PAST goings on at the airport in Mena, Ark., are starting to get a lot of official attention. And I'm sure neither Republican nor Democratic higher-ups will be thrilled about any disclosures in a year when an independent candidacy for the presidency appears as a strong possibility.
As you've read in this column, Mena seems to have been used by covert agencies in Washington as a place from which to ship guns to Nicaraguan rebels. Cocaine seems to have been smuggled into the United States on return flights.
Those drug shipments left Arkansas awash with illegal money that needed to be laundered. And it could very well have led to the corruption of the political and financial system in that state.
Bill Alexander, a former congressman who has spent a lot of time looking into Mena, tells me that more than one law enforcement agency has contacted him for information on Mena.
"I have been contacted by law enforcement agencies - plural - and committees in Congress on the question of drug trafficking and money laundering in Arkansas," says Alexander, who had been the chief whip in the House and chairman of the Speaker's Task Force on Central America.
Which agencies? You can bet they are the FBI, which has recently taken a bigger interest in Mena because of Special Prosecutor Ken Starr's Whitewater probe, and the Drug Enforcement Administration, which seems to have located two Cayman Island bank accounts it believes contains, or once contained, drug money.
The DEA may also be embarrassed by reports, especially in The Post, that someone in its organization protected Barry Seal, a key person in the Mena operation, from prosecution by the Arkansas state police.
Alexander says the law enforcement agencies contacted him as recently as last week.
At least one Congressional committee, Jim Leach's House Banking Committee, is also known to have been in touch with Alexander. While not the main thrust of its investigation, Leach has become fond of poking at the scum that formed around the Mena operation.
We'll see if any of these curious folks get their investigations up to full speed.
And by the way, the press seems to be getting interested. I'm told a television network had a crew filming around Mena last week.
You'll remember Dickey as Chelsea Clinton's nanny and the woman who called the governor's mansion in Arkansas the night that Vince Foster was found dead in Fort Marcy Park in Virginia.
The trouble is that a state trooper says he answered Dickey's phone call much earlier than when the White House knew of Foster's death. That trooper, as well as another trooper he called and a lawyer, already issued notarized affadavits of their own about the time.
So D'Amato has a case of the dueling affadavits.
The trouble is that Dickey's affadavit probably isn't valid. And the notary who took her statement is dodging inquiries from The Post as well as from a congressional prober.
Barry Boshears, who has been a notary for about five years, failed to put the expiration date of his commission on Dickey's statement. And he didn't bother to fill in the date on which the statement was taken.
And the affadavit is also odd because Dickey's statement is on page one, and nothing but Boshears' statement is on page two. There's nothing to indicate that the two pages are connected.
All of this might simply have been sloppiness. But Boshears won't explain to me or anyone else if he actually saw Dickey sign the paper.
Oh, yeah. Boshears also happens to be an investigator for the incredibly politically connected Arkansas state attorney general's office.
Maybe D'Amato can get an anwser if he calls Boshears before Congress.
Another mystery has also been solved. Maria Haley, who is supposed to have comforted Dickey the night Foster died, has been found.
She's now a director of the Export Import Bank in Washington. Haley didn't return a phone call, but she did have her public relations contact get in touch. Just in case D'Amato wants to invite her to the hearings as well. Haley's number is (202) 565-3530.
(John Crudele is a financial columnist with the New York Post. His mailing address is P.O. Box 610, Lincroft, N.J. 07738. Click here to send him e-mail).