Post by UniverseSeven on Feb 11, 2006 2:38:10 GMT -5
Guns . Oil . Drugs
Mena is no Myth
www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/MENA/mena.html
The Mena Arkansas Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Drug Connection
www.dldewey.com/columns/menaf.htm
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www.freedomdomain.com/Catalog/catbooka.htm
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Sam Smith: The Bush Clinton Nexus
Monday, 14 February 2005, 3:39 pm
Opinion: Sam Smith
Who Was That Ex-President I Saw You With Last Night?
By Prorev.com Editor Sam SmithA reader inquires as to why Bill Clinton and Bush the Elder are so chummy these days. This is another case where just considering the political aspect of the news lets you down. A more helpful approach is to consider Clinton and Bush the heads of the two biggest political mobs in the country, a metaphor strengthened by a recent shot of the pair, both in shades, leaning back smugly in their chairs like a couple of big time dons. Sometimes the families work together; sometimes they fight it out.
America's course has been driven by mob politics since the Mafia helped Jack Kennedy get in the White House. Only two presidents have apparently been free of mob influence: Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter. Many of the most important events of our time reflect the influence of criminal forces - from the Mafia to corrupt big time bankers and local drug dealers:
John F. Kennedy: The 1960 election, Castro assassination attempt, Bay of Pigs, assassination
Lyndon B. Johnson: ML King assassination, RFK assassination, SE Asian heroin trade
Richard Nixon: CHAOS, Cambodia, Chile, Watergate.
Ronald Reagan Wall Street scandals, S&L scandal, BCCI scandal, Iran-Contra, Latin American drug trade, domestic spying
George Bush: Iran-Contra cover-up, BCCI cover-up, S&L cover-up
Bill Clinton: Whitewater and associated scandals including ties to the S&L and BCCI scandals
The relationship between the Bush and Clinton families goes back a long way. Here's a timeline:
1984 - Clinton bodyguard, Arkansas state trooper LD Brown, applies for a CIA opening. Governor Clinton gives him help on his application essay including making it more Reaganesque on the topic of the Nicaragua. According to Brown, he meets a CIA recruiter in Dallas whom he later identifies as former member of Vice President Bush's staff. On the recruiter's instruction, he meets with notorious drug dealer Barry Seal in a Little Rock restaurant. Joins Seal in flight to Honduras with a purported shipment of M16s and a return load of duffel bags. Brown gets $2,500 in small bills for the flight. Brown, concerned about the mission, consults with Clinton who says, "Oh, you can handle it, don't sweat it." On second flight, Brown finds cocaine in a duffel bag and again he seeks Clinton's counsel. Clinton says to the conservative Brown, "Your buddy, Bush, knows about it" and of the cocaine, "that's Lasater's deal."
Barry Seal estimates that he has earned between $60 and $100 million smuggling cocaine into the US, but with the feds closing in on him, Seal flies from Mena to Washington in his private Lear Jet to meet with two members of Vice President George Bush's drug task force. Following the meeting, Seal rolls over for the DEA, becoming an informant. He collects information on leaders of the Medellin cartel while still dealing in drugs himself. The deal will be kept secret from investigators working in Louisiana and Arkansas. According to reporter Mara Leveritt, "By Seal's own account, his gross income in the year and a half after he became an informant - while he was based at Mena and while Asa Hutchinson was the federal prosecutor in Fort Smith, 82 miles away - was three-quarters of a million dollars. Seal reported that $575,000 of that income had been derived from a single cocaine shipment, which the DEA had allowed him to keep. Pressed further, he testified that, since going to work for the DEA, he had imported 1,500 pounds of cocaine into the U.S. Supposed informant Seal will fly repeatedly to Colombia, Guatemala, and Panama, where he meets with Jorge Ochoa, Fabio Ochoa, Pablo Escobar, and Carlos Lehder - leaders of the cartel that at the time controlled an estimated 80 percent of the cocaine entering the United States."
