Our Man in Haiti

George De Mohrenschildt and the CIA in the Nightmare Republic

By Joan Mellen

Trine Day LLC

Copyright © 2012 Joan Mellen
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-936296-52-1

Contents

Cover Image,
Title page,
Copyright page,
Also by Joan Mellen,
Dedication,
Acknowledgments,
A note on usage,
Quote,
1 – An Adoptive Texan with some Intelligence Connections,
2 – Clémard Joseph Charles Teams Up With George De Mohrenschildt,
3 – Has CIA Abandoned Clémard Joseph Charles? George De Mohrenschildt In Haiti,
4 - Philippe Thyraud De Vosjoli: Everyone Is Connected,
5 – A Sheikh From Kuwait,
6 – George De Mohrenschildt Under CIA Surveillance,
7 – The Paramilitary Game,
8 – Second And Third Acts,
Notes,
Addendum – H.L. HUNT & SONS and CIA,
Photographs,
Documents,
Bibliography,
Index,
Back Cover,

CHAPTER 1

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...