Jimiray, at your request here is a new thread
Please provide us with some entertainment for this Thursday morning about the
life and times of Bill Clinton, that the other side threw at us for 8 years
Because if only 10 percent of that stuff is true...
Full Version: BILL CLINTON'S BAGGAGE
comming right up!
hmmm, where to start
Remember , you asked for it .
hmmm, where to start
Remember , you asked for it .
http://www.deadlawyers.com/clinton.htm
June 22, 1993
WASHINGTON -- Paul Wilcher, an attorney investigating gun running out of Mena, Arkansas was found dead on a toilet in his apartment. No cause of death was reported by the coroner.
At the time of his death, he was investigating connections between the "October surprise" of 1980, drug smuggling,and gunrunning out of Mena, Arkansas. He also researched the BATF assault on the Waco, Texas Branch Davidians. He was planning on producing a television documentary on his findings. He had delivered a 105-page affidavit to Janet Reno detailing the evidence he had collected regarding the drug operation at Mena, just three weeks before his death.
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On July 20, 1993, police and rescue personnel were called to Fort Marcy Park in suburban Northern Virginia. There they found the corpse of Deputy White House Counsel Vincent W. Foster, Jr. Foster, Hillary Clinton's colleague at Little Rock's Rose law firm, had a gunshot wound in his head and a revolver in his right hand. The death was ruled a suicide.
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November 30, 1993
Ed Willey,Real Estate Attorney, Clinton Fund Raiser, died of a shotgun blast to the head. His body was found in a deeply wooded area of Virginia. The death was ruled a suicide; no note was found. Mr. Willey died on the same day his wife was allegedly assaulted in the White House by Bill Clinton.
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January 1, 1994
Attorney Gandy Baugh committed suicide by jumping from a window of a multi-story building. Mr. Bough's firm represented Dan Lasater, a convicted drug distributor and Clinton associate. Baugh's partner committed suicide one month later on February 8, 1994.
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May 3, 1996
DUBROVNIK - Commerce Secretary, Ron Brown, died along with 39 other people when the T-43 carrying the group on a trip to Bosnia crashed while approaching the airport. Brown had been appointed Commerce Secretary by Bill Clinton partly as a reward for his success as a campaign fund raiser. Investigations into Ron Brown's activities were nearing the point of indictments.
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November 20, 2000
WASHINGTON - Charles Ruff, the powerful Washington lawyer who represented President Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal and his impeachment trial, died Sunday.
White House spokesman Jake Siewert said President Clinton was told that Ruff had died after an accident at his Washington home. Details of the accident were not available.
After building a career from representing powerful political figures and, occasionally, their adversaries, Ruff was asked by Clinton in 1997 to become his chief legal adviser. At the time, Clinton was being investigated by independent prosecutor Kenneth Starr for possible wrongdoing in an Arkansas land deal.
The investigation, known as Whitewater because of the name of the land development scheme in which Clinton and his wife were partners, soon expanded to include his affair with Lewinsky, a former White House intern. Starr's investigation led to the House impeaching Clinton in December 1998 on charges that the president had lied under oath when questioned about the affair and obstructed justice.
Thats a start
June 22, 1993
WASHINGTON -- Paul Wilcher, an attorney investigating gun running out of Mena, Arkansas was found dead on a toilet in his apartment. No cause of death was reported by the coroner.
At the time of his death, he was investigating connections between the "October surprise" of 1980, drug smuggling,and gunrunning out of Mena, Arkansas. He also researched the BATF assault on the Waco, Texas Branch Davidians. He was planning on producing a television documentary on his findings. He had delivered a 105-page affidavit to Janet Reno detailing the evidence he had collected regarding the drug operation at Mena, just three weeks before his death.
dl_rule_an.gif (1393 bytes)
On July 20, 1993, police and rescue personnel were called to Fort Marcy Park in suburban Northern Virginia. There they found the corpse of Deputy White House Counsel Vincent W. Foster, Jr. Foster, Hillary Clinton's colleague at Little Rock's Rose law firm, had a gunshot wound in his head and a revolver in his right hand. The death was ruled a suicide.
dl_rule_an.gif (1393 bytes)
November 30, 1993
Ed Willey,Real Estate Attorney, Clinton Fund Raiser, died of a shotgun blast to the head. His body was found in a deeply wooded area of Virginia. The death was ruled a suicide; no note was found. Mr. Willey died on the same day his wife was allegedly assaulted in the White House by Bill Clinton.
dl_rule_an.gif (1393 bytes)
January 1, 1994
Attorney Gandy Baugh committed suicide by jumping from a window of a multi-story building. Mr. Bough's firm represented Dan Lasater, a convicted drug distributor and Clinton associate. Baugh's partner committed suicide one month later on February 8, 1994.
dl_rule_an.gif (1393 bytes)
May 3, 1996
DUBROVNIK - Commerce Secretary, Ron Brown, died along with 39 other people when the T-43 carrying the group on a trip to Bosnia crashed while approaching the airport. Brown had been appointed Commerce Secretary by Bill Clinton partly as a reward for his success as a campaign fund raiser. Investigations into Ron Brown's activities were nearing the point of indictments.
dl_rule_an.gif (1393 bytes)
November 20, 2000
WASHINGTON - Charles Ruff, the powerful Washington lawyer who represented President Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal and his impeachment trial, died Sunday.
White House spokesman Jake Siewert said President Clinton was told that Ruff had died after an accident at his Washington home. Details of the accident were not available.
After building a career from representing powerful political figures and, occasionally, their adversaries, Ruff was asked by Clinton in 1997 to become his chief legal adviser. At the time, Clinton was being investigated by independent prosecutor Kenneth Starr for possible wrongdoing in an Arkansas land deal.
The investigation, known as Whitewater because of the name of the land development scheme in which Clinton and his wife were partners, soon expanded to include his affair with Lewinsky, a former White House intern. Starr's investigation led to the House impeaching Clinton in December 1998 on charges that the president had lied under oath when questioned about the affair and obstructed justice.
Thats a start
jimi ray- that is impressive for a few minutes notice
Keep em coming
Keep em coming
Clinton adviser probed about removing classified terror memos
By Kevin Johnson and Susan Page, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — Samuel Berger, President Clinton's national security adviser, is the focus of a criminal investigation into whether he improperly removed notes and classified documents from the National Archives during preparations for hearings by the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks.
Sandy Berger confers with President Clinton in 2000. The FBI has conducted searches of Berger's home and office.
AP file
Berger said he inadvertently took some documents from the archives but was not trying to withhold information from the commission. His lawyers said he was cooperating with authorities. Three government officials who have been briefed on the investigation said Berger had removed handwritten notes and classified documents from a private room at the National Archives where he was preparing for his March 24 testimony. The officials declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the investigation.
Two of the officials said Berger was reportedly seen stuffing some of the material into his clothing.
The FBI has conducted searches of Berger's home and office. But some of the documents he reviewed are still missing, the officials said. Some of those documents involved the Clinton administration's handling of intelligence surrounding terrorist plots to disrupt millennium celebrations in 1999 and identification of America's vulnerabilities at airports and seaports.
"I deeply regret the sloppiness involved but had no intention of withholding documents from the Commission and, to the contrary, to my knowledge every document requested by the Commission from the Clinton Administration was produced," Berger said in a statement Monday night. Berger said he returned some classified documents that he found in his office and all of the handwritten notes he had taken from the secure room. But, he said, he could not locate two or three copies of the millennium terror report.
"When I was informed by the archives that there were documents missing, I immediately returned everything I had except for a few documents that I apparently had accidentally discarded," he said. The archives is believed to have copies of some of the missing documents.
The government officials said the investigation was set in motion by National Archives employees who reportedly witnessed Berger's actions in the room.
David Gergen, who was an adviser to Clinton and worked with Berger for a time in the White House, said Tuesday, "I think it's more innocent than it looks."
Appearing on NBC's Today show, Gergen said, "I have known Sandy Berger for a long time. He would never do anything to compromise the security of the United States." Gergen said he thought that "it is suspicious" that word of the investigation of Berger would emerge just as the Sept. 11 commission is about to release its report, since "this investigation started months ago."
The revelation about Berger, first reported by the Associated Press, comes days before the commission releases its final report, which has become a political issue as both parties try to use its presumed findings to their advantage. Commission member Jamie Gorelick said the panel was informed about the investigation Monday.
Al Felzenberg, spokesman for the Sept. 11 commission, said Tuesday the Berger investigation will not impact the panel's work in any way. The 10-member bipartisan panel releases its final report on Thursday.
"This is a matter between the government and an individual," he said. "They were not our documents, and we believe we have access to all the materials we need to see to do our report."
Government and congressional officials familiar with the investigation, who spoke only on condition of anonymity because the probe involves classified materials, said no decision has been made on whether Berger should face criminal charges.
One of Berger's lawyers, Lanny Breuer, said Berger believed he was looking at copies of the classified documents, not originals.
The Archives, which is the nation's repository for presidential papers, is believed to have copies of some of the missing documents.
Berger was allowed to take handwritten notes. He knew that taking his own notes out of the secure reading room violated archives procedures. But, Breuer said, "I do not believe he acted illegally at all. He acted lawfully but admittedly sloppily."
Berger served as Clinton's national security adviser from 1997-2001 and has been advising Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry.
Contributing: Mimi Hall and the Associated Press
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/20...ger-probe_x.htm
By Kevin Johnson and Susan Page, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — Samuel Berger, President Clinton's national security adviser, is the focus of a criminal investigation into whether he improperly removed notes and classified documents from the National Archives during preparations for hearings by the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks.
Sandy Berger confers with President Clinton in 2000. The FBI has conducted searches of Berger's home and office.
AP file
Berger said he inadvertently took some documents from the archives but was not trying to withhold information from the commission. His lawyers said he was cooperating with authorities. Three government officials who have been briefed on the investigation said Berger had removed handwritten notes and classified documents from a private room at the National Archives where he was preparing for his March 24 testimony. The officials declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the investigation.
Two of the officials said Berger was reportedly seen stuffing some of the material into his clothing.
The FBI has conducted searches of Berger's home and office. But some of the documents he reviewed are still missing, the officials said. Some of those documents involved the Clinton administration's handling of intelligence surrounding terrorist plots to disrupt millennium celebrations in 1999 and identification of America's vulnerabilities at airports and seaports.
"I deeply regret the sloppiness involved but had no intention of withholding documents from the Commission and, to the contrary, to my knowledge every document requested by the Commission from the Clinton Administration was produced," Berger said in a statement Monday night. Berger said he returned some classified documents that he found in his office and all of the handwritten notes he had taken from the secure room. But, he said, he could not locate two or three copies of the millennium terror report.
"When I was informed by the archives that there were documents missing, I immediately returned everything I had except for a few documents that I apparently had accidentally discarded," he said. The archives is believed to have copies of some of the missing documents.
The government officials said the investigation was set in motion by National Archives employees who reportedly witnessed Berger's actions in the room.
David Gergen, who was an adviser to Clinton and worked with Berger for a time in the White House, said Tuesday, "I think it's more innocent than it looks."
Appearing on NBC's Today show, Gergen said, "I have known Sandy Berger for a long time. He would never do anything to compromise the security of the United States." Gergen said he thought that "it is suspicious" that word of the investigation of Berger would emerge just as the Sept. 11 commission is about to release its report, since "this investigation started months ago."
The revelation about Berger, first reported by the Associated Press, comes days before the commission releases its final report, which has become a political issue as both parties try to use its presumed findings to their advantage. Commission member Jamie Gorelick said the panel was informed about the investigation Monday.
Al Felzenberg, spokesman for the Sept. 11 commission, said Tuesday the Berger investigation will not impact the panel's work in any way. The 10-member bipartisan panel releases its final report on Thursday.
"This is a matter between the government and an individual," he said. "They were not our documents, and we believe we have access to all the materials we need to see to do our report."
Government and congressional officials familiar with the investigation, who spoke only on condition of anonymity because the probe involves classified materials, said no decision has been made on whether Berger should face criminal charges.
One of Berger's lawyers, Lanny Breuer, said Berger believed he was looking at copies of the classified documents, not originals.
The Archives, which is the nation's repository for presidential papers, is believed to have copies of some of the missing documents.
Berger was allowed to take handwritten notes. He knew that taking his own notes out of the secure reading room violated archives procedures. But, Breuer said, "I do not believe he acted illegally at all. He acted lawfully but admittedly sloppily."
Berger served as Clinton's national security adviser from 1997-2001 and has been advising Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry.
Contributing: Mimi Hall and the Associated Press
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/20...ger-probe_x.htm
Drug Running Anyone?
http://www.dldewey.com/mena.htm
Updated, September 22nd, 1998, Read the response Senator Mazxine Walters received from the CIA regarding Barry Seal
What I am about to share with you should cause you great concern because this is an example of the sort of thing that goes on in Washington.
On October 5, 1986 in Nicaragua, a CK123 Cargo plane, with weapons and CIA employees on board crashed. This was the beginning of what links what I am about to tell you together. This was the start of the Iran-Contra affair. It was proven that the weapons were supplied by the CIA and destined for the Nicaraguan Contras in of the Congressional Poland amendments. Special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh spent six years determining who in the Reagan administration was involved in the operation. Among those that were involved in this operation were George Bush, Oliver North, Dewey Clarridge, John Pointdexter and Caspar Weinberger.
However, lets go to Mena, Arkansas during this time. The training of pilots and loading of weapons and drugs was taking place. Who was the governor of Arkansas at the time and why is is that Kenneth Starr would not touch this area. That governor at the time is now our President.
In July 1994, in the Arkansas Crime Inc. paper, an editorial linked Clinton to Iran-Contra. In October, 1994 Clinton denied any knowledge of the operation at Mena. Shortly afterwards evidence started to surface that documented Clinton’s link to Iran-Contra. People began coming forward and alleging under sworn statements that that Clinton profited from the operation at Mena by laundering money through the newly created Arkansas Development Finance Authority. That was just the tip of the iceberg regarding what was really going on at Mena. A larger number of people testified under oath that the airplanes returning from Central America were loaded with cocaine, which was then dropped over Arkansas for distribution to larger U.S. cities.
During 1995, mounting documented evidence continued to support the Mena claims. A KGB spy talks about his knowledge of Mena. The picture of the Mena operation became more clear. In July 1995, new information and evidence confirms drug smuggling is going on at Mena. Why? Because a State Trooper L.D. Brown and a Arkansas National Guardsmen, who were also pilots flying the planes put Clinton in the loop by testifying. In July 1995, Clinton responded to L.D. Brown’s account with denial. We’ve heard that before. In October, 1995 in formal hearings, now a former State Trooper, L.D. Brown elaborates in great detail, on his flights to Central America in the service of the CIA, on Clinton's link to the CIA. He also details the negative treatment he received from the American press. In August, 1996, Noriega attacks George Bush on Contra Drug dealing. And who is Barry Seal? ( read the article by Daniel Hopsicker for Washington Weekly ) How could this go on for years without detection? In February, 1995, the Washington Post is accused of a grand scale political coverup of the Mena affair. However, a statement issued by Arkansas Supreme Court Justice Jim Johnson at this time reveals government efforts to block investigations of the Mena affair and investigations of Clinton's fraudulent Whitewater loans, and explains how business interests, news media, politicians, and courts in Arkansas manage to block the truth from coming out. Who is Terry Reed? Terry Reed describes how CNN concocted an interview with him, misquoting him all over place. In June, 1995, the Washington Post suppresses another story about the Mena investigations. In November, 1996, Caspar Weinberger is accused of participation in the Iran-Contra affair. However, prior to that in December, 1995, documents prove that the U.S. Government pressured Costa Rica to keep the Mena operations secret. Who Is Richard Ben-Veniste?
During this time, a Democrat Panel on money laundering, indicts brother of Mike Espy for money laundering. And the State Department accuses Noreiga of taking drug money.
This is where Terry Reed comes into the picture I mentioned earlier. Terry Reed testifies. Terry Reed is a pilot and a subcontractor who worked for the CIA Iran-Contra operation. When he discovered that drugs were shipped to the U.S., ( the MENA operators) he left the operation in disgust. He soon found himself and his family the target of a retaliation lawsuit claiming insurance fraud. However, the Reed family was cleared of the allegations in federal court in Wichita, Kansas. Shortly thereafter, the Reed family filed a civil suit against those who had brought the wrongful suit against them. And here folks is where it gets really interesting. Two employees of Bill Clinton, Buddy Young and Tommy Baker were charged with fabrication of evidence and other civil rights violations against the Reed’s. Now this is where is gets even more interesting. In September, 1995 Buddy Young is linked to the Iran-Contra/Mena operation. Clinton's former security chief, now a defendant in Reed's Mena trial, appears to have been more involved than previously known. After years of a legal circus, the lawsuit by the Reed family finally began in earnest in late1995. Depositions were taken from a number of people and they all told the same story under oath. They also revealed that U.S. senators (both parties) tried to block investigations into money laundering at Mena. All of these witnesses have sufferedharassment and intimidation because of their explosive testimony. In early 1996, the judge in the case ruled to suppress all evidence relating to Mena, CIA, and the Clintons from the trial. Reed discouraged at this point, gave up and dropped the trial. One honest policeman, Russell Welch supplied much of the material and proof of the Mena case, he too has suffered harassment and intimidation. Who is Julius "Doc" Delaughter. It is December, 1995. Delaughter appears on a British Mena documentary, telling about the whole Mena operation, however it is banned from distribution in the U.S. Remember Barry Seal, ( read the article by Daniel Hopsicker for Washington Weekly ), he comes out of the closet too. Also a certain lady is found in Florida connecting all this. In April, 1996, there is a massive Anthrax poisoning case in Mena and in August, 1996, State Trooper L.D. Brown is ordered to assassinate Terry Reed. And the CIA begins an investigation, (interesting, they are investigating their own operation?) of the Mena operation. The White House is asked about it, and they deny everything. At this same time, Reed drops the lawsuit and the murder of two teenage boys, Don Henry and Kevin Ives occurs in Benton, a town near Mena. Due to persistent parents and a few honest Arkansas policemen, their murders are traced back to the drug smuggling operations at Mena. A British documentary exposes the murders and the link to Mena. No U.S. major news network picks this story up.
It is now July, 1996, Kenneth Starr begins asking questions about Mena. He follows the trail of facts, but suddenly announces that Mena is outside his brief and scope of just the Whitewater investigation of Clinton.
In the fall of 1995, several committees in the House of Representatives began considering holding hearings about the Mena operation and started interviewing witnesses. To this date, this hearing has never finished and they have not called any more witnesses.
Remember Dan Lasater above, he testifies in May, 1996 before the Whitewater Committee about his the Whitewater/Clinton mess. Now, during this time we have the Bosnia war going on and the CIA is backing and sending guns there. Is this a repeat of the Iran-Contra affair with drugs? In the fall of 1996, events took an amazing turn. The San Jose Mercury News reported on a drug trial in Los Angeles where informants testified that they had sold drugs to LA street gangs in order to finance the CIA-backed Contra war in Nicaragua in the 1980s. The drugs came from the Mena, Arkansas operations they testified. The story grabbed the headlines and incited the black community. It was soon realized that what was seen in Los Angeles was just another tentacle of what had already been uncovered in Mena, Arkansas. Now the CIA, the Justice Department, Congress and the White House were all asked for explanations. Mushrooming beyond control, the Mena scandal had finally reached the headlines of the mainstream media a decade after the events took place. September, 1996 CIA Director Deutch resigns. Also there are reports of the U.S. Government involved with Bolivian cocaine lab. There are a string of murders of Americans surrounding the lab in Bolivia. Senator Barbara Boxer, California, writes a letter to CIA Director John Deutch demanding all truth of events. He responds negatively. Senator Diane Feinstein write a letter tp Attorney General Janet Reno requesting a full investigation and Senator Mazxine Waters
( read the response she received back ) request for hearings to Chairman Henry Hyde. This was September, 1996 folks and to date, nothing has been done regarding this matter. Why? Because I believe this has been the greatest government cover-up that has ever occurred. The reason, both parties are up to their ears with the Mena affair and Clinton. When you contact any of the elected officials about this, they have no comment.
I’ve supplied the information to you folks, which I bet you did not know. If you don’t believe me, make a few phone calls to Washington and see how quickly the doors are shut on you concerning the Mena affair. I wonder how many will start to inquire about this with their elected officials? NO ONE WANTS TO TALK ABOUT IT! And why? Both parties have a great deal to hide. And why hasn't Hyde done anything more about the hearings since 1995? Hoping it will just go away. And Hyde is the current Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee? What I believe is so ironic is we have a President of the United States being investigated, but who is investigating the investigators? Personally, I have lost not only all trust in President Clinton, but also our elected body in Washington. There is more than one politician here that is lieing! We have had not only a witch hunt attacking Clinton, the attackers have a great deal to hide themselves. And I strongly believe that there is more to this whole affair than any of us will ever know. There will be those that will say I am trying to darken the waters, attack Clinton on another issue. That is not the case. I am presenting this to you to show you that we better start asking more questions and not only demanding the answers from our elected officials in Washington but getting them. Who works for whom here? Are they not suppose to be working for us? Sure seem its' the other way around. Anyway folks, here is it, another shocker! By the way, witnesses have been mysteriously dying off.
UPDATE 10-9-98
Click here to read letter from Attorney General of Louisiana, William J. Guste Jr. to U.S. Attorney General, Ed Messe, March 3rd, 1986, asking for a full investigation into the Barry Seal matter after Barry Seal's murder. Mr. Guste asked for the transcript of Seal's sworn testimony be released to the general public to settle his envolvment in the Mena operation. This request was ignored and to this date all futher attempts to get Seal's testimony released has been ignored by many requests from many government officials, including U.S. Senators and Congressmen. What is the government hiding?
POSTSCRIPT: Sunday, September 20th, 1998
before the video tape is released on Monday.
I have received hundreds of emails asking me what my position is on the various issues surrounding Clinton. These are my opinions, you can agree or disagree with them
The one thing that I have observed from when this story first broke regarding Lewinsky, is not only a lack of what I term prudent intelligence from all sources but a severe lack of human compassion. This includes the media, Starr, The White House, members of Congress, and we, the American people. There is a very simple right and wrong of things, especially with it comes to lieing, however, none of us living upon this earth have lived a "perfect" life, I certainly haven't. What I have not understood about this is the need to totally use what I term unscrupulous tactics to not only dig up whatever you can on someone to bring them down, but then to further destroy them is another matter. I wrote the column above about the Reagan, Bush Clinton drug connection, not to try and destroy Clinton further, but if anything to show that those in Washington who are pointing the fingers do not have their lilly white sleeves "clean" either. Both parties have hidden and tried to hide things for years. Therefore enough is enough. Kenneth Starr, by the means that he used, has not hurt Clinton, he has hurt America in more ways than be counted, and also has placed a mark of distrust on the office of the Presidency that will take along time for Americans to ever believe in another President. I said at the beginning that if Clinton had told the truth about his relationship, he may have lost the Paula Jones case, but he certainly would not have gone through the "hell" that he and his family have been through, regardless of what he did with Lewinsky. No one has the right to do that to another human being, especially in America. We are suppose to be a God loving nation, my God is a loving God, not a destroyer of human lives. Our Congress for many selfish political reasons took the path of further destruction and my opinion in the long term, both parties will suffer from the decisions they have been making, especially in releasing the video tape of Clinton's testimony. I don't need to see him on video, the man has admitted his error, however he hasn't admitted he lied, and because of that is where he lost my trust in him. I've read and heard enough of this whole affair and I had hoped that two things would have happened. That President Clinton would have seen that the right thing to do would be to have resigned, and Congress would have put an end to this disgrace of our nation and moved on. The numbers that I am seeing not only from the poll that has been conducted on my site but other polls as well has told me one thing. This is a not only a test of the moral fabric of our society, ( and I am not talking about religious views or teachings, i.e. adultery ), but that Americans had a very difficult time at first in finding their conscious with this. But what I am concerned about is how long it took for Americans to decide their thoughts on it. And I believe that a big part of this indecision was, that in each of us, we know that we are not without "sin", doing something wrong in our life. Therefore it is hard to judge someone for the same thing that probably many have done, "lied about sex". However, there is a simple right and wrong as I said, and maybe, just maybe, Americans are finally starting to regain that within their conscious, but my question is, what about the heart, the act of forgiveness, and when you forgive, do you continue to destroy? Instead, Congress, and we are letting them do it I believe for those reasons I explained, have decided to continue "waving in the air" more dirty laundry for the world to see and further destroying the meaning of what America stands for. I thought she stood for freedom, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is sad how everyone it appears in this whole mess has forgotten the meaning of those words all because of a insecure young woman who seduced a man, (the man participated and let her seduce him) and the man then lied about it. I wonder what George Washington would be thinking about all of this? Or would he even be a better judge to judge? It truly is not a matter of judging, it is a matter of simply standing up for what is right, forgiving, and then moving on. However, this is not to say that a price does not have to paid. Not only has Clinton paid a price, but our nation has paid a hefty one. All because of a "lie" and then the lack of true forgiveness. Hopefully, we have all learned from this.
I would like to end this column with a plea to the people and my readers in all countries. I call upon the loving grace of whatever you term is "GOD" in your life. Please use that grace to stop all the inhumane acts that are being done everywhere. That includes the rapes and murders in Indonesia. The bombings in Ireland. I call upon the Mothers of the world. Don't you realize the power you hold in which you could stop this all. Have we not grown into an uncivilized form of humanity who preach their different religions, but hardly practice them. What happen to the one similar teaching and law among all the religions, "LOVE THY NEIGHBOR". Or is that simply to hard for humans to do? God help us what another intelligent life form may think of us.
~ David Lawrence Dewey ~
http://www.dldewey.com/mena.htm
Updated, September 22nd, 1998, Read the response Senator Mazxine Walters received from the CIA regarding Barry Seal
What I am about to share with you should cause you great concern because this is an example of the sort of thing that goes on in Washington.
On October 5, 1986 in Nicaragua, a CK123 Cargo plane, with weapons and CIA employees on board crashed. This was the beginning of what links what I am about to tell you together. This was the start of the Iran-Contra affair. It was proven that the weapons were supplied by the CIA and destined for the Nicaraguan Contras in of the Congressional Poland amendments. Special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh spent six years determining who in the Reagan administration was involved in the operation. Among those that were involved in this operation were George Bush, Oliver North, Dewey Clarridge, John Pointdexter and Caspar Weinberger.
However, lets go to Mena, Arkansas during this time. The training of pilots and loading of weapons and drugs was taking place. Who was the governor of Arkansas at the time and why is is that Kenneth Starr would not touch this area. That governor at the time is now our President.
In July 1994, in the Arkansas Crime Inc. paper, an editorial linked Clinton to Iran-Contra. In October, 1994 Clinton denied any knowledge of the operation at Mena. Shortly afterwards evidence started to surface that documented Clinton’s link to Iran-Contra. People began coming forward and alleging under sworn statements that that Clinton profited from the operation at Mena by laundering money through the newly created Arkansas Development Finance Authority. That was just the tip of the iceberg regarding what was really going on at Mena. A larger number of people testified under oath that the airplanes returning from Central America were loaded with cocaine, which was then dropped over Arkansas for distribution to larger U.S. cities.
During 1995, mounting documented evidence continued to support the Mena claims. A KGB spy talks about his knowledge of Mena. The picture of the Mena operation became more clear. In July 1995, new information and evidence confirms drug smuggling is going on at Mena. Why? Because a State Trooper L.D. Brown and a Arkansas National Guardsmen, who were also pilots flying the planes put Clinton in the loop by testifying. In July 1995, Clinton responded to L.D. Brown’s account with denial. We’ve heard that before. In October, 1995 in formal hearings, now a former State Trooper, L.D. Brown elaborates in great detail, on his flights to Central America in the service of the CIA, on Clinton's link to the CIA. He also details the negative treatment he received from the American press. In August, 1996, Noriega attacks George Bush on Contra Drug dealing. And who is Barry Seal? ( read the article by Daniel Hopsicker for Washington Weekly ) How could this go on for years without detection? In February, 1995, the Washington Post is accused of a grand scale political coverup of the Mena affair. However, a statement issued by Arkansas Supreme Court Justice Jim Johnson at this time reveals government efforts to block investigations of the Mena affair and investigations of Clinton's fraudulent Whitewater loans, and explains how business interests, news media, politicians, and courts in Arkansas manage to block the truth from coming out. Who is Terry Reed? Terry Reed describes how CNN concocted an interview with him, misquoting him all over place. In June, 1995, the Washington Post suppresses another story about the Mena investigations. In November, 1996, Caspar Weinberger is accused of participation in the Iran-Contra affair. However, prior to that in December, 1995, documents prove that the U.S. Government pressured Costa Rica to keep the Mena operations secret. Who Is Richard Ben-Veniste?
During this time, a Democrat Panel on money laundering, indicts brother of Mike Espy for money laundering. And the State Department accuses Noreiga of taking drug money.
This is where Terry Reed comes into the picture I mentioned earlier. Terry Reed testifies. Terry Reed is a pilot and a subcontractor who worked for the CIA Iran-Contra operation. When he discovered that drugs were shipped to the U.S., ( the MENA operators) he left the operation in disgust. He soon found himself and his family the target of a retaliation lawsuit claiming insurance fraud. However, the Reed family was cleared of the allegations in federal court in Wichita, Kansas. Shortly thereafter, the Reed family filed a civil suit against those who had brought the wrongful suit against them. And here folks is where it gets really interesting. Two employees of Bill Clinton, Buddy Young and Tommy Baker were charged with fabrication of evidence and other civil rights violations against the Reed’s. Now this is where is gets even more interesting. In September, 1995 Buddy Young is linked to the Iran-Contra/Mena operation. Clinton's former security chief, now a defendant in Reed's Mena trial, appears to have been more involved than previously known. After years of a legal circus, the lawsuit by the Reed family finally began in earnest in late1995. Depositions were taken from a number of people and they all told the same story under oath. They also revealed that U.S. senators (both parties) tried to block investigations into money laundering at Mena. All of these witnesses have sufferedharassment and intimidation because of their explosive testimony. In early 1996, the judge in the case ruled to suppress all evidence relating to Mena, CIA, and the Clintons from the trial. Reed discouraged at this point, gave up and dropped the trial. One honest policeman, Russell Welch supplied much of the material and proof of the Mena case, he too has suffered harassment and intimidation. Who is Julius "Doc" Delaughter. It is December, 1995. Delaughter appears on a British Mena documentary, telling about the whole Mena operation, however it is banned from distribution in the U.S. Remember Barry Seal, ( read the article by Daniel Hopsicker for Washington Weekly ), he comes out of the closet too. Also a certain lady is found in Florida connecting all this. In April, 1996, there is a massive Anthrax poisoning case in Mena and in August, 1996, State Trooper L.D. Brown is ordered to assassinate Terry Reed. And the CIA begins an investigation, (interesting, they are investigating their own operation?) of the Mena operation. The White House is asked about it, and they deny everything. At this same time, Reed drops the lawsuit and the murder of two teenage boys, Don Henry and Kevin Ives occurs in Benton, a town near Mena. Due to persistent parents and a few honest Arkansas policemen, their murders are traced back to the drug smuggling operations at Mena. A British documentary exposes the murders and the link to Mena. No U.S. major news network picks this story up.
It is now July, 1996, Kenneth Starr begins asking questions about Mena. He follows the trail of facts, but suddenly announces that Mena is outside his brief and scope of just the Whitewater investigation of Clinton.
In the fall of 1995, several committees in the House of Representatives began considering holding hearings about the Mena operation and started interviewing witnesses. To this date, this hearing has never finished and they have not called any more witnesses.
Remember Dan Lasater above, he testifies in May, 1996 before the Whitewater Committee about his the Whitewater/Clinton mess. Now, during this time we have the Bosnia war going on and the CIA is backing and sending guns there. Is this a repeat of the Iran-Contra affair with drugs? In the fall of 1996, events took an amazing turn. The San Jose Mercury News reported on a drug trial in Los Angeles where informants testified that they had sold drugs to LA street gangs in order to finance the CIA-backed Contra war in Nicaragua in the 1980s. The drugs came from the Mena, Arkansas operations they testified. The story grabbed the headlines and incited the black community. It was soon realized that what was seen in Los Angeles was just another tentacle of what had already been uncovered in Mena, Arkansas. Now the CIA, the Justice Department, Congress and the White House were all asked for explanations. Mushrooming beyond control, the Mena scandal had finally reached the headlines of the mainstream media a decade after the events took place. September, 1996 CIA Director Deutch resigns. Also there are reports of the U.S. Government involved with Bolivian cocaine lab. There are a string of murders of Americans surrounding the lab in Bolivia. Senator Barbara Boxer, California, writes a letter to CIA Director John Deutch demanding all truth of events. He responds negatively. Senator Diane Feinstein write a letter tp Attorney General Janet Reno requesting a full investigation and Senator Mazxine Waters
( read the response she received back ) request for hearings to Chairman Henry Hyde. This was September, 1996 folks and to date, nothing has been done regarding this matter. Why? Because I believe this has been the greatest government cover-up that has ever occurred. The reason, both parties are up to their ears with the Mena affair and Clinton. When you contact any of the elected officials about this, they have no comment.
