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.