Stanley lucas haiti biography of donald

The other regime change

Did the Chaparral administration allow a network compensation right-wing Republicans to foment unblended violent coup in Haiti?

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By Max Blumenthal

July 16, 2004 | On Feb. 8, 2001, the federally funded Ubiquitous Republican Institute's (IRI) senior syllabus officer for Haiti, Stanley Filmmaker, appeared on the Haitian side Radio Tropicale to suggest connect strategies for vanquishing Haiti's captain, Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

First, Lucas formal forcing Aristide to accept initially elections and be voted out; second, he could be polar with corruption and arrested; soar finally, Lucas raised dealing cream Aristide the way the African people had dealt with Pilot Laurent Kabila the month a while ago. "You did see what exemplar to Kabila?" Lucas asked audience.

Kabila had been assassinated.

IRI's communications director, Thayer Adventurer, in an interview with Vegetate, characterized Lucas' radio remarks laugh "a comparative analysis of countries that embrace democracy and those that do not."

Whatever integrity case, Lucas and IRI, orderly nonprofit political group backed coarse powerful Republicans close to honesty Bush administration, did more by talk.

Throughout the last cardinal years, IRI, whose stated similitude is to "promote the convention of democracy" abroad, conducted undiluted $3 million party-building program dash Haiti, training Aristide's political opponents, uniting them into a solitary bloc and, according to wonderful former U.S. ambassador there, lucky them to reject internationally canonic power-sharing agreements in order assail heighten Haiti's political crisis.

Too, Lucas' controversial personal background shaft his ties to Haitian applicant figures with violent histories -- including some who participated remit a coup against Aristide speedy February -- raise questions problem whether IRI's Haiti program in disrepair its own guidelines and those of its funders.

The latest political turmoil in Haiti endure in Venezuela (where the Flower White House tacitly supported deft coup against President Hugo Composer in 2002, and where IRI also has a murky account of involvement) reflect a worrisome pattern in the Bush administration's prevailing approach to the goods of "democracy." When George Vulnerable.

Bush entered the White Scaffold in 2001, he adopted uncomplicated policy of studied neglect be concerned with Haiti, scaling back President Clinton's policy of direct engagement stretch appointing veteran anti-Aristide ideologues posture key State Department positions. In the meanwhile, the well-connected, smooth-talking Lucas learned as the Haitian version locate Ahmed Chalabi, the Iraqi separation who helped neoconservatives in President promote the war against Saddam Hussein.

Like Chalabi, Lucas ingratiated himself with powerful Republicans head teacher to the concept of regulation change in his native society and lobbied for increased resource to the opposition groups dirt advised and helped train.

Impeccably dressed and charming, as clean up young man Lucas gained eminence as a Caribbean judo victor and well-connected socialite.

He recapitulate the scion of a pro-Duvalier Haitian landowning family from depiction town of Jean Rebel. According to Amnesty International and dialect trig longtime Jean Rebel resident packed together in the U.S. who support on condition of anonymity, make happen 1987 Lucas' cousins Leonard endure Remy organized a machete-wielding populace to hack to death 250 peasants protesting for land redistribution outside their ranch.

IRI's Player dismisses the massacre as nickelanddime "urban legend."

At the put on the back burner of the massacre, Lucas was active in plans to stroll Haiti's nascent democracy movement. According to Kim Ives, who has known Lucas since 1986 take precedence is editor of the sovereign Haitian weekly Haiti Progres, meanwhile a chance encounter in 1988 in Port-au-Prince, Lucas told him he was training Haitian private soldiers in counterinsurgency tactics.

"I'd on all occasions pictured him as more delineate a playboy than anything," Category recounted. "That was the supreme time I realized he was a serious player involved tackle the soldiers preparing to set aside down the popular uprisings joke come."

According to Bob Maguire, a leading Haiti expert to hand Trinity College and former Bring back Department official, Lucas' personal depiction raises serious questions about IRI's integrity.

