Our Man in Haiti: George De Mohrenschildt and the CIA in the Nightmare Republic by Joan Mellen

Author:Joan Mellen [Mellen, Joan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Non-Fiction, History
Publisher: TrineDay
Published: 2012-10-06T00:00:00+00:00

Seven

The Paramilitary Game

“We have the green light from the CIA.”

Rolando Masferrer Rojas

“There will be no Cuba and no Bay of Pigs here.”

Doctor Magiot in Graham Greene’s The Comedians.

In the spring of 1965, CIA sponsored a cornucopia of invasions of Haiti. If Joe Dryer’s abandonment of his kenaf business hadn’t been reason enough, the Valentine-Fayed affair had persuaded the Agency that American business was not secure under Papa Doc. Haiti had been overrun by weapons dealers and various unsavoury characters, many of whom, as CIA noted, graced George de Mohrenschildt’s dinner table. Behind the scenes lurked drug smuggling, with Haiti as a station in a triangular smuggling operation that brought heroin to the U.S. Once more CIA assumed the uneasy role of providing resources for the downfall of Papa Doc without implicating ODYOKE, the U.S. Government.

Records reveal that in these paramilitary invasions, which seem designed more to destabilize Duvalier’s government than actually to overthrow it, the U.S. was unanimously on board. Lyndon Johnson’s national security adviser McGeorge Bundy arranged that the State Department and CIA “coordinate on investigating alternate sources of political power in Haiti.”

The President’s “303 Covert Action Committee” now authorized CIA to make “an intensive survey of Haitian individuals of influence, both inside and outside the country,” who would best serve “U.S. interests.” Candidates would be assessed according to their “responsiveness to U.S. direction.” Only a national leader under the domination of the U.S. and close to CIA was acceptable to rule over what Graham Greene had termed in his novel The Comedians, the “nightmare Republic.”

By June 1965, the Joint Chiefs had compiled a list of four “potentially useful” Haitian officers; the military was again serving CIA’s policy. Desmond Fitzgerald “took these under advisement.” One officer was already known to CIA, having proven himself to be “of some use in a covert role on another continent.” The name “Clémard Joseph Charles” does not appear on these declassified lists.

The minutes of the June 10, 1965 meeting of the 303 Committee include a section entitled “Haiti – The Threat and Possible Pre-Emptive Measures,” foreshadowing the far more costly pre-emptive wars of the twenty-first century.

The “303 Committee” was a direct descendant of the 5412 Committee, a vehicle for the authorization of covert action, chaired by Richard Nixon during the Eisenhower administration. Under discussion were the types of covert actions outlined in George Kennan’s National Security directive 10/2, which allowed CIA to engage in all manner of covert actions ranging from what the Agency termed “black” propaganda and sabotage to murder.

The 5412 Committee became the “Special Group” until 1964, when the name changed to the “303 Committee.” At its meetings, the Director of Central Intelligence sat alongside the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, and the Deputy Under-Secretary of State for Political Affairs. CIA had emerged as a power in its own right, free of accountability and boasting of no electoral mandate.

Cautious, CIA decided that the training of a force of Haitian exiles should take place only in the Dominican Republic.

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