9947: Pierre Jean replies to FAEdouard(fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Pierre Jean <pierrejean01@yahoo.com>

The involvement of some of the former coup leaders in
drug-related activities is actually not so secret, and
certainly was no secret to the US government as you
will see below. 

I have what I consider reliable sources (human assets,
if you will) for what I wrote about Elysee ... those I
cannot disclose for obvious reasons. Elysee managed to
stay out of the limelight because, apart from a few
but key meetings with drug traders, he kept himself
out of public view the whole time and acted behind the
scenes. Do you disagree with any of the other details
I provided about Elysee?

Now, consider this:

1) as a starting point, I would point you to a very
public source: The New York Times of 6/8/94, with an
article by Howard French entitled "U.S. Says Haitian
Military is Involved in Drug Traffic."

2) Also, check out if you can find them the following
articles: "What's Behind Washington's Silence on Haiti
Drug Connection?" and "A Haitian Call to Arms"
by Dennis Bernstein of Pacific News Service published
on 10/20/93 and 11/2/93, respectively. These two
articles detail Michel Francois's involvement as the
point man on the drug trade. The sources he uses are
leaked confidential DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency)
reports that were pretty damning for the Haitian
military. The man charged with "financial montage"
once the deals were struck was Elysee (this is not in
the article.)

3) You need to read "Haiti's Nightmare: The Cocaine
Coup and the CIA Connection" by Paul DeRienzo
published in The Shadow's April/May 1992 issue. In it,
you will learn that the US government, from the DEA to
the CIA to Congress (Sen. John Kerry and Christopher
Dodd in particular), had pretty much all the
information that was needed to indict a good part of
the military for drug trafficking. In fact, well
before the coup, Colonel Jean-Claude Paul was indicted
in the US precisely for drug trafficking. I suspect,
if you live in the United States, that you can use
this info as a starting point to dig up old
congressional records and senate hearing transcripts
on the subject. I am sure you will find it quite
interesting.

4) Also, you should investigate the creation in Haiti
in 1986 of the Service d'Information National (SIN),
which was financed in part by the CIA and which was
supposed to fight cocaine trafficking in Haiti. In
fact, SIN high-ranking officials (some were actually
military) actually became drug traders and involved
their other military friends in it.

5) In August 2000, Haiti deported to the USA Carlos
Botero Asprilla, a drug trafficker connected to
Colombia's Medellin cocaine cartel. Botero had been
operating out of Haiti for years, and was one of the
original intermediary between the military and the
cartels.

One could say that all of this stuff comes straight
out of a conspiracy theory and that there is very
little proof. However, if I settle simply on anecdotal
evidence gathered in Haiti from 1984 onward, I am sure
the increase in drug trafficking and in illicit riches
is too obvious to be ignored. But I encourage you to
look beyond the secondary sources I listed above and
get the primary sources which they list, many of which
are available to the public. This way, you can decide
for yourself whether there was indeed  an issue of
drug trafficking within the Haitian military. You will
also be able to determine what the US know, and when
did it learn about it.

On the subject of drugs in Haiti today, it is
interesting to note how the PNH stepped in and
basically took over the networks that the military had
set up, leading to that well-know phenomenon of "les
armateurs" in Cap-Haitien and of the speed boats and
dropped shipments in the Southeast these past 3 or 4
years.

It is also amusing (but sad) to note two things: (1)
the number of Colombians living in Haiti who are not
involved in any visible lawful activity (retirement at
a young age must be nice!) and (2) the number of
Colombians in jails around the country on any given
day, in places like Jacmel and Cap-Haitien. I have
been told that the numbers have come down, but there
are still a few of them here and there. Finally, check
out the number of Colombians who "live" in such places
as Jacmel and Port-de-Paix. Not that they don't have
the right to, but why would they elect domicile in
such places when they could be living a comfortable
life in Bogota, Barranquilla, Cartagena, or Medellin?
Makes me wonder.

However, you raise a more important point when you
write:

> ... Also,
> why has the US ignored this "fact" ?

You assume that the US would "naturally" move toward
crushing any source of drugs entering the US. In fact,
you may be partially correct. The US invasion of 1994
was billed as a humanitarian effort to return
Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power. However, it is also
alleged that it was meant to curb the exports of
cocaine from Haiti to the US which had quadrupled (by
some estimates) during the coup period.

On the other hand, there have been many instances in
history where the US has not acted on information it
possessed to crack down on law violators. The
complicity between the CIA and several Haitian
military officers may have had someting to do with the
fact that there was no real crackdown for a while.
After all, we witnessed the whole Iran-Contra affair
which did not make the US government look too good.
Why should it be any different with the Haitian
military, some of whom were graduates of the infamous
School of the Americas?

One last thing: I read the other day that the alleged
murderers of American nuns in El Salvador in the
1980s, who were former Salvadoran military personnel,
were given permanent residency in the United States,
of all places. Why shouldn't Elysee, who was one of
the coup leaders, be entitled to the same priviledge?
After all, he is not the only one. Toto Constant is in
the US, for starters, and so is Colonel Carl Dorelien
(former Chief of the military in Cap) who had the
nerve to win the Lottery in Florida, if my sources are
right.

Pierre Jean 


__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Check out Yahoo! Shopping and Yahoo! Auctions for all of
your unique holiday gifts! Buy at http://shopping.yahoo.com
or bid at http://auctions.yahoo.com