The Crooked Hillary Clinton is really The Crooked Bitch Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump is correct as Hillary Rodham Clinton is Crooked;
The cops and robbers of Hillary and Bill Clinton,
The Thugs and Crime
Family Bill and Hillary Clinton - Investigations, Crime Stats, Clinton Machine
Foundation, Convictions, Congress, Media, Why the Clinton's are Frauds, Cheats,
Liars and Racketeering,
STARR-RAY INVESTIGATION
- Number of Starr-Ray investigation
convictions or guilty pleas (including one governor, one associate attorney
general and two Clinton business partners): 14
- Number of Clinton
cabinet members who came under criminal investigation: 5
- Number of Reagan
cabinet members who came under criminal investigation: 4
- Number of top officials
jailed in the Teapot Dome Scandal: 3
CRIME STATS
- Number of individuals
and businesses associated with the Clinton machine who have been convicted of
or pleaded guilty to crimes: 47
- Number of these
convictions during Clinton's presidency: 33
- Number of
indictments/misdemeanor charges: 61
- Number of congressional
witnesses who have pleaded the Fifth Amendment, fled the country to avoid
testifying, or (in the case of foreign witnesses) refused to be interviewed:
122
SMALTZ INVESTIGATION
- Guilty pleas and
convictions obtained by Donald Smaltz in cases involving charges of bribery and
fraud against former Agriculture
Secretary Mike Espy and
associated individuals and businesses: 15
- Acquitted or overturned
cases (including Espy): 6
- Fines and penalties
assessed: $11.5 million
- Amount Tyson Food paid
in fines and court costs: $6 million
CLINTON MACHINE
CRIMES
FOR WHICH CONVICTIONS
WERE OBTAINED
Drug
trafficking (3), racketeering, extortion, bribery (4), tax evasion, kickbacks,
embezzlement (2), fraud (12), conspiracy (5), fraudulent loans, illegal gifts
(1), illegal campaign contributions (5), money laundering (6), perjury,
obstruction of justice.
OTHER MATTERS
INVESTIGATED BY SPECIAL PROSECUTORS
AND CONGRESS, OR REPORTED
IN THE MEDIA
Bank and mail fraud,
violations of campaign finance laws, illegal foreign campaign funding, improper
exports of sensitive technology, physical violence and threats of violence,
solicitation of perjury, intimidation of witnesses, bribery of witnesses,
attempted intimidation of prosecutors, perjury before congressional committees,
lying in statements to federal investigators and regulatory officials, flight
of witnesses, obstruction of justice, bribery of cabinet members, real estate
fraud, tax fraud, drug trafficking, failure to investigate drug trafficking,
bribery of state officials, use of state police for personal purposes, exchange
of promotions or benefits for sexual favors, using state police to provide
false court testimony, laundering of drug money through a state agency, false
reports by medical examiners and others investigating suspicious deaths, the
firing of the RTC and FBI director when these agencies were investigating
Clinton and his associates, failure to conduct autopsies in suspicious deaths,
providing jobs in return for silence by witnesses, drug abuse, improper
acquisition and use of 900 FBI files, improper futures trading, murder, sexual
abuse of employees, false testimony before a federal judge, shredding of
documents, withholding and concealment of subpoenaed documents, fabricated
charges against (and improper firing of) White House employees, inviting drug
traffickers, foreign agents and participants in organized crime to the White House.
ARKANSAS ALZHEIMER'S
Number of times that
Clinton figures who testified in court or before Congress said that they didn't
remember, didn't know, or something similar.
Bill Kennedy 116
Harold Ickes 148
Ricki Seidman 160
Bruce Lindsey 161
Bill Burton 191
Mark Gearan 221
Mack McLarty 233
Neil Egglseston 250
Hillary Clinton 250
John Podesta 264
Jennifer O'Connor
343
Dwight Holton 348
Patsy Thomasson 420
Jeff Eller 697
ARKANSAS MEMORIES
THE REAL CLINTON story is
a fascinating one of a mobbed-up politician from a drug-infested southern state
in the control of the Dixie Mafia, a far more deadly institution than its New
York counterpart. Little of this came through because the media immediately
created a mythological Bill and Hillary saga that overwhelmed the facts. What
follows are excerpts from our timeline of interesting and little known events
prior to Clinton taking office as president. It gives a sense of the real story
that voters were denied:
1950s
When Bill Clinton is 7,
his family moves from Hope, Arkansas, to the long-time mob resort of Hot
Springs, AR. Here Al Capone is said to have had permanent rights to suite 443
of the Arlington Hotel. Clinton's stepfather is a gun-brandishing alcoholic who
loses his Buick franchise through mismanagement and his own pilfering. He
physically abuses his family, including the young Bill. His mother is a heavy
gambler with mob ties. According to FBI and local police officials, his Uncle
Raymond -- to whom young Bill turns for wisdom and support -- is a colorful car
dealer, slot machine owner and gambling operator, who thrives (except when his
house is firebombed) on the fault line of criminality.
