The Central Intelligence Agency created an intelligence service in Haiti in the mid-1980s to fight the cocaine trade, but the unit evolved into an instrument of political terror whose officers at times engaged in drug trafficking, American and Haitian officials say.
American officials say the CIA cut its ties to the Haitian organization shortly after the 1991 military coup against Haiti's first democratically elected president, the Rev. Jean-Bertrand Aristide.Three former chiefs of the Haitian unit, the National Intelligence Service, known as SIN from its initials in French, are now on the U.S. Treasury Department's list of Haitian officials whose assets in the United States were frozen this month because of their support for the military leaders blocking Aristide's return to power.
The disclosure of the American role in creating the agency in 1986 comes amid increasing congressional and public debate about the intelligence relationship between the United States and Haiti, the richest and poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere.
Supporters of Aristide contend that the CIA is undermining the chances for his return with analyses skewed by a misplaced trust in his military foes.
The agency paid key members ofthe junta now in power for political and military information up until the ouster of Aristide in 1991. A review of the CIA's activities in Haiti under the Reagan and Bush administrations, based on documents and interviews with current and former officials, confirms that senior CIA officers have long been deeply skeptical about the stability and politics of Aristide, a leftist priest.
No evidence suggests that the CIA backed the coup or intentionally undermined Aristide. In fact, the agency has acted to help him at times.
Though much of the CIA's activities in Haiti remains secret, the emerging record reveals both failures and achievements.
Having created the Haitian intelligence service, the agency failed to ensure that several million dollars spent training and equipping the service from 1986 to 1991 was actually used in the war on drugs. The unit produced little narcotics intelligence. Senior members committed acts of political terror against Aristide supporters, including interrogations and torture, and threatened last year to kill the local chief of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
On the other hand, U.S. officials said, one senior Haitian intelligence officer dissuaded soldiers from killing Aristide during the 1991 coup. The CIA also helped to save the lives of at least six Aristide supporters after the coup, evacuating them in a late-night rescue that involved the Navy's elite SEAL unit, officials said.
The CIA has a mixed record in analyzing the fall of the 30-year Duvalier family dictatorship in 1986. The agency's analysts did not foresee the political violence that led to the collapse of elections in 1987 and the 1991 coup. But the analysts correctly predicted this year that the Haitian military would block Aristide's scheduled return in October.
Members of the congressional panels that oversee the CIA say the agency's intelligence-gathering helped American policymakers bewildered by the political chaos.
"The problems of Haiti are problems of policy, not intelligence," said Rep. Dan Glickman, a Kansas Democrat who heads the House intelligence committee. "In some cases, intelligence gets a bum rap. From the interviews we've had with the agency, I don't get any feeling that our goal was to preserve military dictatorship in Haiti."
But Sen. Christopher J. Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who received extensive briefings from the agency, asserted two weeks ago that the CIA's view of Haiti was distorted by its ties to the Haitian military. "A lot of the information we're getting is from the very same people who in front of the world are brutally murdering people," Dodd said.
Established in 1986, SIN received $500,000 to $1 million a year in equipment, training, and financial support from the CIA, U.S. and Haitian government officials say. The money may have sent a mixed message for Congress was withholding about $1.5 million in aid for the Haitian military regime at the same time.
By late 1988, the agency decided to "distance itself" from the intelligence service, a senior U.S. official said. But the ties continued until October 1991, just after the Sept. 30 coup against Aristide, he said.
The Haitian intelligence service provided little information on drug trafficking and some of its members themselves became enmeshed in the drug trade, American officials said. A U.S. official who worked at the American Embassy in Haiti in 1991 and 1992 said he took a dim view of SIN.
"It was a military organization that distributed drugs in Haiti," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "It never produced drug intelligence. The agency gave them money under counter-narcotics, and they used their training to do other things in the political arena."