Pubdate: Fri, 25 May 2001
Source: Arkansas Times (AR)
Copyright: 2001 Arkansas Times Limited Partnership
Contact:  http://www.arktimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/583
Author: Mara Leveritt

ASA AND ME

I've Wondered For Years: What Does Hutchinson Know About Arkansas's Biggest 
Drug Smuggler? And When Did He Know It?

Asa Hutchinson and I share a passion for the subject of drugs. As a 
crusading member of Congress, he talks a lot about them. As a reporter 
focused on crime, my writing centers on them. Hutchinson wants to intensify 
this country's war on drugs. I think three decades of failure have proven 
the war a disaster.

Now President George W. Bush has nominated Hutchinson to head the DEA, the 
biggest drug-fighting squad in the world. But before Hutchinson assumes 
that post, there are some questions about high-level cocaine trafficking in 
Arkansas while he was a U.S. attorney here that he should be required to 
answer. The questions have hung about for years, but so far he has managed 
to dodge them.

They relate to the period from 1982 to 1985, when Hutchinson served as the 
federal prosecuting attorney for western Arkansas. He speaks often of that 
time.

"During the 1980s, our nation declared a war against drugs," he proclaimed 
in a 1997 speech to the House. "I was in that battle as a federal 
prosecutor. It was during that time that our families, our communities, and 
our law-enforcement officials mobilized in a united effort to fight this war."

In another speech he observed, "I have seen the drug war from all sides -- 
as a member of Congress, as a federal prosecutor, and as a parent -- and I 
know the importance of fighting this battle on all fronts."

But some strange things happened in Hutchinson's district while he was 
federal prosecutor that he doesn't mention in his speeches. Specifically, a 
man identified by federal agents as "a documented, major narcotics 
trafficker" was using facilities at an airport in Hutchinson's district for 
"storage, maintenance, and modification" of his drug-running aircraft, 
throughout most of Hutchinson's tenure.

The man was Adler Berriman "Barry" Seal. For the last four years of his 
life - and throughout Hutchinson's term as U.S. attorney - his base of 
operations was Mena, Arkansas.

In 1982, the year that Hutchinson took office as U.S. attorney and Seal 
moved to Mena, federal officials were already aware that he controlled "an 
international smuggling organization" that was "extremely well organized 
and extensive." Agents for the DEA, FBI, U.S. Customs, and IRS were 
watching him. They brought Hutchinson evidence that Seal was "involved in 
narcotics trafficking and the laundering of funds derived from such 
trafficking."

I knew none of this in the early 1980s. At the time, this was highly secret 
information, known only to a handful of state and federal investigators and 
a few politicians, including U.S. Attorney Asa Hutchinson.

My interest in the relationship between Seal and Hutchinson was piqued as I 
became aware of how heavily drug prosecutions fell on street- and mid-level 
dealers, while smugglers like Seal, who imported drugs by the ton, rarely 
ended up in prison. So when rumors surfaced about Seal and his 
organization, and how they had managed for years to avoid prison, even 
though the extent of their activities was well known to drug authorities, I 
wanted to know more.

But getting the story has not been easy. In the early 1990s, I asked 
Hutchinson about Barry Seal and his associates at Mena. Hutchinson provided 
no information, and politely dismissed the complaints that had arisen by 
then about his failure to prosecute Seal. He said he had already resigned 
as U.S. attorney by the time the matter arose.

Even then I knew better than that. Ignoring sidelong glances from some of 
my peers, who already equated drug smuggling at Mena with reports of life 
on Ma rs, I began collecting official accounts of what had happened there. 
My main thrust was an attempt to acquire, through the federal Freedom of 
Information laws, all the documents relating to Seal that were generated by 
the FBI.

I wish now that I had gone after the DEA's records on Seal, but I was 
working in the dark. I knew that the FBI had been involved in Seal's case, 
so I began with what I knew.

The battle to obtain even those documents has now taken longer than the 
length of time that Seal was based at Mena. At first the FBI denied that it 
had any records on Seal. When I produced photocopies of FBI memos relating 
to the Seal investigation, the agency acknowledged that a file existed. 
But, I was told, it probably would take years to review it, and besides, 
thousands of applicants for other files were already ahead of me.