I’ve supplied the information to you folks, which I bet you did not know. If you don’t believe me, make a few phone calls to Washington and see how quickly the doors are shut on you concerning the Mena affair. I wonder how many will start to inquire about this with their elected officials? NO ONE WANTS TO TALK ABOUT IT! And why? Both parties have a great deal to hide. And why hasn't Hyde done anything more about the hearings since 1995? Hoping it will just go away. And Hyde is the current Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee? What I believe is so ironic is we have a President of the United States being investigated, but who is investigating the investigators? Personally, I have lost not only all trust in President Clinton, but also our elected body in Washington. There is more than one politician here that is lieing! We have had not only a witch hunt attacking Clinton, the attackers have a great deal to hide themselves. And I strongly believe that there is more to this whole affair than any of us will ever know. There will be those that will say I am trying to darken the waters, attack Clinton on another issue. That is not the case. I am presenting this to you to show you that we better start asking more questions and not only demanding the answers from our elected officials in Washington but getting them. Who works for whom here? Are they not suppose to be working for us? Sure seem its' the other way around. Anyway folks, here is it, another shocker! By the way, witnesses have been mysteriously dying off.
UPDATE 10-9-98
Click here to read letter from Attorney General of Louisiana, William J. Guste Jr. to U.S. Attorney General, Ed Messe, March 3rd, 1986, asking for a full investigation into the Barry Seal matter after Barry Seal's murder. Mr. Guste asked for the transcript of Seal's sworn testimony be released to the general public to settle his envolvment in the Mena operation. This request was ignored and to this date all futher attempts to get Seal's testimony released has been ignored by many requests from many government officials, including U.S. Senators and Congressmen. What is the government hiding?
POSTSCRIPT: Sunday, September 20th, 1998
before the video tape is released on Monday.
I have received hundreds of emails asking me what my position is on the various issues surrounding Clinton. These are my opinions, you can agree or disagree with them
The one thing that I have observed from when this story first broke regarding Lewinsky, is not only a lack of what I term prudent intelligence from all sources but a severe lack of human compassion. This includes the media, Starr, The White House, members of Congress, and we, the American people. There is a very simple right and wrong of things, especially with it comes to lieing, however, none of us living upon this earth have lived a "perfect" life, I certainly haven't. What I have not understood about this is the need to totally use what I term unscrupulous tactics to not only dig up whatever you can on someone to bring them down, but then to further destroy them is another matter. I wrote the column above about the Reagan, Bush Clinton drug connection, not to try and destroy Clinton further, but if anything to show that those in Washington who are pointing the fingers do not have their lilly white sleeves "clean" either. Both parties have hidden and tried to hide things for years. Therefore enough is enough. Kenneth Starr, by the means that he used, has not hurt Clinton, he has hurt America in more ways than be counted, and also has placed a mark of distrust on the office of the Presidency that will take along time for Americans to ever believe in another President. I said at the beginning that if Clinton had told the truth about his relationship, he may have lost the Paula Jones case, but he certainly would not have gone through the "hell" that he and his family have been through, regardless of what he did with Lewinsky. No one has the right to do that to another human being, especially in America. We are suppose to be a God loving nation, my God is a loving God, not a destroyer of human lives. Our Congress for many selfish political reasons took the path of further destruction and my opinion in the long term, both parties will suffer from the decisions they have been making, especially in releasing the video tape of Clinton's testimony. I don't need to see him on video, the man has admitted his error, however he hasn't admitted he lied, and because of that is where he lost my trust in him. I've read and heard enough of this whole affair and I had hoped that two things would have happened. That President Clinton would have seen that the right thing to do would be to have resigned, and Congress would have put an end to this disgrace of our nation and moved on. The numbers that I am seeing not only from the poll that has been conducted on my site but other polls as well has told me one thing. This is a not only a test of the moral fabric of our society, ( and I am not talking about religious views or teachings, i.e. adultery ), but that Americans had a very difficult time at first in finding their conscious with this. But what I am concerned about is how long it took for Americans to decide their thoughts on it. And I believe that a big part of this indecision was, that in each of us, we know that we are not without "sin", doing something wrong in our life. Therefore it is hard to judge someone for the same thing that probably many have done, "lied about sex". However, there is a simple right and wrong as I said, and maybe, just maybe, Americans are finally starting to regain that within their conscious, but my question is, what about the heart, the act of forgiveness, and when you forgive, do you continue to destroy? Instead, Congress, and we are letting them do it I believe for those reasons I explained, have decided to continue "waving in the air" more dirty laundry for the world to see and further destroying the meaning of what America stands for. I thought she stood for freedom, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is sad how everyone it appears in this whole mess has forgotten the meaning of those words all because of a insecure young woman who seduced a man, (the man participated and let her seduce him) and the man then lied about it. I wonder what George Washington would be thinking about all of this? Or would he even be a better judge to judge? It truly is not a matter of judging, it is a matter of simply standing up for what is right, forgiving, and then moving on. However, this is not to say that a price does not have to paid. Not only has Clinton paid a price, but our nation has paid a hefty one. All because of a "lie" and then the lack of true forgiveness. Hopefully, we have all learned from this.
I would like to end this column with a plea to the people and my readers in all countries. I call upon the loving grace of whatever you term is "GOD" in your life. Please use that grace to stop all the inhumane acts that are being done everywhere. That includes the rapes and murders in Indonesia. The bombings in Ireland. I call upon the Mothers of the world. Don't you realize the power you hold in which you could stop this all. Have we not grown into an uncivilized form of humanity who preach their different religions, but hardly practice them. What happen to the one similar teaching and law among all the religions, "LOVE THY NEIGHBOR". Or is that simply to hard for humans to do? God help us what another intelligent life form may think of us.
~ David Lawrence Dewey ~
http://www.iacenter.org/warcrime/wct2000.htm
WAR CRIMES TRIBUNAL FINDS U.S. AND NATO GUILTY nato_wanted.jpg (20667 bytes)
Posted: 6/12/00
Final Judgement
Findings
Recommendations
Schedule and Presentations (full texts)
Judges
Prosecutor team
A panel of 16 judges from 11 countries at a people’s tribunal meeting in New York June 10 before 500 people found U.S. and NATO political and military leaders guilty of war crimes against Yugoslavia in the March 24-June 10, 1999 assault on that country.
Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, the lead prosecutor at the International Tribunal on U.S./NATO War Crimes Against Yugoslavia, urged those present and those they represented from the 21 countries participating to carry out a sentence of organizing a campaign to abolish the NATO military pact.
Ben Dupuy, former ambassador from Haiti, Rev. Kiyul Chung of Korea, and auto worker Martha Grevatt, who heads the AFL-CIO’s organization Pride at Work, read the three parts of the verdict (included with this release).
Participants taking the witness stand included eye-witnesses, researchers who visited Yugoslavia, renowned political and economics analysts, historians, physicists, biologists, military experts, journalists and lay researchers. (A list of all the judges, and the witnesses and their topics is included with this release.)
Many of these witnesses have in the past 15 months presented to audiences worldwide a complete picture of the war NATO waged against Yugoslavia. For the tribunal, however, all limited themselves to a single area of expertise that made up a single part of the evidence against the political and military leaders of the United States and the other NATO countries.
Taken together, the judges decided, each single part contributed to construct a proof that beyond a reasonable doubt proved the guilt of the accused, just as the proper placing of single tiles can build a mosaic.
The witnesses described how NATO forces used the media to spread lies to demonize the Serbs and their leadership in order to prepare public opinion to prepare for war. Then they showed the real economic and geopolitical interests of the imperialist powers--the U.S. and Western Europe—in seizing economic control of the area from the Balkans to the oil-rich Caspian Sea.
Finally they demonstrated how Washington rigged the “Racak massacre” and then used the so-called Rambouillet accord—in reality an ultimatum demanding NATO's military control of all of Yugoslavia--to provoke the war. Taken together this all proved a crime against peace.
They also showed the use of illegal weapons, the purposeful choice of civilian targets and the destruction of the environment and the civilian infrastructure that add up to war crimes. And the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of people from Kosovo and Metohija that prove crimes against humanity.
The witnesses’ presentations were accompanied in many cases by slides and videos displayed on a large screen on the stage of the auditorium at Martin Luther King Jr. High School in Manhattan. This screen was easily visible both to the judges, who sat on the stage, and to the hundreds in the audience, many of whom stayed throughout the nine-hour day.
In addition, pictures and videos were on display in the hall outside the auditorium, and documentary evidence was offered in books or in research papers.
The International Action Center, founded by Clark in 1992, organized this final session of the tribunal. There were also participants by those who had organized similar tribunal hearings in Germany, Italy, Austria, Russia, Ukraine, Yugoslavia and Greece, where thousands declared U.S. President Clinton a war criminal last November in Athens.
In addition to the witnesses, there were also important guest presentations from representatives of the governments Yugoslavia and Cuba. In addition, Ismael Guadalupe from Vieques, Puerto Rico showed in a powerful speech how the practice runs against his small island laid the basis for U.S./NATO aggression around the world.
According to the IAC organizers, total registration, including justices, witnesses and staff was 511. Invited speakers, witnesses and judges came from Haiti, Spain, Turkey, Korea, Puerto Rico, India, Germany, United States, Canada, Italy, Yugoslavia, Russia, Britain, Belgium, Iraq, Greece, Austria, France, and Portugal. The U.S. government refused visas to four people from Ukraine, whose message was read from the stage.
There were also representatives of the Roma people—often referred to by the derisive term "gypsy." Shani Rifati, a Roma witness who was born in Pristina, capital of Kosovo, told how NATO occupation has led to the expulsion of 100,000 Romas. He pointed out that the verdict condemned the persecution of Roma people, the first time this has happened in any international tribunal.
Five different television crews taped the entire proceedings, including Serbian television and a three-camera crew from Australia, as well as alternate media sources in the U.S. like the Peoples Video Network.
FINAL JUDGEMENT OF THE COMMISSION OF INQUIRY TO INVESTIGATE U.S./NATO WAR CRIMES AGAINST THE PEOPLE OF YUGOSLAVIA
Final Judgement
The Members of the Independent Commission of Inquiry to Investigate U.S./NATO War Crimes Against the People of Yugoslavia, meeting in New York, having considered the Initial Charges and Complaint of the Commission dated July 31, 1999 against President William J. Clinton, Gen. Wesley Clark, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Prime Minister Tony Blair, Chancellor Gerhard Schroder, President Jacques Chirac, Prime Minister Massimo D’Alema, Prime Minister Jose Maria Azmar, the Governments of the United States and the other NATO member states, former Secretary General Javier Solana and other NATO leaders, and Others with nineteen separate Crimes Against Peace, War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity in violation of the Charter of the United Nations, the 1949 Geneva Conventions, other international agreements and customary international law;
Having the right and obligation as citizens of the world to sit in judgement regarding violations of international humanitarian law;
Having heard the testimony from Commissions of Inquiry and Tribunals held within their own countries during the past year and having received reports from numerous other Commission hearings which recite the evidence there gathered;
Having been provided with documentary evidence, eyewitness statements, photos, videotapes, special reports, expert analyses and summaries of evidence available to the Commission;
Having access to all evidence, knowledge and expert opinion in the Commission files or available to the Commission staff;
Having been provided by the Commission, or otherwise obtained, various books, articles and other written materials on various aspects of events and conditions in Yugoslavia and other countries in the Balkans, and in the military and arms establishments;
Having considered newspaper coverage, magazine and periodical reports, special publications, TV, radio and other media coverage and public statements by the accused, other public officials and public materials;
Having heard the presentations of the Commission of Inquiry in public hearing on June 10, 2000, and the testimony, evidence and summaries there presented;
And having met, considered and deliberated with each other and with Commission staff and having considered all the evidence that is relevant to the nineteen charges of criminal conduct alleged in the Initial Complaint, make the following findings:
Findings
The Members of the International War Crimes Tribunal find the accused Guilty on the basis of the evidence against them and that each of the nineteen separate crimes alleged in the Initial Complaint has been established to have been committed beyond a reasonable doubt. These are:
1. Planning and Executing the Dismemberment, Segregation and Impoverishment of Yugoslavia.
2. Inflicting, Inciting and Enhancing Violence Between and Among Muslims and Slavs.
3. Disrupting Efforts to Maintain Unity, Peace and Stability in Yugoslavia.
4. Destroying the Peace-Making Role of the United Nations.
5. Using NATO for Military Aggression Against, and Occupation of, Non-Compliant Poor Countries.
6. Killing and Injuring a Defenseless Population throughout Yugoslavia.
7. Planning, Announcing and Executing Attacks Intended to Assassinate the Head of Government, Other Government Leaders and Selected Civilians in Yugoslavia.
8. Destroying and Damaging Economic, Social, Cultural, Medical, Diplomatic -- including the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China and other embassies -- and Religious Resources, Properties and Facilities throughout Yugoslavia. 9 Attacking Objects Indispensable to the Survival of the Population of Yugoslavia.
10. Attacking Facilities Containing Dangerous Substances and Forces.
11. Using Depleted Uranium, Cluster Bombs and Other Prohibited Weapons.
12. Waging War on the Environment.
13. Imposing Sanctions through the United Nations that are a Genocidal Crime Against Humanity.
14. Creating an Illegal Ad-Hoc Criminal Tribunal to Destroy and Demonize the Serbian Leadership. The Illegitimacy of this Tribunal is Further Demonstrated by Its Failure to Bring Any Case Regarding the Oppression of the Romani People, Who Have Suffered the Highest Rate of Casualties of Any People in the Region.
15. Using Controlled International Media to Create and Maintain Support for the U.S. Assault and to Demonize Yugoslavia, Slavs, Serbs and Muslims as Genocidal Murderers.
16. Establishing the Long-Term Military Occupation of Strategic Parts of Yugoslavia by NATO Forces.
17. Attempting to Destroy the Sovereignty, Right to Self-Determination, Democracy and Culture of the Slavic, Muslim, Roma and Other People’s of Yugoslavia.
18. Seeking to Establish U.S. Domination and Control of Yugoslavia and to Exploit Its People and Resources.
19. Using the Means of Military Force and Economic Coercion in Order to Achieve U.S. Domination.
The Members hold NATO, the NATO states and their leaders accountable for their criminal acts and condemn those found guilty in the strongest possible terms. The Members condemn the NATO bombardments, denounce the international crimes and violations of international humanitarian law committed by the armed attack and through other means such as economic sanctions. NATO has acted lawlessly and has attempted to abolish international law.
Recommendations
The Members urge the immediate revocation of all embargoes, sanctions and penalties against Yugoslavia because they constitute a continuing crime against humanity. The Members call for the immediate end to the NATO occupation of all Yugoslav territory, the removal of all NATO and U.S. bases and forces from the Balkans region, and the cessation of overt and covert operations, including the “International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia” in the Hague, aimed at overthrowing the government of Yugoslavia.
The Members further call for full reparations to be paid to the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia for death, injury, economic and environmental damage resulting from the NATO bombing, economic sanctions and blockades. Further, other states in the region which have suffered economic and environmental damage due to the NATO bombing and economic sanctions on Yugoslavia must also be awarded reparations. The Members condemn the threat or use of military technology against life, both civilian and military, as was used by the NATO powers against the people of Yugoslavia.
The Members urge public action and mobilization to stop new and continued sanctions and aggressions by the U.S. and other NATO powers against Iraq, Cuba, North Korea, the countries of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, Puerto Rico, Asia, Sudan, Colombia and other countries. We ask for the immediate cessation of overt/covert activities by the U.S. and NATO in such countries.
The Members believe that the interests of peace, justice and human progress require the abolition of NATO, which has proved itself beyond any doubt to be an instrument of aggression for the dominant, colonizing powers, particularly the United States. The Pentagon, the central and key element of NATO and the greatest single threat to the people of the world, must be disbanded.
The Members urge the Commission to provide for the permanent preservation of the reports, evidence and materials gathered to make them available to others, and to seek ways to provide the widest possible distribution of the truth about the U.S./NATO war on Yugoslavia.
We urge all people of the world to act on recommendations developed by the Commission to hold power accountable and to secure social justice on which lasting peace must be based.
Done in New York this 10th day of June, 2000
LIST OF 16 JUDGES
1. Ben Dupuy--Haiti--Former Ambassador at Large for Haiti under the first government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide and currently secretary general of the Popular National Party (PPN) of Haiti.
2. Angeles Maestro Martin--Spain--Elected member of Spanish parliament from Madrid and a leader in the movement to end sanctions against Iraq .
3. Cimile Cakir --Turkey; journalist for newspaper serving Kurdish community and member of Turkish Human Rights Association. Imprisoned four years in Turkey for human rights activity..
4. Rev. Kiyul Chung--Korea--Rev. Ki Yul Chung, chairperson of the Executive Committee of the Congress for Korean Unification in North America.
5. John Nickels--Roma--U.S. representative of the International Romani Union and also a judge in the Romani community in the U.S.
6. Jorge Farinacci--Puerto Rico--leader of the Socialist Front of Puerto Rico and a long-time leader of the independence movement in Puerto Rico.
7. Ray Laforest--Haitian-American--labor unionist in the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and a leader of the Haitian Coalition for Justice, an organization that fights police brutality in New York.
8. Uma Kutwal -originally from India, Uma Kutwal is president of Local 375 of the Civil Service Technical Union District Council 37 of American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.
9. Dr. Christa Anders--Germany--doctor of medicine and an organizer of the German/European Tribunal.
10. Raniero La Valle--Italy--Former senator who has served 14 years in the Italian parliament and an anti-war leader in Catholic circles and spokesperson for the Italian War Crimes Tribunal movement.
11. Dr. Wolfgang Richter--Germany--Chairperson of the Society for the Protection of Civil Rights and Human Dignity and a leader of the War Crimes Tribunal movement in Germany.
12. Martha Grevatt--United States--National Secretary of the AFL-CIO for Lesbian/Gay/Bi/Trans Labor Organization called Pride at Work, and active in the United Auto Workers.
13. Michael Ratner--United States--Civil Rights Attorney on the National Board of the Center for Constitutional Rights and he took the U.S. government to court for violating the War Powers Act in its undeclared war against Yugoslavia.
14. Yole Stanesic--Yugoslavia, Russia--Montenegrin poet and writer living in Russia, member of the tribunals in Yaroslav, Kiev and Belgrade.
15. John Black--United States--retired President of the Health and Hospital Workers Union in Pennsylvania, responsible for bringing many thousands of hospital workers into the union. As a teenager in Germany he was active in the anti-Nazi underground resistance.
16. Dr. Berta Joubert--Puerto Rico--psychiatrist working in public health and organizer of Puerto Rican and African American anti-racist activities in Philadelphia.
The Prosecutor team:
Ramsey Clark, former U.S. attorney general and founder of the International Action Center.
Pat Chin--originally from Jamaica, International Action Center spokesperson for solidarity with Haiti and Yugoslavia and other issues.
Sara Flounders, International Action Center national co-director, participant in numerous tribunal hearings.
Gloria La Riva, a leader of the Peace for Cuba Committee, producer of video NATO Targets.
All were in Yugoslavia either during the war or participating in seminars or meetings after the war. Short opening remarks by Ramsey Clark, who will be lead prosecutor. Opening greetings from Mikhail Kuznetsov of the International Peoples Tribunal organized from Russia and Ukraine and other former Soviet countries.
How's that so far G4A?
WAR CRIMES TRIBUNAL FINDS U.S. AND NATO GUILTY nato_wanted.jpg (20667 bytes)
Posted: 6/12/00
Final Judgement
Findings
Recommendations
Schedule and Presentations (full texts)
Judges
Prosecutor team
A panel of 16 judges from 11 countries at a people’s tribunal meeting in New York June 10 before 500 people found U.S. and NATO political and military leaders guilty of war crimes against Yugoslavia in the March 24-June 10, 1999 assault on that country.
Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, the lead prosecutor at the International Tribunal on U.S./NATO War Crimes Against Yugoslavia, urged those present and those they represented from the 21 countries participating to carry out a sentence of organizing a campaign to abolish the NATO military pact.
Ben Dupuy, former ambassador from Haiti, Rev. Kiyul Chung of Korea, and auto worker Martha Grevatt, who heads the AFL-CIO’s organization Pride at Work, read the three parts of the verdict (included with this release).
Participants taking the witness stand included eye-witnesses, researchers who visited Yugoslavia, renowned political and economics analysts, historians, physicists, biologists, military experts, journalists and lay researchers. (A list of all the judges, and the witnesses and their topics is included with this release.)
Many of these witnesses have in the past 15 months presented to audiences worldwide a complete picture of the war NATO waged against Yugoslavia. For the tribunal, however, all limited themselves to a single area of expertise that made up a single part of the evidence against the political and military leaders of the United States and the other NATO countries.
Taken together, the judges decided, each single part contributed to construct a proof that beyond a reasonable doubt proved the guilt of the accused, just as the proper placing of single tiles can build a mosaic.
The witnesses described how NATO forces used the media to spread lies to demonize the Serbs and their leadership in order to prepare public opinion to prepare for war. Then they showed the real economic and geopolitical interests of the imperialist powers--the U.S. and Western Europe—in seizing economic control of the area from the Balkans to the oil-rich Caspian Sea.
Finally they demonstrated how Washington rigged the “Racak massacre” and then used the so-called Rambouillet accord—in reality an ultimatum demanding NATO's military control of all of Yugoslavia--to provoke the war. Taken together this all proved a crime against peace.
They also showed the use of illegal weapons, the purposeful choice of civilian targets and the destruction of the environment and the civilian infrastructure that add up to war crimes. And the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of people from Kosovo and Metohija that prove crimes against humanity.
The witnesses’ presentations were accompanied in many cases by slides and videos displayed on a large screen on the stage of the auditorium at Martin Luther King Jr. High School in Manhattan. This screen was easily visible both to the judges, who sat on the stage, and to the hundreds in the audience, many of whom stayed throughout the nine-hour day.
In addition, pictures and videos were on display in the hall outside the auditorium, and documentary evidence was offered in books or in research papers.
The International Action Center, founded by Clark in 1992, organized this final session of the tribunal. There were also participants by those who had organized similar tribunal hearings in Germany, Italy, Austria, Russia, Ukraine, Yugoslavia and Greece, where thousands declared U.S. President Clinton a war criminal last November in Athens.
In addition to the witnesses, there were also important guest presentations from representatives of the governments Yugoslavia and Cuba. In addition, Ismael Guadalupe from Vieques, Puerto Rico showed in a powerful speech how the practice runs against his small island laid the basis for U.S./NATO aggression around the world.
According to the IAC organizers, total registration, including justices, witnesses and staff was 511. Invited speakers, witnesses and judges came from Haiti, Spain, Turkey, Korea, Puerto Rico, India, Germany, United States, Canada, Italy, Yugoslavia, Russia, Britain, Belgium, Iraq, Greece, Austria, France, and Portugal. The U.S. government refused visas to four people from Ukraine, whose message was read from the stage.
There were also representatives of the Roma people—often referred to by the derisive term "gypsy." Shani Rifati, a Roma witness who was born in Pristina, capital of Kosovo, told how NATO occupation has led to the expulsion of 100,000 Romas. He pointed out that the verdict condemned the persecution of Roma people, the first time this has happened in any international tribunal.
Five different television crews taped the entire proceedings, including Serbian television and a three-camera crew from Australia, as well as alternate media sources in the U.S. like the Peoples Video Network.
FINAL JUDGEMENT OF THE COMMISSION OF INQUIRY TO INVESTIGATE U.S./NATO WAR CRIMES AGAINST THE PEOPLE OF YUGOSLAVIA
Final Judgement
The Members of the Independent Commission of Inquiry to Investigate U.S./NATO War Crimes Against the People of Yugoslavia, meeting in New York, having considered the Initial Charges and Complaint of the Commission dated July 31, 1999 against President William J. Clinton, Gen. Wesley Clark, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Prime Minister Tony Blair, Chancellor Gerhard Schroder, President Jacques Chirac, Prime Minister Massimo D’Alema, Prime Minister Jose Maria Azmar, the Governments of the United States and the other NATO member states, former Secretary General Javier Solana and other NATO leaders, and Others with nineteen separate Crimes Against Peace, War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity in violation of the Charter of the United Nations, the 1949 Geneva Conventions, other international agreements and customary international law;
Having the right and obligation as citizens of the world to sit in judgement regarding violations of international humanitarian law;
Having heard the testimony from Commissions of Inquiry and Tribunals held within their own countries during the past year and having received reports from numerous other Commission hearings which recite the evidence there gathered;
Having been provided with documentary evidence, eyewitness statements, photos, videotapes, special reports, expert analyses and summaries of evidence available to the Commission;
Having access to all evidence, knowledge and expert opinion in the Commission files or available to the Commission staff;
Having been provided by the Commission, or otherwise obtained, various books, articles and other written materials on various aspects of events and conditions in Yugoslavia and other countries in the Balkans, and in the military and arms establishments;
Having considered newspaper coverage, magazine and periodical reports, special publications, TV, radio and other media coverage and public statements by the accused, other public officials and public materials;
Having heard the presentations of the Commission of Inquiry in public hearing on June 10, 2000, and the testimony, evidence and summaries there presented;
And having met, considered and deliberated with each other and with Commission staff and having considered all the evidence that is relevant to the nineteen charges of criminal conduct alleged in the Initial Complaint, make the following findings:
Findings
The Members of the International War Crimes Tribunal find the accused Guilty on the basis of the evidence against them and that each of the nineteen separate crimes alleged in the Initial Complaint has been established to have been committed beyond a reasonable doubt. These are:
1. Planning and Executing the Dismemberment, Segregation and Impoverishment of Yugoslavia.
2. Inflicting, Inciting and Enhancing Violence Between and Among Muslims and Slavs.
3. Disrupting Efforts to Maintain Unity, Peace and Stability in Yugoslavia.
4. Destroying the Peace-Making Role of the United Nations.
5. Using NATO for Military Aggression Against, and Occupation of, Non-Compliant Poor Countries.
6. Killing and Injuring a Defenseless Population throughout Yugoslavia.
7. Planning, Announcing and Executing Attacks Intended to Assassinate the Head of Government, Other Government Leaders and Selected Civilians in Yugoslavia.
8. Destroying and Damaging Economic, Social, Cultural, Medical, Diplomatic -- including the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China and other embassies -- and Religious Resources, Properties and Facilities throughout Yugoslavia. 9 Attacking Objects Indispensable to the Survival of the Population of Yugoslavia.
10. Attacking Facilities Containing Dangerous Substances and Forces.
11. Using Depleted Uranium, Cluster Bombs and Other Prohibited Weapons.
12. Waging War on the Environment.
13. Imposing Sanctions through the United Nations that are a Genocidal Crime Against Humanity.
14. Creating an Illegal Ad-Hoc Criminal Tribunal to Destroy and Demonize the Serbian Leadership. The Illegitimacy of this Tribunal is Further Demonstrated by Its Failure to Bring Any Case Regarding the Oppression of the Romani People, Who Have Suffered the Highest Rate of Casualties of Any People in the Region.
15. Using Controlled International Media to Create and Maintain Support for the U.S. Assault and to Demonize Yugoslavia, Slavs, Serbs and Muslims as Genocidal Murderers.
16. Establishing the Long-Term Military Occupation of Strategic Parts of Yugoslavia by NATO Forces.
17. Attempting to Destroy the Sovereignty, Right to Self-Determination, Democracy and Culture of the Slavic, Muslim, Roma and Other People’s of Yugoslavia.
18. Seeking to Establish U.S. Domination and Control of Yugoslavia and to Exploit Its People and Resources.
19. Using the Means of Military Force and Economic Coercion in Order to Achieve U.S. Domination.
The Members hold NATO, the NATO states and their leaders accountable for their criminal acts and condemn those found guilty in the strongest possible terms. The Members condemn the NATO bombardments, denounce the international crimes and violations of international humanitarian law committed by the armed attack and through other means such as economic sanctions. NATO has acted lawlessly and has attempted to abolish international law.
Recommendations
The Members urge the immediate revocation of all embargoes, sanctions and penalties against Yugoslavia because they constitute a continuing crime against humanity. The Members call for the immediate end to the NATO occupation of all Yugoslav territory, the removal of all NATO and U.S. bases and forces from the Balkans region, and the cessation of overt and covert operations, including the “International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia” in the Hague, aimed at overthrowing the government of Yugoslavia.
The Members further call for full reparations to be paid to the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia for death, injury, economic and environmental damage resulting from the NATO bombing, economic sanctions and blockades. Further, other states in the region which have suffered economic and environmental damage due to the NATO bombing and economic sanctions on Yugoslavia must also be awarded reparations. The Members condemn the threat or use of military technology against life, both civilian and military, as was used by the NATO powers against the people of Yugoslavia.
The Members urge public action and mobilization to stop new and continued sanctions and aggressions by the U.S. and other NATO powers against Iraq, Cuba, North Korea, the countries of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, Puerto Rico, Asia, Sudan, Colombia and other countries. We ask for the immediate cessation of overt/covert activities by the U.S. and NATO in such countries.
The Members believe that the interests of peace, justice and human progress require the abolition of NATO, which has proved itself beyond any doubt to be an instrument of aggression for the dominant, colonizing powers, particularly the United States. The Pentagon, the central and key element of NATO and the greatest single threat to the people of the world, must be disbanded.
The Members urge the Commission to provide for the permanent preservation of the reports, evidence and materials gathered to make them available to others, and to seek ways to provide the widest possible distribution of the truth about the U.S./NATO war on Yugoslavia.
We urge all people of the world to act on recommendations developed by the Commission to hold power accountable and to secure social justice on which lasting peace must be based.
Done in New York this 10th day of June, 2000
LIST OF 16 JUDGES
1. Ben Dupuy--Haiti--Former Ambassador at Large for Haiti under the first government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide and currently secretary general of the Popular National Party (PPN) of Haiti.
2. Angeles Maestro Martin--Spain--Elected member of Spanish parliament from Madrid and a leader in the movement to end sanctions against Iraq .
3. Cimile Cakir --Turkey; journalist for newspaper serving Kurdish community and member of Turkish Human Rights Association. Imprisoned four years in Turkey for human rights activity..
4. Rev. Kiyul Chung--Korea--Rev. Ki Yul Chung, chairperson of the Executive Committee of the Congress for Korean Unification in North America.
5. John Nickels--Roma--U.S. representative of the International Romani Union and also a judge in the Romani community in the U.S.
6. Jorge Farinacci--Puerto Rico--leader of the Socialist Front of Puerto Rico and a long-time leader of the independence movement in Puerto Rico.
7. Ray Laforest--Haitian-American--labor unionist in the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and a leader of the Haitian Coalition for Justice, an organization that fights police brutality in New York.
8. Uma Kutwal -originally from India, Uma Kutwal is president of Local 375 of the Civil Service Technical Union District Council 37 of American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.
9. Dr. Christa Anders--Germany--doctor of medicine and an organizer of the German/European Tribunal.
10. Raniero La Valle--Italy--Former senator who has served 14 years in the Italian parliament and an anti-war leader in Catholic circles and spokesperson for the Italian War Crimes Tribunal movement.
11. Dr. Wolfgang Richter--Germany--Chairperson of the Society for the Protection of Civil Rights and Human Dignity and a leader of the War Crimes Tribunal movement in Germany.
12. Martha Grevatt--United States--National Secretary of the AFL-CIO for Lesbian/Gay/Bi/Trans Labor Organization called Pride at Work, and active in the United Auto Workers.
13. Michael Ratner--United States--Civil Rights Attorney on the National Board of the Center for Constitutional Rights and he took the U.S. government to court for violating the War Powers Act in its undeclared war against Yugoslavia.
14. Yole Stanesic--Yugoslavia, Russia--Montenegrin poet and writer living in Russia, member of the tribunals in Yaroslav, Kiev and Belgrade.
