[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 75 (Friday, May 24, 1996)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E919-E921]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             WAITING TO HEAR FROM THE SECRETARY OF THE ARMY

                                 ______


                           HON. JOHN CONYERS

                              of michigan

                    in the house of representatives

                         Thursday, May 23, 1996

  Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, the United States has the best intentions 
in Haiti but right now it is engaged in an obstruction of justice of 
the most egregious kind. When a multinational force restored democracy 
to Haiti the United States Military seized thousands of documents from 
the Haitian Military headquarters and from the headquarters of FRAPH, a 
violent paramilitary organization. Over a year and a half after they 
were taken, the Department of Defense still has not returned them, and 
the State Department is still supposedly negotiating their return. The 
seized documents are desperately needed today to collect information 
about human rights violations that took place while the elected 
president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide was in forced exile.
  On December 1, 40 Members of Congress wrote the following letter to 
President Clinton, calling for the release of the documents:

         Congress of the United States, House of Representatives,
                                 Washington, DC, December 1, 1995.
     President William Jefferson Clinton,
     The White House.
       Dear Mr. President: Just over a year ago, we celebrated the 
     restoration of democracy to Haiti with the return of its duly 
     elected President, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Your role as 
     president was crucial to this occurring. The re-establishment 
     of the legitimate government of Haiti followed three years of 
     a murderous military regime. Recent press accounts have 
     discussed how the Pentagon is now holding tens of thousands 
     of pages of documents taken during the restoration of 
     government, and has yet to return them. We seek a complete 
     account of all documents and their immediate return to the 
     Haitian government. This is not only normal and appropriate, 
     but expected in the relations between the two friendly 
     nations. The documents should include any and all that may 
     pertain to the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense 
     Intelligence Agency, or any other part of the United States 
     Government.
       There is absolutely no justification why these materials 
     should be in the hands of our government now that the 
     legitimate government of Haiti has been restored. The fact 
     that these documents have been withheld obviously raises 
     questions about the level of collaboration between elements 
     of the American government and the former military regime.
       These documents are necessary to the government of Haiti if 
     it is to make sense of

[[Page E920]]

     what happened during the three years of President Aristide's 
     forced exile. We should be comforted by President Aristide's 
     enlightened policy of reconciliation that has been the 
     hallmark of his new government. Nevertheless, Haitian 
     investigators must have full knowledge about the sources and 
     causes of the pain and bloodshed during the rule of the 
     military junta if Haiti is to be reconciled and to move 
     forward.
       The United States must satisfy its responsibility to meet 
     the Haitian government's right to the ownership of these 
     documents. To deny President Aristide the official documents 
     of his insubordinate military is an insult to this new 
     democratic nation. Anything short of a complete return of all 
     documents also undermines our policy's goals of supporting a 
     thriving, stable, and peaceful democracy in Haiti. It would 
     also undermine the integrity of open democracy in our nation. 
     We might add that history has taught us repeatedly that 
     democracy is not strengthened by concealing what may be 
     embarrassing or what may be inconvenient.
       We expect that you will facilitate the immediate return of 
     all the aforementioned documents.
           Sincerely,
         John Conyers, Jr., Carrie Meek, Julian Dixon, Alan 
           Mollohan, Jim Traficant, Marcy Kaptur, Nancy Pelosi, 
           Eva Clayton, Kweisi Mfume, Barney Frank, Ron Dellums, 
           Joe Moakley, Paul Kanjoriski, Cardiss Collins, Dave 
           Bonior, Sheila Jackson-Lee, George Brown, John Lewis, 
           Louis Stokes, George Miller, Maurice Hinchey, Bennie 
           Thompson, Martin Sabo, Peter DeFazio, Joe Kennedy, 
           Henry Gonzalez, Victor Frazer, Neil Abercrombie, Bobby 
           Rush, Eliot Engel, Major Owens, Eddie Bernice Johnson, 
           Earl Hilliard, Ed Towns, Donald Payne, Sam Gibbons, 
           Chaka Fattah, Bernard Sanders, Vic Fazio, Nita Lowey.

  A few days later, Members of the Congressional Black Caucus had a 
meeting with the Haitian Ambassador Jean Casimir. Then we met with the 
State Department Haiti Coordinator, Ambassador James Dobbins, who has 
since moved on to the National Security Council. At both briefings, we 
learned that the administration intended to return the documents and 
materials. Soon thereafter, the U.S. government offered the Haitian 
Government incredibly onerous terms for return which the Haitian 
Government rejected.
  On January 30, two dozen members of Congress joined me in writing to 
President Clinton again and demanding the release of these documents. 
That letter follows:

