This is the story that couldn't be suppressed. An investigative
report into a scandal that haunts the reputations of three
presidents — Reagan, Bush, and Clinton.
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PENTHOUSE MAGAZINE
July, 1995 Issue
By Sally Denton and Roger Morris
Sidebar About The Crimes of Mena
Arkansas Drug Exposé Misses the Post - By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in Washington - The London Sunday Telegraph - Jan.29,1995
This is the story that couldn't be suppressed. An investigative
report into a scandal that haunts the reputations of three
presidents — Reagan, Bush, and Clinton.
Barry Seal — gunrunner, drug trafficker, and covert C.I.A. operative extraordinaire — is hardly a familiar name in American politics. But nine years after he was murdered in a hail of bullets by Medellin cartel hit men outside a Salvation Army shelter in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, he has come back to haunt the reputations of three American presidents.
Seal's legacy includes more than 2,000 newly discovered documents that now verify and quantify much of what previously had been only suspicion, conjecture, and legend. The documents confirm that from 1981 to his brutal death in 1986, Barry Seal carried on one of the most lucrative, extensive, and brazen operations in the history of the international drug trade, and that he did it with the evident complicity, if not collusion, of elements of the United States government, apparently with the acquiescence of Ronald Reagan's administration, impunity from any subsequent exposure by George Bush's administration, and under the usually acute political nose of then Arkansas governor Bill Clinton.
The newly unearthed papers show the real Seal as far more impressive and well-connected than the character played by Dennis Hopper in a made-for-TV movie some years ago, loosely based on the smuggler's life. The film portrayed the pudgy pilot as a hapless victim, caught in a cross fire between bungling but benign government agencies and Latin drug lords. The truth sprinkled through the documents is a richer — and altogether more sinister — matter of national and individual corruption. It is a tale of massive, socially devastating crime, of what seems to have been an official cover-up to match, and, not least, of the strange reluctance of so-called mainstream American journalism to come to grips with the phenomenon and its ominous implications — even when the documentary evidence had appeared.
The trail winds back to another slightly bruited but obscure name — a small place in western Arkansas called Mena.
Of the many stories emerging from the Arkansas of the 1980s that was crucible to the Clinton presidency, none has been more elusive than the charges surrounding Mena. Nestled in the dense pine and hardwood forests of the Oachita Mountains, some 160 miles west of Little Rock, once thought a refuge for nineteenth-century border outlaws and even a hotbed of Depression-era anarchists, the tiny town has been the locale for persistent reports of drug smuggling, gunrunning, and money laundering tracing to the early eighties, when Seal based his aircraft at Mena's Intermountain Regional Airport.
From first accounts circulating locally in Arkansas, the story surfaced nationally as early as 1989 in a Penthouse article called "Snowbound," written by the investigative reporter John Cummings, and in a Jack Anderson column, but was never advanced at the time by other media. Few reporters covering Clinton in the 1992 campaign missed hearing at least something about Mena. But it was obviously a serious and demanding subject — the specter of vast drug smuggling with C.I.A. involvement — and none of the major media pursued it seriously During 1992, the story was kept alive by Sarah McClendon, The Nation, and The Village Voice.
Then, after Clinton became president, Mena began to reappear. Over the past year, CBS News and The Wall Street Journal have reported the original, unquieted charges surrounding Mena, including the shadow of some C.I.A. (or "national security") involvement in the gun and drug traffic, and the apparent failure of then governor Clinton to pursue evidence of such international crime so close to home.
"Seal was smuggling drugs and kept his planes at Mena," The Wall Street Journal reported in 1994. "He also acted as an agent for the D.E.A. In one of these missions, he flew the plane that produced photographs of Sandinistas loading drugs in Nicaragua. He was killed by a drug gang [Medellin cartel hit men] in Baton Rouge. The cargo plane he flew was the same one later flown by Eugene Hasenfus when he was shot down over Nicaragua with a load of contra supplies.
In a mix of wild rumor and random fact, Mena has also been a topic of ubiquitous anti-Clinton diatribes circulated by right-wing extremists — an irony in that the Mena operation was the apparent brainchild of the two previous and Republican administrations.
Still, most of the larger American media have continued to ignore, if not ridicule, the Mena accusations. Finding no conspiracy in the Oachitas last July, a Washington Post reporter typically scoffed at the "alleged dark deeds," contrasting Mena with an image as "Clandestination, Arkansas ... Cloak and Dagger Capital of America." Noting that The New York Times had "mentioned Mena primarily as the headquarters of the American Rock Garden Society," the Columbia Journalism Review in a recent issue dismissed "the conspiracy theories" as of "dubious relevance."
A former Little Rock businessman, Terry Reed, has coauthored with John Cummings a highly controversial book, Compromised: Clinton, Bush, and the C.I.A., which describes a number of covert activities around Mena, including a C.I.A. operation to train pilots and troops for the Nicaraguan Contras, and the collusion of local officials. Both the book and its authors were greeted with derision.
Now, however, a new mass of documentary evidence has come to light regarding just such "dark deeds" — previously private and secret records that substantiate as never before some of the worst and most portentous suspicions about what went on at Mena, Arkansas, a decade ago.
Given the scope and implications of the Mena story, it may be easy to understand the media's initial skepticism and reluctance. But it was never so easy to dismiss the testimony arid suspicions of some of those close to the matter: Internal Revenue Service Agent Bill Duncan, Arkansas State Police investigator Russell Welch, Arkansas Attorney General J. Winston Bryant, Congressman Bill Alexander, and various other local law-enforcement officials and citizens.
All of these people were convinced by the late eighties that there existed what Bryant termed "credible evidence" of the most serious criminal activity involving Mena between 1981 and 1986. They also believed that the crimes were committed with the acquiescence, if not the complicity, of elements of the U.S. government. But they couldn't seem to get the national media to pay attention.
During the 1992 campaign, outside advisers and aides urged former California governor Jerry Brown to raise the Mena issue against Clinton — at least to ask why the Arkansas governor had not done more about such serious international crime so close to home. But Brown, too, backed away from the subject. I'll raise it if the major media break it first," he told aides. "The media will do it, Governor," one of them replied in frustration, "if only you'll raise it."
Mena's obscure airport was thought by the I.R.S., the F.B.I., U.S. Customs, and the Arkansas State Police to be a base for Adler Berriman "Barry" Seal, a self-confessed, convicted smuggler whose operations had been linked to the intelligence community. Duncan and Welch both spent years building cases against Seal and others for drug smuggling and money laundering around Mena, only to see their own law-enforcement careers damaged in the process.
What evidence they gathered, they have said in testimony and other public statements, was not sufficiently pursued by the then U.S. attorney for the region, J. Michael Fitzhugh, or by the I.R.S., Arkansas State Police, and other agencies. Duncan, testifying before the joint investigation by the Arkansas state attorney general's office and the United States Congress in June 1991, said that 29 federal indictments drafted in a Mena-based money-laundering scheme had gone unexplored. Fitzhugh, responding at the time to Duncan's charges, said, "This office has not slowed up any investigation ... [and] has never been under any pressure in any investigation."
By 1992, to Duncan's and Welch's mounting dismay, several other official inquiries into the alleged Mena connection were similarly ineffectual or were stifled altogether, furthering their suspicions of government collusion and cover-up. In his testimony before Congress, Duncan said the I.R.S. "withdrew support for the operations" and further directed him to "withhold information from Congress and perjure myself."
Duncan later testified that he had never before experienced "anything remotely akin to this type of interference.... Alarms were going off," he continued, "and as soon as Mr. Fitzhugh got involved, he was more aggressive in not allowing the subpoenas and in interfering in the investigative process."
State policeman Russell Welch felt he was "probably the most knowledgeable person" regarding the activities at Mena, yet he was not initially subpoenaed to testify before the grand jury. Welch testified later that the only reason he was ultimately subpoenaed at all was because one of the grand jurors was from Mena and "told the others that if they wanted to know something about the Mena airport, they ought to ask that guy [Welch] out there in the hall."
State Attorney General Bryant, in a 1991 letter to the office of Lawrence Walsh, the independent counsel in the Iran-Contra investigation, wondered "why no one was prosecuted in Arkansas despite a mountain of evidence that Seal was using Arkansas as his principal staging area during the years 1982 through 1985."
What actually went on in the woods of western Arkansas? The question is still relevant for what it may reveal about certain government operations during the time that Reagan and Bush were in the White House and Clinton was governor of Arkansas.
In a mass of startling new documentation — the more than 2,000 papers gathered by the authors from private and law-enforcement sources in a year-long nationwide search — answers are found and serious questions are posed.
These newly unearthed documents — the veritable private papers of Barry Seal — substantiate at least part of what went on at Mena.
What might be called the Seal archive dates back to 1981, when Seal began his operations at the Intermountain Regional Airport in Mena. The archive, all of it now in our possession, continues beyond February 1986, when Seal was murdered by Colombian assassins after he had testified in federal court in Las Vegas, Fort Lauderdale, and Miami for the U.S. government against leaders of the Medellin drug cartel.
The papers include such seemingly innocuous material as Seal's bank and telephone records; negotiable instruments, promissory notes, and invoices; personal correspondence address and appointment books; bills of sale for aircraft and boats; aircraft registration, and modification work orders.
In addition, the archive also contains personal diaries; handwritten to-do lists and other private notes; secretly tape-recorded conversations; and cryptographic keys and legends for codes used in the Seal operation.
Finally, there are extensive official records: federal investigative and surveillance reports, accounting assessments by the I.R.S. and the D.E.A., and court proceedings not previously reported in the press — testimony as well as confidential pre-sentencing memoranda in federal narcotics-trafficking trials in Florida and Nevada — numerous depositions, and other sworn statements.
The archive paints a vivid portrait not only of a major criminal conspiracy around Mena, but also of the unmistakable shadow of government complicity. Among the new revelations:
Mena, from 1981 to 1985, was indeed one of the centers for international smuggling traffic. According to official I.R.S. and D.E.A. calculations, sworn court testimony, and other corroborative records, the traffic amounted to thousands of kilos of cocaine and heroin and literally hundreds of millions of dollars in drug profits. According to a 1986 letter from the Louisiana attorney general to then U.S. attorney general Edwin Meese, Seal "smuggled between $3 billion and $5 billion of drugs into the U.S."
