Sarah McClendon and Mena

A little known fact is the only person to ever ask Clinton a public question about the events in Mena Arkansas, while he was President, was Sarah McClendon in 1994.

She also drilled Mike McCurry over the issue in September of 1996, an interesting exchange, in which a person named Helen (my guess is Helen Thomas) told McClendon to "put a sock in it" so she could get her question in. [both transcripts are bellow]

SARAH McCLENDON, McClendon News: Sir, the Republicans are trying to blame you for the existence of a small airbase at Mena, Ark. This base was set up by George Bush and Oliver North and the CIA to help the Iran-Contras, and they brought in planeload after planeload of cocaine there for sale in the United States, and then they took the money and bought weapons and took them back to the Contras, all of which was illegal, as you know, under the Boland Act. But tell me, did they tell you that this had to be in existence because of national security?

Pres. CLINTON: Well, let me answer the question. No, they didn't tell me anything about it. They didn't say anything to me about it. The airport in question, and all the events in question, were the subject of state and federal inquiries. It was primarily a matter for federal jurisdiction. The state really had next to nothing to do with it.

The local prosecutor did conduct an investigation based on what was within the jurisdiction of state law. The rest of it was under the jurisdiction of the United States attorneys who were appointed successively by previous administrations. We had nothing - zero - to do with it, and everybody who's ever looked into it knows that.

HEADLINE: THE WHITE HOUSE WASHINGTON, DC REGULAR BRIEFING September 23, 1996, Monday

Q You know, all this talk that we're getting every five minutes about the Republicans saying that Clinton hasn't done enough against -- to curb narcotics, why doesn't he answer that? Why doesn't he come out and say: The last two or three days around here there's been documented evidence that it was George Bush and Oliver North and the CIA that was bringing in the narcotics, and they're still doing it. The CIA is still bringing in the narcotics through Mena, Arkansas. Now why the devil doesn't -- excuse me for saying that -- but why in the world doesn't Clinton come out and say the Republicans are the ones who have bringing in narcotics?

MR. MCCURRY: The first part of that question, the president is satisfied, as Director Deutch has indicated, that they are conducting an independent review of those allegations at the CIA and that is underway, as has been announced. Secondly, the president is --

MR. MCCURRY: What I just said just then is, as Director of Central Intelligence, John Deutch has said, and assured members of Congress, an independent inspector general at the CIA is looking into some of the allegations that you just referenced. On the first --

MR. MCCURRY: They're conducting an independent inspector general's review of the matter. On the first part of the question, the president is happy to talk about his record during the time he has been president and, frankly, his commitment going back all the years he's been in public service to combat drug trafficking and drug use.

MR. MCCURRY: This president has requested more funding from the Congress for anti-drug efforts than his predecessors did. He has put together a drug strategy now with the leadership of a four-star general. He supported the death penalty for drug kingpins, and he's worked vigorously to combat drug use and spoken to the issue publicly.

Q -- and tell the Republicans: After all, you have been bringing them in for years.

MR. MCCURRY: Well, I believe that's what we are in the process of doing. I think we are attempting, as effectively as you can during a political season in which many misbegotten charges get made, to rebut some of that information. Helen?

Q -- and his inspector general to find out something. (Laughter.) And all he has to do it turn around in his office and find it.

that corresponds to a lot of what I read also. Except that I'm not a liberal, I'm a right-winger and very non-republican.

The story I believe is that Reagan told his people to fund the contras after congress had specifically shut down funding for the contras. I remember those days, there was a big effort in conservative press to support contras, I wanted to send them money. Reagan was kept in the dark as to how the money was raised. But the cocaine smuggling was what paid for the guns for the contras. The effort was successful. The communists were shut down in central america.

Another thing the CIA did to fund the contras was they brought about 10% of El Salvadoran population to California as illegal aliens and created some big businesses that employed these people all so that these El Salvadorans would send money to contras in appreciation.

There are legitimate reasons for the CIA to want to penetrate and even to control or set up a drug smuggling operation. But I think that the people who rule our country and use this CIA for dark purposes have gone way too far. They are short-circuiting and bypassing the democracy completely and in an illegitimate manner. Problem is that they control the media, and any politician who stands up to them will either be discredited or killed through covert activities.

What happened at Waco? That was CIA murdering 90 americans. Things have gotten out of hand, but we as free citizens are finding it impossible to get the CIA under control.

I found the transcript of the press conference where McClendon asked Clinton giving the country to the UN. It can be found at: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/white_house/march97/press_3-7.html

Let's take one from Sarah. And then I've got to take one from Jill Dougherty because she's about to go to Moscow and she needs to have her parting shot. Go ahead.

Q Sir, this is on another subject. We have a very great problem in this country today, and I wonder if you would use your leadership to counteract the rumor-mongers that are abroad in the land who are spreading all these rumors that are scaring people to death -- large segments of our citizens believe that the United Nations is taking over whole blocks of counties in Kentucky and Tennessee.