Virginia Kelly, Clinton's
mother: "Hot Springs was so different. We had wide-open gambling, for one
thing, and it was so wide open that it never occurred to me that it was illegal
- it really didn't - until it came to a vote about whether we were going to
legalize gambling or not. I never was so shocked."
1960s
A federal investigation
concludes that Hot Springs has the largest illegal gambling operations in the
United States.
Clinton goes to
Georgetown University where he finds a mentor in Professor Carroll Quigley.
Quigley writes: "That the two political parties should represent opposed
ideals and policies. . . is a foolish idea. Instead, the two parties should be
almost identical . . .The policies that are vital and necessary for America are
no longer subjects of significant disagreement, but are disputable only in
detail, procedure, priority, or method."
Bill Clinton, according
to several agency sources interviewed by biographer Roger Morris, works as a
CIA informer while briefly and erratically a Rhodes Scholar in England.
Although without visible means of support, he travels around Europe and the
Soviet Union, staying at the ritziest hotel in Moscow. During this period the
US government is using well educated assets such as Clinton as part of
Operation Chaos, a major attempt to break student resistance to the war and the
draft. According to former White House FBI agent Gary Aldrich Clinton is told
by Oxford officials that he is no longer welcome there.
After becoming involved
in politics, Wellesley graduate Hillary Rodham orders her senior thesis sealed
from public view.
1974
27 year old Clinton, only
months out of Yale Law School, is back in Arkansas eager to run for Congress.
Roger Morris writes later, "A relative unknown, he faces an imposing field
of rivals in the Democratic primary, and beyond, in the general election, a
powerful Republican incumbent. . . It begins with a quiet meeting at his
mother's house in Hot Springs. Around the kitchen table, as Virginia Clinton
will describe the scene, avid young Billy meets with two of his most crucial
early backers -- uncle Raymond G. Clinton, a prosperous local Buick dealer, and
family friend and wealthy businessman Gabe Crawford. As they talk, Mr. Crawford
offers the candidate unlimited use of his private plane, and uncle Raymond not
only provides several houses around the district to serve as campaign
headquarters, but will secure a $10,000 loan to Bill from the First National
Bank of Hot Springs - an amount then equal to the yearly income of many
Arkansas families. . .
No mere businessman with
a spare plane, Gabe Crawford presided over a backroom bookie operation that was
one of Hot Springs' most lucrative criminal enterprises. [And the] inimitable
uncle Raymond - who had also played a pivotal behind-the-scenes role in keeping
young Bill out of the Vietnam draft - was far more than an auto dealer. In the
nationally prominent fount of vice and corruption that was Hot Springs from the
1920s to the 1980s (its barely concealed casinos generated more income than Las
Vegas well into the 1960s), the uncle's Buick agency and other businesses and
real estate were widely thought to be facades for illegal gambling, drug money
laundering and other ventures, in which Raymond was a partner. He was a minion
of the organized crime overlord who controlled the American Middle South for
decades, New Orleans boss Carlos Marcello or "Mafia Kingfish" as his
biographer John Davis called him.
1976
Two Indonesian
billionaires come to Arkansas. Mochtar Riady and Liem Sioe Liong are close to
Suharto. Riady is looking for an American bank to buy. Finds Jackson Stephens
with whom he forms Stephens Finance. Stephens will broker the arrival of BCCI
to this country and steer BCCI's founder, Hassan Abedi, to Bert Lance.
1977
Apparently because of
pressure from Indonesia, Riady withdraws his bid to buy Lance's 30% share of
the National Bank of Georgia. Instead, a BCCI front man buys the shares and
Abedi moves to secretly take over Financial General - later First American
Bankshares -- later the subject of the only BCCI-connected scandal to be
prosecuted in the US.
1978
Clinton is elected
governor. The Clintons and McDougals buy land in the Ozarks for $203,000 with
mostly borrowed funds. The Clintons get 50% interest with no cash down. The 203
acre plot, known as Whitewater, is fifty miles from the nearest grocery store.
