("Quid coniuratio est?")
THE CRIMES OF MENA
Investigative report by Sally Denton and Roger Morris
[Penthouse, July 1995]
Yes, this is the article, originally scheduled to run earlier this year in the Washington Post, that was yanked at the last possible moment. "At the very last minute... the Post killed the piece -- and refused to give a satisfactory answer for its action."
The authors, Denton and Morris, obtained what they refer to as "the Seal archives" after more than a year of digging into the story. Named for reputed drug smuggler extraordinaire Adler Berriman Seal, the archives seem to have been primarily gathered in via the efforts of Denton (author, by the way, of a good book on drugs and political corruption in Kentucky, The Bluegrass Conspiracy), who "scoured her considerable law-enforcement and underworld sources throughout the nation."
"By late summer 1994, what we called the Seal archive was mostly gathered -- more than 2,000 documents, from the smallest receipt to whole volumes of investigation..."
For those of you tuning in late, here is what the Mena story is all about, based on the testimony of scores of witnesses, investigators, experts, insiders, and researchers. Mena is a small town in Western Arkansas. During the 1980s, huge C-130 cargo planes, laden with weapons, would take off from there and fly down to Central America. The weapons would be unloaded and given to the Contras. (Some say that the weapons were being distributed to both sides.) The cargo planes did not fly back empty; weapons sales were financed, at least partly, by cocaine and marijuana; the cargo planes flew back to Arkansas filled with illegal drugs. The sales of these illegal drugs caused many Arkansas banks to be, as Sherman Skolnick puts it, "awash with cash."
The genesis of the Mena affair was the attempt (illegal) by some/all of the Reagan/Bush White House to circumvent the Boland amendment which had cut off Congressional funding for the Contras in Nicaragua. They are supposed to have paid off then- Governor Clinton and some/all of the Arkansas government in return that they look the other way and pretend not to notice anything unusual going on at places like Mena, Arkansas.
So, if the many witnesses are to be believed (and I think they are telling the truth), Arkansas was a beehive of drug/gun smuggling and money laundering activity during the 1980s. And the real kicker is that some/most highly-placed persons within the U.S. government were involved in all this! So that we had (and, some say, still have) a "war on drugs" in this country in which the forces of "law and order" were not only combatting drug smuggling but were also, themselves, smuggling in the drugs!!
So now it is like, as if we didn't have enough proof of this already, here comes Denton and Morris with even more proof. We don't need more proof! The proof is already there! It is like, as if "Well maybe the 'massa' don't see it our way because we ain't done put it down double-spaced and with 1-inch margins." The "massa" don't see it 'cuz the "massa" don't want to see it! It's not that the "massa" just don't have enough proof! The "massa" ain't never gonna have enough proof because this story, if it were to come out in the "official" media would make the "massa" look bad! So the "massa" ain't gonna see it and it's not that he just needs more proof or that the report must be double- spaced or any of that crap.
But, anyway, here is more proof, good proof, in the July 1995 Penthouse. What good is it going to do? Will Tom Brokaw suddenly sit up and take notice? ("Gosh, all I needed was more proof! I'll get right on it!") Is this factual account of grand commisars and high potentates of the U.S. government dealing drugs -- and even banking the profits -- finally going to push the O.J. Simpson trial off the tube? Don't bet on it.
I encourage distribution of "Conspiracy Nation."
Coming to you from Illinois -- "The Land of Skolnick"