Black Crawling Systems Archive Release 1.0/Black Crawling Systems Archive Release 1.0 (L0pht Heavy Industries, Inc.)(1997).ISO/tezcat/Clinton/Mena_Spiked_by_WashPost.txt

Text File | 1996-07-08 | 20KB | 351 lines

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The following is a transcript of  a tape of  The Barry Young radio show out
of Phoenix, courtesy of Toni Plinka.

The guests are Sally Denton and Roger Morris.  They are the authors of the Mena
story that was permanently spiked by  the Washington Post.  To expedite the
typing of this I will preface the quotes as  Y=Young, D=Denton, M=Morris.

Y-Sally you are in Santa Fe, is that right?
D-Yeah, I am.
Y- and Roger, where are you
M- I'm in Santa Fe also.
Y- Now that's a long way from Washington, DC, before we start I would
like to explain to the folks, I'd like you to explain for the audience
before we talk about Mena, how you got hooked up with the Wash. Post.
because you were putting this t for a year, he almost virtually went into
seclusion.   People would ask him about Clinton and he would purposely
not say anything about Clinton  and the feeling has been for a long
time that they made an agreement that they would not talk about Iran-Contra
because it would be mutual assured destruction, both of them had enough
on each other to sink each other's boat.

D-The policy as I said, transcends both party lines and  Mena was certainly
the brain child of Ronald Regan, I would  think.

Y-But of course, you can't separate Bush and Regan.

M- No, this is a bi partisan disaster and is part of the dark side
of American government which American journalism  and the public have a
tough time coming to grips with.  It is not a pretty sight, it is not
something one wants to tell their children at bedtime. It is a grim and
shameful episode in American history.

Y- Did those drugs make their way to the streets of the United States?

M- OH, Yes!  There is no question about that.  We know there was a
distribution system that made their way to most of the major cities in
the Midwest and in the east  and Detroit and Philadelphia,  New York and
Boston,  there were  lives shattered literally all over America as a
result of  this traffic.

D-  Not to mention the money that was laundered through institutions,
further destabilizing the economy.

We are going to pause now for those of you who have questions, ( and for
the typist to take a break.)

The guests are Sally Denton and Roger Morris.  They are the authors
of the Mena story that was permanently spiked by  the Washington Post.
To expedite the typing of this I will
preface the quotes as Y=Young, D=Denton, M=Morris.


Y- Now that's a long way from Washington, DC, before we start I
would like to explain to the folks, I'd like you to  explain
for the audience before we talk about Mena, how you  got hooked
up with the Wash. Post.  because you were putting this story together
on whatever was going on at the Mena airport before you got
hooked up with the Wash. Post and as I understand it the story
was ready to go, is that right?

M-That's right we had  developed the story independently  and we were
looking for a national outlet, one that would have high impact in
Wash and elsewhere and we went to the Post in the hopes that they of
course would publish it.

Y- and they initially said what

M -They initially were very supportive and receptive in fact
they got back with us within the hour after we
had faxed the story to them and said they would indeed be
interested in publishing it and we worked with
them over  the course of an eleven week period on editing
and checking again and again the article was
vetted line by line by the Wash Post lawyers , looked at not by
just one editor, but several.

Y-now when you say vetted line by line what does that mean?

M-Well, they were interested in checking the factual basis for
everything we  had said, it is a very controversial story that
is sensational in its content.

Y- They didn't want to get sued in other words.

M- They wanted to make sure that everything was backed up,
I'm not sure if it was so much a case of libel
as it was making sure it was well documented. And we of
course had that documentation and then some.

D- I might add that this didn't just kind of come about Richard
is in the midst of completing a book about
the Clinton's which is due out shortly so this was an outgrowth
of over a year of research that he had been doing.

Y-Nothing's worse for a major newspaper than to have to come back
and do a retraction.

Allright folks , if you worked with them over an eleven  week
period, that is almost three months, that story
had to get honed down and verified and rewritten a number
of times  till it was polished up and ready to go.
Would that be a fair assumption of the status of the story is?

