 9:30 a.m. Sept. 17.
       Clinton, speaking to reporters at the state Capitol, said the
Arkansas State Police conducted a "very vigorous" investigation
several years ago after allegations began to swirl about Mena. The
investigation raised questions "that involved linkages to the federal
government," the government said.
        He said he authorized the state police to tell local officials
the state would help pay for a grand jury, which he expected would be
costly because of the need to bring witnesses in from outside the
state.
       "Nothing ever came of that," Clinton said, adding he didn't know
whether federal officials pressured the local prosecutor in any way.
       When local officials failed to act, Clinton said, the state
police file was given to the U.S. attorney, who eventually called a
grand jury. The state police investigator was called to testify
"rather late in the proceedings" and felt he was asked "a rather
limited range of questions," the governor said.
         Seal received "inadequate security," Clinton said, adding that
he "raised all kinds of questions about whether he had any links to
the CIA and if he was involved with the Contras ... and if that
backed into the Iran-Contra deal."
       In the deal, the U.S. allegedly sold weapons to the Iranians and
used the proceeds to finance the Contras.
        When the federal grand jury failed to act, Clinton said, the
state sent its investigative file to a subcommittee of the House
Judiciary Committee.
*****************************************

"Chapters in the Recent History of Arkansas"
THE NATION
February 24, 1992
by Alexander Cockburn

By the mid-1980s, Arkansas was a crucial link in the 
contra war against Nicaragua being masterminded from 
Washington. One scheme for maintaining a cover-up for 
Oliver North's network was, it appears, played out in 
the Governor's mansion occupied by Bill Clinton.

Among the occupants of that same mansion was Buddy Young, 
a man then, as now, in charge of Clinton's security.
(BTW, now a regional director for FEMA.)
According to court documents filed by Terry Reed, a 
former C.l.A. asset involved in North's contra supply 
effort, Young was a pivotal figure in a case designed 
to land Reed in prison not long after Reed had walked 
out of an arms-for-drugs operation in Guadalajara, Mexico, 
where he had been working with C.I.A. man Felix Rodriguez.

Arkansas's role in the contra war and in an arms-for-drugs
supply network goes back to the early 1980s and the airport at
Mena, Arkansas, discussed in this column two weeks ago. A federal
investigation aided by the Arkansas State Police established
that Barry Seal, a drug dealer working for the Medellin cartel
as well as with the C.I.A. and the D.E.A., had his planes 
retrofitted at Mena for drug drops, trained pilots there and 
laundered his profits partly through financial institutions in
Arkansas. Seal, at this time was in close contact with North,
who acknowledged the relationship in his memoir. These were
the years in which North was constructing his covert supply
lines for the contras.

Among those recruited by North was--so the man has subsequently 
asserted in court papers--Terry Reed, formerly with Air America 
in Thailand. Reed says he was working for North by 1983. North 
put Reed in touch with Seal and by 1984, Reed had established a 
base at Nella, ten miles north of Mena in the Ouachita National 
Forest. There Nicaraguan contras and other recruits from Latin 
America were trained in resupply missions, night landings, p
recision paradrops and similar maneuvers. Reed, familiar with 
the commercial affairs of Mena, asserts that large sums of drug 
money were being laundered through leading Arkansas bond brokers, a 
pattern of investment also being considered by a federal 
investigator just as his researches were abruptly terminated.

One of Reed's contacts in North's network was William Cooper, 
another Air America veteran then working for Southern Air 
Transport. Cooper was at the controls of the C-123, once 
owned by Seal, that was shot down by a Sandinista soldier 
on October 5,1986, thus--since it was loaded with arms and 
documentation linking the crew to a chain stretching back
to the office of Vice President George Bush--helping to fuel
the Iran/contra scandal then bursting upon the world. That
plane had been serviced at Mena. Cooper died in the crash.

His crewman, Eugene Hasenfus, survived.

Back in 1985, Cooper had suggested to Reed that he go to 
Mexico and set up an operation expanding the supply network. 
Reed agreed, traveled to Veracruz for discussions with Felix 
Rodriguez and, in July of 1986, set up a front company,
Machinery International, in Guadalajara.

