From Paul DeRienzo's Web page at
http://www.dorsai.org/~wbai/derienzo/index.htm#hub

Bill Clinton, Oliver North, the CIA and cocaine

        Akansas Airport Called "Hub" of CIA Drugs and Guns Pipeline

                                  May 1992
                              by Paul DeRienzo

An independent group of researchers in Arkansas are charging that Governor
Bill Clinton is covering up an airport used by the CIA and major cocaine
smugglers in a remote corner of the Ozark mountains. According to Deborah
Robinson of the Arkansas Committee, the Intermountain Regional Airport in
Mena, Arkansas continues to be the hub of operations for people like
assassinated cocaine kingpin Barry Seal as well as government intelligence
operations linked to arms and drug smuggling.

In the 1980's the Mena airport became one of the worlds largest aircraft
refurbishing centers, providing services to planes from many countries.
Researchers claim that the largest consumers of aircraft refurbishing
services are drug smugglers and intelligence agencies involved in covert
activities. In fact residents of Mena, Arkansas have told reporters that
former marine Lt. Col. Oliver North was a frequent visitor during the
1980's. Eugene Hasenfus, who was shot down in a Contra supply plane over
Nicaragua, was also see n in town renting cargo vehicles.

A federal Grand Jury looking into activities at the Mena airport refused to
hand down any indictments after drug running charges were made public.
Deborah Robinson says that Clinton had "ignored the situation" until he
began his presidential campaign. Clinton then said he would provide money
for a state run investigation of the Mena airport. But according to
Robinson the promise of an investigation was never followed up by Clinton's
staff. In fact a local Arkansas state prosecutor blasted Clinton's promise
of an investigation comparing it to "spitting on a forest fire."

DISPOSABLE ASSETS

Clinton's involvement in the drug and arms running goes even further than a
mere cover-up of the deplorable activities that went on, and are still
going on, at the airport in Mena. A federal mail fraud case against an
Arkansas pilot-trainer who participated in illegal arms exports to Central
America relied on a key Clinton staffer as a chief witness. The case was
dismissed for lack of evidence when the CIA refused to allow the discussion
of top secret information about the arms transfers.

Terry Reed, a former employee of the CIA's Air America operation in Laos
during the Indochina war, claims to have been recruited as a pilot trainer
into the Iran operation by Oliver North. In an article written by David
Fallis and published last year by Covert Action Information Bulletin, Reed
said in 1983 he had agreed to supply North's operatives with "certain
items."

In pursuit of the Reagan administration's Contra war against the
Sandinistas, the CIA had planted mines in Nicaragua's harbors. In 1984,
Congress passed the Boland amendment which cut off US aid to the Contras.
According to Reed it was during this period that North asked him to become
involved in a covert operation called "Project Donation". Reed was told he
would be reimbursed for supplying the Contras by insurance companies that
were linked to North's operation.

Shortly afterwards, Reed reported the "theft" of Piper turbo-prop aircraft
and he filed a $33,000 claim on which he eventually collected almost
$7,000.

In late 1985, Reed received a phone call an Air America buddy,William
Cooper, a pilot working with Southern Air Transport, another CIA front
company. Cooper also was working with soon to be murdered drug kingpin
Barry Seal at the same time he was flying re-supply missions for the
Contras. In 1986, he was shot down and killed over Nicaragua along with
co-pilot Wallace Sawyer. The planes cargo-kicker, Eugene Hasenfus,
parachuted into the arms of waiting Sandinista soldiers. Video ima ges of
his capture spanned the world and forced an airing of a tiny part of US
covert operations.

Sandinistas who recovered the downed cargo plane searched Coopers pockets
and found phone numbers linking the re-supply operation with Felix
Rodriguez, an associate of George Bush, best known for murdering Che
Guevera, after his capture in Bolivia. To this day Rodriguez, who works for
the CIA, wears Che's watch as a trophy.

Reed says that Cooper told him that the stolen Piper would soon be returned
and that he should store it in a hangar at Mena until the Hasenfus mess
blew over. "There was a lot of Contra stuff going on in Arkansas," said
Reed, "it was the hub."

Meanwhile, Reed went into business in Mexico with the blessing of
Rodriguez, who was overseeing the Contra air re-supply operation in El
Salvador. Reed's company used Mexico to export arms to the Contras in
violation of the Boland amendment.

Reed went down to Mexico and his operation continued for a year after the
Iran-Contra story broke. In the summer of 1987 even as the hearings were
going on in Congress, Terry Reed began to suspect they were using his front
company for something other then smuggling weapons. One day he was looking
for a lathe in one of his warehouses near the airport in Guadalejara, when
he opened up one of the very large airfreight shipping containers (they're
about 28' long, about 7' high and about 8' wide), and he found it packed
full of cocaine.

Reed realized that he was in a very precarious situation because he was the
only person on paper who had anything to do with that company and there was
nobody to stand up and say well this guy didn't know anything about what
was going on. Reed decided he wasn't going to play the part of a patsy.