15. John Black--United States--retired President of the Health and Hospital Workers Union in Pennsylvania, responsible for bringing many thousands of hospital workers into the union. As a teenager in Germany he was active in the anti-Nazi underground resistance.
16. Dr. Berta Joubert--Puerto Rico--psychiatrist working in public health and organizer of Puerto Rican and African American anti-racist activities in Philadelphia.
The Prosecutor team:
Ramsey Clark, former U.S. attorney general and founder of the International Action Center.
Pat Chin--originally from Jamaica, International Action Center spokesperson for solidarity with Haiti and Yugoslavia and other issues.
Sara Flounders, International Action Center national co-director, participant in numerous tribunal hearings.
Gloria La Riva, a leader of the Peace for Cuba Committee, producer of video NATO Targets.
All were in Yugoslavia either during the war or participating in seminars or meetings after the war. Short opening remarks by Ramsey Clark, who will be lead prosecutor. Opening greetings from Mikhail Kuznetsov of the International Peoples Tribunal organized from Russia and Ukraine and other former Soviet countries.
How's that so far G4A?
QUOTE(jimiray @ Mar 16 2006, 11:23 AM)
Drug Running Anyone?
http://www.dldewey.com/mena.htm
Updated, September 22nd, 1998, Read the response Senator Mazxine Walters received from the CIA regarding Barry Seal
What I am about to share with you should cause you great concern because this is an example of the sort of thing that goes on in Washington.
On October 5, 1986 in Nicaragua, a CK123 Cargo plane, with weapons and CIA employees on board crashed. This was the beginning of what links what I am about to tell you together. This was the start of the Iran-Contra affair. It was proven that the weapons were supplied by the CIA and destined for the Nicaraguan Contras in of the Congressional Poland amendments. Special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh spent six years determining who in the Reagan administration was involved in the operation. Among those that were involved in this operation were George Bush, Oliver North, Dewey Clarridge, John Pointdexter and Caspar Weinberger.
However, lets go to Mena, Arkansas during this time. The training of pilots and loading of weapons and drugs was taking place. Who was the governor of Arkansas at the time and why is is that Kenneth Starr would not touch this area. That governor at the time is now our President.
In July 1994, in the Arkansas Crime Inc. paper, an editorial linked Clinton to Iran-Contra. In October, 1994 Clinton denied any knowledge of the operation at Mena. Shortly afterwards evidence started to surface that documented Clinton’s link to Iran-Contra. People began coming forward and alleging under sworn statements that that Clinton profited from the operation at Mena by laundering money through the newly created Arkansas Development Finance Authority. That was just the tip of the iceberg regarding what was really going on at Mena. A larger number of people testified under oath that the airplanes returning from Central America were loaded with cocaine, which was then dropped over Arkansas for distribution to larger U.S. cities.
During 1995, mounting documented evidence continued to support the Mena claims. A KGB spy talks about his knowledge of Mena. The picture of the Mena operation became more clear. In July 1995, new information and evidence confirms drug smuggling is going on at Mena. Why? Because a State Trooper L.D. Brown and a Arkansas National Guardsmen, who were also pilots flying the planes put Clinton in the loop by testifying. In July 1995, Clinton responded to L.D. Brown’s account with denial. We’ve heard that before. In October, 1995 in formal hearings, now a former State Trooper, L.D. Brown elaborates in great detail, on his flights to Central America in the service of the CIA, on Clinton's link to the CIA. He also details the negative treatment he received from the American press. In August, 1996, Noriega attacks George Bush on Contra Drug dealing. And who is Barry Seal? ( read the article by Daniel Hopsicker for Washington Weekly ) How could this go on for years without detection? In February, 1995, the Washington Post is accused of a grand scale political coverup of the Mena affair. However, a statement issued by Arkansas Supreme Court Justice Jim Johnson at this time reveals government efforts to block investigations of the Mena affair and investigations of Clinton's fraudulent Whitewater loans, and explains how business interests, news media, politicians, and courts in Arkansas manage to block the truth from coming out. Who is Terry Reed? Terry Reed describes how CNN concocted an interview with him, misquoting him all over place. In June, 1995, the Washington Post suppresses another story about the Mena investigations. In November, 1996, Caspar Weinberger is accused of participation in the Iran-Contra affair. However, prior to that in December, 1995, documents prove that the U.S. Government pressured Costa Rica to keep the Mena operations secret. Who Is Richard Ben-Veniste?
During this time, a Democrat Panel on money laundering, indicts brother of Mike Espy for money laundering. And the State Department accuses Noreiga of taking drug money.
This is where Terry Reed comes into the picture I mentioned earlier. Terry Reed testifies. Terry Reed is a pilot and a subcontractor who worked for the CIA Iran-Contra operation. When he discovered that drugs were shipped to the U.S., ( the MENA operators) he left the operation in disgust. He soon found himself and his family the target of a retaliation lawsuit claiming insurance fraud. However, the Reed family was cleared of the allegations in federal court in Wichita, Kansas. Shortly thereafter, the Reed family filed a civil suit against those who had brought the wrongful suit against them. And here folks is where it gets really interesting. Two employees of Bill Clinton, Buddy Young and Tommy Baker were charged with fabrication of evidence and other civil rights violations against the Reed’s. Now this is where is gets even more interesting. In September, 1995 Buddy Young is linked to the Iran-Contra/Mena operation. Clinton's former security chief, now a defendant in Reed's Mena trial, appears to have been more involved than previously known. After years of a legal circus, the lawsuit by the Reed family finally began in earnest in late1995. Depositions were taken from a number of people and they all told the same story under oath. They also revealed that U.S. senators (both parties) tried to block investigations into money laundering at Mena. All of these witnesses have sufferedharassment and intimidation because of their explosive testimony. In early 1996, the judge in the case ruled to suppress all evidence relating to Mena, CIA, and the Clintons from the trial. Reed discouraged at this point, gave up and dropped the trial. One honest policeman, Russell Welch supplied much of the material and proof of the Mena case, he too has suffered harassment and intimidation. Who is Julius "Doc" Delaughter. It is December, 1995. Delaughter appears on a British Mena documentary, telling about the whole Mena operation, however it is banned from distribution in the U.S. Remember Barry Seal, ( read the article by Daniel Hopsicker for Washington Weekly ), he comes out of the closet too. Also a certain lady is found in Florida connecting all this. In April, 1996, there is a massive Anthrax poisoning case in Mena and in August, 1996, State Trooper L.D. Brown is ordered to assassinate Terry Reed. And the CIA begins an investigation, (interesting, they are investigating their own operation?) of the Mena operation. The White House is asked about it, and they deny everything. At this same time, Reed drops the lawsuit and the murder of two teenage boys, Don Henry and Kevin Ives occurs in Benton, a town near Mena. Due to persistent parents and a few honest Arkansas policemen, their murders are traced back to the drug smuggling operations at Mena. A British documentary exposes the murders and the link to Mena. No U.S. major news network picks this story up.
It is now July, 1996, Kenneth Starr begins asking questions about Mena. He follows the trail of facts, but suddenly announces that Mena is outside his brief and scope of just the Whitewater investigation of Clinton.
In the fall of 1995, several committees in the House of Representatives began considering holding hearings about the Mena operation and started interviewing witnesses. To this date, this hearing has never finished and they have not called any more witnesses.
Remember Dan Lasater above, he testifies in May, 1996 before the Whitewater Committee about his the Whitewater/Clinton mess. Now, during this time we have the Bosnia war going on and the CIA is backing and sending guns there. Is this a repeat of the Iran-Contra affair with drugs? In the fall of 1996, events took an amazing turn. The San Jose Mercury News reported on a drug trial in Los Angeles where informants testified that they had sold drugs to LA street gangs in order to finance the CIA-backed Contra war in Nicaragua in the 1980s. The drugs came from the Mena, Arkansas operations they testified. The story grabbed the headlines and incited the black community. It was soon realized that what was seen in Los Angeles was just another tentacle of what had already been uncovered in Mena, Arkansas. Now the CIA, the Justice Department, Congress and the White House were all asked for explanations. Mushrooming beyond control, the Mena scandal had finally reached the headlines of the mainstream media a decade after the events took place. September, 1996 CIA Director Deutch resigns. Also there are reports of the U.S. Government involved with Bolivian cocaine lab. There are a string of murders of Americans surrounding the lab in Bolivia. Senator Barbara Boxer, California, writes a letter to CIA Director John Deutch demanding all truth of events. He responds negatively. Senator Diane Feinstein write a letter tp Attorney General Janet Reno requesting a full investigation and Senator Mazxine Waters
( read the response she received back ) request for hearings to Chairman Henry Hyde. This was September, 1996 folks and to date, nothing has been done regarding this matter. Why? Because I believe this has been the greatest government cover-up that has ever occurred. The reason, both parties are up to their ears with the Mena affair and Clinton. When you contact any of the elected officials about this, they have no comment.
I’ve supplied the information to you folks, which I bet you did not know. If you don’t believe me, make a few phone calls to Washington and see how quickly the doors are shut on you concerning the Mena affair. I wonder how many will start to inquire about this with their elected officials? NO ONE WANTS TO TALK ABOUT IT! And why? Both parties have a great deal to hide. And why hasn't Hyde done anything more about the hearings since 1995? Hoping it will just go away. And Hyde is the current Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee? What I believe is so ironic is we have a President of the United States being investigated, but who is investigating the investigators? Personally, I have lost not only all trust in President Clinton, but also our elected body in Washington. There is more than one politician here that is lieing! We have had not only a witch hunt attacking Clinton, the attackers have a great deal to hide themselves. And I strongly believe that there is more to this whole affair than any of us will ever know. There will be those that will say I am trying to darken the waters, attack Clinton on another issue. That is not the case. I am presenting this to you to show you that we better start asking more questions and not only demanding the answers from our elected officials in Washington but getting them. Who works for whom here? Are they not suppose to be working for us? Sure seem its' the other way around. Anyway folks, here is it, another shocker! By the way, witnesses have been mysteriously dying off.
UPDATE 10-9-98
Click here to read letter from Attorney General of Louisiana, William J. Guste Jr. to U.S. Attorney General, Ed Messe, March 3rd, 1986, asking for a full investigation into the Barry Seal matter after Barry Seal's murder. Mr. Guste asked for the transcript of Seal's sworn testimony be released to the general public to settle his envolvment in the Mena operation. This request was ignored and to this date all futher attempts to get Seal's testimony released has been ignored by many requests from many government officials, including U.S. Senators and Congressmen. What is the government hiding?
POSTSCRIPT: Sunday, September 20th, 1998
before the video tape is released on Monday.
I have received hundreds of emails asking me what my position is on the various issues surrounding Clinton. These are my opinions, you can agree or disagree with them
The one thing that I have observed from when this story first broke regarding Lewinsky, is not only a lack of what I term prudent intelligence from all sources but a severe lack of human compassion. This includes the media, Starr, The White House, members of Congress, and we, the American people. There is a very simple right and wrong of things, especially with it comes to lieing, however, none of us living upon this earth have lived a "perfect" life, I certainly haven't. What I have not understood about this is the need to totally use what I term unscrupulous tactics to not only dig up whatever you can on someone to bring them down, but then to further destroy them is another matter. I wrote the column above about the Reagan, Bush Clinton drug connection, not to try and destroy Clinton further, but if anything to show that those in Washington who are pointing the fingers do not have their lilly white sleeves "clean" either. Both parties have hidden and tried to hide things for years. Therefore enough is enough. Kenneth Starr, by the means that he used, has not hurt Clinton, he has hurt America in more ways than be counted, and also has placed a mark of distrust on the office of the Presidency that will take along time for Americans to ever believe in another President. I said at the beginning that if Clinton had told the truth about his relationship, he may have lost the Paula Jones case, but he certainly would not have gone through the "hell" that he and his family have been through, regardless of what he did with Lewinsky. No one has the right to do that to another human being, especially in America. We are suppose to be a God loving nation, my God is a loving God, not a destroyer of human lives. Our Congress for many selfish political reasons took the path of further destruction and my opinion in the long term, both parties will suffer from the decisions they have been making, especially in releasing the video tape of Clinton's testimony. I don't need to see him on video, the man has admitted his error, however he hasn't admitted he lied, and because of that is where he lost my trust in him. I've read and heard enough of this whole affair and I had hoped that two things would have happened. That President Clinton would have seen that the right thing to do would be to have resigned, and Congress would have put an end to this disgrace of our nation and moved on. The numbers that I am seeing not only from the poll that has been conducted on my site but other polls as well has told me one thing. This is a not only a test of the moral fabric of our society, ( and I am not talking about religious views or teachings, i.e. adultery ), but that Americans had a very difficult time at first in finding their conscious with this. But what I am concerned about is how long it took for Americans to decide their thoughts on it. And I believe that a big part of this indecision was, that in each of us, we know that we are not without "sin", doing something wrong in our life. Therefore it is hard to judge someone for the same thing that probably many have done, "lied about sex". However, there is a simple right and wrong as I said, and maybe, just maybe, Americans are finally starting to regain that within their conscious, but my question is, what about the heart, the act of forgiveness, and when you forgive, do you continue to destroy? Instead, Congress, and we are letting them do it I believe for those reasons I explained, have decided to continue "waving in the air" more dirty laundry for the world to see and further destroying the meaning of what America stands for. I thought she stood for freedom, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is sad how everyone it appears in this whole mess has forgotten the meaning of those words all because of a insecure young woman who seduced a man, (the man participated and let her seduce him) and the man then lied about it. I wonder what George Washington would be thinking about all of this? Or would he even be a better judge to judge? It truly is not a matter of judging, it is a matter of simply standing up for what is right, forgiving, and then moving on. However, this is not to say that a price does not have to paid. Not only has Clinton paid a price, but our nation has paid a hefty one. All because of a "lie" and then the lack of true forgiveness. Hopefully, we have all learned from this.
I would like to end this column with a plea to the people and my readers in all countries. I call upon the loving grace of whatever you term is "GOD" in your life. Please use that grace to stop all the inhumane acts that are being done everywhere. That includes the rapes and murders in Indonesia. The bombings in Ireland. I call upon the Mothers of the world. Don't you realize the power you hold in which you could stop this all. Have we not grown into an uncivilized form of humanity who preach their different religions, but hardly practice them. What happen to the one similar teaching and law among all the religions, "LOVE THY NEIGHBOR". Or is that simply to hard for humans to do? God help us what another intelligent life form may think of us.
~ David Lawrence Dewey ~
http://www.dldewey.com/mena.htm
Updated, September 22nd, 1998, Read the response Senator Mazxine Walters received from the CIA regarding Barry Seal
What I am about to share with you should cause you great concern because this is an example of the sort of thing that goes on in Washington.
On October 5, 1986 in Nicaragua, a CK123 Cargo plane, with weapons and CIA employees on board crashed. This was the beginning of what links what I am about to tell you together. This was the start of the Iran-Contra affair. It was proven that the weapons were supplied by the CIA and destined for the Nicaraguan Contras in of the Congressional Poland amendments. Special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh spent six years determining who in the Reagan administration was involved in the operation. Among those that were involved in this operation were George Bush, Oliver North, Dewey Clarridge, John Pointdexter and Caspar Weinberger.
However, lets go to Mena, Arkansas during this time. The training of pilots and loading of weapons and drugs was taking place. Who was the governor of Arkansas at the time and why is is that Kenneth Starr would not touch this area. That governor at the time is now our President.
In July 1994, in the Arkansas Crime Inc. paper, an editorial linked Clinton to Iran-Contra. In October, 1994 Clinton denied any knowledge of the operation at Mena. Shortly afterwards evidence started to surface that documented Clinton’s link to Iran-Contra. People began coming forward and alleging under sworn statements that that Clinton profited from the operation at Mena by laundering money through the newly created Arkansas Development Finance Authority. That was just the tip of the iceberg regarding what was really going on at Mena. A larger number of people testified under oath that the airplanes returning from Central America were loaded with cocaine, which was then dropped over Arkansas for distribution to larger U.S. cities.
During 1995, mounting documented evidence continued to support the Mena claims. A KGB spy talks about his knowledge of Mena. The picture of the Mena operation became more clear. In July 1995, new information and evidence confirms drug smuggling is going on at Mena. Why? Because a State Trooper L.D. Brown and a Arkansas National Guardsmen, who were also pilots flying the planes put Clinton in the loop by testifying. In July 1995, Clinton responded to L.D. Brown’s account with denial. We’ve heard that before. In October, 1995 in formal hearings, now a former State Trooper, L.D. Brown elaborates in great detail, on his flights to Central America in the service of the CIA, on Clinton's link to the CIA. He also details the negative treatment he received from the American press. In August, 1996, Noriega attacks George Bush on Contra Drug dealing. And who is Barry Seal? ( read the article by Daniel Hopsicker for Washington Weekly ) How could this go on for years without detection? In February, 1995, the Washington Post is accused of a grand scale political coverup of the Mena affair. However, a statement issued by Arkansas Supreme Court Justice Jim Johnson at this time reveals government efforts to block investigations of the Mena affair and investigations of Clinton's fraudulent Whitewater loans, and explains how business interests, news media, politicians, and courts in Arkansas manage to block the truth from coming out. Who is Terry Reed? Terry Reed describes how CNN concocted an interview with him, misquoting him all over place. In June, 1995, the Washington Post suppresses another story about the Mena investigations. In November, 1996, Caspar Weinberger is accused of participation in the Iran-Contra affair. However, prior to that in December, 1995, documents prove that the U.S. Government pressured Costa Rica to keep the Mena operations secret. Who Is Richard Ben-Veniste?
During this time, a Democrat Panel on money laundering, indicts brother of Mike Espy for money laundering. And the State Department accuses Noreiga of taking drug money.
This is where Terry Reed comes into the picture I mentioned earlier. Terry Reed testifies. Terry Reed is a pilot and a subcontractor who worked for the CIA Iran-Contra operation. When he discovered that drugs were shipped to the U.S., ( the MENA operators) he left the operation in disgust. He soon found himself and his family the target of a retaliation lawsuit claiming insurance fraud. However, the Reed family was cleared of the allegations in federal court in Wichita, Kansas. Shortly thereafter, the Reed family filed a civil suit against those who had brought the wrongful suit against them. And here folks is where it gets really interesting. Two employees of Bill Clinton, Buddy Young and Tommy Baker were charged with fabrication of evidence and other civil rights violations against the Reed’s. Now this is where is gets even more interesting. In September, 1995 Buddy Young is linked to the Iran-Contra/Mena operation. Clinton's former security chief, now a defendant in Reed's Mena trial, appears to have been more involved than previously known. After years of a legal circus, the lawsuit by the Reed family finally began in earnest in late1995. Depositions were taken from a number of people and they all told the same story under oath. They also revealed that U.S. senators (both parties) tried to block investigations into money laundering at Mena. All of these witnesses have sufferedharassment and intimidation because of their explosive testimony. In early 1996, the judge in the case ruled to suppress all evidence relating to Mena, CIA, and the Clintons from the trial. Reed discouraged at this point, gave up and dropped the trial. One honest policeman, Russell Welch supplied much of the material and proof of the Mena case, he too has suffered harassment and intimidation. Who is Julius "Doc" Delaughter. It is December, 1995. Delaughter appears on a British Mena documentary, telling about the whole Mena operation, however it is banned from distribution in the U.S. Remember Barry Seal, ( read the article by Daniel Hopsicker for Washington Weekly ), he comes out of the closet too. Also a certain lady is found in Florida connecting all this. In April, 1996, there is a massive Anthrax poisoning case in Mena and in August, 1996, State Trooper L.D. Brown is ordered to assassinate Terry Reed. And the CIA begins an investigation, (interesting, they are investigating their own operation?) of the Mena operation. The White House is asked about it, and they deny everything. At this same time, Reed drops the lawsuit and the murder of two teenage boys, Don Henry and Kevin Ives occurs in Benton, a town near Mena. Due to persistent parents and a few honest Arkansas policemen, their murders are traced back to the drug smuggling operations at Mena. A British documentary exposes the murders and the link to Mena. No U.S. major news network picks this story up.
It is now July, 1996, Kenneth Starr begins asking questions about Mena. He follows the trail of facts, but suddenly announces that Mena is outside his brief and scope of just the Whitewater investigation of Clinton.
In the fall of 1995, several committees in the House of Representatives began considering holding hearings about the Mena operation and started interviewing witnesses. To this date, this hearing has never finished and they have not called any more witnesses.
Remember Dan Lasater above, he testifies in May, 1996 before the Whitewater Committee about his the Whitewater/Clinton mess. Now, during this time we have the Bosnia war going on and the CIA is backing and sending guns there. Is this a repeat of the Iran-Contra affair with drugs? In the fall of 1996, events took an amazing turn. The San Jose Mercury News reported on a drug trial in Los Angeles where informants testified that they had sold drugs to LA street gangs in order to finance the CIA-backed Contra war in Nicaragua in the 1980s. The drugs came from the Mena, Arkansas operations they testified. The story grabbed the headlines and incited the black community. It was soon realized that what was seen in Los Angeles was just another tentacle of what had already been uncovered in Mena, Arkansas. Now the CIA, the Justice Department, Congress and the White House were all asked for explanations. Mushrooming beyond control, the Mena scandal had finally reached the headlines of the mainstream media a decade after the events took place. September, 1996 CIA Director Deutch resigns. Also there are reports of the U.S. Government involved with Bolivian cocaine lab. There are a string of murders of Americans surrounding the lab in Bolivia. Senator Barbara Boxer, California, writes a letter to CIA Director John Deutch demanding all truth of events. He responds negatively. Senator Diane Feinstein write a letter tp Attorney General Janet Reno requesting a full investigation and Senator Mazxine Waters
( read the response she received back ) request for hearings to Chairman Henry Hyde. This was September, 1996 folks and to date, nothing has been done regarding this matter. Why? Because I believe this has been the greatest government cover-up that has ever occurred. The reason, both parties are up to their ears with the Mena affair and Clinton. When you contact any of the elected officials about this, they have no comment.
I’ve supplied the information to you folks, which I bet you did not know. If you don’t believe me, make a few phone calls to Washington and see how quickly the doors are shut on you concerning the Mena affair. I wonder how many will start to inquire about this with their elected officials? NO ONE WANTS TO TALK ABOUT IT! And why? Both parties have a great deal to hide. And why hasn't Hyde done anything more about the hearings since 1995? Hoping it will just go away. And Hyde is the current Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee? What I believe is so ironic is we have a President of the United States being investigated, but who is investigating the investigators? Personally, I have lost not only all trust in President Clinton, but also our elected body in Washington. There is more than one politician here that is lieing! We have had not only a witch hunt attacking Clinton, the attackers have a great deal to hide themselves. And I strongly believe that there is more to this whole affair than any of us will ever know. There will be those that will say I am trying to darken the waters, attack Clinton on another issue. That is not the case. I am presenting this to you to show you that we better start asking more questions and not only demanding the answers from our elected officials in Washington but getting them. Who works for whom here? Are they not suppose to be working for us? Sure seem its' the other way around. Anyway folks, here is it, another shocker! By the way, witnesses have been mysteriously dying off.
UPDATE 10-9-98
Click here to read letter from Attorney General of Louisiana, William J. Guste Jr. to U.S. Attorney General, Ed Messe, March 3rd, 1986, asking for a full investigation into the Barry Seal matter after Barry Seal's murder. Mr. Guste asked for the transcript of Seal's sworn testimony be released to the general public to settle his envolvment in the Mena operation. This request was ignored and to this date all futher attempts to get Seal's testimony released has been ignored by many requests from many government officials, including U.S. Senators and Congressmen. What is the government hiding?
POSTSCRIPT: Sunday, September 20th, 1998
before the video tape is released on Monday.
I have received hundreds of emails asking me what my position is on the various issues surrounding Clinton. These are my opinions, you can agree or disagree with them
The one thing that I have observed from when this story first broke regarding Lewinsky, is not only a lack of what I term prudent intelligence from all sources but a severe lack of human compassion. This includes the media, Starr, The White House, members of Congress, and we, the American people. There is a very simple right and wrong of things, especially with it comes to lieing, however, none of us living upon this earth have lived a "perfect" life, I certainly haven't. What I have not understood about this is the need to totally use what I term unscrupulous tactics to not only dig up whatever you can on someone to bring them down, but then to further destroy them is another matter. I wrote the column above about the Reagan, Bush Clinton drug connection, not to try and destroy Clinton further, but if anything to show that those in Washington who are pointing the fingers do not have their lilly white sleeves "clean" either. Both parties have hidden and tried to hide things for years. Therefore enough is enough. Kenneth Starr, by the means that he used, has not hurt Clinton, he has hurt America in more ways than be counted, and also has placed a mark of distrust on the office of the Presidency that will take along time for Americans to ever believe in another President. I said at the beginning that if Clinton had told the truth about his relationship, he may have lost the Paula Jones case, but he certainly would not have gone through the "hell" that he and his family have been through, regardless of what he did with Lewinsky. No one has the right to do that to another human being, especially in America. We are suppose to be a God loving nation, my God is a loving God, not a destroyer of human lives. Our Congress for many selfish political reasons took the path of further destruction and my opinion in the long term, both parties will suffer from the decisions they have been making, especially in releasing the video tape of Clinton's testimony. I don't need to see him on video, the man has admitted his error, however he hasn't admitted he lied, and because of that is where he lost my trust in him. I've read and heard enough of this whole affair and I had hoped that two things would have happened. That President Clinton would have seen that the right thing to do would be to have resigned, and Congress would have put an end to this disgrace of our nation and moved on. The numbers that I am seeing not only from the poll that has been conducted on my site but other polls as well has told me one thing. This is a not only a test of the moral fabric of our society, ( and I am not talking about religious views or teachings, i.e. adultery ), but that Americans had a very difficult time at first in finding their conscious with this. But what I am concerned about is how long it took for Americans to decide their thoughts on it. And I believe that a big part of this indecision was, that in each of us, we know that we are not without "sin", doing something wrong in our life. Therefore it is hard to judge someone for the same thing that probably many have done, "lied about sex". However, there is a simple right and wrong as I said, and maybe, just maybe, Americans are finally starting to regain that within their conscious, but my question is, what about the heart, the act of forgiveness, and when you forgive, do you continue to destroy? Instead, Congress, and we are letting them do it I believe for those reasons I explained, have decided to continue "waving in the air" more dirty laundry for the world to see and further destroying the meaning of what America stands for. I thought she stood for freedom, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is sad how everyone it appears in this whole mess has forgotten the meaning of those words all because of a insecure young woman who seduced a man, (the man participated and let her seduce him) and the man then lied about it. I wonder what George Washington would be thinking about all of this? Or would he even be a better judge to judge? It truly is not a matter of judging, it is a matter of simply standing up for what is right, forgiving, and then moving on. However, this is not to say that a price does not have to paid. Not only has Clinton paid a price, but our nation has paid a hefty one. All because of a "lie" and then the lack of true forgiveness. Hopefully, we have all learned from this.
I would like to end this column with a plea to the people and my readers in all countries. I call upon the loving grace of whatever you term is "GOD" in your life. Please use that grace to stop all the inhumane acts that are being done everywhere. That includes the rapes and murders in Indonesia. The bombings in Ireland. I call upon the Mothers of the world. Don't you realize the power you hold in which you could stop this all. Have we not grown into an uncivilized form of humanity who preach their different religions, but hardly practice them. What happen to the one similar teaching and law among all the religions, "LOVE THY NEIGHBOR". Or is that simply to hard for humans to do? God help us what another intelligent life form may think of us.
~ David Lawrence Dewey ~
priceless
41=42+43=41
44to be part of the equation and Jeb 45
It is all tied so neatly into place if this is true, isn't it Jimiray
One conncertion with another
Same names go round and round
From good to bad to good again
QUOTE(graham4anything @ Mar 16 2006, 10:29 AM)
priceless
41=42+43=41
44to be part of the equation and Jeb 45
It is all tied so neatly into place if this is true, isn't it Jimiray
One conncertion with another
Same names go round and round
From good to bad to good again
41=42+43=41
44to be part of the equation and Jeb 45
It is all tied so neatly into place if this is true, isn't it Jimiray
One conncertion with another
Same names go round and round
From good to bad to good again
They are all tied together!
I told you a long time ago I knew Clinton was bad.
Remember where I live.
Who knows? Clinton's enemies may be gunning down these people to make it look bad for Clinton - especially as there was, way back, a hunch that Hillary would be running someday as a Presidential candidate.
Mafias always use scapegoat and pawns to let the other side look bad. Guess you haen't seen too many Mafia movies, graham4anything and jimiray? And, graham4anything, I do realize that you are so much in love with Al Gore and would really hate to see Hillary win. Still, paparazzi, malicious and guess-work gossips don't get to fly too much...
Mafias always use scapegoat and pawns to let the other side look bad. Guess you haen't seen too many Mafia movies, graham4anything and jimiray? And, graham4anything, I do realize that you are so much in love with Al Gore and would really hate to see Hillary win. Still, paparazzi, malicious and guess-work gossips don't get to fly too much...
There's a rumor that Clinton was recruited by the CIA as a Rhodes Scholar to spy on vietnam protestors overseas. You can google for it I believe.
QUOTE(Sunshine @ Mar 16 2006, 02:27 PM)
There's a rumor that Clinton was recruited by the CIA as a Rhodes Scholar to spy on vietnam protestors overseas. You can google for it I believe.
I would have believed it if Clinton had attended a community college. Gee wheez, if only one realizes that studying at the Oxford University gives a Rhodes Scholar little time even to poop!
QUOTE(Salute_Liberty @ Mar 16 2006, 02:20 PM)
Who knows? Clinton's enemies may be gunning down these people to make it look bad for Clinton - especially as there was, way back, a hunch that Hillary would be running someday as a Presidential candidate.
Mafias always use scapegoat and pawns to let the other side look bad. Guess you haen't seen too many Mafia movies, graham4anything and jimiray? And, graham4anything, I do realize that you are so much in love with Al Gore and would really hate to see Hillary win. Still, paparazzi, malicious and guess-work gossips don't get to fly too much...
Mafias always use scapegoat and pawns to let the other side look bad. Guess you haen't seen too many Mafia movies, graham4anything and jimiray? And, graham4anything, I do realize that you are so much in love with Al Gore and would really hate to see Hillary win. Still, paparazzi, malicious and guess-work gossips don't get to fly too much...
Trouble is, I just don't believe 100 percent of one side can all be wrong and lies, yet
100 percent of what we think about Bush is right.
Statistically, it just does not pan out. The odds would be, who knows what.
And I believe in right/wrong not left/right. That old smell test...
I do know, as soon as the Clintonistas came to help Kerry, trouble started.
joe Lockhart, Begala and whats the other one, they came in and the CBS memo
trouble started, then the Berger thing happened, all embarrassment to Kerry.
They certainly did not help that's for sure.
I would enthusastically support Hillary, She is my 3rd or 4th choice, and she is a great NY Senator, but it won't help the country unite.
I want a woman president almost as much as I want a black President.
Make it Maxine Waters and I would be in heaven, but that ain't happening.
And 41 and 43 are practically living together they are so enamoured of each other.
I just want to win in 2006 and then take it from there. We win in 2006, there is breathing room
Matter of fact, I just want everyone to be alive in 2009 with no panademic, world war or other disaster and NO DRAFT
Give us some more jimiray
QUOTE(Salute_Liberty @ Mar 16 2006, 02:42 PM)
I would have believed it if Clinton had attended a community college. Gee wheez, if only one realizes that studying at the Oxford University gives a Rhodes Scholar little time even to poop!
I think Clinton didn't pass.
So maybe he was spendingtoo much time spying on peolpe.
QUOTE(Sunshine @ Mar 16 2006, 02:51 PM)
I think Clinton didn't pass.
So maybe he was spendingtoo much time spying on peolpe.
So maybe he was spendingtoo much time spying on peolpe.
Besides, to spy on Vietnam, America would have been better off sending Clinton to a University in Paris. In the days of the Vietnam War, if there were anti-war activities supporting the anti-draft movement in America, it was at the London School of Economics. Believe me, the majority of students were otherwise having a great time competing against one another and sporting the 1960's fashion looks, and those old enough were trying to sneak into go-go clubs, and the celebrated new Playboy's Club to gather those hot-hot Playboy club souvenirs! Oh yes, careless of what was really happening to Vietnam deaths out there didn't hit them hard to home. There was just too much high-fashion attraction and fun during those days to distract even the most serious student. My brother then was at Oxford U, too - same time as Clinton. My mom was going raving crazy to get him focused - in fact, sold off his Mini-Cooper, and allowed him a mini-weekly allowance to keep him focused. As for my sisters and myself, we would even slip to Chelsea where the Mary Quant and Bibba were a must between travelling home from school.
