http://dolphin.gulf.net/may17-99/Bag -------------------- I WAS BILL CLINTON'S BAG MAN Interview with Author L.D. Brown By Marvin Lee In his recently released book, "Crossfire: Witness in the Clinton Investigation," author L.D. Brown finally makes a full admission of the crimes that he helped then-Governor Bill Clinton commit in the 1980s. Brown admits that, while assigned to then-Governor Clinton's security detail, he actually performed the role of Clinton's "bag man." But Brown has also included a shocker of a current scandal that has yet to unfold in the U.S. media: a current covert White House operation aimed at supporting the Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland. I interviewed Brown about these topics as well as Brown's and Clinton's role in the Nicaraguan Contra supply operation at Mena airport in 1980s and other topics revealed in his book: QUESTION: You reveal in the book that you were a "bag man" for Bill Clinton. You actually use that term. BROWN: Well, it's the best term to use. In a crime world, when writers write about the man who carries the money around, it is usually the "bag man." Frankly, that's what it was. We used a paper sack, a brown paper bag. QUESTION: Did you just collect from local businessmen, some of whom you name in the book, or did you also in any way get involved in collecting money from Chinese businessmen? BROWN: No. I knew Charlie Trie... QUESTION: But not in a fundraising context? BROWN: Not in a fundraising context. And, quite frankly, I don't know whether Charlie was a contributor to Bill during his gubernatorial elections. QUESTION: He was, through Richard Mays. BROWN: One thing I do remember is that we didn't have to pay for the event at Charlie Trie's restaurant. We had a pretty good bill there. QUESTION: And there's another thing. You reveal in the book a relationship between Hillary Clinton and Vince Foster. That must have been apparent to Charlie Trie because it took place in his restaurant? BROWN: Charlie wasn't downstairs. QUESTION: So he may not have known about it? BROWN: He didn't know about it that night. QUESTION: So, in your role as bag man, you never picked up any packages of money from Mena airport? BROWN: No, none other than what [CIA contractor Barry] Seal gave me. QUESTION: Yes, for yourself. You may know that Jerry Parks' widow says that her husband drove cash from Mena airport on a contract for Vince Foster [1]. BROWN: As far as I remember, I have never met Jerry Parks at Mena airport. When we came and left there, there was no activity in and around the airplane. THE DIXIE MAFIA QUESTION: On another topic, when you expose all the crimes that took place in Arkansas, you never mention the Dixie Mafia. Is the relationship of people like Dan Lasater, Patsy Thomasson, and Buddy Young to the Dixie Mafia not a significant factor in this, you think? BROWN: Well, having been in law enforcement for quite a number of years, I have a different connotation about the, quote, Dixie Mafia, unquote. It's not like the Marcellos in New Orleans, the Cosa Nostras, the Capos, and all that. The Dixie Mafia is much more loose knit--not identifiable as a gang in a hierarchy as other organized crime gangs. I guess it is an unorganized crime organization. It's more of a social structure. I never really thought about that, trying to put all this in the context of an organized crime operation, even though if you take the separate acts that have been committed, it's certainly a racketeering operation. QUESTION: You know Roger Morris, in his biography of Bill Clinton, was the first to try to put the entire thing in a Mafia context, pointing out, actually, that Bill Clinton's first campaign was funded, presumably, through the Mafia, through his uncle Raymond. BROWN: Well, I don't doubt that. And that is more "Mafia" Mafia, as you think of Cosa Nostra, when you talk about the old Hot Springs crowd. QUESTION: Speaking of Seal and [Carlos] Marcello, whom you brought up. Did you know that Seal had worked for Marcello? BROWN: It doesn't surprise me. COVERT OPERATION IN NORTHERN IRELAND QUESTION: Speaking of covert operations, you reveal in the book an effort by the Clinton administration to divert money from food aid and airplane parts from Russia to the Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland. Have I understood that correctly? BROWN: It wasn't revealed to me in so many words, but I couldn't come to any more reasonable conclusion than that from all the conversations I had with this man that I met in England, T. John McBrearty. As I describe in the book he first approached me at 2 a.m. at a bus station in England. After a 2-hour drive to Heathrow airport--starting from "hey, waiting on a bus?" to, when we finally arrived, him trying to arrange liaison between James Carville and me and throwing in this Soderburg lady who worked for Clinton on the NSC... QUESTION: She was actually deputy staff director at the National Security Council. BROWN: She apparently had some official job to do with Northern Ireland and the troubles. And this whole operation came down on