{"id":11996,"date":"2020-07-23T23:42:00","date_gmt":"2020-07-23T23:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theopensource.tv\/news\/?p=11996"},"modified":"2021-12-09T00:02:52","modified_gmt":"2021-12-09T00:02:52","slug":"ignored-by-media-huge-clinton-investigation-heats-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theopensource.tv\/news\/2020\/07\/23\/ignored-by-media-huge-clinton-investigation-heats-up\/","title":{"rendered":"Ignored by Media, Huge Clinton Investigation Heats Up"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"by Frank Holmes, reporter<\/span><\/p>\n

Of all the scandals hanging over Bill Clinton, the one that\u2019s remained the most mysterious for the longest period of time is this: What was his connection to an alleged government drug smuggling operation run out of Mena, Arkansas, while he was governor?<\/p>\n

Allegations have swirled for decades about the airport, where multiple federal agencies flew planes for years at the height of the U.S. cocaine epidemic.<\/p>\n

Now, new documents, first obtained by conservative legal watchdog Judicial Watch<\/a>, shed light on one of the darkest corners of the Clinton legacy.<\/p>\n

In 1981, a drug smuggler named Barry Seal moved his operation to a tiny airstrip in Arkansas, the Mena Intermountain Airport.<\/p>\n

Seal claimed he\u2019d made up to $50 million by delivering 1,000-pound bags of cocaine for South American cartels. When the feds busted him, he became a DEA informant and helped expose how Nicaragua\u2019s Communist Sandinistas helped cocaine flow into the U.S.<\/p>\n

But rumors have always had it that Seal did a lot more than run picture-taking errands; he was smuggling drugs into the U.S.\u2014and Bill Clinton allegedly sat at the center of the action.<\/p>\n

Eyewitnesses claim to have seen a new airstrip being cut into the wild woods of the Ozarks near Mena, and very strange things happening there.<\/p>\n

Former IRS investigator Bill Duncan said reports started to pour in of \u201cautomatic weapons fire, men of Latin American appearance in the area, people in camouflage moving quietly through streams with automatic weapons, aircraft drops, twin-engine airplane traffic.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sources claimed that the airport was ground zero of a massive illegal drug-and-arms-smuggling operation that imported cocaine into the United States and shipped weapons to Central American rebels\u2014and rumor is that Clinton and his pals profited handsomely from the trade.<\/p>\n

Clinton\u2019s then-governor administration collected a 10 percent \u201ccommission\u201d<\/a> on every dollar of drugs flown into the Mena airport\u2014and, according to a 550-page book by Terry Reed, Clinton saw that the drugs got laundered through Dan Lasater, a close friend of the governor, his wife, and his half-brother Roger Clinton.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was something going on there that the government desperately wanted to hide,\u201d said the book\u2019s co-author, John Cummings.<\/p>\n

But it looked like we\u2019d never know the details. In just a few years Seal was murdered by the Medellin cartel, and his plane \u2013 and its new pilot \u2013 got shot down over Nicaragua, illegally carrying arms to the Contras.<\/p>\n

The fact that all this happened while Bill Clinton sat in the governor\u2019s mansion made people ask the same question: What did Clinton know and when did he know it?<\/p>\n

Amazing as it sounds, President Clinton has only made one statement on the shocking allegations over the years\u2014in 1994. At a press conference, he said things happening at Mena \u201cwere primarily<\/em> a matter for federal jurisdiction.\u201d The feds \u201cdidn\u2019t tell me anything about it,\u201d and that \u201cwe had nothing\u2014zero\u2014to do with it.\u201d At the time, reporters thought he used legal language to dodge the question<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[Sponsored] <\/em>#1 \u201cFruit Trick\u201d for Perfect Blood Pressure<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Others said he outright lied.<\/p>\n

The London Telegraph <\/em>reported that Arkansas state trooper Larry Patterson stated, under penalty of perjury, that he and others on his team \u201cdiscussed repeatedly in Clinton\u2019s presence\u201d very \u201clarge quantities of drugs being flown into the Mena airport, large quantities of money, large quantities of guns.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1996, Congress ordered the CIA to produce a report about what happened at the mountaintop airport with the high volume of drug shipments.<\/p>\n

CIA officials insisted the report cleared them\u2026but it never saw the light of day.<\/p>\n

Until now.<\/p>\n

Judicial Watch sued and won the report\u2019s release<\/a>\u2014but there\u2019s a hitch.<\/p>\n

Sponsored:<\/em> \u201cForbidden\u201d book now available (claim yours now)<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Most of its 73 pages are redacted, erased, or crossed out.<\/p>\n

Still, what is visible brings interesting facts to light.<\/p>\n

The CIA states that it had nothing to do with Barry Seal\u2014except for a two-day stint when they paid him to repair airplanes they flew on another, totally innocent mission with the Defense Department.<\/p>\n

What that routine training with the DoD entailed, they won\u2019t say.<\/p>\n

But the document undercuts Clinton\u2019s statement that he knew \u201czero\u201d about the goings-on at Mena. The CIA says that \u201ccertain Arkansas state and local officials were informed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those with knowledge of the Arkansas government in the 1980s say it\u2019s unbelievable that Clinton didn\u2019t at least know about what really happened at Mena, whatever it was.<\/p>\n

\u201cBill Clinton likely knew a lot more than he has admitted,\u201d Judicial Watch says in a statement. \u201cWe also learn there is a lot the government still does not want us to know.\u201d<\/p>\n

In fact, Clinton\u2019s cronies are reportedly still avoiding investigators. Reporter Mara Leveritt said she personally read the Arkansas State Police\u2019s enormous file on Barry Seal years ago\u2014but when she asked to review it a few years ago, it disappeared into thin air.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cI knew the agency had an extensive file on Seal, because I\u2019d read it decades earlier, shortly after Seal\u2019s murder,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Because of this kind of stonewalling, Judicial Watch is demanding the CIA come clean to the American public.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Mena Report should be declassified and released<\/a>,\u201d says Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. The public deserves answers to what really went on at Mena.\u201d<\/p>\n

Frank Holmes is a veteran journalist and an outspoken conservative that talks about the news that was in his weekly article, \u201cOn The Holmes Front.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Frank Holmes, reporter Of all the scandals hanging over Bill Clinton, the one that\u2019s remained the most mysterious for the longest period of time is this: What was his connection to an alleged government drug smuggling operation run out of Mena, Arkansas, while he was governor? Allegations have swirled for decades about the airport, where multiple federal agencies flew planes for years at the height of the U.S. cocaine epidemic. Now, new documents, first obtained by conservative legal watchdog […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11803,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking-news","category-politics-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theopensource.tv\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11996","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theopensource.tv\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theopensource.tv\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theopensource.tv\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theopensource.tv\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11996"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.theopensource.tv\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11996\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11997,"href":"https:\/\/www.theopensource.tv\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11996\/revisions\/11997"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theopensource.tv\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theopensource.tv\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theopensource.tv\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theopensource.tv\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}