IRAN-CONTRA CONSPIRACY DOGS PICK FOR DEA

Asa Hutchinson's Arkansas Past

WASHINGTON, D.C., MAY 10 - The news leak here Wednesday that
President Bush will soon name Asa Hutchinson, a conservative Arkansas
Republican, as head of the Drug Enforcement Agency has cranked up the
Clinton conspiracy buffs. Hutchinson, of course, is best known as the
clean-cut House prosecutor who helped bring Clinton's impeachment
before the Senate. His appointment will be a victory for the dozens
of House members who hung tough and pushed the hopeless effort to the
very end - at which point they were mocked by Bill Clinton and Al
Gore, who stood on the White House porch celebrating the victory and
laughing at the right-wingers.

But Clinton scandalmongers are into Hutchinson for quite another
reason. They say that while he was U.S. attorney for the western part
of Arkansas in the early 1980s, he looked the other way as a huge
drug ring allegedly operated in the little town of Mena. Hutchinson,
for his part, said he left office before the evidence was
well-established, according to the Arkansas Times.

Conspiracy buffs suspect the ring was part of the Iran-Contra affair.
They think Hutchinson and his successor ignored the drug trafficking
and money laundering to protect the interests of President Reagan and
other GOP bigwigs. The state police and the IRS are said to have
investigated the situation at Mena, but a grand jury investigation
went nowhere. Barry Seal, the famous drug trafficker, was murdered
about a month before he was to appear before the grand jury in
Arkansas.

L.D. Brown, a former member of then governor Clinton's Arkansas
security detail, claimed in a 1995 article in The American Spectator
that he had participated in two secret flights originating from Mena
in 1984 during which M-16 rifles were given to the Nicaraguan contras
in exchange for cocaine. Brown also claimed Clinton himself was
involved. In the mid 1980s, Hutchinson, ensconced as head of the
state Republican Party, asked for a new investigation into drug
trading and other irregularities at Mena.

The charges of money laundering and drug trafficking at Mena have
grown to legendary proportions. They have been stoutly denied, and
proof has always seemed circumstantial at best.