By all reports, William Duncan was a hard-working,
detail-oriented investigator for the Internal Revenue
Service.  When he found evidence of massive money
laundering of cocaine profits in Arkansas, instead of
prosecuting the guilty, the U.S. Justice Department
asked Duncan to perjure himself.  Apparently Reagan
Attorney General Edwin Meese had a taste for bribes, and
Duncan was told not to tell Congress about the Meese
allegations (corroborated by Medellin cartel members who
testified for the U.S. Justice Department in its prosecution
of Manuel Noriega).

As is typical of U.S. government whistle-blowers, Duncan 
met career difficulties, and the crimes of Mena went unpunished.

Larry
________________

"House panel hears tales of illegal activities at Mena airport"
By Jeffrey Stinson
THE ARKANSAS GAZETTE 
July 25, 1991

      WASHINGTON  An investigator for Attorney General Winston Bryant
told a House subcommittee Wednesday that a "bizarre mixture" of drug
smuggling, gun running, money laundering and covert activities was
 operated out of the little Mena, Ark., airport in the mid-1980s.
       The investigator, William Duncan, said evidence and statements
from witnesses he collected during the last 18 months indicate that
the 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.
       In the middle of it all, he said, was a drug smuggler who turned
government informant, Barry Seal, who was assassinated outside a
halfway house in New Orleans in 1986.
      "The evidence details a bizarre mixture of drug smuggling, gun
running, money laundering and covert operations by Barry Seal, his
associates, and both employees and contract operatives of the United
States intelligence services," Duncan told the House Government
Operations subcommittee on commerce, consumer and monetary affairs.
       "The testimony reveals a scheme whereby massive amounts of
cocaine were smuggled into the state of Arkansas and profits were
partially used to fund covert operations."
       Similar reports of Seal's alleged exploits emerged previously
from Mena, Washington hearing rooms and people involved in drug- and
gun-smuggling operations for years.
        But nobody ever was indicted in connection with activities at
 the airport and cursory congressional investigations have never shed
much light on the matter. Seal was killed after running a mission to
Nicaragua for the federal Drug Enforcement Administration to
implicate the Communist Sandinistas with the Colombian Medellin drug
cartel.
       Arkansans have never gotten a full, true tale of what exactly
happened at Mena and any role it might have played in the Iran-Contra
affair.
       Duncan, now the chief Medicaid fraud investigator for the
Arkansas attorney general's office, said he began gathering
information on Mena in 1983 while he was an IRS agent assigned to
Fayetteville. He was called before Congress in 1988 to tell what he
knew of activities at Mena. It was that trip to Washington that led
Duncan to eventually resign from the IRS and the basis for his
testimony before the subcommittee.
       The subcommittee is trying to gauge the extent of unethical
practices within the IRS and what happens to whistleblowers who
complain of misconduct inside the tax-collecting agency.
       Duncan said IRS lawyers advised him to lie to another House
subcommittee in 1988 regarding information about a top U.S. Justice
Department official being bribed to derail a federal investigation of
Seal's activities in Mena.
       In fact, Duncan said, he had been told  but was unable to
corroborate  that then-U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese had received
a $350,000 bribe to lay off Seal, who became a DEA informant in 1984.
       Rather than perjure himself, Duncan complained to higher-ups and
to the subcommittee in 1989. His boss, N. Paul Whitmore, who was
chief of the IRS criminal investigation division in Little Rock at
the time and who heard the lawyers' advice, backed him up.
      Duncan and Whitmore told the subcommittee that once they
rejected the advice to commit perjury, they were given the run-around
by top officials.
      Whitmore, who still works for the IRS, said he stood by his
original allegations that IRS lawyers advised Duncan not to tell the
truth. As a result, he said, he has lost out on promotions and been
transferred among jobs within the agency.
      "The organization wants to make an example of me so that other
employees will be slow to testify in the future," Whitmore told the
committee.
       Both men complained that an internal IRS investigation into
their complaints was improperly conducted. As a result, they said,
the IRS has been whitewashed by lawyers who them still work for the
agency.
       Both men took and passed polygraph tests, they said, while none
were given to the lawyers or other top IRS officials on the
allegations that the two agents had been advised to lie.
        Since leaving the IRS, Duncan said, he has encountered difficulty
in getting any other investigative job. Until going to work for
Bryant, he had spent much of his time investigating activities at
Mena on his own.
       He said all the evidence he gathered has been turned over to
Bryant, who declined through a spokesman Wednesday to comment on
 Duncan's appearance before the subcommittee.