The Washington Post will report later that some purchasers of lots, many of
them retirees, "put up houses or cabins, others slept in vans or tents,
hoping to be able to live off the land." More than half of the purchasers
will lose their plots thanks to the sleazy form of financing used.
Two months after
commencing the Whitewater scam, Hillary Clinton invests $1,000 in cattle
futures. Within a few days she has a $5,000 profit. Before bailing out she
earns nearly $100,000 on her investment. Many years later, several economists
will calculate that the chances of earning such returns legally were one in 250
million.
Bill Clinton's mother
hangs out at the race track with mobsters and other local figures, including
Dan Lasater who breeds race horses in Kentucky and Florida and has a box at the
track next to hers. Mrs. Clinton introduces Lasater to Roger Clinton.
Roger Clinton develops a
four-gram a day cocaine habit, getting his stuff from New York and Medellin
suppliers, based (as one middleman will later testify) on "who his brother
was." Sharlene Wilson is one of his dealers. Dan Lasater will give Roger
work and loan him $8,000 to pay off a drug debt.
1979
Sharlene Wilson will
testify in a 1990 federal drug probe that she began selling cocaine to Roger
Clinton as early as this year. She will also tell reporters that she sold two
grams of cocaine to Clinton's brother at the Little Rock nightclub Le Bistro,
then witnessed Bill Clinton consume the drug. "I watched Bill Clinton lean
up against a brick wall," Wilson reveals to the London Telegraph's Ambrose
Evans-Pritchard in 1995. "He was so messed up that night, he slid down the
wall into a garbage can and just sat there like a complete idiot." Drug
prosecutor Jean Duffey will say that she has no doubt that Wilson was telling
the truth.
Arkansas becomes a major
center of gun-running, drugs and money laundering. The IRS warns other law
enforcement agencies of the state's "enticing climate." According to
Clinton biographer Roger Morris, operatives go into banks with duffel bags full
of cash, which bank officers then distribute to tellers in sums under $10,000
so they don't have to report the transaction.
Sharlene Wilson,
according to investigative reporter Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, flies cocaine from
Mena to a pickup point in Texas. Other drugs, she and others say, are stuffed
into chickens for shipping around the country. Wilson also serves as "the
lady with the snow" at "toga parties" attended, she reports, by
Bill Clinton.
Investor's Business Daily
would later write, "Sally Perdue, a former Miss Arkansas and Little Rock
talk show host who said she had an affair with then-Gov. Clinton in 1983, told
the London Sunday Telegraph that he once came over to her house with a bag full
of cocaine. "He had all the equipment laid out, like a real pro."
In the 1990s, Genifer
Flowers tells Sean Hannity's WABC talk radio show: "Bill clearly let me
know that he did cocaine. And I know people that knew he did cocaine. He did
tell me that when he would use a substantial amount of cocaine that his head
would itch so badly that he would become self conscious at parties where he was
doing this. Because all he wanted to do while people were talking to him is
stand around and scratch his head. ...."
Two Arkansas state
troopers will swear under oath that they have seen Clinton "under the
influence" of drugs when he was governor.
Hillary Clinton makes a
$44,000 profit on a $2,000 investment in a cellular phone franchise deal that
involves taking advantage of the FCC's preference for locals, minorities and
women. The franchise is almost immediately flipped to the cellular giant,
McCaw.
A drug pilot brings a
Cessna 210 full of cocaine into eastern Arkansas where he is met by his
pick-up: a state trooper in a marked police car. "Arkansas," the
pilot will recall years later, "was a very good place to load and
unload."
According to his wife,
security operative Jerry Parks delivers large sums of money from Mena airport
to Vince Foster at a K-Mart parking lot. Mrs. Parks discovers this when she
opens her car trunk one day and finds so much cash that she has to sit on the
trunk to close it again. She asks her husband whether he is dealing drugs, and
he allegedly explains that Foster paid him $1,000 for each trip he took to
Mena.
Parks said he didn't
"know what they were doing, and he didn't care to know. He told me to
forget what I'd seen.". . . .Later Ambrose Evans-Pritchard will write,
"Foster was using him as a kind of operative to collect sensitive
information on things and do sensitive jobs. Some of this appears to have been
done on behalf of Hillary Clinton. . . Foster told him that Hillary wanted it
done. Now, my understanding . . . is that she wanted to know how vulnerable he
would be in a presidential race on the question of -- how shall I put it? --
his appetites."
In 1993, on the night before
Vince Foster's death, Parks' wife claims she hears a heated conversation
between her husband and Foster in which Parks says, "You can't give
Hillary those files, they've got my name all over them." Parks will be
gunned down two months after Foster's death in his car outside of Little Rock.