Seal himself spent considerable sums to land, base, maintain, and specially equip or refit his aircraft for smuggling. According to personal and business records, he had extensive associations at Mena and in Little Rock, and was in nearly constant telephone contact with Mena when he was not there himself. Phone records indicate Seal made repeated calls to Mena the day before his murder. This was long after Seal, according to his own testimony, was working as an $800,000-a-year informant for the federal government.
A former member of the Army Special Forces, Seal had ties to the Central Intelligence Agency dating to the early 1970s. He had confided to relatives and others, according to their sworn statements, that he was a C.I.A. operative before and during the period when he established his operations at Mena. In one statement to Louisiana State Police, a Seal relative said, "Barry was into gunrunning and drug smuggling in Central and South America ... and he had done some time in El Salvadore [sic]." Another then added, "lt was true, but at the time Barry was working for the C.I.A."
In a posthumous jeopardy-assessment case against Seal — also documented in the archive — the I.R.S. determined that money earned by Seal between 1984 and 1986 was not illegal because of his "C.I.A.-D.E.A. employment." The only public official acknowledgment of Seal's relationship to the C.I.A. has been in court and congressional testimony, and in various published accounts describing the C.I.A.'s installation of cameras in Seal's C-123K transport plane, used in a highly celebrated 1984 sting operation against the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua.
Robert Joura, the assistant special agent in charge of the D.E.A.'s Houston office and the agent who coordinated Seal's undercover work, told The Washington Post last year that Seal was enlisted by the C.I.A. for one sensitive mission — providing photographic evidence that the Sandinistas were letting cocaine from Colombia move through Nicaragua. A spokesman for then Senate candidate Oliver North told The Post that North had been kept aware of Seal's work through "intelligence sources."
Federal Aviation Administration registration records contained in the archive confirm that aircraft identified by federal and state narcotics agents as in the Seal smuggling operation were previously owned by Air America, Inc., widely reported to have been a C.I.A. proprietary company. Emile Camp, one of Seal's pilots and a witness to some of his most significant dealings, was killed on a mountainside near Mena in 1985 in the unexplained crash of one of those planes that had once belonged to Air America.
According to still other Seal records, at least some of the aircraft in his smuggling fleet, which included a Lear jet, helicopters, and former U.S. military transports, were also outfitted with avionics and other equipment by yet another company in turn linked to Air America.
Among the aircraft flown in and out of Mena was Seal's C-123K cargo plane, christened Fat Lady. The records show that Fat Lady, serial number 54-0679, was sold by Seal months before his death. According to other files, the plane soon found its way to a phantom company of what became known in the Iran-Contra scandal as "the Enterprise," the C.I.A.-related secret entity managed by Oliver North and others to smuggle illegal weapons to the Nicaraguan Contra rebels. According to former D.E.A. agent Celerino Castillo and others, the aircraft was allegedly involved in a return traffic in cocaine, profits from which were then used to finance more clandestine gunrunning.
F.A.A. records show that in October 1986, the same Fat Lady was shot down over Nicaragua with a load of arms destined for the Contras. Documents found on board the aircraft and seized by the Sandinistas included logs linking the plane with Area 51 — the nation's top-secret nuclear-weapons facility at the Nevada Test Site. The doomed aircraft was co-piloted by Wallace Blaine "Buzz" Sawyer, a native of western Arkansas, who died in the crash. The admissions of the surviving crew member, Eugene Hasenfus, began a public unraveling of the Iran-Contra episode.
An Arkansas gun manufacturer testified in 1993 in federal court in Fayetteville that the C.I.A. contracted with him to build 250 automatic pistols for the Mena operation. William Holmes testified that he had been introduced to Seal in Mena by a C.I.A. operative, and that he then sold weapons to Seal. Even though he was given a Department of Defense purchase order for guns fitted with silencers, Holmes testified that he was never paid the $140,000 the government owed him. "After the Hasenfus plane was shot down," Holmes said, "you couldn't find a soul around Mena."
Meanwhile, there was still more evidence that Seal's massive smuggling operation based in Arkansas had been part of a C.I.A. operation, and that the crimes were continuing well after Seal's murder. In 1991 sworn testimony to both Congressman Alexander and Attorney General Bryant, state police investigator Welch recorded that in 1987 he had documented "new activity at the [Mena] airport with the appearance of ... an Australian business [a company linked with the C.I.A.], and C-130s had appeared...."
At the same time, according to Welch, two F.B.I. agents officially informed him that the C.I.A. "had something going on at the Mena Airport involving Southern Air Transport [another company linked with the C.I.A.] ... and they didn't want us [the Arkansas State Police] to screw it up like we had the last one."
The hundreds of millions in profits generated by the Seal trafficking via Mena and other outposts resulted in extraordinary banking and business practices in apparent efforts to launder or disperse the vast amounts of illicit money in Arkansas and elsewhere. Seal's financial records show from the early eighties, for example, instances of daily deposits of $50,000 or more, and extensive use of an offshore foreign bank in the Caribbean, as well as financial institutions in Arkansas and Florida.
According to I.R.S. criminal investigator Duncan, secretaries at the Mena Airport told him that when Seal flew into Mena, "there would be stacks of cash to be taken to the bank and laundered." One secretary told him that she was ordered to obtain numerous cashier's checks, each in an amount just under $10,000, at various banks in Mena and surrounding communities, to avoid filing the federal Currency Transaction Reports required for all bank transactions that exceed that limit.
Bank tellers testified before a federal grand jury that in November 1982, a Mena airport employee carried a suitcase containing more than $70,000 into a bank. "The bank officer went down the teller lines handing out the stacks of $1,000 bills and got the cashier's checks."
Law-enforcement sources confirmed that hundreds of thousands of dollars were laundered from 1981 to 1983 just in a few small banks near Mena, and that millions more from Seal's operation were laundered elsewhere in Arkansas and the nation.
Spanish-language documents in Seal's possession at the time of his murder also indicate that he had accounts throughout Central America and was planning to set up his own bank in the Caribbean.
Additionally, Seal's files suggest a grandiose scheme for building an empire. Papers in his office at the time of his death include references to dozens of companies, all of which had names that began with Royale. Among them: Royale Sports, Royale Television Network, Royale Liquors, Royale Casino, S.A., Royale Pharmaceuticals, Royale Arabians, Royale Seafood, Royale Security, Royale Resorts ... and on and on.
Seal was scarcely alone in his extensive smuggling operation based in Mena from 1981 to 1986, commonly described in both federal and state law-enforcement files as one of the largest drug-trafficking operations in the United States at the time, if not in the history of the drug trade. Documents show Seal confiding on one occasion that he was "only the transport," pointing to an extensive network of narcotics distribution and finance in Arkansas and other states. After drugs were smuggled across the border, the duffel bags of cocaine would be retrieved by helicopters and dropped onto flatbed trucks destined for various American cities.
In recognition of Seal's significance in the drug trade, government prosecutors made him their chief witness in various cases, including a 1985 Miami trial in absentia of Medellln drug lords; in another 1985 trial of what federal officials regarded as the largest narcotics-trafficking case to date in Las Vegas; and in still a third prosecution of corrupt officials in the Turks and Caicos Islands. At the same time, court records and other documents reveal a studied indifference by government prosecutors to Seal's earlier and ongoing operations at Mena.
In the end, the Seal documents are vindication for dedicated officials in Arkansas like agents Duncan and Welch and local citizens' groups like the Arkansas Committee, whose own evidence and charges take on new gravity — and also for The Nation, The Village Voice, the Association of National Security Alumni, the venerable Washington journalists Sarah McClendon and Jack Anderson, Arkansas reporters Rodney Bowers and Mara Leveritt, and others who kept an all-too-authentic story alive amid wider indifference.
But now the larger implications of the newly exposed evidence seem as disturbing as the criminal enormity it silhouettes. Like his modern freebooter's life, Seal's documents leave the political and legal landscape littered with stark questions.
What, for example, happened to some nine different official investigations into Mena after 1987, from allegedly compromised federal grand juries to congressional inquiries suppressed by the National Security Council in 1988 under Ronald Reagan to still later Justice Department inaction under George Bush?
Officials repeatedly invoked national security to quash most of the investigations. Court documents do show clearly that the C.I.A. and the D.E.A. employed Seal during 1984 and 1985 for the Reagan administration's celebrated sting attempt to implicate the Nicaraguan Sandinista regime in cocaine trafficking.
According to a December 1988 Senate Foreign Relations Committee report, "cases were dropped. The apparent reason was that the prosecution might have revealed national-security information, even though all of the crimes which were the focus of the investigation occurred before Seal became a federal informant."
Tax records show that, having assessed Seal posthumously for some $86 million in back taxes on his earnings from Mena and elsewhere between 1981 and 1983, even the I.R.S. forgave the taxes on hundreds of millions in known drug and gun profits over the ensuing two-year period when Seal was officially admitted to be employed by the government.
To follow the I.R.S. logic, what of the years, crimes, and profits at Mena in the early eighties, before Barry Seal became an acknowledged federal operative, as well as the subsequently reported drug-trafficking activities at Mena even after his murder — crimes far removed from his admitted cooperation as government informant and witness?
"Joe [name deleted] works for Seal and cannot be touched because Seal works for the C.I.A.," a Customs official said in an Arkansas investigation into drug trafficking during the early eighties. "A C.I.A. or D.E.A. operation is taking place at the Mena airport," an F.B.I. telex advised the Arkansas State Police in August 1987, 18 months after Seal's murder. Welch later testified that a Customs agent told him, "Look, we've been told not to touch anything that has Barry Seal's name on it, just to let it go."
The London Sunday Telegraph recently reported new evidence, including a secret code number, that Seal was also working as an operative of the Defense Intelligence Agency during the period of the gunrunning and drug smuggling.