providing commodities, food to the Russian republics in return for air parts, which--through this networking of the old "air thugs" and people like Southern Air Transport [a CIA proprietary air business of the past] and Jack Stephens... QUESTION: Who took the air parts? BROWN: Who took the air parts, and this was news to me. And I have since found out--I don't know if I write about this in the book--that he has an operation that deals in spare airplane parts. The entire thing comes back to an operation that he [McBrearty] was running, close to the border in the north in Ireland, that provided jobs for people that were disenfranchised for some reason--because they were sympathetic to the Irish Republic, but they were northerners, or--any way, that's what it was. It was a pro-IRA thing. QUESTION: It was a cover for providing support for the IRA? BROWN: Absolutely, sure. A cover. And if you need to provide a cover, you need people who were experienced in "cover up," people who were experienced in doing a "cut-out" operation. QUESTION: Well, of course the U.S. government cannot support a terrorist organization BROWN: Not openly. QUESTION: So they made another Iran-Contra diversion. BROWN: That's my point. You are making my point. It is "Let's go around the Boland Amendment" [prohibiting CIA support for the Contras] all over again! Only this time it is Bill's instead of [George] Bush's pet project! It's the IRA. Bill's open politics have shown that! QUESTION: Yes, did you know that a member of the Clinton administration was censured for fundraising for the IRA while working for the State Department? BROWN: No. QUESTION: Her name was Rosemary O'Neill. So this is the first time that you reveal this operation? BROWN: Absolutely. I worry about this more than I do about Barry Seal's connection with the Marcello family, I worry more about these people that apparently are doing these same kinds of operations that I was involved in when Bush was running that [Iran Contra] operation that Bill got me involved in. A cut-out, a cover to implement a foreign policy that you cannot legally propose or follow through! This is the first time I talk about that for that very reason. Other people have tried to get me to talk about it. I have, in graduated, measured steps, been following the policy that when the time is right, sometimes the best security is to hide in plain sight. Make things public. Some of these people will do anything to cover their tracks, to keep an operation like that secret--but at least a lot of them, when they know that you are on record with something, don't try to deal with you. QUESTION: Another interesting, or novel, aspect of that operation is that McBrearty asked you to work with James Carville to get the intelligence agencies off their back. BROWN: Absolutely. QUESTION: But what, exactly, did you understand that to mean, "get the intelligence agencies off" whose back? McBrearty and his covert operation in Ireland? BROWN: Right. QUESTION: That's what you understood? BROWN: Right. QUESTION: So, by implication, we can conclude that intelligence agencies are investigating this and are not supporting it? BROWN: From what he told me, absolutely. QUESTION: But that must mean that this operation does not have CIA support? BROWN: According to him, sure. I don't know if he thought or the Clinton people thought that I had more of a favorable relationship with the Agency and still do than I really do or did, and that somehow I could be a liaison. I didn't have a relationship with the Agency, I don't have a relationship with the Agency. I cannot conceive of how I could have helped them, as he said, "get the Agency of their ass." QUESTION: They obviously thought that you had a relationship. They didn't know that it was completely terminated. BROWN: Right. And the president appoints the director of Central Intelligence, but it is obvious from news reports that they have had some differences in foreign policy and intelligence matters. That still puzzles me. I don't know how I was supposed to be helping them. MENA AIRPORT - WHAT DID THE CIA KNOW AND WHEN DID IT KNOW IT? QUESTION: Now, let's move on to Mena. You mention in your book that [CIA contact] Magruder was interested in your past DEA work. Do you think that the CIA sent you along on those flights [with Barry Seal to Central America] to check up on rumors of drug smuggling? Could that have been a purpose? BROWN: It could have been. Magruder knew everything about my DEA work. I had the impression that I was being considered for an Operations Officer job [with the CIA]. But he asked me, during our conversation in Dallas, whether, as a stepping stone to that I would be willing to work on another "component," as he called it: Para-military, anti-terrorism, security and anti-drug-smuggling. And I said yes. That's where we ended our entire interview. QUESTION: But do you think that it is possible that that was the reason the CIA sent you along on those flights, to check up on rumors of drug smuggling? BROWN: It's very possible. It makes sense. But my conclusions about this, just