Three months later Cooper was dead and Hasenfus was being
paraded by the Sandinistas before the Managua press corps.
Reed says that Machinery International's business, "trans-
shipping items" in "support of our foreign policies," was put
on hold until January 1987, this at a time when the cover-up
was pressing forward in Washington. Seven months later, Reed
says, he became aware that drugs were part of the shuttle 
passing through Machinery International's premises in 
Guadalajara and that he himself presented a likely candidate 
as fall guy if things came unglued.

Reed says he confronted Rodriguez and told him he was quitting. 
By early September 1987 he had returned to the United States. 
A month later Buddy Young was activating--from Bill Clinton's 
mansion--a sequence of events designed to land the potentially 
troublesome Reed in prison.

The instrument at hand was a plane owned by Reed.

On March 24, 1983, Reed's plane had been stolen from a repair 
shop in Joplin, Missouri (Reed's home state). Prior to this, 
Reed says, Oliver North had asked him to contribute this same 
plane to Project Donation, a scheme by which individuals would 
allow their fully insured planes and boats to "disappear" for 
the sake of counterrevolution in Nicaragua. Reed claims he had 
refused. At all events, the plane was removed while Reed was 
out of town. Reed duly reported the theft to his insurance 
company and received compensation. He says that in 1985 North's 
people contacted him in Mena, told him that his plane was being 
returned after having been in Central America for two years and 
asked that he not report its return because they might need to 
"borrow" it again. Reed consented. He left the plane at his 
hangar in the North Little Rock Airport and left for Guadalajara 
soon thereafter.

On October 8, 1987, Tommy Baker, a former Arkansas State Police 
officer and longtime friend of Buddy Young, says he happened 
to be passing Reed's hangar when a powerful gust of wind blew 
the door open, revealing a plane. Baker says he thought the 
plane looked "suspicious" and so called his pal Young at the 
Governor's mansion. Young later claimed in testimony that he 
called the registration number on the plane into the National 
Crime Information Center to see if a plane with that number 
had been stolen, found no record of this and so instructed 
Baker to check if the plane's markings had been changed, a 
common practice of plane thieves (also a routine practice at 
Mena and in North's Project Donation). Baker established that 
they had been, and by October 21 the two had turned the case 
over to the F.B.I.

Under scrutiny, that sequence, as set out by Baker and Young,
did not stand up. On October 5, three days before that 
fortuitous gust blew open the hangar door, Young was phoning
Reed's parents masquerading as an old friend of their son,
according to legal papers filed by Reed. Young had called in
the plane's correct registration number to the N.C.I.C.--so
the center's records show--on October 7, before Baker had,
by his account, even set eyes on the plane (and before Young
had called in with the doctored number). That same evening
Young had called Joplin to inquire about the plane's original
disappearance. In June of 1988, Reed was indicted on mail
fraud charges in connection with his 1983 insurance claim on
the plane.
****************************************
----------------------------------------------
Question asked of President William J. Clinton
at a News Conference held in the East Room of
the White House at 2:00 PM Eastern Standard
Time on Friday, October 7, 1994.
----------------------------------------------

 
     Yes, Sarah? 
     Q: Sir, the Republicans are trying to blame you for the existence
  of a small airbase at Mena, Arkansas. This base was set up by George
  Bush and Oliver North and the CIA to help the Iran-Contras, and they
  brought in planeload after planeload of cocaine there for sale in the
  United States, and then they took the money and bought weapons and
took
  them back to the Contras, all of which was illegal as you know under
  the Boland Act. But tell me, did they tell you that this had to be in
  existence because of national security? 
     A: Well, let me answer the question. No, they didn't tell me
anything 
  about it. They didn't say anything to me about it. The airport in
question,
  and all the events in question, were the subject of state and federal
  inquiries. It was primarily a matter for federal jurisdiction. The
state
  really had next to nothing to do with it. The local prosecutor did
conduct
  an investigation based on what was within the jurisdiction of state
law.
  The rest of it was under the jurisdiction of the United States
attorneys
  who were appointed successively by previous administrations. We had
  nothing -- zero -- to do with it, and everybody who's ever looked into
  it knows that. 

****************************************

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 man 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.

**************************************************************************
Covert actions are counter-productive and damaging to the national 
interest of the United States.  They are inimical to the operation of 
an effective national intelligence system, corruptive of civil 
liberties, including the functioning of the judiciary and a free press.  
Most importantly, they contradict the principles of democracy, 
self-determination and international law to which the United States is 
publicly committed.
  -- Credo of the Association of National Security Alumni
**************************************************************************



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