MENA

• Document Type: FOIA
• Keywords: SEAL BARRY
• Keywords: MENA ARKANSAS
• Collection: FOIA Collection
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 0001289860
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: June 22, 2015
• Document Release Date: September 30, 2009
• Case Number: F-2002-01499
• Publication Date: July 29, 1995

APPROVED FOR
RELEASE DATE:
28-Sep-2009
// . % i
=9 July 1995
Note to: Acting DCI
From: Acting Director of Public Affairs
Subject: Mena
The August issue of The American Spectator takes up the Mena
story in a way that is likely to resonate on the Hill (see
attached article).
It alleges, explicitly and implicitly, that an aircraft
operated by a CIA front company in 1984 used the airfield at
Mena, Arkansas, as a staging point for weapons supply flights
to the Contras in Nicaragua; on the return flights from
Honduras, the aircraft allegedly carried illegal narcotics to
Mena. The narcotics runner, Barry Seal, allegedly paid off
then-Governor Clinton's protege, L. D. Brown, and one Dan
Laseter, a Clinton contributor.
This is the latest repackaging of allegations previously made
by the Wall Street Journal.
.I understand that Fred Hitz or someone from his staff, along
with other CIA officers will brief Congressman Leach on'
Friday 21 July in an attempt to address his concerns about
these and other allegations.
In the mean time, we are receiving media queries on Mena,
most recently from Michael Isikoff of Newsweek on 18 July.
With the publication of The American Spectator article, we
expect more.
At present, although there is no reason to believe any of the
allegations, we are declining to comment publicly, pending
exhaustive searches of DO files, as tasked by OCA. As soon
as those searches are complete, we hope to have a crisp
public statement that distances us from the allegations--if
the Agency IG's look into them does not cor)strain us from
doing so.
CC: EXDIR, GC, D/OCA, ADDO, ADDI, DDA, D/AIS
 ',<
R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.
The Arkansas Drug Shuttle
What L.D. Brown, Clinton s fair-haired boy, has told me.
Arkansas State Trooper L. D.
Brown was 28 years old in
1984. He was not only
Gov. Bill Clinton's favorite body-
guard, but also a close friend. The
other troopers called him Clinton's
"fair-haired boy." They shared an
interest in books, ideas, and night
life. Brown still has books that
Clinton gave him, one being a bar
exam study book in which the politi-
cian had made some ironic underlin-
ings. One passage discusses the
deductibility of charitable donations,
and another the length of residency
required in Washington before tax
liability is incurred. Like Clinton,
Brown passed through a radical
stage when he attended the
University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. Indeed, when Clinton
was a law professor in Fayetteville, Brown was working on an
off-campus magazine, the radical Grapevine.
In the autumn of 1984, Brown found himself seated on a
bench inside a cavernous C-123K cargo plane roaring over a
Central American jungle. The pilot of the plane was Barry Sea!,
a legendary drug trafficker. Two years later, he would be shot
dead in Louisiana. Three Colombians eventually were arrested
and convicted of the murder. The Louisiana attorney general
would tell the Justice Department that Seal had "smuggled
between $3 billion and $5 billion in drugs into the U.S."
The C-123K also had a history. It was originally an Air
Force transport plane. Seal dubbed it "the Fat Lady." It
would later be serviced and financed by Southern Air
R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. is editor-in-chief of The American
Spectator.
Transport, a CIA front company,
and it was eventually shot down
over Nicaragua in a doomed sup-
ply effort to the Contras that left
an American, Eugene Hasenfus, a
prisoner of the Sandinistas and the
CIA link to the Contras revealed.
Brown recalls that on the morn-
ing of this particular flight, Seal had
told him to drive to Mena
Intermountain Regional Airport, a
remote air strip near the Oklahoma
border. He had expected to find, he
says, a Baron or King Air, the kind
of plane in which he had sometimes
accompanied the Governor, and in
which he had some training as a
pilot. Instead, he says, he found this
"huge military plane" that was not
actually a military plane. It was dark almost black, and had
only the minimal tail markings necessary for civilian operation.
