Here was explosive Congressional testimony ignored by American media, except in Arkansas. DEA agents testified that Barry Seal had smuggled cocaine into Mena. DEA officers revealed they "had lost their opportunity to achieve their goals: identifying drug trafficking routes, identifying all the drug cartels' U.S. assets and staging a surprise arrest of all the drug cartel members, after Barry Seal was assassinated. One DEA investigator said it was someone in the Reagan White House who leaked the identity of Barry Seal as an informant, resulting in the murder of the drug trafficker, Contra gun smuggler and DEA informant Larry ___________________ "Testimony reveals leak in drug probe Cost Seal his life, witness says" By Maria Henson THE ARKANSAS GAZETTE July 29, 1988 WASHINGTON The late Barry Seal did fly a cocaine smuggling mission out of the airport at Mena, Ark., a congressional committee was told Thursday. He even accompanied Colombian drug runners to the airport in 1984, a witness said. The testimony came in a hearing by the House Judiciary subcommittee on crime. The hearing prominently featured tales about Seal, a convicted drug pilot turned government informant. Investigations about his exploits at Mena and elsewhere have been under way for several years and have been highly publicized. The testimony Thursday was in the House Judiciary subcommittee on crime. Its chairman, Rep. Bill Hughes, D-N.J., said Seal was involved in one of the most significant undercover drug investigations in U.S. history. And the testimony, he charged, showed that the investigation was compromised because of a politically motivated news leak by someone in the U.S. government. The leak, Hughes said, cost Seal the principal informant in the investigation his life. Seal was slain Feb. 19, 1986 in Baton Rouge, La. DEA adds details Ernst Jacobsen, a Drug Enforcement Administration investigator, provided more details of the ongoing, mysterious allegations involving Seal, who he said flew 50 trips for the cartel. Testifying behind a screen to protect his identity, Jacobsen said that after Seal turned government informant in March 1984, Seal flew to Colombia the next month to meet with members of the Medellin Cartel to plan a cocaine pickup. "After Seal returned from Colombia, the cocaine cartel had instructed some of their representatives in Miami to meet with Mr. Seal, go to Mena and observe the aircraft that was going to be utilized in the smuggling operation," Jacobsen said. "Seal met with three or four of the Colombians in Miami and took them to Mena to buy the aircraft." Chronology provided A chronology provided by the subcommittee's lawyer indicated that Seal, his co-pilot Emil Camp, Felix Dixon Bates and three Colombians traveled to Mena on April 18, 1984, to see a Lockheed Learstar plane. The next month, May 28, Seal and Camp left Mena at 2:30 a.m. in the plane for Colombia, the chronology said. Jacobsen said the plane landed on a muddy dirt strip, where drug kingpin Carlos Lehder awaited them. (Lehder was sentenced last week to two consecutive life terms for drug smuggling and conspiracy.) Lehder, on horseback in the rain, directed Indians to load the plane with 1,500 to 3,000 kilos of cocaine. When the plane tried to take off, however, the wheel dug into the mud and it turned over. Lehder helped Camp and Seal out, while the Indians took the cocaine "torched it, cut it up and buried it," Jacobsen said. Seal and Camp hid in the jungle with Lehder for three days until they got another plane to transport 700 kilos of cocaine. That operation, however, was aborted when the new plane was hit by anti-aircraft fire and had to land in Managua, Nicaragua. Seal and Camp were detained overnight. Hughes said Seal was the DEA's key operative in the undercover investigation, and that his cover was blown when the Washington Times printed an account on July 17, 1984, alleging that the Sandinista government in Nicaragua was involved in drug trafficking. "I heard from my superiors that the leak came from an aide in the White House," Jacobsen said. Aide not identified Jacobsen didn't identify the aide, but Hughes suggested it was retired Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North, a main player in the Iran-Contra affair. The subcommittee released "15 declassified pages" of North's notebooks containing references to "leak on drug," and "Washington Times article on cocaine," but they don't reveal any direct link between North and the leak. "The evidence suggests clearly that Oliver North and the CIA both wanted to make it public," Hughes said. "There have been a lot of suggestions that it was for political purposes... . The Contra aid vote was moving through the process at that point." A second DEA official, Ron Caffrey, testified that he briefed North on the investigation before July 7, 1984, and North "did ask when this investigation could go public." But Rep. Bill McCollum, R-Fla., a committee member, said the leak could have come from several sources. Jacobsen said that after the Times ran the story, the DEA ended its investigation and rushed the next day to obtain arrest and search warrants. They had lost their opportunity to achieve their goals: identifying drug trafficking routes, identifying all the drug cartels' U.S. assets and staging a surprise arrest of all the drug cartel members. Hughes said the leak blew the investigation. "We've never had in the history I believe of enforcement an opportunity to reach that level of the cartel," he said. "In addition to that, Barry Seal was dead. That was the net result of the leak to the press. It was a disaster."