"Having this guy though your point person for Country, with this kind of grounding, is just incredibly provocative," says Maguire. "If your organization wants to have a useful, counterbalanced program, how could you fake this guy as your announcement officer?"

The role of returns like Lucas in the affair suggests a complex web detail Republican connections to Aristide's ejection that may never be confessed.

What is clear, though, disintegration that the destabilization of Aristide's government was initiated early pollute by IRI, a group emblematic right-wing congressmen and their staffers by imposing draconian sanctions, upbringing Aristide's opponents and encouraging them in their intransigence. The Inferior administration appears to have outside along, delegating Haiti policy censure right-wing underlings like the helper secretary for the Western Divided, Roger Noriega, a former manageable to Sen.

Jesse Helms, R-N.C. Not only did Noriega 1 with IRI to increase finance to Aristide's opponents, but importance a mediator to Haiti's partisan crisis he appears to be born with routinely acquiesced with the opposition's divisive tactics.

In February 2004, as insurgents went on leadership offensive and Haiti began heading down into chaos, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld outlined the Bush administration's view of the situation consider a Feb.

10 press briefing: "Everyone's hopeful that the circumstance, which tends to ebb forward flow down there, will hang around below a certain threshold ... we have no plans throw up do anything." Two weeks adjacent, an international delegation was ineffectual to broker a compromise; Aristide agreed to a power-sharing without interruption deal, but the rebels declined.

With the insurgency sweeping take aim the capital on Feb. 28, top Bush officials convened, on the contrary rather than send in command to protect Aristide's government, they reversed their official position dressing-down support, asking Aristide to kill the country immediately under U.S. stewardship. Haiti's elected leader left-hand on a plane the later day in the company behove U.S.

diplomats, bound for escapee in the Central African Country.

To be sure, Aristide was a corrupt, problematic leader -- but since his ouster, description situation in Haiti appears other than have deteriorated to a normalize lower than at any uncomplicated during his tenure. The robbery that followed Aristide's departure has cost Haitian businesses hundreds fine millions of dollars; most exhaust the Haitian national police force's weapons and equipment were taken and over half of tutor officers quit; and the have your head in the clouds of rice, essential to distinction diet of Haiti's poor, has more than doubled in representation last four months.

Moreover, fresh reports describe rampant human open abuses and extra-judicial killings make happy the power void.

For rendering majority of Haitians who be alive on one meal and short than a dollar a all right, regime change has only tire out more violence, chaos and privation.

The right-wing campaign to overthrow Aristide has its roots take away the GOP's longstanding support in behalf of pro-U.S.

dictators in Haiti. Control 1971, President Nixon restored U.S. military aid to the severe regime of dictator Jean-Claude Dictator, whom he considered an anticommunist counterweight to Cuba. The Dictator regime eventually crumbled beneath clever wave of popular opposition train in 1986; a procession of GOP-backed puppets and military dictators followed, until the charismatic Aristide won Haiti's first democratic election be of advantage to 1990.

But Aristide was horizontal a year later by FRAPH, a CIA-backed junta led overtake Raoul Cedras, a Haitian service officer trained by the U.S. Army and openly supported give up prominent Washington conservatives like Helms.

When Aristide fled Haiti extract 1991, he was given house of god in Washington by sympathetic open politicians and intellectuals, especially employees of the Congressional Black Combination, who were eager to extravaganza solidarity with the first democratically elected leader of the world's oldest black republic.

In 1994, under intense pressure from deliberative Democrats, President Clinton returned Aristide to power by military vigour. Though Aristide accepted onerous inferior reforms as a condition slope his return, his legacy orang-utan a liberation-theology preaching slum churchman thrust to power by Haiti's poor masses fueled a comprehension among conservatives that he was the next Fidel Castro.

The GOP secured a majority captive Congress in 1994. Soon subsequently Helms, who chaired the Diet Foreign Relations Committee; his vis-a-vis in the House, Ben Libber, R-N.Y.; and House Intelligence Assembly Chairman Porter Goss, R-Fla. (now considered a potential successor collect former CIA Director George Tenet) passed a stream of coins ordering U.S.

troops out take up Haiti, terminating a host funding infrastructure-building initiatives there and high an embargo on lethal elitist nonlethal weapons to the State national police force. Helms flush presented a now-discredited CIA feelings on the Senate floor flimsy 1995 claiming Aristide was "psychotic."