Parks is shot through the rear window of his car and shot three more times,
thru the side window, with a 9mm pistol.
Parks was running
American Contract Services, the business which supplied bodyguards for Clinton
during his presidential campaign and the following transition. Bill Clinton
still owed him $81,000. Parks had collected detailed data on Clinton's sexual
escapades, including pictures and dates. Mrs. Pariks claims federal agents
subsequently removed files and computer.
1980
Bill Clinton loses
re-election as governor. He will win two years later. Larry Nichols will tell
the George Putman Show in 1998 that he had met with Clinton and Jackson
Stephen's brother Witt and that Witt had told Clinton that the Stephens were
ready to back him for another run at the governorship but that he had to
"dry out on the white stuff."
There are reports that
following his loss, Clinton ended up in the hospital for a drug overdose.
Journalist R. Emmett Tyrrell later asked emergency room workers at the
University of Arkansas Medical Center if they could confirm the incident. He
didn't get a flat "no" from the hospital staff. One nurse said,
"I can't talk about that." Another said she feared for her life if
she spoke of the matter. Newsmax will report: "Dr. Sam Houston, a
respected Little Rock physician and once a doctor for Hillary's cantankerous
father, Hugh Rodham, says it is well known in Little Rock medical circles that
Clinton was brought to a Little Rock hospital for emergency treatment for an
apparent cocaine overdose. According to Houston, who told us he spoke to
someone intimately familiar with the details of what happened that night,
Clinton arrived at the hospital with the aid of a state trooper. Hillary
Clinton had been notified by phone and had instructed the hospital staff that
Clinton's personal physician would be arriving soon. When Mrs. Clinton arrived,
she told both of the resident physicians on duty that night that they would
never practice medicine in the United States if word leaked out about Clinton's
drug problem. Reportedly, she pinned one of the doctors up against the wall,
both hands pressed against his shoulders, as she gave her dire warning."
According to Jim
McDougal's later account, he and Henry Hamilton, "developed a system to
pass money to Clinton," then governor of Arkansas. "I considered it
just another way of helping to take care of Bill. A contractor agreed to pad my
monthly construction bill by $2,000. The contractor put the figure on his invoice
as a cost for gravel or culvert work. After I paid the full amount ... the
contractor reimbursed me the $2,000. I turned the money over to Henry to give
to Clinton. Once, after I handed Henry his latest consignment of 20
hundred-dollar bills to relay to the governor's office, he turned the bills
over and over in one hand, like a magician. Henry grinned. `You know,' he said,
`Caesar had his Brutus, Charles the First had Cromwell. Clinton could profit
from these examples if he crosses us.'"
1981
Hillary Clinton writes
Jim McDougal: "If Reaganomics works at all, Whitewater could become the
Western Hemisphere's Mecca."
Major drug trafficker
Barry Seal, under pressure from the Louisiana cops, relocates his operations to
Mena, Arkansas. Seal is importing as much as 1,000 pounds of cocaine a month
from Colombia according to Arkansas law enforcement officials. He will claim to
have made more than $50 million out of his operations. As an informant Seal
testified that in 1980-81, before moving his operation to Arkansas, he made
approximately 60 trips to Central America and brought back 18,000 kilograms.
According to the Telegraph's Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, "Larry Patterson, an
Arkansas state trooper, testified under oath that there were 'large quantities
of drugs being flown into the Mena airport, large quantities of money, large
quantities of guns.' The subject was discussed repeatedly in Clinton's presence
by state troopers working on his security detail, he alleged. Patterson said
the governor 'had very little comment to make; he was just listening to what
was being said.'"
Mena state police
investigator Russell Welch will later describe the airport, pointing to one
hanger he says is owned by a man who "doesn't exist in history back past a
safe house in Baltimore in 1972." Another is owned by someone who
"smuggled heroin through Laos back in the seventies." Still another
is "owned by a guy who just went bankrupt. So what's he do? Flies to
Europe for more money." Welch points to a half dozen Fokker aircraft
parked on an apron, noting that "the DEA's been tracking those planes back
and forth to Columbia for a while now."
1982
A DEA report uncovered by
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard will cite an informant claiming that a famous Arkansas
figure and backer of Clinton "smuggles cocaine from Colombia, South
America, inside race horses to Hot Springs."