Inside the plane, according to Brown, were another pilot
and two "beaners"-common laborers who looked like Central
American Indians. Later Brown would come to know them as it
"kickers." All were wearing jeans, T-shirts, and sneakers. Seal,
Brown says, had also prescribed the dress code, and insisted t
that no one carry identificarinn, not even keys or jewelry. Then,
he started the engines, and Brown remembers, "This ... I
mean just thunderous noise. Scared the s--- out of me just tak-
ing off." Brown says that when the plane took off, he was sit-
ting on a bench behind the two pilots. At the rear of the plane.
by the beaners, he says, were palettes on casters.
After it left Mena, the plane made a refueling stop-
The American Spectator
Nobody got off," Brown says---and then resumed flight.
Eventually, Brown recalls, Seal startled him by yelling,
"Well, you all hang on." Then the plane dropped to what
J) 5 3 -3
 Brown calls "an altitude a hell of a lot lower than what you'd
think you'd fly." He suspected Seal was trying to evade
radar. Then, he says, they regained altitude, but then they
descended again, and "that's when these two crazy bastards
get these palettes and roll them out on casters." Parachutes
opened from the palettes. Later Seal confirmed Brown's sus-
picions: the palettes contained M-16s for the Contras.
Approximately 30 minutes later, Brown says., the C-
123K landed in what he later learned was Tegucigalpa,
Honduras. Then it was refueled while Seal and the kickers
got off. Brown and the co-pilot, who never exchanged any
more than a few words, remained on board. Then, Brown
says, Seal and the kickers returned, carrying four duffel
bags. Brown says he never saw the bags again..
Back at Mena, Brown says, he told Seal he had thought they
were going to fly in a plane similar to the ones he had been on
with the Governor. Seal, he says, laughed, and told Brown that
all he had wanted him to do was "sit back for the ride." Then
he gave Brown an envelope with $2,500 in cash-"not marked
money, not banded money, just twenties, fifties, mosdy twen-
ties, used money, like you just went out and spent."
When Brown returned to the Governor's mansion, he
recalls, Clinton greeted him jovially, "You having any fun
yet?" he asked. Clinton had been asking him a similar ques-
tion for months, ever since, with Clinton's encouragement, he
had applied for a job with the CIA. Indeed, Clinton had taken
an active role in helping Brown. As part of the application
process, Brown had written an essay: "Marxist Influence in
Central America." Three early drafts of the essay contain
interpolations in Clinton's handwriting. Clinton also suggest-
ed that Brown study Russian, a suggestion Brown took seri-
ously enough to begin making entries in his daybook in cyril
lic. Clinton, Brown believed, was familiar with the CIA.
"When I got back from that first trip he knew I had been
out doing something," Brown insists. "I mean I didn't have
a chance to tell him anything about it. That's when he said,
'You having any fun yet."'
The CIA does not talk about these things, and so Brown's
exact relationship with the agency may never be known.
It may also never be known whether CIA officials
approved or knew of Seal's activities, or whether he was operat-
ing on his own. Some facts, however, are indisputable. An entry
in Brown's daybook indicates that the flight with Seal took
place on October 23, 1984. A month before that, the Southwest
personnel representative for the CIA, Ken Cargile, in a letter to
Brown, wrote that "I am pleased to nominate you for employ-
ment with the Central Intelligence Agency." Another entry in
Brown's daybook indicates that he had met with another CIA
representative only a few days before that. Brown has identified
him as Dan Magruder, and says that he spoke admiringly of
Clinton. Magruder, Brown says, asked him if he would be inter-
ested in "paramilitary, counterintelligence and narcotics."
Brown, who had worked in narcotics enforcement as a police
officer, said he was interested. He then, he says, signed a secre-
cy agreement, and was told he would be contacted further.
Subsequently, Brown says, Seal called him at home, and
The American Spectator August 1995
i set up a meeting at Cajun's Wharf, a popular Little Rock
watering hole. Seal, according to Brown, was familiar with
the biographical information he had given the agency. Seal,
Brown says, talked knowledgeably about airplanes, and
spoke of an "operation" he was planning. He also referred
to Clinton, familiarly, as "the guy."