M-It was very polished. It was not so much rewritten as added to,
they were interested in supplementing various things we had
included in the first draft.  They reviewed a  lot of the
documentation and we amplified and clarified a  number of things.
I think well honed and well polished is  a good way of
describing it.

Y - So what happened?

M- Well at the very last moment, the contract had been signed,
the story had been laid out in galleys the art
work  had been commissioned, the photographs had been sent
and so on, at the very last moment the managing editor of the
Wash. Post, Robert Kaiser, decided to put another hold on it, for no
reason really that could be explained to us, no  substantive reason.
 We were simply told that he didn't feel that he
wanted to do it at that point, and as a result we, in great
regret and frustration, pulled the story from
the Post.  Our feeling was that they were openly going to kill it.

Y- And how close to publication, if  it had been printed what date
are we talking about.

D- Well, Jan 29 was the day it was scheduled, and we pulled it on
Thursday before that. so that was the 25 or 26th

Y-Pulled it meaning that you had the story back now

D   Well its true we always had our original copy of the story
and the galleys that they had sent us. they
obviously still have a copy of it and somehow the London Sunday
Telegraph received a bootleg copy of it
from the Washington   Post as well.

Y. Incredible, did the telegraph print the story as well?

D.  No but they quoted from it, they didn't print it in its  entirety,
I think they wanted to , we were pretty
definite  with them that was the last thing we wanted/.

M- It was a copyrighted story, we had copyrighted it and  Sally
told them not to published because we
thought it would jeopardized publication ultimately in this country.

Y- What about publication in the United States?

D-Well, I think we've got the story placed in a national venue
I'm a little reluctant to say for sure because we
haven't signed the contract, but we are very confident that
it will be published in the near future.

Y- allright, since the London Times or was it the Telegraph?
The Telegraph since they have printed some of
the quotes from the story,  let me ask you this,
knowing that the story is still to come out,  if you were a
mystery writer, I wouldn't ask you  to give away if the
butler did it, but what have you found  about Mena,
what was going on, what can you tell us about this story?

M.  I think the principle importance of this story is  really
in old fashioned terms a "smoking gun"  there
been a lot of suspicions  and allegations about Mena for some
time and there have been video tapes and
stories  floating around about a drug smuggling operation
there and gun running going on there in the early
1980s under the nose of then Gov. Bill Clinton.   Allegations
that were never before backed up by any
documentary evidence or any  hard facts .   We unearthed,
in the course of a year of searching around the
country an archive of more than two  thousand documents,
all sorts of financial and other records, that
established that there was indeed, a multi billion-billion
dollar drug running operation around Mena,
Ark. from 1981to1986 and perhaps even beyond that time, that
it involved massive amounts  of drugs , literally,  tons of
cocaine shipped in from Latin America  and that it was done
with the complicity if not the active collusion of    elements of
the US Government.   One of  the major drug runners involved was
a man named Barry Seal who was at the time and had been operating
before as a member of the CIA.   The details of that are all
quite stunning.

Y-Well, it is stunning, considering the fact that we spend billions
of dollars a year on the so called War on
Drugs, nothing is worse than fighting the war and finding out
that you have a Benedict Arnold aboard, which it sounds like not
only did we have one , we had a lot of them and it was all
the way up to the highest levels of government involved in this thing.
The obvious question here is to what end was
the being done?  I mean, if you are going to smuggle drugs,
usually we think of Columbian drug lords or Asian drug lords, were
pocketing vast sums of money and becoming some of the world's
richest people, and at the same time international outlaws, but I
take it that's not where this story's going.

D-I think the real question here is whether or not this was in
fact a rogue operation as most of the findings
of the Iran-Contra or the Ollie North allegations or whether
this is really a question of foreign policy, that
was sanctioned at the highest level, as for drug smuggler
and CIA operatives to pose as drug smugglers, or
if they are not really posing but are cocaine and heroin
profits are necessary to foment foreign policy that is
really off the shelf.

Y- so the question that I'm asking you is who is getting the
money, somebody was getting rich off this thing.

