"Contras, Drug Smuggling Questions Remain About Arkansas Airport"
By Julie Stewart
September 24, 1991
The Associated Press 
  
   MENA, Ark. (AP)  -  A state police investigator says that not long
ago he would have laughed at the idea of illegal drugs and arms
shipments to Nicaraguan rebels going through the airport in this
western Arkansas city.
   But that was before Arkansas' attorney general and a congressman
last week asked the Iran-Contra prosecutor to look at evidence that
Mena's Intermountain Regional Airport was linked to drug smuggling
and the Contras.
   "Now I can mildly sit back and listen to talk of military
training, Central and South Americans involved with the Iran-Contra
scandal," said investigator Russell Welch. He helped amass a          
34-volume investigative file on cocaine smuggling at the airport in          
the early 1980s.      
    On Sept. 17, state Attorney General Winston Bryant, U.S. Rep. Bill      
Alexander and two aides took boxes of information to the office of         
Lawrence Walsh, the Iran-Contra prosecutor. Bryant said it would          
take the prosecutor's office a week or two to evaluate the material.           
    "We gave to them what in our opinion is credible evidence of          
gunrunning, illegal drug smuggling, money laundering and the          
governmental cover-up and possibly a criminal conspiracy in          
connection with the Mena airport," Bryant said. 
     Walsh spokeswoman Mary Belcher said Tuesday that his office won't         
comment on whether he'll investigate the Mena case, or any other          
case. "I'm not able to discuss decisions made in the office regarding 
future actions of the investigation," she said.      
     Investigations by various agencies of activities at the airport         
 have been going on since the early 1980s.   
     The Arkansas Committee, a student group at the University of          
Arkansas in Fayetteville, has prodded Bryant to pursue the Mena case.          
     Committee president Mark Swaney said the case is "a murky          
situation." He believes CIA connections to activities at the airport          
have been documented through telephone records, trial testimony and          
other sources.    
     The committee, which has been working with the Christic          
Foundation, a legal foundation in Washington that has focused on the          
Iran-Contra investigation. The committee says it also has gotten          
pertinent records through the Freedom of Information Act.    
     Welch said the state police investigation looked only at          
allegations of drug smuggling at the airport in 1982 and 1983,          
focusing on smuggler Barry Seal, who based his planes at Mena.             
Seal transported cocaine for Colombia's Medellin cartel, one of          
the world's top cocaine distributors, according to prosecutors at the          
trial of three Colombians who were convicted of assassinating Seal in          
1986.      
     Seal became a government informant. Prosecutors at the trial 
of the three Colombians said Seal was slain to prevent him from
testifying against Medellin cartel kingpins.
     Former Internal Revenue Service investigator William Duncan worked
with Welch on the Seal investigation.
     Duncan left the IRS in 1988, charging that IRS lawyers advised him
to lie to Congress about a top Justice Department official being
bribed to derail a federal investigation of Seal's activities in
Mena.
     Duncan now is the chief Medicaid fraud investigators for Arkansas'
attorney general.
     On July 24, 1991, Duncan testified before a House subcomittee
probing the extent of unethical practices within the IRS.
     He said evidence he had collected in the last 18 months indicated
that the Mena airport "was an important hub-waypoint for
trans-shipment of drugs, weapons and Central American Contra and
Panamanian Defense Force personnel between 1984 and 1986," when
Congress barred the CIA from supplying the Contras with military
assistance. The Contras were fighting against the leftist Sandinista
government at the time.
     In July 1989, Alexander, D-Ark., accused the IRS of having blocked
congressional and police efforts to investigate an alleged
drugs-for-arms operation linking Mena and Central America.
     IRS officials did not return calls seeking comment Tuesday.
______________

This report came out well before the 1992 Presidential Campaign rolled 
into gear.  Isn't it odd that neither President George Bush nor Governor
Bill Clinton ever used this information to trash the other?  Is this
the reason why Bush and Clinton made a quid pro quo where Bush won't
criticize Clinton and Clinton won't investigate Bush?

Larry