Perhaps most telling is what is so visibly missing from the voluminous files. In thousands of pages reflecting a man of meticulous organization and planning, Barry Seal seems to have felt singularly and utterly secure — if not somehow invulnerable — at least in the ceaseless air transport and delivery into the United States of tons of cocaine for more than five years. In a 1986 letter to the D.E.A., the commander and deputy commander of narcotics for the Louisiana State Police say that Seal "was being given apparent free rein to import drugs in conjunction with D.E.A. investigations with so little restraint and control on his actions as to allow him the opportunity to import drugs for himself should he have been so disposed."
Seal's personal videotapes, in the authors' possession, show one scene in which he used U.S. Army paratroop equipment, as well as militarylike precision, in his drug-transporting operation. Then, in the middle of the afternoon after a number of dry runs, one of his airplanes dropped a load of several duffel bags attached to a parachute. Within seconds, the cargo sitting on the remote grass landing strip was retrieved by Seal and loaded onto a helicopter that had followed the low-flying aircraft. "This is the first daylight cocaine drop in the history of the state of Louisiana," Seal narrates on the tape. If the duffel bags seen in the smuggler's home movies were filled with cocaine — as Seal himself states on tape — that single load would have been worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Perhaps the videos were not of an actual cocaine drop, but merely the drug trafficker's training video for his smuggling organization, or even a test maneuver. Regardless, the films show a remarkable, fearless invincibility. Barry Seal was not expecting apprehension.
His most personal papers show him all but unconcerned about the very flights and drops that would indeed have been protected or "fixed," according to law-enforcement sources, by the collusion of U.S. intelligence.
In an interview with agent Duncan, Seal brazenly "admitted that he had been a drug smuggler."
If the Seal documents show anything, an attentive reader might conclude, it is that ominous implication of some official sanction. Over the entire episode looms the unmistakable shape of government collaboration in vast drug trafficking and gunrunning, and in a decade-long cover-up of criminality.
Government investigators apparently had no doubt about the magnitude of those crimes. According to Customs sources, Seal's operations at Mena and other bases were involved in the export of guns to Bolivia, Argentina, Peru, and Brazil, as well as to the Contras, and the importation of cocaine from Colombia to be sold in New York, Chicago, Detroit, St. Louis, and other cities, as well as in Arkansas itself.
Duncan and his colleagues knew that Seal's modus operandi included dumping most of the drugs in other southern states, so that what Arkansas agents witnessed in Mena was but a tiny fragment of an operation staggering in its magnitude. Yet none of the putative inquiries seems to have made a serious effort to gather even a fraction of the available Seal documents now assembled and studied by the authors.
Finally, of course, there are somber questions about then governor Clinton's own role vis-a-vis the crimes of Mena.
Clinton has acknowledged learning officially about Mena only in April 1988, though a state police investigation had been in progress for several years. As the state's chief executive, Clinton often claimed to be fully abreast of such inquiries. In his one public statement on the matter as governor, in September 1991 he spoke of that investigation finding "linkages to the federal government," and "all kinds of questions about whether he [Seal] had any links to the C.I.A.... and if that backed into the Iran-Contra deal."
But then Clinton did not offer further support for any inquiry, "despite the fact," as Bill Plante and Michael Singer of CBS News have written, "that a Republican administration was apparently sponsoring a Contra-aid operation in his state and protecting a smuggling ring that flew tons of cocaine through Arkansas."
As recently as March 1995, Arkansas state trooper Larry Patterson testified under oath, according to The London Sunday Telegraph, that he and other officers "discussed repeatedly in Clinton's presence" the "large quantities of drugs being flown into the Mena airport, large quantities of money, large quantities of guns," indicating that Clinton may have known much more about Seal's activities than he has admitted.
Moreover, what of the hundreds of millions generated by Seal's Mena contraband? The Seal records reveal his dealings with at least one major Little Rock bank. How much drug money from him or his associates made its way into criminal laundering in Arkansas's notoriously freewheeling financial institutions and bond houses, some of which are reportedly under investigation by the Whitewater special prosecutor for just such large, unaccountable infusions of cash and unexplained transactions?
"The state offers an enticing climate for traffickers," I.R.S. agents had concluded by the end of the eighties, documenting a "major increase" in the amount of large cash and bank transactions in Arkansas after 1985, despite a struggling local economy.
Meanwhile, prominent backers of Clinton's over the same years — including bond broker and convicted drug dealer Dan Lasater and chicken tycoon Don Tyson — have themselves been subjects of extensive investigative and surveillance files by the D.E.A. or the F.B.I. similar to those relating to Seal, including allegations of illegal drug activity that Tyson has recently acknowledged publicly and denounced as "totally false." "This may be the first president in history with such close buddies who have NADDIS numbers," says one concerned law-enforcement official, referring to the Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs Intelligence System numbers assigned those under protracted investigation for possible drug crimes.
The Seal documents are still more proof that for Clinton, the Arkansas of the eighties and the company he kept there will not soon disappear as a political or even constitutional liability.
"I've always felt we never got the whole story there," Clinton said in 1991.
Indeed. But as president of the United States, he need no longer wonder — and neither should the nation. On the basis of the Seal documents (copies of which are being given to the Whitewater special prosecutor in any case), the president should ask immediately for a full report on the matter from the C.I.A., the D.E.A., the F.B.I., the Justice Department, and other relevant agencies of his own administration — including the long-buried evidence gathered by I.R.S. agent Duncan and Arkansas state police investigator Welch. President Clinton should also offer full executive-branch cooperation with a reopened congressional inquiry, and expose the subject fully for what it says of both the American past and future.
Seal saw himself as a patriot to the end. He had dictated his own epitaph for his grave in Baton Rouge: "A rebel adventurer the likes of whom in previous days made America great." In a sense his documents may now render that claim less ironic than it seems.
The tons of drugs that Seal and his associates brought into the country, officials agree, affected tens of thousands of lives at the least, and exacted an incalculable toll on American society. And for the three presidents, the enduring questions of political scandal are once again apt: What did they know about Mena? When did they know it? Why didn't they do anything to stop it?
The crimes of Mena were real. That much is now documented beyond doubt. The only remaining issues are how far they extended, and who was responsible.
Barry Seal, Air Contra, and Mena Airport - Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
Boy Clinton - Prologue
VINCE FOSTER - The Mirage of Suicide and The Reality of Murder
THE PARKS MURDER - Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
SUDDEN INSTANT DEATH SYNDROME - A Clinton Disease - II
BARRY SEAL - Judge Set To Rule In Dispute Over Seal Tax Crime
Mena/Iran-Contra - Starr Investigation Targets Law Enforcement Complicity
MENA/Iran-Contra/Cocaine SITES
The Activities at Mena - Michael Rivero Mena Site
Michael Rivero's New Homepage
The Washington Weekly Mena Archive
We The People Site - CIA, Iran-Contra, Mena
The Serendipity CIA Page
Cocaine Importing Agency
Michael C. Ruppert, a former LAPD narcotics investigator Website
THE CIA VOLUME II and Other Articles
CIA Admits Drug-Trafficking and Cover-Up
CONNECTIONS BETWEEN CIA AND THE CONTRAS IN COCAINE TRAFFICKING TO THE U.S. - Voulume I
Celerino Castillo, The DEA Man Who Worked Too Well
Oliver North Diary Entries:
"Want A/C To Pick Up 1500 Kilos"
"14M To Finance Came From Drugs"
"DC-6...Used For Drug Runs Into U.S."
MENA ARTICLES AND DOCUMENTS
William C. Duncan Oral Deposition
Russell F. Welch Oral Deposition - Part 1
Russell F. Welch Oral Deposition - Part 2
The Mena Story - Russell Welch
Richard Brenneke Oral Deposition
Drug Running At Mena - American Spectator, R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr.
Interview With L.D. Brown
The Crimes of Mena - Previous FR Thread - Sally Denton and Roger Morris
The Mena Twins (Excerpt) - The Secret Life of Bill Clinton - Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
Mysterious Mena - Wall Street Journal - Micah Morrison
CIA Admits Drug Trafficking, Coverup
The Mena Anthrax Poisoning Case - The Attempted Murder of Investigator Russell Welch
The Dixie Mafia
DEATH SQUAD - (Part 1)
DEATH SQUAD - (Part 2)
THE DIXIE MAFIA - Sheriff Leroy Hobbs, Drugs and Murder
America Should Have Listened To Justice Jim Johnson
The Dan Lasater Drug Trafficking Organization - Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
The Dan Lasater Drug Trafficking Organization - Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
The Arkansas Drug Shuttle
The Train Deaths, The Cover-Up, and Clinton
Train Deaths - Randall Terry Interviews Jean Duffy
Clinton Linked To Iran-Contra
The Chip Tatum Chronicles - Part 1
The Chip Tatum Chronicles - Part 2
The Chip Tatum Chronicles - Part 3
Starr Won't Touch Mena
The Life and Times of Judge Henry Woods
The Clinton/Bush Mena Memorial Library
THE ADFA ARCHIVE
Name of the Rose
ADFA, Dan Laster and Bond Underwriting
Clinton, Mena, ADFA and Drugs - Part A
Clinton, Mena, ADFA and Drugs - Part B
Clinton, Mena, ADFA and Drugs - Part C
Clinton, Mena, ADFA and Drugs - Part D
Clinton, Mena, ADFA and Drugs - Part E
Clinton, Mena, ADFA and Drugs - Part F
The Barbados Connection: Coral Reinsurance
CIA, PRC, ADFA Linked
Park-O-Meter (POM) - History of POM
The Real Webster Hubbell
"All Hell's Done Broken Loose"
QUOTES
"On March 8, 1996, U.S. Federal Judge George Howard Jr., ruled that Terry Reed could not introduce any evidence related to his participation in missions sponsored by the FBI, the CIA or any other agency of the United States government...as well as any operations conducted in Southwest Arkansas regarding the training of Nicaraguan nationals...any reference to President or Governor Bill Clinton and/or Hillary Clinton and the Mena or Nella airports. Further, any reference to Dan Lasater...any reference to a business relationship of Barry Seal and Dan Lasater...and the Arkansas Development and Finance Authority." - The Secret Life of Bill Clinton - Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
Strategic Investment Newsletter - Sept. 1995: "The Latin American drug cartels have stretched their tentacles much deeper into our lives than most people believe. It's possible they are calling the shots at all levels of government."