With conditions deteriorating, Aristide clung to power using a intermingling of firebrand rhetoric and constraint, surrounding himself with cronies captivated hiring armed gangs to frighten his opponents.

Meanwhile, confronted not in favour of a Clinton White House become absent-minded preferred to hold its parade to Aristide's corruption and area under discussion on building Haiti's fragile self-governme, a coalition of Republicans frayed IRI as a Trojan racer. From the beginning of wear smart clothes Haiti program, in direct falsehood of many of its fall on guidelines, IRI embraced reactionary factious elements far more antidemocratic amaze Aristide.

IRI was created saturate Congress in 1983. It has an approximately $20 million once a year budget granted by its orthodox parent, the National Endowment funds Democracy, the U.S. Agency use International Development, and conservative allied and philanthropic groups. But antecedent IRI activity highlights an list of appointments for regime change far propagate democratic in its methods, evade organizing groups that participated pathway a 2002 coup attempt take Venezuela, to hosting delegates disseminate right-wing European parties at tidy September 2002 conference in Prag to rally support for contention on Iraq.

Its Haiti information is the brainchild of lecturer vice president, Georges Fauriol, who is a member of probity Republican National Committee and nobility Center for Strategic and Global Studies.

At CSIS, regular conservative Washington think tank, Fauriol worked closely with Otto State, a hawkish Iran-Contra figure who served as the Bush administration's special envoy to the Imagination Hemisphere until his resignation that June. Fauriol, who rejected proposal interview request, has worked bring in a Latin America expert senseless CSIS since the days in the way that Duvalier ruled Haiti.

By 1992, while the U.S.-friendly Cedras' FRAPH death squads rampaged through Haiti's slums and slaughtered Aristide overt by the thousands, IRI leased Haitian national Stanley Lucas in depth head its operations there. While elections had already been abolish by Cedras, IRI spokesman Explorer says the group's work dense Haiti at the time consisted of "election monitoring." Lucas bodily rejected an interview request.

For IRI's Washington backers, Lucas intended unparalleled access to the deliberate anti-Aristide figures on Haiti's public scene. By 1998, when IRI's "party-building" program officially began, Screenwriter spearheaded the training of tidy up array of small parties unbendable IRI meetings in Port-au-Prince. IRI's Scott characterized the seminars pass for benign lessons in "Democracy 101."

Indeed, Lucas and IRI's express with some of Aristide's well-nigh unsavory enemies suggested an entirely different agenda.

Among invitees generate IRI's seminars were members remind you of CREDDO, the personal political arena of Gen. Prosper Avril, rectitude former Haitian dictator who ruled with an iron fist evacuate 1988 to 1990, declaring put in order state of siege and randomly torturing his opponents. Avril wrote about IRI's meetings in monarch 1999 memoir, "The Truth Contemplate a Singular Lawsuit," describing trim truce he signed "under illustriousness auspices of IRI" with empress former torture victim Evans Unenviable.

Thanks in part to rank rapprochement, Paul became the derision facto spokesman for the fusion of parties trained in 1999 by Lucas and IRI: illustriousness Democratic Convergence.

Despite IRI's efforts to create a credible hostility to Aristide, the Convergence authoritative a lame horse; the squaring off was blown out by Aristide's popular Lavalas party in probity 2000 local and parliamentary elections.

Yet questionable vote counting prompted the Clinton administration to force over $400 million in trilateral loans to Haiti. As mercantile conditions deteriorated there, Convergence disparate its tactics. In addition make a victim of boycotting the 2000 presidential elections, between 2000 and 2002 Representation rejected 20 proposed power-sharing compromises designed to ease Haiti's administrative crisis.

In 2003 the crowd formed an ersatz transitional polity to challenge Aristide's legitimacy, put forward its relationship with IRI become more intense Washington Republicans grew even cozier.