IRS agent William Duncan
and an Arkansas State Police investigator take their evidence concerning drug
trafficking in Mena to US Attorney Asa Hutchinson. They ask for 20 witnesses to
be subpoenaed before the grand jury. Hutchinson chooses only three. According
to reporter Mara Leveritt, "The three appeared before the grand jury, but
afterwards, two of them also expressed surprise at how their questioning was
handled. One, a secretary at Rich Mountain Aviation, had given Duncan sworn
statements about money laundering at the company, transcripts of which Duncan
had provided to Hutchinson. But when the woman left the jury room, she
complained that Hutchinson had asked her nothing about the crime or the sworn
statements she'd given to Duncan. As Duncan later testified, 'She basically
said that she was allowed to give her name, address, position, and not much
else.' The other angry witness was a banker who had, in Duncan's words,
'provided a significant amount of evidence relating to the money-laundering
operation.' According to Duncan, he, too, emerged from the jury room
complaining 'that he was not allowed to provide the evidence that he wanted to
provide to the grand jury.'"
Financial General changes
its name to First American and Clark Clifford is appointed chairman. BCCI
fronts begin acquiring controlling interest in banks and other American
financial institutions. In Arkansas, Jim McDougal purchases Madison Guaranty
Savings & Loan.
1983
According to a later
account in the Tampa Tribune, planes flying drugs into Mena in coolers marked
"medical supplies" are met by several people close to then-Governor
Bill Clinton.
1984
Stevens and Riady buy a
banking firm and change its name to Worthern Bank with Riady's 28-year-old son
James as president. Other Worthen co-owners will eventually include BCCI
investor Abdullah Taha Bakhish.
Foreshadowing future Wall
Street interest in Clinton, Goldman Sachs, Payne Webber, Salomon Brothers and
Merrill Lynch all show up as financial backers of the governor. Also on the
list: future king-maker Pam Harriman. But Bill Clinton's funders include not
only some of the biggest corporate names ever to show an interest in the tiny
state of Arkansas but some of the most questionable. A former US Attorney will
later tell Roger Morris, "That was the election when the mob really came
into Arkansas politics. . . It wasn't just Bill Clinton and it went beyond our
old Dixie Mafia. . . This was eastern and west coast crime money that noticed
the possibilities just like the legitimate corporations did."
Dan Lasater buys a ski
resort in New Mexico for $20 million and uses Clinton's name (with permission)
to promote it. Later, a US Customs investigative report will note that the
resort is being used for drug operations and money laundering. Lasater also
flies to Belize with his aide Patsy Thomasson to buy a 24,000 acre ranch. Among
those present at the negotiations is the US Ambassador. The deal falls through
because of the opposition of the Belize government.
A private contractor for
Arkansas' prison system stops selling prisoners' blood to a Canadian broker and
elsewhere overseas after admitting the blood might be contaminated with the
AIDS virus or hepatitis. Sales of prisoners' blood in US are already forbidden.
Tens of thousands of
dollars in mysterious checks begin moving through Whitewater's account at
Madison Guaranty. Investigators will later suspect that McDougal was operating
a check-kiting scheme to drain money from the S&L
Hot Springs police record
Roger Clinton during a cocaine transaction. Roger says, "Got to get some
for my brother. He's got a nose like a vacuum cleaner." Roger is arrested
while working at menial jobs for Arkansas "bond daddy" Dan Lasater.
Barry Seal estimates that
he has earned between $60 and $100 million smuggling cocaine into the US, but
with the feds closing in on him, Barry Seal flies from Mena to Washington in
his private Lear Jet to meet with two members of Vice President George Bush's
drug task force. Following the meeting, Seal rolls over for the DEA, becoming
an informant. He collects information on leaders of the Medellin cartel while
still dealing in drugs himself. The deal will be kept secret from investigators
working in Louisiana and Arkansas. According to reporter Mara Leveritt,
"By Seal's own account, his gross income in the year and a half after he
became an informant - while he was based at Mena and while Asa Hutchinson was
the federal prosecutor in Fort Smith, 82 miles away - was three-quarters of a
million dollars. Seal reported that $575,000 of that income had been derived
from a single cocaine shipment, which the DEA had allowed him to keep. Pressed
further, he testified that, since going to work for the DEA, he had imported
1,500 pounds of cocaine into the U.S. Supposed informant Seal will fly
repeatedly to Colombia, Guatemala, and Panama, where he meets with Jorge Ochoa,
Fabio Ochoa, Pablo Escobar, and Carlos Lehder - leaders of the cartel that at
the time controlled an estimated 80 percent of the cocaine entering the United
States."
Ronald Reagan wants to
send the National Guard to Honduras to help in the war against the Contras.
Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis goes to the Supreme Court in a futile
effort to stop it but Clinton is happy to oblige, even sending his own security
chief, Buddy Young, along to keep an eye on things. Winding up its tour, the
Arkansas Guard declares large quantities of its weapons "excess" and
leaves them behind for the Contras.
Clinton bodyguard, state
trooper LD Brown, applies for a CIA opening. Clinton gives him help on his
application essay including making it more Reaganesque on the topic of the
Nicaragua. According to Brown, he meets a CIA recruiter in Dallas whom he later
identities as former member of Vice President Bush's staff. On the recruiter's
instruction, he meets with notorious drug dealer Barry Seal in a Little Rock
restaurant. Joins Seal in flight to Honduras with a purported shipment of M16s
and a return load of duffel bags. Brown gets $2,500 in small bills for the
flight. Brown, concerned about the mission, consults with Clinton who says,
"Oh, you can handle it, don't sweat it." On second flight, Brown
finds cocaine in a duffel bag and again he seeks Clinton's counsel. Clinton
says to the conservative Brown, "Your buddy, Bush, knows about it"
and of the cocaine, "that's Lasater's deal."
1985
Arkansas state pension
funds -- deposited in Worthen by Governor Bill Clinton -- suddenly lose 15% of
their value because of the failure of high risk, short-term investments and the
brokerage firm that bought them. The $52 million loss is covered by a Worthen
check written by Jack Stephens in the middle of the night, an insurance policy,
and the subsequent purchase over the next few months of 40% of the bank by
Mochtar Riady. Clinton and Worthen escape a major scandal.
Mochtar and James Riady
engineer the takeover of the First National Bank of Mena in a town of 5,000
with few major assets beyond a Contra supply base plus drug running and
money-laundering operations.
Terry Reed is asked to
take part in Operation Donation, under which planes and boats needed by the
Contras "disappear," allowing owners to claim insurance. Reed has
been a Contra operative and CIA asset working with Felix Rodriguez, the Contra
link to the CIA and then-Vice President Bush's office. Reed later claims he
refused, but that his plane was removed while he was away.
Park on Meter, a parking
meter manufacturer in Russellville, Arkansas, receives the first industrial
development loan from the Arkansas Development Finance Authority in 1985. Some
suspect that POM is doing a lot more than making parking meters -- specifically
that it has secret federal contracts to make components of chemical and
biological weapons and devices to carry them on C-130s for the Contras. The
company later denies the Contra connection although it will admit having secret
military contracts. Web Hubbell is the company's lawyer. Right next to POM, on
land previously owned by it, is an Army reserve chemical warfare company.
An independent
investigator will later find evidence of an electronic transfer of $50 million
from the Arkansas Development Financial Authority to a bank in the Cayman
Islands. Grand Cayman has a population of 18,000, 570 commercial banks, one
bank regulator and a bank secrecy law. It is a favorite destination spot for
laundered drug money.
Asa Hutchinson leaves the
US Attorney's office to make an unsuccessful bid for US Senate. According to
police sources, Hutchinson had been aware of what was happening at Mena and the
investigation into it, but did nothing. Hutchinson is replaced by Mike Fitzhugh
who is reluctant to let investigators Russell Welch of the state police and
William Duncan of the IRS present evidence of money-laundry to a grand jury.
1986
Journalist
Evans-Pritchard will describe the Arkansas of this period as a "major
point for the transshipment of drugs" and "perilously close to
becoming a 'narco-republic' -- a sort of mini-Columbia within the borders of
the United States." There is "an epidemic of cocaine, contaminating
the political establishment from top to bottom," with parties "at
which cocaine would be served like hors d'oeuvres and sex was rampant."
Clinton attends some of these events.
On January 17, the U. S.
Attorney for the Western District drops a money laundering and
narcotics-conspiracy charges against associates of drug smuggler Barry Seal
over the protests of investigators Russell Welch of the state police and Bill
Duncan of the Internal Revenue.
Seal is scheduled to
testify at the trial of Jorge Ochoa Vasques. But on February 19, shortly before
the trial is to begin, Seal is murdered in Baton Rouge gangland style by three
Colombian hitmen armed with machine guns who attack while he seated behind the
wheel of his white Cadillac in Baton Rouge, La. The Colombians, connected with
the Medellin drug cartel, are tried and convicted. Upon hearing of Seal's
murder, one DEA agent says, "There was a contract out on him, and everyone
knew it. He was to have been a crucial witness in the biggest case in DEA
history."
Eight months after the
murder, Seal's cargo plane is shot down over Nicaragua. It is carrying
ammunition and other supplies for the Contras from Mena. One crew member,
Eugene Hasenfus, survives.
