Smuggler's End by Del Hahn

Author:Del Hahn [Hahn, Del]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pelican Publishing
Published: 2015-12-04T00:00:00+00:00

Part Two: The Myths

Chapter 17

The Crimes of Mena

To the “vast government conspiracy” crowd, Mena, Arkansas, became as infamous as Roswell, New Mexico. The reputation came after public knowledge that Barry Seal used the town’s airport as a base for his smuggling planes. He parked the famous C-123 cargo plane there.

Although there were no alien sightings, it was generally presumed that he laundered millions and millions of dollars through Mena banks and smuggled hundreds of kilos of cocaine and tons of arms and munitions through the Mena Intermountain Airport on behalf of the CIA.

Barry Seal may have brought some unwelcome notoriety to Mena. The airport was popular with aircraft owners long before Seal could fly.

A rough flying field was started on the McBride property south of town in the early forties. In 1942, Hartzell Geyer built the first hangar and opened a small flying school. In 1946, serious construction began when the Civil Aeronautics Board (now the FAA) chose the site as an emergency landing strip for commercial aircraft.

In the early years, the grass field was maintained by an agreement with a farmer who mowed and baled the runway in exchange for the hay.

After development of the airstrip, several businesses opened. Pilots began to bring their planes in for overhaul and repair. It was remote but centrally located. The aircraft industry at the Mena airport grew and now employs several hundred people in the areas of upholstery, painting, engineering, engine overhauling, and general maintenance. These businesses bring millions of dollars into the local economy, and the popularity of the airport has continued to grow.

In 2015, the regional airport has a lighted and paved six thousand-foot runway and five thousand-foot paved runways, with support and mechanical services for most aircraft including small- and mid-sized commercial airliners. 1

The Mena airport was in the jurisdiction of Polk County Sheriff A. L. Hadaway. It didn’t take him long to get word of Barry Seal’s arrival and to learn what kind of business he was in.

Sheriff Hadaway and the author had a long phone conversation on May 18, 1983. The sheriff said he had what he considered to be reliable information that someone named “Barry” from Baton Rouge was running a drug smuggling operation out of Rich Mountain Aviation, an aircraft service facility at the Mena airport. Rich Mountain was owned by a man named Fred Hampton. The sheriff had a first name of “Barry” and a pager number and little else. His source was reliable.

Hadaway described one specific event that took place. A Piper Seneca, plane number N8049Z, was observed to take off. The informant said the plane was flown by “Red” Hall. It carried one duffel bag of cocaine.

The Piper Seneca involved in the incident had been purchased from Louisiana Aircraft Rental on March 12, 1982, by Seal. He had personally handed one of the owners a fruit carton containing $160,000 cash.

The plane had been registered in the name of Interstate Aviation to a bogus address in Jackson, Mississippi. FAA records revealed that the

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