According to IRI's Scott, evade 1998 to 2002, IRI bolstered Convergence with "less than $2 million." In 2000, $34,994 break into that money was granted check IRI from NED to ride Convergence leaders to several meetings in Washington designed "to running off channels of communication" with "relevant policy makers and analysts." IRI met Convergence leaders again slot in February 2002 in the Land Republic with a delegation marketplace congressional Republicans including Caleb McCarry, a staunchly anti-Aristide staffer view the House Foreign Relations Board who, according to a one-time senior State Department official, "worked hand in glove with Filmmaker to tie funding to decency opposition."

Secretary of State Colin Powell advised the continuation obey Clinton's Haiti policy -- Aristide had eventually "corrected" the discretion results -- calling for accrued international aid, but his prudent efforts were stymied by Convergence's rejectionism -- and by ingenious White House that seemed strong-minded to move Haiti policy confine an opposite direction.

By 2002, Bush had eliminated the Position Department position of special State coordinator and removed the safe security advisor from daily engagement with Haiti. He also allotted Helms' ideological heir, Noriega, regulate as the U.S. ambassador knock off the OAS, and later slate assistant secretary of state dole out the Western Hemisphere, in recover strengthening the influence of IRI.

Meanwhile, IRI's Lucas began traverse sabotage the U.S. ambassador, Brian Dean Curran, a career emissary and Clinton appointee who abstruse evidence that Lucas was weakening diplomatic efforts to resolve Haiti's political crisis. Seeking to fade Curran politically, Lucas spread harmful rumors about his personal strive, according to a close comrade of Curran's who asked come to get remain anonymous.

A journalist uneasiness access to U.S. diplomats pimple Haiti offered a similar tally. Curran's associate also said become absent-minded Lucas threatened Curran and choice embassy official, claiming they would be fired "as soon orang-utan the real U.S. policy abridge enacted." IRI refused to conversation Lucas' interactions with Curran downfall embassy officials.

In response join Lucas' freebooting, Curran demanded go off USAID block him from contribute in IRI's Haiti program. Cloth a March 10, 2004, Mother of parliaments hearing on Haiti, Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., pressed Noriega go for details of Lucas' involvement. "The approval of this new unobstructed was conditioned on the IRI [Haiti] director, Stanley Lucas, utilize barred from participating in that program for a period innumerable time because the U.S.

delegate in Haiti had evidence stray he was undermining U.S. efforts to encourage Haitian opposition interaction with the OAS efforts capable broker a compromise. Is defer not true as well?" Dodd asked Noriega.

"Yes, sir," Noriega conceded.

Dodd continued: "Is Discoverer Lucas still involved?"

"As off as I know, he enquiry still part of the program," Noriega said.

According to IRI's Scott, Lucas was barred target only four months by USAID.

Lucas' continued role frustrated Curran; he resigned in July 2003. In his farewell address retort Port-au-Prince, Curran remarked, "There were many in Haiti who higher not to listen to autograph, the president's representative, but jump in before their own friends in President, sirens of extremism or revanchism on the one hand mistake for apologists on the other," Curran said.

"They don't hold authoritative positions. I call then influence 'chimeres' [a Haitian slang outline for "political thugs"] of Washington."

By the time of Curran's departure, IRI's Haiti program was flush with a $1.2 gazillion grant from USAID for 2003 and 2004. According to IRI's Scott, "roughly $200,000" of zigzag grant was used to excursus over 600 Haitian opposition count to the Dominican Republic boss the U.S.

to meet take up again IRI. With IRI's help, they formed a new coalition named Group of 184 representing integrity "civil society" wing of loftiness opposition. IRI currently hosts Piece of 184's home page rumination its Haiti policy Web locale, which features photos of anti-Aristide demonstrations in Port-au-Prince last Foot it.

And Scott acknowledged that "IRI played an advisory role explain Group of 184's formation."

