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Our Man in Haiti

George De Mohrenschildt and the CIA in the Nightmare Republic

Trine Day LLC

An Adoptive Texan with some Intelligence Connections

He was a fey character and an off and on acquaintance over the years as was Clémard Charles and some of the other players in that 'great game' as the Brits are proned [sic] to denote it.

– Edward Browder, solder of fortune, gunrunner, CIA asset

I find out he's also hooked to Army Intelligence. Cuba via Haiti.

– CIA's Laurence Parmenter, a figure apparently modeled on David Atlee Phillips, speaking about George de Mohrenschildt, in Libra.

"Our man in Haiti" could be any one of several men. That appellation could refer to George de Mohrenschildt, who enters this narrative fresh from his assignment from CIA to look after the former U.S. Marine Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas and Fort Worth. De Mohrenschildt is in Haiti on a new project. Our man in Haiti" could be Clémard Joseph Charles, a Haitian banker, who, while working for the dictator François Duvalier ("Papa Doc"), sought CIA's assistance in replacing him. It could even be Papa Doc himself, who became appealing to the U.S. as the Caribbean alternative to Fidel Castro, and so was, finally, tolerated, despite the atrocities he visited upon his already beleaguered people.

"Our man in Haiti" could even be a figure like Isadore Irving (I.I.) Davidson, at the center of intrigue in Haiti, keeping watch for CIA on de Mohrenschildt, Charles, Duvalier and others. This is a story of Haiti in the 1960s. It depicts the collision of military and industrial enterprise, as President Eisenhower put it, along with the increasingly powerful intelligence forces that would prophesy what was to come.

After the 1962 missile crisis, CIA gave up on liberating Cuba and removing Fidel Castro, notwithstanding certain posturing, along with several paramilitary operations designed to fail. Once John F. Kennedy signed his agreement with Nikita Khrushchev not to invade Cuba again, CIA had no alternative but to pull back. Kennedy would be the only president since CIA was founded in 1947 to enter into open conflict with the Agency. At that moment in CIA's history, the Agency was not ready to defy openly the directives of a sitting President, whether in Cuba or in Haiti.

Haiti's finest hour had come at the turn of the nineteenth century when a former slave, Toussaint L'Ouverture, with stunning shrewdness and military savoir-faire, freed the country from both slavery and colonial domination. Tousssaint did not live to witness the Revolution that resulted in Haiti's becoming the first independent republic in the Caribbean, and the first black Republic anywhere. Toussaint had to defeat not only the French colonizers of Haiti, but also the armies of Spain and Great Britain, each with its own interests. The mulattoes, a class as much as they were a race, conspired with the British.

Toussaint perished in one of Napoleon's jails in France seven months before Haiti, in 1804, issued its "Declaration of Independence." Unspeakable bloodshed on the part of Haiti's adversaries had left the country exhausted. Fearing the re -imposition of slavery, the ex-slaves exterminated their enemies.

The new flag of Haiti made clear the minimal expectation of its ex -slave population: "Liberty or Death." As C.L.R. James writes in The Black Jacobins, "whites were banished from Haiti for generations, and the unfortunate country, ruined economically, its population lacking in social culture, had its inevitable difficulties doubled by this massacre."

Toussaint would live on in history as the inspiration for Simón Bolívar, who went on to lead the struggle for independence from Spain of five countries in South America. Alexandre Pétion was elected president of Haiti's southern Republic on March 9, 1806. Among Pétion's policies was the prohibition of foreign ownership of the land. When Simón Bolívar sailed into Les Cayes as a political refugee on Christmas Eve, 1815, Pétion nursed him back to health, granted him political asylum, along with military and financial support, and gave him a printing press.

All that Pétion asked in return was that Bolívar emancipate the slaves in the territories he liberated – a promise he did not keep. Bolívar, who was granted sanctuary in Haiti twice, never recognized the country. He refused to invite Haiti to the Congress of American States that he hosted in 1826.

If the Haitian's believed that they were finished with imperialism, James notes, "they were mistaken." Haiti's troubles – the revenge taken upon the former slaves who had led the struggle – resulted in Haiti's becoming and remaining the poorest country in the hemisphere. Its impoverishment was in no small measure the fruit of the colonial powers and the U.S. blockading this first black Republic. There would be no "nation building" by the U.S. here. Toussaint had known that "the guarantee of the liberty of the blacks is the prosperity of agriculture" – Haiti's ability to feed itself rather than relying on commodity production for export. It didn't work out that way.

Haiti has been vulnerable to American investment since the turn of the twentieth century. In 1910, a U.S. entrepreneur built a railroad in Haiti, the better to facilitate his exploitation of the area. Where business went, the U.S. military was not far behind. In 1915, Woodrow Wilson dispatched two companies of Marines to Haiti to protect American investments against growing German competition,.