Brown's break with Clinton came after Brown made
what he says was his second flight from Mena to Central
America. Two duffel bags were put on board the plane at
Tegucigalpa. Back at Mena, Brown says, he and Seal
walked to Brown's car, a Datsun hatchback, and Seal put
one of the duffel bags under the hatchback. Then both men
got into the front seat of the car, and Seal reached back into
the duffel bag, and pulled out a manila envelope with
$2,500 in it. He said the money had been brought back from
Tegucigalpa. Then, Brown says, Seal reached again into the
duffel bag and pulled out a kilogram of cocaine.
Brown, a narcotics cop, got upset. He says he feared he
was being set up-made a conspirator in an operation he
despised. He also says he told Seal he wanted no part of was
happening; then he left. When he returned to Little Rock, he
called his brother Dwayne. Dwayne Brown says his bother
seemed "terribly upset," and that he immediately drove over
to the Governor's Mansion to meet him. Dwayne Brown says
he knew his brother had made some unexplained trips out of
the country. He suspected a CIA involvement, although his
brother did not confirm it. But when he asked his brother,
"Who's pushing this?" his brother, Dwayne Brown says,
"nodded over towards the Governor's Mansion." From then
on, until he left Clinton's security detail in June, Dwayne
Brown says, his brother was at "a high level of despair." He
says he had feared he might be suicidal.
Meanwhile, Brown says, he confronted Clinton, asking
him if he knew that Seal was dealing in drugs and unreport-
ed currency. Brown says Clinton told him not to worry. He
said, according to Brown, "That's Lasater's deal, that's
Lasater's deal."
Dan Lasater, of course, was the celebrated Little Rock
"bond daddy." As early as 1982, his firm had been censured
by the Arkansas' security commissioner for cheating cus-
tomers. In 1986, he was convicted of drug distribution, and
lost his state securities license. At the time Seal's flights
took place, Lasater was contributing to Clinton's political
campaigns. He was also providing Clinton with the use of a
private airplane, and entertaining him at various places,
including his New Mexico resort, Angel Fire.
In the years that followed his split from Clinton, Brown
investigated white-collar crime for the Arkansas State Police.
He says that he wanted to go public with his revelations about
Mena, but that he did not know whom to tell. He also says he
was mindful of the secrecy agreement he had signed with the
CIA. Whatever the case, of all the Arkansas troopers who
would later admit to knowledge of Clinton's high life, Brown
was the most hesitant to talk. Though the Clinton machine
seemed to fear him the most, he showed no intention of break-
ing his silence until a chain of random events made it inevitable.
In 1994, Brown told Daniel Wattenberg of The American
9 17
 Spectator that Jim Guy Tucker, then the Arkansas governor,
had asked him and trooper Larry Patterson for compromising
information on Clinton's private life in 1990, when Tucker was
contemplating a race for governor. When Wattenberg reported
this, an angry Tucker retaliated against Brown by demoting
him from white-collar investigations to highway patrol. "I
don't want to be getting any more reports from Brown" is the
statement by Tucker that Colonel Tommy Goodwin, the
recently retired head of the Arkansas state police, quoted in
explaining the demotion to me in an interview.
Owing to a case that Brown was then working on that
could have implicated Tucker, Brown believes the demotion
was illegal. An indignant Brown began toying with the idea
of exposing the corruption of Arkansas politics.
Subsequently, the special prosecutor investigating
Whitewater subpoenaed Brown to disclose what he knew
about Clinton's connections to David L. Hale. Clinton
appeared to have pressured Hale, the head of an Arkansas
lending agency, into making loans to Susan McDougal, the
Clintons' Whitewater real estate partner.
Brown says he realized then that "everything is going to
come out." Nonetheless, he still seemed reluctant to dis-
close all he knew. The irony is that he might have remained
reluctant, but then the White House itself intervened.
hen ABC News interviewed Brown in the fall of
1994, the White House tried to malign him. White
House officials, as well as Clinton's lawyer David
Kendall, approached ABC. As Time reported, Kendall was
"working very, very hard to keep Whitewater out of the head-
lines." Meanwhile, Betsey Wright, a Clinton political fixer,
told ABC that Brown was a "pathological liar," even though
his personnel file in Arkansas abounded with recommenda-
tions-some from Clinton, and even one from Dr. Joycelyn
Elders. ABC was also told that Brown had failed a psycholog-
ical test. Goodwin told me and ABC that Brown had passed it.