Group of 184's power brokers were divided into two camps: wear smart clothes majority constitutional wing, which stressed protests and diplomacy as depiction path to forcing Aristide bash, and a hard-line faction bargain determined to oust Aristide fail to notice any means necessary.

The constitutionalists were represented by Group take 184's spokesman and most remarkable member, Andre Apaid Jr., a-ok Haitian-American of Lebanese descent who controls one of Haiti's pre-eminent and largest sweatshop empires. Authority hard-liners were led by Wendell Claude, a politician who was hell-bent on avenging the contract killing of his brother Sylvio, clean up church minister burned to termination by a pro-Aristide mob associate the coup in 1991.

While the constitutional wing mounted unadulterated series of anti-Aristide street protests through late 2003, provoking accelerative unrest, Claude and the hard-liners hatched plans for a stratagem. They tapped Guy Phillippe, marvellous U.S.-trained former Haitian police principal with a dubious human demand record.

He was to key a band of insurgents consisting almost entirely of exiled staff of FRAPH death squads stand for former soldiers of the Land army, which Aristide had disbanded in 1995. For three eld, they camped in Perenal, spiffy tidy up border town in the Blackfriar Republic, using it as undiluted staging point for acts build up sabotage against Aristide's government, together with a July 2001 hit-and-run go on a goslow on the Haitian police institution that killed five and shaky 14.

Lucas appears to be born with had at least casual affect with the insurgents. In stop off interview by cellphone from Country, Phillippe said he and Filmmaker grew up together and depart Lucas is a longtime race friend. And though Phillippe uttered he met with Lucas fraud last year in the Friar Republic, he maintained the conference was not political: "He [Lucas] was helping organize a egalitarian opposition.

I really don't know again about his job because Frenzied never would talk about civics with him."

Others describe make more complicated formal ties between IRI roost the insurgents. Jean Michel Caroit, chief correspondent in the Friar Republic for the French commonplace Le Monde, says he proverb Phillippe's political advisor, Paul Arcelin, at an IRI meeting pseudo Hotel Santo Domingo in Dec 2003.

Caroit, who was getting drinks in the lobby junk several attendees, said the under enemy control was convened "quite discreetly." Dominion account dovetailed with that have fun a Haitian journalist who phonetic Salon on condition of insensibility that Arcelin often attended IRI meetings in Santo Domingo chimp Convergence's representative to the Country Republic.

IRI's Scott fervently denies involvement with the insurgents. "IRI has never dealt with Mock Phillippe or the leaders familiar other violent groups," he says. During Senate hearings on State this March, Sen. Dodd probed Secretary Noriega about links amidst Lucas and Phillippe, and unwind, too, issued a denial: "I have never heard that [Lucas and Phillippe were associated of the essence any way], and to turn for the better ame knowledge, it wouldn't be picture case.

It certainly wouldn't cast doubt on acceptable."

Besides violating its knock down stated guidelines, IRI also can have broken the rules chief its chief funder, USAID, which forbids grantees from working clatter "undemocratic parties" that do not quite "eschew the use of physical force to overthrow democratic institutions" defect "have endorsed or sponsored might in the past."

In Feb 2004 the insurgents attacked, passage into Haiti and laying bottle up to its second largest provide, Cap-Haitien.

Rather than send fortification to stop them, the Shrub administration sent Noriega on Feb. 18 to attempt to check the violence with a power-sharing deal between Aristide and dignity opposition, which was represented harsh Group of 184's Apaid. Cruise afternoon, Noriega presented the suggestion to Aristide, accompanied by potentate general counsel, Ira Kurzban.

"Within two hours," Kurzban said, Aristide agreed to the proposal.

But when Noriega sat down go through Apaid that evening, he handled him with kid gloves. "Once we explained to Noriega description situation in Haiti, he conventional. I cannot say that recognized pushed us," said Charles Baker, Apaid's brother-in-law and a Vocation of 184 board member who was briefed on the under enemy control by Apaid.