"Action is evidently necessary," Wilson declared, "and no doubt it would be a mistake to postpone it long." Wilson's pretext will be examined in due course. The military was acting on behalf of empire long before CIA was a gleam in William ('Wild Bill') Donovan's and Allen Dulles' eyes.

On foot, and with fixed bayonets, the Marines visited the Bank of Haiti and "in broad daylight, by use of force, made off with the gold stored there and sent it off to New York." In 1918, the Haitian constitution was revised to permit foreign ownership of land and property, supplanting the revolutionary 1804 document that forbade both. The U.S. Marines remained in Haiti until 1934.

Among the entrepreneurs turning a profit in Haiti in the following years was Brown & Root, who in 1953 signed a $28,000,000 contract to build the Péligre Dam in the Artibonite Valley. Through the Export-Import bank, the U.S. government provided $31,000,000, with Brown & Root entering into its customary "cost plus" arrangement. "Cost plus" meant that an original contract would be amended to meet unexpected costs, which always managed to make their appearance in abundance. Brown & Root were closing up shop when President Paul Eugène Magloire fled the country in 1956.

Preceding Colonel Paul Magloire had been Dumarsais Estimé, who was called "un noir au pouvoir," a black man in power. Estimé had supported rural cooperatives and nationalized the banana industry, and proved too reformist for the elite. He passed a law granting a minimum wage, yet failed to mobilize popular support. A military coup on May 10, 1950, a "bloodless coup" – supported by business, by the Roman Catholic Church, and by mulatto Marxists – ended Estimé's reign and led to the election of Paul Magloire, who had served as commandant of the palace guard under Estimé.

Under Magloire, Haiti's tourism flourished along with its relations with the U.S. as he welcomed foreign investment. Yet Magloire suppressed strikes. He also imposed censorship, shutting down the newspaper Haiti Démocratique. He closed down schools that he considered hotbeds of subversion and taxed the population mercilessly.

Magloire's regime was repressive and ridden with corruption, fueled by bribery. He jailed his political opponents and banned political meetings. It wasn't long before yet another military coup was in the offing. A general strike preceded Magloire's flight from Haiti to Jamaica and then on to Brooklyn, New York. Magloire departed from Haiti with twenty million dollars. The Army returned to power, followed by the election of Dr. François Duvalier, "Papa Doc," who had been part of Estimé's government and had opposed Magloire from the start.

Papa Doc was a tiny country doctor, whose notoriety derived from his having battled a typhoid epidemic, for which he earned the nickname. At first glance, he might have seemed an unprepossessing figure, peering out from behind Coke-bottle eyeglasses. He wrapped himself in oversized heavy black wool suits despite Haiti's unforgiving tropical climate. Duvalier, however, was not to be underestimated.

Duvalier ensured his election – the year was 1957 – with a $400,000 bribe to the Army dispensed by his personal banker, Clémard Joseph Charles. Charles tendered his contribution in Duvalier's name. A loyal acolyte of Papa Doc, it certainly seemed, Charles chipped in $46,000 of his own money for soldiers who had not been paid for two months.

A State of Emergency proclaimed at the beginning of 1958 became all but permanent. By April 1961, Duvalier had dissolved the National Assembly and the Senate so that the legislative branch of the government would be a single chamber represented by a single political party. He announced that he would be "president for life."

Duvalier identified himself, as "black," as had Estimé. Robert I. Rotberg writes in Haiti: The Politics of Squalor that Duvalier gained wide support by suggesting that mulattoes "could redeem themselves only by thinking black." Duvalier invoked Toussaint L'Ouverture as if he were his moral successor, speaking for the black masses of Haiti. Duvalier also embraced Vodou ("voodoo") as if he were one of the gods himself, dispatched to protect the Haitian people. Duvalier was no friend to foreign-born Roman Catholic priests, whom he persecuted and banished from the country, starting with Monsignor François Poirier, Archbishop of Port-au-Prince.

Freedom of the press soon became a distant memory, as did independent trade unions; in this Duvalier did not differ markedly from his predecessor, Magloire. Duvalier also purged the judiciary and dismissed the president of the highest court, who had urged publicly that Haiti maintain an independent judiciary. Economically, Haiti sank even further, with the balance of trade entirely on the side of its neighbor on the island of Hispaniola, the Dominican Republic.

To ward off opposition, dissent and criticism of any kind, Duvalier did not rely on the Haitian army, which he reduced to 5,000 men. Instead, Papa Doc created a private militia, the "Tontons Macoutes" (literally "bogey men"), murderers by reflex and criminals by habit, whose modus operandi was to eliminate entire families.

Uniforms were scarce, but none were required. The Tontons Macoutes favored opaque black sunglasses, and, when they could find them, blue jeans. People were gunned down in broad daylight. Many disappeared. Others were tortured and then executed in the basement of the National Palace.

