textfiles-politics/regexConsp/drug-cia.xml

<xml><p>
 WBAI Pacifica Radio New York 
 Interview with Mark Swaney
  By: Paul DeRienzo.</p>

<div>--------------------------------</div>

<p>WBAI radio interview with Mark Swaney from "Faithful Arkansas" 
a citizens group, speaking of Bill Clinton's and George Bush's 
connection with the CIA covert drug smuggling operation in 
Mena Arkansas in support of the Contras. 

MARK SWANEY:
. . . . [they] set up a front company in Guadalahara Mexico. 
The purpose of which, he was told, was to smuggle weapons to 
the Contra's in Central America. And he was to be the front man 
-- he was to provide the front cover for this company, but he 
was given to know that behind the scenes they [the CIA] would 
be using this company to smuggle weapons. So he was ok with 
that and he went down to Guadalahara and was down there until 
the summer of '87 --actually the plane was shot down in '86 
so this operation in Mexico continued for a year after the 
Iran-Contra story was breaking and that's something that a 
lot of people don't know --they think that Iran-Contra/Contra 
Resupply stopped when the revelations were made in '86, but 
they actually continued.

 Anyway in the summer of '87, even as the hearings were going 
on in Congress, Terry Reed began to suspect they were using 
his front company for something other than smuggling weapons. 
And one day he was looking for a lathe in one of his warehouses 
by the airport there in Guadalahara and he went in and opened 
up an air freight shipping container (which are very large, 
they're about 28 feet long, 7 feet high, 8 feet wide), and he 
found it packed full of Cocaine when he opened it up.  He immediately 
realized he was in a very precarious situation because he was 
the only one on paper who had anything to do with that company, 
and if they had ever gotten caught -- there was nobody to stand 
up and say well this guy didn't know anything -- he was going
to be a patsy if anything went wrong. So he decided he wasn't 
going to play the part of the patsy. The man who was his contact 
man for the CIA in Mexico was Felix Rodrigez. So he confronted 
Felix Rodrigez and said well listen I didn't bargain on getting 
into Narcotics smuggling and I'm outa this all together guys 
-- I'm leaving now -- I refuse to have anything further to do 
with this. And Felix Rodrigez said ok fine if you want to be 
out your out. Now before he was able to return even to Little 
Rock Arkansas where his home was at the time, Governor Clinton's 
Chief of Security, a man named Raymond Buddy Young, and
another man Tommy Baker, Private Investigator and I'm told 
former member of the Arkansas State Police, were framing 
Terry Reid for mail fraud. What this involved was the so 
called project donation that Oliver North had set up.  Terry 
Reid's plane had been stolen a number of years earlier 
-- and used in drug missions and such without his knowledge 
-- and he claimed the insurance money for his plane being stolen 
-- and so to set him up what they did was took the airplane 
and put it back in his hangar before he got back to Arkansas.  
Governor Clinton's Chief of Security just supposedly happened 
--and this is what he tells the press -- he say's "one day I
just happened to be walking by this hangar, and the wind just 
happened to blow the door open and I just happened to look in 
and see this airplane that was stolen four years earlier in 
another state and I realized -that was the plane." And so this 
is how the case got started.

PAUL DeRIENZO: 

How would he have known that was the plane?

MARK SWANEY: </p>

<p>Oh that's never been explained.  Along with a number of aspects 
in this famous story. We're in contact with Terry Reid's defense 
attorney in Witchita and she's promised to send us all of the 
documents --we have some of the documents already that indicate 
--he was found not guilty --well he never went to trial.


PAUL DeRIENZO:</p>

<p>Is that the same Buddy Young by the way who's head of Governor
Clinton's security detail.

MARK SWANEY:</p>

<p>Yes he is.

PAUL DeRIENZO: 

Buddy Young, let's keep his name in mind because I want to come 
back to him.  Let's jump now to the sight in Arkansas that was 
used as the landing sight, the airport in Arkansas in the town 
of Mena Arkansas --that was determinates of a lot of these 
Iran-Contra resupply flights.

