TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/042092/04209927.000

Text File | 1992-09-10 | 5.8 KB | 119 lines

                                                                                COVER STORIES, Page 45

BILL CLINTON

Anatomy of a Smear


Terry Reed loves to tell reporters scandalous tales about Bill
Clinton and the contras. The trouble is the stories are false.

By RICHARD BEHAR/LITTLE ROCK


    To hear Terry Reed tell it, during the mid-1980s he was
a key player in a covert "resupply network" that flew arms to
the Nicaraguan contras and drugs back to the U.S., using a
small airport in rural Arkansas as a base. On top of that, the
enterprise was personally supervised by Governor Bill Clinton,
whose state received 10% of the profits from the operation. And
according to Reed, he even discussed the scheme with Clinton
while the Governor smoked marijuana in a van parked outside a
busy Mexican restaurant in Little Rock.

    The only trouble with Reed's sensational tale is that not
a word of it is true. That inconvenient fact has not stopped a
busy rumor mill in Arkansas from cranking out ever more
preposterous allegations, nor has it prevented some credulous
journalists, including Andrew Cockburn, a columnist for the
Nation, from using Reed as a source for absurdly speculative
accounts. None of those who are taking Reed's wild stories
seriously seem to have asked why Clinton, a vocal critic of U.S.
aid to the contras who even then was considering running for
President, would have done risky favors for the Reagan
Administration. But then again, answering that question would
spoil the fun.

    As with most smears, Reed's allegations are built on a
slim foundation of truth. Before being gunned down in Louisiana
by a squad of Colombian hit men in 1986, a convicted drug
smuggler and dea informant named Barry Seal was involved in
something fishy at the airport in Mena, a heavily wooded town
130 miles west of Little Rock. In 1984 Seal played a part in
Oliver North's campaign to prove that the Sandinista government
was in league with Colombia's Medellin cocaine cartel. In
exchange for a reduced sentence on drug-smuggling charges, Seal
flew his C-123 transport plane to Managua and picked up 750
kilos of cocaine from a high-ranking Sandinista official,
recording the transaction with hidden cameras.

    What does this have to do with Reed, a 43-year-old pilot
and machine-tool salesman who now lives in Moorpark, Calif.? He
claims that in 1983 North recruited him to go to Mena to work
with Seal and help train contra pilots. He also says North
asked him to donate a Piper airplane to the contras and then
report the plane as stolen so that insurance would cover his
loss. Later that year, Reed and his wife Janis received a
$33,000 insurance payment for the Piper. He says he quit the
contra effort in August 1987 after he learned that it involved
drug running. For that, he claims, the government sought
revenge.

    Two months later, a Little Rock private investigator named
Thomas Baker stumbled on a rusted Piper in a local aircraft
hangar. He asked his best friend, state police captain Raymond
("Buddy") Young, who has been Clinton's chief of security for
a decade, to run the plane's identification numbers through the
fbi's national crime data base. Lo and behold, it turned out to
be Reed's missing plane. Reed and his wife were indicted for
mail fraud in Wichita. The case was dismissed in 1990 after the
government refused to turn over North's diaries, notes and phone
records, which Reed claimed would back up his alibi.

    Since then Reed has been waging a vendetta against Baker
and Young. He began by filing a suit accusing them of
fabricating a federal crime. More recently he has added Clinton
to his list of targets. In an interview with TIME, he
breathlessly proclaimed that "I just spoke to my lawyer and he
says that a Clinton emergency fund was just increased
considerably, and he seems to think that some kind of offer will
be made to get this thing to go away." That was news to Reed's
attorney, John Wesley Hall, a constitutional expert from Little
Rock, who says he actually told Reed that no one would ever
settle the suit. Adds Hall: "I haven't been able to corroborate
((Reed's story)), that's the problem."

    No wonder. There is absolutely no proof that Reed ever
worked with either the CIA or Seal. Oliver North denies that he
has ever met or spoken with him. A couple with whom Reed claims
he was dining on the night of his alleged conversation with
Clinton say they have never been to the restaurant with Reed.

    Over the past decade, Reed has shuttled from one job to
another, leaving behind a string of charges that he absconded
with company funds. Among his victims: an Illinois-based
Japanese machine-tool company named Gomiya, which currently has
a $600,000 judgment outstanding against him. Last month U.S.
marshals seized Reed's van for Gomiya. Reed blames the CIA.

    Given Reed's track record, why does anyone take him
seriously? In part because there are so many unanswered
questions about what was going on at Mena. In 1988 a federal
grand jury that had investigated the affair for three years
failed to return indictments, leading some state law-enforcement
officers to grumble that the case had been scuttled by
higher-ups in Washington. Clinton says the state has done
everything it can to solve the mystery. But Charles Black, a
deputy state prosecuting attorney, says when he asked the
Governor to provide financial assistance so the state could
conduct its own grand jury investigation in 1988, Clinton never
got back to him. Last year Democratic Congressman Bill Alexander
obtained $25,000 from the Federal Government to fund a probe by
the state police, who will soon decide how to proceed with the
investigation. That is a timely idea, if only to lay Reed's
fabrication to rest.