That's when I wrote to two members of Congress, asking for their help. Even 
though Hutchinson is not from my district, I contacted him in hopes that, 
having been close to the events, he would want to help clear the record. 
Again, he responded politely.

He told me that it was always good to hear from me, that he had contacted 
the FBI in my behalf, and that he would be back in touch with me when the 
agency responded. He included a copy of a federal guide to using the 
Freedom of Information and Privacy Act, in the hope that it would help in 
my "research efforts." He thanked me for my patience.

That was the last I heard from Asa Hutchinson until a couple of years 
later, when I mentioned the incident in a column. At that point, an aide to 
Hutchinson hastened to apologize for the lack of followup. But still, there 
was no help on the Mena front coming from the Hutchinson camp.

Fortunately, Rep. Vic Snyder was more responsive. In fact, Snyder and his 
staff made repeated attempts to persuade the FBI to release the records I 
had requested. Finally, after a personal visit from Snyder, the agency 
agreed to start releasing some of its files on Mena. As a result, during 
the past two years, I have received several hundred pages of reports 
relating to Barry Seal. I have posted many of these pages on my website, 
www.maraleveritt.com, and a new batch will be posted soon. The pages 
reflect the intensity of activity surrounding Seal, even if, in true 
wartime fashion, most of the details have been blacked out.

Many of the documents have been so heavily censored that they have been 
rendered worthless. And hundreds more were withheld altogether. Some of the 
redactions were made, according to agency notations, to protect the privacy 
of named individuals. Many others, however, are said to have been made 
under laws to protect "national security."

In an effort that my children predict I'll still be waging from beyond the 
grave, I am appealing the national security exclusions. What, I ask, is the 
connection between Seal and national security?

I have seen the rug of "national security" grow larger by the year, and it 
concerns me that so many aspects of this war on drugs are piously being 
swept under it. Too often "national security" means "don't tell the 
American people."

I believe that if this country is going to fight a long and costly war, the 
war's leaders have an obligation to report faithfully on its battles. The 
incidents that surrounded Seal constituted a major battle. But the faithful 
report has been missing. For more than 15 years, U.S. government officials, 
including Hutchinson, who were close to the events have maintained a stony 
silence.

Yet, despite the former prosecutor's unhelpfulness, chunks of the story 
have emerged. And scoffs about Mena aside, it is a remarkable one. The 
stakes with Seal were about as high as they can get in a war. The story is 
replete with intrigue and layers of betrayal. The losses it reflects were 
enormous.

Here's a gram of what happened:

Early in 1984, after years of painstaking investigation, law enforcement 
agencies, including the DEA, were ready to prosecute Seal. But Seal called 
upon political connections, and they let him become an informant rather 
than go to prison. The price of Seal's last-minute deal with the U.S. 
government was that he was to betray his Colombian allies, toppling the 
leadership of the Medellin cartel.

But the government lost on the deal. The plan to use Seal to rout the 
cartel ended in murder and failure. Not only was Seal exposed, and then 
assassinated, but members of his "extensive" organized crime operation 
evaded prosecution.

The fiasco left many law enforcement officers who'd worked on the Seal case 
feeling that they'd been betrayed. I've interviewed some of them, and their 
disillusionment is heartbreaking.

In 1992, I spoke with Jack Crittendon, a sergeant with the Louisiana State 
Police. He told me that 10 years earlier, in early 1982, he and his partner 
were building a case against Seal when they were notified that DEA 
officials in Miami were on the verge of indicting Seal. Armed with that 
information, Crittendon and his partner confronted Seal at a steak house in 
Baton Rouge.

"We told him we'd like for him to turn around and cooperate with us and 
with the DEA and with the U.S. attorney in Baton Rouge," Crittendon 
recalled. "We were looking across the table at him. Now, the man had a mind 
for business. With his mind, he could have been the head of a Fortune 500 
company. It just so happened that his business was smuggling. We told him 
we wanted the cartel. He said he'd have to give it some thought."