Dennis Dayle, former head of DEA's Centac, was asked the following question: "Enormously powerful criminal organizations are controlling many countries, and to a certain degree controlling the world, and controlling our lives. Your own U.S. government to some extent supports them, and is concealing this fact from you."
Dennis Dayle's answer: "I know that to be true. That is not conjecture. Experience, over the better part of my adult life, tells me that that is so. And there is a great deal of persuasive evidence.
"I have put thousands of Americans away for tens of thousands of years for less evidence for conspiracy with less evidence than is available against Ollie North and CIA people...I personally was involved in a deep-cover case that went to the top of the drug world in three countries. The CIA killed it." - Former DEA Agent Michael Levine - CNBC-TV, Oct. 8, 1996
"The connections piled up quickly. Contra planes flew north to the U.S., loaded with cocaine, then returned laden with cash. All under the protective umbrella of the United States Government. My informants were perfectly placed: one worked with the Contra pilots at their base, while another moved easily among the Salvadoran military officials who protected the resupply operation. They fed me the names of Contra pilots. Again and again, those names showed up in the DEA database as documented drug traffickers. When I pursued the case, my superiors quietly and firmly advised me to move on to other investigations." - Former DEA Agent Celerino Castillo - Powder Burns, 1992
"I really take great exception to the fact that 1,000 kilos came in, funded by U.S. taxpayer money." - DEA official Anabelle Grimm - CBS-TV "60 minutes"
Former Arkansas Supreme Court Justice Jim Johnson Statement: "He (Former Congressman Bill Alexander - D. Ark.) made me privy to the depositions he took from three of the most credible witnesses in that project, which left absolutely no doubt in my mind that the government of the United States was an active participant in one of the largest dope operations in the world.."
Eduardo Valle, former advisor, Attorney General in Mexico: "Drug trafficking has permeated all political structures and has corrupted federal, state, and local officials. It has deformed the economy. It is a cancer that has generated financial and political dependence, which instead of producing goods, has created serious problems ultimately affecting honest businessmen. The Attorney General's office is unable to eradicate drug trafficking because government structures at all levels are corrupted."
THE OCTOPUS - The Tentacles Of Corruption
And it continues on, right now, even in Mena.
The Fall of the Republic
Bump to you.
Bump.
In a parliamentary system, any backbencher could rise during question period (with total impunity) and grill the PM or any available cabinet minister on a hot button topic such as this one.
This simply can't be done in Congress. The President isn't there.
Furthermore, he never allows open Q&A sessions any more with the press but hides behind buffers like Joe Lockjaw.
Any reporter gutsy enough to hit him with a tough question is likely to get bounced off the White House press corps.
THIS is democracy in action?
NBC cameraman and investigator John Hillyer tried his best to bring the Mena drug-trafficking, murder and cover-ups to the American people. It cost him his life. Most, even on Free Republic, have never even heard of him. I've not seen one person bring his name up. Shrug.
John Hillyer
Video journalist and investigator. He helped to produce the documentaries "Circle of Power," and "The Clinton Chronicles." He had information on Mena. He mysteriously died in a dentist's chair for no apparent reason.
World Net Daily 8/3/99 Sarah Foster: "…Matrisciana recalled that his cameraman, John Hillyer, who worked with him on the "Clinton Chronicles" and "Obstruction of Justice" died under very strange circumstances in 1996, and was "fearful" for his safety. "John thought his life was in danger -- and we had experienced a lot of harassment when we were doing the films," recalled Matrisciana. "We were followed; we were harassed. So he was very concerned. He called me from Atlanta (where he was living) and told me he had heard there was a drug that that could be given to someone, and it would look like he died of a heart attack. "I started laughing and said, 'John, you're so healthy, it would never come off like a heart attack.' He said he knew, but figured that's what they'd do. "A couple of months later he phoned and said he had some vital information. We figured our phones were tapped and that couldn't discuss it over the phone, but planned to make arrangements to meet. Three days later, John died of a heart attack in the dentist's office. About a year ago his widow sent us some videos he had made of himself, saying he was afraid he was going to be killed," Matrisciana said. "I don't know if he was murdered," Matrisciana admitted, "But it was strange."…"
Sorry, I am not familiar with the work of Hillyer. However, I have posted repeatedly on the research and deaths of Danny Casolaro (Inslaw/PROMIS and the Octopus) and Paul Wilcher (Octopus nad October Surprise). I have also wondered about the recent death of Jim Keith of Nitro News.
By the way, have you ever heard of Ted Smart or Louis Lomax? No? Well neither had I until I read this:
http://www.skolnicksreport.com/mofmlk.html.
Thanks for the update on Hillyer. Another name for the body count, I guess.
Didn't one of the October Surprise flyboys also die of a mysterious heart attack as well?
It's hard to see clearly through muddy waters! Nothing is ever as it seems!
Can you imagine putting together all the parts of a huge puzzle, and the parts all fit mechanically, yet the resulting picture seems to make no sense?
Jobs...
At the time, Clinton promised jobs to the people of Arkansas...and he delivered.
Killing to birds with one stone, he did his laundry through the AFAD(?) by offering low interest loans to companies to come in and set up shop in the area.
J.B. Hunt trucking company was one, Walmart was another...there are a few more who were drawn to the laundry business....
I remember sitting in on a meeting held by the logistics personnel of my employer at the time...Howard Bear Trucking...They were all slightly giddy about the possible new contracts with walmart. The old man of the company sat back and did not say much. As the spirits of the group increased, the old man spoke up...he said, "Is Walmart good for America?"...
They all stopped and were silent...wondereing what the old man was on to. He siad...."Forget Walmart, they are as bad for the country as the Arkansas government is." Got up and walked out of the room.
The old man knew then what was going on in Arkansas, and he wanted no part of it.
A life or two means nothing to the modern politician. The end justifies the means...
IMHO
That is interesting! When was this?
Yes, I had read that article. So many murders, so little time.
Slym, when you talk, this is what happens.
Congressmen's grandchildren killed in fire
"Three grandchildren of former U.S. Reps. Bob Mathias of California and Bill Alexander of Arkansas were killed, along with their father, in a house fire, Mathias said Wednesday."
Clinton Clinton press conference
Ex-Arkansas State Trooper Believed Clinton Knew About Drug Flights From Central America to Arkansas
A Place Called Mena--Just Some Facts
THE MENA AIRPORT: Why Arkansas's biggest mystery won't die
Mysterious Mena: CIA Discloses, Leach Disposes
Dan Lasater: A Friend of Bill's
NORIEGA ASSAILS GEORGE BUSH ON CONTRA DRUG DEALING
Sworn Statement of William Henry LaRoche, Jr, alleging CIA complicity in Drug Smuggling
Arkansas Drug Exposé Misses the Post
Drug agent: 'I saw the CIA load the cocaine'
The Lonely Crusade of Linda Ives
Investigations troubled longtime Madison County lawman who drowned in the White River
Meth and murder in Madison County
Grand jury takes up puzzle of who killed Billie Jean Phillips
Mena's New runway to allow jet services, Help Area's Economy
The Crimes of Mena Mafia : Military 'Suicides'
Historic Review of Lasater and Patsy Thomasson
Hubbell Judge Tossed Tyson Charges As Well
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See any names of interest? Guard your eyes, it's ugly.
Sit-Rep. The old man was wise. He may not have known Jackson Stephens and a plethora of other evil tentacles, but he knew what was good for America, and probably knew other things when looked upon from a future standpoint, and not a short-term gain standpoint, which made sense to him. Just curious, do you know any information on a Buddy Bean Lumber Company?
"Can you imagine putting together all the parts of a huge puzzle.."
Chap, don't even say that, my head starts to hurt. 8-)
I used to like to have fun with folks when they first came here, and tell them, now, you want to start out here to get just a flavor on what's really happening, then tell them to click here. I wonder if any of them left because of that?
Chip Tatum claims in the interviews that I recently posted that the CIA has binary poisons that can induce a heart attack and that do not show up in an autopsy.
Yes, I've read many articles on this. It's spooky. Aristeides, I was going to link that series that you posted. I forgot. If you have them handy, would you mind posting the links in order and together here. Thanks.
Ha! Ha! Sometimes it gets so complicated that 'they' can't even keep up with reality! The experience come all the way from before Pearl Harbor when FDR conspired with Churchill to force the USA into the war; the intelligence apparatus was stacked like a deck of cards to cover the trail!
bump
I read this when it came out and for years have been on talk radio and the Internet to try to do anything I could about it. These people control billions and billions of dollars and we can't even imagine all of their power and what they are doing.
Thank you so much for the heads up!!!
Barry Seal - The Spy Who Smuggled
INTERVIEW WITH CELERINO CASTILLO
December 4 1981
1.2 THE NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL
... (a) Purpose. The National Security Council (NSC) was established by the National Security Act of 1947 to advise the President with respect to the integration of domestic, foreign and military policies relating to the national security. The NSC shall act as the highest Executive Branch entity that provides review of, guidance for and direction to the conduct of all national foreign intelligence, counterintelligence, and special activities, and attendant policies and programs.
(b) Committees. The NSC shall establish such committees as may be necessary to carry out its functions and responsibilities under this Order. The NSC, or a committee established by it, shall consider and submit to the President a policy recommendation, including all dissents, on each special activity and shall review proposals for other sensitive intelligence operations...
