Re: Haitian Expulsion/AP - Amnesty International
The following article reprinted with permission (see footnote) may explain some of the strange goings on. Out of the frying pan and into the fire.
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AN EXPLOSION IN DRUG TRAFFICKING THROUGH HAITI
Clinton's Haiti Nightmare
By Marvin Lee
Since 21.000 U.S. troops in 1994 restored the democratically elected Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power in Haiti, it has become the new focal point for cocaine trafficking from South America to the United States. Aristide relinquished his presidential seat to Rene Preval in 1995, but since fraudulent elections last year Haiti has been in total political chaos. Aristide's political opponents blame him for orchestrating the chaos to facilitate his return to power next year.
The more than $3 billion in U.S. aid to Haiti since 1994 has helped only a select few. Poverty and starvation are widespread, while Aristide has turned his interests towards banking. His opponents claim that the former Marxist preacher has amassed a small fortune of $30 million through banks involved in money laundering.
According to a U.S. Government interagency assessment on cocaine movement, in 1996 between 5 and 8 percent of the cocaine coming into the U.S. passed through Haiti. By the third quarter of 1997, it jumped 12 percent, and then it increased to 19 percent by the end of that year.
What has been the response of the Clinton administration to this explosion in cocaine inflow? It has been to remove the only remaining roadblock to the traffickers. Operation Frontier Lance utilized Coast Guard cutters, speedboats, and helicopters to detect and capture drug traffickers in the Caribbean on a round- the-clock basis. Last month, Operation Frontier Lance was shut down by the Clinton Administration.
In 1994, Terry Lenzner's Investigative Group International, Inc. received a no-bid contract from the State Department to train Haitian Police. Lenzner later admitted under oath that he has also been retained by Clinton's personal lawyers to investigate political opponents.
When Justice Department employee Martin Anderson last year blew the whistle on official mismanagement in the training of foreign policemen and prosecutors, including the compromising of U.S. intelligence secrets and visa fraud, he was terminated. Anderson was rehired last month under the Whistleblower Protection Act after an investigation by the Inspector General led to the suspension of the security clearance for the chief of an operation to train policemen in Haiti.
In 1996 charges surfaced that U.S.-trained security forces of Aristide had murdered political opponents. When the U.S. Congress started investigating Clinton administration involvement in the assassinations, what did the White House do? It claimed executive privilege. White House Counsel Jack Quinn refused to turn over 47 subpoenaed White House and State Department documents to Congress.
It seems that Clinton's foreign policy "success" in Haiti has turned into a nightmare with the worst part yet to come.
Published in the July 13, 1998 issue of The Washington Weekly Copyright 1998 The Washington Weekly (<A HREF="http://www.federal.com">http://www.federal.com</A>)
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