1985 - Terry Reed is asked to take part in Operation Donation, under which planes and boats needed by the Contras "disappear," allowing owners to claim insurance. Reed has been a Contra operative and CIA asset working with Felix Rodriguez, the Contra link to the CIA and then-Vice President Bush's office. Reed later claims he refused, but that his plane was removed while he was away.
1987 Terry Reed's plane is returned but, according to his account, he is asked not report it because it might have to be "borrowed" again. Reed later says that he had become aware that the Contra operation also involved drug running and had gotten cold feet. He also believed that large sums of drug money were being laundered by leading Arkansas financiers. He went to Bush asset Felix Rodriguez and told him he was quitting. Reed was subsequently charged with mail fraud for having allegedly claimed insurance on a plane that was in fact hidden in a hanger in Little Rock. The head of Clinton's Swiss Guard, Capt. Buddy Young, will claim to have been walking around the North Little Rock Airport when "by an act of God" a gust of wind blew open the hangar door and revealed the Piper Turbo Arrow.
Ronald Reagan wants to send the National Guard to Honduras to help in the war against the Contras. Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis goes to the Supreme Court in a futile effort to stop it but Clinton is happy to oblige, even sending his own security chief, Buddy Young, along to keep an eye on things. Winding up its tour, the Arkansas Guard declares large quantities of its weapons "excess" and leaves them behind for the Contras.
Harken Energy, with George W Bush on the board, gets rescued by aid from the BCCI-connected Union Bank of Switzerland in a deal brokered by Jackson Stephens, later to show up as a key supporter of Bill Clinton. The deal was also pushed along by another Clinton friend, David Edwards. Edwards will bring BCCI-linked investors into Harken deals including Abdullah Bakhsh, purchases $10 million in shares of Stephens dominated Worthen Bank.
**********
The job of a politician such as Governor Clinton in a situation like Arkansas is not to run things but to keep matters calm and look the other way when necessary. Clinton did this extremely well for the Reagan-Bush illegal Contra-drug operation.
And it worked the other way. The Republican US Attorney Asa Hutchinson knew far more about the massive Arkansas drug trade than he ever let on. Hutchinson apparently not only knew about Seal's operation but when an IRS agent and a state police investigator wanted to take evidence about Mena to a grand jury, Hutchinson let only 3 of their 20 witnesses appear and one of those who did - a banker ready to testify about extensive money laundering - found he was not allowed to tell his story.
There were also a number of occasions leading up to Clinton's impeachment where it seemed clear that the Republicans suddenly backed off because the inquiries were moving onto bipartisan turf. For example, a real investigation into Mena would have hurt both Bush and Clinton. So instead, a corrupt bipartisanship once again arose to save some of our prominent leaders in both parties.
This is all not well understood by the public because the media is loath to admit that anything like this could be going on right under its nose. And liberals don't want to give up their illusion that politics is just a policy debate rather than often something far more sinister. To get some sense of the way the game is sometimes really played, here's an account we ran six years ago:
1999 - Former Arkansas state trooper and Clinton bodyguard L.D. Brown charges in his new book 'Crossfire' that Alphonse D'Amato, after subjecting him to bear hugs, head locks, and other forms of gratuitous bonhomie at a large dinner party, asked, "L. D., that Mena thing, that was just a drug deal gone bad wasn't it?" Writes Brown, "I came away from that conversation thinking he was trying to convince me Mena was nothing but a drug operation. It reminded me of the strange Bush and Clinton connection all over again." Later, D'Amato said to Brown, "C'mon, L. D., let's go take a leak." Brown's lawyer and aide to the senator accompanied them on the trip to the men's room. Here's what happened next, according to Brown:
"There were a couple of people in the rest room. While they finished their business, we also did what we ostensibly came there to do. But there was more business to do. The Senator's aide checked the stalls in the rest room to make sure they were vacant and then walked to the only door leading into the room. The Senator now grabbed me in the familiar headlock. ~~~ Justin [Brown's lawyer] looked around to see what was going on as the aide put his foot at the bottom of the door, thus placing an improvised locking mechanism on it. Then the Senator went for the kill.
