`I WAS HIS BLOND-HAIRED BOY'

Anne McElvoy meets the Arkansas

ex-state trooper who is a key witness against Clinton

THE Washington Post, irked by the eclectic range and shrill tenor of allegations against President Clinton, ran an article earlier this year about America's appetite for unprovable conspiracy theories and the desire of some journalists to believe the worst about those who rule them. Its satiri- cal headline read: 'Exclusive: Gennifer Flowers Was On The Grassy Knoll.' For readers resistant to the details of modern American lore, Miss Flowers is the lady with big blonde hair and glossy lipstick who alleges that President Clinton was her long-time lover. The grassy knoll was where the disputed 'second shot' was sup- posed to have come from in the assassina- tion of President Kennedy.

The Post's message was clear — the campaign to skewer Clinton over his alleged crimes and other misdemeanours was as hysterical and would end as incon- clusively as the repetitive attempts to prove that President Kennedy's murder was not the work of a single gunman. The paper — sceptical of the claims against President Clinton and his wife — seemed to be telling its readers that if they believed the stories against Mr Clinton, they probably believed in Santa Claus and the tooth fairy too.

But last week, as President Clinton cele- brated the beginning of his second term in office, it seems that one key allegation against him — that as governor of Arkansas he tolerated drug-trafficking through the state's Mena airport because one of the local drug barons was a friend and campaign funder — may indeed be connected to another story shrouded in myth and variously interpreted: the CIA's funding of the Nicaraguan Contras.

Last week, the CIA acknowledged for the first time that it had conducted opera- tions at Mena airport, said to have been the hub of money-laundering, gun-running and drug-smuggling in Arkansas. It was responding to claims by L.D. Brown, a for- mer state trooper who worked for the then governor Clinton. Mr Brown claims that while on probation for possible CIA employment in 1984, he took two aero- plane trips from Mena airport together with a man known as Barry Seal.

During the trips, he claims, two drops of large crates covered in netting and proba- bly containing weapons were made. In return, the plane was loaded with several large, tightly-packed duffel bags. At the conclusion of the second trip, he says, Seal opened one of the bags and showed him a brick of cocaine. Brown, who had worked in drug enforcement, says that he was so shocked that he went straight to the gover- nor — who had helped him with his CIA application — and told him what had hap- pened. Clinton's cool reply, according to Brown, was, 'That's Lasater's deal'. Dan Lasater, a proven cocaine dealer and employer of Clinton's drug-convicted brother Roger, helped fund the Clinton Excuse me, sir, did you realise you went straight through a red light area without stopping?' gubernatorial campaign.

The White House has described the Mena allegations as 'the darkest back- water of the right-wing conspiracy indus- try', but its dismissive tone jars now that the CIA has admitted that Brown was, as he claims, a candidate for employment and said that there was, at the very least, a drugs 'sting' operation involving Seal in which surveillance cameras were fitted with Seal's knowledge in his plane. This admis- sion is meant to stall rumours of a 'guns- for-drugs' operation backed by the CIA under President Reagan's administration and tolerated by governor Clinton.

Brown left the governor's service and kept quiet about the conversation. But by 1992 other former state troopers were parading their colourful memories of work- ing for Clinton in Arkansas. The guberna- torial social life owed more to the Caligula model than most cocktail circuits. Lasater's parties — some of which Brown says he attended with Clinton — featured silver bowls full of cocaine and an improbable number of single, obliging women.

After Clinton became President, Brown was approached by Bob Tyrrell, editor of the American Spectator (no relation), who has pursued Clinton like a one-man version of the Furies. Tyrrell was writing a damn- ing book on the President and had heard that Brown had helped procure women for Clinton in Arkansas. 'It's true,' Brown says turning a little pink. 'I was one of the troopers on tail-detail.'

Sorry, what was that? 'That's what we called it — you know — finding women for him.' The Mena allegation which emerged in Tyrrell's book may yet be far more dam- aging. This week, Tyrrell proudly produced his catch here in London. Brown is not the average state trooper. He is intelligent, precise and suave, with a history in drug enforcement agencies. He guarded the gov- ernor, kept him on schedule and oversaw the security of his garden, and calmed down fracas with Republican opponents when they threatened to turn into fisticuffs. A laddish entente appears to have reigned between the trooper and the governor. 'I was his blond-haired boy. We both liked the same sort of books — biographies of great statesmen. We read about Churchill, de Gaulle and the Kennedys and we both liked good crime novels. I knew that he was reading them because he wanted to be president. That was always what he was about. I always believed he would make it. He was the best politician I ever saw.'

