19518: (hermantin)Miami-Herald-U.S. allegedly blocked extra bodyguards (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Posted on Mon, Mar. 01, 2004

ARISTIDE SECURITY


U.S. allegedly blocked extra bodyguards

The United States allegedly blocked Haitian President Jean
Bertrand-Aristide's last-minute attempt to bolster his personal bodyguards.

BY JUAN O. TAMAYO

jtamayo@herald.com


The Bush administration blocked a last-minute attempt by Haitian President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide to bolster his bodyguards -- mostly former U.S.
Special Forces members -- fearing he wanted them to organize and lead a
counterattack against the rebels who threatened his presidency,
knowledgeable sources said Sunday.

U.S. officials also forced a small group of extra bodyguards from the San
Francisco-based Steele Foundation to delay their flight from the United
States to Haiti from Sunday to today -- too late to help Aristide, said the
sources, who are close to Aristide.

The Steele Foundation, which despite its name is a private
executive-protection firm, has long held the contract, approved by the U.S.
State Department, to provide Aristide's personal security detail. Most of
them are veterans of the Special Forces and the State Department's VIP
protection service.

Calls to the Steele Foundation Sunday went unanswered, and State Department
officials declined to comment.

Aristide's Steele guard rose from about 10 to about 60 in 2000 after an
apparent coup attempt the previous December, according to Herald reports.

But it had dropped to around 20 to 25 as of recent weeks, the sources
indicated.

EMBASSY ACTION

The sources said that after the Haitian government had recently contacted
Steele to provide a large group of extra bodyguards, U.S. Embassy officials
in the Haitian capital contacted Steele representatives and warned them off.

Reports floating around the capital in recent weeks had Aristide asking
Steele to help professionalize his security forces.

Other reports indicated he wanted them to organize and command a
counterattack against the rebels.

Haiti's National Police -- a force of 6,000 that had shrunk to 4,000 --
virtually evaporated in the face of a rebel force estimated at a few hundred
since the uprising against the president began Feb. 5. Aristide abolished
the army in 1995.

''The embassy took it as if the Steele guys were going to go after these
guys,'' said one source, who would not confirm whether Aristide had indeed
intended to have the new bodyguards prepare his forces for a counterattack.

The smaller group of bodyguards that was scheduled to go Sunday ''was just
additional protection, not a number large enough to go after these guys,''
the source added.

Most of the Steele Foundation's contracts to protect foreign dignitaries --
it also provides security for Afghan President Hamid Karzai -- must be
approved, officially or indirectly, by the U.S. government.

Government officials in Haiti and Washington told The Herald in early 2002
that Aristide was paying $6 million to $9 million a year for the 60 or so
bodyguards, a considerable sum for the hemisphere's poorest nation.

PROTECTION UNIT

The contract also called for a ''weapons package'' for the guards worth just
under $1 million, one of the officials said at the time.

Ken Kurtz, a managing director of Steele, confirmed that his firm provides
Aristide's ''presidential protection unit,'' but declined to comment on the
reports that it had been expanded or any other ``operational questions.''

Aristide's reliance on foreign bodyguards reflected the political crisis
facing the controversial president, toppled in a military coup in 1991,
restored after a U.S. invasion in 1994 and then reelected in 2000. ''The
government of Haiti, like any government after a violent incident such as
happened, would be interested in improving security,'' Kurtz told The
Herald.

2001 PALACE ATTACK

On Dec. 17, 2001, two dozen heavily armed men had attacked the National
Palace in Port-au-Prince, killing two policemen and two passersby.

The apparent coup attempt allegedly was led by Guy Philippe, a former police
commissioner in northern Haiti.

Aristide was not in the palace at the time.

Philippe escaped into exile in the neighboring Dominican Republic, but
returned last month at the head of the Haitian Liberation Front, a rebel
group of some 50 to 60 former soldiers who captured Haiti's second-largest
city, Cap Haitien, last Sunday.

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