After the Cuban revolution, a nervous Duvalier invited the U.S. Marines back to Haiti to train guerrilla fighters in the event of a Castro invasion. The U.S. obliged. The State Department's William A. Wieland sent an entire rifle company to Haiti, led by a six foot four inch, red headed Marine colonel with a flaming red mustache. Fluent in French, the red-haired colonel brought with him, according to Joseph F. Dryer, Jr., who will be a major character in this narrative, a DC airplane (probably a Super DC-3) and trained four companies of Haitians. (Four companies would amount to about four hundred and thirty-two men). They easily eliminated an invading Castro brigade of six hundred and eighty, who had landed on the south side of the almost impenetrable Haitian jungle, and had begun to move up the island.

CIA did not yet have a station in Haiti. They didn't need one. Toward American business, Duvalier remained benign.

In 1959, the U.S. government sent a $4,300,000 loan for development of the Artibonite Valley, along with a grant of $7,000,000. In 1960, American aid jumped to $21.4 million, while Haiti's sugar quota (the amount of sugar guaranteed by the U.S. for import) rose by twenty-five percent. The Artibonite Valley, through which the Artibonite River flows, is located in Haiti's central plateau. The Valley had been Haiti's main rice growing area, and also featured banana plantations, but the absence of irrigation was a persistent problem.

Over the years, Haitian presidents like Paul Magloire initiated various irrigation schemes. The Péligre dam – 220 feet high and 1,075 feet wide, was to irrigate 80,000 arid acres. When Duvalier came to power, Haiti still owed the Export-Import Bank $25 million on the Artibonite Valley project, which had yet to be productive. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Haiti was the only Caribbean nation to show a decrease in agricultural production.

Robert and Nancy Heinl write in their history of Haiti that "it was the measure of Duvalier's extraordinary force of character that no nation or agency rendering aid to Haiti ever openly challenged the nonfiscal accounts during his presidency." No one questioned where the aid went. Duvalier announced that his role models were Marx, Lenin, Atatürk, Nkrumah and Mao Tse-Tung. Yet, François Duvalier, whatever his faults and despite his invocation of Communists as his heroes, was, for the United States, preferable to that unpredictable Communist ninety miles from its shores: Fidel Castro.

In exchange for all this largesse, Duvalier was expected to vote with the United States at international meetings. In the Cuban Missile Crisis, Duvalier supported the United States, although before long he was threatening to "bring President Kennedy to his knees." Kennedy held Duvalier at arm's length. Only after Kennedy's assassination was a new investment loan awarded to Haiti, guaranteeing $4,000,000 for an oil refinery. An Inter-American Development Bank loan would improve the water system.

Eighty percent of all this American aid disappeared into the pockets of Duvalier and his minions, just as it had with the presidents who preceded him. Although there were no confiscations of American property, no Castro-style agrarian reform, American businessmen faced repeated shakedowns and harassment from the Duvalier government. Foremost among the entrepreneurs rooted in Haiti was the Texan Clint Murchison, Jr. To be on the safe side, Murchison registered in Washington, D.C. as a lobbyist for Duvalier.

Murchison owned flour mills ("Caribbean Mills"), and a mammoth meatpacking business called HAMPCO, "Haitian-American Meat and Provision Company, S.A." At the flour mills, grey flour was ground for the poor out of imported surplus wheat. In the fiscal year ending June 1962, HAMPCO shipped 1,609,886 pounds of meat; between July 1, 1961 and September 30, 1963, 5,237,242 pounds of meat left Haiti.

Sanitary conditions at HAMPCO were sub-standard. There were no health inspections, and the meat was unfit for the U.S. market. Instead, it was shipped to Puerto Rico where regulation was non-existent.

When "certain deficiencies" finally led to HAMPCO being denied an import certificate even to Puerto Rico, Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson's secretary, Bobby Baker, made the trouble evaporate – for a commission of one cent per pound. Johnson received his kickback. The scandal was being investigated in late 1963 by Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, who planned to add this example of Lyndon's malfeasance to his growing list of justifications for removing Lyndon Johnson from the 1964 presidential ticket.

Nor were Lyndon Johnson, Murchison and Bobby Baker the only Texans reaping profits from Haiti. George H.W. Bush's partner in Zapata and Zapata Off-Shore oil, CIA operative Thomas J. Devine, working out of New York, was also doing business in Haiti. By 1985, cheap labor and tax concessions would result in the presence of two hundred and forty factories in Haiti owned by U.S. businessmen. The minimum wage was now only three dollars a day.

Still, American corporations concluded that Duvalier was too blatantly corrupt and unreliable. It was not so much Duvalier's corruption that made the U.S. uneasy. They had dealt with corruption before. Rather, it was the fear of the nationalization of American businesses, along with an unreasonable tax burden, and unpredictable shakedowns for cash, that by 1963 led CIA to enter into serious discussions about how most efficaciously to remove Papa Doc.

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Excerpted from Our Man in Haiti by Joan Mellen. Copyright © 2012 Joan Mellen. Excerpted by permission of Trine Day LLC.
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