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Intelligence

House Republican Policy Committee
Policy Perspective
Christopher Cox, Chairman

Government Death Squads Spell Another Pyrrhic Victory

Haiti: Another Vanishing Clinton "Success" Story

October 2, 1996

The Clinton Administration claims Haiti as a foreign policy triumph. Yet since U.S. forces intervened in that impoverished country, President Aristide obstructed an FBI investigation of government political murders, and his successor Rene Preval was subsequently forced to purge his own security forces because of their complicity in such murders. In late September 1996, the Clinton Administration refused to turn over 47 documents about its Haiti policy subpoenaed by the House International Relations Committee. The Committee believes that they contain important evidence about the Clinton Administration's knowledge of the crimes committed by Haitian government security forces.

Like the rest of President Clinton's foreign "successes," his Haiti policy is yet another Potemkin village. It is all too reminiscent of the disappearing "triumphs" around the world:

In Northern Ireland, President Clinton overturned a bipartisan antiterror policy dating back a quarter century by permitting the leader of the Irish Republican Army's political arm to receive a U.S. visa, visit the White House, and raise money on American soil. The IRA responded with the February and June 1996 bombings in London and Manchester that killed and injured over 300 civilians.

In Bosnia, the Clinton Administration brokered a "peace" agreement that rewarded aggressors and war criminals by partitioning the nation and ratifying "ethnic cleansing." After promising to withdraw the 20,000 U.S. troops enforcing this agreement within a year, the President now admits that he will break his word to the American people and extend the U.S. presence. Yet the Administration no longer claims that either the original deployment or this extended deployment will achieve even the modest goals of the Dayton Accord. No major war criminals have been arrested or even deprived of real power; refugees have not been permitted to return; the Iranian terrorists the President allowed into Bosnia remain; and the Administration demanded that elections proceed despite clear evidence that they would be neither free nor fair, and would only empower extremists in each camp.

The President broke his public pledge that North Korea would not be permitted to acquire nuclear weapons, rewarding its clandestine weapons program with an agreement to deliver nuclear reactors that can produce more enriched uranium than the reactors Pyongyang promised to close. And North Korea's Communists are now withholding information required to ensure non-proliferation until those new reactors are running.

And, most recently, in the Middle East, no less than two of Clinton's vaunted successes have vanished. Far from being "contained," Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein handily crushed U.S.-backed Kurdish opponents in northern Iraq, destroying a $100 million CIA operation. And the Administration-brokered peace process has disintegrated as the Palestianian Authority's newly-armed police turn their guns on Israel's defense forces.

In Haiti, the Administration is using executive privilege in an effort to to cover up its failure until after the November presidential election. Chairman Ben Gilman's statement at a September 27, 1996 hearing on Haiti reveals the truth President Clinton would prefer to hide.

Statement of Chairman Benjamin A. Gilman
Hearing on Administration Action
and Political Murders in Haiti: Part II
September 27, 1996

Two years ago this week, 20,000 American troops left their homes for Haiti to restore constitutional order and to throw out a regime that was murdering its political opponents. Since then the Clinton Administration has spent more than $2 billion dollars to support a government that has tolerated thugs who murder its political opponents.

I supported the restoration of the constitutional order in Haiti, but that support was betrayed by this Administration when it kept Congress in the dark about political murders by the very government we returned to power.

Many of these murders were committed in 1995, while U.S. troops were still in Haiti as peacekeepers. Our government has information linking these killings to members of Haiti's Presidential Security Unit, which was trained by our government. One of the most shocking murders was the March 28th, 1995 shooting in broad daylight of Mireille Bertin, a prominent opponent of then President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Two dozen FBI agents were deployed to Haiti to help investigate the shooting, but by August 1995, our Embassy had concluded that the Aristide government was stonewalling the FBI. Even as the FBI was packing up to leave Haiti in frustration, an Administration official told our Western Hemisphere Subcommittee on October 12th that the investigation was continuing. Within a few days, the last FBI agent had left Haiti in frustration.

The Administration has been aware since early 1995 that death-squads were operating under the direction of top security aides to President Aristide. The Administration privately pressed Aristide to dismiss suspected assassins in his security unit, but he refused to do so. Although some were dismissed by President Rene Preval after he took office in February 1996, their violence got out of hand last month.

But, despite some ten hearings and briefings before the Committee on Haiti during 1995, the Administration failed to inform us until January 1996 that it was aware of these death-squads, which began a year earlier. After two leading opponents of President Preval were slain on August 20th, the Administration rushed 46 armed agents of our Diplomatic Security Service to Haiti to protect Mr. Preval from his own U.S.-trained bodyguards and to oust members of his palace guard who are linked to a series of recent murders.

The Administration has claimed Haiti as a foreign policy success. Yet, on the very weekend it was preparing to send cruise missiles against Iraq, two top members of its foreign policy team, the Deputy Secretary of State and the President's National Security Advisor, were dispatched to Port au Prince to negotiate with President Preval. If Haiti is the success that it claims, then why has the Administration been so reluctant to provide our Committee with the information we have sought?

It is interesting that, while the Administration has declassified 5,847 documents pertaining to Guatemala, it has declassified only 21 pertaining to Haiti. You see these documents here this morning, which illustrate a stark double standard. Moreover, the President has made an extraordinary use of his executive privilege to block a careful scrutiny of about 50 essential documents by our committee.

And, to those who may say that our investigation is mere politics, I would point out that our Committee has an oversight responsibility to discharge on behalf of the American people. As a National Security Council official said when releasing those Guatemala documents last May, "We're going to let the chips fall where they may. We just want to get to the facts."

In concluding, I would like to note that I have tried to work with the Administration over this past year to get to the bottom of these troubling issues...issues that should not be minimized because some say conditions were worse before U.S. troops landed in Haiti.

We must ask instead, after our nation's vast investment in Haiti, how many political killings are acceptable?

I want a democratic government in Haiti to work. I have long supported that goal. What I cannot accept, nor can our Committee accept, is this Administration telling Congress less than the full story about the situation in Haiti.

I would much prefer to try to work with the administration to fix current shortcomings than to be told next year that we must support the return of U.S. troops to Haiti as the only means of preventing the collapse of the government in Port au Prince.

# # #
Created by the House Republican Policy Committee,
please send comments to tcremer@hr.house.gov.
Last updated October 2, 1996



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