TERRY REED EXPLAINS WHY HIS LITTLE ROCK LAW SUIT WAS SHUT DOWN

Terry Reed interviewed by Chuck Harder
June 4, 1996

Terry Reed: Well, I have a five-year-old case, Chuck, in federal court in Little Rock, Arkansas. And then, parallel to that is a civil action over in Fort Smith, Arkansas.

Chuck Harder: Okay, now what case is going in Little Rock - or was going?

Terry Reed: Well, my lawyers and I referred to it as the "big case" because that was the case where they clearly implicated elements of Bill Clinton's former administration, namely his chief of security, Raymond "BUDDY" Young and others. We knew that they had done a lot of protecting of Bill Clinton's backside.

Chuck Harder: Um-humm.

Terry Reed: In terms of this Mena operation. So that was the proper place to bring in a lot of government witnesses and clearly prove to the American people, once and for all, that Mena happened, that the CIA had an operation there, Bill Clinton was complicit, cocaine had been trafficked through the Mena airport, that Bill knew about it and even protected some of the people who were transporting the cocaine.

Chuck Harder: Okay.

Terry Reed: That was the "big case" [as] we called it.

Chuck Harder: Then there was another case. What was that case?

Terry Reed: That's the case I want to talk to you about that's sort of dropped through the cracks. That is a libel case that is over in Fort Smith, Arkansas, in the federal court, against my book, "Compromised." I'm the defendant in that case. That's always been viewed as a sort of back burner case, but it's now going to move to the front burner very quickly, based upon what we're going to be discussing here.

Chuck Harder: You are a defendant?

Terry Reed: I'm a defendant in the libel case since I'm the author of the book.

Chuck Harder: And who sued you?

Terry Reed: Well, I allegedly libeled a man named J.D. Brotherton. He has a company called Brodricks [sp] Manufacturing. In the book I talked about his relationship with the CIA's armaments manufacturing. I think that really embarrassed Mr. Brotherton - he didn't want to admit to that relationship - so he filed a libel action against me that's due to go to trial August 12. It's going to be really interesting based on what happened to the "big case" in our option of turning our case over there into our big case, in which I, as the defendant, will be given a lot more latitude...

Chuck Harder: I see. Was there another case against a magazine?

Terry Reed: Oh, the Time magazine case you're referring to.

Chuck Harder: Yes.

Terry Reed: Yeah, back when I was young and naive, I sued Time magazine for libel...

Chuck Harder: Is that case still going?

Terry Reed: No. That case was dismissed about a year ago by a federal judge in New York - we just didn't have the resources to properly litigate it. They hit us with their gold-plated law firm...and we just were ill-equipped to throw the million dollars that we needed into it.

Chuck Harder: It would have cost that much, huh?

Terry Reed: Oh, absolutely. In fact Bob [garbled], whom you know, estimated that they spent a million dollars on the case, defending it. We couldn't keep up with them.

Chuck Harder: Isn't that the case that said you were a liar?

Terry Reed: Absolutely. That is the case in which Time magazine not only tore me up, they generally ridiculed anybody and everybody who ever said the CIA had an operation in Mena. In so doing we felt that Time magazine had used all of their resources to protect Bill Clinton. When he wrote that article, Strobe Talbot was a so-called editor at large for Time magazine. My lawyers felt, and I still feel that Strobe Talbot enlisted the services of Time and its staff to protect Bill in 1992, at a time in which this Mena scandal would have run back-to-back with the Gennifer Flowers scandal, and probably kept him out of the White House.

Chuck Harder: Was that the article that also mentioned Larry Nichols, or was that a separate issue?

Terry Reed: That's a separate issue, I believe. The article that Time wrote, which was a full page, I might add, tore into me, and not only me, but the law-enforcement people who investigated Mena, and said that their careers had been destroyed over their investigation. That they had hit a sort of glass ceiling within their respective law enforcement units an been told to back off of Mena.

Chuck Harder: Alright. Let's leave it right there for a quick break...

[Break for commercials]

Chuck Harder: Larry Nichols is one of the people that the mainstream press have just beat up and, of course, the convictions in Little Rock indicate that he has been right. Another gentleman who has been equally right is Terry Reed. Now, you've had all of these different cases. The Time case, you dropped, right?

Terry Reed: Right.

Chuck Harder: And the reason you dropped it was because it [required] just too much money to go after them, right?

Terry Reed: I'd like to point out the General Westmoreland, when he tried to sue Time magazine for libel, he spent about seven million dollars on that case, and ultimately he didn't prevail, either. And I got a taste of that same kind of medicine. You see what a conglomerate like Time-Warner can do. They'll spend 10 million dollars on a case to keep you from getting a hundred thousand when they libel you.

Chuck Harder: In other words, they can do whatever they want and it doesn't matter because they have more money than you do.

Terry Reed: That's right, as I've learned the hard way. And you and I have discussed this privately. That symbol of justice - that blind lady with the scales - she weighs justice, she weighs money. It's sad...but that's what the courts in this country have turned into. The O.J. Simpson case is a good example of that.

Chuck Harder: What is the status of your cases now? Which one is going and which one is dying?

Terry Reed: What my wife faxed you yesterday was our statement to the court - we were slated to go to trial yesterday in Little Rock. That's the so called "big case" where we had at one time 110 witnesses. We had just a [garbled] of evidence to put on and Judge Howard, the same judge who had the Whitewater case, literally gutted our case back in March. He issued an order the likes of which no judge had ever seen. I've shown this order to several federal judges and they say they can't believe that a judge would step out of line to protect Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton and a lot of the Arkansas establishment by saying we can go to trial, we just can't put on our evidence. And that was something that my lawyers had been arguing and re-arguing up until last Friday.

