Here is a report that the FBI was investigating
Mena.  That was five years ago.  So far no arrests.
I wonder how much longer it will take the G-Mena
to crack this one.

Larry
________________

"FBI apparently investigating Mena, Seal"
By  Michael Arbanas
THE ARKANSAS GAZETTE 
May 24, 1991

      A New Orleans-based FBI investigation apparently concerns the Mena
airport and Barry Seal, the international cocaine smuggler who was
based there in the early 1980s.
       Seal, who became a U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency informant in
1984, was killed two years later in his native Baton Rouge, La., by
hit men for the Medellin drug cartel.
       His activities in Mena remain shrouded in mystery, and a wide
variety of allegations persist concerning the smuggling of drugs into
Mena and the smuggling of guns from there to Contra rebels in
Nicaragua.
       In a May 15 letter responding to a 1988 Freedom of Information
request from the Arkansas Gazette, the FBI denied access to its files
on Seal and the Mena airport, saying the files "have been determined
 to be corresponding files to pending investigations being conducted
by our New Orleans office."
       The letter, signed by J. Kevin O'Brien, chief of the FBI's FOI
section, states that release of the Seal file could jeopardize the
on-going investigation.
       Ron Wolfe, spokesman for the FBI office in Little Rock, said
Thursday that he could not comment on whether the office was involved
in such an investigation.
       Lawrence Graves, chief of staff for Attorney General Winston
Bryant, said Bryant's office had received a similar denial of an FOI
request this week from the FBI concerning files Bryant requested from
the Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys.
      According to O'Brien's letter to Bryant, that office found in
its files 60 documents totaling 208 pages and turned them over to the
FBI for review before releasing them. The FBI denied Bryant's
request, citing the New Orleans-based investigation.
       The Mena situation became an issue in Bryant's 1990 campaign
against Asa Hutchinson, who was the U.S. attorney in Fort Smith when
Seal moved his operation to Mena. During the campaign, Bryant
accused Hutchinson of being lax in his investigation of Seal.