1.8 THE CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
All duties and responsibilities of the CIA shall be related to the intelligence functions set out below. As authorized by this Order; the National Security Act of 1947, as amended (see Short Title note above); the CIA Act of 1949, as amended (see Short Title of 1949 Amendment note above); appropriate directives or other applicable law, the CIA shall:
(a) Collect, produce and disseminate foreign intelligence and counterintelligence, including information not otherwise obtainable. The collection of foreign intelligence or counterintelligence within the United States shall be coordinated with the FBI as required by procedures agreed upon by the Director of Central Intelligence and the Attorney General;
(b) Collect, produce and disseminate intelligence on foreign aspects of narcotics production and trafficking;
(c) Conduct counterintelligence activities outside the United States and, without assuming or performing any internal security functions, conduct counterintelligence activities within the United States in coordination with the FBI as required by procedures agreed upon (by) the Director of Central Intelligence and the Attorney General;
(d) Coordinate counterintelligence activities and the collection of information not otherwise obtainable when conducted outside the United States by other departments and agencies;
(e) Conduct special activities approved by the President. No agency except the CIA (or the Armed Forces of the United States in time of war declared by Congress or during any period covered by a report from the President to the Congress under the War Powers Resolution (87 Stat. 855) (50 U.S.C. 1541 et seq.)) may conduct any special activity unless the President determines that another agency is more likely to achieve a particular objective;
(f) Conduct services of common concern for the Intelligence Community as directed by the NSC...
2.7 CONTRACTING
Agencies within the Intelligence Community are authorized to enter into contracts or arrangements for the provision of goods or services with private companies or institutions in the United States and need not reveal the sponsorship of such contracts or arrangements for authorized intelligence purposes. Contracts or arrangements with academic institutions may be undertaken only with the consent of appropriate officials of the institution...
3.6 REVOCATION Executive Order No. 12036 of January 24, 1978, as amended, entitled ''United States Intelligence Activities,'' is revoked.
Ronald Reagan.
90, 91...
I was unaware of the Mena deal at the time, so I do not know exactly what stage Walmart was at...be it finishing their construction and the logistics were soon to start out of their new wharehouse, or, they were already established and thinking of signing Howard Bear on at that time (90, 91). According to the time line in the book, I think the latter was the case...
Like I said, it did not hit me, until I read Compromised and did some further research in 93...
That rings a bell Uncle Bill but I cannot place the name with a time frame....
Were they eager participants?
Yes, I've asked around, but found little out. On the video The Mena Cover-Up, Scott Wheeler discusses a situation where a truck owned by the Buddy Bean Lumber company was pulled over in Missouri by State Police. The vehicle was impounded and when agents thoroughly checked the vehicle over they found that the entire lumber stack on the back was merely a facade. The lumber stack was simply a shell, which they lifted up, and found the secret compartment inside stuffed with cocaine and marijuana. As I recall, nobody was held accountable. Business as usual. When listening to the video, the name is hard to make out, but I believe Wheeler is stating Buddy Bean.
They're not hard to find, but I want the dirt! 8-)
Buddy Bean Lumber Company
Physical Address:Key Personnel:
Buddy Bean , President
Services:
Lumber: rough, sawed, or planed
Lumber, plywood, and millwork
Lumber and other building materials
Ooops! Buddy Bean, on the Board of Directors of First National Bank in Mena. Hehehe.
First National Bank - Mena, Arkansas
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Buddy Bean
Wayne Dingler
Harold Campbell
Donald Forbis
Dr. G.W. Goforth
Joe H. Hardegree
Daniel C. Horton
Denver Jones
G.R. Mosley
Gary L. Newcomb
Bart Price
James W. Tauriainen
Leroy Thomas
Bttt.
So many links, so little time...... (OK, I'll give up tonight's sleep and come back to this one later :-).
btt
Looks like team players are taken care of aye?
Hard name to forget....I'll keep an eye out for the names and events, anything I come up with I'll shoot your way.
Correction Chapita...
This was 91, 92, and read the book shortly after it,s release in 94...
If you drive by the place, what you see is ..... is...
A LUMBER YARD!!!!
A few more folks ought to do that to get a feel for how it's done. Right out in front of God and Everybody.
And when you drive thru Branson and see the thousands of Condo/Timeshares built and still more being built, and have seen thousands of defaults published in the local paper, then swing on by one of the Banks that aren't there, well, your head will spin. :-)
Ugly indeed. Kind of a Who's Who, isn't it? Even a few who got dead under mysterious circumstances. Maybe they were given to understand that a thousand bucks would buy protection.
Let me run this by some folks who'll have more familiarity with local names.
We owe the legendary Felix Rodriguez thanks, do we not, for mooting that obnoxious "beret" poster of Che Guevara?
:-)
The following transcript is a small excerpt from The Mena Cover-Up video. If you read between the lines, it's obvious that Bill Duncan and Russell Welch had issued many subpoenas to participants in the circle of Barry Seal's distribution cartel. Obvious, at least to me, is that Buddy Bean was one such recipient. You be the judge.
BILL DUNCAN: You're dealing with an international cocaine smuggler that moved his entire air force basically, to the state of Arkansas. Everybody, in law enforcement that was involved knew it. You had some talented law enforcement people involved in investigating this, gathering hard evidence. You had an United States Attorney's office involved initially, apparently supporting the investigation, was assuring us, at least, that it was serious business. We requested that a money laundering specialist from Operation Greenback in Miami come to Arkansas, and review the Mena evidence to see if it was sufficient for indictments. A specialist arrived, reviewed the evidence, was very enthusiastic about it. Drafted, it's my recollection a 29 count indictment of individuals in the Mena, Arkansas area. And that indictment was to be presented to the January, 1986 grand jury.
NARRATOR: During the midst of the grand jury proceedings Seal found himself confined to a Salvation Army halfway house. With no police protection or security, he became, in effect, a sitting duck. While awaiting his appearance before the Arkansas grand jury, Seal was suddenly gunned down. Several Colombian hitmen were later charged and convicted of the assassination.
RUSSELL WELCH: Bill Duncan and I interviewed Barry Seal less than two months before he was killed. Uh, and uh, he was served with a subpoena at that time, he was under subpoena to come to Arkansas and testify for the grand jury here, when he was killed.
SCOTT WHEELER: Apparently, somebody in Arkansas wanted Seal dead, because he was murdered before he could show up for that grand jury investigation. Very little is known about the distribution method that Seal had.
We do know that one lumber truck from Mena was busted going to Kansas City. It had a lumber facade on the back. When you lifted the lumber up, there was a load of cocaine. Same driver, drove the same route, time and time again. Well, the owner of the lumber company was very close to Bill Clinton, Governor Clinton, Buddy Bean. They were never allowed to do a thorough investigation. The whole thing, just uh, went down the tubes.
NARRATOR: Barry Seal's death conveniently prevented the grand jury from finding out who else was involved in the Arkansas drug smuggling operation. The media, while focusing on the Colombians, failed to recognize that Seal's testimony would have caused far more damage to his American associates. For example, who handled Seal's cocaine once it was on the ground? Who paid Seal for his illegal cargo? Was Seal's operation linked to any U.S. political figures? The assassination of Barry Seal would prove to be only the first step in shutting down Welsh and Duncan's investigation entirely.
[End of Partial Transcript]
So, next time anyone here makes that deposit at the bank, say hi to Buddy, if you can catch a Board meeting
"We owe the legendary Felix Rodriguez thanks, do we not, for mooting that obnoxious "beret" poster of Che Guevara?"
Hehehe.
The "Who Killed Billie Jean?" link is in and of itself boggling...
Just one sidenote to the massive amount of information you have posted, and it is in regard to that list of those who have not been allowed to testify regarding government and government related criminalities, and it is this caveat lector: I would suggest several of them might be something other than what they appear...
Wasn't all that much to him! He went on the run because Fidel was worried about Che getting all the lime-light! Felix may have been tipped of by the DGI where to look!
I previously have run across that Rodriquez had nothing to do with the capture of Guevara; rather, he came on the scene, after the fact, to cut himself a little glory.
Since Castro was brought up in this thread, perhaps sometime I will get into it that...
the State Department was warned--preceding Castro's coming to power--that he was going to align with Russia.
What I'm suggesting here is, this is exemplary of how the Globalists use/manipulate communism for the bigger picture, One Worldism, and was prototypical of the so-called Cold War.
White House photograph showing President Reagan meeting with Contra leaders (L to R) Alfonso Robelo, Arturo Cruz and Adolfo Calero. In officially released photo, Oliver North (at right) was cropped out.
Alfonso Robelo
"Background. Alfonso Robelo was active in Nicaraguan politics for over 30 years. He was an original member of a five-person ruling junta of the Sandinista Government, a Southern Front Contra political leader and later Ambassador to Costa Rica during the presidency of Violetta Chamorro. Robelo's opposition to the Sandinistas crystallized in mid-1980 when he resigned his position on the Sandinista Council of State to protest the Council's expansion and addition of FSLN members. By early 1982, Robelo--along with Eden Pastora and Brooklyn Rivera--formed ARDE.
Allegations of Drug Trafficking. An October 1984 cable to Headquarters reported that a Sandinista newspaper, El Nuevo Diaro, had stated on October 10, 1984 that Robelo and ARDE had accepted help from an unidentified drug trafficker in Miami. The article also said that two FRS/ARDE helicopters had been painted with a black substance to make them invisible to radar.
In June 1987, CIA learned that Robelo had been contacted by two Bolivians--Enrique Crespou and Fernando Perou--who had offered to make a "significant" monetary contribution to the Contras. Robelo said that they offered $150 million to the Contras with "no strings attached." Robelo said that the Bolivians were evasive in their answers about the origins of the funds. Robelo was advised not to accept any money from the Bolivians until its origins could be determined.
CIA Response to Allegations of Drug Trafficking. No information has been found to indicate that CIA took any actions to follow up on the 1984 Sandinista newspaper allegation that Robelo and ARDE were involved in dealings with a drug trafficker.
In October 1988, a cable reported to Headquarters that Perou and Crespou had been accused during a press conference by Roberto Suarez Levy, son of imprisoned cocaine "king" Roberto Suarez Gomez, of being CIA agents. Suarez Levy also alleged that CIA and DEA were operating a cocaine lab in "Huanchaca," Bolivia. A Headquarters response stated that the only relevant information it had regarding Perou and Crespo was that they had met with Robelo in June 1987 and offered him $150 million for the Contras.