As of last Friday we saw that Judge Howard's intention was to get us to pay for our own crucifixion. Going to court with no evidence that he would allow to be presented [we would be] bound and gagged. Under his order I couldn't even mention that I had served my country in uniform. He felt that would somehow inflame the jury - for me to bring up the fact that I had been in the Air Force during the Vietnam War - that I had worked for the FBI's counter-intelligence division - that activity led me into the CIA and that led me to Mena. He said no, you can't discuss any of that. What we did yesterday on the third of June, our scheduled trial date - we basically non-suited that case. That means that we voluntarily shut it down...

Chuck Harder: You're telling me that you dismissed the case.

Terry Reed: Absolutely. That's a sad day for me and Janis and our backers. We've had a lot of public support for the case, we've taken a lot of depositions. I think I've shared most of those with you and your audience. We're up against a powerful, powerful political machine that's obviously absorbed at least some federal judges, and they're using those judges to protect politicians. To keep the truth from coming out.

Chuck Harder: Was Judge Howard's decision appealable?

Terry Reed: No, you cannot appeal the decision. Here's what my lawyers finally figured out, after a lot of money and a lot of time. A discovery issue - that's what this comes down to - an evidentiary argument - the only time you can do that is after you lose. As I said in my letter to the court, the judge has very skillfully manipulated us into a position that would force us to go to trial and lose. We felt that that would be a lot worse than non-suiting, to shut it down on our own, because in this election year, you know what the Clinton spin doctors would do with a defeat. That would be used to the advantage of the Clinton machine to say, "aha - that clearly proves that nothing happened at Mena, even though what the judge eliminated by his own order was all the so-called Mena evidence. So for the sake of the case and the integrity of the material, we elected to shut it down. And I did so with a lot of remorse...

That's the bad news. If you want to get around to it, I've got good news.

Chuck Harder: Let's hear it.

Terry Reed: ...What was shut down was plan A. What's firmly in place is plan B. All that Mena evidence that was eliminated by this judge is going to be put on in the libel case over in Fort Smith, August 12th. We cannot be stopped there - I am the defendant. [The man] who has sued me and my book "Compromised" has basically said the book is a pack of lies. That means I get to prove it is not a pack of lies. In so doing, all that material evidence...is going to find its home in a new federal courtroom in Fort Smith, and I might point out that we have a Republican judge there we think will be much more sympathetic with our case.

Chuck Harder: Is there any possibility of cross-suing another defendant out of that case?

Terry Reed: Yeah, we've already done that. It's not being filed until tomorrow, but there is a cross-action coming out of the libel case, and that's being done to prevent the plaintiff from shutting the case down and withdrawing it, to try to keep us out of court.

Chuck Harder: Right.

Terry Reed: In this election year. I'm not a lawyer, but I've been around these guys long enough to know how they think. So we've got a sort of check-mate action to their reaction as we put our 110 witness list in place in Judge Hendricks' [sp] court in Fort Smith.

Chuck Harder: Alright, let's take a short break.

[Break for commercials]

Chuck Harder: Now Terry, so the big case, for the moment, is dead?

Terry Reed: Shut down as of yesterday...I think they're probably holding a big party right now....The case is structured better. Some people accuse me of trying to profit from other people's misery. I'll be a defendant and win absolutely nothing except my honor and proof that my book is not libelous.

Chuck Harder: So what you're going to do is get the information out into the public domain through that case.

Terry Reed: Correct. The other side has already made a big error in that case, Chuck. They've put the whole book in as evidence, which means that we will be allowed to go chapter and verse, call our witnesses as we'd intended to do in Judge Howard's court in Little Rock, and prove that each chapter is factual.

We had asked Judge Howard for at least six weeks to litigate, and he said no, you can have one. Base upon his extremely heavy criminal docket which [included] the Whitewater case... We were just being railroaded. It was a kangaroo court. I felt the best thing we could do was not play their game. Go somewhere else and play our own game.

Chuck Harder: Isn't there some kind of federal judicial qualifications commission that you can complain to about that?

Terry Reed: There is a procedure [whereby] one can sue a judge. We're exploring a couple of options along those lines. What I'd prefer to do before we did anything like that is go to trial and get our case put on in Fort Smith, and if we win then we can go to the Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis and file the action that you're talking about. And I certainly intend to do that.

Chuck Harder: What is the new time table?

Terry Reed: The new time table is between now and August 12 I will continue to do what I've always done, and try to keep this machine lubricated with money, with the Mena Connection video tape that you allowed me to co-produce. Without it, this case wouldn't have gotten to the point that it has. I want to thank you and your network...

Chuck Harder: Sure.

Terry Reed: [Discusses the Mid-America Constitution Conference in Kansas City where he will be a speaker].

It's not over 'till it's over.

Chuck Harder: It's just taking a little bit of a twist and a turn.

Terry Reed: It's a bypass mechanism that we had looked at. As the judge shut our case down and restricted us more and more...we can't mention Bill and Hillary's name in the court room. We can't mention Bob Nash. We couldn't mention ADFA...

Chuck Harder: You simply couldn't do it.

Terry Reed: I hear you.

Chuck Harder: Terry Reed, thanks for a great interview.

Terry Reed: Thank you, Chuck.