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60 - PLACES/CITIES/Mena, Arkansas.md

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+---
+category: "Military Installation"
+tags:
+  - Geography
+  - United_States
+  - Arkansas
+  - 1980s
+  - Contra_War
+  - Dark_Alliance_Investigation
+summary: Small Arkansas town where Barry Seal based drug-smuggling and weapons operations at Intermountain Regional Airport during the Contra war.
+---
+Mena, Arkansas is a small town in western Arkansas where [[Barry Seal]] based his drug-smuggling and weapons operation at Intermountain Regional Airport during the early to mid-1980s.[^1] Mena became a hub for CIA-connected covert operations during the Contra war, involving drug trafficking, weapons manufacturing, and pilot training for the [[Contras]].
+
+### Barry Seal's Operations
+
+Seal moved from [[Baton Rouge, Louisiana|Baton Rouge]] to Mena in 1982 and began running drugs and weapons. In the early 1980s, Seal was one of the biggest cocaine and marijuana importers in the southern [[United States]], flying loads in directly for the [[Medellin Cartel|Medellín cartel]] and air-dropping them with pinpoint precision across [[Louisiana]], [[Arkansas]], and other southern states. IRS spokesman Henry Holms said Seal was involved in 50 drug-smuggling trips between 1981 and 1983, and a letter from Louisiana's attorney general to U.S. Attorney General Ed Meese said Seal "smuggled between $3 billion and $5 billion worth of drugs into the U.S."[^1]
+
+Seal's personal records showed him to be a contract [[Central Intelligence Agency]] operative both before and during his years of drug-running at Mena. Historian [[Roger Morris]], a former NSC staffer, wrote that Seal also worked for the [[Defense Intelligence Agency|Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA)]], "where coded records reportedly showed him on the payroll beginning in 1982."[^1]
+
+### Terry Reed and Weapons Manufacturing
+
+Former Air Force intelligence officer [[Terry Reed]] was initially recruited to train would-be Contra pilots at a clandestine airstrip near Nella, Arkansas, not far from Mena. Later, he claimed, he was asked to help the CIA set up secret weapons parts facilities in Arkansas and [[Mexico]]. One company Reed worked with was [[Park On Meter]] Inc. in Russellville, Arkansas, which he claimed was secretly manufacturing parts for M-16 rifles as a subcontractor on a CIA weapons project to supply the Contras. The *Washington Post* confirmed that the parking meter company "did make some gun parts for Iver Johnson," though it disputed the significance.[^1]
+
+### Government Knowledge
+
+Clinton's critics charged that it was impossible for the governor of Arkansas to have been unaware of Seal's activities at Mena. Former Arkansas state trooper Larry Patterson, a member of Governor Clinton's security detail, testified that he and other troopers were aware "that there was large quantities of drugs being flown into the Mena airport, large quantities of money, large quantities of guns, that there was an ongoing operation training foreign people in that area. That it was a CIA operation." Mechanic John Bender swore in a deposition that he saw Clinton at Mena three times in 1985.[^1]
+
+Ex-trooper L. D. Brown said that when he confronted Clinton about the cocaine flights, the governor replied, "That's Lasater's deal," referring to [[Danny Ray Lasater]].[^1]
+
+### Suppression of Investigations
+
+The same Senate subcommittee that looked into the Contras' connections with [[Hondu Carib Cargo]] in 1988 also investigated Mena and concluded that "associates of Seal who operated aircraft service businesses at the Mena, Arkansas, airport were also the targets of grand jury probes into narcotics trafficking. Despite the availability of evidence sufficient for an indictment on money laundering charges, and over the strong protests of State and federal law enforcement officials, the cases were dropped. The apparent reason was that the prosecution might have revealed national security information."[^1]
+
+In sworn testimony, a former staff member of the Arkansas State Police Intelligence Unit described "a shredding party" in which she was ordered to purge the state's Mena files of nearly a thousand documents, including those referring specifically to Iran-Contra conspirator [[Oliver North]] and Seal associate Terry Reed.[^1]
+
+### CIA Acknowledgment
+
+While denying that the CIA was involved in any illegal activities at Mena during the time Seal's drug-smuggling operation was based there, the CIA's Inspector General's Office confirmed in 1996 that the CIA ran a "joint training operation with another federal agency at Mena Intermountain Airport." The IG report, which has never been publicly released, reportedly claims the exercise lasted only two weeks, but conveniently omits the year. The CIA also used the Mena airport for "routine aviation related services" on CIA-owned planes, according to a declassified summary of the report.[^1]
+
+### The Fat Lady
+
+Seal's drug-hauling airplane, a Fairchild C-123K called The Fat Lady, was based at Mena before Seal sold it and it began flying weapons-hauling missions for North and the [[FDN]]. The plane was shot down over [[Nicaragua]] in 1986 by a Sandinista soldier with a SAM-7 missile, breaking open the [[Iran-Contra Affair]].[^1]
+
+### Footnotes
+
+[^1]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 6: "They were doing their patriotic duty"

60 - PLACES/CITIES/South Central Los Angeles.md

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----
-category: "City"
-tags:
-  - Geography
-  - Region
-  - United_States
-  - California
-  - 1980s
-  - Dark_Alliance_Investigation
-summary: Region of Los Angeles that was the epicenter of the crack cocaine explosion in the early 1980s, where Danilo Blandón's Contra-connected cocaine was converted to crack and distributed by Ricky Ross's network.
----
-South Central Los Angeles is a region of [[Los Angeles]] that was the epicenter of the [[Crack Cocaine|crack]] cocaine explosion in the early 1980s.[^1] [[Ricky Ross|"Freeway" Ricky Ross]] built his crack distribution empire in South Central, supplied entirely by [[Danilo Blandon|Danilo Blandón]]'s Contra-connected [[cocaine]] network.[^2]
-
-### Crack Market Origins
-
-Blandón was the first major trafficker to establish a direct connection between South Central L.A. street gangs and the [[Colombia|Colombian]] cocaine cartels. Ross's network spread from South Central through the [[Crips]] and Bloods street gangs, converting Blandón's kilos into crack and distributing it throughout the neighborhood.[^2]
-
-### Distribution Network
-
-Ross used South Central apartments as stash houses, cash-counting operations, and distribution centers. At the peak of operations, Ross used a South Central apartment as a countinghouse where drug money was sorted and wrapped using two or three counting machines running day and night. His operation spread from South Central to every major urban market in the [[United States]].[^3]
-
-### Community Impact
-
-The influx of cheap cocaine from Blandón's Contra-connected network into South Central fueled the rise of both the crack epidemic and gang violence. "The fact that a government-connected drug ring was dumping tons of cocaine into the black neighborhoods in L.A. goes a long way towards explaining why crack developed such deep roots in the black community," [[Gary Webb]] wrote. "It's where the seed was planted."[^4]
-
-### Footnotes
-
-[^1]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Prologue: "It was like they didn't want to know"
-[^2]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 8: "A million hits is not enough"
-[^3]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 10: "Teach a man a craft and he's liable to practice it"
-[^4]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 27: "A very difficult decision"