Robelo says he does not recall the meeting with the Bolivians or their reported offer of $150 million. He does not deny that the meeting may have taken place, but states that he participated in approximately 10 situations when people offered to donate large sums of money to the Contras but did not do so.
Information Sharing with Other U.S. Government Entities. No information has been found to indicate that CIA informed U.S. law enforcement or other agencies or the Congress about the 1984 Sandinista newspaper allegation. CIA informed Congress about the alleged offer of $150 million from the Bolivians in 1997 in the context of another matter."
Adolfo Calero
"Background. Adolfo Calero Portocarrero, an American-educated businessman and politician, was originally active--as were many other Nicaraguan political figures who went on to become Contra leaders--in working to bring down the regime of Anastasio Somoza. After Somoza's ouster in 1979, U.S. Embassy officials reported from Managua that Calero initially sought to work with the FSLN Government, claiming that all sectors needed to contribute to the political and economic reconstruction of Nicaragua. However, Calero had publicly criticized the Sandinistas by late 1980 for "setting themselves up as gods." In December 1982, he left Nicaragua in protest of FSLN policies.
On leaving Nicaragua, Calero joined the FDN and became a member of its leadership. In January 1983, he traveled to Panama, Costa Rica and Colombia to seek support. That same month, he helped draft a FDN peace initiative calling for elections, pluralism, nonalignment in foreign affairs, and respect for individual and human rights. Calero later became President and Commander-in-Chief of the FDN, the preeminent Contra group that pursued resistance activities on the Northern Front from bases in Honduras.
When pressures to unify the Contra forces led to the creation of UNO in mid-1985, Calero--along with Arturo Cruz and Alfonso Robelo--was named to share authority and decision making control of the military effort. Disputes with Cruz and Robelo led to Calero's resignation from the UNO leadership in early 1987. However, with the founding of a successor coalition, the Nicaraguan Resistance (RN), in May of that year, Calero was restored to a senior leadership position. In that position, Calero differed with Enrique Bermudez, the RN military commander, over strategies for cease fire negotiations.
Allegations of Drug Trafficking. A number of Central American publications and public figures mentioned the Northern Contra Front forces in the context of broad-based charges of drug trafficking by the Contras. A cable informed Headquarters in February 1988 that a Nicaraguan exile had alleged at a meeting in Miami, Florida, that Enrique Bermudez, Adolfo Calero, Aristides Sanchez, and another individual were all involved in drug smuggling. The purpose of the meeting in Miami at which this allegation was made was to invite former Nicaraguan National Guard members to return to Nicaragua under a Sandinista amnesty program. The Nicaraguan exile reportedly offered no substantiation for his allegations. According to the cable, he had been characterized by both a U.S. law enforcement source and CIA as mentally unstable.
CIA Response to Allegations of Drug Trafficking. According to a February 1988 Headquarters cable, CIA records were searched in February 1988 regarding the Nicaraguan exile in response to his allegations that Calero and other UNO/FDN leaders had engaged in drug smuggling. The cable indicated that a number of sources characterized him as unstable, a swindler and as having a reputation of being a drug dealer in Nicaragua before leaving that country in 1983.
Information Sharing with Other U.S. Government Entities. In February 1988, the information contained in the February 1988 cable concerning the drug trafficking allegation by the Nicaraguan exile against Calero and other Contra leaders was forwarded by CIA to the FBI.
No record has been found to indicate that the allegation received by CIA regarding Calero and drug trafficking was reported to Congress."
Arturo Cruz
"* Cf. the testimony of former Sandinista official Arturo Cruz, Jr.: "From 1979 to 1981 I was the Sandinistas' man in Washington in charge of handling Congress. It was my task to negotiate the $75 million assistance package the Carter Administration was a rranging for the Sandinista regime. It provided crucial balance of payments support on very generous terms. The money came from the Special Support Funds which were reserved only for very close allies of the United States like Israel or Egypt. Not only was the U.S. government giving us economic aid, but quality aid. And not only Special Support funds, but also PL 480 -- food for peace funds -- and loans for development projects from AID. The U.S. government was also supporting us in our requests to r enegotiate our national debts with the private New York banks. Finally, the Carter Administration was using its good offices with the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank and other multinational organizations to be very generous with the revol utionary regime. With enemies like this, one doesn't need friends. The line I took as the Sandinista representative in Washington was that if the U.S. was generous with us we would not go to the Soviets for aid. But in reality, even while the U.S. was providing us this generous financial support, we were signing every possible agreement under the table with the U.S.S.R. and the other Communist governments for military support and to establish Party to Party relations. What we Sandinistas wanted was to establish a division of labor: the west would provide the money for socialist economic development, while the Communist states would provide us with the weapons and technical support in setting up the institutions of power -- the army, the police, the 'b lock committees' charged with spying on the population. So while America and the other western democracies supplied advisers to our economic ministers, the internal and external security ministers and the ministries responsible for the new ideological ap paratus -- communications, education -- were reserved for foreign advisors from the Soviet Union, Cuba, East Germany, Bulgaria, North Vietnam and North Korea." In Peter Collier and David Horowitz, eds., Second Thoughts (Madison Books, 1989)."
This thread is fantastic. It could be an entire web page...an excellent bookmark.
Regarding your last post, bird of metal. Let's go back in time. Barry Seal was flying with Ferrie. James Jesus Angleton was best friends with Kim Philby, who it was discovered to Angleton's horror was a Russian spy. Angleton has to facilitate Castro to keep other secrets from making print. Enter Nosenko, stage left, to distract the sheeple from Russia's role.
Drugs are undermining this country to such an extent that it is equivalent to a takeover by a hostile power. Instead of using missles, these commies used drugs. The number of assassinations recall the purges by Stalin. The elite are just useful idiots.
Angleton didn't "facilitate" Castro. I don't know if the CIA knew about Castro or not. How do you know, except by guessing?
The State Department, controlled by CFR, I know did know, though.
You make too many guesses [& invariably wrong], trying to fill in gaps because of insufficient information.
In Angleton trying to blackmail Colby over JFK tells you something...
Communists don't use the elites.
You have it exactly backwards.
Yeltsin attends a Bilderberger meeting?
Gorby runs a foundation in sunny California?
How much do you need before a pattern begins to emerge for you?
Interview with Alfred McCoy: The Politics of Heroin; CIA Complicity In The Global Drug Trade
The Washington Weekly
October 17, 1994
Editorial
When the Associated Press in 1988 looked at the telephone log from Governor Clinton's Arkansas Development Finance Authority, it found a surprise. The log included 142 long- distance phone calls to Nicaraguan Contra leaders. What did a Clinton agency have to do with the Nicaraguan Contras?
Plenty. The CIA Iran-Contra operation in the 1980s was based in Mena, Arkansas. Why did the CIA choose Arkansas? Allegedly because Arkansas was known as a "banana republic" state where politicians could be bought for money, a state with a single party and no opposition. Several participants in the CIA operation have claimed that Clinton created the ADFA to launder CIA money for the Contras. Clinton allegedly took a cut on the laundered money, which gave him tremendous political and economical power. It is not impossible that some of that power was used in his presidential campaign. Perhaps it is time to look into sources of Clinton's presidential campaign fund?
Why did the discovery not make big headlines in 1988? Because Clinton, a prominent Democrat, was active in the Dukakis campaign. If the national media had used the Iran-Contra operation in Mena, Arkansas against George Bush, it could have backfired on their own candidate.
In a press conference a few weeks ago, Clinton was finally asked how much he knew about the Iran-Contra operation and CIA money laundering in Mena, Arkansas. Clinton did not deny the allegations, but said that he had not been told about what went on in Mena. Decide for yourself.
CASPAR WEINBERGER ACCUSED OF PARTICIPATION IN DRUG OPERATION
Thanks for all your efforts, Uncle Bill. You must never sleep...
Fate of 'train deaths' case rests with jury
'Train Deaths' libel suit winds down
Trial of 'train deaths' producer underway
'Train deaths' figure threatened
Documentary producer sued for $16 million
The case of the boys on the tracks
Another Arkansas miscarriage of justice
The case of the boys on the tracks
THE TRAIN DEATHS, THE COVER-UP, AND CLINTON
SOME ADDITONAL INFORMATION REGARDING THE TRAIN DEATHS:
1. With regard to Dr. Malak, in 1992 the Los Angeles times also documented that he falsified the "cause" of death 20 times.
2. Raymond Albright - Murdered 1992 - Actual cause of death was murder. Albright was shot 5 times in chest and Malak ruled the cause of death "suicide".
3. James Dewey Milam - Murdered - Milam had information on the deaths of Ives and Henry. Malak's initial ruling was an ULCER. Milam was decapitated. Malak concluded that the family pet had eaten the entire head and regurgitated the head later on. Unfortunately for Malak, the entire head was later found intact in a trash bin just a couple blocks away from the initial area where the body was found. Malak made up the entire story.
4. Keith Coney - Murder and cover-up May 1988 - Keith had initially been with Kevin Ives and Don Henry the night of the train death. He told relatives that "law enforcement" officials were responsible for murdering Kevin and Don. 2 days later he was killed while riding his Motorcycle at very high speed being chased by a vehicle. According to some officers, his throat had been slashed by his attackers. Ruled a traffic accident. No autopsy done.
5. Keith McKaskle - Murdered Nov. 1988 - Keith was allegedly at tracks that night with Kevin and Don. He turned over the information he knew to Richard Garrett, Deputy Prosecutor. He immediately told everything he knew to his family and also told his family that he had told the "wrong" people what he knew when he told Garrett the information. He was so convinced that he was going to be murdered he arranged his funeral, told family and friends good-bye. Within days he was stabbed 113 times. The night of local elections in 1988, Keith laid 2 cents on the Wagonwheel tavern bar and said if Jim Steed wins this sheriff election tonight my life's not worth 2 cents.He was right.
