And I'm sure neither Republican nor Democratic higher-ups will be thrilled about any disclosures in a year when an independent candidacy for the presidency appears as a strong possibility. As you've read in this column, Mena seems to have been used by covert agencies in Washington as a place from which to ship guns to Nicaraguan rebels.
Cocaine seems to have been smuggled into the United States on return flights.
Those drug shipments left Arkansas awash with illegal money that needed to be laundered. And it could very well have led to the corruption of the political and financial system in that state. Bill Alexander, a former congressman who has spent a lot of time looking into Mena, tells me that more than one law enforcement agency has contacted him for information on Mena. You can bet they are the FBI, which has recently taken a bigger interest in Mena because of Special Prosecutor Ken Starr's Whitewater probe, and the Drug Enforcement Administration, which seems to have located two Cayman Island bank accounts it believes contains, or once contained, drug money. The DEA may also be embarrassed by reports, especially in The Post, that someone in its organization protected Barry Seal, a key person in the Mena operation, from prosecution by the Arkansas state police.