But of the charges levelled at Brown by the White
House, the most unintentionally revealing was that Brown
had flunked a CIA examination in the mid-1980's. That
charge could only have come from the man-then Governor
Clinton-who knew that his former bodyguard had dealings
with the CIA ten years ago. Seemingly panicked, the White
House mistakenly presumed that Brown was talking to
ABC News about his involvement with Mena when he was
actually discussing Whitewater. (Brown maintains that he
never flunked the test; in fact, he was nominated four
months after taking it for employment with the agency.)
An ABC producer told me at the time that "Brown is
telling the truth. You can trust him," but the network appar-
ently yielded to White House pressure. The interview with
Brown, in which he had spoken only about Hale and not
about Mena, was killed. Brown's patience had been strained
beyond endurance. He decided to talk about Mena.
It must be noted now that Clinton's efforts to distance
himself from Mena have persisted for years. At a press con-
ference in October 1994, for instance, he was asked a ram-
bling question about the remote air strip, and gave an equally
rambling answer. He concluded by saying that ,Mena was
federal, not a state, matter. "The state really had next to nosh-
ing to do with it. We had nothing-zero-to do with it, anc
everybody who's ever looked into it knows that."
But Brown says he is lying. His daybook records one visit tc
Mena by Clinton on May 21, 1984, and he says that he accom-
panied Clinton to Mena on several other occasions
Meanwhile
.
,
others are now coming forward to confirm a Clinton connection
to Mena. Trooper Bobby Walker has told me that "sometime in
the mid-1980s" he was at Mena with Clinton. Walker said a
"huge dark-green military plane" was parked there, and that
when he expressed surprise at seeing a military plane at Mena,
Clinton said it was not military; it served another purpose.
Last March, in a legally binding deposition, trooper
Larry Patterson also said that Clinton knew about Mena.
Patterson said he had overheard conversations about "large
quantities of drugs being flown into Mena airport, large
quantities of guns, that there was an ongoing operation
training foreign people in the area." When asked, "Were
any of these conversations in the presence of Gov. Bill
Clinton?" he replied: "Yes, sir."
Patterson was being deposed in a legal suit filed against
Buddy Young, the former head of Clinton's security detail,
and another man by Terry Reed, who says he trained Contra
pilots, under Seal's supervision, at Nella, Arkansas. In
another deposition in the case, John Bender, a mechanic,
says he saw Clinton at Mena three times in the summer of
1985. There were no local dignitaries present, Bender says,
and Clinton did not seem to be taking part in any official
function. He says that Clinton arrived in a Beech aircraft,
and was still there when he left for the day.
When he was deposed, Bender was shown a photograph
of Buddy Young. He identified him as "Capt. Buddy
Young-that little beady-faced fellow," and said he was with
Clinton at Mena. Young has since been made head of the
Federal Emergency Management Administration in Denton,
Texas. In another deposition in the Reed case, Russell Welch,
an Arkansas state police investigator who has .looked exten-
sively at Mena, says that Young asked him in 1992 if
Clinton's name had ever come up in connection with Mena.
Welch said it had not, but Young's concern was intriguing.
At this juncture, no one, including Brown, can say pre-
cisely what Clinton was doing at Mena. Brown's role, after
all, was quite limited. After Brown told Seal-and
Clinton-that he would no longer take part in the drug
flights, Seal contacted Brown again. Brown says Seal told
him "there's good money to be had." But Brown, says he
was out of that game for good. It does seem, however, that
Clinton was far less cautious. The Mena operation reveals
the essential recklessness of our present president.
How much did Clinton know about what he called
"Lasaster's deal" in that conversation with L.D. Brown?
Ultimately we may find out, as Brown tells us that he has
been repeatedly questioned by lawyers working for the
Whitewater independent counsel about Clinton's~associa-
tion with Lasater at a time when illicit drugs allegedly were
flowing into.Mena airport. 0