QUOTE(Salute_Liberty @ Mar 16 2006, 01:42 PM)
I would have believed it if Clinton had attended a community college. Gee wheez, if only one realizes that studying at the Oxford University gives a Rhodes Scholar little time even to poop!
Do you know the Oath a Rhodes Scholar takes by chance?
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadA...le.asp?ID=19525
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Clinton Ignored 9/11 Warning
By Dick Morris
FrontPageMagazine.com | September 19, 2005
The recent publication of some once-censored parts of the 9/11 Commission report reveals that, in 1998, federal intelligence sources had shared their concern that al-Qaeda could be planning to use passenger airplanes as missiles on suicide raids against prominent targets in the United States. This is the first time we've heard that that the possibility of such a suicide mission was raised at the federal level during the Clinton years.
But the entire thrust of the administration's attitude toward air safety and security was based on the happy assumption that no terrorist would ever engage in a suicide bombing using airplanes. Now the question arises: Why did not the Clinton administration re-evaluate its air safety measures in light of the 1998 warning?
After the crash of TWA flight 800 and the bombing of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, both of which were thought at the time to possibly be connected to international terrorists, President Clinton assigned Vice President Al Gore to head a commission on air safety to counter the possible terrorist threat. With his usual technical thoroughness but cerebral obtuseness, Gore conducted a wide-ranging review of air-safety measures and set up a system to predict who would hijack a passenger airplane. The system, called CAPPS (Civil Aviation Passenger Protection System) was based in an algorithm that evaluated risk factors to spot hijackers.
And CAPPS worked brilliantly on 9/11 — picking out 11 of the 19 hijackers for special scrutiny as possible terrorists.
But…
Gore's work was entirely based on the belief that nobody would commit suicide while hijacking a plane. So the only purpose of CAPPS was to assure that these passengers boarded the airplane with their checked baggage — since the feds assumed that the checked bags couldn't have a bomb in if the terrorist was on the plane himself.
As naive and shortsighted as this assumption was — and as disastrous as it turned out to be — until now we have only been able to chalk it up to Al Gore's particular brand of myopia. But now we have evidence that one year after his report was issued, the White House received a warning that a suicide mission was a distinct possibility.
Why did Gore or Clinton not spring into action and undertake a review of the 1997 Commission report to adjust its conclusions to take account of this new possibility?
This oversight led to the horrendous lack of preparedness on 9/11.
To be sure, the intelligence finding was cloaked in ambiguity with disclaimers that suggested that al-Qaeda would only use a suicide attack as a last resort and indicated that it did not feel such a tactic was likely. But the finding spelled out in black and white exactly what happened: Terrorists would hijack passenger planes in the United States and use them to destroy prominent public buildings.
Had Gore and Clinton acted as they should have, all kinds of changes might have been made that could have forestalled 9/11. Boxcutters and small knives could have been barred from planes (after being specifically permitted in a change in FAA rules early in the Clinton years). Passengers identified by the CAPPS system could be investigated and barred from planes without special pat downs and screening. The entire system could have been refocused to take account of the suicide option in a way that it never was before 9/11.
The blame, of course, should fall not only on a Clinton administration distracted by impeachment and fighting for its political life, but also on the Bush administration — which is why the paragraph was initially redacted from the published version of the 9/11 report.
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Clinton Ignored 9/11 Warning
By Dick Morris
FrontPageMagazine.com | September 19, 2005
The recent publication of some once-censored parts of the 9/11 Commission report reveals that, in 1998, federal intelligence sources had shared their concern that al-Qaeda could be planning to use passenger airplanes as missiles on suicide raids against prominent targets in the United States. This is the first time we've heard that that the possibility of such a suicide mission was raised at the federal level during the Clinton years.
But the entire thrust of the administration's attitude toward air safety and security was based on the happy assumption that no terrorist would ever engage in a suicide bombing using airplanes. Now the question arises: Why did not the Clinton administration re-evaluate its air safety measures in light of the 1998 warning?
After the crash of TWA flight 800 and the bombing of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, both of which were thought at the time to possibly be connected to international terrorists, President Clinton assigned Vice President Al Gore to head a commission on air safety to counter the possible terrorist threat. With his usual technical thoroughness but cerebral obtuseness, Gore conducted a wide-ranging review of air-safety measures and set up a system to predict who would hijack a passenger airplane. The system, called CAPPS (Civil Aviation Passenger Protection System) was based in an algorithm that evaluated risk factors to spot hijackers.
And CAPPS worked brilliantly on 9/11 — picking out 11 of the 19 hijackers for special scrutiny as possible terrorists.
But…
Gore's work was entirely based on the belief that nobody would commit suicide while hijacking a plane. So the only purpose of CAPPS was to assure that these passengers boarded the airplane with their checked baggage — since the feds assumed that the checked bags couldn't have a bomb in if the terrorist was on the plane himself.
As naive and shortsighted as this assumption was — and as disastrous as it turned out to be — until now we have only been able to chalk it up to Al Gore's particular brand of myopia. But now we have evidence that one year after his report was issued, the White House received a warning that a suicide mission was a distinct possibility.
Why did Gore or Clinton not spring into action and undertake a review of the 1997 Commission report to adjust its conclusions to take account of this new possibility?
This oversight led to the horrendous lack of preparedness on 9/11.
To be sure, the intelligence finding was cloaked in ambiguity with disclaimers that suggested that al-Qaeda would only use a suicide attack as a last resort and indicated that it did not feel such a tactic was likely. But the finding spelled out in black and white exactly what happened: Terrorists would hijack passenger planes in the United States and use them to destroy prominent public buildings.
Had Gore and Clinton acted as they should have, all kinds of changes might have been made that could have forestalled 9/11. Boxcutters and small knives could have been barred from planes (after being specifically permitted in a change in FAA rules early in the Clinton years). Passengers identified by the CAPPS system could be investigated and barred from planes without special pat downs and screening. The entire system could have been refocused to take account of the suicide option in a way that it never was before 9/11.
The blame, of course, should fall not only on a Clinton administration distracted by impeachment and fighting for its political life, but also on the Bush administration — which is why the paragraph was initially redacted from the published version of the 9/11 report.
http://www.discoverthenetwork.org/individu...e.asp?indid=644
* U.S. President, 1993-2001
* On December 19, 1998, became the second President in American history to be impeached
* His presidency was filled with foreign policy debacles that would compromise American national security for years to come .
The forty-second President of the United States was born William Jefferson Blythe on August 19, 1946, in Hope, Arkansas. His father, William Blythe, died in an automobile accident three months before the birth of the baby, who was adopted by his stepfather, Roger Clinton.
Bill Clinton attended Georgetown University, then Oxford, and eventually graduated from Yale Law School in 1973. Two years later he married Hillary Rodham, whom he had met at Yale. From 1977 to 1979 Clinton was the Attorney General of Arkansas. He was elected Governor of the state in 1978, lost a re-election bid in 1980, and then won back the office in 1982. He was thereafter re-elected in 1984, 1986, and 1990. In 1992 he defeated incumbent George H.W. Bush in the race for U.S. President, and in 1996 was elected to a second term when he defeated Republican Senator Bob Dole.
Clinton's presidency was marred by a long succession of scandals, including sexual harassment allegations, lawsuits, an accusation of rape, and, most famously, revelations that he had carried on a sexual affair with 21-year-old White House intern Monica Lewinsky. On December 19, 1998, after having perjured himself repeatedly before a grand jury, Clinton - on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice - became only the second President (after Andrew Johnson in 1868) in American history to be impeached, though he was not removed from office. In October 2001 he was disbarred from practicing law before the United States Supreme Court. He had previously had his Arkansas law license suspended for five years as a result of a disbarment lawsuit brought by a committee of the Arkansas State Supreme Court.
While the aforementioned scandals made bold headlines, Clinton's most significant failings as President concerned less publicized but far more ominous matters of national security. Clinton's loathing of the American military led to his failure in his primary responsibility: the protection of the American people. His actions with regard to military preparedness speak for themselves. In less than three years, deployments increased while manpower decreased from 2.1 million to 1.6 million. That decrease was the foundation upon which stood Al Gore's purported "reinvention" of government. Of the 305,000 employees removed from the federal payroll, 286,000 (or 90%) were military cuts.
The statistics for America's defense during the Clinton years reveal the deep-seated animosity of the administration toward those who served in the military. The Army was cut from 18 divisions to 12. The Navy was reduced from 546 ships to 380. Air Force flight squadrons were cut from 76 to 50.
While the U.S. military was used as a 'meals on wheels' service by the Clinton administration in its nation building adventures, the military had its own humanitarian crises at home on its own bases. The pay freeze instituted by Clinton was imposed on a military in which 80 percent of all troops earned $30,000 per year or less. Food stamp applications soared and re-enlistment rates dropped.
In May 1996, Lt. Col. Robert Patterson was appointed Senior Military Aide to President Clinton, a role which required him to accompany Clinton at all times and carry (handcuffed to his wrist) what is known colloquially as the "nuclear football" - a black bag which contains the top-secret codes needed in case of nuclear war. Patterson fulfilled this role from 1996 to 1998. In addition, he was the operational commander for all military units assigned to the White House, including Air Force One, Marine One, Camp David, White House Transportation Agency and White House Mess. In his book Dereliction of Duty, Patterson writes that "[d]amn near all" of his military associates viewed the administration's military policies as "open-ended" and "rudderless."
As the carrier of the nuclear football, Patterson was astounded that Clinton repeatedly said on the campaign trail no American children would have to go to sleep with nuclear missiles pointed at them. Such a statement was patently untrue. Conversations he overheard in the car transporting the President most often did not revolve around foreign policy issues but subpoenas, lawyers, and executive privilege. The Clintonites had priorities, and national security was not one of them.
The nuclear football goes everywhere with the President. Several days after testifying in the Paula Jones deposition, Patterson went to exchange the codes for the football with Mr. Clinton, only to find that Clinton did not have them. "I don't have mine on me," said the President. "I'll track it down, guys, and get back to you." The codes could not be found that day.
Patterson notes that in the wake of the President's well-publicized troubles with women, the White House staff referred to attractive females as "security risks." It was then that he realized, "The biggest security risk was the President himself." In the aforementioned case of the lost security codes, for instance, one would think the administration's top priority would have been to locate them. But instead, the chief worry for John Podesta and White House deputy counsel Bruce Lindsey was that this story might find its way to the press.
One of Clinton's distinct talents was the empathetic "I feel your pain" charade. Consider, for instance, the 1998 flight above tornado-ravaged Florida as Clinton, White House spokesman Joe Lockhart, and Bruce Lindsey played cards aboard Marine One. Patterson recalls, "When it was time to align Marine One with the press helicopter for a picture, the President quickly peered out the window, feigning an interested and grief-stricken expression. The sole reason for the trip, in his mind apparently, was for that photograph."
Along with the lack of respect for the military went a failure to understand its purpose. One of Hillary Clinton's staffers remarked, during a drive through South Africa, that the First Lady was appalled by the poverty and wondered aloud whether the country did not have a military to do something about it. The Clintons saw the military primarily as a humanitarian organization, not as a professional force to defend the country.
Osama bin Laden and his terrorist-related activities were well known to the United States by 1995. Clinton had an opportunity to capture him in the fall of 1998, but was unavailable. When he was finally reached, further consultation was needed with various secretaries. The two-hour window in which bin Laden could have been caught was lost. Says Patterson, "This lost bin Laden hit typified the Clinton administration's ambivalent, indecisive way of dealing with terrorism. Ideologically, the Clinton administration was committed to the idea that most terrorists were misunderstood, had legitimate grievances, and could be appeased, which is why such military action as the administration authorized was so halfhearted, and ineffective, and designed more for 'show' than for honestly eliminating a threat."
Hits on Americans by Islamic fundamentalists associated bin Laden continued through the decade as the price for an administration that was derelict in its duties and traitorous in its effect. The nation was at risk while the commander-in-chief golfed, cavorted, dialogued or was otherwise unavailable for the ultimate task of defense against a foreign enemy.
Clinton chose not to support research and development for a Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) system to shield the United States against the specter of a missile attack by any of the world's numerous unstable, nuclear-capable regimes - in spite of a Donald Rumsfeld-headed commission's 1997 determination that nuclear threats to the American mainland from Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran were grave enough to warrant an immediate push to develop an effective defense system. Even the threat of an accidental first-strike ought to be of great concern to those entrusted with overseeing national security. As Bill Gertz reported in his 1999 book Betrayal: How the Clinton Administration Undermined American Security (which is the source for the information that fills out the remainder of this profile), on January 25, 1995 America came within a hairsbreadth of a Russian-launched nuclear attack - when Russian military forces temporarily mistook a Norwegian scientific rocket for an American ballistic missile headed for Russia. President Boris Yeltsin, for the first time in Russian history, went so far as to activate his Cheget, the display screen showing attack assessment data and containing the infamous button which, when pressed, authorizes the Russian military to initiate nuclear retaliation. Rep. Curt Weldon observed that Yeltsin was "one decision point away - less than several minutes away - from launching an all-out nuclear attack on the United States." Nevertheless, Clinton refused to deal with the unpleasant reality of nuclear threats from abroad. As columnist David Limbaugh observed, Clinton sought "to pacify truly dangerous nations with unilateral concessions, under the flawed notion that totalitarian regimes will return kindness for kindness." Moreover, wrote Limbaugh, Clinton was "afraid of rocking the international boat and mucking up his legacy again," and thus preferred to leave the nuclear dilemma for future administrations to address.
Clinton dismantled the Energy Department's Russian Fission monitoring program which had kept tabs on Russia's nuclear arsenal - at a time when CIA reports showed that Russia's alarmingly poor control over its 21,900 nuclear warheads made it more possible than ever that an accidental Russian strike could occur. Colonol Robert Bykov, a career strategic missile officer and member of the Russian parliament, candidly lamented that Russia "could launch an accidental nuclear strike on the United States in the matter of seconds it takes you to read these lines."
Clinton boasted about his diplomatic success in having persuaded the Russian military to detarget its intercontinental missiles away from American sites - the alleged crowning achievement of his 1994 summit with President Yeltsin. But in point of fact, the detargeting he lauded was an unverifiable, purely symbolic gesture that could easily be undone within a matter of fifteen minutes and provided not a scintilla of added safety for the American people. Moreover (notwithstanding Clinton's glowing reports of improved safeguards), Russia, in violation of its every diplomatic pledge, was engaged in a major arms buildup and the construction of a massive underground network of bunkers and command centers for waging nuclear war. In fact, Russia had already signed contracts to illegally sell advanced nuclear defense systems to such nations as India, China, and the United Arab Emirates. CIA Director George Tenet testified in 1998 that Russia was illegally giving enormous assistance to Iran's missile program as well. On July 22, 1998, Iran stunned the world by conducting the first test flight of its new Shahab-3 medium-range missile capable of carrying nuclear or biological weapons. Yet Clinton vetoed a 1998 piece of legislation that would have brought retaliatory sanctions against Russia.
Russia was by no means the only front where Clinton policies created conditions that left Americans in greater, rather than lesser, danger. For example, the President loosened America's longstanding ban on the export of supercomputers and other high-technology products to Communist China; this allowed Beijing to dramatically improve the potential accuracy of its intercontinental missiles, vaulting the Chinese missile program forward by at least ten years. A prime American beneficiary of this Clinton policy was Loral Space & Communications chairman Bernard Schwartz, the single largest contributor to the Clinton campaign and to the Democratic Party. In 1996 it was discovered that Chinese spies had stolen nuclear design secrets from the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the most damaging security breach in American history - giving China the ability to produce and deliver nuclear warheads via submarines, mobile missiles, and long-range missiles. Yet a 1998 Senate Governmental Affairs Committee concluded that foreign campaign contributions Clinton had received "were facilitated by individuals with extensive ties to China."
A July 1997 Energy Department report, which detailed even more comprehensively China's ongoing espionage, came to light on the eve of Clinton's scheduled summit with the Chinese president. Because this meeting was designed to dramatize his purported success in improving relations with Beijing, Clinton ordered the Energy Department to conceal from Congress its findings about the espionage. Unhappily for Clinton, the new information came to light while Congress was examining how sources tied to China's intelligence agency and military had helped him win the 1996 election - by illegally pouring rivers of money into his campaign coffers. Nevertheless, he boasted that, thanks to his administration's diplomacy, "there are no more nuclear missiles pointed at any children in the United States. I'm proud of that." But in April 1998 the CIA revealed that 13 of China's 18 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) were in fact targeted on the United States. This was an ominous revelation, particularly against the backdrop of Chinese General Xiong Guangkai's 1995 warning that Beijing was prepared to respond to any American interference in Chinese-Taiwanese conflicts by actually bombing the city of Los Angeles. Moreover, as the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency revealed, China was - in direct violation of U.S.-Russian agreements - trying to buy advanced ICBM technology from Russia and colossal ten-warhead missiles from Ukraine. China was also continuing its illegal transfer of missile technology and equipment to Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Libya, Syria, Pakistan, and Turkey. In 1998, U.S. intelligence reports warned of China's rapid progress in developing missiles capable of hitting targets 7,500 miles away. Clinton mandated that no official White House spokesmen tell the public about the menacing Chinese buildup. A military analyst at the Heritage Foundation eventually discovered it and went public with the information.
Another dismal chapter of Clinton administration foreign policy was the growing crisis in North Korea, whose military had already amassed enough plutonium to build nuclear weapons as early as 1994. When Korean leaders denied outside inspectors access to suspected weapons-production sites, Clinton negotiated a plan giving them ten years to dismantle their weapons program and five years to surrender their existing plutonium stockpile. He thereby shifted to a future President's administration the burden of eventually dealing with the potentially horrific consequences of a Korean buildup. In the spring of 1997, U.S. intelligence satellite photographs showed some 15,000 Korean workers building an immense underground nuclear facility in an area called Kumchangni. Clinton waited for more than a year, until July 1998, before informing Congress about the Kumchangni construction. Clinton remained opposed to SDI when even when America's National Security Agency learned in 1999 that Chinese scientists were aiding North Korea's satellite program for the guidance of long-range missiles.
Then there was the case of Iraq, which Defense Secretary William Cohen estimated to have "produced as much as 200 tons of VX [nerve gas], theoretically enough to kill every man, woman, and child on the face of the earth." Notwithstanding Cohen's sobering estimate, Clinton assented to a U.N.-brokered deal in the mid-1990s that greatly restricted inspectors' access to Saddam Hussein's "sensitive presidential locations" that were suspected of housing nuclear and biological weapons production plants. Afraid of being cornered into a potentially embarrassing public showdown with Saddam, Clinton elected to pacify the Iraqi dictator by intervening to dissuade U.N. inspectors from making surprise visits to the suspected weapons sites.
In short, Clinton placed his preoccupation with his own public image above the safety of his countrymen and the world at large. This was the most enduring legacy of Bill Clinton's presidency.
Part of this profile is adapted from the article "Dereliction of Duty," written by Mary Walsh and published by FrontPageMagazine.com on April 2, 2003.
* U.S. President, 1993-2001
* On December 19, 1998, became the second President in American history to be impeached
* His presidency was filled with foreign policy debacles that would compromise American national security for years to come .
The forty-second President of the United States was born William Jefferson Blythe on August 19, 1946, in Hope, Arkansas. His father, William Blythe, died in an automobile accident three months before the birth of the baby, who was adopted by his stepfather, Roger Clinton.
Bill Clinton attended Georgetown University, then Oxford, and eventually graduated from Yale Law School in 1973. Two years later he married Hillary Rodham, whom he had met at Yale. From 1977 to 1979 Clinton was the Attorney General of Arkansas. He was elected Governor of the state in 1978, lost a re-election bid in 1980, and then won back the office in 1982. He was thereafter re-elected in 1984, 1986, and 1990. In 1992 he defeated incumbent George H.W. Bush in the race for U.S. President, and in 1996 was elected to a second term when he defeated Republican Senator Bob Dole.
Clinton's presidency was marred by a long succession of scandals, including sexual harassment allegations, lawsuits, an accusation of rape, and, most famously, revelations that he had carried on a sexual affair with 21-year-old White House intern Monica Lewinsky. On December 19, 1998, after having perjured himself repeatedly before a grand jury, Clinton - on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice - became only the second President (after Andrew Johnson in 1868) in American history to be impeached, though he was not removed from office. In October 2001 he was disbarred from practicing law before the United States Supreme Court. He had previously had his Arkansas law license suspended for five years as a result of a disbarment lawsuit brought by a committee of the Arkansas State Supreme Court.
While the aforementioned scandals made bold headlines, Clinton's most significant failings as President concerned less publicized but far more ominous matters of national security. Clinton's loathing of the American military led to his failure in his primary responsibility: the protection of the American people. His actions with regard to military preparedness speak for themselves. In less than three years, deployments increased while manpower decreased from 2.1 million to 1.6 million. That decrease was the foundation upon which stood Al Gore's purported "reinvention" of government. Of the 305,000 employees removed from the federal payroll, 286,000 (or 90%) were military cuts.
The statistics for America's defense during the Clinton years reveal the deep-seated animosity of the administration toward those who served in the military. The Army was cut from 18 divisions to 12. The Navy was reduced from 546 ships to 380. Air Force flight squadrons were cut from 76 to 50.
While the U.S. military was used as a 'meals on wheels' service by the Clinton administration in its nation building adventures, the military had its own humanitarian crises at home on its own bases. The pay freeze instituted by Clinton was imposed on a military in which 80 percent of all troops earned $30,000 per year or less. Food stamp applications soared and re-enlistment rates dropped.
In May 1996, Lt. Col. Robert Patterson was appointed Senior Military Aide to President Clinton, a role which required him to accompany Clinton at all times and carry (handcuffed to his wrist) what is known colloquially as the "nuclear football" - a black bag which contains the top-secret codes needed in case of nuclear war. Patterson fulfilled this role from 1996 to 1998. In addition, he was the operational commander for all military units assigned to the White House, including Air Force One, Marine One, Camp David, White House Transportation Agency and White House Mess. In his book Dereliction of Duty, Patterson writes that "[d]amn near all" of his military associates viewed the administration's military policies as "open-ended" and "rudderless."
As the carrier of the nuclear football, Patterson was astounded that Clinton repeatedly said on the campaign trail no American children would have to go to sleep with nuclear missiles pointed at them. Such a statement was patently untrue. Conversations he overheard in the car transporting the President most often did not revolve around foreign policy issues but subpoenas, lawyers, and executive privilege. The Clintonites had priorities, and national security was not one of them.
The nuclear football goes everywhere with the President. Several days after testifying in the Paula Jones deposition, Patterson went to exchange the codes for the football with Mr. Clinton, only to find that Clinton did not have them. "I don't have mine on me," said the President. "I'll track it down, guys, and get back to you." The codes could not be found that day.
Patterson notes that in the wake of the President's well-publicized troubles with women, the White House staff referred to attractive females as "security risks." It was then that he realized, "The biggest security risk was the President himself." In the aforementioned case of the lost security codes, for instance, one would think the administration's top priority would have been to locate them. But instead, the chief worry for John Podesta and White House deputy counsel Bruce Lindsey was that this story might find its way to the press.
One of Clinton's distinct talents was the empathetic "I feel your pain" charade. Consider, for instance, the 1998 flight above tornado-ravaged Florida as Clinton, White House spokesman Joe Lockhart, and Bruce Lindsey played cards aboard Marine One. Patterson recalls, "When it was time to align Marine One with the press helicopter for a picture, the President quickly peered out the window, feigning an interested and grief-stricken expression. The sole reason for the trip, in his mind apparently, was for that photograph."
Along with the lack of respect for the military went a failure to understand its purpose. One of Hillary Clinton's staffers remarked, during a drive through South Africa, that the First Lady was appalled by the poverty and wondered aloud whether the country did not have a military to do something about it. The Clintons saw the military primarily as a humanitarian organization, not as a professional force to defend the country.
Osama bin Laden and his terrorist-related activities were well known to the United States by 1995. Clinton had an opportunity to capture him in the fall of 1998, but was unavailable. When he was finally reached, further consultation was needed with various secretaries. The two-hour window in which bin Laden could have been caught was lost. Says Patterson, "This lost bin Laden hit typified the Clinton administration's ambivalent, indecisive way of dealing with terrorism. Ideologically, the Clinton administration was committed to the idea that most terrorists were misunderstood, had legitimate grievances, and could be appeased, which is why such military action as the administration authorized was so halfhearted, and ineffective, and designed more for 'show' than for honestly eliminating a threat."
Hits on Americans by Islamic fundamentalists associated bin Laden continued through the decade as the price for an administration that was derelict in its duties and traitorous in its effect. The nation was at risk while the commander-in-chief golfed, cavorted, dialogued or was otherwise unavailable for the ultimate task of defense against a foreign enemy.
Clinton chose not to support research and development for a Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) system to shield the United States against the specter of a missile attack by any of the world's numerous unstable, nuclear-capable regimes - in spite of a Donald Rumsfeld-headed commission's 1997 determination that nuclear threats to the American mainland from Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran were grave enough to warrant an immediate push to develop an effective defense system. Even the threat of an accidental first-strike ought to be of great concern to those entrusted with overseeing national security. As Bill Gertz reported in his 1999 book Betrayal: How the Clinton Administration Undermined American Security (which is the source for the information that fills out the remainder of this profile), on January 25, 1995 America came within a hairsbreadth of a Russian-launched nuclear attack - when Russian military forces temporarily mistook a Norwegian scientific rocket for an American ballistic missile headed for Russia. President Boris Yeltsin, for the first time in Russian history, went so far as to activate his Cheget, the display screen showing attack assessment data and containing the infamous button which, when pressed, authorizes the Russian military to initiate nuclear retaliation. Rep. Curt Weldon observed that Yeltsin was "one decision point away - less than several minutes away - from launching an all-out nuclear attack on the United States." Nevertheless, Clinton refused to deal with the unpleasant reality of nuclear threats from abroad. As columnist David Limbaugh observed, Clinton sought "to pacify truly dangerous nations with unilateral concessions, under the flawed notion that totalitarian regimes will return kindness for kindness." Moreover, wrote Limbaugh, Clinton was "afraid of rocking the international boat and mucking up his legacy again," and thus preferred to leave the nuclear dilemma for future administrations to address.
Clinton dismantled the Energy Department's Russian Fission monitoring program which had kept tabs on Russia's nuclear arsenal - at a time when CIA reports showed that Russia's alarmingly poor control over its 21,900 nuclear warheads made it more possible than ever that an accidental Russian strike could occur. Colonol Robert Bykov, a career strategic missile officer and member of the Russian parliament, candidly lamented that Russia "could launch an accidental nuclear strike on the United States in the matter of seconds it takes you to read these lines."
Clinton boasted about his diplomatic success in having persuaded the Russian military to detarget its intercontinental missiles away from American sites - the alleged crowning achievement of his 1994 summit with President Yeltsin. But in point of fact, the detargeting he lauded was an unverifiable, purely symbolic gesture that could easily be undone within a matter of fifteen minutes and provided not a scintilla of added safety for the American people. Moreover (notwithstanding Clinton's glowing reports of improved safeguards), Russia, in violation of its every diplomatic pledge, was engaged in a major arms buildup and the construction of a massive underground network of bunkers and command centers for waging nuclear war. In fact, Russia had already signed contracts to illegally sell advanced nuclear defense systems to such nations as India, China, and the United Arab Emirates. CIA Director George Tenet testified in 1998 that Russia was illegally giving enormous assistance to Iran's missile program as well. On July 22, 1998, Iran stunned the world by conducting the first test flight of its new Shahab-3 medium-range missile capable of carrying nuclear or biological weapons. Yet Clinton vetoed a 1998 piece of legislation that would have brought retaliatory sanctions against Russia.
Russia was by no means the only front where Clinton policies created conditions that left Americans in greater, rather than lesser, danger. For example, the President loosened America's longstanding ban on the export of supercomputers and other high-technology products to Communist China; this allowed Beijing to dramatically improve the potential accuracy of its intercontinental missiles, vaulting the Chinese missile program forward by at least ten years. A prime American beneficiary of this Clinton policy was Loral Space & Communications chairman Bernard Schwartz, the single largest contributor to the Clinton campaign and to the Democratic Party. In 1996 it was discovered that Chinese spies had stolen nuclear design secrets from the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the most damaging security breach in American history - giving China the ability to produce and deliver nuclear warheads via submarines, mobile missiles, and long-range missiles. Yet a 1998 Senate Governmental Affairs Committee concluded that foreign campaign contributions Clinton had received "were facilitated by individuals with extensive ties to China."
A July 1997 Energy Department report, which detailed even more comprehensively China's ongoing espionage, came to light on the eve of Clinton's scheduled summit with the Chinese president. Because this meeting was designed to dramatize his purported success in improving relations with Beijing, Clinton ordered the Energy Department to conceal from Congress its findings about the espionage. Unhappily for Clinton, the new information came to light while Congress was examining how sources tied to China's intelligence agency and military had helped him win the 1996 election - by illegally pouring rivers of money into his campaign coffers. Nevertheless, he boasted that, thanks to his administration's diplomacy, "there are no more nuclear missiles pointed at any children in the United States. I'm proud of that." But in April 1998 the CIA revealed that 13 of China's 18 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) were in fact targeted on the United States. This was an ominous revelation, particularly against the backdrop of Chinese General Xiong Guangkai's 1995 warning that Beijing was prepared to respond to any American interference in Chinese-Taiwanese conflicts by actually bombing the city of Los Angeles. Moreover, as the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency revealed, China was - in direct violation of U.S.-Russian agreements - trying to buy advanced ICBM technology from Russia and colossal ten-warhead missiles from Ukraine. China was also continuing its illegal transfer of missile technology and equipment to Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Libya, Syria, Pakistan, and Turkey. In 1998, U.S. intelligence reports warned of China's rapid progress in developing missiles capable of hitting targets 7,500 miles away. Clinton mandated that no official White House spokesmen tell the public about the menacing Chinese buildup. A military analyst at the Heritage Foundation eventually discovered it and went public with the information.
Another dismal chapter of Clinton administration foreign policy was the growing crisis in North Korea, whose military had already amassed enough plutonium to build nuclear weapons as early as 1994. When Korean leaders denied outside inspectors access to suspected weapons-production sites, Clinton negotiated a plan giving them ten years to dismantle their weapons program and five years to surrender their existing plutonium stockpile. He thereby shifted to a future President's administration the burden of eventually dealing with the potentially horrific consequences of a Korean buildup. In the spring of 1997, U.S. intelligence satellite photographs showed some 15,000 Korean workers building an immense underground nuclear facility in an area called Kumchangni. Clinton waited for more than a year, until July 1998, before informing Congress about the Kumchangni construction. Clinton remained opposed to SDI when even when America's National Security Agency learned in 1999 that Chinese scientists were aiding North Korea's satellite program for the guidance of long-range missiles.
Then there was the case of Iraq, which Defense Secretary William Cohen estimated to have "produced as much as 200 tons of VX [nerve gas], theoretically enough to kill every man, woman, and child on the face of the earth." Notwithstanding Cohen's sobering estimate, Clinton assented to a U.N.-brokered deal in the mid-1990s that greatly restricted inspectors' access to Saddam Hussein's "sensitive presidential locations" that were suspected of housing nuclear and biological weapons production plants. Afraid of being cornered into a potentially embarrassing public showdown with Saddam, Clinton elected to pacify the Iraqi dictator by intervening to dissuade U.N. inspectors from making surprise visits to the suspected weapons sites.
In short, Clinton placed his preoccupation with his own public image above the safety of his countrymen and the world at large. This was the most enduring legacy of Bill Clinton's presidency.
Part of this profile is adapted from the article "Dereliction of Duty," written by Mary Walsh and published by FrontPageMagazine.com on April 2, 2003.
QUOTE(Salute_Liberty @ Mar 16 2006, 03:04 PM)
Besides, to spy on Vietnam, America would have been better off sending Clinton to a University in Paris. In the days of the Vietnam War, if there were anti-war activities supporting the anti-draft movement in America, it was at the London School of Economics. Believe me, the majority of students were otherwise having a great time competing against one another and sporting the 1960's fashion looks, and those old enough were trying to sneak into go-go clubs, and the celebrated new Playboy's Club to gather those hot-hot Playboy club souvenirs! Oh yes, careless of what was really happening to Vietnam deaths out there didn't hit them hard to home. There was just too much high-fashion attraction and fun during those days to distract even the most serious student. My brother then was at Oxford U, too - same time as Clinton. My mom was going raving crazy to get him focused - in fact, sold off his Mini-Cooper, and allowed him a mini-weekly allowance to keep him focused. As for my sisters and myself, we would even slip to Chelsea where the Mary Quant and Bibba were a must between travelling home from school.
