"At the Bottom of the Barrel"
Comments by Duane Roberts, May 7, 1996 (excerpted)

First, I wish to state that I have never been, nor will I ever be, a registered member of either the Democratic or Republican Party.

My conservative friends consider my politics as being "progressive" or "liberal" in orientation.

This I won't deny.

The following question was asked of President Bill Clinton at a news conference held in the East Room of the White House at 2:00 PM Eastern Standard Time on Friday, October 7, 1994.

It was televised live on C-SPAN, CNN, and other networks.

Q: Sir, the Republicans are trying to blame you for the existence of a small airbase at Mena, Arkansas. This base was set up by George Bush and Oliver North and the CIA to help the Iran-Contras, and they brought in planeload after planeload of cocaine there for sale in the United States, and then they took the money and bought weapons and took them back to the Contras, all of which was illegal as you know under the Boland Act. But tell me, did they tell you that this had to be in existence because of national security?

A: Well, let me answer the question. No, they didn't tell me anything about it. They didn't say anything to me about it. The airport in question, and all the events in question, were the subject of state and federal inquiries. It was primarily a matter for federal jurisdiction. The state really had next to nothing to do with it. The local prosecutor did conduct an investigation based on what was within the jurisdiction of state law. The rest of it was under the jurisdiction of the United States attorneys who were appointed successively by previous administrations. We had nothing -- zero -- to do with it, and everybody who's ever looked into it knows that.

So Clinton says he "had nothing -- zero -- to do with it" eh?

You know, Clinton has no problem with signing legislation which insures that persons arrested for possessing a few grams of crack cocaine continue to face stiff five and ten year minimum mandatory prison sentences if convicted (as was the case last year when he opposed recommendations made by the U.S. Sentencing Commission that the penalties applied toward crack cocaine offenses be made equal to those applied toward powder cocaine offenses).

But when he was the Governor of Arkansas, he didn't seem to mind the fact that the Reagan Administration was allowing a major drug smuggler like the late Adler Berriman "Barry" Seal to use the Intermountain Regional Airport in Mena as a base to import tons of cocaine into the United States and run weapons back to the Contras fighting the Sandinista government of Nicaragua.

When Joseph Hardegree, then-Prosecutor of Polk County, tried to investigate and prosecute some of the persons involved in this affair, they were prevented from doing so by the U.S. Attorney's office in Fort Smith, as well as other federal agencies. They believed this in part was due to Seal's ties to the National Security Council of the Reagan White House. In a statement he made to newspaper reporters in February 1988, Hardegree said:

The really unfortunate aspect of this whole matter is the apparent fact that the federal investigation of drug traffic in connection with the Mena airport came to be intricately involved with international politics and more particularly with the private wars conducted by the Reagan White House in Washington.

I believe that the activities of Mr Seales [sic] came to be so valuable to the Reagan White House and so sensitive that no information concerning Seales activities could be released to the public. The ultimate result was that not only Seales but all of his confederates and all who worked with or assisted him in illicit drug traffic were protected by the government.

I have good reason to believe that all federal law enforcement agencies from the Justice Department down through the FBI to the Drug Enforcement Administration all received encouragement to downplay and de-emphasize any investigation or prosecution that might expose Seales' activities and National Security Council involvement in them. In this framework that the federal grand juries and law enforcement authorities in Arkansas apparently stopped in their serious deliberations or investigations concerning Barry Seales' activities and all of the surrounding circumstances. {1}

In October 1988, Charles E. Black, then-Deputy Prosecutor of Polk County (and one of Hardegree's employees) personally met with Governor Clinton at the State Capitol in Little Rock to request that he release funds to pay for a grand jury that would investigate this affair at the state level. Black said he told Clinton the reason why he wanted a grand jury to probe the matter was because he was afraid that the U.S. Attorney's office in Fort Smith was trying to cover up the affair by stonewalling an attempt by the Polk County Prosecutor's office to investigate the matter and prosecute Seal's associates at Mena. Black said Clinton told him that someone at the Governor's office would get back with him regarding his request for funds. But no one ever did:

I ... [made] an in-person request to Governor Clinton for any available State-level financial aid to assist in the local-level effort to investigate the rather wide array of illegal activities by Barry Seal, and accomplices, in Polk County. To the best of my recollection, Governor Clinton's verbal response was to the effect that he would have someone (not identified to me) check on the availability of financial aid and get word to me. Thereafter, I never personally received any word or information, from anyone, that any amount of state funds was available. {2}

From this, I must surmise that Governor Clinton thought it was O.K. for the Reagan White House to protect a drug-smuggling ring that was importing tons of cocaine into his state....

No big deal.

It's just the smoking gun of the Iran-Contra affair.

Who cares if there is evidence of U.S. government complicity in narcotics trafficking?

It's just a wacky conspiracy theory - isn't it?

....One of the "informants" the team of four investigators from the House Banking Committee [has taken] a deposition from was Charles Black. Black made an interesting comment that subsequently appeared in an article that was printed on the editorial page of the Monday, April 22, 1996 issue of The Wall Street Journal:

...."My cynical belief is that there is a lack of motivation in either party to fully and properly investigate.... because the results will damage as many Republicans as Democrats."

Black knows from personal experience that he and others were prevented from conducting a serious investigation into this matter by both the Reagan White House and the Arkansas Governor's office.

"Virtually no one takes these [Mena] allegations seriously," says White House counsel Mark Fabiani.

Virtually no one who knows anything about Mena takes any of White House Counsel Mark Fabiani's comments regarding this matter seriously.

But then, I wonder if Mr. Fabiani was aware of the fact that when Clinton was the Governor of Arkansas, his own state Attorney General made the following statement:

In my opinion, there is a body of evidence out there that suggests that Mena was used as a base in which drugs were smuggled into the country and from which guns were run to the Contras. {3}

- WINSTON BRYANT
Attorney General of Arkansas
Former Lt. Governor of Arkansas

From this, we must assume that Mr. Fabiani didn't know anything about this because, after all, the Clinton White House would never lie to the American people about this affair.

Or would it?

....Actually, I've discovered that at the bottom of the Whitewater barrel is a scandal that implicates the politicians of both the Democratic and Republican parties in one of the biggest narcotics trafficking operations in the history of the international drug trade.

Anyone for another Watergate?

Sincerely,

Duane J. Roberts
Undergraduate Student
Criminology, Law, and Society
School of Social Ecology
University of California, Irvine


Notes:

{1} Rodney Bowers, "Seal Case Observers Cite Government Interference", December 6, 1989, The Arkansas Democrat (Little Rock).

{2} Letter to Tom Brown, then-Treasurer of the Arkansas Committee, from Charles E. Black, former Deputy Prosecutor of Polk County, January 13, 1992.

{3} Source: The Associated Press, "Bryant: Mena Connection Should be Probed", September 11, 1991, The Northwest Arkansas Times (Fayetteville).