M- A lot of people were getting rich, this was an enormous
network we simply tell the story of the literally
sensational as it is, of one small part of the larger picture.
Sally's absolutely right, it was a matter of
finance, comes down to money in the end.  We were running,
we, the United States, covertly running weapons to several
countries in Latin America, not just to the Contras in Nicaragua,
but elsewhere in Central America and in South America, and that
was illegal at the time, they were not doing it with regular
appropriations from the congress, the huge hundreds of millions
of dollars generated by the drug trade were, in part helping to
finance that operation.  It was an illegal, extraconstitutional
foreign policy being conducted by means of illicit profits
from the drug trade. That is of course, just one part of the story.

Y- Now the question that I am about to ask you, I know
there is no way, but I want the audience to know
there is no way you are going to be able to answer this
by saying YES absolutely this was the case, but I am
going to ask your opinion on this.  Everybody knows there
was some kind of unwritten agreement between Pres. Bush and Pres.
Clinton where they would not beat the hell out of each
other after Pres. Clinton took over.  I mean, Pres. Bush
basically went out of sight

,Y-What could be the purpose of the Wash Post squelching
this story?  Its not like one side would take a licking and the
other side get off scott free.

D-There is a whole gamete of potential reasons.  It could be so
petty as that they didn't get this story first.It
could be something as sinister and the CIA or the Whitehouse
intervening.   I just don't think we are in a
position to know that, we have certainly heard a lot of  rumors

Y- Again, I am going to ask your opinion, is there one
prevailing thing that stands out above all the other,
what I'm really asking is did the CIA or Whitehouse
intervene in your opinion?

M-  Well, we don't  know for a fact that they did, but it
would be unusual for the Post to not inform them
before the fact.   The usual method is for someone at the Post
to call someone at the ranking establishment
and say we are running  the story, or is there anything
to this story.   Sometimes they are told not to touch
that area, they will be burned, things get killed all the
time in Washington that way.

Y- is that right  How many years was it going on?

M- we know that it was going on until at least 86,

 Y- Is it safe to say that it is not going on now.

Both D andM in unison-  No that is not safe to say.

M- we have been told by various sources that shady operations
are still going on  but we have no proof of that.

Y-the CIA often uses airfields in the Us for staging grounds ,
we have one south of Phoenix where
evergreen air operated at one time.  Mirana, I think they
still do.  They are staging grounds, but that is not to
say they are all  illegal, covert activities have to take
place somewhere. but  you say that operations still
exists in Mena that are illegal.

M- As i said, we have no proof, but it appears that operations,
and the US government participation in illicit
drug trade are still happening. And that of course is a
very disturbing charge.

Y-it doesn't seem as if that would be hard to verify, afterall,
Mena is not the crossroads of America.  I f it as
a disproportionate amount of air traffic, it would be a safe
guess that something is happening.  Now to
phone calls

  Mike.   I've watched a video depicting drug running operations
in Mena and in this video, those  unfortunate people that
tried to expose the operation were killed and all their evidence
was confiscated and destroyed so surely your guests have been
warned or threatened no to go forward with  their stories,  my
question is what are you both doing to  stay out of harms way
and what are you doing to get your story printed?

Y- was that video you saw by any chance called the
Clinton Chronicles?

Mike-certainly was.

Y-Sally and Roger, have  you seen the video of the
Clinton  Chronicles?

M- Yes

Y- What about your safety number one and what about the allegations
that others who tired to expose what has been going on in Mena
have been killed?

D- I don't know about people being killed, certainly law
enforcement officers who have attempted to have
the activities investigated have had their careers thwarted.
think as a journalist, you are always safest when
you get your story published, and become visible.

Y-in other words, the more people who know your story,
the safer you are

M-That's right, I think even the Wash. Post  killing the story has
helped in some respect, that is a protection of a kind.

Y- Has anybody ever approached or threatened you?

D & M No  We have been warned by colleagues  and people
who are aware as to what happened in the past
that this might  happen, but it hasn't.

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