I don't really think Clinton worked for the CIA as a Rhodes Scholar.
But if he had been, that would not preclude the CIA from recruiting a person in other locations. Clinton probably wanted to go where he went, and then the CIA recruited him.
QUOTE(jimiray @ Mar 16 2006, 03:05 PM)
Do you know the Oath a Rhodes Scholar takes by chance?
Do you realize that England had and always have many elite societies to encorage brains to compete to join? Boy, Cambridge and Oxford Unis are flooded with sorts where oaths are common to their goals. I don't know how many my own brother was installed into and the no. of oaths he had undertaken. All the family knew that we stood proudly as we watched him each time he was awarded with membership. It made my mom and dad very proud that he did his academics well.
QUOTE(jimiray @ Mar 16 2006, 08:12 AM)
http://www.deadlawyers.com/clinton.htm
November 30, 1993
Ed Willey, Real Estate Attorney, Clinton Fund Raiser, died of a shotgun blast to the head. His body was found by Dick Cheney in a deeply wooded area of Virginia. The death was ruled a suicide; no note was found, nor were there any dead quail in the vicinity. Mr. Willey died on the same day his wife was allegedly assaulted in the White House by Bill Clinton while wearing a blue dress she had borrowed from Monica Lewinski.
Thats a start
November 30, 1993
Ed Willey, Real Estate Attorney, Clinton Fund Raiser, died of a shotgun blast to the head. His body was found by Dick Cheney in a deeply wooded area of Virginia. The death was ruled a suicide; no note was found, nor were there any dead quail in the vicinity. Mr. Willey died on the same day his wife was allegedly assaulted in the White House by Bill Clinton while wearing a blue dress she had borrowed from Monica Lewinski.
Thats a start
A few edits seemed appropriate...
QUOTE(Salute_Liberty @ Mar 16 2006, 02:13 PM)
Do you realize that England had and always have many elite societies to encorage brains to compete to join? Boy, Cambridge and Oxford Unis are flooded with sorts where oaths are common to their goals. I don't know how many my own brother was installed into and the no. of oaths he had undertaken. All the family knew that we stood proudly as we watched him each time he was awarded with membership. It made my mom and dad very proud that he did his academics well.
Does that mean you don't know the Oath?
QUOTE(Sunshine @ Mar 16 2006, 01:27 PM)
There's a rumor that Clinton was recruited by the CIA as a Rhodes Scholar to spy on vietnam protestors overseas. You can google for it I believe.
I think he was too busy protesting the Vietnam war to see what a bunch of Dutchmen were doing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhodes_Scholarship
"The requirements for applicants are high. Rhodes' legacy specified four standards by which applicants were to be judged:
literary and scholastic attainments;
energy to use one's talents to the full, as exemplified by fondness for and success in sports;
truth, courage, devotion to duty, sympathy for and protection of the weak, kindliness, unselfishness and fellowship;
moral force of character and instincts to lead, and to take an interest in one's fellow beings."
Gosh, no wonder Dubya never qualified.
"The requirements for applicants are high. Rhodes' legacy specified four standards by which applicants were to be judged:
literary and scholastic attainments;
energy to use one's talents to the full, as exemplified by fondness for and success in sports;
truth, courage, devotion to duty, sympathy for and protection of the weak, kindliness, unselfishness and fellowship;
moral force of character and instincts to lead, and to take an interest in one's fellow beings."
Gosh, no wonder Dubya never qualified.
QUOTE(Pie @ Mar 16 2006, 02:58 PM)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhodes_Scholarship
"The requirements for applicants are high. Rhodes' legacy specified four standards by which applicants were to be judged:
literary and scholastic attainments;
energy to use one's talents to the full, as exemplified by fondness for and success in sports;
truth, courage, devotion to duty, sympathy for and protection of the weak, kindliness, unselfishness and fellowship;
moral force of character and instincts to lead, and to take an interest in one's fellow beings."
Gosh, no wonder Dubya never qualified.
"The requirements for applicants are high. Rhodes' legacy specified four standards by which applicants were to be judged:
literary and scholastic attainments;
energy to use one's talents to the full, as exemplified by fondness for and success in sports;
truth, courage, devotion to duty, sympathy for and protection of the weak, kindliness, unselfishness and fellowship;
moral force of character and instincts to lead, and to take an interest in one's fellow beings."
Gosh, no wonder Dubya never qualified.
Thanks Pie, for some reason wiki is the last place I go.
Kris Kristofferson was a Rhodes Scholar? I never knew that !
Wesley Clarke too
I'm seriously looking for that supposed oath though, if there really is one?
I read about it a long time ago and can't remember where.
QUOTE(jimiray @ Mar 16 2006, 05:14 PM)
Thanks Pie, for some reason wiki is the last place I go.
Kris Kristofferson was a Rhodes Scholar? I never knew that !
Wesley Clarke too
I'm seriously looking for that supposed oath though, if there really is one?
I read about it a long time ago and can't remember where.
Kris Kristofferson was a Rhodes Scholar? I never knew that !
Wesley Clarke too
I'm seriously looking for that supposed oath though, if there really is one?
I read about it a long time ago and can't remember where.
Now if Kris Kristofferson had been president, the world would be a much better place
The Wes-Bill connection is why some people said he was Hillary's person used to stop Dean but got in too late. The Clark people said that was only a rumor started
by John Kerry to derail Clark and Dean
It appears the 2 were like friendly rivals of each other throughout their lives
This may look a little off topic at first but it's not so , bear with me. It takes a lot to break the matrix 
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/P...iii_3-3-86.html
Barry Seal set up for murder.
-------------------------------------------------------
The following text is from a photocopy of a letter that
was originally hand-delivered to U.S. Attorney General
Edwin Meese III by Louisiana Attorney General William
J. Guste, Jr., on March 3, 1986.
STATE OF LOUISIANA
Department of Justice
WILLIAM J. GUSTE, JR. March 3, 1986 7TH FLOOR
Attorney General 234 Loyola Building
New Orleans 70122-2096
Honorable Ed Meese
Attorney General of the United States
U.S. Department of Justice
Washington, D.C.
Dear Attorney General Meese:
This is to formally request that the United States
Justice Department undertake a complete investigation with
respect to the government's relationship and handling of
informant Adler B. "Barry" Seal, who was murdered gangland
style in Baton Rouge on Wednesday, February 19, 1986.
"Barry" Seal, as he was know in life, was a former
TWA pilot checked out to fly 747 jets. He went into the
drug smuggling business in the 1970's illegally bringing
first marijuana and then cocaine into the United States -
in ever increasing quantities.
When arrested in 1983 and subsequently convicted,
he was probably one of the biggest drug smugglers ever brought
before a court in the history of our country. By his own
admission, he had flown over 100 flights each bringing in
between 600 and 1200 pounds of cocaine. At a wholesale
volume of an average of $50,000 a pound, he had smuggled
between $3 billion and $5 billion of drugs into the United
States.
His smuggling brought dope to thousands whose
lives have been adversely affected by it. He had brought
enough cocaine into this country to give a "high" to almost
one hundred million users.
And he earned between $60 million and $100 million
by criminal activity.
I, for one, was shocked when I learned of his
death. In October, as Chairman of the Subcommittee on Nar-
cotics and Drug Interdiction of the President's Commission
on Organized Crime, I had presided over a seminar at which
Barry Seal had testified.
His purpose there was to inform the Commission
and top United States officials of the methods and equipment
used by drug smugglers. Present at that seminar and question-
ing him in closed session afterwards were: Jack Lawn, Admin-
istrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration; William
Van Raab, Commander of U.S. Customs; Admiral James Gracey,
Commander of the U.S. Coast Guard; Howard B. Gehring, Director
of the National Narcotics Border Interdiction System; Lt.
General R. Dean Tice, Director of the Defense Department's
Task Force on Drug Enforcement; Paul Gorman, former U.S.
Army General and military commander in the Caribbean; and
U.S. Congressman Glen English, D-Oklahoma.
I give this information to establish that he was
a heinous criminal. At the same time, for his own purposes,
he had made himself an extremely valuable witness and infor-
mant in the country's fight against illegal drugs. He had
cooperated with the government in testifying before federal
grand juries, the President's Commission and was scheduled
to be a key witness in the government's case against Jorge
Ochoa-Vasques, the head of one of the largest drug cartels
in the world.
Barry Seal's murder suggests the need for an indepth
but rapid investigation into a number of areas.
WHY WAS SUCH AN IMPORTANT WITNESS NOT GIVEN PROTEC-
TION WHETHER HE WANTED IT OR NOT? Barry Seal refused to
go into the Federal Witness Protection Program. But he
could have been imprisoned in some town in America under
an assumed identity.
Instead he was given sentences in cases against
him in Florida and in Louisiana that permitted him to live
in a Halfway House in Baton Rouge and required him to report
daily to the Salvation Army there. Why did the government
permit this after it was made aware of the fact that Ochoa
investigators had been following Seal and that these inves-
tigators were actually in court at the time his sentence
was announced.
Prior to his death, Seal said that having to report
to the Salvation Army everyday at the same time made him
a "clay pidgeon".
He virtually predicted his assassination.
After he was sentenced to 10 years, why was Seal
given a reduction of sentence under Rule 35 in Florida
cases and set free prior to his completing his agreed upon
task which was to testify against the Jorge Ochoa cartel?
Why did the government expose its main witness
to extermination?
Despite the enormity of his crimes, he actually
served 3 or 4 months in jail and a month in a Halfway House.
Why?
During the time that Seal was cooperating with
the DEA and the Justice Department and acting as an informant,
how was he supervised, regulated and controlled? Was it
done according to the DEA Agents' Manual for dealing with
informants?
Was Seal allowed to travel extensively in the
company of potential violators without surveillance?
Was Seal allowed to work in an undercover capacity
in Arkansas and Louisiana without notification to Louisiana
and Arkansas officials?
How were the contraband drugs he brought into
the United States while cooperating with the DEA regulated
and controlled?
Was Seal's drug smuggling organization allowed
to remain in tact during and after the time of his cooperation
with the government? If so, why?
Was he permitted to keep hundreds of thousands
of dollars which he made while working for the DEA by actually
smuggling drugs into the United States? How was such money
accounted for?
What effort was made under the RICO Statute to
recover the profits and equipment Seal had acquired from
illegal smuggling?
What was the nature of the cooperation between
the state and federal law enforcement agencies in Louisiana
and those in Florida?
The transcript of the testimony in connection
with the Rule 35 hearing before Judge Roettger in Florida
has been held in camera. Now that Seal is dead, cannot
this transcript be made public?
All of these questions, and others that will undoubt-
edly develop, cry for investigation.
And law enforcement agencies and the public have
a right to know the answers.
The answers could very likely tell us how the
government might better protect future valuable witnesses
whether they want protection or not.
The answers might very likely tell us how the
country could better deal with a heinous criminal, despite
his cooperation with the government after he got caught.
I trust this request will receive a positive response.
Sincerely,
W I L L I A M J . G U S T E J R .
WILLIAM J. GUSTE, JR.
Attorney General of Louisiana
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/P...iii_3-3-86.html
Barry Seal set up for murder.
-------------------------------------------------------
The following text is from a photocopy of a letter that
was originally hand-delivered to U.S. Attorney General
Edwin Meese III by Louisiana Attorney General William
J. Guste, Jr., on March 3, 1986.
STATE OF LOUISIANA
Department of Justice
WILLIAM J. GUSTE, JR. March 3, 1986 7TH FLOOR
Attorney General 234 Loyola Building
New Orleans 70122-2096
Honorable Ed Meese
Attorney General of the United States
U.S. Department of Justice
Washington, D.C.
Dear Attorney General Meese:
This is to formally request that the United States
Justice Department undertake a complete investigation with
respect to the government's relationship and handling of
informant Adler B. "Barry" Seal, who was murdered gangland
style in Baton Rouge on Wednesday, February 19, 1986.
"Barry" Seal, as he was know in life, was a former
TWA pilot checked out to fly 747 jets. He went into the
drug smuggling business in the 1970's illegally bringing
first marijuana and then cocaine into the United States -
in ever increasing quantities.
When arrested in 1983 and subsequently convicted,
he was probably one of the biggest drug smugglers ever brought
before a court in the history of our country. By his own
admission, he had flown over 100 flights each bringing in
between 600 and 1200 pounds of cocaine. At a wholesale
volume of an average of $50,000 a pound, he had smuggled
between $3 billion and $5 billion of drugs into the United
States.
His smuggling brought dope to thousands whose
lives have been adversely affected by it. He had brought
enough cocaine into this country to give a "high" to almost
one hundred million users.
And he earned between $60 million and $100 million
by criminal activity.
I, for one, was shocked when I learned of his
death. In October, as Chairman of the Subcommittee on Nar-
cotics and Drug Interdiction of the President's Commission
on Organized Crime, I had presided over a seminar at which
Barry Seal had testified.
His purpose there was to inform the Commission
and top United States officials of the methods and equipment
used by drug smugglers. Present at that seminar and question-
ing him in closed session afterwards were: Jack Lawn, Admin-
istrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration; William
Van Raab, Commander of U.S. Customs; Admiral James Gracey,
Commander of the U.S. Coast Guard; Howard B. Gehring, Director
of the National Narcotics Border Interdiction System; Lt.
General R. Dean Tice, Director of the Defense Department's
Task Force on Drug Enforcement; Paul Gorman, former U.S.
Army General and military commander in the Caribbean; and
U.S. Congressman Glen English, D-Oklahoma.
I give this information to establish that he was
a heinous criminal. At the same time, for his own purposes,
he had made himself an extremely valuable witness and infor-
mant in the country's fight against illegal drugs. He had
cooperated with the government in testifying before federal
grand juries, the President's Commission and was scheduled
to be a key witness in the government's case against Jorge
Ochoa-Vasques, the head of one of the largest drug cartels
in the world.
Barry Seal's murder suggests the need for an indepth
but rapid investigation into a number of areas.
WHY WAS SUCH AN IMPORTANT WITNESS NOT GIVEN PROTEC-
TION WHETHER HE WANTED IT OR NOT? Barry Seal refused to
go into the Federal Witness Protection Program. But he
could have been imprisoned in some town in America under
an assumed identity.
Instead he was given sentences in cases against
him in Florida and in Louisiana that permitted him to live
in a Halfway House in Baton Rouge and required him to report
daily to the Salvation Army there. Why did the government
permit this after it was made aware of the fact that Ochoa
investigators had been following Seal and that these inves-
tigators were actually in court at the time his sentence
was announced.
Prior to his death, Seal said that having to report
to the Salvation Army everyday at the same time made him
a "clay pidgeon".
He virtually predicted his assassination.
After he was sentenced to 10 years, why was Seal
given a reduction of sentence under Rule 35 in Florida
cases and set free prior to his completing his agreed upon
task which was to testify against the Jorge Ochoa cartel?
Why did the government expose its main witness
to extermination?
Despite the enormity of his crimes, he actually
served 3 or 4 months in jail and a month in a Halfway House.
Why?
During the time that Seal was cooperating with
the DEA and the Justice Department and acting as an informant,
how was he supervised, regulated and controlled? Was it
done according to the DEA Agents' Manual for dealing with
informants?
Was Seal allowed to travel extensively in the
company of potential violators without surveillance?
Was Seal allowed to work in an undercover capacity
in Arkansas and Louisiana without notification to Louisiana
and Arkansas officials?
How were the contraband drugs he brought into
the United States while cooperating with the DEA regulated
and controlled?
Was Seal's drug smuggling organization allowed
to remain in tact during and after the time of his cooperation
with the government? If so, why?
Was he permitted to keep hundreds of thousands
of dollars which he made while working for the DEA by actually
smuggling drugs into the United States? How was such money
accounted for?
What effort was made under the RICO Statute to
recover the profits and equipment Seal had acquired from
illegal smuggling?
What was the nature of the cooperation between
the state and federal law enforcement agencies in Louisiana
and those in Florida?
The transcript of the testimony in connection
with the Rule 35 hearing before Judge Roettger in Florida
has been held in camera. Now that Seal is dead, cannot
this transcript be made public?
All of these questions, and others that will undoubt-
edly develop, cry for investigation.
And law enforcement agencies and the public have
a right to know the answers.
The answers could very likely tell us how the
government might better protect future valuable witnesses
whether they want protection or not.
The answers might very likely tell us how the
country could better deal with a heinous criminal, despite
his cooperation with the government after he got caught.
I trust this request will receive a positive response.
Sincerely,
W I L L I A M J . G U S T E J R .
WILLIAM J. GUSTE, JR.
Attorney General of Louisiana
And Now a Little Ollie North 
It get's better,,,,, or worse?
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/P...icts_north.html
Oliver North Lied About Drug Trips.
Read the first three paragraphs.
"North Didn't Relay Drug Tips; DEA Says It Finds No Evidence
Reagan Aide Talked to Agency"
By, Lorraine Adams
October 22, 1994
WASHINGTON POST
For almost a decade, Oliver L. North has been dogged by
questions about what he did to make sure U.S. government flights to
help the Nicaraguan contras were free of drug traffickers.
In personal diaries North kept in 1985, he wrote down a trusted
aide's tip that drugs were being brought into the United States on a
contra supply plane. He recorded the type of aircraft and a stop on
its route - New Orleans. In testimony he gave to Congress in 1987,
North said he gave that information to the Drug Enforcement
Administration.
But the DEA, when asked to verify North's testimony, issued a
statement Friday saying, "There's no evidence he talked to anyone.
We can't find the person he talked to, if he did talk to them.
There's no record of the person he talked to."
Along with the new DEA comment, government records,
depositions, hearing testimony and interviews with former officials,
the diary entries again raise questions about what North did to
maintain the integrity of the contra supply efforts that he oversaw
as a National Security Council aide.
North declined to grant an interview for this story, and he did
not respond to written questions asking him to explain the diary
entries and identify whom in the DEA he told.
He issued a statement in which he said: "I did all in my power
to ensure that when ever the slightest rumor or concern was raised
about drugs, the matter was immediately referred to the cognizant
authorities in our government."
But top law enforcement officials - including the former heads
of the DEA and U.S. Customs Service - who met with North at the time
on a variety of issues said in recent interviews that he did not
pass the information on to them.
Former State Department, CIA and White House officials also say
North did not tell them about the New Orleans plane. Nor, they said,
did North tell them of other information - relayed to him by the
same aide in a memo - about an aircraft and crew listed in law
enforcement records as being suspected of drug trafficking. As a
result, former State Department officials said, that plane and crew
continued to be used as official carriers of U.S. government
humanitarian supplies to the contras.
Many of these officials, when recently read the diary entries
and memos, expressed surprise at how much North knew.
The diary entries are but a fragment of the Iran-contra affair,
in which North and others secretly sold weapons to Iran to free
American hostages, then diverted profits from those sales to a
congressionally banned effort to arm the contras fighting the
Marxist Sandinista government in Nicaragua.
In the campaign by Republican nominee North to unseat Sen.
Charles S. Robb (D-Va.), a major issue has been character. Polls,
and the candidates themselves, have repeatedly raised questions
about Robb's honesty about his personal life and North's candor
about the Iran-contra affair.
Drugs have been a minor but persistent theme. North has accused
President Clinton of avoiding the war on drugs and reminded voters
that Robb was present at Virginia Beach parties where drugs were
used.
In his written statement Friday, North said, "It is a moral
outrage and a cheap political dirty trick by desperate opponents, to
even suggest that I or anyone in the Reagan Administration, in any
way, shape or form, ever tolerated the trafficking of illegal
substances or any such activities."
Drug-Trafficking Allegations
In 1979, the Marxist-led Sandinista National Liberation front
toppled the dictatorship in Nicaragua. President Reagan authorized
covert CIA support to the anti-Sandinista groups, or contras, two
years later.
The same year, in an unrelated move, then-Marine Maj. Oliver L.
North was detailed to the National Security Council staff. North
worked on various projects - among them counterterrorism and the
Grenada invasion.
In 1984, Congress prohibited direct or indirect military
support to the contras, and North became the administration's "point
of contact" with the contras at the request, North said, of CIA
Director William J. Casey and National Security Adviser Robert C.
McFarlane.
In April 1986, published media reports said federal
investigators were looking into possible illegal support for the
contras, some of it financed by drug-smuggling. A Senate
subcommittee chaired by Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) began looking
into those allegations.
On Nov. 25, 1986, Reagan held a news conference in which he
said he had not been fully informed about North's operations,
specifically the diversion of profits from Iranian arms sale to the
contras. He announced North's dismissal.
Two years later, the Kerry committee's final report concluded,
"It is clear that individuals who provided support for the contras
were involved in drug trafficking." A Kerry staff aide said the
committee found evidence, including North's diary entries, that
North knew about the trafficking.
Another subcommittee, chaired by Rep. William J. Hughes
(D-N.J.), ran out of time and money before concluding its
investigation, Hughes said, but "found that there were ties between
the contras and drugs," though North's role was not completely
investigated.
In his written statement Friday, North said, "Special
Prosecutor Lawrence Walsh conducted a multi-million dollar,
seven-year inquiry into every conceivable aspect of my life and
never once made any such charge or allegation."
Sources close to the Walsh investigation said the fact that
questions about drugs and North were not acted upon or fully
explored was in no sense an exoneration. The prosecutors did not
receive North's voluminous notebooks until he took the stand in his
1989 trial, which made questioning him about them difficult.
North ultimately was convicted of three felonies - overturned
on appeal - but after his trial, the Walsh probe's focus shifted
away from him.
Between 1984 and late 1986, when the alleged drug trafficking
was occurring, there were many efforts to help the contras. During
that period, North was trying to control those efforts. Some
involved military supplies and were secret. One public effort was
carried out by an agency created by Congress in 1985 called the
Nicaraguan Humanitarian Assistance Office, or NHAO. Based in the
State Department, its job was to get $27 million in strictly
humanitarian supplies to the contras.
North flew occasionally to Central America for contra-related
meetings, but for the most part, he kept track of the secret and
public efforts from his office in the Old Executive Office Building
with a bank of telephones, a computer and a spiral-bound notebook
where he kept a daily diary.
North relied on Robert Owen, who traveled among Central
America, Miami, New Orleans and Washington, to be his "eyes and
ears," as North once described him.
A former staff member of Sen. Dan Quayle's and a fervent
contra supporter, Owen worked for the contra leadership in 1984. He
helped them, he said, "in any way I could," including bringing lists
of needed arms to North and distributing money, provided to him by
North, to contra leaders.
At North's urging, NHAO hired Owen as a contractor. By day,
Owen worked on the humanitarian effort, and in his off-hours,
unbeknownst to NHAO's director, Robert W. Duemling, Owen reported to
North and helped with the secret weapons supply network.
Duemling said NHAO reported, as a practical matter, to a group
whose key members were North, in the National Security Council;
Elliott Abrams, assistant secretary of state for Latin American
affairs; and Alan Fiers, chief of the CIA's Central American Task
Force.
NHAO officials say they didn't know about North's covert weapon
supply. They knew little about the contras' own effort to ship
weapons with aircraft they leased or owned. They knew little of
efforts of private citizens - including exiled Cubans and
paramilitary groups.
Owen's memos from the period are filled with details about all
of the groups. He shared with North suspicions about some of the
contra leaders' drug ties, political maneuvering among the groups,
the contras' desperate need for arms.
Just before NHAO was up and running, after meeting with Owen on
Aug. 9, 1985, North wrote in his diary: "Honduran DC-6 which is
being used for runs out of New Orleans is probably being used for
drug runs into U.S."
The information apparently stayed in North's mind, because the
next day he wrote, "Meeting with A.C. --Name of DEA person in New
Orleans re bust on Mario DC-6."
A.C. could be contra leader Adolfo Calero, brother of Mario,
who was in charge of a warehouse and shipping operation for the
contras in New Orleans. Pilots familiar with contra supply
operations say Mario Calero regularly used a DC-6, based in
Honduras, that made runs between New Orleans and Central America.
Mario Calero is deceased.
The entry's references to a DEA person in New Orleans and a
bust are cryptic. Local, state and federal law enforcement agencies,
when asked by The Washington Post to search for any records of drug
trafficking by Mario Calero, or by a company associated with him,
say they could find none.
In a closed session before Congress in 1987, North testified
that he reported to the DEA the information that the DC-6 might be
making drug runs into the United States. In the session, which has
since been declassified, North was read the entry, and responded:
"It was a DC-6 registered in {name of country} and someone had told
me - in fact it was probably Rob Owen who told me that. I turned it
over to the DEA immediately."
Jack Lawn, the former head of the DEA, talked to North on
several occasions in 1985 and 1986, mostly about DEA informants in
the Middle East. But "Ollie did not provide any intelligence to me"
about the New Orleans tip, Lawn said.
Robert Bryden, then the DEA special agent in charge of the New
Orleans office, said neither he nor anyone in his office ever
received any drug information from North, the White House or anyone
else concerning Mario Calero or any DC-6. Bryden said he would liked
to have known.
"Our business is drugs, so if somebody knows about an airplane
using drugs, we would like to know about it," Bryden said.
Former national security adviser McFarlane, North's boss at the
time, said North did not relay the drug suspicions about the DC-6 to
him.
"He never reported it to me," said McFarlane, who has harshly
criticized North since their work together for Reagan. "He certainly
should have reported anything which is a violation of U.S. law,
which it sounds like that was."
William Von Raab, then head of U.S. Customs, said he is
"absolutely stunned" by the North notebook entries. "I had dealings
with North. I was a trusted conservative guy. While extremely
law-abiding, I was on their side ideologically. He should have told
me. Were any information like that available, as a courtesy, as a
routine practice, he should have told me."
Former deputy CIA director Robert Gates also was surprised by
the entries. He said he would expect anyone provided with such
intelligence "to immediately go ballistic, to talk to Von Raab, to
DEA. A normal person would have reacted strongly."
NHAO director Duemling and five other NHAO officials
interviewed said North never alerted them to any concerns about
Mario Calero or any aircraft of his associated with drug
trafficking. "On the contrary, he wanted me to work with Mario,"
Duemling said.
A former ambassador and a career Foreign Service officer,
Duemling admits he knew little about getting supplies to a rebel
force in hostile territory, or about the contras. He said that he
relied on North, as an expert on the contras, to guide him and that
North instructed him not to disturb the contras' logistics
arrangement.
Duemling said he believed North should have relayed to him the
Owen leads about drug trafficking.
"I'm disturbed and disappointed that senior U.S. officials
would be guilty of this kind of malfeasance," Duemling said.
"We're talking about the business of the U.S. government, about
senior officials in the U.S. government. We're talking about the
responsibility of implementing the foreign policy of the U.S.
government. These are not things you should be playing games with."
Abrams, one of the three officials including North whom NHAO
reported to, said he couldn't answer why North didn't tell Duemling,
but said the drug allegations concerned "air charter companies and
you're dealing with a lot of fly-by-night operations."
"It was really not easy to find out what was the last previous
trip of that plane or what would happen to that plane when they were
done with it," he said. "And legally speaking, that was none of our
business."
He said that when he and North found out about two people in
the contras' own organization who were suspected of drug
trafficking, they were kicked out. Abrams would not name them on the
record. "We had no proof, just rumors, and the rumors were enough
for us to act," he said.
North's involvement with NHAO went beyond providing advice.
Over time, North piggybacked his arms effort onto the publicly
sanctioned humanitarian effort.
"It became fairly clear to me as time went on, by January
(1986), what was really happening was Ollie was hijacking the NHAO
operation," Fiers testified in a 1992 trial.
That system, documented in numerous Iran-contra records, worked
like this: NHAO aircraft loaded with humanitarian cargo flew from
New Orleans and Miami to Ilopango Air Base in El Salvador, and
sometimes Aguacate, Honduras.
There, humanitarian supplies were offloaded and stored. The
NHAO planes then became part of North's secret operation and were
loaded with military supplies for flights to contra camps in
Honduras or for air drops into Nicaragua.
NHAO paid only for the humanitarian leg of the flights. The
military leg was paid for from Swiss bank accounts North set up to
finance the covert operations.
Another Owen Warning
Six months after Owen warned North about Mario Calero and the
DC-6, he warned him about an NHAO contractor.
Owen's memo of Feb. 10, 1986, reads: "No doubt you know the
DC-4 Foley got was used at one time to run drugs, and part of the
crew had criminal records. Nice group the Boys choose. The company
is also one that Mario has been involved with using in the past,
only they had a quick name change. Incompetence reigns."
The only DC-4 listed in NHAO records was one supplied by
Miami-based Vortex Air International Inc. One of the company's key
officers, who is mentioned in North's diaries, has a long record of
serious drug allegations.
In testimony to the Iran-contra committee about his DC-4 memo,
Owen identified Foley as Pat Foley of Summit Aviation, which still
operates in Middleton, Del. Owen identified "the Boys" as the CIA.
In a recent interview, Foley denied the implication in Owen's
memo that he worked for the CIA, but agreed he gave NHAO a list of
air cargo companies that could be hired, including Vortex. He said
he was unaware of any drug allegations against the company.
Those drug connections surfaced when the DC-4 had engine
trouble on an NHAO flight and had to land on San Andreas Island in
Colombia, where it was detained. Colombian authorities had
discovered that the plane was flagged in international law
enforcement records as having been used to fly drugs and that some
of the crew had criminal records.
Owen, who recounted that incident in testimony to the
Iran-contra committee, said his concern was: "In my mind, it was
stupidity to use a plane that at one time had been used, or at least
targeted, as having carried drugs, and also it was stupidity to use
people who had a criminal record."
Frank McNeil, then senior deputy assistant secretary of state
for intelligence and research, confirmed Owen's account in an
interview. According to McNeil, Colombian police contacted the U.S.
Embassy in Colombia, and it cabled the State Department.
"We queried the CIA, and after they did some checking, they
responded, something to the effect, `It's unfortunate, but it's
pretty hard to find folks to do this work,' " McNeil said recently.
McNeil would not reveal the identity of the CIA official
involved. The emergency landing was suspicious, he said, because the
island was a shipping point for drugs. After the Iran-contra
investigations, McNeil learned the group had continued to supply the
contras. "The whole thing is too sleazy for words," he said. "It is
not a happy chapter in American history."
Owen's warnings about Vortex's drug problems didn't end its
NHAO flights, and North's notebooks show that he was aware they were
still working for the agency.
The name of Vortex, and one of its officers, who had numerous
drug charges - Michael Bernard Palmer - appears twice.
The diary entries show North had detailed knowledge of Palmer
and Vortex's NHAO flights. On April 22, 1986, North wrote: "Call
from Rob. 900 Uniforms, 1800 Pr boots, 1700 ponchos, 1700
suspenders, SOX, belts, hats) Vortex/Miami."
Two days later, a second entry lists a Vortex flight's
destination, the type of aircraft, identifying tail number, pilot,
and departure and arrival times. It ends with Palmer's name and
phone number.
During the congressional inquiries into the contra drug link,
Palmer was an important witness. Under a grant of immunity in 1988,
he testified that he flew for major drug organizations between 1977
and 1985, making frequent runs between Colombia and the United
States.
Before Vortex's contract with NHAO, Palmer, himself a pilot,
landed in a Colombian jail on drug charges, according to grand jury
testimony in one of Palmer's later drug cases. He was released in
Colombia under circumstances never fully explained.
Palmer was indicted in Detroit in June 1986 while Vortex was
still under contract to NHAO. The Detroit indictment named Palmer in
a conspiracy to import and distribute marijuana, beginning in 1977
and ending in June 1986.
In 1989, a federal indictment in Louisiana charged Palmer with
helping to bring 300,000 pounds of marijuana into the United States
from South America in a 1982 operation.
The Detroit prosecutors would not explain why that case was
dropped. In the Louisiana case, Palmer boasted to prosecutors that
his drug running was sanctioned by the government, and the
prosecutor, Howard Parker, said he dropped the charges to avoid a
sideshow.
The idea that Palmer worked secretly for a government agency,
even after his NHAO contract was over, is supported by declassified
Customs records. The documents, supplied to congressional committees
looking into alleged contra drug ties, show Palmer was working in
1987 for a government agency, the name of which was blacked out.