Ultimately, Seal rejected the Louisiana proposal. Crittendon recalled, "We 
said, 'That's fine with us, but wherever you go, they're going to be after 
you.' And, in fact, it was shortly after that, he turned up in Mena, Arkansas."

Seal was being watched so closely that state and federal officials in 
Arkansas, including Asa Hutchinson, knew of his move to Arkansas, almost 
from the moment his first aircraft arrived. They also knew that Seal had 
formed a business relationship with Rich Mountain Aviation, an aircraft 
modification company headquartered at the Mena airport.

Soon after Seal's move to Mena, U.S. Attorney Hutchinson called a meeting 
at his Fort Smith office to coordinate local surveillance. Among those 
attending were an Arkansas DEA agent, a U.S. Customs official, and U.S. 
Treasury agent William C. Duncan.

Duncan's job was to investigate money laundering by the Seal organization. 
By the end of 1982, he had gathered what he believed to be substantial 
evidence of the crime.

Duncan and an Arkansas State Police investigator, who was also monitoring 
Seal's enterprise, took their evidence to Hutchinson. They asked that the 
U.S. attorney subpoena 20 witnesses they'd identified to testify before a 
federal grand jury. To Duncan's surprise, however, Hutchinson seemed 
reluctant. Ultimately, Hutchinson called only three of the 20 witnesses the 
investigators had requested.

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."

Hutchinson left the U.S. attorney's office in October 1985, to make what 
turned out to be an unsuccessful bid for the U.S. Senate. His successor, J. 
Michael Fitzhugh, appeared no more zealous than Hutchinson to pursue 
information regarding Seal. As a result, neither Seal nor his associates in 
Arkansas were indicted.

(As late as 1989, according to records I've received, FBI agents in Little 
Rock were still expecting that some of Seal's associates would be indicted. 
Only after Sen. Dale Bumpers inquired into the status of the case, and 
calls were made to Fitzhugh's office, did the agents learn that the grand 
jury had disbanded the previous summer without issuing the expected 
indictments.)

In 1991, Treasury agent Duncan was questioned under oath about the Seal 
investigation. Asked what conclusions he and his superiors at the IRS had 
drawn, Duncan answered matter-of-factly, "There was a cover-up."

"I had found Asa Hutchinson to be a very aggressive U.S. attorney in 
connection with my cases," Duncan said. "Then, all of a sudden, with 
respect to Mena, it was just like the information was going in, but nothing 
was happening, over a long period of time. But, just like with the 20 
witnesses and the complaints, I didn't know what to make of that. Alarms 
were going off...

"We were astonished that we couldn't get subpoenas. We were astonished that 
Barry Seal was never brought to the grand jury, because he was on the 
subpoena list for a long time. And there were just a lot of investigative 
developments that made no sense to us."

Asked to elaborate, Duncan explained, "One of the most revealing things was 
that we had discussed specifically with Asa Hutchinson the rumors about 
National Security [Administration] involvement in the Mena operation. And 
Mr. Hutchinson told me personally that he had checked with a variety of law 
enforcement agencies and people in Miami, and that Barry Seal would be 
prosecuted for any crimes in Arkansas. So we were comfortable that there 
was not going to be National Security interference."

Duncan also said he found it "very strange" that he saw so few signs of the 
DEA at Mena while Seal was headquartered there. "We were dealing with 
allegations of narcotics smuggling [and] massive amounts of money 
laundering," Duncan said in his deposition. "And it was my perception that 
the Drug Enforcement Administration would have been very actively involved 
at that stage, along with the Arkansas State Police. But DEA was 
conspicuously absent during most of that time."

Duncan did not know while he was investigating Seal that, about a year and 
a half after Seal's move to Arkansas -- and about midway through 
Hutchinson's term as U.S. attorney -- the smuggler had changed his mind 
about becoming a federal informant. In March 1984, with charges filed 
against him in Florida and others pending in Louisiana, Seal was desperate 
to make a deal. But the U.S. attorney in Fort Lauderdale was more inclined 
to prosecute than to let Seal roll and become an informant. The talks had 
reached an impasse.