6. Gregory Collins - Murdered Jan. 1989 - Greg had information on the Ives and Henry murders. He was scheduled to appear at the grand jury and had been subpoened. He had been shot in the face with a shotgun. It was ruled a suicide. No autopsy was performed.
7. Boonie Bearden - Murdered under mysterious circumstances March 1989 - He was a friend of both Greg Collins and Keith Coney. He "vanished" without a trace. It was rumored he knew exactly what had happened at the tracks. An anonymous caller said he knew where he had been murdered. The police found a piece of a shirt, nothing more. His body has never been recovered.
8. Jeff Rhodes - Murdered April 1989 - He told his family he knew too much about the murders of Kevin, Don and McKaskle's murders. His body was found in a trash dump. He had severe gunshot blasts to the head, his hands and feet had been partially sawn off, he was possibly tortured and then burned.
9. Richard Winters - Murdered in July 1989 - Winters was a possible suspect in the deaths of Ives and Henry. He was cooperating and was to be a witness for Don and Kevin within the Grand Jury. He was gunned down in cold blood via a shotgun blast to his face in a robbery which has been proven to be a set-up.
9. Jordan Ketelsen - Murdered June 1990 - Jordan was believed to be connected to the murder of Mckaskle. He was shot at point blank range in the head via a shotgun in his pickup truck. There was no police investigation. No autopsy was performed as the body was cremated quickly.
10. Mike Samples - Murdered June 1995 - Mike was another grand jury witness for Don and Kevin. He was reported as knowing a great deal about the deaths of Ives and Henry. Sources say he had been involved with picking up drugs that were dropped out of planes at the Mena drop sites. He was shot to death in the head and was not found for some time.
11. John Hillyer - Murdered - NBC cameraman and investigator who brought much of the initial Mena findings to the publics attention. It cost him his life.
Note: Authorities(investigators) have denied any connection between these cases and the Kevin Ives/Don Henry murders! There is great fear that they will implicate very powerful people within the Arkansas Power circle.
SUSPECTS IMPLICATED IN IVES/HENRY MURDERS & COVER-UP:
Dan Harmon - Prosecutor
Richard Garrett - Deputy Prosecutor
Jim Steed - Sheriff
Jay Campbell - Pulaski County sheriff's deputy
Kirk Lane - Pulaski County sheriff's deputy
Danny Allen - Officer
Larry Rochelle - at the tracks that night.
ADDITIONAL OFFICIALS WHO SHOULD BE INVESTIGATED FOR OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE AND COVER-UP:
Bill Clinton - President
Michael Fitzhugh - U.S. attorney
Chuck Banks - U.S. attorney
Floyd Hays - FBI Agent
John Cole - Judge, Saline County
Rick Elmendorf - former Saline County head investigator under Sheriff Jim Steed.
Don Birdsong - State Police liason to Governor Clinton.
Fahmy Malak - Former Ark.State Medical Examiner
Jocelyn Elders - Former Ark. State Health Dept. Director
SOME PREVIOUS QUOTES ON VIDEO:
Sharline Wilson - " The people at the track that night, to my knowledge were Dan Harmon, Keith McKaskle, Larry Rochelle. I do know that the boys were watching the drop site, O.K.? And they got curious as to what was being dropped there." - The Clinton Chronicles
John Brown - Former Saline County Criminal Investigator - " The fact is, we know who killed these kids." - The Clinton Chronicles
Sorry, I had to leave early yesterday for a dental appointment, and couldn't post all the links to the Tatum series. I see you've posted links to the first dozen, but there are more now.
Here are the links: A CIA AGENT TALKS: Cocaine, Assassinations, NWO, Bush, Clinton (Part XX) ; A CIA AGENT TALKS: Cocaine, Assassinations, NWO, Bush, Clinton (Part XIX) ; A CIA AGENT TALKS: Cocaine, Assassinations, NWO, Bush, Clinton (Part XVIII) ; A CIA AGENT TALKS: Cocaine, Assassinations, NWO, Bush, Clinton (Part XVII) ; A CIA AGENT TALKS: Cocaine, Assassinations, NWO, Bush, Clinton (Part XVI) ; A CIA AGENT TALKS: Cocaine, Assassinations, NWO, Bush, Clinton (Part XV) ; A CIA AGENT TALKS: Cocaine, Assassinations, NOW, Bush, Clinton (Part XIV) ; A CIA AGENT TALKS: Cocaine, Assassinations, NOW, Bush, Clinton (Part XIII) ; A CIA AGENT TALKS: Cocaine, Assassinations, NOW, Bush, Clinton (Part XII) (Reposting) ; A CIA AGENT TALKS: Cocaine, Assassinations, NWO, Bush, Clinton (Part XI) ; A CIA AGENT TALKS: Cocaine, Assassinations, NWO, Bush, Clinton (Part X) ; A CIA AGENT TALKS: Cocaine, Assassinations, NWO, Bush, Clinton (Part IX) ; A CIA AGENT TALKS: Cocaine, Assassinations, NWO, Bush, Clinton (Part VIII) ; A CIA AGENT TALKS: Cocaine, Assassinations, NWO, Bush, Clinton (Part VII) ; A CIA AGENT TALKS: Cocaine,Assassinations, NWO, Bush, Clinton (Part VI) ; A CIA AGENT TALKS: Cocaine, assassinations, NWO, Bush, Clinton (Part V) ; A CIA AGENT TALKS: Cocaine, Assassinations, NWO, Bush, Clinton (Part IV) ; A CIA AGENT TALKS: Cocaine, assassinations, NWO, Bush, Clinton (Part III) ; A CIA AGENT TALKS:COCAINE, ASSASSINATIONS,NWO, BUSH AND CLINTON (Part II) ; and A CIA AGENT TALKS: Cocaine, Assassinations, NWO, Bush, Clinton (Part One) .
You have it exactly backwards.
It is a backwards game, metal...as in the tail wagging the dog. This is not a guess but a working hypothesis. The CIA was primed to take out Castro and then the flip flop. The Elite are mortal too. As this thread shows, this is a crowd that eats its young.
for additional background, one you won't want to miss is: WHITE OUT by alexander cockburn.
p.s. don't forget that rep. leach's investigation was completely shut down...........
"Drugs are undermining this country to such an extent that it is equivalent to a takeover by a hostile power. Instead of using missles, these commies used drugs. The number of assassinations recall the purges by Stalin. The elite are just useful idiots."
Hate to use the word, but does "conspiracy" come to mind?
Rush. who has classified all conspiracy nuts as "kooks," has even softened and has adjusted his rhetoric to include this term in a limited fashion, using his office staff get-togethers as a conspiracy to "seperate people from their money" by advertising, etc.
There has been a mass conspiracy by the bureaucrats and politicians to undermine the political process for decades. This voluminous thread is just the tip of the iceberg. It won't matter who makes the cut into the oval office. His or her position has long since been predestined to conform to the precepts of a system of money, crime, despotism, and intrigue. (sounds third-world)
I have studied this situation for years. I have worked in some minor ways to expose this "conspiracy" which is by no means "right wing." I don't know the answer short of splitting this country into smaller groups of individual states that are democratically capable of deciding their own destiny. I do know that this administration has done and is doing more damage to the future of this great country than all those who have previously tilled the soil in preparation of the harvest - total destruction of our individual freedoms.
FTMT (Follow The Money Trail)
All these politicians suffer from the same disease: traitoritis. And people think things are going to be different if dubya or mccain get in instead of gore? Give me a break.
Never let yourself being wrong get in the way of your argument.
They're all cut from the same cloth, but each wear a mask of a different color.
Welcome aboard the conspiracy train, t40. All on this thread realize we have been had.
I don't have an ego that has to be right or wrong. I am putting my ideas out there....if someone disagrees, fine. I believe in learning from the Socratic method.[ Plus, even the stupidest comment bumps this thread.]
Why do you think the CIA flip-flopped on Cuba? As we look at this thread, we can see that drugs/arms sales have been facilitated by that stance, regardless of Communism.
Let's keep this bumped
I'm not sure what you mean by the CIA flip-flopping on Cuba, but I do have reason to believe they used the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion as "Red Scare" agitprop for justification of getting into Vietnam, which was more about the CIA--handled as a paramilitary operation over a war-- than DoD, which explains the loss there.
I read this when it came out and for years have been on talk radio and the Internet to try to do anything I could about it
I've heard you on the air a few times... Keep up the good work, DFU!
This is a bump.
Bump!
How does this square with Mr. Bear Bottoms thread (claiming to be the brother of Barry Seal)....
I think Mr. Bear Bottoms has an agenda to cover up the truth about Mena. (The question is why?) I don't trust him or believe anything he says. I've done lots of research, and I think that anyone with half a brain can see that there is plenty of evidence to back up the Mena/Contra drug allegations.
Its obvious why so many people want to keep this swept under the rug... Because it involves both parties; Bush and Clinton... and neither side can accuse the other, without incriminating themselves.
Bottoms' sister was married to Barry Seal.
bttt
Bump for the truth!
Bttt.
BTTT
If you ever get in trouble but want to have fun Cindy, invite your friends and neighbors over for "shredding parties." It's as American as apple pie and baseball. Depending on how much you want to spend, you can use shredders for destruction of many documents at a time or just one piece of paper at a time. You can have races too, to see who can do the job the fastest. Within a short period of time the government will be so brazen that it will hire for new positions called Shredding Specialist I, Shredding Specialist II within the new Department of Shredding. The Department of Justice and FBI will be given oversight responsibilities for this old service in a new agency. If you party shred though, don't tell what you did in a sworn deposition, it always comes back to bite you. You might even end up in a book.
"In a sworn deposition, Michelle Tudor, a secretary at the intelligence unit of the state police, testified about "shredding parties" that took place in 1988.
Question: "Did you see references to Oliver North and Mena?"
"Yes, sir, there was one document in particular that I do distinctly recall. There were certain areas blacked out as classified. It was by Oliver North."
"In respect to these records, relating to Mena, did you see the name Terry Reed?"
"Yes sir."
"Was that on more than one occasion?"