"While putting an extra squeeze on the headlock he said, 'L. D., we got to have your help. We need you to cooperate with us.' I could hear by now that people were banging on the door to get in the rest room. 'We're fucking in here!' the aide yelled. D'Amato continued on, oblivious to the commotion as the aide struggled to keep the door shut. 'Now L. D., we'll take care of you, we'll get you a job.' With the cigar in his mouth and his arm around my neck, the Senator looked more like a character from a Mario Puzo novel making me 'an offer I couldn't refuse' than a United States Senator conducting an investigation on the President of the United States. I was shocked and I could tell Justin didn't want to be there either.
"People outside obviously were about to wet their pants while this seemed to drag on forever. The aide was now vigorously struggling to keep the door shut while I had 'the arm' put on me. The Senator finally released his grip and I mumbled something about being concerned for my family as we finally walked out of the bathroom. The aide, clearly exhausted from his bathroom chores went back to the table with Justin and me while being led by the Senator. The party was about to break up and I was wishing I had never come. Justin and I rolled our eyes at each other at what had just happened. We knew it was improper at best to offer jobs to potential witnesses. It also disappointed me to no end to find yet another person in this entire Whitewater fiasco who wanted to use me."
**************
UNDERNEWS
FROM THE PROGRESSIVE REVIEW
EDITED BY SAM SMITH
SINCE 1964, Washington's most unofficial source
1312 18th St. NW #502, Washington DC 20036
202-835-0770 Fax: 835-0779
E-MAIL: mailto:news@prorev.com
www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0502/S00155.htm
---------
Bush, Clinton, and the CIA
by By Paul DeRienzo
ARKANSAS GOVERNOR BILL CLINTON PRESIDENT GEORGE BUSH CIA DRUGS FOR GUNS CONNECTION
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 In These Times, 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 world's 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. Colonel Oliver North was a frequent visitor during the 1980's. Eugene Hasenfus, a pilot who was shot down in a Contra supply plane over Nicaragua in 1986, was also seen 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."
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 Gallis and published last year by Covert Action Information Bulletin, Reed said that 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 aided 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, Red received a phone call from 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 plane's cargo-kicker, Eugene Hasenfus, parachuted into the arms of waiting Sandinista soldiers. Video images 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 Cooper's pockets and found phone numbers linking the re-supply operation with Felix Rodriguez, an associate of George Bush, best known for murdering Che Guevara 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 hanger 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.
According to Arkansas Committee researcher Mark Swaney, in the summer of 1987, even as the ContraGate hearings were going on in Congress, Terry Reed began to suspect they were using his front company for something other than snuggling weapons. One day, he was looking for a lathe in one of his warehouses near the airport in Guadalajara and he opened up one of the very large air freight shipping containers (they are about 28' long, about 7' high and about 8' wide), and he found it packed full of cocaine.
Swaney reports that Reed realized he was in a very precarious situation because he was the only person on paper who had anything to do with the company set up to run guns to the Contras in Nicaragua out of Mexico and there was nobody to say that he did not know anything about what was going on. Reed decided he wasn't going to play the part of a patsy.
Swaney says that Reed's contact man for the CIA in Mexico was Felix Rodriguez, whom Reed confronted. Reed said that he hadn't bargained for getting into narcotics smuggling and that he was dropping out 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 hanger 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 Thiel ordered Reed acquitted on all of the charges.
Allegations of Governor 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 25, 1992, 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, Nichols 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."
In court documents recently released by Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, it has 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 (BCCI) 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 Worthern 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 Stephens' close friend Bert Lance. Lance was a former cabinet official under President Jimmy Carter who was forced to resign due to a banking scandal.
According 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 that they did not know the group of Pakinstani and Saudi investors headed by Pharon, which they were dealing with, were actually fronting for BCCI. Clinton's staff has refused to comment.
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 on earth.
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 supports a plan to incinerate the waste, a plan that is being vigorously opposed by the residents of Jacksonville.
