I need a refresher on Mena, so I will watch linked videos. Do you believe Ollie North was involved in drug running through Mena to fund the Contras? What about Bush 41 or CIA?
Terry Reed -— COMPROMISED: CLINTON, BUSH, AND THE CIA
Unfortunately, our government has done some unsavory things with cocaine to beat what they thought was a bigger threat -— communism in our hemisphere. I have met Terry Reed and tend to believe his version of the stories. None of those drugs could have come into Mena without a complicit governor. He shut up because he wanted the presidency. And he benefited from Dan Lasater contributions from cocaine money.
No, but Barry Seal was. Clinton and friends were involved in money laundering on wholesale scale.
At one point I had 4 salesmen in AR that I was responsible for. I have been to Mena many times, we had customers there. I have never been to Bella, where the airport was.
I never believed elder Bush had anything to do with money laundering or drugs. It is probable that CIA operatives like Barry Seal were.
Elder Bush did know Clinton at the time. Clinton was paid by North and CIA.
Hill and Bill could always be bought.
Yes, they are capable of murder.
Error
Bella should have been Bella airport.
And the director is the son of Arthur Liman, the (Democrat) chief counsel for the Senate Iran-Contra hearings, so the filmmakers were definitely out to make the Republicans look bad, even working George W. Bush into the story in a throwaway scene.
That said, their idea was that it was mostly just Barry Seal himself who was dealing the drugs. Clinton might have known, but he wasn't a drug kingpin by any means.
The movie makes it look like Clinton intervened to stop Seal's prosecution because the fed wanted it stopped. That may or may not be true, but it doesn't look like Clinton was running the operation or skimming off the profits.
In the movie, Seal is shipping guns to the Contras for the CIA and running drugs out of Colombia on his own as part of his operation. Most of the guns end up in Colombia, rather than Nicaragua.
After Barry gets busted the CIA gets the charges against him dropped. In exchange Seal has to do a drug deal with the Nicaraguan government that will be photographed and used as evidence against the Sandinistas. In the film, it looks like the Colombians had Seal killed.
This isn't history; it's Hollywood, but it's a plausible story. It's possible that some of the wilder charges that have been made elsewhere -- Clintons as drug kingpins, the Bushes as drug kingpins, the Contras running drugs, the CIA killing Seal -- are exaggerated.
There's no reason why the movie should be believed as the truth, but it is less feverish than much of what you can find online.