The records describe an incident in which Palmer protested a
Customs inspection of a DC-6 that Vortex was servicing at Miami
International Airport. The records say: "Normal U.S. Customs Service
procedures for incoming flights are expedited" at the request of the
unnamed agency.
The unnamed agency's officials knew of the open drug charges
against Palmer, but "our records do not go beyond allegations, the
substance of which did not preclude us from using these
individuals," the Customs records state.
Palmer said in a recent interview that he didn't know North. The
drug cases were dropped, he said, because he was not guilty of the
charges.
Vortex was not the only company used by NHAO with an officer
accused of drug trafficking.
During the time NHAO was operating and hiring air cargo
companies, Duemling and NHAO's attorney said they requested
background information from the Justice Department about the NHAO
contractors, but never received a reply.
It wasn't until after NHAO had closed down, when Sen. Kerry's
subcommittee published its report, that it became clear that several
cargo carriers and suppliers NHAO had used were either owned or
operated by individuals under investigation by federal law
enforcement for drug trafficking.
In addition to Vortex, the report listed DIACSA, based in
Miami. DIACSA received $41,120 in NHAO work; Vortex received
$317,425. Two foreign firms were listed in the report: SETCO Air, a
Honduran company, and Frigorificos de Puntarenas, a Costa Rican
firm.
DIACSA's owner, Alfredo Caballero, and Floyd Carlton, who ran a
drug and money laundering operation out of DIACSA's Miami offices,
according to DEA affidavits, were under indictment at the time of
the NHAO contract. Carlton pleaded guilty to a cocaine trafficking
charge. Caballero was indicted in a cocaine conspiracy and pleaded
guilty to one count, but the specifics of the plea are sealed.
Carlton later became the star government witness in the drug trial
of Manuel Noriega.
It get's better,,,,, or worse?
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/P...icts_north.html
Oliver North Lied About Drug Trips.
Read the first three paragraphs.
"North Didn't Relay Drug Tips; DEA Says It Finds No Evidence
Reagan Aide Talked to Agency"
By, Lorraine Adams
October 22, 1994
WASHINGTON POST
For almost a decade, Oliver L. North has been dogged by
questions about what he did to make sure U.S. government flights to
help the Nicaraguan contras were free of drug traffickers.
In personal diaries North kept in 1985, he wrote down a trusted
aide's tip that drugs were being brought into the United States on a
contra supply plane. He recorded the type of aircraft and a stop on
its route - New Orleans. In testimony he gave to Congress in 1987,
North said he gave that information to the Drug Enforcement
Administration.
But the DEA, when asked to verify North's testimony, issued a
statement Friday saying, "There's no evidence he talked to anyone.
We can't find the person he talked to, if he did talk to them.
There's no record of the person he talked to."
Along with the new DEA comment, government records,
depositions, hearing testimony and interviews with former officials,
the diary entries again raise questions about what North did to
maintain the integrity of the contra supply efforts that he oversaw
as a National Security Council aide.
North declined to grant an interview for this story, and he did
not respond to written questions asking him to explain the diary
entries and identify whom in the DEA he told.
He issued a statement in which he said: "I did all in my power
to ensure that when ever the slightest rumor or concern was raised
about drugs, the matter was immediately referred to the cognizant
authorities in our government."
But top law enforcement officials - including the former heads
of the DEA and U.S. Customs Service - who met with North at the time
on a variety of issues said in recent interviews that he did not
pass the information on to them.
Former State Department, CIA and White House officials also say
North did not tell them about the New Orleans plane. Nor, they said,
did North tell them of other information - relayed to him by the
same aide in a memo - about an aircraft and crew listed in law
enforcement records as being suspected of drug trafficking. As a
result, former State Department officials said, that plane and crew
continued to be used as official carriers of U.S. government
humanitarian supplies to the contras.
Many of these officials, when recently read the diary entries
and memos, expressed surprise at how much North knew.
The diary entries are but a fragment of the Iran-contra affair,
in which North and others secretly sold weapons to Iran to free
American hostages, then diverted profits from those sales to a
congressionally banned effort to arm the contras fighting the
Marxist Sandinista government in Nicaragua.
In the campaign by Republican nominee North to unseat Sen.
Charles S. Robb (D-Va.), a major issue has been character. Polls,
and the candidates themselves, have repeatedly raised questions
about Robb's honesty about his personal life and North's candor
about the Iran-contra affair.
Drugs have been a minor but persistent theme. North has accused
President Clinton of avoiding the war on drugs and reminded voters
that Robb was present at Virginia Beach parties where drugs were
used.
In his written statement Friday, North said, "It is a moral
outrage and a cheap political dirty trick by desperate opponents, to
even suggest that I or anyone in the Reagan Administration, in any
way, shape or form, ever tolerated the trafficking of illegal
substances or any such activities."
Drug-Trafficking Allegations
In 1979, the Marxist-led Sandinista National Liberation front
toppled the dictatorship in Nicaragua. President Reagan authorized
covert CIA support to the anti-Sandinista groups, or contras, two
years later.
The same year, in an unrelated move, then-Marine Maj. Oliver L.
North was detailed to the National Security Council staff. North
worked on various projects - among them counterterrorism and the
Grenada invasion.
In 1984, Congress prohibited direct or indirect military
support to the contras, and North became the administration's "point
of contact" with the contras at the request, North said, of CIA
Director William J. Casey and National Security Adviser Robert C.
McFarlane.
In April 1986, published media reports said federal
investigators were looking into possible illegal support for the
contras, some of it financed by drug-smuggling. A Senate
subcommittee chaired by Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) began looking
into those allegations.
On Nov. 25, 1986, Reagan held a news conference in which he
said he had not been fully informed about North's operations,
specifically the diversion of profits from Iranian arms sale to the
contras. He announced North's dismissal.
Two years later, the Kerry committee's final report concluded,
"It is clear that individuals who provided support for the contras
were involved in drug trafficking." A Kerry staff aide said the
committee found evidence, including North's diary entries, that
North knew about the trafficking.
Another subcommittee, chaired by Rep. William J. Hughes
(D-N.J.), ran out of time and money before concluding its
investigation, Hughes said, but "found that there were ties between
the contras and drugs," though North's role was not completely
investigated.
In his written statement Friday, North said, "Special
Prosecutor Lawrence Walsh conducted a multi-million dollar,
seven-year inquiry into every conceivable aspect of my life and
never once made any such charge or allegation."
Sources close to the Walsh investigation said the fact that
questions about drugs and North were not acted upon or fully
explored was in no sense an exoneration. The prosecutors did not
receive North's voluminous notebooks until he took the stand in his
1989 trial, which made questioning him about them difficult.
North ultimately was convicted of three felonies - overturned
on appeal - but after his trial, the Walsh probe's focus shifted
away from him.
Between 1984 and late 1986, when the alleged drug trafficking
was occurring, there were many efforts to help the contras. During
that period, North was trying to control those efforts. Some
involved military supplies and were secret. One public effort was
carried out by an agency created by Congress in 1985 called the
Nicaraguan Humanitarian Assistance Office, or NHAO. Based in the
State Department, its job was to get $27 million in strictly
humanitarian supplies to the contras.
North flew occasionally to Central America for contra-related
meetings, but for the most part, he kept track of the secret and
public efforts from his office in the Old Executive Office Building
with a bank of telephones, a computer and a spiral-bound notebook
where he kept a daily diary.
North relied on Robert Owen, who traveled among Central
America, Miami, New Orleans and Washington, to be his "eyes and
ears," as North once described him.
A former staff member of Sen. Dan Quayle's and a fervent
contra supporter, Owen worked for the contra leadership in 1984. He
helped them, he said, "in any way I could," including bringing lists
of needed arms to North and distributing money, provided to him by
North, to contra leaders.
At North's urging, NHAO hired Owen as a contractor. By day,
Owen worked on the humanitarian effort, and in his off-hours,
unbeknownst to NHAO's director, Robert W. Duemling, Owen reported to
North and helped with the secret weapons supply network.
Duemling said NHAO reported, as a practical matter, to a group
whose key members were North, in the National Security Council;
Elliott Abrams, assistant secretary of state for Latin American
affairs; and Alan Fiers, chief of the CIA's Central American Task
Force.
NHAO officials say they didn't know about North's covert weapon
supply. They knew little about the contras' own effort to ship
weapons with aircraft they leased or owned. They knew little of
efforts of private citizens - including exiled Cubans and
paramilitary groups.
Owen's memos from the period are filled with details about all
of the groups. He shared with North suspicions about some of the
contra leaders' drug ties, political maneuvering among the groups,
the contras' desperate need for arms.
Just before NHAO was up and running, after meeting with Owen on
Aug. 9, 1985, North wrote in his diary: "Honduran DC-6 which is
being used for runs out of New Orleans is probably being used for
drug runs into U.S."
The information apparently stayed in North's mind, because the
next day he wrote, "Meeting with A.C. --Name of DEA person in New
Orleans re bust on Mario DC-6."
A.C. could be contra leader Adolfo Calero, brother of Mario,
who was in charge of a warehouse and shipping operation for the
contras in New Orleans. Pilots familiar with contra supply
operations say Mario Calero regularly used a DC-6, based in
Honduras, that made runs between New Orleans and Central America.
Mario Calero is deceased.
The entry's references to a DEA person in New Orleans and a
bust are cryptic. Local, state and federal law enforcement agencies,
when asked by The Washington Post to search for any records of drug
trafficking by Mario Calero, or by a company associated with him,
say they could find none.
In a closed session before Congress in 1987, North testified
that he reported to the DEA the information that the DC-6 might be
making drug runs into the United States. In the session, which has
since been declassified, North was read the entry, and responded:
"It was a DC-6 registered in {name of country} and someone had told
me - in fact it was probably Rob Owen who told me that. I turned it
over to the DEA immediately."
Jack Lawn, the former head of the DEA, talked to North on
several occasions in 1985 and 1986, mostly about DEA informants in
the Middle East. But "Ollie did not provide any intelligence to me"
about the New Orleans tip, Lawn said.
Robert Bryden, then the DEA special agent in charge of the New
Orleans office, said neither he nor anyone in his office ever
received any drug information from North, the White House or anyone
else concerning Mario Calero or any DC-6. Bryden said he would liked
to have known.
"Our business is drugs, so if somebody knows about an airplane
using drugs, we would like to know about it," Bryden said.
Former national security adviser McFarlane, North's boss at the
time, said North did not relay the drug suspicions about the DC-6 to
him.
"He never reported it to me," said McFarlane, who has harshly
criticized North since their work together for Reagan. "He certainly
should have reported anything which is a violation of U.S. law,
which it sounds like that was."
William Von Raab, then head of U.S. Customs, said he is
"absolutely stunned" by the North notebook entries. "I had dealings
with North. I was a trusted conservative guy. While extremely
law-abiding, I was on their side ideologically. He should have told
me. Were any information like that available, as a courtesy, as a
routine practice, he should have told me."
Former deputy CIA director Robert Gates also was surprised by
the entries. He said he would expect anyone provided with such
intelligence "to immediately go ballistic, to talk to Von Raab, to
DEA. A normal person would have reacted strongly."
NHAO director Duemling and five other NHAO officials
interviewed said North never alerted them to any concerns about
Mario Calero or any aircraft of his associated with drug
trafficking. "On the contrary, he wanted me to work with Mario,"
Duemling said.
A former ambassador and a career Foreign Service officer,
Duemling admits he knew little about getting supplies to a rebel
force in hostile territory, or about the contras. He said that he
relied on North, as an expert on the contras, to guide him and that
North instructed him not to disturb the contras' logistics
arrangement.
Duemling said he believed North should have relayed to him the
Owen leads about drug trafficking.
"I'm disturbed and disappointed that senior U.S. officials
would be guilty of this kind of malfeasance," Duemling said.
"We're talking about the business of the U.S. government, about
senior officials in the U.S. government. We're talking about the
responsibility of implementing the foreign policy of the U.S.
government. These are not things you should be playing games with."
Abrams, one of the three officials including North whom NHAO
reported to, said he couldn't answer why North didn't tell Duemling,
but said the drug allegations concerned "air charter companies and
you're dealing with a lot of fly-by-night operations."
"It was really not easy to find out what was the last previous
trip of that plane or what would happen to that plane when they were
done with it," he said. "And legally speaking, that was none of our
business."
He said that when he and North found out about two people in
the contras' own organization who were suspected of drug
trafficking, they were kicked out. Abrams would not name them on the
record. "We had no proof, just rumors, and the rumors were enough
for us to act," he said.
North's involvement with NHAO went beyond providing advice.
Over time, North piggybacked his arms effort onto the publicly
sanctioned humanitarian effort.
"It became fairly clear to me as time went on, by January
(1986), what was really happening was Ollie was hijacking the NHAO
operation," Fiers testified in a 1992 trial.
That system, documented in numerous Iran-contra records, worked
like this: NHAO aircraft loaded with humanitarian cargo flew from
New Orleans and Miami to Ilopango Air Base in El Salvador, and
sometimes Aguacate, Honduras.
There, humanitarian supplies were offloaded and stored. The
NHAO planes then became part of North's secret operation and were
loaded with military supplies for flights to contra camps in
Honduras or for air drops into Nicaragua.
NHAO paid only for the humanitarian leg of the flights. The
military leg was paid for from Swiss bank accounts North set up to
finance the covert operations.
Another Owen Warning
Six months after Owen warned North about Mario Calero and the
DC-6, he warned him about an NHAO contractor.
Owen's memo of Feb. 10, 1986, reads: "No doubt you know the
DC-4 Foley got was used at one time to run drugs, and part of the
crew had criminal records. Nice group the Boys choose. The company
is also one that Mario has been involved with using in the past,
only they had a quick name change. Incompetence reigns."
The only DC-4 listed in NHAO records was one supplied by
Miami-based Vortex Air International Inc. One of the company's key
officers, who is mentioned in North's diaries, has a long record of
serious drug allegations.
In testimony to the Iran-contra committee about his DC-4 memo,
Owen identified Foley as Pat Foley of Summit Aviation, which still
operates in Middleton, Del. Owen identified "the Boys" as the CIA.
In a recent interview, Foley denied the implication in Owen's
memo that he worked for the CIA, but agreed he gave NHAO a list of
air cargo companies that could be hired, including Vortex. He said
he was unaware of any drug allegations against the company.
Those drug connections surfaced when the DC-4 had engine
trouble on an NHAO flight and had to land on San Andreas Island in
Colombia, where it was detained. Colombian authorities had
discovered that the plane was flagged in international law
enforcement records as having been used to fly drugs and that some
of the crew had criminal records.
Owen, who recounted that incident in testimony to the
Iran-contra committee, said his concern was: "In my mind, it was
stupidity to use a plane that at one time had been used, or at least
targeted, as having carried drugs, and also it was stupidity to use
people who had a criminal record."
Frank McNeil, then senior deputy assistant secretary of state
for intelligence and research, confirmed Owen's account in an
interview. According to McNeil, Colombian police contacted the U.S.
Embassy in Colombia, and it cabled the State Department.
"We queried the CIA, and after they did some checking, they
responded, something to the effect, `It's unfortunate, but it's
pretty hard to find folks to do this work,' " McNeil said recently.
McNeil would not reveal the identity of the CIA official
involved. The emergency landing was suspicious, he said, because the
island was a shipping point for drugs. After the Iran-contra
investigations, McNeil learned the group had continued to supply the
contras. "The whole thing is too sleazy for words," he said. "It is
not a happy chapter in American history."
Owen's warnings about Vortex's drug problems didn't end its
NHAO flights, and North's notebooks show that he was aware they were
still working for the agency.
The name of Vortex, and one of its officers, who had numerous
drug charges - Michael Bernard Palmer - appears twice.
The diary entries show North had detailed knowledge of Palmer
and Vortex's NHAO flights. On April 22, 1986, North wrote: "Call
from Rob. 900 Uniforms, 1800 Pr boots, 1700 ponchos, 1700
suspenders, SOX, belts, hats) Vortex/Miami."
Two days later, a second entry lists a Vortex flight's
destination, the type of aircraft, identifying tail number, pilot,
and departure and arrival times. It ends with Palmer's name and
phone number.
During the congressional inquiries into the contra drug link,
Palmer was an important witness. Under a grant of immunity in 1988,
he testified that he flew for major drug organizations between 1977
and 1985, making frequent runs between Colombia and the United
States.
Before Vortex's contract with NHAO, Palmer, himself a pilot,
landed in a Colombian jail on drug charges, according to grand jury
testimony in one of Palmer's later drug cases. He was released in
Colombia under circumstances never fully explained.
Palmer was indicted in Detroit in June 1986 while Vortex was
still under contract to NHAO. The Detroit indictment named Palmer in
a conspiracy to import and distribute marijuana, beginning in 1977
and ending in June 1986.
In 1989, a federal indictment in Louisiana charged Palmer with
helping to bring 300,000 pounds of marijuana into the United States
from South America in a 1982 operation.
The Detroit prosecutors would not explain why that case was
dropped. In the Louisiana case, Palmer boasted to prosecutors that
his drug running was sanctioned by the government, and the
prosecutor, Howard Parker, said he dropped the charges to avoid a
sideshow.
The idea that Palmer worked secretly for a government agency,
even after his NHAO contract was over, is supported by declassified
Customs records. The documents, supplied to congressional committees
looking into alleged contra drug ties, show Palmer was working in
1987 for a government agency, the name of which was blacked out.
The records describe an incident in which Palmer protested a
Customs inspection of a DC-6 that Vortex was servicing at Miami
International Airport. The records say: "Normal U.S. Customs Service
procedures for incoming flights are expedited" at the request of the
unnamed agency.
The unnamed agency's officials knew of the open drug charges
against Palmer, but "our records do not go beyond allegations, the
substance of which did not preclude us from using these
individuals," the Customs records state.
Palmer said in a recent interview that he didn't know North. The
drug cases were dropped, he said, because he was not guilty of the
charges.
Vortex was not the only company used by NHAO with an officer
accused of drug trafficking.
During the time NHAO was operating and hiring air cargo
companies, Duemling and NHAO's attorney said they requested
background information from the Justice Department about the NHAO
contractors, but never received a reply.
It wasn't until after NHAO had closed down, when Sen. Kerry's
subcommittee published its report, that it became clear that several
cargo carriers and suppliers NHAO had used were either owned or
operated by individuals under investigation by federal law
enforcement for drug trafficking.
In addition to Vortex, the report listed DIACSA, based in
Miami. DIACSA received $41,120 in NHAO work; Vortex received
$317,425. Two foreign firms were listed in the report: SETCO Air, a
Honduran company, and Frigorificos de Puntarenas, a Costa Rican
firm.
DIACSA's owner, Alfredo Caballero, and Floyd Carlton, who ran a
drug and money laundering operation out of DIACSA's Miami offices,
according to DEA affidavits, were under indictment at the time of
the NHAO contract. Carlton pleaded guilty to a cocaine trafficking
charge. Caballero was indicted in a cocaine conspiracy and pleaded
guilty to one count, but the specifics of the plea are sealed.
Carlton later became the star government witness in the drug trial
of Manuel Noriega.
Deposition of Eugene Wheaton
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/P...deposition.html
"Deposition summarizes rumors about Seal"
THE ARKANSAS GAZETTE
June 26, 1988
The allegations contained in the sworn deposition of Eugene
Wheaton summarize most of the rumors about Barry Seal at Mena.
Wheaton said Seal took part in an alleged "secret" effort to use
profits from drug smuggling to buy and deliver guns to the contra
rebels fighting the Sandinista government in Nicaragua.
Wheaton's story, which has yet to be proven, includes allegations
hat Seal played a part in:
Drug smuggling and gun running with the consent of the federal Drug
Enforcement Administration and the Central Intelligence Agency.
Clandestine pilot training at a grass airstrip near the Nella
community in southern Scott County.
Commando training of "Latins" near the airstrip by CIA veterans of
the war in Southeast Asia.
Many allegations doubted
Investigators have expressed doubt about many of Wheaton's
allegations. Other assertions by Wheaton, they said, fall in line
with leads they are following. The investigators spoke on the
condition that they not be identified because the case is still being
investigated.
Efforts to interview Wheaton through the Christic Institute over
the course of more than a month were unsuccessful.
Wheaton said in the Christic Institute deposition in March that
he is a former Marine and former Air Force and Army criminal
investigator who served as narcotics adviser and security consultant
to the late Shah of Iran and later worked for corporations in the
Middle East and elsewhere.
Moved to Mena in '82
Wheaton said Seal moved his drug-smuggling operation to Mena in
1982. After Seal became a government informant in 1984, Wheaton
said, he began "flying missions out of Florida into Central America
hauling weapons down and drugs back under the control of the DEA and
the CIA."
Wheaton said Seal was "directed by agents of the government" to
move from Baton Rouge to Mena and to continue his smuggling as a
cover for his DEA and CIA undercover work.
"In other words, they said if he would go to Arkansas, continue
what he was doing he would, if not be protected, he would be
ignored by federal agencies while he continued his covert help to the
government in Florida," Wheaton said.
Alleged partner
Wheaton said Seal made Fred L. Hampton, the owner of Rich
Mountain Aviation at the Mena Airport, his associate and was himself
a financial supporter of Hampton's company.
Hampton said last week, however, that Seal "was strictly a
customer." Hampton said the company had performed maintenance on
"six or eight" of Seal's planes between 1981 and 1986.
He said Seal had paid cash for the work and was charged the same
rates as other customers. Hampton said Seal was slow to pay his
bills and owed the company $13,000 when he died.
Wheaton also said Seal brought "at least one large load of
cocaine" into the Mena Airport and that Hampton had transported it to
Louisiana. Hampton said he had "never seen any cocaine in my life."
Bought plot of land
Wheaton said Seal bought an isolated plot of land in the Ouachita
National Forest near the Nella community in Scott County through
Hampton.
Scott County tax records show that Hampton bought the land in
November 1982 and that he sold it to his father, Fred V. Hampton Sr.,
in January 1986.
Seal and Hampton then built a 2,000-foot, dirt airstrip on the
land in the National Forest, Wheaton said. The airstrip later became
a base for training pilots for night takeoffs and landings at
unimproved airstrips using special night vision and video equipment,
he said.
At the same time, Wheaton said, "a covert paramilitary commando
training operation" began and continued until late 1987.
Hampton said he bought the land as "an investment" and for
recreation. He said he and others had landed on the airstrip in
small, single-engine planes "on two or three occasions." He said he
had planned to build a house on the land but never did.
"The speculation is that the land was used for a private
smuggling operation and that it had something to do with the
Iran-contra affair," Hampton said. "That's totally ludicrous."
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/P...deposition.html
"Deposition summarizes rumors about Seal"
THE ARKANSAS GAZETTE
June 26, 1988
The allegations contained in the sworn deposition of Eugene
Wheaton summarize most of the rumors about Barry Seal at Mena.
Wheaton said Seal took part in an alleged "secret" effort to use
profits from drug smuggling to buy and deliver guns to the contra
rebels fighting the Sandinista government in Nicaragua.
Wheaton's story, which has yet to be proven, includes allegations
hat Seal played a part in:
Drug smuggling and gun running with the consent of the federal Drug
Enforcement Administration and the Central Intelligence Agency.
Clandestine pilot training at a grass airstrip near the Nella
community in southern Scott County.
Commando training of "Latins" near the airstrip by CIA veterans of
the war in Southeast Asia.
Many allegations doubted
Investigators have expressed doubt about many of Wheaton's
allegations. Other assertions by Wheaton, they said, fall in line
with leads they are following. The investigators spoke on the
condition that they not be identified because the case is still being
investigated.
Efforts to interview Wheaton through the Christic Institute over
the course of more than a month were unsuccessful.
Wheaton said in the Christic Institute deposition in March that
he is a former Marine and former Air Force and Army criminal
investigator who served as narcotics adviser and security consultant
to the late Shah of Iran and later worked for corporations in the
Middle East and elsewhere.
Moved to Mena in '82
Wheaton said Seal moved his drug-smuggling operation to Mena in
1982. After Seal became a government informant in 1984, Wheaton
said, he began "flying missions out of Florida into Central America
hauling weapons down and drugs back under the control of the DEA and
the CIA."
Wheaton said Seal was "directed by agents of the government" to
move from Baton Rouge to Mena and to continue his smuggling as a
cover for his DEA and CIA undercover work.
"In other words, they said if he would go to Arkansas, continue
what he was doing he would, if not be protected, he would be
ignored by federal agencies while he continued his covert help to the
government in Florida," Wheaton said.
Alleged partner
Wheaton said Seal made Fred L. Hampton, the owner of Rich
Mountain Aviation at the Mena Airport, his associate and was himself
a financial supporter of Hampton's company.
Hampton said last week, however, that Seal "was strictly a
customer." Hampton said the company had performed maintenance on
"six or eight" of Seal's planes between 1981 and 1986.
He said Seal had paid cash for the work and was charged the same
rates as other customers. Hampton said Seal was slow to pay his
bills and owed the company $13,000 when he died.
Wheaton also said Seal brought "at least one large load of
cocaine" into the Mena Airport and that Hampton had transported it to
Louisiana. Hampton said he had "never seen any cocaine in my life."
Bought plot of land
Wheaton said Seal bought an isolated plot of land in the Ouachita
National Forest near the Nella community in Scott County through
Hampton.
Scott County tax records show that Hampton bought the land in
November 1982 and that he sold it to his father, Fred V. Hampton Sr.,
in January 1986.
Seal and Hampton then built a 2,000-foot, dirt airstrip on the
land in the National Forest, Wheaton said. The airstrip later became
a base for training pilots for night takeoffs and landings at
unimproved airstrips using special night vision and video equipment,
he said.
At the same time, Wheaton said, "a covert paramilitary commando
training operation" began and continued until late 1987.
Hampton said he bought the land as "an investment" and for
recreation. He said he and others had landed on the airstrip in
small, single-engine planes "on two or three occasions." He said he
had planned to build a house on the land but never did.
"The speculation is that the land was used for a private
smuggling operation and that it had something to do with the
Iran-contra affair," Hampton said. "That's totally ludicrous."
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/P...ke_6-21-91.html
The Brenneke Deposition
This is the bombshell deposition given by Richard J. Brenneke that established that aircraft flying guns and ammo out of Mena were flying drugs back in!
It is worth noting that Richard J. Brenneke was persecuted for his deposition with trumped up legal charges of which he was ultimatly acquitted.
------------------------------------------
The Oral Deposition of Richard J. Brenneke
------------------------------------------
Joint Investigation by the
Arkansas State Attorney General's Office
and the U.S. Congress, June 21, 1991.
------------------------------------------
The following deposition was taken from Mr. Brenneke at the Office of the
Attorney General, 323 Center Street, Little Rock, Arkansas on June 21,
1991 at 10:10 a.m.
Excerpts are from pages 3, 4, 6, 7-12, 13, 14-21, 22, 23, 24, 25,
26, 28-30, 39-41.
MR. ALEXANDER: My name is William Alexander, Jr., and I'm an attorney
and a member of the United States Congress. I'm a member of the Bar of
the State of Arkansas as well as the District of Columbia and other
states. And I'm taking this deposition today as a member of the United
States Congress in my investigative authority under the Constitution, and
as a member of of the Appropriations Committee having jurisdiction over
all agencies of the federal government, specifically those agencies of
the Departments of Justice, State, Commerce and the Federal Judiciary.
For some time I have been involved in investigating the subject of
inquiry today with full authority as a member of the United States
Congress. In addition, I'm acting as a Special Assistant to the Attorney
General of the State of Arkansas, who is represented here today. And,
Chad, would you state who are you, and what you're doing here?
MR. FARRIS: My name is Chad Farris. I'm the Chief Deputy Attorney
General for the State of Arkansas. And Representative Alexander is right,
that he has been so designated, and I am attending as a representative
for the Attorney General's Office and will participate in this investigation.
MR. ALEXANDER: I'll state further for the record, that the nature of
this inquiry is confidential. And that it is - the evidence is intended
to be used to produce for the benefit of the Special Prosecutor in the
Iran-Contra case now pending in Washington and for other purposes. And
I'd now like to ask the reporter if he would swear the witness.
(The witness was sworn.)
EXAMINATION
BY MR. ALEXANDER:
Q. Would you state your name, age and residence?
A. Okay. The name is Richard J. Brenneke, B-R-E-N-N-E-K-E. My home
address is [deleted] Street in [deleted], and that's [deleted]....
Q. So you were an independent contractor with the Central Intelligence
Agency?
A. That's correct.
Q. Beginning when and through what years?
A. 1968 through about 1986, somewhere in 1985, '86 is when I called it off.
Q. So what services did you perform for the Central Intelligence Agency?
A. Specialized in two activities; I handled money for them, I handled
East Bloc weapons purchases primarily made in Yugoslavia and
Czechoslovakia....
Q. And you were a pilot for the CIA?
A. That's correct.
Q. During what period?
A. During the whole period I worked for them.
Q. And that was what years?
A. That would be '68 through '80 -- I think the last flying I did for
them was in '84.
Q. Did you ever pilot an aircraft to a location at Mena, Arkansas?
A. Yes, sir. I did on a number of occasions.
Q. And what aircraft did you fly into Mena?
A. I generally flew a C-130. Aircraft would be brought into Mena, the
first trips that I made started in early '84.
Q. I see. Were you based out of Mena for a period of time?
A. That would be a very appropriate description.
Q. How many flights would you say that you made from the Mena, Arkansas
airport for the CIA during the period of time that you worked for them?
A. Ten to twelve.
Q. Ten to twelve flights? And you flew a C-130?
A. Generally flew a C-130. I did, however, on occasion come in -- on one
occasion specifically I recall coming in on a Lear Jet, on one occasion on a
400 Series Cessna.
Q. You kept flight logs of all of your flights for the CIA?
A. Yes, sir. I certainly did.
Q. You have those logs?
A. They're lodged with my attorney.
Q. And would you submit to us copies of -- exact copies of those logs,
and make those an attachment to this record?
A. I certainly will....
Q. All right. Now, Mr. Brenneke, could you tell us when you first made a
flight for the CIA from Mena, Arkansas?
A. It would have been March, April of 1984.
Q. 1984. And what was the cargo that you transported for the CIA from Mena?
A. From Mena?
Q. Yes.
A. Okay. From Mena I would generally take people who had been trained in
the area around Mena, generally paramilitary or military forces from
Central America. They would be taken back to Panama City, where I would
drop them. And, in addition to that, we would carry weapons that were
being shipped down there. The weapons, as I've said, frequently came
either from government stores or through [deleted] Gun Shop in Miami,
Florida.
Q. Now, were the shipments made from Mena, though?
A. Yes, sir, they were.
Q. Okay. Now, the guns, how did you know they were guns?
A. I could see them being loaded on my aircraft.
Q. Were the guns in boxes?
A. The guns were in crates, and they were stamped clearly on the outside
as to what they were.
Q. Now, can you identify for the record some of the kinds of guns that
were being shipped from Mena to Central America?
A. M-1's, M-1 rifles, recoil -- small recoilless rifles, [illegible],
I've forgotten the exact caliber on it, grenades, ammunition for these
weapons, fuses, detonator fuses. And I remember that one very specifically
because it only happened once. But we had detonator fuses on board, and
my concern was that we might have the equipment being detonated on the
same flight, and I didn't want that.
Q. Did you inspect the crates yourself prior to airlifting?
A. No, sir. I didn't look at every crate. But I would, from time-to-time,
open one because I wanted to make sure of the weights on them.
Q. And who was with you as co-pilot on the first flight?
A. [deleted], a friend of mine who lives in Denver, Colorado.
Q. Did he accompany you on all the flights or were there other co-pilots?
A. No, there were other co-pilots from time-to-time.
Q. Can you describe -- name for us the co-pilots that accompanied you on
the several flights that you made to Central America?
A. No, sir, I can't. It's been too long.
Q. Do you recall names other than [deleted]?
A. Yes. Unfortunately only nicknames. There was a fellow that I flew with
regularly that was called "The Hippie." He worked out Medellin, would
frequently fly the trips up north to us.
Q. "Up north," what do you mean?
A. Up to Mena.
Q. To Mena?
A. And also into Iron Mountain Ranch in Texas.
Q. Into Texas. So you -- let's deal with the Mena location at the moment,
and we can go to other locations today if we wish --
A. Sure.
Q. -- at a later time. There is an airport at Mena, and what's the name
of it?
