Mena, Arkansas & The CIA

            Ask yourself this question; could a person be looking right at a historical artifact that played a significant, if not notorious, role in U.S. history and not realize it?

            If what that person is looking at is the Intermountain Regional Airport in Mena, Arkansas, the answer would an unqualified, “Yes.”

    Intermountain Regional Airport

Mena, Arkansas; the launch site for

weapons and drug smuggling in the

1980s that led to the Iran-Contra

scandals and investigations.

            It was from this surprisingly well-equipped airport with equally surprising long runways, infrastructure and facilities, all within the shadow of the nearby Qauchita Mountains, that, among other things, the infamous Iran-Contra gun-running operation supporting rebels in Nicaragua and a questionable front in the war on drugs was launched in the early 1980s.

            In fact, the Mena airport was specifically improved with millions of clandestine dollars flowing from the U.S. government aimed at supporting CIA and DEA missions into Central and South America.

            Companies literally sprang up overnight supporting the maintenance, conversion, modification and operations of large cargo aircraft.

            Those operations unraveled, yanked out of covert darkness into the bright light of day when, in October 1986, a twin-engined Fairchild C123K cargo plane was shot down over Nicaragua. One crew member, Eugene Hasenfus, survived, was captured and interrogated by Nicaraguan authorities. Less than a month later, the Iran-Contra scandal broke.

Barry Seal

            Rich Mountain Aviation, now defunct and once owned and operated as a CIA/DEA front by renegade pilot Barry Seal who was later convicted on federal drug and gun smuggling charges, disappeared into obscurity shortly after the 1986 machine-gun murder of Seal who was shot down in front of a Baton Rouge, Louisiana, halfway house by suspected drug cartel gunmen who were later captured and sentenced to life in prison.           

            Airplanes arrived and departed all the time. Weapons, without doubt and according to government records including records kept by Seal himself, were the main cargo of export. There’s plenty of evidence to suggest tons of cocaine came back; evidence backed up by Seal’s notes. Evidence suggests that the cocaine found its way into American society, but, actually, no one knows for sure what happened to the drugs given the secretive nature of the missions and massive cover-ups of Seal’s activities.

            As long as opposition to former and present Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, who had communist ties, and to the steady river of cocaine flowing out Colombia existed, Mena’s Intermountain Regional Airport was at the heart of the action.

            But, none of it was to survive the scrutiny that peeled away the operation’s layers in 1986. The Mena mission collapsed – supposedly – when the Iran-Contra scandal broke in 1986 leaving former President Ronald Reagan red-faced and former Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North as the missions’ chief architect.

            What goes on at Intermountain Regional Airport today? It’s hard to say. The locals don’t talk much about it and queries made of folks who have airplanes based at Intermountain go basically unanswered if they are acknowledged at all.

            Many believe the CIA and DEA have departed; that no interest by those agencies remains in site so publically pilloried by the media and Congress. No covert operations could possibly operate, some might tell you, out of an area so stained by such notoriety.

            But, could it? Will it?

            An interesting question to consider as one might today find oneself driving by Mena’s most notable, if not most undiscussed, public curiousity.

By Bob Howie
Copyright 2011