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