THE PRESIDENT: Yes.

Q And some of them, they believe that --

THE PRESIDENT: Now, you all are laughing, but --

Q -- you're going to put us in a concentration camp and you're going to give our army to Russia and all that baloney. Could you do something about this? Because it's hurting the unity of the United States.

THE PRESIDENT: I don't know, because the people who believe that think I'm the problem. (Laughter.) We're all laughing about it, but there is a not insubstantial number of people who believe that there is a plan out there for world domination and I'm trying to give American sovereignty over to the U.N. There was a --I read in our local Arkansas newspaper, one of them the other day had a letter to the editor saying that, there I go again, there's Clinton out there trying to give American sovereignty over to the United Nations.

Let me just say this: For people that are worried about it, I would say, there is a serious issue here that every American has to come to grips with, including Americans that don't much think about foreign policy until some great problem occurs, and that is, how can we be an independent, sovereign nation leading the world in a world that is increasingly interdependent, that requires us to cooperate with other people and then to deal with very difficult circumstances in trying to determine how best to cooperate.

That's the issue that you will all be reporting on for the next week in the Mexico certification issue. Did I do the right thing to certify Mexico? Are the members of Congress who disagree with me right when they say we should have decertified Mexico and then give it a national interest waiver so we could continue to cooperate economically and in others ways?

I strongly believe I was right. But we don't -- if you want to go into that, we can later, but the issue is, we live in an interdependent world. We have to cooperate with people. We're better off when we do. We're better off with NATO. We're better off with the United Nations. We're better off when these countries can work together. So I just think for folks that are worried about this out in the country, they need to be thinking about how -- we're not going to give up our freedom, our independence, but we're not going to go it alone into the 21st century either. We're going to work together and we have to.

your recollections are 100% correct; and your gullability is very impressive also.

Of course it's true that the two CIA statements from late 98 and early 99 didn't have anything in them about Mena, no specifics. They were very short statements. The 1'st one said they'd beeninvolved in drug smuggling into the US. The second one said they'd been involved in this for 20 years. Also, in 1983 Attorney General William F Smith signed a letter that has been made public and I've seen here on FR that told the various 92 US Attorneys that there were cases where the CIA did not want them to prosecute drug cases and that the various 92 US Attorneys were to cooperate with the CIA. So, the only kind of person who denies that the CIA has been involved in drug smuggling are stupid idiots who don't give a damn about the truth.

But we must consider the context of the statements. There were many ex-CIA people and associates who were telling the press fantastic stories about drug smuggling. This included the fantastic Mena stories and other stories. In my opinion the purpose of the two statements was to tell the agents who were talking to the press to shut up. The CIA was confirming that they knew all about it and just didn't want to talk about it and didn't want anyone else to talk about it. Some CIA agents apparently didn't understand that top management was behind the drug smuggling and they had to be publicly told to get them to shut up.

Obviously the purpose of the press releases was not to inform the american public. The 2'nd press release was made on the saturday morning that Clinton was impeached, just a half hour after the vote. Obviously, they wanted to make the press release, but they didn't want the americans to know. They wanted their own CIA people to know that top management wanted them to shut up, that it was OK what happened and that if they continued, then they'll be killed. That, IMHO, was the purpose of the press releases.

To me it verifies that the fantastic stories are more true than false. But you are right in that the press releases did not actually confirm the wild fantastic stories.

1 more thing about the CIA for those who are interested:

Did you see how they killed William Kolbe? I'm not sure I have the name or spelling exactly correct. But there was a man who was named William Colbe. But let me tell you a story about William colby so that you all can ask yourselves if it is good for our nation to be ruled by a monster that uses the CIA as it's enforcer.

As a young man they dropped Colby behind enemy lines in Germany. He worked as a spy. He survived. Then he became a part of the CIA, he worked as an agent undercover in many venues. He became eventually director of the CIA in mid 1980's?. Then he retired. But he stayed active. He had an association with Investor's Business Daily I think. He had a consulting firm.

Like all americans he knew those people at Waco were going to be murdered in the end. He got friends of his at the Alabama Air Guard to fly a plane from Alabama all the way to Texas to take a video of the terrible Waco events on April 19, 1993. This air crew flew without their commander's OK to Texas with an Alabama national guard plane. It was against Texas law, it was against all procedure. They did it because Bill Colby asked them to do it.

On that day they flew 5 miles away from the terrible spot where the Branch Davidians were. To fly closer would cause the federal monster's people to force you out of the sky. They filmed the terrible events with the special infra-red camera that would work from 5 miles away. That tape was funneled to William Colby after they made it. Then Colby circulated it to others. Because of this the Americans were able to see the video that shows American soldiers shooting guns at American civilians at waco Texas on that terrible day.