Reed's contact man for the CIA in Mexico was Felix Rodriguez, who Reed
confronted, saying that he hadn't bargained for getting into narcotics
smuggling and that he was dropping out of this all together. Soon afterward
his legal problems began.

In a series of mysterious events, Reed was charged with mail fraud for
claiming insurance for an aircraft that was used by North's network under
Operation Donation. Reed, who was eventually acquitted of the charges, was
picked up by the FBI after the missing plane was discovered in the Mena
hangar, where Reed had put the plane, at Cooper's suggestion. The discovery
was made by Clinton's security chief, Buddy Young. Young testified that his
discovery of the stolen plane was coincidental, an assertion Federal Judge
Frank Thiel said was unsupported by the facts.

Reed was charged with mail fraud for collecting insurance on the plane, but
the CIA prevented prosecutors from releasing information they called "top,
top secret," about the Rodriguez, North, Southern Air Transport connection.
In November 1990, the prosecution admitted they couldn't prosecute Reed
without the secret documents, and Judge Theis ordered Reed acquitted on al
l the charges.

SEX, DRUGS and LOW INTENSITY CONFLICT

Allegations of Bill Clinton's extra-marital sexual exploits originated with
a 1990 lawsuit by Larry Nichols, a former Arkansas state employee. Nichols
was fired by Clinton in 1988 after reporters discovered Nichols had been
lobbying on behalf of the Contras from his office as head of the Arkansas
Development Finance Authority.

The suit claimed that Clinton had lied when he said Nichols was fired
because he was phoning the Contras directly from his state office. Nichols
claimed he only called Washington to lobby on behalf of the Contras. In the
suit Nichols also revealed the affair between Clinton and office secretary
Gennifer Flowers.

The suit was dropped by Nichols on January 25th, after Gennifer Flowers
went public with her story of the affair. Nichols told reporters that he
decided to drop the suit after meeting with Clinton security chief Buddy
Young, the same man who found Terry Reed's missing Piper aircraft at the
Mena airport.

According to Arkansas Committee researcher Mark Swaney, N ichols said that
Young had told him he was a "dead man," prompting Nichols to drop the suit.
In public Nichols says he dropped the suit because "the media have made a
circus out of this thing and it's gone way too far."

CLINTON'S BCCI CONNECTION

In court documents recently released by Manhattan District Attorney Robert
Morgenthau, it's been revealed that Jackson Stephens, a billionaire banker
in Little Rock, Arkansas, and one of presidential candidate Bill Clinton's
main supporters, may have played a key role in setting up the illegal
purchase by the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, of two American
banks. Both First American National Bank, the largest bank in Washington DC
and Georgia National Bank, were purchased by BCCI front man and Stephens
business associate, Gaith Pharon. Stephens' family bank, the Worthen
National Bank, recently extended a two million dollar loan to the Clinton
campaign.

Stephens, who is an avid golfer and chairman of the prestigious Masters
Tournament Committee, is named in the court records as having brought
Pharon together with Stephen's close friend Bert Lance. Lance was a former
cabinet official under Jimmy Carter, who was forced to resign due to a
banking scandal.

Acco rding to newspaper reports BCCI founder Agha Hasan Abedi was
introduced to Lance by Stephens. Stephens, Lance, and First American Bank
director and longtime Democratic party power broker Clark Clifford all
maintain they did not know that the group of Pakistani and Saudi investors
that they were dealing with, headed by Pharon, were actually fronting for
BCCI. Clinton's staff has refused to comment.

OZARK DUMPING GROUND

Bill Clinton's environmental record has been as dismal as his record in the
Iran-Contra scandal. He has supported the incineration of extremely toxic
chemicals at a site in the city of Jacksonville, 20 miles from Little Rock,
that is reputed to be the most polluted spot in the United States.
Jacksonville was the site of Hercules Inc., a company that produced the two
components of Agent Orange, 2,4,D, which is still used in agriculture and
2,4,5,T, which was banned by the federal government in 1983 as a
carcinogen. Agent Orange was used to defoliate Vietnamese forests during
the Indochina war and its production yields the by-product dioxin, the most
toxic chemical known.

Hercules sold the operation in 1976 to Vertac Inc., which closed the plant
in 1987, leaving behind 20,000 barrels of the chemicals. Gov. Bill Clinton
supported a plan to incinerate the waste that is being vigorously opposed
by the residents of Jacksonville.

Deborah Robinson says that Clinton has allowed Arkansas to become a dumping
ground. "Arkansas" she says, "is still kind of a backwoods state, and
there's a lot of room for someone to set up whatever they want." Arkansas
has been exploited by people who have things they want to do, that they
might not get away with somewhere else. Robinson adds that "there are a lot
of questions about what somebody like Clinton would do for a country when
he couldn't do anything for his own state."

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Last Modified: Sun 02-25-1996