A. It's Mena Airport.
Q. Mena Airport. And who did you see personally involved in the loading
of these crates and the management of these cargoes that you knew
personally and you can identify for the record? Did you see anyone there
you would --
A. Yes, a man by the name of [deleted].
Q. Were there -- [deleted], is he from Mena?
A. [deleted] owns and operates [deleted].
Q. In Mena, Arkansas?
A. In Mena, Arkansas. And he would be the individual directing his
workers, because they followed his direction in loading and unloading
aircraft.
Q. How many workers do you recall were used for the purpose of loading
and unloading aircraft?
A. Depending on the equipment, it could run as high as twelve, more often
than not it was around five or six people.
Q. Five or six people. Would you -- do you recall any of the names of the
people who participated?
A. I was never introduced to who they were.
Q. I see. So as I understand it, they would load the guns and munitions
on the C-130, and you and a co-pilot, one of who you've identified as
[deleted] --
A. Uh-huh.
Q. -- would fly these munitions and equipment to locations in Central
America. Where was the cargo destined for; where did you fly it to?
A. We flew it to Panama City and off loaded it there.
Q. Do you remember where in Panama City?
A. Panama -- at Tecuman Airport.
Q. Which airport?
A. Tecuman.
Q. Tecuman?
A. Tecuman, T-E-C-U-M-A-N.
Q. Tecuman Airport. That's in Panama City?
A. In Panama City.
Q. Did you fly them to other locations?
A. Yes, sir. We also flew to a point on the East Coast of Panama and Colon.
Q. Colon?
A. It's a Greek word.
Q. Now, could -- were the shipments met by people in Panama?
A. Yes, they were. They were. They were met by military types who wore
military uniforms and were easily identified as members of the Panamanian
Defense Force, which essentially is the Palace Guard....
Q. I see. Now, what would happen to the cargo once you landed in Panama
at either of these locations when it was met by the Panamanian Defense
Forces?
A. The cargo would be immediately off loaded off the aircraft and loaded
either onto trucks or stacked in warehouses. If we were going into Colon,
there are bonded warehouses where it would simply be stacked in
warehouses where it would simply be stacked.
Q. Were these military trucks?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Could you identify the military insignias on the trucks?
A. No. They were just --
Q. They were military trucks?
A. Drab olive green.
Q. Olive green trucks?
A. With numbers stenciled on the side.
Q. I see. Operated by --
A. Operated by people in military garb. I assume they were military trucks.
Q. Okay. And then what would be your actions following the arrival there
when the -- after the cargo was unloaded; did you stay the night, or
would you immediately turn around an return to the United States? What
was your --
A. No, we always stayed the night. Generally we would stay just one
night, there were times when we stayed two or three.
Q. Now, you would stay a night or a couple of days and you returned. And
would you return with cargo?
A. Yes, sir, we would. We would come back with individuals and from
time-to-time unmarked boxes of items that were put in one aircraft along
with the individuals. Now, being conservative by nature and not having a
death-wish, I opened the boxes on a number of occasions to find out what
I was flying. And what --
Q. What did you discover the cargo to be?
A. I found the cargo to be cocaine, in some cases marijuana.
Q. How, would you describe what you saw when you opened the boxes?
A. What I saw when I opened the boxes were plastic bags filled with a
white powdery substance. On one occasion I wanted to know more about what
it was, so I cut one of them open and tasted it; and I have tasted cocaine
in a controlled environment before at the request of law enforcement
officials, so this --
Q. So you positively identified the substances that you were carrying as
cocaine?
A. Yes, sir, I did.
Q. How much cocaine would you judge that you were carrying?
A. In the course of time there?
Q. Well, in each load?
A. In each load, 4 to 600 pounds.
Q. 4 to 600 pounds. And did you see people loading this cargo onto the
airplane?
A. Yes, sir, I did.
Q. And who -- can you identify those people?
A. Those were Panamanian Defense Force soldiers. They were in military
uniform and easily identifiable as such.
Q. The same people that took the guns off, put the cocaine on?
A. Absolutely.
Q. Is that right?
A. That's correct.
Q. Now, what would you do with the load of cocaine once it was loaded
onto your C-130; where would you go with it?
A. We would bring it to Mena, Arkansas.
Q. And how long would it take you to fly to Mena?
A. Four to six hours, depending on the wind.
Q. And you have a flight log that would identify this flight?
A. Yes, sir, I do.
Q. Each one of the flights?
A. Yes, sir, I do.
Q. And when you landed at Mena, what would be the disposition of the cargo?
A. On one or two occasions the cargo was taken off by people who were not
residents of the Mena area and put into other aircraft which departed
from there. However, the most frequent activity was that the aircraft
would be unloaded in front of [deleted]'s hangers and it would be stored
in the back of the hanger....
Q. And go back in your mind to the first trip you took and describe to me
the disposition of the cargo; that is, the cocaine, once it returned to
Arkansas, once it was delivered to Arkansas? And I am especially -- I am
particularly interested in the identification of persons other than
[deleted]. You've talked about [deleted]. You've identified him. Can you
identify other people who might have received this cocaine?
A. Yes. I can identify people who in fact received the cocaine, not
"might have." And --
Q. Can you tell us who they were?
A. I can tell you that they were members of John Gotti's family in New
York. One of them was an individual know to me by the name of Sal Reale.
Q. Could you spell that name for us?
A. R-E-A-L-E.
Q. Sal Reale?
A. Salvatore Reale.
Q. Salvatore Reale?
A. Correct.
Q. And how did you know Mr. Reale?
A. Mr. Reale at that time was the Director of -- I believe it was that
time, was the Director of Security of Kennedy International in New York City.
Q. In New York City. Speak to the subject of your knowledge of Mr. Reale
and his activities as the head of security at Kennedy? Tell us what you
know about him and what he did?
A. Okay. Mr. Reale was a -- was one of Mr. Gotti's lieutenants. I watched
the two of them interact. Mr. Gotti would provide directions, Mr. Reale
would carry them out. It was his job to make sure that cargo being
shipped through Kennedy was not lost, but properly located, and in some
cases avoiding customs -- avoided the customs procedures....
Q. So you worked for Mr. Gotti as well as for the CIA?
A. Actually the CIA told me to do that on his behalf.
Q. So the CIA was in, would you say, partnership or association with Mr.
Gotti?
A. Yes, sir. I would say a partnership.
Q. And can you describe the nature of that partnership?
A. Sure. The organized crime members had a need for two things: they
needed drugs brought into the country on a reliable, safe basis; they
needed people taken out of the country or people brought into the country
without alerting customs or INS to the fact that they were being brought
into the country; they also needed their money taken offshore so that it
would not be subject to United States tax where they might have to
declare its source. And so we performed these kinds of functions for them.
Q. Mr. Brenneke, are you saying that the CIA was in the business of
bringing drugs into the United States?
A. Yes, sir. That's exactly what I'm saying.
Q. And that they were in partnership with John Gotti in this operation?
A. I would say that they worked with Mr. Gotti and his organization very
closely. Whether it was a formal partnership, I don't know. But there
certainly was a close alliance between the two.
Q. All right. Now, let's go back to Mena Airport in Arkansas for a
moment. At a time when you saw Mr. Reale there, did he receive any of the
shipment, the cargo of the drugs that your brought back from Panama?
A. He did not personally take any of the drugs. He did, however, see
that they were transferred into aircraft and vehicles so that they would
be moved off the field, and that was his function. His function was not
to load the vehicles, but to see that nothing got lost on transit.
Q. Are you saying that drugs that you brought back from Central America
to Mena were for the purpose of delivery to Mr. Reale, who was in the
employ of Mr. Gotti, the New York crime syndicate boss?
A. Yes, sir. I would say that.
Q. And Mr. Reale was there to manage the transhipment of those drugs?
A. From time-to-time there were other people from the family down there.
Q. Did you have any conversations with him about where he intended to
take those drugs?
A. Yes, sir. I asked on more than one occasion where the drugs would be
taken, and I was told the New York City area, specifically Kennedy
International Airport....
Q. Now, I was asking you about whether or not the CIA had a "black bag"
operation at [deleted] in Mena, Arkansas. And maybe a more interesting
way to ask that question would be, you knew that you were dealing with
criminals; is that correct?
A. That's correct, sir.
Q. You were dealing with criminals that were transporting and selling
cocaine in the United States?
A. Yes....
Q. Now, did the Gotti organization, through Reale, pay money to the CIA
for the drugs?
A. Yes, they did.
Q. Do you know how much money?
A. Firsthand knowledge, somewhere in the $50,000,000 bracket.
Q. How do you know how much money?
A. Because I banked that money for them in Panama City, and ultimately
transferred it to other locations in Europe....
Q. So what would be the procedure for you to receive the payment from the
Gotti organization for the drugs?
A. Generally the money was -- okay. Let me restate that. The money was
given to us in cash.
Q. "Us," you mean the CIA?
A. "Us," meaning the people I worked with, who were also associated with
the Central Intelligence Agency. We would transfer that money to banks in
Central and South America. And from there transfer via accounts that I
had established back in 1970 -- they were accounts which I was a
beneficial holder and the named signee on it....
Q. Can you recall any conversations you had with any of the CIA agents
about the money, and tell us the nature of that conversation, the scope
of it?
A. Sure. When I found that we were bringing drugs into the United States,
and that we were receiving money which was being put into accounts which
I knew to belong to the United States Government, as I'd set them up
specifically for that purpose, I called Mr. Don Gregg, who was a CIA
officer with whom I was acquainted, and complained about the nature of
what we were doing.
Q. Now, who is Mr. Don Gregg?
A. At that time, he was George Bush - Vice-President George Bush's
National Security Advisor.
Q. And do you recall the date that you had this conversation with Mr. Gregg?
A. I am more than willing to look for it in my telephone records.
Q. And when you discover that, you can provide it for us?
A. I will provide you with --
Q. You have records of the conversation?
A. Yes, I do.
Q. And will you make a copy of that record available for this --
A. Yes, sir, I will. Including my handwritten notes that are contemporaneous.
Q. Now, you don't have any notes with you at this time?
A. No, I do not.
Q. But do you recall the conversation with Mr. Gregg?
A. Very well.
Q. And can you tell us what you remember about that conversation?
A. I surely can. I was told that it was not my business, what I was
flying in and out of the country. That I was hired to do specific things,
and if I would do those things and not pay any attention to anything
else, we would all be very happy. I didn't like that.
Q. Well, what else did he say?
A. Shut up and do your job.
Q. He said, "shut up and do your job?"
A. Essentially, yes.
Q. Did you have any further contact with him?
A. I talked to him in 19 --
Q. "Him," I'm talking about Mr. Gregg?
A. Yes. Subsequently I talked to Mr. Gregg on a number of occasions as
well as to other people in the Vice-President's office to voice my
concern over the use of drugs in -- importing drugs into the United
States and using the cash generated from that to perform operations which
I perceived to be not put before Congress in any form....
Q. I think, finally, I want to ask you if you have any knowledge of the
money that you're talking about coming from the Gotti organization being
used for any other purposes, other than depositing in the bank accounts
for the CIA?
A. Sure. We had to run the operations at Nella, for instance. The
training facilities at Nella had to be paid for.
Q. Now, where is Nella?
A. Nella is about 10 miles out of Mena, north.
Q. North of the Mena Airport. We've not talk about that, Mr. Brenneke.
Can you tell us what your know about Nella; what it is, and for what
purposes it was established?
A. Sure. Nella was a training base for military and paramilitary folks
from south of the border, Mexico, Panama.
Q. Who managed the base? Who operated the base?
A. Don't know the names of the operators.
Q. What agency operated the base?
A. Central Intelligence Agency, as far as I knew.
Q. Did you know anyone from the agency that was responsible for the
operation?
A. I knew the names of some of the people over there. I didn't spend much
time at Mena, so I'd have to answer that by saying, no, I really don't
know. I did know one of the folks who was a flight instructor over there,
and that was Terry Reed.
Q. Terry Reed.
A. And on another occasion, I did provide Mr. Reed with a deposition in a
case in which he was acquitted.
Q. Mr. Brenneke, I have here in my hand a copy of a videotaped deposition
which was presented as evidence in the United States District Court for
the District of Kansas in the case United States of America, Plaintiff
versus Terry Kent Reed, Defendant. And I will ask you if you can identify
this document?
A. (Witness viewing document.) Yes, sir. That is the testimony that I gave
under oath in Portland, Oregon....
Q. (BY MR. ALEXANDER) Mr. Brenneke, I don't want to dwell on this too much
at this point. But I think it's important just to summarize the connection
between the Mena CIA operation and the Nella CIA operation. And can you just
tell us briefly what distinctions there was, if any, and whether or not these
operations were one in the same? And let's move onto something else after you
have explained that.
A. The operations were one in the same. The equipment that was used at Mena
would frequently transport people and equipment to the truck, for instance,
you know, would drive up to Nella and leave people and equipment there.
Q. So, in other words, the CIA had an operation in Mena which included Nella?
A. Yes....
The Brenneke Deposition
This is the bombshell deposition given by Richard J. Brenneke that established that aircraft flying guns and ammo out of Mena were flying drugs back in!
It is worth noting that Richard J. Brenneke was persecuted for his deposition with trumped up legal charges of which he was ultimatly acquitted.
------------------------------------------
The Oral Deposition of Richard J. Brenneke
------------------------------------------
Joint Investigation by the
Arkansas State Attorney General's Office
and the U.S. Congress, June 21, 1991.
------------------------------------------
The following deposition was taken from Mr. Brenneke at the Office of the
Attorney General, 323 Center Street, Little Rock, Arkansas on June 21,
1991 at 10:10 a.m.
Excerpts are from pages 3, 4, 6, 7-12, 13, 14-21, 22, 23, 24, 25,
26, 28-30, 39-41.
MR. ALEXANDER: My name is William Alexander, Jr., and I'm an attorney
and a member of the United States Congress. I'm a member of the Bar of
the State of Arkansas as well as the District of Columbia and other
states. And I'm taking this deposition today as a member of the United
States Congress in my investigative authority under the Constitution, and
as a member of of the Appropriations Committee having jurisdiction over
all agencies of the federal government, specifically those agencies of
the Departments of Justice, State, Commerce and the Federal Judiciary.
For some time I have been involved in investigating the subject of
inquiry today with full authority as a member of the United States
Congress. In addition, I'm acting as a Special Assistant to the Attorney
General of the State of Arkansas, who is represented here today. And,
Chad, would you state who are you, and what you're doing here?
MR. FARRIS: My name is Chad Farris. I'm the Chief Deputy Attorney
General for the State of Arkansas. And Representative Alexander is right,
that he has been so designated, and I am attending as a representative
for the Attorney General's Office and will participate in this investigation.
MR. ALEXANDER: I'll state further for the record, that the nature of
this inquiry is confidential. And that it is - the evidence is intended
to be used to produce for the benefit of the Special Prosecutor in the
Iran-Contra case now pending in Washington and for other purposes. And
I'd now like to ask the reporter if he would swear the witness.
(The witness was sworn.)
EXAMINATION
BY MR. ALEXANDER:
Q. Would you state your name, age and residence?
A. Okay. The name is Richard J. Brenneke, B-R-E-N-N-E-K-E. My home
address is [deleted] Street in [deleted], and that's [deleted]....
Q. So you were an independent contractor with the Central Intelligence
Agency?
A. That's correct.
Q. Beginning when and through what years?
A. 1968 through about 1986, somewhere in 1985, '86 is when I called it off.
Q. So what services did you perform for the Central Intelligence Agency?
A. Specialized in two activities; I handled money for them, I handled
East Bloc weapons purchases primarily made in Yugoslavia and
Czechoslovakia....
Q. And you were a pilot for the CIA?
A. That's correct.
Q. During what period?
A. During the whole period I worked for them.
Q. And that was what years?
A. That would be '68 through '80 -- I think the last flying I did for
them was in '84.
Q. Did you ever pilot an aircraft to a location at Mena, Arkansas?
A. Yes, sir. I did on a number of occasions.
Q. And what aircraft did you fly into Mena?
A. I generally flew a C-130. Aircraft would be brought into Mena, the
first trips that I made started in early '84.
Q. I see. Were you based out of Mena for a period of time?
A. That would be a very appropriate description.
Q. How many flights would you say that you made from the Mena, Arkansas
airport for the CIA during the period of time that you worked for them?
A. Ten to twelve.
Q. Ten to twelve flights? And you flew a C-130?
A. Generally flew a C-130. I did, however, on occasion come in -- on one
occasion specifically I recall coming in on a Lear Jet, on one occasion on a
400 Series Cessna.
Q. You kept flight logs of all of your flights for the CIA?
A. Yes, sir. I certainly did.
Q. You have those logs?
A. They're lodged with my attorney.
Q. And would you submit to us copies of -- exact copies of those logs,
and make those an attachment to this record?
A. I certainly will....
Q. All right. Now, Mr. Brenneke, could you tell us when you first made a
flight for the CIA from Mena, Arkansas?
A. It would have been March, April of 1984.
Q. 1984. And what was the cargo that you transported for the CIA from Mena?
A. From Mena?
Q. Yes.
A. Okay. From Mena I would generally take people who had been trained in
the area around Mena, generally paramilitary or military forces from
Central America. They would be taken back to Panama City, where I would
drop them. And, in addition to that, we would carry weapons that were
being shipped down there. The weapons, as I've said, frequently came
either from government stores or through [deleted] Gun Shop in Miami,
Florida.
Q. Now, were the shipments made from Mena, though?
A. Yes, sir, they were.
Q. Okay. Now, the guns, how did you know they were guns?
A. I could see them being loaded on my aircraft.
Q. Were the guns in boxes?
A. The guns were in crates, and they were stamped clearly on the outside
as to what they were.
Q. Now, can you identify for the record some of the kinds of guns that
were being shipped from Mena to Central America?
A. M-1's, M-1 rifles, recoil -- small recoilless rifles, [illegible],
I've forgotten the exact caliber on it, grenades, ammunition for these
weapons, fuses, detonator fuses. And I remember that one very specifically
because it only happened once. But we had detonator fuses on board, and
my concern was that we might have the equipment being detonated on the
same flight, and I didn't want that.
Q. Did you inspect the crates yourself prior to airlifting?
A. No, sir. I didn't look at every crate. But I would, from time-to-time,
open one because I wanted to make sure of the weights on them.
Q. And who was with you as co-pilot on the first flight?
A. [deleted], a friend of mine who lives in Denver, Colorado.
Q. Did he accompany you on all the flights or were there other co-pilots?
A. No, there were other co-pilots from time-to-time.
Q. Can you describe -- name for us the co-pilots that accompanied you on
the several flights that you made to Central America?
A. No, sir, I can't. It's been too long.
Q. Do you recall names other than [deleted]?
A. Yes. Unfortunately only nicknames. There was a fellow that I flew with
regularly that was called "The Hippie." He worked out Medellin, would
frequently fly the trips up north to us.
Q. "Up north," what do you mean?
A. Up to Mena.
Q. To Mena?
A. And also into Iron Mountain Ranch in Texas.
Q. Into Texas. So you -- let's deal with the Mena location at the moment,
and we can go to other locations today if we wish --
A. Sure.
Q. -- at a later time. There is an airport at Mena, and what's the name
of it?
A. It's Mena Airport.
Q. Mena Airport. And who did you see personally involved in the loading
of these crates and the management of these cargoes that you knew
personally and you can identify for the record? Did you see anyone there
you would --
A. Yes, a man by the name of [deleted].
Q. Were there -- [deleted], is he from Mena?
A. [deleted] owns and operates [deleted].
Q. In Mena, Arkansas?
A. In Mena, Arkansas. And he would be the individual directing his
workers, because they followed his direction in loading and unloading
aircraft.
Q. How many workers do you recall were used for the purpose of loading
and unloading aircraft?
A. Depending on the equipment, it could run as high as twelve, more often
than not it was around five or six people.
Q. Five or six people. Would you -- do you recall any of the names of the
people who participated?
A. I was never introduced to who they were.
Q. I see. So as I understand it, they would load the guns and munitions
on the C-130, and you and a co-pilot, one of who you've identified as
[deleted] --
A. Uh-huh.
Q. -- would fly these munitions and equipment to locations in Central
America. Where was the cargo destined for; where did you fly it to?
A. We flew it to Panama City and off loaded it there.
Q. Do you remember where in Panama City?
A. Panama -- at Tecuman Airport.
Q. Which airport?
A. Tecuman.
Q. Tecuman?
A. Tecuman, T-E-C-U-M-A-N.
Q. Tecuman Airport. That's in Panama City?
A. In Panama City.
Q. Did you fly them to other locations?
A. Yes, sir. We also flew to a point on the East Coast of Panama and Colon.
Q. Colon?
A. It's a Greek word.
Q. Now, could -- were the shipments met by people in Panama?
A. Yes, they were. They were. They were met by military types who wore
military uniforms and were easily identified as members of the Panamanian
Defense Force, which essentially is the Palace Guard....
Q. I see. Now, what would happen to the cargo once you landed in Panama
at either of these locations when it was met by the Panamanian Defense
Forces?
A. The cargo would be immediately off loaded off the aircraft and loaded
either onto trucks or stacked in warehouses. If we were going into Colon,
there are bonded warehouses where it would simply be stacked in
warehouses where it would simply be stacked.
Q. Were these military trucks?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Could you identify the military insignias on the trucks?
A. No. They were just --
Q. They were military trucks?
A. Drab olive green.
Q. Olive green trucks?
A. With numbers stenciled on the side.
Q. I see. Operated by --
A. Operated by people in military garb. I assume they were military trucks.
Q. Okay. And then what would be your actions following the arrival there
when the -- after the cargo was unloaded; did you stay the night, or
would you immediately turn around an return to the United States? What
was your --
A. No, we always stayed the night. Generally we would stay just one
night, there were times when we stayed two or three.
Q. Now, you would stay a night or a couple of days and you returned. And
would you return with cargo?
A. Yes, sir, we would. We would come back with individuals and from
time-to-time unmarked boxes of items that were put in one aircraft along
with the individuals. Now, being conservative by nature and not having a
death-wish, I opened the boxes on a number of occasions to find out what
I was flying. And what --
Q. What did you discover the cargo to be?
A. I found the cargo to be cocaine, in some cases marijuana.
Q. How, would you describe what you saw when you opened the boxes?
A. What I saw when I opened the boxes were plastic bags filled with a
white powdery substance. On one occasion I wanted to know more about what
it was, so I cut one of them open and tasted it; and I have tasted cocaine
in a controlled environment before at the request of law enforcement
officials, so this --
Q. So you positively identified the substances that you were carrying as
cocaine?
A. Yes, sir, I did.
Q. How much cocaine would you judge that you were carrying?
A. In the course of time there?
Q. Well, in each load?
A. In each load, 4 to 600 pounds.
Q. 4 to 600 pounds. And did you see people loading this cargo onto the
airplane?
A. Yes, sir, I did.
Q. And who -- can you identify those people?
A. Those were Panamanian Defense Force soldiers. They were in military
uniform and easily identifiable as such.
Q. The same people that took the guns off, put the cocaine on?
A. Absolutely.
Q. Is that right?
A. That's correct.
Q. Now, what would you do with the load of cocaine once it was loaded
onto your C-130; where would you go with it?
A. We would bring it to Mena, Arkansas.
Q. And how long would it take you to fly to Mena?
A. Four to six hours, depending on the wind.
Q. And you have a flight log that would identify this flight?
A. Yes, sir, I do.
Q. Each one of the flights?
A. Yes, sir, I do.
Q. And when you landed at Mena, what would be the disposition of the cargo?
A. On one or two occasions the cargo was taken off by people who were not
residents of the Mena area and put into other aircraft which departed
from there. However, the most frequent activity was that the aircraft
would be unloaded in front of [deleted]'s hangers and it would be stored
in the back of the hanger....
Q. And go back in your mind to the first trip you took and describe to me
the disposition of the cargo; that is, the cocaine, once it returned to
Arkansas, once it was delivered to Arkansas? And I am especially -- I am
particularly interested in the identification of persons other than
[deleted]. You've talked about [deleted]. You've identified him. Can you
identify other people who might have received this cocaine?
A. Yes. I can identify people who in fact received the cocaine, not
"might have." And --
Q. Can you tell us who they were?
A. I can tell you that they were members of John Gotti's family in New
York. One of them was an individual know to me by the name of Sal Reale.
Q. Could you spell that name for us?
A. R-E-A-L-E.
Q. Sal Reale?
A. Salvatore Reale.
Q. Salvatore Reale?
A. Correct.
Q. And how did you know Mr. Reale?
A. Mr. Reale at that time was the Director of -- I believe it was that
time, was the Director of Security of Kennedy International in New York City.
Q. In New York City. Speak to the subject of your knowledge of Mr. Reale
and his activities as the head of security at Kennedy? Tell us what you
know about him and what he did?
A. Okay. Mr. Reale was a -- was one of Mr. Gotti's lieutenants. I watched
the two of them interact. Mr. Gotti would provide directions, Mr. Reale
would carry them out. It was his job to make sure that cargo being
shipped through Kennedy was not lost, but properly located, and in some
cases avoiding customs -- avoided the customs procedures....
Q. So you worked for Mr. Gotti as well as for the CIA?
A. Actually the CIA told me to do that on his behalf.
Q. So the CIA was in, would you say, partnership or association with Mr.
Gotti?
A. Yes, sir. I would say a partnership.
Q. And can you describe the nature of that partnership?
A. Sure. The organized crime members had a need for two things: they
needed drugs brought into the country on a reliable, safe basis; they
needed people taken out of the country or people brought into the country
without alerting customs or INS to the fact that they were being brought
into the country; they also needed their money taken offshore so that it
would not be subject to United States tax where they might have to
declare its source. And so we performed these kinds of functions for them.
Q. Mr. Brenneke, are you saying that the CIA was in the business of
bringing drugs into the United States?
A. Yes, sir. That's exactly what I'm saying.
Q. And that they were in partnership with John Gotti in this operation?
A. I would say that they worked with Mr. Gotti and his organization very
closely. Whether it was a formal partnership, I don't know. But there
certainly was a close alliance between the two.
Q. All right. Now, let's go back to Mena Airport in Arkansas for a
moment. At a time when you saw Mr. Reale there, did he receive any of the
shipment, the cargo of the drugs that your brought back from Panama?
A. He did not personally take any of the drugs. He did, however, see
that they were transferred into aircraft and vehicles so that they would
be moved off the field, and that was his function. His function was not
to load the vehicles, but to see that nothing got lost on transit.
Q. Are you saying that drugs that you brought back from Central America
to Mena were for the purpose of delivery to Mr. Reale, who was in the
employ of Mr. Gotti, the New York crime syndicate boss?
A. Yes, sir. I would say that.
Q. And Mr. Reale was there to manage the transhipment of those drugs?
A. From time-to-time there were other people from the family down there.
Q. Did you have any conversations with him about where he intended to
take those drugs?
A. Yes, sir. I asked on more than one occasion where the drugs would be
taken, and I was told the New York City area, specifically Kennedy
International Airport....
Q. Now, I was asking you about whether or not the CIA had a "black bag"
operation at [deleted] in Mena, Arkansas. And maybe a more interesting
way to ask that question would be, you knew that you were dealing with
criminals; is that correct?
A. That's correct, sir.
Q. You were dealing with criminals that were transporting and selling
cocaine in the United States?
A. Yes....
Q. Now, did the Gotti organization, through Reale, pay money to the CIA
for the drugs?
A. Yes, they did.
Q. Do you know how much money?
A. Firsthand knowledge, somewhere in the $50,000,000 bracket.
Q. How do you know how much money?
A. Because I banked that money for them in Panama City, and ultimately
transferred it to other locations in Europe....
Q. So what would be the procedure for you to receive the payment from the
Gotti organization for the drugs?
A. Generally the money was -- okay. Let me restate that. The money was
given to us in cash.
Q. "Us," you mean the CIA?
A. "Us," meaning the people I worked with, who were also associated with
the Central Intelligence Agency. We would transfer that money to banks in
Central and South America. And from there transfer via accounts that I
had established back in 1970 -- they were accounts which I was a
beneficial holder and the named signee on it....
Q. Can you recall any conversations you had with any of the CIA agents
about the money, and tell us the nature of that conversation, the scope
of it?
A. Sure. When I found that we were bringing drugs into the United States,
and that we were receiving money which was being put into accounts which
I knew to belong to the United States Government, as I'd set them up
specifically for that purpose, I called Mr. Don Gregg, who was a CIA
officer with whom I was acquainted, and complained about the nature of
what we were doing.
Q. Now, who is Mr. Don Gregg?
A. At that time, he was George Bush - Vice-President George Bush's
National Security Advisor.
Q. And do you recall the date that you had this conversation with Mr. Gregg?
A. I am more than willing to look for it in my telephone records.
Q. And when you discover that, you can provide it for us?
A. I will provide you with --
Q. You have records of the conversation?
A. Yes, I do.
Q. And will you make a copy of that record available for this --
A. Yes, sir, I will. Including my handwritten notes that are contemporaneous.
Q. Now, you don't have any notes with you at this time?
A. No, I do not.
Q. But do you recall the conversation with Mr. Gregg?
A. Very well.
Q. And can you tell us what you remember about that conversation?
A. I surely can. I was told that it was not my business, what I was
flying in and out of the country. That I was hired to do specific things,
and if I would do those things and not pay any attention to anything
else, we would all be very happy. I didn't like that.
Q. Well, what else did he say?
A. Shut up and do your job.
Q. He said, "shut up and do your job?"
A. Essentially, yes.
Q. Did you have any further contact with him?
A. I talked to him in 19 --
Q. "Him," I'm talking about Mr. Gregg?
A. Yes. Subsequently I talked to Mr. Gregg on a number of occasions as
well as to other people in the Vice-President's office to voice my
concern over the use of drugs in -- importing drugs into the United
States and using the cash generated from that to perform operations which
I perceived to be not put before Congress in any form....
Q. I think, finally, I want to ask you if you have any knowledge of the
money that you're talking about coming from the Gotti organization being
used for any other purposes, other than depositing in the bank accounts
for the CIA?
A. Sure. We had to run the operations at Nella, for instance. The
training facilities at Nella had to be paid for.
Q. Now, where is Nella?
A. Nella is about 10 miles out of Mena, north.
Q. North of the Mena Airport. We've not talk about that, Mr. Brenneke.
Can you tell us what your know about Nella; what it is, and for what
purposes it was established?
A. Sure. Nella was a training base for military and paramilitary folks
from south of the border, Mexico, Panama.
Q. Who managed the base? Who operated the base?
A. Don't know the names of the operators.
Q. What agency operated the base?
A. Central Intelligence Agency, as far as I knew.
Q. Did you know anyone from the agency that was responsible for the
operation?
A. I knew the names of some of the people over there. I didn't spend much
time at Mena, so I'd have to answer that by saying, no, I really don't
know. I did know one of the folks who was a flight instructor over there,
and that was Terry Reed.
Q. Terry Reed.
A. And on another occasion, I did provide Mr. Reed with a deposition in a
case in which he was acquitted.
Q. Mr. Brenneke, I have here in my hand a copy of a videotaped deposition
which was presented as evidence in the United States District Court for
the District of Kansas in the case United States of America, Plaintiff
versus Terry Kent Reed, Defendant. And I will ask you if you can identify
this document?
A. (Witness viewing document.) Yes, sir. That is the testimony that I gave
under oath in Portland, Oregon....
Q. (BY MR. ALEXANDER) Mr. Brenneke, I don't want to dwell on this too much
at this point. But I think it's important just to summarize the connection
between the Mena CIA operation and the Nella CIA operation. And can you just
tell us briefly what distinctions there was, if any, and whether or not these
operations were one in the same? And let's move onto something else after you
have explained that.
A. The operations were one in the same. The equipment that was used at Mena
would frequently transport people and equipment to the truck, for instance,
you know, would drive up to Nella and leave people and equipment there.
Q. So, in other words, the CIA had an operation in Mena which included Nella?
A. Yes....
Graham, youve created a Monster 
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/P...tness_dies.html
Barry Seal's Partner dies in plane crash.
"Co-pilot held answers sought in investigation
But he died in plane crash in 1985"
THE ARKANSAS GAZETTE
June 27, 1988
Emile Camp, Barry Seal's co-pilot and a partner in many of Seal's
exploits, could have provided answers to many of the questions about
Seal's activities.
But Camp died in a 1985 crash on Fourche Mountain north of Mena
almost a year to the day before Seal's death at Baton Rouge.
Dandra Seale, Barry Seal's secretary, said Seal and Camp were to
travel in Seal's Lear jet February 20, 1985, from Baton Rouge to Mena
and later to Miami. But, when they arrived at the Baton Rouge
airport, she said, they found that Seal's jet had been stolen.
