SMUGGLER: Barry Seal

The gist of most conspiracy theories about Mena, Ark., is that the Intermountain Regional Airport was used as a staging area for the Reagan administration's covert shipment of arms to the anti-Sandinista Nicaraguan rebels known as the Contras.

The contract pilots who flew the arms shipments to Contra resupply bases just outside NicaraguaHonduras, El Salvador, and Costa Rica were big transshipment pointswere employed through a labyrinth of corporate cutouts, and the planes they flew were bought, sold, leased, and traded through an equally confusing mishmash of CIA front companies, according to the theories. Some of the conspiracy advocates claim the CIA allowed the pilots to smuggle drugs back to the United States. Some go so far as to posit that the drug shipments were what paid for the whole Contra operation.

Several people have come forward in the years since Barry Seal's death and claimed that he was one of those contract pilots:

• In sworn testimony in a civil case, convicted drug smuggler Michael Tolliver said Barry Seal got him a job flying guns to Honduras. Tolliver said he was paid for the trips by Max Gomez, the cover name of former CIA operative Felix Rodriguez, who during that time was coordinating resupply operations for the Contras on behalf of National Security Council staffer Lt. Col. Oliver North.
• A gun manufacturer in Arkansas testified in federal court that a CIA operative introduced him to Barry Seal. He said Seal bought guns from him and later shipped them to the Contras.
• Arkansas State Trooper L.D. Brown claimed he accompanied Seal on two trips to Central America in 1984 during which Seal dropped off pallets stacked with M-16 rifles to the Contras. Brown also claimed Seal smuggled cocaine back on the return trips.
• CIA contract pilots Terry Reed and William "Tosh" Plumlee have stated repeatedly that Seal was a pilot for the CIA. Reed said Seal hired him to train Nicaraguan pilots at a rough airstrip outside Mena.
• Chicago television station WMAQ, an NBC affiliate, reported on a confidential FBI document in which an executive of Rich Mountain Air admitted the company was maintaining one of Seal's airplanes, a military C-123, for the CIA.

After more than a decade of being hounded by allegations and investigations of drug and gun running, the CIA launched its own internal investigation in 1996. Not surprisingly, the CIA's inspector general issued a report in November 1996 clearing the agency of any criminal wrongdoing. The report, of course, was classified, but the unclassified six-page summary acknowledged that while the CIA did contract with a local, unnamed, company in Mena for routine aircraft maintenance, all of the other allegations were untrue.

"No evidence has been found that the CIA was associated with money laundering, narcotics trafficking, arms smuggling or other illegal activities at or around Mena, Ark., at any time," the summary report said.