The attorney general of
Louisiana tells US Attorney General Ed Meese that drug trafficker Barry Seal
has smuggled drugs into the US worth $3-$5 billion.
1987
Two boys, Kevin Ives and
Don Henry, are killed in Saline County and left on a railroad track to be run
over by a train. The medical examiner will initially rule the deaths
accidental, saying that the boys were unconscious and in a deep sleep due to
marijuana. The finding will be punctured by dogged investigators whose efforts
are repeatedly blocked by law enforcement officials. Ultimately, the bodies
will be exhumed and another autopsy will be performed, which finds that Henry
had been stabbed in the back and Ives beaten with a rifle butt. Although no one
will ever be charged, the trail will lead into the penumbra of the Dixie Mafia
and the Arkansas political machine. Some believe the boys died because they
accidentally intercepted a drug drop, but information obtained by the
Progressive Review suggests the drop may have dispensed not drugs but cash, gold
and platinum -- part of a series of sorties through which those working with US
intelligence were being reimbursed. According to one version, the boys were
blamed in order to cover up the theft of the drop by persons within the Dixie
Mafia and Arkansas political machine. Ives' mother will later charge that high
state and federal officials participated in a cover-up: "I firmly believe
my son and Don Henry were killed because they witnessed a drug drop by an
airplane connected to the Mena drug smuggling routes."
Prosecutor Jean Duffey
will later tell a talk show host in answer to whether law enforcement people
were involved in the train death murders: "I believe the law enforcement
agents were connected to some very high political people because they have never
been brought to justice and I don't think they ever will be. I think they are
protected to avoid exposing the connection. . . There have been several murders
of potential witnesses. Anyone who could have solved this murder many years ago
has been systematically eliminated."
Nine persons reportedly
having information on the Ives-Henry murders will end up dead themselves.
1988
Charles Black, a
prosecutor for Polk County, which includes Mena, meets with Governor Clinton
and asks for assistance in a probe of illegal activities. "His
response," Mr. Black will tell CBS News later, "was that he would get
a man on it and get back to me. I never heard back."
Following pressure from
then-Arkansas Rep. Bill Alexander, the General Accounting Office opens a probe
in April 1988; within four months, the inquiry is shut down by the National
Security Council, according to a later report by Micah Morrison of the Wall
Street Journal. Several congressional subcommittee inquiries sputter and stop.
1989
What will later be known
as the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy begins on the left as a group of progressive
students at the University of Arkansas form the Arkansas Committee to look into
Mena, drugs, money laundering, and Arkansas politics.
1990
Drug distributor Dan
Lasater is pardoned by Governor Clinton after serving just six months in jail
and four in a halfway house on minor charges. One law enforcement official will
describe the investigation into Lasater's operations as "either a high
dive or extremely unprofessional. Take your pick." The alleged reason for
the pardon: so Lasater can get a hunting license. Lasater returns to his 7,400
acre ranch in Saline County.
1991
An IRS memorandum reveals
that even at this late date "the CIA still has ongoing operations out of
the Mena, AR airport."
Arkansas State Police
investigator Russell Welch, who has been working with IRS investigator Bill
Duncan on drug running and money laundering at Mena, develops pneumonia-like
symptoms. The Washington Weekly described the incident in 1996: "On the
weekend of September 21, 1991, Arkansas State Police Investigator Russell Welch
met with IRS Investigator Bill Duncan to write a report on their investigation
of Mena drug smuggling and money laundering and send it to Iran-Contra
prosecutor Lawrence Walsh.. Returning to Mena on Sunday, Welch told his wife
that he didn't feel too well. He thought he had gotten the flu . . . In Fort
Smith a team of doctors were waiting. Dr. Calleton had called them twice while
Welch was in transport and they had been in contact with the CDC. Later the
doctor would tell Welch's wife that he was on the edge of death. He would not
have made it through the night had he not been in the hospital. He was having
fever seizures by now. A couple of days after Welch had been admitted to St.
Edwards Mercy Hospital, his doctor was wheeling him to one of the labs for
testing when she asked him if he was doing anything at work that was
particularly dangerous. He told her that he had been a cop for about 15 years
and that danger was probably inherent with the job description. She told Welch
that they believed he had anthrax. She said the anthrax was the military kind
that is used as an agent of biological warfare and that it was induced.
Somebody had deliberately infected him. She added that they had many more tests
to run but they had already started treating him for anthrax."