trying to use basic deductive reasoning and knowing Bill Clinton and everything that he was doing shepherding me through the whole [CIA] process, that may have been the Agency's idea. But I think Bill, knowing obviously that this [the drug smuggling] was going on, was probably more planning this as a self-serving deniability device for him: "Gee, whiz, I put my most staunch advocate of anti- drug-smuggling that we have on that plane. Do you think that if I had known there would have been drugs there I would have put him there?" QUESTION: But in the end, because it involved drug smuggling during those return CIA flights, you said that you wanted no part of the operation. BROWN: Well, I didn't want any part of it because the person who had guided me through this entire process, Bill Clinton, when I broached the subject with him, he said the worst thing that he could ever say, that it was "A Dan Lasater deal." Then things clicked in my mind: "Oh, my God, the only time I've seen him around coke that I know of, for sure, has been in Dan Lasater's house." Dan Lasater openly displayed coke in his home. I thought about this later. Is Dan Lasater working on a contract with CIA? Was he? It was a drug deal and I wanted no part of it. QUESTION: But then the CIA came back to you some time later with another assignment. That was the assignment in Mexico. Then we get into the sensitive topic of CIA assassinations. They wanted you to eliminate a U.S. citizen in Mexico, and the question is for what purpose. It had something to do with his knowledge of drug smuggling in that [Mena] operation? BROWN: They coached it with me as an effort to get rid of the co-pilot on those flights with Seal. Seal was dead by then. I didn't want anything to get out about me being on an airplane with drugs. I knew Bill surely didn't ever want it to get out. Dan Lasater didn't. And, you know, at the time Dan had people hanging around him that would hurt you! I wanted it closed. I wanted the book closed on this. But when I got to the assigned location in Mexico and the guy was pointed out to me by my local contact, I knew that it wasn't the co-pilot I had seen on the airplane. They had the wrong guy. I don't think Rodriguez [Brown's CIA contact on the assignment] knew he was sending me to get the wrong guy, but that's basically what happened. And of course, I was obviously not forgetting that there was one other person on that plane [who knew] who is not dead yet. It's me. What better way to be done with me and that other guy than for me go down there, nail him, get arrested two minutes later and die in a Mexican prison? I immediately became paranoid. I ditched the gun and went back to Arkansas without carrying out the assignment. I found out much later, after Terry Reed wrote a book (curiously someone sent me a copy), when I looked through the book there was a receipt for him being at this hotel [in Mexico] at the same time I was there, and there was a picture of him in the book, I realized that he was the guy I had seen there at the hotel. Reed later filed a lawsuit and subpoenaed me but I had it postponed until after at least May or June of 1996 so the 10-year statute of limitations had run in the State of Arkansas so I couldn't get prosecuted for conspiracy. QUESTION: Conspiracy to commit murder? BROWN: Conspiracy to commit murder, absolutely. QUESTION: You mentioned your concern about exposure to criminal liability. And you admit in the book that you have been complicit in other violations committed by Bill Clinton. Is that the reason why you have not spoken out until now? BROWN: Oh, sure. I didn't have the benefit at the time of knowing what has now come together as a criminal enterprise more or less. We are talking about racketeering, that's what was going on. I was there, I saw these things, but I didn't completely know all the transactions that took place outside my view. Yes, I was a cog in that wheel but I didn't understand the big picture at the time. I knew that I shouldn't be carrying around cash in a bag, but I didn't know exactly where that cash came from, whether it was from a drug deal or unreceipted or unaccounted for money from Madison [S&L]. I knew it was wrong. There is no excusing that. I have apologized and repented for it publicly. I was an enabler, not unlike the people that he is surrounding himself with now. Whether it be 100 congressmen standing beside him when he is gloating, almost, that he has been impeached, or it is his minions that go out and try to destroy people who are telling the truth. I was one of those people. NOTES 1. Jerry Parks was a Clinton campaign security contractor whose liaison was Vince Foster. Se Ambrose Evans-Pritchard's book, The Secret Life of Bill Clinton. [L.D. Brown's book "Crossfire: Witness in the Clinton Investigation" is available at the discounted price of $11.95 plus S&H at http://crossfirebook.com (not available in bookstores).] Published in the May. 17, 1999 issue of The Washington Weekly Copyright 1999 The Washington Weekly (http://www.federal.com) Reposting permitted with this message intact