MARK SWANEY:</p>

<p>Yes, in fact Terry Reid has stated in that same article that 
you have that it was the *hub* of the Contra resupply effort.  
Many people are not aware that Arkansas was very heavily and 
very deeply involved in the Iran-Contra affair all during the 
time that Governor Clinton ???? Governor of the state.
And there were numerous stories written about it in the press. 
Well the story about Mena is that Mena is a very small town 
in the middle of the the Washitah (sp) mountains in Southwestern 
Arkansas and not coincidentally it happens to be in Congressman 
John Paul Hammerschmidt's district, the Third Congressional 
district.  John Paul Hammerschmidt just happens to be one 
of George Bush's very closest friend's. He was George Bush's 
Presidential Campaign Manager for Bush's campaign in '76 and 
again in 1980.  The two people are very close. Anyway Mena 
has an airport and it looks from the outside like an ordinary, 
normal airport. The thing that separates Mena's airport from 
any other is the fact that there are row upon row of hangars 
--buildings which house aircraft refitting facilities. Now 
aircraft refitting is an industry that is in demand by two 
principal paying customers.  One of them is the CIA, and the 
other one are drug smugglers. And the reason is, is because if 
you're a CIA guy and you're going to do covert actions overseas 
-- they're almost entirely relying on air transport of some kind. 
Particularly if you're going to covertly resupply an army that's 
over a thousand miles away.

PAUL DeRIENZO:

Hassenfusse's plane was based there.  

MARK SWANEY: </p>

<p>Pardon me.

PAUL DeRIENZO:

Hassenfusse's plane, the plane that was shot down, was based 
in Mena Arkansas.

MARK SWANEY:</p>

<p>That plane was based there formally before Barry Seal was 
murdered just a few months before it was shot down.  That 
was Barry Seal's own personal airplane.  But anyway what 
you need to do, if you're a CIA or a drug smuggler is you 
need an airplane that can do things that normally airplanes 
of the civilian variety are not allowed to do. Things like
have cargo doors that open to the inside of the airplane so 
that you can make in-flight drops - so that you can drop 
things out of the airplane while it's flying -- which is 
illegal on a commercial or civilian type of aircraft. You 
need to do things like install advanced navigational equipment 
sometimes even ??? You need things like roller matts to put 
down on the floor so that you can roll the crates forward
in the fuselage of the airplane to kick them out.  You need 
to be able to modify a civilian aircraft that is not legally 
allowed to have such capability so that it does have those 
capabilities.

PAUL DeRIENZO:

And this was done in Mena -- a smalltown airport.

MARK SWANEY:

Right. Now Mena has the second or third largest --I don't 
know which, but one of the largest aircraft refitting 
facilities in the United States.  And as such it was --long 
before the Nicaruguan episode happened, it was a base of CIA 
covert operation and remains to this very minute a base of 
CIA covert operation.

PAUL DeRIENZO:

Let's jump to another name that comes up in this -- a fella 
by the name of Larry Nichols, former employee of the state 
of Arkansas. He was a employee of the Arkansas Development 
and Finance Authority now I have an Associated Press article 
that came out just a couple of days ago that Larry Nichols 
has dropped a lawsuit that he had instituted in 1990 against 
Governor Clinton that came after his 1988 dismissal from that 
state job for miss-use of agency telephones.</p>

<p>Can you tell us who Larry Nichols was.

MARK SWANEY:

Yeah this is probably the most interesting part of the story 
-- you see Larry Nichols is the source of all these rumors 
and the Jennifer Flowers thing and the Governor's sex life.
The story that the press has yet not picked up on is the 
fact that Larry Nichols was a big time Contra supporter. 
He has close connections to Mario Collero, Adolpho Collero 
and Jack Singlove. In fact he served with General Singlove 
in Vietnam. He spent the first half of the decade working 
for the Contras in a connection with an organization that 
General Singlove had. He spent time with the Contra's on the 
ground in Honduras. His job was to collect military information.
Now I've met with Larry Nichols -- this information that I'm 
about to give you he has told me directly. And we have checked 
out a great deal of what he's told us and everything that he 
has told us has checked out totally accurate.

PAUL DeRIENZO:

So what we're seeing here is a connection between the mistress 
sex scandal and the Iran-Contra and the Governor of Arkansas. 
There's a connection.

MARK SWANEY:

Well what you find out here in a minute is that the sex 
scandals really have nothing to do with it. I saw his lawsuit 
several months ago when I was in Little Rock and it was of 
no interest to me I didn't even bother to make a copy of it. 
But Larry Nichols, the man, and his relationship to the 
Governor is extremely interesting. You see what it is --is 
that his job was to make military analysis of the situation
in Honduras with the Contras. And to take that information 
back to the United States and package it and present it to 
Congressmen who are in favor of Contra Aid with a view toward 
convincing them that the Contra's were an effective military 
fighting force --that they could win militarily against the 
Sandanistas. At some point around '85 I believe this job for 
Larry ran out, and he didn't have any money and he approached 
Governor Clinton. Now according to Larry, he and Governor Clinton
are close friends, have known each other for a long time. In 
fact before the Governor was the Governor.  He asked Governor 
Clinton --hey I'm broke I need a job.  Well it's not too usual 
that somebody could just call up the Governor and say I want 
a job and the Governor says sure we'll make you Marketing 
Director for ADFA. That's the Arkansas Development Finance 
Authority --which figures centrally in Bill Clinton's 
relationship to the Contra Resupply network that the state 
of Arkansas was so heavily involved in.  In any case he was 
there working at ADFA and someone at ADFA a fellow employee 
had found out about this guy that was working with them who 
was this romantic jungle fighter type of character. And 
eventually she began to talk to some friends about it and 
word reached the ears of a reporter and a reporter began 
to investigate Larry Nichols --wondering what this big Contra 
supporter was doing working for ADFA.  Everyone who holds a 
top position at ADFA is directly appointed by Bill Clinton --in
fact ADFA is a total invention of Bill Clinton's --he created 
the agency out of thin air and appoints all of the top 
directors.  In any case a reporter approached Bill Clinton 
in Japan and started to question him about Larry Nichols 
--wanted to know what this guy was doing on state payroll 
--if he was lobbying for the Contra's or just what the story 
was. Mr. Clinton, rather precipitously fired Larry Nichols 
directly after that. And the story that was put out was that
he was fired for misusing state telephones that he'd supposedly 
made hundreds of calls to the Contras and ran up thousands of 
dollars worth of bills to the Contras -- uhmm that is an 
unsubstantiated allegation --in fact on Larry Nichols suggestion 
the organization I work with received his entire phone records 
from ADFA through freedom of information act and went over 
those phone records with him call by call and we did not find 
any records of calls by him outside the United States on 
those phone records so it was a phony charge and Larry Nichols 
was in fact wrongfully fired and they made up this story that 
he was calling the Contras in order to get rid of him.

PAUL DeRIENZO: 

Why do you think that was?

MARK SWANEY:

Well I don't know the exact reason but I can tell you this 
that Larry Nichols and Buddy Young the man I mentioned earlier, 
are very close friends.

PAUL DeRIENZO: 

Well that's a point that you just mentioned that Buddy Young was
the State Security man who discovered the airplane -- the allegedly
stolen airplane belonging to Terry Reid was in fact in a certain 
airport hangar. 


MARK SWANEY: 

Everything to do with that in fact the federal judge is on record 
for calling Buddy Young a liar in Terry Reid's trial. But see Larry
Nichols and Buddy Young knew each other and are close friends 
according to the newspaper accounts that were in the newspaper 
down here in Arkansas yesterday -- they're old buddies.

PAUL DeRIENZO:

Yes, well that's what the Associated Press report that I'm looking 
at right now says that Nichols dropped his lawsuit after consulting
with Buddy Young.

MARK SWANEY:

Yes, Now I'm going to say something right now which is rather 
shocking -- this is the first time this has been made public 
to my knowledge.  A member of my organization who is going to 
be at a press conference that we're having tomorrow --spoke 
with Larry Nichols --we've been in contact with him for several 
months off and on on the telephone, and he's had a conversation 
with him sometime around the first week of January -- during 
which Larry Nichols tolde this member of my organization -- that 
Buddy Young had called him and told him that he in fact was a 
dead man -- that was under threat of death.

PAUL DeRIENZO:

Buddy Young was?

MARK SWANEY:

No. Larry Nichols. And at that time Buddy Young was frightened 
-- he was not threatening Larry Nichols personally he was saying 
that we're all in trouble with this because there's a move in 
the Governor's office to get rid of me.  So Buddy Young was 
afraid that Governor Clinton was about to axe him in the same 
way that he axed Larry Nichols.  And so serious did he take 
this possibility that he informed Larry Nichols directly that 
he was a dead man.

PAUL DeRIENZO:

So Larry Nichols is now saying that Buddy Young the Chief of 
Governor Clinton's gubernatorial campaign has told him that 
he's a dead man.

MARK SWANEY:

Yes, that is the information that Larry Nichols gave to us 
-- now as I say that has not been reported anywhere else and 
I would not bet a lot right now on Mr. Nichols backing that 
statement up, but I back it up.

PAUL DeRIENZO:
 
And this is prior to him dropping this lawsuit against Governor 
Clinton.

MARK SWANEY:

Yes, the timing of his dropping the lawsuit is interesting to 
us too, because we just recently were in contact with the Nation 
Magazine, and it was approximately two days after the Nation 
Magazine actually decided to take the information that we had 
collected on this case very seriously and in fact are now 
pursuing their own investigative journalism on this, it was 
about two days after that that Larry Nichols declared that he 
was going to drop his lawsuit.  Uh, so there's some very strange 
things that are going on.  There's a great deal of other 
information --uh, connecting Governor Clinton to the operation 
in Mena.  We don't have what you'd call a smoking gun on this 
-- I have in front of me a piece of paper that I've written 
17 questions for the Governor on that the media has totally 
overlooked in their haste to salivate over all these sexual 
stories --they've totally missed what's available.  For example, 
the organization that I work for has been --I don't say I work for, 
nobody pays us we're getting broke doing this, but in any case 
we've collected just about everything that's publicly available 
about Mena and all of its ramifications and its a tremendous 
story, and I'd like to emphasize right now that Governor
Clinton's part in this is very minor -- the real big fish in this
story is George Bush. The damage that could come from this 
information coming out is in fact far more damaging to George 
Bush than anyone else, because he's directly responsible for this 
-- this operation was run out of the then Vice President George 
Bush's office. And I'd also like to add that the Arkansas chapter 
of the Iran-Contra story was the one that was most heavily 
covered up at the time -- it was part of the story they had 
that they took the most care to see to it that nothing ever 
came out about it.  And that was for two reasons:  1) because 
it involves massive cocaine smuggling -- we had one pilot that 
came to the University and spoke directly to us and said 
"I personally flew for the CIA, guns, Panamanian Defense 
forces and approximately one ton of cocaine per flight.
I flew seven of these flights into Mena Arkansas."  So they 
wanted to cover it up because it was the one thing that would 
have exposed the drug connection within the United States 
most heavily. 2) And the other reason that they were very 
anxious to coverup Mena's involvement was because the base 
of operations that the CIA was using was in fact still active 
at the time the hearings were going on. And that base of 
operations supports covert operations all around the world 
not just in Central America.  For example, there's a current 
covert operation that was going on there at least as late as
May of last year that killed a man from Arkansas and Angola --
so the entire time that Barry Seal was operating out of that 
airport the CIA was supporting there covert war with Jonason(sp) 
and Manunita(sp) in Angola.  And we have sources within the 
United States government that there is covert activity going on 
in it this very day.


PAUL DeRIENZO:

Thank you very much Mark Swaney --this is an amazing story and
the amazing thing about it is that this is the *real* story about
Governor Bill Clinton and that what we're getting served to us from 
all the media from start to finish from morning to night headlines
in all the New York papers, is this thing about Governor Clinton 
and this woman Jennifer Flowers and her association with the 
Governor who is married for 14 years, and the real story which 
you get on WBAI underneath it all from our contacts in Arkansas 
is that in fact the Governor of Arkansas is covering up an illegal 
operation that began in the Vice President's office who is now 
President of the United States -- George Bush.  Which makes me 
wonder why should I even bother voting -- who's there to vote for.
I mean both sides the Democrats and the Republicans are involved.

MARK SWANEY: </p>

<p>That's another part of the story --you know the best way to buy 
off an election is to pay off both candidates. There's significant
Republican interest in seeing Bill Clinton get the nomination
from the standpoint that they will be assured then that none
of the issues of the Iran-Contra affair are likely to be talked
about. Certainly Clinton doesn't want to talk about them.</p>

<p>We tried before we knew that Mr. Clinton was involved in this --
we only came across this information 5 or 6 months ago and 
for two years now we've been doing demonstrations, writing 
letters collecting petitions holding informational gatherings 
to try to get this story to the people, and we have on several 
occasions sent Bill Clinton signatures, petitions of Arkansan's 
asking for a state investigation and he refused to do anything 
about them he would do nothing more than have an aide send us a 
two sentence letter saying we have received your petition and
then this last September just one week before he decided to 
run for the Presidency we contacted his office and said listen
we'd be willing to talk to you or any one of your aides so that
we could talk to you about this major crime problem in our state 
that we're concerned about that we'd like to get to the bottom
of -- and he refused that.  During the 4 or 5 years now that
the press has covered this story about Mena and Barry Seal --
you know this is a story about people who have been murdered --
this is a very, very serious affair and during all of this time
talk of massive Cocaine smuggling, corruption of local officials 
corruption of Federal and State judicial system on and on and on
there was total silence from the Governor, not a word. And it
was not until our organization had a large demonstration 
-- it wasn't really a large demonstration but it was very well 
covered in the Arkansas press --that reporters approached 
Mr. Clinton about Mena. He talked about it for the first time 
in 4 or 5 years and what he had to say at that time was that 
he had in fact authorized some money for lonely little Polk County, 
which is a poor county in Southwestern Arkansas to run an 
investigation and so we asked him for back up from the 
Governor's office we said -freedom of information act 
-- we'd like to know if you have any documentation whatsoever 
to back up your statement that you are willing to help the 
Polk County investigators do their own state investigation 
in this affair.  And he could not produce a single thing.</p>

<div>---------------------------</div>

<p>"Why of course the people don't want war... It is the leaders...who
determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the
people along...all you have to do is tell them they are being attacked
and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the
country to danger. It works the same in any country.</p>

<p>Hermann Goering, 1936

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