Not everyone charged with drug crimes can bargain effectively with the U.S. 
government. But Seal had some advantages. For one, he had financial 
resources. According to his own account, by 1984 he had already earned 
between $60 and $100 million smuggling cocaine into the U.S. He could hire 
his own lawyers.

Perhaps more important, it appears, he had cultivated some important 
connections. Stymied in his negotiations in Florida, Seal flew his personal 
Lear jet to Washington, D.C., where he met with members of a White House 
task force on crime headed by the elder George Bush. At the time, the 
current president's father was vice president under President Ronald Reagan.

There is no indication that then Vice President George Bush was present at 
the meeting with Seal. But the meeting was important, nonetheless. Where 
Seal had failed in Florida, he now succeeded in Washington, as members of 
the task force backed his offer to become a federal informant.

Days later, in the presence of Justice Department officials, Seal signed an 
agreement to cooperate with the DEA. The problem for Duncan and other 
investigators working in Louisiana and Arkansas was that the deal was kept 
a secret. Contrary to law enforcement protocols, they were not informed of 
the change in Seal's status.

Seal lived for 23 months after he cut that deal. They are months shrouded 
in mystery. Questions that have festered for years remain to this day 
unanswered.

Why were Duncan and other investigators assigned to follow Seal not 
notified that he was now a confidential government informant? And what was 
the DEA's role with regard to Seal? How close was the supervision of this 
high-level criminal turned critically-important informant? After Seal 
became an informant, did he continue to smuggle drugs -- and keep the money 
he made from them -- as he later testified in court that he did?

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.

Of course, Duncan and other investigators knew nothing of all this. They 
had no idea in 1984, as they monitored Seal's occasional appearances at 
Mena, that the smuggler was also flying between meetings with high-level 
U.S. officials and the cocaine lords of Central America. Between March 1984 
and February 1986, records indicate that Seal flew repeatedly to Colombia, 
Guatemala, and Panama, where he met 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.

Compounding the mystery around Seal are questions that arose during this 
period about his relationship with the CIA. Were the connections extensive, 
permeating his career? Or were they limited to one event, as the CIA 
maintains? I know that some of the records in Seal's FBI file -- ones I've 
been denied on grounds of national security -- originated with the CIA. So 
the questions remain.

What we do know is that, in June 1984, CIA technicians installed hidden 
cameras in Seal's C-123K at Florida's Homestead Air Force Base. The next 
day, Seal flew to Nicaragua, where the CIA-installed cameras captured 
images of cocaine being loaded onboard the plane. Two months later, at the 
height of the Reagan administration's effort to get congressional funding 
for the Nicaraguan Contras, those photos were leaked to the media. 
Administration sources identified the blurry figures as leaders of the 
Sandinista government, who were opposed by the Contra rebels.

The leak exploded Seal's cover, revealing to his associates in the Medellin 
cartel that he was now cooperating with the U.S. government. It ruined Seal 
as an informant just three months after he'd made the deal. And it set him 
up for retaliation.

How much of this Hutchinson knew at the time, he has never said. What is 
known is that at the end of 1984, Seal was indicted in Louisiana, and in 
January 1985, he pled guilty to drug charges there. His usefulness now 
limited to courtrooms, for most of 1985, Seal made appearances at federal 
drug trials, where he testified as a government witness against others in 
his trade. He helped in several prosecutions, though none in Arkansas.

Seal's most important court appearance was to come in 1986, when he was 
scheduled to testify at the trial of Jorge Ochoa Vasques. But in February 
of that year, shortly before the trial was to begin, Seal was ambushed in 
Baton Rouge and killed in a hail of bullets. Upon hearing of Seal's murder, 
one stunned DEA agent lamented, "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."

Why was Seal not protected? There are no good explanations. Seal's status 
as an informant was destroyed by the decision to leak his photos. And he 
was gunned down, ending his ability to testify, when he showed up for an 
appointment that a federal judge had ordered him to keep.

