Editorials/Let the Chips Fall/Staying Put
Jr, R. Emmett Tyrrell
EDITORIALS Let the Chips Fall by R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. L ast July a most amazing thing happened in American journalism, demonstrating how easily intimidated and politically sensitive the...
...After Clinton said, "That's Lasater's deal," he went on to say, "and your buddy Bush knows about it...
...It really is time for the media to review Brown's original charges...
...Today I think I know why...
...In the Wall 16 The American Spectator October 1995 Street Journal's July 10 editorial the editors wrote, "Mena cries out for investigation...
...More importantly, an essay Brown submitted to the CIA bears Clinton's handwritten interpolations...
...In the months before Brown's flights, Clinton reminded Brown that Bush had once headed the CIA...
...Alarmed and angered, Brown returned to the man who had gotten him onto these flights, Governor Clinton, to warn him of the drug shipments...
...After Brown's second flight with Seal, the pilot showed Brown both cocaine and money he had picked up in Central America...
...He is a large man and in fact rugged-looking, but his tantrum was strangely feckless, tinny, and petulant...
...Other equally reliable sources have told me that since Brown's story came out, President Clinton told an Arkansas senator that he was having the IRS investigate Brown's tax returns...
...The deposition results from a false arrest and defamation suit against, among others, the former chief of security to then-Governor Clinton...
...The president's legendary anger then surged as he grumbled, "Lies, lies, lies...
...What came to mind was not the anger of a statesman but rather Tinkerbell in a snit...
...On the return flights drugs were brought into the state...
...Important questions need to be answered...
...Quite by accident last July I had the opportunity to ask Clinton for his response to Brown's claim that, as governor, Clinton had knowledge of Mena being a shipping point for illegal arms, drug trafficking, and money laundering...
...The witness, Arkansas state trooper L.D...
...Well, I have word that the important questions have multiplied since last July's revelations...
...There is more to this story, which perhaps explains the press's reluctance to report it...
...Seal was a Adapted from RET's weekly Washington Times column syndicated by Creators Syndicate...
...There is more to the story...
...He was a benefactor of another drug user, the Governor's brother Roger Clinton...
...I have copies of the correspondence that took place at this time between Brown and the agency...
...Brown, and to obstruct justice...
...Brown, discovered that on the return leg of these flights, the pilot, Barry Seal, was carrying large quantities of cocaine...
...Trooper Brown had met Bush with the Governor a year before and admired him...
...As president he has lied about this activity repeatedly, and he has attempted to intimidate this witness...
...Moreover, I am told that someone acting directly or indirectly on behalf of the president has gotten a copy of the 1971 death certificate of Joann Brown, Brown's mother, who died in a gun accident...
...As I was the target of this one, I must say that I found his anger curious...
...At the time of the flights Seal was an operative with the Drug Enforcement Administration and a contract employee with the CIA...
...Now two more witnesses have come forward corroborating Brown's story that he flew to Central America and that he associated with Barry Seal...
...Dan Lasater, a Clinton financial supporter in Arkansas, was eventually convicted of drug distribution...
...I have legal depositions from witnesses refuting Clinton's claim that he had little knowledge of Mena airport...
...People in the press who believe they can or should protect a Republican or a Democratic president are kidding themselves...
...convicted drug trafficker who later was shot dead in Louisiana...
...The L.D...
...A witness came forward and reported to me—and shortly thereafter in depositions—that the long-rumored American intelligence operation to re-supply the contras in the 1980s was carried out through flights out of Arkansas...
...Similar testimony by Brown has been given to the Independent Counsel...
...Governor Clinton knew about both legs of these flights...
...Three Colombians have been convicted of the crime...
...Both of these sources are going to be subpoenaed...
...And now there are the new charges of the White House intimidating a witness and obstructing justice...
...The witness, a former narcotics investigator and erstwhile confidant of Clinton, has testified in legally binding deposition that in 1984, with the encouragement of his boss, then-Governor Clinton, he traveled on two flights from Arkansas's Mena airport to Central America...
...He called Brown a "pathological liar," though in no instance have any investigators been able to find Brown lying...
...The last time Clinton tried to shut down a media investigation of Brown, his lawyer impliedto ABC News that Brown played a sinister role in his mother's death...
...Reliable sources have told me that the Independent Counsel has been informed of attempts by the White House to intimidate the witness, L.D...
...And the president's own record in this department is, well, spotty...
...Or it could have been "your hero Bush knows about it"—Brown is not certain about the precise wording...
...Clinton's was anger without force...
...L ast July a most amazing thing happened in American journalism, demonstrating how easily intimidated and politically sensitive the supposedly bold American press is...
...The Wall Street Journal, which has been following this story for several years, editorialized on the importance of this witness's revelations to me...
...Clinton's mention of Bush's old position was made while he was helping Brown with his application for employment with the CIA...
...Now for the amazing thing: no other major media source even reported the story...
...Clinton's blasé response was, "That's Lasater's deal, that's Lasater's deal...
...We have all heard of his tantrums...
...Brown story is not going to go away...
...If some chips fall on the Republican side, so be it...
...A congressional committee with resources, subpoena power, and the perseverance displayed by some past chairmen should look into this...
...Brown's testimony that Clinton told him about Bush's knowledge of Mena is to be included in a corrected version of Brown's recent deposition...
...Indeed the story is spreading, and fast...
...On those flights, for which the Central Intelligence Agency paid him $5,000, arms were dropped to the contras...
Vol. 28 • October 1995 • No. 10