In These Times reporter 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 to set up and Arkansas has been exploited by people who have things they want to do that they might no get away with somewhere else." Robinson adds, "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."
www.totse.com/en/politics/central_intelligence_agency/clinton.html
Mena is no Myth
www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/MENA/mena.html
The Mena Arkansas Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Drug Connection
www.dldewey.com/columns/menaf.htm
-
www.freedomdomain.com/Catalog/catbooka.htm
-
Sam Smith: The Bush Clinton Nexus
Monday, 14 February 2005, 3:39 pm
Opinion: Sam Smith
Who Was That Ex-President I Saw You With Last Night?
By Prorev.com Editor Sam SmithA reader inquires as to why Bill Clinton and Bush the Elder are so chummy these days. This is another case where just considering the political aspect of the news lets you down. A more helpful approach is to consider Clinton and Bush the heads of the two biggest political mobs in the country, a metaphor strengthened by a recent shot of the pair, both in shades, leaning back smugly in their chairs like a couple of big time dons. Sometimes the families work together; sometimes they fight it out.
America's course has been driven by mob politics since the Mafia helped Jack Kennedy get in the White House. Only two presidents have apparently been free of mob influence: Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter. Many of the most important events of our time reflect the influence of criminal forces - from the Mafia to corrupt big time bankers and local drug dealers:
John F. Kennedy: The 1960 election, Castro assassination attempt, Bay of Pigs, assassination
Lyndon B. Johnson: ML King assassination, RFK assassination, SE Asian heroin trade
Richard Nixon: CHAOS, Cambodia, Chile, Watergate.
Ronald Reagan Wall Street scandals, S&L scandal, BCCI scandal, Iran-Contra, Latin American drug trade, domestic spying
George Bush: Iran-Contra cover-up, BCCI cover-up, S&L cover-up
Bill Clinton: Whitewater and associated scandals including ties to the S&L and BCCI scandals
The relationship between the Bush and Clinton families goes back a long way. Here's a timeline:
1984 - Clinton bodyguard, Arkansas state trooper LD Brown, applies for a CIA opening. Governor Clinton gives him help on his application essay including making it more Reaganesque on the topic of the Nicaragua. According to Brown, he meets a CIA recruiter in Dallas whom he later identifies as former member of Vice President Bush's staff. On the recruiter's instruction, he meets with notorious drug dealer Barry Seal in a Little Rock restaurant. Joins Seal in flight to Honduras with a purported shipment of M16s and a return load of duffel bags. Brown gets $2,500 in small bills for the flight. Brown, concerned about the mission, consults with Clinton who says, "Oh, you can handle it, don't sweat it." On second flight, Brown finds cocaine in a duffel bag and again he seeks Clinton's counsel. Clinton says to the conservative Brown, "Your buddy, Bush, knows about it" and of the cocaine, "that's Lasater's deal."
Barry Seal estimates that he has earned between $60 and $100 million smuggling cocaine into the US, but with the feds closing in on him, Seal flies from Mena to Washington in his private Lear Jet to meet with two members of Vice President George Bush's drug task force. Following the meeting, Seal rolls over for the DEA, becoming an informant. He collects information on leaders of the Medellin cartel while still dealing in drugs himself. The deal will be kept secret from investigators working in Louisiana and Arkansas. According to reporter Mara Leveritt, "By Seal's own account, his gross income in the year and a half after he became an informant - while he was based at Mena and while Asa Hutchinson was the federal prosecutor in Fort Smith, 82 miles away - was three-quarters of a million dollars. Seal reported that $575,000 of that income had been derived from a single cocaine shipment, which the DEA had allowed him to keep. Pressed further, he testified that, since going to work for the DEA, he had imported 1,500 pounds of cocaine into the U.S. Supposed informant Seal will fly repeatedly to Colombia, Guatemala, and Panama, where he meets with Jorge Ochoa, Fabio Ochoa, Pablo Escobar, and Carlos Lehder - leaders of the cartel that at the time controlled an estimated 80 percent of the cocaine entering the United States."