After Seal's murder, the attorney general of Louisiana wrote to U.S. 
Attorney Edwin Meese, requesting answers to some of the bigger questions 
about the government's relationship with Barry Seal. William J. Guste Jr. 
asked Meese why "such an important witness" had not been given protection. 
Guste also wanted to know how Seal had been "supervised, regulated and 
controlled" after agreeing to work with the DEA.

The Louisiana attorney general asked, "Was Seal allowed to work in an 
undercover capacity in Arkansas and Louisiana without notification to 
Louisiana and Arkansas officials?" And, "How were the contraband drugs he 
brought into the United States while cooperating with the DEA regulated and 
controlled?

"Was Seal's drug smuggling organization allowed to remain intact during and 
after the time of his cooperation with the government? If so, why?

"Was he permitted to keep hundreds of thousands of dollars which he made 
while working for the DEA by actually smuggling drugs into he United 
States? How was such money accounted for?"

Guste wrote, "All of these questions and others that will undoubtedly 
develop cry for investigation. And law enforcement agencies and the public 
have a right to know the answers." In 1994, Guste told me that Meese never 
responded to the letter. If Asa Hutchinson, who worked under Meese, made 
any similar inquiries, they have never come to light.

Fifteen years have now passed since Barry Seal's murder, and the still 
unanswered questions remain as haunting as ever. Bill Clinton, who was 
governor of Arkansas during Seal's tenure here, dismissed the questions 
during his campaign for the presidency as entirely a federal matter. Once 
he gained the White House, a spokesman ridiculed questions about Seal and 
Mena, calling them "the darkest backwater of conspiracy theories."

But these questions do not deserve such a brush-off. They deserve answers. 
Yet, even at this late date, instead of providing them, President Bush 
plans to install Hutchinson, the tight-lipped and loyal drug warrior, as 
head of the DEA.

While Hutchinson (and others) have remained mum about the deals and 
questions, politics and bungles that surrounded Barry Seal, the 
peculiarities that marked Seal's case have not escaped mention entirely. In 
1988, the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations issued a report prepared by 
its Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations that 
exposed the seriousness of the Seal disaster. That report read in part: 
"Law enforcement officials were furious that their undercover operation was 
revealed and agents' lives jeopardized because one individual in the U.S. 
government -- Lt. Col. Oliver North -- decided to play politics with the 
issue."

The report continued: "Associates of Seal, who operated aircraft service 
businesses at the Mena, Arkansas airport, were also 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, even though all of the crimes which 
were the focus of the investigation occurred before Seal became a federal 
informant."

When I wrote to Hutchinson in 1995, he might have referred me to that 
report. But he didn't. Now that Hutchinson is in line to head the DEA, I 
think he should be required to address the long waiting questions about 
Seal. And a few more questions to boot. Among them:

What are the limits on secrecy when it comes to fighting this war?

What should be the DEA's relationship with the CIA?

How heavily should narcotics investigators be allowed to rely on 
drug-criminals-turned-snitches -- people like Barry Seal -- for activities 
that are kept from public review and for testimony resulting from deals?

What explanation is owed to law enforcement officers, many of whom risk 
their lives, only to see their efforts wasted -- if not purposefully 
undermined -- as they were in the case of Seal?

What about all the inmates who are serving time in prisons for drug law 
violations that were insignificant compared to Seal's? What does Hutchinson 
say to them? And to the American people?

Like most drug warriors, Hutchinson speaks often about "messages." He 
resists changing even marijuana laws, saying that to do so would send the 
"wrong message." He opposes calling the war on drugs anything but a war, 
arguing that to change the terminology sends "the wrong message."

I share his respect for messages. So I'd like to hear how he interprets 
this one:

In 1994, when I asked the head of the DEA's office in Little Rock what had 
actually transpired with Seal, the agent answered obliquely that "no 
conclusion was determined." When I asked what in the world that meant, he 
explained, "Sometimes that is the conclusion: that there can be no conclusion."

I'd like to know: Would that answer satisfy Hutchinson? It does not satisfy me.
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