HAITI UNDER CLOAK
by Alan Nairn
from the Nation magazine, February 26, 1996
The C.I.A. has placed agents within the rebuilt Haitian National
Police, where, according to the transition chief for president-elect
Rene Preval, they operate outside the control of the legal Haitian
government. In an interview nine days before Preval's scheduled
inauguration, the transition chief, Chavannes Jean-Baptiste, told
The Nation: "The C.I.A. is present within the police. It
is present in all parts. But what their plan is-I don't have it."
His statement has been confirmed by U.S. officials familiar with
the operation, who say that much of the C.I.A. recruitment took
place during the F.B.I.'s International Criminal Investigations
Training Assistance Program (ICITAP) police training, which was
done last year at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, at the insistence
of the Clinton White House and over initial objections from the
Aristide government.
The disclosure comes as Washington is pressing on at least two
fronts to prevent further revelations about its secret work in
Haiti. On one, the United States has privately been in touch with
jailed terror leader Emmanuel "Toto" Constant, who has
been threatening to tell all he knows about U.S. support for the
hit squad known as FRAPH.
The United States, according to a December 11 internal government
memo and interviews with informed officials, has made a special
arrangement with Constant, a longtime C.I.A. asset, to deport
him back to Haiti eventually, and if that occurs, according to
the memo, to do so in a U.S. government plane complete with "V.I.P."
security and "no advance notice" for the Haitian government.
Regular Haitian airport workers are to be kept away from Constant's
plane (ground services to be provided by Brown & Root, the
Pentagon contractor), and Haitian Customs will be required to
"process him at an isolated location." Constant is then
to be the beneficiary of a program of "crowd control"
and a 'public affairs strategy" designed to urge Haitians
"to remain calm despite the intensity of anti-FRAPH and anti-Constant
sentiment."
These extraordinary arrangements for Constant were finalized four
days after he called me on December 7 from an I.N.S. prison in
Maryland and offered to reveal "everything" about the
United States and FRAPH. When I tried to follow up, though (he
insisted on a face-to-face meeting), the I.N.S. denied me access,
explaining that Constant had had a change of heart and no longer
wanted to talk.
Caribbean
watch
Allan
Nairn page