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