Clinton 'knew of plan for assassination'
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in Washington
http://www.assumption.edu/WebVAX/ETnew/wclin04Aug96.html
Whitewater acquittals cheer Clinton's camp
IN THE interests of a drug-free world it is perhaps time for Britain and other Western democracies to consider banning President Clinton from visiting their countries.
After all, President Ernesto Samper of Colombia is now a pariah because of allegations that he once accepted campaign funding from the drug cartels - and it is hard to make the case that the hapless Samper did anything the current incumbent of the White House has not done himself. The allegations that Clinton dipped into the drug trough while Governor of his own narco-banana-state in Arkansas are equally persuasive. Indeed, they are worse.
Anybody who still refuses to believe that Clinton was once mixed up with the world of gun-running and drug-smuggling should read Boy Clinton, the long-awaited book by Robert Emmett Tyrrell, editor of The American Spectator. The opening chapter recounts the astounding story of L. D. Brown, an Arkansas state trooper who served as as a bodyguard to Clinton in the mid-1980s. Among other charges, the book alleges that Clinton appeared to have prior knowledge of a planned political murder in 1986.
L. D. Brown is not your typical state trooper. A man who likes to drink cognac at the Jockey Club in Washington - where he has been wined and dined countless times by Tyrrell in a two-year journalistic courtship - he is something of a sophisticate. He became Clinton's "fair-haired boy" and his arch-accomplice, allegedly soliciting more than a hundred women for the Governor's delectation. His wife was nanny to Mr Clinton's daughter, Chelsea. Nobody had a better ringside seat at the Arkansas Governor's Mansion in the mid-1980s.
Brown says that Clinton encouraged him to join the CIA in 1984. Clinton helped with the application, at one point scribbling annotations on drafts of an essay called "Marxist Influence in Central America" which Brown had written for the CIA. Eventually Brown was accepted by the agency.
Still a state trooper, Brown soon found himself drawn into the vortex of a clandestine operation based at the Mena airport, in western Arkansas, which was used to supply weapons to the Nicaraguan Contras. He went on two trips to Central America with Barry Seal, a notorious drug smuggler who had supposedly turned over a new leaf and was now working for the US government. On the second flight he discovered that the aircraft was coming back to Arkansas with duffel bags full of cocaine.
There seemed to be a plan to kill 'anybody that apparently had anything to do with what happened at Mena'
"Do you know what they're bringing back on those planes? They're bringing back coke," he said, confronting Clinton. "That's Lasater's deal," said Clinton. He was referring to Dan Lasater, a Little Rock tycoon who went to prison two years later for cocaine distribution. Lasater had been the subject of scrutiny by the Drug Enforcement Administration for a number of years.
Lasater was a major contributor to Clinton's electoral campaigns. One of Lasater's former girlfriends, Patty-Ann Smith, has told The Telegraph that Lasater and Clinton were extremely close, and she once saw the two of them snorting cocaine in the kitchen of Lasater's house.
The smuggler Barry Seal was assassinated in February 1986, ostensibly by Colombian hitmen. Shortly afterwards Brown was instructed to go to Mexico to murder Seal's co-pilot. He flew to Puerto Vallarta on June 18, 1986, was issued with a rifle and led to his victim. But the man was not Seal's co-pilot. Instead it was a CIA contract employee called Terry Reed, who had worked on a different part of the Mena operation.
Brown backed out at the last moment. He told Tyrrell that there seemed to be a plan to kill "anybody that apparently had anything to do with what happened at Mena". Brown alleges that he told Clinton about the assassination mission to Mexico and Clinton simply said: "Oh, that's good, that's good, L. D." Looking back, Brown believes Clinton knew that the intended quarry was Reed.
Reed claims to have been in a bunker outside Little Rock in 1986 when Clinton met Lt-Col Oliver North and others to discuss the secret scheme to resupply the Contras. He would rather not have witnessed it, because it made him a walking liability. Reed was hunted down and arrested on trumped up criminal charges. After a three-year ordeal he was acquitted, with the judge reprimanding the prosecutor for abuse of power. Ever since, he has been fighting in the courts to find out who orchestrated the efforts to destroy him.
Now, the American media will try to ignore this whole shocking saga, continuing the conspiracy of silence. Instead, they will serve us a warmed-over dish of Whitewater, as if anybody cared about that petty infraction. Death squads are much more interesting.
This report appeared in the last edition of The Sunday Telegraph