From bigxc@prairienet.orgSun Feb  5 07:49:15 1995
Date: Thu, 2 Feb 95 11:47:16 CST
From: Brian Redman <bigxc@prairienet.org>
To: Multiple recipients of list <conspire@prairienet.org>
Subject: Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 3 Num. 77



              Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 3  Num. 77
             ======================================
                    ("Quid coniuratio est?")
 
 
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[CN -- Thanks to D.S.O. for transcribing the following.]
 
 
           FROM *THE 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 11 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withdrawn it in disgust, accusing the *Post* of a cover-up of the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 US 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 and 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 contribution to
Outlook. 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 US 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 9 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.
 
Morris and Denton have added fresh evidence but the real political
importance of the piece is the fact that it was going to run in *The
Washington Post*. The *Post* still sets the agenda in Washington and
guides many US press and TV reporters on what they are supposed to
think.
 
Up to now, the *Post* has conducted no more than a desultory
investigation of the Mena affair, and its reporters have persistently
treated it as a ludicrous conspiracy theory.
 
The treatment of the article by Morris and Denton will fuel claims
from both Left and Right that *The Washington Post* is engaged in
active suppression of the news to protect either Clinton or the CIA or
both.
 
"It's down to naked politics now," Morris told *The Sunday Telegraph*.
"We've jumped through every hoop. We've given them everything they've
asked for. They can't say the story's not credible now."
 
In the end the Mena story is going to come out, with the courts doing
the work of the press. A lawsuit in Arkansas is being used to
determine the role of both Clinton and the US federal government in
dirty tricks linked to Mena.
 
The case has already reached a crucial phase. A high-powered team of
lawyers has issued subpoenas to key witnesses who will be compelled to
testify under oath. Sworn depositions will rain down like confetti
over the next few months.
 
And if the great American newspapers do not want to cover it, the
radio talk shows certainly will.
 
 
[DSO - perhaps it's the fact that both sides of politics are involved
in this scandal that has prevented media exposure so far. Any threats
against Clinton can be met with a reciprocal threat to expose the
involvement of previous administrations. Let's hope the gridlock is
broken.]
 
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Aperi os tuum muto, et causis omnium filiorum qui pertranseunt.
Aperi os tuum, decerne quod justum est, et judica inopem et 
  pauperem.                    -- Liber Proverbiorum  XXXI: 8-9 

 Brian Francis Redman    bigxc@prairienet.org    "The Big C"
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    Coming to you from Illinois -- "The Land of Skolnick"        
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