"He sent Emile in one of his other planes and caught a commercial
flight to Miami," she said. That was the last time they saw Camp
alive.
Records to be inspected
Rudy Furr, the Mena airport manager and the former business
manager of Rich Mountain Aviation, said Camp was bringing records to
Mena for review by a Federal Aviation Administration inspector.
Fred L. Hampton, owner of Rich Mountain Aviation, said Seal was
converting a C-131 that had once been used by the Coast Guard for
civilian use.
"I waited here with the FAA inspector, but Camp never came," Furr
said.
The Piper Seneca that Camp was flying was reported missing about
3:30 p.m. Authorities searched unsuccessfully for the missing
aircraft for several days.
Seal and his brother, Ben, arrived at Mena with two helicopters,
officials said, and joined the search. They found the wreck February
23 on Fourche Mountain about 10 miles north of Mena.
"Barry said he had a feeling that he knew where Emile had
crashed," Dandra Seale said.
The National Transportation Safety Board ruled that pilot error
was the cause of the crash.
Crash came as surprise
A. L. Hadaway, the former sheriff, said he was surprised to learn
that Camp, an experienced pilot, had crashed.
"He could find this airport at night and land without lights;
I've seen him do it," Hadaway, who is also a pilot, said.
Furr said there was little doubt that Camp's death was an
accident.
"I've heard murder, that Camp had a bomb on board, that he had
500 pounds of cocaine and that he had $3 million in cash," Furr said.
"You can hear anything."
"Emile was not as good a pilot as he thought he was," Hampton
said.
Seal later testified that he stayed at Mena for a week after
Camp's body was recovered. He was then told by Drug Enforcement
Administration agents to return to Miami, he said.
Another Seal associate, Eric Arthur, a native of the Turks and
Caicos Islands, died in 1984 when he walked into the moving
propellers of an airplane at Seal's island base.
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/P...tness_dies.html
Barry Seal's Partner dies in plane crash.
"Co-pilot held answers sought in investigation
But he died in plane crash in 1985"
THE ARKANSAS GAZETTE
June 27, 1988
Emile Camp, Barry Seal's co-pilot and a partner in many of Seal's
exploits, could have provided answers to many of the questions about
Seal's activities.
But Camp died in a 1985 crash on Fourche Mountain north of Mena
almost a year to the day before Seal's death at Baton Rouge.
Dandra Seale, Barry Seal's secretary, said Seal and Camp were to
travel in Seal's Lear jet February 20, 1985, from Baton Rouge to Mena
and later to Miami. But, when they arrived at the Baton Rouge
airport, she said, they found that Seal's jet had been stolen.
"He sent Emile in one of his other planes and caught a commercial
flight to Miami," she said. That was the last time they saw Camp
alive.
Records to be inspected
Rudy Furr, the Mena airport manager and the former business
manager of Rich Mountain Aviation, said Camp was bringing records to
Mena for review by a Federal Aviation Administration inspector.
Fred L. Hampton, owner of Rich Mountain Aviation, said Seal was
converting a C-131 that had once been used by the Coast Guard for
civilian use.
"I waited here with the FAA inspector, but Camp never came," Furr
said.
The Piper Seneca that Camp was flying was reported missing about
3:30 p.m. Authorities searched unsuccessfully for the missing
aircraft for several days.
Seal and his brother, Ben, arrived at Mena with two helicopters,
officials said, and joined the search. They found the wreck February
23 on Fourche Mountain about 10 miles north of Mena.
"Barry said he had a feeling that he knew where Emile had
crashed," Dandra Seale said.
The National Transportation Safety Board ruled that pilot error
was the cause of the crash.
Crash came as surprise
A. L. Hadaway, the former sheriff, said he was surprised to learn
that Camp, an experienced pilot, had crashed.
"He could find this airport at night and land without lights;
I've seen him do it," Hadaway, who is also a pilot, said.
Furr said there was little doubt that Camp's death was an
accident.
"I've heard murder, that Camp had a bomb on board, that he had
500 pounds of cocaine and that he had $3 million in cash," Furr said.
"You can hear anything."
"Emile was not as good a pilot as he thought he was," Hampton
said.
Seal later testified that he stayed at Mena for a week after
Camp's body was recovered. He was then told by Drug Enforcement
Administration agents to return to Miami, he said.
Another Seal associate, Eric Arthur, a native of the Turks and
Caicos Islands, died in 1984 when he walked into the moving
propellers of an airplane at Seal's island base.
This one should be enough to chew on for a while. Back to Barry Seal!
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/P...es_of_mena.html
The Crimes of Mena
The Suppressed Article
This is the article which had been scheduled to appear in the Washington Post. After having cleared the legal department for all possible questions of inaccurate statements, the article was scheduled for publication when just as the presses were set to roll, Washington Post Managing Editor Bob Kaiser (Like George Bush, a member of the infamous "Skull & Bones Fraternity), killed the article without explanation. According to the sidebar which appeared with the Penthouse Magazine version of this story, Bob Kaiser refused to even meet with Sally Denton and Roger Morris, hiding in his office while his secretary made excuses.
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.
THE CRIMES OF MENA
By Sally Denton and Roger Morris
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.l.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.l.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.lA., which describes a number of covert activities around Mena, including a C.l.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 l.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 l.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 l.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 principle 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 l.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 l.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.l.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.l.A."
In a posthumous jeopardy-assessment case against Seal - also documented in the archive - the l.R.S. determined that money earned by Seal between 1984 and 1986 was not illegal because of his "C.l.A.-D.E.A. employment." The only public official acknowledgment of Seal's relationship to the C.l.A. has been in court and congressional testimony, and in various published accounts describing the C.l.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.l.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.l.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.l.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.l.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.l.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.l.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.l.A.], and C-130s had appeared...."
At the same time, according to Welch, two F.B.I. agents officially informed him that the C.l.A. "had something going on at the Mena Airport involving Southern Air Transport [another company linked with the C.l.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 l.R.S. criminal investigator Duncan, secretaries at the Mena Airport told him that when Seal flew into Mena, I'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 companiesQall 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.l.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 l.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 l.R.S. Iogic, 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.l.A.," a Customs official said in an Arkansas investigation into drug trafficking during the early eighties. "A C.l.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 plan- ning, 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.l.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.l.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 l.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.
From the July 1995 issue of *Penthouse*
Ambrose Evens-Pritchard On The Above
THE LONDON SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
29 JANUARY 1995
ARKANSAS DRUG EXPOSE MISSES THE
POST
BY AMBROSE EVANS-PRITCHARD IN
WASHINGTON
IT MIGHT almost be called The Greatest Story Never
Told. The article was typeset and scheduled to run in
today"s edition of The Washington Post.
It had the enthusiastic backing of the editors and staff
of the Sunday Outlook section, where it was to appear
after eleven weeks of soul-searching and debate.
Lawyers had gone through the text line by line.
Supporting documents had been examined with
meticulous care. The artwork and illustrations had been
completed. The contract with the authors had been
signed. Leonard Downie, the executive editor of the
newspaper, had given his final assent.
But on Thursday morning the piece was cancelled. It
had been delayed before - so often, in fact, that its
non-appearance was becoming the talk of Washington -
but this time the authors were convinced that the story
was doomed and would never make it into the pages of
what is arguably the world"s most powerful political
newspaper. They have withdrawn it in disgust, accusing
the Post of a cover-up of the biggest scandal in
American history.
In stark contrast, the managing editor, Robert Kaiser,
left a message on my answering machine saying that
there was really nothing to "this non-existent story".
In a subsequent conversation, he dismissed the article
as a reprise of rumours and allegations. "I am confident
that it doesn"t have any great new revelations," he said.
Others are less confident. A copy of the article passed
to The Sunday Telegraph - not, it should be stressed,
by its authors - appears to be absolutely explosive.
Based on an archive of more than 2,000 documents, it
says that western Arkansas was a centre of international
drug smuggling in the early 1980s - perhaps even the
headquarters of the biggest drug trafficking operation in
history. It asks whether hundreds of millions of dollars
in profits made their way "into criminal laundering in
Arkansas"s notoriously free-wheeling financial
institutions and bond houses".
The activities were mixed up with a U.S. intelligence
operation at the Mena airport in Arkansas that was
smuggling weapons to the Nicaraguan Contras.
Bill Clinton is not specifically accused of involvement,
but he was Governor of Arkansas at the time. The piece
also notes that some of his prominent backers had been
the subject of extensive investigation by the Drug
Enforcement Administration and the FBI, and had been
assigned files in NADDIS - the Narcotics & Dangerous
Drugs Intelligence System.
The article makes clear that the alleged scandal is not
confined to the activities of the Arkansas political
machine and Mr. Clinton. It embraces the highest levels
of the federal government over several years. "For three
Presidents of both parties - Messrs. Reagan, Bush and
Clinton - the old enduring questions of political scandal
are once again apt," the article concludes. "What did
they know about Mena? When did they know it? Why
didn"t they do anything to stop it?"
It is clear that The Washington Post took the article
extremely seriously. It was to be run at full length -
roughly 4,000 words, taking up several pages in an
almost unprecedented spread across the Sunday
Outlook section.
The authors, Dr. Roger Morris and Sally Denton, were
told that they were being offered the highest fee ever
paid for a contributiontotlook. They are veteran
investigators with established reputations. Morris
worked for the National Security Council staff at the
White House during the Johnson and Nixon
Administrations. He has taught at Harvard and has
written a series of acclaimed books on foreign policy.
Denton is the former head of news agency UPI"s
special investigative unit, and is the author of the
Bluegrass Conspiracy, which exposed the involvement
of Kentucky political and law enforcement figures in an
international arms and drug smuggling ring.
Their research is concentrated on the activities of Barry
Seal, a legendary smuggler who operated from a
company called Rich Mountain Aviation in the
Ouachita Mountains west of Little Rock.
They have his bank and telephone records, invoices,
appointment books, handwritten notes, personal diaries
and secretly-recorded conversations, as well as
extensive police records and surveillance reports.
Among other allegations they make are:
- Seal was using his fleet of aircraft to export weapons
to Bolivia, Argentina and Brazil in addition to the
Nicaraguan Contras.
- The planes were carrying cocaine back up to
Arkansas on the return journey for sale in New
York, Chicago, Detroit, St. Louis and other cities.
- Seal had ties to the CIA and felt that he could
smuggle with impunity.
- Nine separate attempts to investigate Mena, by
both state and federal authorities, were stymied.
"Over the entire episode looms the unmistakable
dark shape of U.S. government complicity in vast
drug trafficking and gun-running," the article says.
The broad picture is not new to readers of The Sunday
Telegraph [DSO - thanks to the heroic efforts of the
author of this article], which published a story making
some of the same points on October 9th last year. [DSO
- headlined "Smugglers Linked to Contra Arms Deals",
that article, also by Evans-Pritchard, is partially
displayed with caption with the present article]. The
Wall Street Journal has also done original reporting on
the subject.
__
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/P...es_of_mena.html
The Crimes of Mena
The Suppressed Article
This is the article which had been scheduled to appear in the Washington Post. After having cleared the legal department for all possible questions of inaccurate statements, the article was scheduled for publication when just as the presses were set to roll, Washington Post Managing Editor Bob Kaiser (Like George Bush, a member of the infamous "Skull & Bones Fraternity), killed the article without explanation. According to the sidebar which appeared with the Penthouse Magazine version of this story, Bob Kaiser refused to even meet with Sally Denton and Roger Morris, hiding in his office while his secretary made excuses.
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.
THE CRIMES OF MENA
By Sally Denton and Roger Morris
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.l.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.l.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.lA., which describes a number of covert activities around Mena, including a C.l.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 l.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 l.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 l.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 principle 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 l.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 l.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.l.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.l.A."
In a posthumous jeopardy-assessment case against Seal - also documented in the archive - the l.R.S. determined that money earned by Seal between 1984 and 1986 was not illegal because of his "C.l.A.-D.E.A. employment." The only public official acknowledgment of Seal's relationship to the C.l.A. has been in court and congressional testimony, and in various published accounts describing the C.l.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.l.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.l.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.l.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.l.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.l.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.l.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.l.A.], and C-130s had appeared...."
At the same time, according to Welch, two F.B.I. agents officially informed him that the C.l.A. "had something going on at the Mena Airport involving Southern Air Transport [another company linked with the C.l.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 l.R.S. criminal investigator Duncan, secretaries at the Mena Airport told him that when Seal flew into Mena, I'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 companiesQall 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.l.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 l.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 l.R.S. Iogic, 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.l.A.," a Customs official said in an Arkansas investigation into drug trafficking during the early eighties. "A C.l.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 plan- ning, 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.l.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.l.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 l.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.
From the July 1995 issue of *Penthouse*
Ambrose Evens-Pritchard On The Above
THE LONDON SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
29 JANUARY 1995
ARKANSAS DRUG EXPOSE MISSES THE
POST
BY AMBROSE EVANS-PRITCHARD IN
WASHINGTON
IT MIGHT almost be called The Greatest Story Never
Told. The article was typeset and scheduled to run in
today"s edition of The Washington Post.
It had the enthusiastic backing of the editors and staff
of the Sunday Outlook section, where it was to appear
after eleven weeks of soul-searching and debate.
Lawyers had gone through the text line by line.
Supporting documents had been examined with
meticulous care. The artwork and illustrations had been
completed. The contract with the authors had been
signed. Leonard Downie, the executive editor of the
newspaper, had given his final assent.
But on Thursday morning the piece was cancelled. It
had been delayed before - so often, in fact, that its
non-appearance was becoming the talk of Washington -
but this time the authors were convinced that the story
was doomed and would never make it into the pages of
what is arguably the world"s most powerful political
newspaper. They have withdrawn it in disgust, accusing
the Post of a cover-up of the biggest scandal in
American history.
In stark contrast, the managing editor, Robert Kaiser,
left a message on my answering machine saying that
there was really nothing to "this non-existent story".
In a subsequent conversation, he dismissed the article
as a reprise of rumours and allegations. "I am confident
that it doesn"t have any great new revelations," he said.
Others are less confident. A copy of the article passed
to The Sunday Telegraph - not, it should be stressed,
by its authors - appears to be absolutely explosive.
Based on an archive of more than 2,000 documents, it
says that western Arkansas was a centre of international
drug smuggling in the early 1980s - perhaps even the
headquarters of the biggest drug trafficking operation in
history. It asks whether hundreds of millions of dollars
in profits made their way "into criminal laundering in
Arkansas"s notoriously free-wheeling financial
institutions and bond houses".
The activities were mixed up with a U.S. intelligence
operation at the Mena airport in Arkansas that was
smuggling weapons to the Nicaraguan Contras.
Bill Clinton is not specifically accused of involvement,
but he was Governor of Arkansas at the time. The piece
also notes that some of his prominent backers had been
the subject of extensive investigation by the Drug
Enforcement Administration and the FBI, and had been
assigned files in NADDIS - the Narcotics & Dangerous
Drugs Intelligence System.
The article makes clear that the alleged scandal is not
confined to the activities of the Arkansas political
machine and Mr. Clinton. It embraces the highest levels
of the federal government over several years. "For three
Presidents of both parties - Messrs. Reagan, Bush and
Clinton - the old enduring questions of political scandal
are once again apt," the article concludes. "What did
they know about Mena? When did they know it? Why
didn"t they do anything to stop it?"
It is clear that The Washington Post took the article
extremely seriously. It was to be run at full length -
roughly 4,000 words, taking up several pages in an
almost unprecedented spread across the Sunday
Outlook section.
The authors, Dr. Roger Morris and Sally Denton, were
told that they were being offered the highest fee ever
paid for a contributiontotlook. They are veteran
investigators with established reputations. Morris
worked for the National Security Council staff at the
White House during the Johnson and Nixon
Administrations. He has taught at Harvard and has
written a series of acclaimed books on foreign policy.
Denton is the former head of news agency UPI"s
special investigative unit, and is the author of the
Bluegrass Conspiracy, which exposed the involvement
of Kentucky political and law enforcement figures in an
international arms and drug smuggling ring.
Their research is concentrated on the activities of Barry
Seal, a legendary smuggler who operated from a
company called Rich Mountain Aviation in the
Ouachita Mountains west of Little Rock.
They have his bank and telephone records, invoices,
appointment books, handwritten notes, personal diaries
and secretly-recorded conversations, as well as
extensive police records and surveillance reports.
Among other allegations they make are:
- Seal was using his fleet of aircraft to export weapons
to Bolivia, Argentina and Brazil in addition to the
Nicaraguan Contras.
- The planes were carrying cocaine back up to
Arkansas on the return journey for sale in New
York, Chicago, Detroit, St. Louis and other cities.
- Seal had ties to the CIA and felt that he could
smuggle with impunity.
- Nine separate attempts to investigate Mena, by
both state and federal authorities, were stymied.
"Over the entire episode looms the unmistakable
dark shape of U.S. government complicity in vast
drug trafficking and gun-running," the article says.
The broad picture is not new to readers of The Sunday
Telegraph [DSO - thanks to the heroic efforts of the
author of this article], which published a story making
some of the same points on October 9th last year. [DSO
- headlined "Smugglers Linked to Contra Arms Deals",
that article, also by Evans-Pritchard, is partially
displayed with caption with the present article]. The
Wall Street Journal has also done original reporting on
the subject.
__
Now for a little side track to Enron 
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2.../28/12723.shtml
Enron and Bill Clinton
Charles R. Smith
Thursday, Feb. 28, 2002
Trade Trips to Russia, India, Bosnia and Indonesia
I must admit to an error in my most recent article on the Enron scandal. Lovers of ex-President Bill Clinton will be overjoyed to find that Enron's top exec Ken Lay did not stay at the White House 11 times.
However, the bad news for those who still worship Mr. Clinton is that Enron not only donated $100,000 to Clinton's 1993 inauguration but, according to the records, also added an additional $25,000 to the Clinton 1993 celebrations.
The documented evidence shows that Enron did make it into the Clinton White House by special invitation. Senior Vice President Terrance H. Thorn had coffee with Bill Clinton on March 5, 1996.
Many of the other attendees of the Clinton White House coffee sessions also make up a long list of convicted criminals, arms dealers and bagmen for illegal DNC contributions.
For example, Wang Jun had coffee with Clinton in 1996. Wang is also the president of Poly Technologies, the largest arms trading firm owned by the People's Liberation Army. Poly Tech is currently banned from doing business in the United States after several of its top executives conspired to smuggle machine guns into the U.S. for sale to a major drug dealer – who later turned out to be a Customs agent posing as a gangster.
Charlie "Yah Lin" Trie, who was later convicted of illegally passing hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Clinton/Gore re-election campaign, brought Wang into the White House. Trie also gave an additional $645,000 to the Democratic National Committee, and most of this money was from illegal foreign sources.
Trip to Russia
Enron's association with the Clinton White House comes even closer to home when you consider the many corporate foreign trade trips paid for by your tax dollars. In 1994, Enron's CEO Ken Lay surfaced on a list of attendees wishing to travel to Russia with Ron Brown.
One person who did make the trade trip to Russia was Roger Tamraz. Interpol then wanted Tamraz, a Lebanese oil financier, for embezzling nearly $80 million from a Middle Eastern bank. Tamraz, who made most of his money selling Libyan oil, would later give more than $300,000 to the DNC after having coffee with Bill Clinton in the White House.
Russia was not the only target of Enron wheeling-and-dealing with the Clinton administration. Enron execs traveled on a profitable trade trip to India with Ron Brown, landing a major contract for a power plant. The India power plant deal later fell apart with allegations of illegal payments and bribery.
Trip to Bosnia
Enron also traveled in 1997 to Bosnia with Commerce Secretary Kantor in hopes of landing a U.S. taxpayer-backed energy deal in the war-torn state. According to the Chicago Tribune, Enron made a $100,000 donation to the DNC just days prior to the trade mission to the former Yugoslav province. Commerce Department documents clearly note that Enron was interested in the "Zagreb" portion of the trip.
Even in the last days of Bill Clinton, Enron execs were on the go. Enron traveled to South Korea with Commerce Secretary William Daley in 1999. Daley would go on to run Vice President Al Gore's failed bid for the White House in 2000.
Trip to Indonesia
The most damning evidence linking Bill Clinton and Enron to corruption is the documentation that shows Enron received U.S. taxpayer monies in order to finance a corrupt deal with Indonesia.
P.T. East Java Power Corp., which was then 50.1 percent owned by Enron, wanted to conclude a deal for a 500 megawatt power plant in East Java, Indonesia. The 20-year deal was later signed by Enron with P.T. PLN Persero (PLN), Indonesia's state-owned electric utility, which agreed to purchase the power from the natural-gas-fired plant.
According to Enron, the natural gas for the project was to be provided by Pertamina, Indonesia's state-owned oil and gas company. Commerce Department documents noted that Pertamina stalled the project with excessive demands for gas prices.
"Enron is now engaged with Pertamina over access to natural gas. These discussions may prove difficult," states a 1994 Commerce Department advocacy document.
"Enron is registered for OPIC (Overseas Private Investment Corporation) insurance," states the document, noting that the giant corporation obtained U.S. taxpayer-backed insurance if the Indonesian deal fell apart.
Ron Brown Letters for Enron
Ron Brown personally sought approval for the Enron electric power plants inside Indonesia. According to a personal letter directed to the Indonesian Minister for Trade and Industry, Brown endorsed two Enron deals for gas-fired power plants with the corrupt Suharto regime.
"Enron power, a world renowned private power developer, is in the final stages of negotiating two combined cycle, gas turbine power projects," wrote Brown in his 1995 letter.
"The first, a 500 MW plant in East Java, should bring commercial power generation by the end of 1997 if it can promptly negotiate a gas supply Memorandum of Understanding with Pertamina. The other project, a smaller plant in East Kalimantan, also awaits a gas supply agreement.
"I urge you to give full consideration to the proposals," concluded Brown to the Indonesian minister. In October 1995, Brown wrote another letter, this time to Hartarto Sastrosurarto, Indonesia's Coordinating Minister for Trade and Industry, pressing him to conclude the Enron power plant deals.
"I would like to bring to your attention a number of projects involving American companies which seem to be stalled, including several independent power projects. These projects include the Tarahan power project, which involves Southern Electric; the gas powered projects in East Java and East Kalimantan, which involves Enron," wrote Brown.
"Your support for prompt resolution of the remaining issues associated with each of these projects would be most appreciated," concluded Brown.
On Nov. 18, 1996, Enron CEO Ken Lay announced that the deal with Suharto was complete. According to Enron's public statement, the U.S.-led energy company had finally won the East Java Power project.
Corruption, Collusion and Nepotism
Yet the Enron success was clouded by allegations that the power plant deals were filled with kickbacks for the Suharto family. In October 1998, U.S. Ambassador J. Stapleton Roy wrote a diplomatic cable that he had recently met with Indonesian Director General of Electricity Endro Utomo Notodisoerjo.
"Commenting on corruption, collusion and nepotism (KKN), Endro said that in the past there was no separation between 'power' (not electric but former first family power) and business. 'All the IPP's (Independent Power Projects) have a relation with power, and it is still going on,' added Endro."
According to State Department documents, Enron signed on to a deal filled with "corruption, collusion and nepotism." One State Department cable included an entire section titled "Dealing with unwanted partners" that detailed corruption inside the two Enron power plants at East Kalimantan and East Java.
"Unocal executives told resources officer that the firm is close to reaching a deal with its partner, PT Nusamba (controlled by former President Soeharto crony Bob Hasan) to sever ties in two production sharing contracts (PSC) in East Kalimantan and East Java," notes the State Department cable.
Eventually, the Indonesian economy collapsed and Suharto was overthrown. The resulting economic mess forced Indonesia to default on its payments for the Enron power plants. The U.S. taxpayer using its insurance, however, paid off Enron. One such policy for Enron was obtained through the World Bank Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency or MIGA.
"In June of this year, MIGA paid $15 million to Enron Java Power Co. for its investment in P.T. East Java Power Corporation in Indonesia," states the 2000 official public release from the World Bank.
"The venture was one of many suspended by the presidential decree of September 20, 1997, issued in response to the country's economic crisis," noted MIGA officials.
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2.../28/12723.shtml
Enron and Bill Clinton
Charles R. Smith
Thursday, Feb. 28, 2002
Trade Trips to Russia, India, Bosnia and Indonesia
I must admit to an error in my most recent article on the Enron scandal. Lovers of ex-President Bill Clinton will be overjoyed to find that Enron's top exec Ken Lay did not stay at the White House 11 times.
However, the bad news for those who still worship Mr. Clinton is that Enron not only donated $100,000 to Clinton's 1993 inauguration but, according to the records, also added an additional $25,000 to the Clinton 1993 celebrations.
The documented evidence shows that Enron did make it into the Clinton White House by special invitation. Senior Vice President Terrance H. Thorn had coffee with Bill Clinton on March 5, 1996.
Many of the other attendees of the Clinton White House coffee sessions also make up a long list of convicted criminals, arms dealers and bagmen for illegal DNC contributions.
For example, Wang Jun had coffee with Clinton in 1996. Wang is also the president of Poly Technologies, the largest arms trading firm owned by the People's Liberation Army. Poly Tech is currently banned from doing business in the United States after several of its top executives conspired to smuggle machine guns into the U.S. for sale to a major drug dealer – who later turned out to be a Customs agent posing as a gangster.
Charlie "Yah Lin" Trie, who was later convicted of illegally passing hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Clinton/Gore re-election campaign, brought Wang into the White House. Trie also gave an additional $645,000 to the Democratic National Committee, and most of this money was from illegal foreign sources.
Trip to Russia
Enron's association with the Clinton White House comes even closer to home when you consider the many corporate foreign trade trips paid for by your tax dollars. In 1994, Enron's CEO Ken Lay surfaced on a list of attendees wishing to travel to Russia with Ron Brown.
One person who did make the trade trip to Russia was Roger Tamraz. Interpol then wanted Tamraz, a Lebanese oil financier, for embezzling nearly $80 million from a Middle Eastern bank. Tamraz, who made most of his money selling Libyan oil, would later give more than $300,000 to the DNC after having coffee with Bill Clinton in the White House.
Russia was not the only target of Enron wheeling-and-dealing with the Clinton administration. Enron execs traveled on a profitable trade trip to India with Ron Brown, landing a major contract for a power plant. The India power plant deal later fell apart with allegations of illegal payments and bribery.
Trip to Bosnia
Enron also traveled in 1997 to Bosnia with Commerce Secretary Kantor in hopes of landing a U.S. taxpayer-backed energy deal in the war-torn state. According to the Chicago Tribune, Enron made a $100,000 donation to the DNC just days prior to the trade mission to the former Yugoslav province. Commerce Department documents clearly note that Enron was interested in the "Zagreb" portion of the trip.
Even in the last days of Bill Clinton, Enron execs were on the go. Enron traveled to South Korea with Commerce Secretary William Daley in 1999. Daley would go on to run Vice President Al Gore's failed bid for the White House in 2000.
Trip to Indonesia
The most damning evidence linking Bill Clinton and Enron to corruption is the documentation that shows Enron received U.S. taxpayer monies in order to finance a corrupt deal with Indonesia.
P.T. East Java Power Corp., which was then 50.1 percent owned by Enron, wanted to conclude a deal for a 500 megawatt power plant in East Java, Indonesia. The 20-year deal was later signed by Enron with P.T. PLN Persero (PLN), Indonesia's state-owned electric utility, which agreed to purchase the power from the natural-gas-fired plant.
According to Enron, the natural gas for the project was to be provided by Pertamina, Indonesia's state-owned oil and gas company. Commerce Department documents noted that Pertamina stalled the project with excessive demands for gas prices.
"Enron is now engaged with Pertamina over access to natural gas. These discussions may prove difficult," states a 1994 Commerce Department advocacy document.
"Enron is registered for OPIC (Overseas Private Investment Corporation) insurance," states the document, noting that the giant corporation obtained U.S. taxpayer-backed insurance if the Indonesian deal fell apart.
Ron Brown Letters for Enron
Ron Brown personally sought approval for the Enron electric power plants inside Indonesia. According to a personal letter directed to the Indonesian Minister for Trade and Industry, Brown endorsed two Enron deals for gas-fired power plants with the corrupt Suharto regime.
"Enron power, a world renowned private power developer, is in the final stages of negotiating two combined cycle, gas turbine power projects," wrote Brown in his 1995 letter.
"The first, a 500 MW plant in East Java, should bring commercial power generation by the end of 1997 if it can promptly negotiate a gas supply Memorandum of Understanding with Pertamina. The other project, a smaller plant in East Kalimantan, also awaits a gas supply agreement.
"I urge you to give full consideration to the proposals," concluded Brown to the Indonesian minister. In October 1995, Brown wrote another letter, this time to Hartarto Sastrosurarto, Indonesia's Coordinating Minister for Trade and Industry, pressing him to conclude the Enron power plant deals.
"I would like to bring to your attention a number of projects involving American companies which seem to be stalled, including several independent power projects. These projects include the Tarahan power project, which involves Southern Electric; the gas powered projects in East Java and East Kalimantan, which involves Enron," wrote Brown.
"Your support for prompt resolution of the remaining issues associated with each of these projects would be most appreciated," concluded Brown.
On Nov. 18, 1996, Enron CEO Ken Lay announced that the deal with Suharto was complete. According to Enron's public statement, the U.S.-led energy company had finally won the East Java Power project.
Corruption, Collusion and Nepotism
Yet the Enron success was clouded by allegations that the power plant deals were filled with kickbacks for the Suharto family. In October 1998, U.S. Ambassador J. Stapleton Roy wrote a diplomatic cable that he had recently met with Indonesian Director General of Electricity Endro Utomo Notodisoerjo.
"Commenting on corruption, collusion and nepotism (KKN), Endro said that in the past there was no separation between 'power' (not electric but former first family power) and business. 'All the IPP's (Independent Power Projects) have a relation with power, and it is still going on,' added Endro."
According to State Department documents, Enron signed on to a deal filled with "corruption, collusion and nepotism." One State Department cable included an entire section titled "Dealing with unwanted partners" that detailed corruption inside the two Enron power plants at East Kalimantan and East Java.
"Unocal executives told resources officer that the firm is close to reaching a deal with its partner, PT Nusamba (controlled by former President Soeharto crony Bob Hasan) to sever ties in two production sharing contracts (PSC) in East Kalimantan and East Java," notes the State Department cable.
Eventually, the Indonesian economy collapsed and Suharto was overthrown. The resulting economic mess forced Indonesia to default on its payments for the Enron power plants. The U.S. taxpayer using its insurance, however, paid off Enron. One such policy for Enron was obtained through the World Bank Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency or MIGA.
"In June of this year, MIGA paid $15 million to Enron Java Power Co. for its investment in P.T. East Java Power Corporation in Indonesia," states the 2000 official public release from the World Bank.
"The venture was one of many suspended by the presidential decree of September 20, 1997, issued in response to the country's economic crisis," noted MIGA officials.
QUOTE(jimiray @ Mar 16 2006, 07:01 PM)
Now for a little side track to Enron
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2.../28/12723.shtml
Enron and Bill Clinton
Charles R. Smith
Thursday, Feb. 28, 2002
Trade Trips to Russia, India, Bosnia and Indonesia
I must admit to an error in my most recent article on the Enron scandal. Lovers of ex-President Bill Clinton will be overjoyed to find that Enron's top exec Ken Lay did not stay at the White House 11 times.
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2.../28/12723.shtml
Enron and Bill Clinton
Charles R. Smith
Thursday, Feb. 28, 2002
Trade Trips to Russia, India, Bosnia and Indonesia
I must admit to an error in my most recent article on the Enron scandal. Lovers of ex-President Bill Clinton will be overjoyed to find that Enron's top exec Ken Lay did not stay at the White House 11 times.
If those working close to the Enron Executives couldn't even smell the smoke while moving so close under the Executives noses, you think Clinton would know that Ken Lay is a crook, right through and through.
Just an example of a list of learned societies in UK:
http://www.britac.ac.uk/links/uksahss.asp?Letter=R
(Note: Every Learned Society in Britain has its own Code of Conduct for members to abide. Disobedience against the Code is enough reason to strile them off membership)
By the way, if you and graham4abything should imagine that Rhodes Scholars are brought together for some Fremasonry Conspiracy, then all these lists of students must be all over the places creeping and spying around the earth:
http://www.rhodesscholar.org/win02.html
(Note: Clinton must be a hell of a good student to be selected to a Rhodes Scholar. Give him his due credit.)
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