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("Quid coniuratio est?")
COMPROMISED
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CONSPIRACY NATION:
What exactly was Mena about?
JOHN CUMMINGS:
Terry came in contact with a man who was introduced to him as
"John Cathey." And John Cathey was, in reality, Oliver North. And
he came into contact as the result of the Toshiba investigation.
So at some point, Terry decides to go into business for himself and he's gonna move to Arkansas. And North tells him, "Well. If you're moving to Arkansas, there's a guy there who's running some stuff for us that you ought to meet." And he says, "You can probably make some money out of this."
Well he meets [Barry] Seal, and they hit it off. And Seal tells him that he needs someone who can train Contra pilots to drop supplies into areas of Nicaragua at night; you know, teach them how to do air drops.
So Terry's job was trying to teach them how to drop this stuff at night, in the jungle, to supply their own troops. Because they didn't want (what later happened), they did not want a plane shot down with an American crew on board. (And of course, that did happen.)
CONSPIRACY NATION:
And then he found out, later on, while he was in Mexico, that
drugs were involved. And he didn't want to have anything to do
with the drugs.
JOHN CUMMINGS:
He was down there supposedly to run a machine tool company. And
he had acquired a big warehouse for putting machine tools. He'd
been told that what they were gonna do with this proprietary
company was run guns from the U.S. to Central America. But when
he went to his warehouse one day, he opened one of these big,
huge containers, and it was full of cocaine.
CONSPIRACY NATION:
[So Reed told "Max Gomez", that he was quitting the operation.]
And what happened was, Reed thought everything was okay, and he
heads north. And Buddy Young puts out a false "profile" on him,
through the computers.
So Reed went "underground" for what, 18 months or so?
JOHN CUMMINGS:
Well, a little less than a year. He and his wife took off with
their children and drove across the country, trying to stay out
of sight, figuring that he had been marked for a hit like [Barry]
Seal had been! He was convinced they would do the same thing to
him that they did to Seal.
CONSPIRACY NATION:
So after about a year underground, Reed decides that he's gonna
turn himself in.
JOHN CUMMINGS:
No, he learns that he's been indicted. So having been indicted,
he decided that he'd better surrender before they tried to come
and find him. And he did. He arranged to surrender. And he went
with an attorney and surrendered. And his wife was also indicted.
And she had done absolutely nothing.
CONSPIRACY NATION:
So then Reed and his wife were exonerated, and found not guilty.
JOHN CUMMINGS:
[They were] acquitted, yeah. He was acquitted by the judge. It
was an order of acquittal, from a judge (which you hardly ever
see.) There was no jury trial.
CONSPIRACY NATION:
So after he was acquitted, he wanted redress of his grievances
and he also wanted to get the truth out.
JOHN CUMMINGS:
He was very angry because of what they had done to his wife. He
was very angry that they had put her through this. And they had
three small children. And it's very obvious that she had done
absolutely nothing.
CONSPIRACY NATION:
And so Reed brought suit against the government?
JOHN CUMMINGS:
No, it wasn't a suit against the government. It was a suit
against the two men who testified against him. There was a third
man, who was an Arkansas state trooper, who works for the DEA.
CONSPIRACY NATION:
And by bringing suit, this allows what they call the discovery
process, right? That he (at least theoretically) should have
access to documents that aren't normally available?
JOHN CUMMINGS:
He got documents from the FBI and from the DEA Intelligence
Headquarters in El Paso...
CONSPIRACY NATION:
And so, this case was proceeding well, up until recently, right?
JOHN CUMMINGS:
There was a motion, from the other side, to limit the amount of
evidence that Terry could bring in. And that copy of the court
order I sent you just about wipes away any reference to Mena
or... In other words, he can try his civil rights case, but you
can't go into why they would have wanted to frame him.
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IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
EASTERN DISTRICT OF ARKANSAS
WESTERN DIVISION
TERRY K. REED, ET AL. PLAINTIFFS
v. Civil No. LR-C-94-634
RAYMOND YOUNG, ET AL. DEFENDANTS
ORDER
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Pending before the court is defendants' [Raymond (Buddy) Young and Tommy L. Baker] December 4th motion in limins to exclude the following matters....... These general areas will be referred to as the "Mena" evidence or documents.
.......Even if the Court were to find that the complaint adequately states sufficient facts to make the allegations.......
relevant to the alleged overt actions of these defendants, the probative value is substantially outweighed by the dangers of unfair prejudice, confusion of issues, the potential for misleading of the jury and considerations of undue delay and waste of time. The following description will control: [may not be introduced into evidence or made part of the court record]
Any reference to the plaintiffs' [Terry and Janis Reed] participation in programs, operations or missions sponsored by the Federal Bureau of Investigation or the Central Intelligence Agency or any other agency of the United States government, covert or otherwise, as well as any organization sponsored by or aligned with the United States government specifically including, but not limited to, any programs, operations or missions conducted in southwest Arkansas regarding the training of Nicaraguan nationals, the funding and support for any factions involved in the Nicaraguan conflict and any contact or communications with operatives or officials of the above-named agencies or organizations. Any reference to President or Governor Bill Clinton and/or Hillary Clinton and the Mena or Nella Airports. Any references to Barry Seale [sic] and any alleged drug smuggling operation or other references to the Mena and Nella Airports, or to a business relationship of Barry Seale [sic] and Dan Lasater, Lasater and Company and the Arkansas Development and Finance Authority (ADFA) and ADFA's former Director, Bob Nash.
.............IT IS SO ORDERED THIS 8th day of March, 1996.
I encourage distribution of "Conspiracy Nation."
See also: http://www.europa.com/~johnlf/cn.html
See also: ftp ftp.shout.net pub/users/bigred