1985 - Terry Reed is asked to take part in Operation Donation, under which planes and boats needed by the Contras "disappear," allowing owners to claim insurance. Reed has been a Contra operative and CIA asset working with Felix Rodriguez, the Contra link to the CIA and then-Vice President Bush's office. Reed later claims he refused, but that his plane was removed while he was away.
1987 Terry Reed's plane is returned but, according to his account, he is asked not report it because it might have to be "borrowed" again. Reed later says that he had become aware that the Contra operation also involved drug running and had gotten cold feet. He also believed that large sums of drug money were being laundered by leading Arkansas financiers. He went to Bush asset Felix Rodriguez and told him he was quitting. Reed was subsequently charged with mail fraud for having allegedly claimed insurance on a plane that was in fact hidden in a hanger in Little Rock. The head of Clinton's Swiss Guard, Capt. Buddy Young, will claim to have been walking around the North Little Rock Airport when "by an act of God" a gust of wind blew open the hangar door and revealed the Piper Turbo Arrow.
Ronald Reagan wants to send the National Guard to Honduras to help in the war against the Contras. Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis goes to the Supreme Court in a futile effort to stop it but Clinton is happy to oblige, even sending his own security chief, Buddy Young, along to keep an eye on things. Winding up its tour, the Arkansas Guard declares large quantities of its weapons "excess" and leaves them behind for the Contras.
Harken Energy, with George W Bush on the board, gets rescued by aid from the BCCI-connected Union Bank of Switzerland in a deal brokered by Jackson Stephens, later to show up as a key supporter of Bill Clinton. The deal was also pushed along by another Clinton friend, David Edwards. Edwards will bring BCCI-linked investors into Harken deals including Abdullah Bakhsh, purchases $10 million in shares of Stephens dominated Worthen Bank.
**********
The job of a politician such as Governor Clinton in a situation like Arkansas is not to run things but to keep matters calm and look the other way when necessary. Clinton did this extremely well for the Reagan-Bush illegal Contra-drug operation.
And it worked the other way. The Republican US Attorney Asa Hutchinson knew far more about the massive Arkansas drug trade than he ever let on. Hutchinson apparently not only knew about Seal's operation but when an IRS agent and a state police investigator wanted to take evidence about Mena to a grand jury, Hutchinson let only 3 of their 20 witnesses appear and one of those who did - a banker ready to testify about extensive money laundering - found he was not allowed to tell his story.
There were also a number of occasions leading up to Clinton's impeachment where it seemed clear that the Republicans suddenly backed off because the inquiries were moving onto bipartisan turf. For example, a real investigation into Mena would have hurt both Bush and Clinton. So instead, a corrupt bipartisanship once again arose to save some of our prominent leaders in both parties.
This is all not well understood by the public because the media is loath to admit that anything like this could be going on right under its nose. And liberals don't want to give up their illusion that politics is just a policy debate rather than often something far more sinister. To get some sense of the way the game is sometimes really played, here's an account we ran six years ago:
1999 - Former Arkansas state trooper and Clinton bodyguard L.D. Brown charges in his new book 'Crossfire' that Alphonse D'Amato, after subjecting him to bear hugs, head locks, and other forms of gratuitous bonhomie at a large dinner party, asked, "L. D., that Mena thing, that was just a drug deal gone bad wasn't it?" Writes Brown, "I came away from that conversation thinking he was trying to convince me Mena was nothing but a drug operation. It reminded me of the strange Bush and Clinton connection all over again." Later, D'Amato said to Brown, "C'mon, L. D., let's go take a leak." Brown's lawyer and aide to the senator accompanied them on the trip to the men's room. Here's what happened next, according to Brown:
"There were a couple of people in the rest room. While they finished their business, we also did what we ostensibly came there to do. But there was more business to do. The Senator's aide checked the stalls in the rest room to make sure they were vacant and then walked to the only door leading into the room. The Senator now grabbed me in the familiar headlock. ~~~ Justin [Brown's lawyer] looked around to see what was going on as the aide put his foot at the bottom of the door, thus placing an improvised locking mechanism on it. Then the Senator went for the kill.
