Editorials: The CIA's Lawyerly Balderdash / A Special Relationship
Tyrrell, R. Emmett Jr.
EDITORIALS by R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. The CIA's Lawyerly Balderdash London Recent leading stories in the British newspapers have concerned a member of the Tory government caught lying to...
...What was that about...
...It slipped from the hands of Southern Air Transport (a well-known CIA front), landing eventually in Seal's lap...
...Unfortunately Seal was not the selfless patriot American officials hoped he was...
...The administration also wanted to gather intelligence relating to the possible presence in Nicaragua of Soviet-made surface-to-air missiles and small nuclear devices...
...When he finished his flights the plane miraculously returned to Southern Air Transport and met a spectacular demise in Nicaragua after Sandinista fire brought it down, revealing one Eugene Hasenfus on a CIA flight to resupply the contras...
...When Clinton took the news calmly, asserting that Brown had happened upon "Lasater's deal" (Lasater being at the time a major Clinton financial supporter, the employer of Roger Clinton, and a known drug distributor), Brown refused to go on further flights and sought to be transferred from his full-time job on the governor's security detail...
...The facts on it are well established...
...However, the CIA claims it decided not to 16 January 1997 The American Spectator hire Brown in December of 1984...
...He has documents establishing the relationship...
...The photographs were eventually released by the Reagan administration to prove that the Sandinistas were engaged in the drug trade...
...The Reagan administration wanted to arm anti-Communist Nicaraguans (contras), who were intent on bringing down the Soviet-supported Sandinista regime then governing Nicaragua and imperiling American national interests in Central America...
...Members of our government lie to Congress frequently and with eye-popping blatancy...
...On his flights back from Central America he brought cocaine and laundered money...
...Then there is the C-123K, about which the CIA's report is so vague...
...Unfortunately for the CIA, back in 1988 a DEA officer, Ernest Jacobsen, testified to the House Subcommittee on Criminal Activities that, in May of 1984, four CIA officials met with DEA officials regarding Seal's impending flights...
...The CIA, coordinating with the Drug Enforcement Administration and the National Security Agency, arranged Adapted from RET's weekly Washington Times column syndicated by Creators Syndicate...
...What lawyerly balderdash...
...They knew exactly Seal's identity...
...but as I understand it, after reviewing documents and interviewing witnesses, it went something like this...
...This we know from several sources, most reliably from L. D. Brown, who, as an Arkansas state trooper moonlighting for the CIA, flew on two of those flights before Seal foolishly showed Brown a kilo of cocaine in hopes of recruiting him into his drug operation...
...for a C-123K cargo plane to be prepared for this dual mission out of Mena...
...On other missions Seal's C-123K dropped arms into the jungle...
...All the serious newspapers of London editorialized against this shocking misbehavior...
...In its declassified summary of the report released November 8, the CIA admits to having a "two-week" operation at Mena "with another government agency" in the 1980's...
...On one of his flights, thanks to the cleverness of the CIA and DEA, he photographed Sandinista and Colombian drug merchants in Nicaragua, loading the plane with cocaine...
...Brown's story began to come out in 1995...
...The CIA's Lawyerly Balderdash London Recent leading stories in the British newspapers have concerned a member of the Tory government caught lying to Parliament...
...Again we have lawyerly balderdash...
...4...
...In its November 8 report the agency is adamant that it was never engaged in drug trafficking, money laundering, or "arms smuggling" at Mena...
...Thus, in the CIA's clumsily put together patchwork of lies and evasions, it leaves a very ominous question for Congressman Leach to ask...
...The CIA does admit to a relationship with Brown, and well it should...
...In February 1996 Congressman Leach's House Banking Committee asked the CIA to prepare a report on its involvement at Mena...
...Just a few days before this Tory miscreant outraged the British press, our CIA delivered up a feast of evasions, deceptions, and red-hot lies to Chairman Jim Leach's House Banking Committee and to those of us who have followed the story that, in the mid-198o's, the CIA ran an operation out of Arkansas' Mena airport...
...The administration naturally enough turned to the government's intelligence agencies...
...Brown had learned about Seal's flights...
...This took place after a December 1984 flight which Brown immediately reported to Governor Bill Clinton...
...It is curious that, during the recent furor over the CIA's alleged involvement with the contras in drug trafficking in Los Angeles, no one pointed out that we have filmed evidence of Sandinistas engaged in this grisly business...
...We have no evidence of the CIA's involvement or, for that matter, of serious contra involvement...
...Now that is precisely when Brown broke with Seal and quit his flights to Central America...
...No one is accusing the CIA of secreting arms into Nicaragua to avoid paying duties on them, which is what smuggling is...
...To Americans familiar with government as perpetrated in Washington these days, the British newspapers' indignation will seem quaint...
...As for Barry Seal, it admits to having put cameras on his plane, but claims there is "no evidence" that the CIA even knew Seal's "true identity...
...Oh, and by the way, there is some evidence that the CIA's activities at Mena continued until 1991 or 1992...
...Was it in Decem-ber of 1984 that the CIA learned what L.D...
...Later in his testimony Jacobsen describes an actual meeting between Seal and CIA officials...
...Even connoisseurs of the well-constructed lie will be disappointed...
...The operation was naturally secret...
...He was an amazingly capable pilot and very cooperative—he was hoping for assistance in avoiding further problems with the law...
...A repentant drug trafficker, Barry Seal, was tapped to fly the plane...
...What did the CIA know and when did it know it...
...Alas, the report is very unsatisfactory...
...As for drugs and laundered money, neither Brown nor anyone I know of has evidence that the CIA was involved in either activity...
Vol. 30 • January 1997 • No. 1