The ease of their relations, Brown claims, led Clinton to encourage him to work for the CIA, saying, 'You'd make a great spy,' and to help him with an essay on Marxist influence in Central America as part of his application. 'He [Clinton] said, "That's the kind of thing they like," so I scribbled something and he corrected it for me,' Brown recalls. An official made con- tact with him and he was asked to take part in the two trips from Mena airport — allegedly as part of a suitability trial — at the end of 1984. He was paid $2,500 in cash after the second trip. While he was absent, his fiancée Becky's brother died. Clinton preached at the funeral, in the Arkansas patriarchal tradition. They were still that close.

By summer the following year, however, Brown had fallen out with the governor. 'I wanted out,' says Mr Brown. 'Clinton promised that he could get me a transfer to the state criminal [forensic] laboratory. But he let me down.' He did, however, get a state job as a white-collar crime investi- gator and maintained links with the gover- nor on drug prevention initiatives `although our personal relationship was at an end'.

His earnest, pretty fiancée was on the payroll as an 'assistant administrator' in the governor's mansion. In reality, she was Chelsea Clinton's nanny, but the formal title meant that her salary could be paid by the state, thus landing the taxpayers of Arkansas with the financial liability for bringing up Chelsea. The Clintons even managed to claim tax relief for the state- funded nanny.

`I had no problems with Chelsea — she was a bright, nice child,' says the now Mrs Brown. 'It's weird to see her all grown up.' Did she get along well with Hillary? 'She wasn't the kind of person you could get along real well with,' says Mrs Brown. 'She was not what you'd call a personable per- son, but I understood her — she was working so hard and she would get snappy because she worried she wasn't spending enough time with Chelsea. Once she kind of flipped and said to me, "Now you be sure to give her a bath and put her to bed by eight," and I'm like, "Well Hillary, that's what I always do." But I didn't take it to heart — I knew that she was just feel- ing guilty the way working mothers do.'

Becky and L.D. were planning to be married in Arkansas and Hillary was per- sonable enough to suggest that they hold the reception in the gubernatorial man- sion. But between Christmas 1985 and the summer wedding date, L.D. had fallen out with the governor, so they married in Bal- timore instead. Becky decided to quit her job at the mansion when her husband left, but she suggested her mother as a replace- ment and Hillary accepted. 'My mother stayed with the Clintons all the way through,' says Mrs Brown bitterly. 'She's up there in the White House now as deputy social secretary or some such. I guess she chose the Clintons over me.'

The Browns are straightforward people, devoid of the manic gleam of so many Clin- ton-hunters and apparently unconcerned about personal advancement. The problem is that before their disillusionment with the Clintons set in, they too were a minor, unthinking part of the lazy, hazy Arkansas world of compromises and deals. And they seem genuinely unsure of where the dividing line lies between thwarted personal advance- ment and moral outrage.

Mr Brown was angry and scared when he saw the cocaine brick after the second flight. But why did he not return the $2,500 he admits he was given by Seal? 'I didn't know who to give it back to. Besides, I saw it as a kind of reward for taking the risk of flying.' He was perplexed by Clinton's response when he reported the experience, but he still wanted the governor to get him a senior job in the state forensic laboratory. Mrs Brown left her job as assistant admin- istrator to the infant Chelsea — but she had no qualms about handing it on to her mother.

Juvenal in his Satires notes that servants take on the traits of their masters, adjusted in scale to reflect their lower status. Like the Clintons, the Browns knew that in Arkansas it was accepted that you looked after you and yours first. There was always a price on the truth and if you knew some- thing the others didn't, why not profit from it? Few people in the governor's circle, it seems, were immune from this kind of thinking — their petty deals and trade-offs made up a pyramid, with Bill and Hillary at the top. Big fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em. The little fleas of Arkansas are biting hard — but the big fleas have moved on.