Mena, Arkansas

Mena, Arkansas is a small town in western Arkansas where Barry Seal based his drug-smuggling and weapons operation at Intermountain Regional Airport during the early to mid-1980s.¹ Mena became a hub for CIA-connected covert operations during the Contra war, involving drug trafficking, weapons manufacturing, and pilot training for the Contras.

Barry Seal's Operations

Seal moved from Baton Rouge to Mena in 1982 and began running drugs and weapons. In the early 1980s, Seal was one of the biggest cocaine and marijuana importers in the southern United States, flying loads in directly for the Medellín cartel and air-dropping them with pinpoint precision across Louisiana, Arkansas, and other southern states. IRS spokesman Henry Holms said Seal was involved in 50 drug-smuggling trips between 1981 and 1983, and a letter from Louisiana's attorney general to U.S. Attorney General Ed Meese said Seal "smuggled between $3 billion and $5 billion worth of drugs into the U.S."¹

Seal's personal records showed him to be a contract Central Intelligence Agency operative both before and during his years of drug-running at Mena. Historian Roger Morris, a former NSC staffer, wrote that Seal also worked for the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), "where coded records reportedly showed him on the payroll beginning in 1982."¹

Terry Reed and Weapons Manufacturing

Former Air Force intelligence officer Terry Reed was initially recruited to train would-be Contra pilots at a clandestine airstrip near Nella, Arkansas, not far from Mena. Later, he claimed, he was asked to help the CIA set up secret weapons parts facilities in Arkansas and Mexico. One company Reed worked with was Park On Meter Inc. in Russellville, Arkansas, which he claimed was secretly manufacturing parts for M-16 rifles as a subcontractor on a CIA weapons project to supply the Contras. The Washington Post confirmed that the parking meter company "did make some gun parts for Iver Johnson," though it disputed the significance.¹

Government Knowledge

Clinton's critics charged that it was impossible for the governor of Arkansas to have been unaware of Seal's activities at Mena. Former Arkansas state trooper Larry Patterson, a member of Governor Clinton's security detail, testified that he and other troopers were aware "that there was large quantities of drugs being flown into the Mena airport, large quantities of money, large quantities of guns, that there was an ongoing operation training foreign people in that area. That it was a CIA operation." Mechanic John Bender swore in a deposition that he saw Clinton at Mena three times in 1985.¹

Ex-trooper L. D. Brown said that when he confronted Clinton about the cocaine flights, the governor replied, "That's Lasater's deal," referring to Danny Ray Lasater.¹

Suppression of Investigations

The same Senate subcommittee that looked into the Contras' connections with Hondu Carib Cargo in 1988 also investigated Mena and concluded that "associates of Seal who operated aircraft service businesses at the Mena, Arkansas, airport were also the targets of grand jury probes into narcotics trafficking. Despite the availability of evidence sufficient for an indictment on money laundering charges, and over the strong protests of State and federal law enforcement officials, the cases were dropped. The apparent reason was that the prosecution might have revealed national security information."¹

In sworn testimony, a former staff member of the Arkansas State Police Intelligence Unit described "a shredding party" in which she was ordered to purge the state's Mena files of nearly a thousand documents, including those referring specifically to Iran-Contra conspirator Oliver North and Seal associate Terry Reed.¹

CIA Acknowledgment

While denying that the CIA was involved in any illegal activities at Mena during the time Seal's drug-smuggling operation was based there, the CIA's Inspector General's Office confirmed in 1996 that the CIA ran a "joint training operation with another federal agency at Mena Intermountain Airport." The IG report, which has never been publicly released, reportedly claims the exercise lasted only two weeks, but conveniently omits the year. The CIA also used the Mena airport for "routine aviation related services" on CIA-owned planes, according to a declassified summary of the report.¹

The Fat Lady

Seal's drug-hauling airplane, a Fairchild C-123K called The Fat Lady, was based at Mena before Seal sold it and it began flying weapons-hauling missions for North and the FDN. The plane was shot down over Nicaragua in 1986 by a Sandinista soldier with a SAM-7 missile, breaking open the Iran-Contra Affair.¹