"Yes, sir. It was repetitious?"
"Was there anything unusual about the [shredding]?"
"Yes, sir, because it was so massive....it began to bother me later because the more I thought about it, the less sense it made to me."
THE SECRET LIFE OF BILL CLINTON - Ambrose Evans-Pritchard - Page 345-346.
bttt
Bttt.
Bttt.
Hi Cindy. Bump.
The best Mena-Seal conspiracy resource:
THE BARRY SEAL AND MENA STORY
THE MYTHS ABOUT BARRY SEAL AND MENA, ARKANSAS
The author also has several threads on Free Republic,
search articles with "by: bbottoms".
Hi Uncle Bill!
BUMP back at you!
bump
This is Dictator Clinton's Amerika! You don't need to know the truth!
Just obey the Serial Rapist Clinton, he knows what is best for you!
Hi Cindy! Hope all is well. Keep fighting on!
An oldie but a goodie BUMP!
BTTT
Bmp.
bttt
bump-bump-bump
Billy, I don't claim to have the last word on anything. But, I did spend a disproportionate amount of my own life investigating certain events surrounding Barry Seal. I, also, suspect that you might be Billy Bottoms, who would know more about Seal than any person living, in my opinion. You're right, Terry Reed is a liar. He's never met Barry Seal. In my opinion, Reed has done more to create confusion about Mena than anybody else. Arkansas State Policeman Russell Welch
William L. Bottoms was on the' internet refuting the myths about Barry Seal.
I knew who he was and I knew he was right. We began exchanging e-mail, some of
which was argumentative and even embittered. However, most of our exchanges were
informative and we both learned some things about Barry Seal that we hadn't
known before. Bottoms found that the conspiracy and the myths had
established such a strong hold on the public that it became more important for
him to tell the truth than to keep himself concealed. He is probably the only
person qualified to talk about Barry Seal. What he says is based on his personal
knowledge.
FBI Agent Del Hahn
Billy, You did a great job on your web page. it is very informative and tells the true story. I just wish the other people who are writing some sort of science fiction about Barry Seal would start telling the truth. how can they tell us what happened when they weren't there? Thanks for telling the story like it happened and setting the science fiction writers on the right path. Your doing good work. Wendell Seal
Billy, A lot of people out there think they know what happened at Mena and with Barry Seal. You've got quite a job ahead of you because people don't want to know the truth. All they care about is which part of the fabricated stories match up to what they want to believe. Your the only one left that knows the whole story. Anything I can do to help, let me know. U.S. Customs Special Agent Ernst Jacobsen
What many people don't know is I lived with the C-123 while it was at Mena. I maintained the aircraft and was the flight engineer for it. I stayed in the small bedroom above the hangar at Rich Mountain Aviation. That airplane didn't go anywhere the whole time it was stored at Mena. Pete Everson
My investigation into Mena is over. Not as much happened as I thought. Rep. House Banking Committee Jim Leach
Response to debate on Usenet by Sally Denton:
DenMorPar wrote: If you READ the material carefully in the Penthouse 95 article and in Partners in Power you will see that Roger and I draw an important distinction between1) the massive amount of drugs in the overall traffic stemming from Seal operations based and maintained at Mena, most of the drops from which went to sites all over the southern United States, including but not limited to Arkansas, and 2) the relatively less but still significant and criminal amounts of drugs dropped in Arkansas, 3) the literally billions of dollars in the overall traffic that was laundered throughout the United States, including but not limited to Arkansas, 4) the relatively less but still significant and criminal amount of money laundered in Arkansas, and finally, 5) the relatively less but still significant and criminal amount of drugs that came actually through the airport at Mena and the relatively small but still criminal amount of money that eyewitnesses watched laundered at local Mena, Arkansas banks. These are import distinctions for historical and evidentiary purposes. Denton & Morris
Bear Bottoms comment: Down heah, we call dat crawfishin.
From: William Bottoms[SMTP:bbottoms@rouge.net]
Sent: Wednesday, December 04, 1996 8:25 PM
To: 'Sally Denton and Roger Morris'
Subject: Mena, Arkansas
Hi gang
My name is William "Bear" Bottoms aka "Billy Bob". I was Barry Seal's brother-in-law and chief pilot from the time he got out of jail in Honduras in 1980 until his death in Feb. 1986. We have things to talk about. There is a request and ready audience on the usenet that would greatly like to see a debate there between you guys and myself. It would be entertaining to the internet and might draw some publicity or media attention. You know what they say, you can't get bad publicity, just publicity. We can correspond via email or if you like jump into the alt.current-events.clinton.whitewater newsgroup.
Sincerely
"Billy Bob"
----------
From: DenMorPar@aol.com[SMTP:DenMorPar@aol.com]
Sent: Saturday, December 07, 1996 6:29 PM
To: bbottoms@rouge.net
Subject: Re: Mena, Arkansas
Thanks for your email. We're familiar with the newsgroup and with your role
in the Barry Seal family and organization, although we haven't seen the
infamous Penthouse exposette. Frankly, we'd love a debate, but we're very
busy right now on another related project and haven't even had time to check
the newsgroup for months. In fact, this is our first time on-line since
September or October, so sorry for the delay in responding. When we get off
the deadline we're on, we'll weigh in. Email us your piece if you get a
chance. We must say, though, anyone who speaks so highly of a "journalist"
like John Camp --or is it Campeaux-- gives us substantial pause. At any
rate, we'd love a debate when we have time. Sally Denton & Roger Morris
Subject: Re: Attn: Roger Morris or Sally Denton
From: denmorpar@aol.com (DenMorPar)
Date: 1996/12/21
Message-Id: <19961221052600.AAA19225@ladder01.news.aol.com>
Newsgroups: alt.current-events.clinton.whitewater
[More Headers]
We've been out of touch with the newsgroup, but want to weigh in here. Neither of us have any idea why Bear Bottoms is using us to vouch for his credibility. We know nothing about him. We try to take everyone on the Net seriously and in good faith until proven otherwise. But we have no independent corroboration of who and what he is, and think most of his claims are dubious, if not fabricated. We do know that in 2500 papers of Barry Seal, he does not appear. Thanks. Sally Denton & Roger Morris
From: William Bottoms[SMTP:bbottoms@rouge.net]
Sent: Wednesday, December 22, 1996 8:25 PM
To: 'Sally Denton and Roger Morris'
Subject: Mena, Arkansas
Hi gang
I saw your "weigh in" the other day in the whitewater news group. I was very surprised to see your comments. In your post, you said you had no idea who I was. You also said you thought my claims were dubious if not fabricated without having any idea if they were or not.. In your email to me you said you were aware of me and my role in Seal's organization and family. In fact, I posted that correspondence on top of your post. I personally think your post was a cheap shot. So did other participants in the newsgroup. In fact, as a result, I think you lost the war in the first battle. I was a little disappointed.
I have no desire to play a friendly game as a result of the cheap tactic and give you an honorable way out. You demonstrated all the character I need to know by doing what you did. I was willing to give you the benefit of the doubt before your post. I no longer need to. If you now run and hide, you will probably be “beat up on” in the newsgroup anyway. If you come in to do battle, you will be fighting a losing one. Like I said, I was surprised at the nature of your post. It has put you folks in an awkward position in my opinion. I would have thought you would have been a little more cautious. But, no. Just jump right in there and discredit old “Billy Bob” and jump out without any meat to it. Big mistake in my opinion. My guess is the poster was Sally girl.
I am curious why you folks don't seem to have access to some of the first public information concerning Barry Seal among your 2,500 documents. The trials in Florida and Las Vegas would be the first place for any credible reporter to look for information. In fact, they would be the easiest to get. The trials in Florida concerning Operation Screamer would not have been much help as that was pre-informant and limited in information. However, the later trials in Florida concerning Norman Saunders and Aldon Smith would have turned up a little more credible information. The trials in Las Vegas were by far the most informative. That is about it when you look for public information directly linked to Barry Seal unless you have access to NADDIS. Louisiana didn’t get much information since they went for a plea bargain. As for Arkansas, Al Hadaway never developed anything of credence. Duncan only found a few hundred thousand dollars laundered by Fred Hampton which was verified by an Operation Greenback agent. Russell Welch admits he only had enough evidence to develop a prosecutable cocaine conspiracy case against a few people, the principle of which was already caught on more serious charges on the same and engaged in agreements with the government regarding the same. Not much evidence. Any credible investigation would have to include the above information at the least.
The rest of the information, which I believe you refer to as your 2,500 documents were written by sources who had no credible evidence as reflected in their content. I know, I probably have most of them myself. My guess is most of your information came from the Arkansas Gazette. Poor choice. I can list more. The London Sunday Telegraph, Gregory Wierzynski, Kevin P. Craddock, Penthouse, John Cummings, Jack Anderson, Sarah McClendon, , The Nation, The Village Voice, American Spectator magazine, Washington Weekley, Mosaic Press, Rodney Bowers, Mara Leveritt, Ambrose Pritchard Evans, Micha Morrison, etc. I have seen what I am told is your archive on the web. Larry-Jennie worships it. He has been “beaten up” a little in the newsgroups lately. As for Reed, Brown, Patterson, Tolliver, Morales, Tatum, Wheaton et.al. I can easily perjure them if they ever get somewhere under oath as I hope they do. As for the Kerry investigation and depositions from other government sources, there is nothing there. At best you have to read between the lines and make up things to fill in the blanks. I am afraid your story “Crimes of Mena” and the whole Mena Conspiracy hoax has taken a set back. I would say the Wall Street Journal made a good decision in my opinion.
Oh yes, I posted some articles from the Las Vegas Sun and Las Vegas Review Journal which made your lack of knowledge about me a little more suspect. In fact, it makes your credibility as an investigative reporters even more suspect. In fact, it show an obvious agenda and no investigative talent in my opinion. Maybe I am being too hard on you folks. You gave me no choice. In fact, your recent post belies this in my opinion.
Bear Bottoms
bump
Bmp.
Bttt
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"It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood."
bttt
Bookmark this thread, Gramps
Regards
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