While in Washington,
D.C., where he holds a permit to carry a gun, IRS agent and Mena drug
investigator Bill Duncan is arrested for weapons possession (his service
revolver), roughed up and handcuffed to a pipe in the basement of a DC police
station. After the incident he is taken off of the Mena investigation. Later,
when he is asked to falsify testimony for a Federal Grand Jury, he refuses and
is fired on the spot.
State Attorney General
Winston Bryant and Arkansas Rep. Bill Alexander send two boxes of Mena files to
special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh. Bryant says the boxes contain "credible
evidence of gunrunning, illegal drug smuggling, money laundering and the governmental
cover-up and possibly a criminal conspiracy in connection with the Mena
Airport." Seventeen months later, Walsh writes Bryant a letter saying,
without explanation, that he had closed his investigation. Says Alexander
later, "The feds dropped the ball and covered it up. I have never seen a
whitewash job like this case."
Dan Harmon becomes the
new prosecuting attorney in the district responsible for the train deaths
investigation. Harmon's drug investigator Jean Duffey is discredited,
threatened and ultimately has to flee Arkansas.
The day Clinton announces
his candidacy for the White House, Meredith Oakley sizes him up in the Arkansas
Democrat Gazette: "His word is dirt. Not a statesman is he, but a common,
run-of-the-mill, dime-a-dozen politician. A mere opportunist. A man whose word
is fallow ground not because it is unwanted but because it is barren, bereft of
the clean-smelling goodness that nurtures wholesome things. Those of us who
cling to the precepts of another age, a time in which a man's word was his
bond, and, morally, bailing out was not an option, cannot join the madding
crowd in celebrating what is for some Bill Clinton's finest hour. We cannot
rejoice in treachery."
The Federal Reserve
begins an investigation of BCCI's alleged control of First American Bank. A few
months later BCCI itself is shut down in what would be revealed as the world's
biggest bank scandal ever. Bill Clinton announces for president. Among his
targets: "S&L crooks and self-serving CEOs."
1992
The Worthen Bank gives
Clinton a $3.5 million line of credit allowing the cash-strapped candidate to
finish the primaries. Stephens Inc. employees give Clinton more than $100,000
for his presidential campaign.
Little Rock Worldwide
Travel provides Clinton with $1 million in deferred billing for his campaign
trips. Clinton aide David Watkins boasts to a travel magazine, "Were it
not for World Wide Travel here, the Arkansas governor may never have been in
contention for the highest office in the land." In fact, without the Worthen
and Worldwide largess, it is unlikely that the cash-strapped candidate could
have survived through the later primaries.
A massive
"bimbo" patrol is established to threaten, buy, or otherwise disarm
scores of women who have had sexual encounters with Clinton. The campaign uses
private investigators in an extensive operation that will be joked about at the
time but later will be seen as a form of blackmail as well as psychological and
physical intimidation.
Money magazine reports
that Clinton annually receives about $1.4 million in admissions tickets to the
state-regulated Oaklawn racetrack which he hands out to campaign contributors
and others.
A survey of campaign
reporters finds that by February, 90% favor Clinton for president.
During the New Hampshire
primary Clinton flies back to Little Rock to preside over the execution of
Ricky Ray Rector. The prisoner was so brain damaged that he saved his pie to
eat later.
1993
Arkansas Governor Jim Guy
Tucker comes to Washington to see his old boss sworn in, leaving his state
under the control of the president pro tem of the senate, Little Rock dentist
Jerry Jewell. Jewell uses his power as acting governor to issue a number of
pardons, one of them for a convicted drug dealer, Tommy McIntosh. According to
the Washington Times, many in the state "say it was a political payoff,
offered in exchange for dirty tricks Mr. McIntosh played on Clinton political
opponents during the presidential campaign." It seems that the elder
McIntosh had worked for Clinton in his last state campaign and, according to
McIntosh in a 1991 lawsuit, had agreed not only to pay him $25,000 but to help
him market his recipe for sweet potato pie and to pardon his son.
Webster Hubbell's name
surfaces as a potential nominee for deputy attorney general but he tells
friends he does not want that job or, reports Time, "to take any other
position that involves Senate confirmation -- perhaps to avoid fishing
expeditions into the law firm's confidential business."
And years later, this
from a real expert: The New York Daily News quotes John Gotti as saying that
Clinton got away with things a Mafia boss would never have gotten away with. In
a conversation with his brother Peter, he is particularly struck with Clinton's
taped conversation with Gennifer Flowers: "He's telling her, 'Why would
you want to bring this out? If anybody investigates, you lie.' " Said
Gotti, "If he had an Italian last name, they would've electrocuted
him."