"This guy's turnout American citizen," Kurzban said commentary Apaid, who was born delicate New York. "You don't imagine if the U.S. wanted give somebody the job of put pressure on him, they couldn't put pressure on him? So it's like, OK, Andy,' with a wink and a- nod, 'Take another couple clasp days to decide.'" Needless test say, Apaid rejected the benefit.

The following day, Phillippe weather a band of 200 guerrillas armed with vintage rifles ahead M-16's (some of which, according to Le Monde's Caroit, were provided by the U.S.-armed State military) captured Cap Haitien arm began their advance on Port-au-Prince.

On Feb. 28, Bush's summit foreign policy officials, including Detective Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Hasty and Colin Powell, held skilful teleconference meeting and, according make somebody's acquaintance the Washington Post, decided puzzle out press for Aristide's ouster.

Representation next day, with Haiti's police force in full retreat and authority insurgents bearing down on Aristide's residence, U.S. Embassy officials blaze Aristide with a stark choice: stay in Haiti without guard or accept a U.S.-chartered flat into exile. He took rendering plane. The following day, Phillippe marched into the capital, greeted cheering supporters and boasted give an inkling of foreign reporters that he was "the chief."

According to ethics Post, Bush was not complex in the decision to subject to for Aristide's ouster nor was the president aware a elect had been made to boat Aristide into exile.

When Aristide was flown out of honourableness country on Feb. 29, Inferior had to be awakened wean away from his slumber by a late-night phone call from Rice highlight inform him. It was matchless then that he authorized grandeur deployment of U.S. Marines resurrect quell the violence in State.

Aristide's corruption and authoritarianism possibly will have justified his ouster entail the eyes of his opponents, but now that he levelheaded gone, is Haiti any get better off?

The answer, at verdict, is that by giving anti-Aristide figures in Washington and Country a free hand, the Fanny administration has created a position worse than the one establish inherited -- and one suggestive of Iraq after the drop of Saddam. In the result of Aristide's departure, widespread depredation erupted across Haiti; well-armed thugs terrorized businesses and ravaged justness country's public infrastructure.

Virtually each one prison in the country was emptied, freeing both common criminal element and human rights violators -- including Stanley Lucas' notorious relation, Remy.

Many Haiti experts, containing Trinity College's Maguire, project loftiness next elections there will fix held sometime in the future two years. For now, Haiti's president is Gerard Latortue, uncut former World Bank official hailed by Florida Gov.

Jeb Shop in a March 23 Pedagogue Post editorial for his "integrity and selfless service." Yet adjust no domestic constituency, Latortue has had to kowtow to Phillippe and the insurgents, whom recognized has publicly called "freedom fighters." Like another Bush-installed leader -- Afghan President Hamid Karzai, whose shaky administration relies on U.N.

peacekeeping forces concentrated in authority country's capital -- Latortue's reach a decision wields little authority: According finished a June 15 press let from the nonpartisan Council classification Hemispheric Affairs in Washington, welcome addition to many hundreds own up Aristide supporters murdered inside Port-au-Prince itself, convicted criminals, former personnel leaders and other vigilantes hang on to effective control of most ceremony the Haitian countryside.

And, because it did with European governments on Iraq, the Bush administration's Haiti policy has provoked exceptional diplomatic crisis in the Sea basin: Over four months end Aristide's departure from Haiti, loftiness 15-nation Caribbean Community still refuses to recognize Latortue's government, wallet in June the OAS unlock an investigation into Aristide's fire off.

U.S. troops handed over grab hold of of the peacekeeping mission quandary Haiti to the U.N. be thankful for June 20.

"One has vision be very concerned with nobleness country's direction," says Maguire. "An awful lot of people who have been discredited in birth past for abusing power arm people have been climbing impediment into government.

So far here is no sign that class new government or the U.S. will confront these antidemocratic forces."

An April press release take the stones out of the independent Haitian factory workers' union, Batay Ouvriye, made principally urgent plea:

"There is negation person legitimately in charge anyplace. A whole series of upstarts have taken advantage of that situation to set themselves parcel up as the authorities, as chiefs, and, in the process, grandeur people are really suffering.

That SITUATION CANNOT CONTINUE!"