But of course you know the story. The americans are very gullible, whatever their tv masters tell them they believe. The tv masters refused to acknowledge the terrible evidence on waco, just as they refuse to acknowledge so much else. The CIA official who testified in the mid-1970's that they had 450 'assets' among the mainstream media knew what he was talking about. When the president said that the evil face on the smoke cloud that came out of the first building hit on 911 was quickly scrubbed by the US government's censors in the networks' own offices on that day was speaking the truth. They can kill stories at will.

But nevertheless, William Colby had done something bad. The media censors were able to control the damage, but the CIA was unhappy with its' former director, Bill Colby. So in the spring of 96 they had the Associated Press release a press statement. The press statement said that William Colby had drowned in a boating accident. People called William Colby's house to give condolences to his wife. At that time William Colby found out about the fake press release which reported his own death.

But the press release was just a warning, or a demonstration of their power. Maybe Colby didn't swear an oath of fealty, maybe they had always planned to kill him anyway. Either way, just one month after the fake press release William Colby did drown (spring of 96) in a boating accident just as the press release from a month earlier had said. Colby was found barefoot. The door to his house was open, his computer was on, logged onto the net, his food was at the table, not eaten. His wife said it was very uncharacteristic of him to leave his computer on like that and that it had never happened that he left his food partially eaten like that and left. So, they came to his house in the woods and forced him to the little river nearby where he normally rode his canoe and killed him there. He went out like a man, in his mid-70's the government assasins couldn't get him to put his shoes on.

He was director of the CIA, he was a war hero, he was a loyal american and they killed him over a policy dispute. Because Colby thought traditional American rule of law was important and the others didn't. Colby thought the waco killings were wrong.

Then we should consider Mr. Wilcher. Mr. Wilcher of the CIA defected and told some journalists about the real reasons for the Waco murders. Wilcher said it was to protect a CIA mind-control program located according to Wilcher very near Waco. What a coincidence, George Bush's ranch is very near Waco. Perhaps he is a subject of the program. According to Wilcher David Koresh and others were involuntarilly pressed into this program as teenagers. Koresh of course started out as the janitor at the branch davidians and became their leader. Wilcher says he was programmed to do it so the CIA could keep an eye on this group. But then Koresh and others allegedly 'woke up' and realized aspects of the mind control program. According to Wilcher the Branch Davidians had some chemical weapons and were going to use them. So, the CIA responded to this by dictating that all Branch Davidians should die in order to protect the public from having any knowledge of the mind control program. Colby disagreed with this out-of-control mentality and the murders. So, Colby eventually was murdered over it. Wilcher was murdered of course too, just 6 weeks after he defected. Wilcher died of a very rare disease in his home. Carlos Gugliatti(spelling incorrect) died of the same rare disease just a few days before he was scheduled to testify in the Waco case in federal court. Gughliatti was the expert who could interpret the funny infra-red video images. He was telling people horrible stories about how it was on video that they murdered those people at Waco. I remember reading here on FR posts from Gughliatti's lawyer just days before he was killed saying that he hopes Carlos is OK and then the same guy posted the news about Carlos being dead. Then the news media had the story about Carlos being killed.

These are the people we're dealing with, these are the people who rule us. The same people who killed John Kennedy are still in charge. Reagan didn't work for them, probably Carter didn't work for them, but the other presidents have ever since 1963.

They think they know what is best for the whole world. They bypass our democratic process and ignore our laws. They short-circuit and rig our elections. They discredit or even kill politicians they don't like. But they're bi-partisan, they work with both parties.

well, Hal9000, I haven't personally investigated any scandals. I'm just an armchair general whose read a bit. Including Ambrose Evans Pritchard's book, a lot of Chris Ruddy, many articles on the net and in magazines, maybe more I can't remember. My hat is off to those who really have investigated.

I only called you gullable because you don't believe that CIA actually was involved in large-scale coke importation. Based on info that I've read it seems they have, but of course, that information I read could be not 100% accurate.

Maybe I should tone down my sometimes obnoxious rhetoric, but I have such fun doing it!! In the future I'll remember not to be obnoxious to you specifically. But with others I just can't resist.

I don't think for a second that GW Bush wants cocaine and other illegal drugs inside the US. Clinton was a slimeball who really did want this. I believe that GHW Bush and others at CIA in the 80's organized efforts that included the large-scale importation of cocaine into Mena. They knew it was happening. They pumped up the market for it by showing gangs in LA how to make crack. They knew the Mena operation was doing this for years. They tolerated it. And in my opinion they tolerated it for what they believed was very legitimate reasons rather than corruption. There may be very good arguments to support those legitimate reasons. I could make those arguments, but I won't bore you.

So, I just think the CIA has gone way too far. It isn't just the Mena cocaine stuff. It's a lot of things. So I rail against them always.

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