"While putting an extra squeeze on the headlock he said, 'L. D., we got to have your help. We need you to cooperate with us.' I could hear by now that people were banging on the door to get in the rest room. 'We're fucking in here!' the aide yelled. D'Amato continued on, oblivious to the commotion as the aide struggled to keep the door shut. 'Now L. D., we'll take care of you, we'll get you a job.' With the cigar in his mouth and his arm around my neck, the Senator looked more like a character from a Mario Puzo novel making me 'an offer I couldn't refuse' than a United States Senator conducting an investigation on the President of the United States. I was shocked and I could tell Justin didn't want to be there either.
"People outside obviously were about to wet their pants while this seemed to drag on forever. The aide was now vigorously struggling to keep the door shut while I had 'the arm' put on me. The Senator finally released his grip and I mumbled something about being concerned for my family as we finally walked out of the bathroom. The aide, clearly exhausted from his bathroom chores went back to the table with Justin and me while being led by the Senator. The party was about to break up and I was wishing I had never come. Justin and I rolled our eyes at each other at what had just happened. We knew it was improper at best to offer jobs to potential witnesses. It also disappointed me to no end to find yet another person in this entire Whitewater fiasco who wanted to use me."
**************
UNDERNEWS
FROM THE PROGRESSIVE REVIEW
EDITED BY SAM SMITH
SINCE 1964, Washington's most unofficial source
1312 18th St. NW #502, Washington DC 20036
202-835-0770 Fax: 835-0779
E-MAIL: mailto:news@prorev.com
www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0502/S00155.htm
---------
Bush, Clinton, and the CIA
by By Paul DeRienzo
ARKANSAS GOVERNOR BILL CLINTON PRESIDENT GEORGE BUSH CIA DRUGS FOR GUNS CONNECTION
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 In These Times, 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 world's 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. Colonel Oliver North was a frequent visitor during the 1980's. Eugene Hasenfus, a pilot who was shot down in a Contra supply plane over Nicaragua in 1986, was also seen 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."
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 Gallis and published last year by Covert Action Information Bulletin, Reed said that 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 aided 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, Red received a phone call from 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 plane's cargo-kicker, Eugene Hasenfus, parachuted into the arms of waiting Sandinista soldiers. Video images 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 Cooper's pockets and found phone numbers linking the re-supply operation with Felix Rodriguez, an associate of George Bush, best known for murdering Che Guevara 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 hanger 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.
According to Arkansas Committee researcher Mark Swaney, in the summer of 1987, even as the ContraGate hearings were going on in Congress, Terry Reed began to suspect they were using his front company for something other than snuggling weapons. One day, he was looking for a lathe in one of his warehouses near the airport in Guadalajara and he opened up one of the very large air freight shipping containers (they are about 28' long, about 7' high and about 8' wide), and he found it packed full of cocaine.
Swaney reports that Reed realized he was in a very precarious situation because he was the only person on paper who had anything to do with the company set up to run guns to the Contras in Nicaragua out of Mexico and there was nobody to say that he did not know anything about what was going on. Reed decided he wasn't going to play the part of a patsy.
Swaney says that Reed's contact man for the CIA in Mexico was Felix Rodriguez, whom Reed confronted. Reed said that he hadn't bargained for getting into narcotics smuggling and that he was dropping out 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 hanger 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 Thiel ordered Reed acquitted on all of the charges.
Allegations of Governor 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 25, 1992, 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, Nichols 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."
In court documents recently released by Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, it has 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 (BCCI) 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 Worthern 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 Stephens' close friend Bert Lance. Lance was a former cabinet official under President Jimmy Carter who was forced to resign due to a banking scandal.
According 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 that they did not know the group of Pakinstani and Saudi investors headed by Pharon, which they were dealing with, were actually fronting for BCCI. Clinton's staff has refused to comment.
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 on earth.
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 supports a plan to incinerate the waste, a plan that is being vigorously opposed by the residents of Jacksonville.
In These Times reporter 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 to set up and Arkansas has been exploited by people who have things they want to do that they might no get away with somewhere else." Robinson adds, "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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