         Congress of the United States, House of Representatives,
                                 Washington, DC, January 30, 1996.
     The President,
     The White House.
       Dear Mr. President: We are writing to you regarding the 
     Haitian documents and materials still in possession of the 
     United States Government. The restoration of democracy in 
     Haiti has been a hallmark of your foreign policy success and 
     we are enthusiastic supporters of this policy and your 
     ongoing attention towards Haiti. We applaud the release of 
     some of the documents, but the continued retention of those 
     remaining troubles us because it is frustrating the judicial 
     process in Haiti. Therefore, we urgently request a meeting 
     with you as soon as possible.
       Many of us first wrote to you about this matter on December 
     1, 1995, and were encouraged by your administration's 
     announcement that the documents would be released. Nearly two 
     months later, they still have not been returned. Surely this 
     is far longer than is required to resolve any logistical 
     requirements necessary for the secure transfer of such 
     materials. The Government of Haiti needs these documents if 
     it is to understand what happened during the years of 
     President Aristide's forced exile, to continue the process of 
     disarmament, and to fully investigate the crimes of 
     paramilitary groups such as FRAPH. Return of the documents is 
     especially urgent in light of the pending extradition of 
     FRAPH's leader, Emmanuel Constant.
       In your eloquently delivered State of the Union address, 
     you pointed out that ``in Haiti the dictators are gone, 
     democracy has a new day.'' The inauguration of a new 
     president in Haiti on February 7 promises a new era of 
     peaceful transition of power. However, the challenges of 
     disarmament and judicial inquiry remain. An important way of 
     assuring that these processes continue is to return the 
     Haitian documents and materials. There is no excuse for the 
     intransigence of elements of the United States Government who 
     are obstructing the rule of law the United States and the 
     Multinational Force helped restore to Haiti. Doing so 
     interferes with the young spirit of democracy and 
     reconciliation in Haiti and contradicts the old tradition of 
     democracy and openness in America. We look forward to meet 
     with you to discuss these matters in full detail.
           Sincerely,
         John Conyers, Major Owens, Cynthia McKinney, Harold Ford, 
           Barbara-Rose Collins, Bennie Thompson, Ronald Dellums, 
           Louis Stokes, Carrie Meek, Eleanor Holmes Norton, 
           Donald Payne, Alcee Hastings, Sheila Jackson-Lee, Earl 
           Hillard, Sanford Bishop, Albert Wynn, Corrine Brown, 
           Bernie Sanders, Victor Frazer, Jim Clyburn, George 
           Miller, Xavier Becerra, Peter DeFazio, George Brown, 
           Barney Frank, Luis Gutierrez.

  But the seizure of the documents took on a whole new meaning when the 
New York Times reported on February 6 that during the invasion American 
troops were told by superiors that FRAPH was a legitimate opposition 
group. They were told this despite the fact that Pentagon and State 
Department officials knew that FRAPH was a group of bloodthirsty thugs, 
and that it had been linked to thousands of murders.
  This raised a number of troubling questions. For example, why were US 
troops deliberately misinformed? Why was there such a stark contrast 
between stated policy and action? Why were the documents taken in the 
first place? If the documents were taken to protect our troops, why 
haven't they been returned since, and why weren't they shared with 
other troops? I decided to put some of these questions to my good 
friend, the Honorable Togo West, the Secretary of the Army. I am 
submitting my letter to Secretary West for the Record.

         Congress of the United States, House of Representatives,
                                   Washington, DC, April 12, 1996.
     Hon. Togo D. West, Jr.,
     Secretary of the U.S. Army, The Pentagon, Washington, DC.
       Dear Togo: I know you are aware that our relations with 
     haiti are of great concern to me. I have traveled there many 
     times over the years, most recently with Ambassador Madeleine 
     Albright to witness that nation's first peaceful transfer of 
     power as the democratically elected Rene Preval was sworn in 
     as president. While this was cause for celebration, difficult 
     challenges for Haiti remain.
       One of the most pressing issues facing Haiti is to 
     establish security among the people and confidence in the new 
     justice system by investigating human rights crimes and 
     continuing the disarmament process. I am concerned that the 
     United States is not doing everything it could to advance 
     these goals. While the Republican Congress is preoccupied 
     with a few select murder cases, new gangs and paramilitary 
     organizations threaten a new surge of vigilante violence 
     because their weapons have not been taken away. News reports 
     from Haiti indicate as many as ten armed anti-democratic 
     gangs are currently operating.
       During the restoration of democracy to Haiti in the fall of 
     1994, the U.S. military seized photographs, thousands of 
     pages of documents, and other materials from the Haitian Army 
     (the FAH'd), the headquarters of the Front for Advancement 
     and Progress of Haiti (FRAPH) and other locations. I am well 
     aware of the ongoing discussions between the United States 
     Government and the Government of Haiti to arrange for the 
     return of the Haitian documents.\1\ I have written two 
     letters to President Clinton about this matter, signed by a 
     cumulative total of 50 members of Congress. I believe that a 
     return of these materials could make an important 
     contribution to the establishment of peace and justice in 
     Haiti.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
     \1\ I commissioned a Congressional Research Service study by 
     the American Law Division which determined that according to 
     the Foreign Relations Law of the United States and 
     international law as interpreted by the United States, the 
     seized documents clearly belong to the legitimate government 
     of Haiti. The opinion also noted that their seizure and 
     retention is a departure from these norms.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
       This letter, however, is a request for information about 
     the directives that were given prior to the seizure of the 
     documents and materials and what happened in the period after 
     they were taken. Since the U.S. Army constituted a large 
     proportion of American involvement in the multinational 
     operation in Haiti, I thought you would be able to provide me 
     with some details about the actual seizure of the documents 
     and the decisions leading up to that action. Specifically, I 
     would like to know (1) generally what troops were told to 
     look for by commanding officers before the searches; (2) 
     which locations were searched and if a complete list of these 
     sites is available; (3) if SALUTE forms or other inventories 
     are available describing everything that was found; and most 
     importantly, (4) what the established priority intelligence 
     requirements and information requirements were.
       I understand that captured enemy material is an important 
     element of intelligence, and that seizure of CEM is vital to 
     gaining information about the adversary. In meeting that 
     requirement, it seems to me that the armed forces involved in 
     the seizures did an admirable job. The seizures in Haiti are 
     a special case because they occurred during a multinational 
     operation. The ``Joint Doctrine for Intelligence Support to 
     Operations'' (Joint Pub. 2-0) notes in its chapter on 
     multilateral operations that ``. . . nations should share all 
     relevant and pertinent intelligence about the situation and 
     the adversary to attain the best possible common 
     understanding of the threatened interests, determine relevant 
     and attainable objectives, and achieve unified efforts 
     against the adversary.'' I am a strong supporter of the 
     United Nations and the UN is of course facing increased 
     skepticism in the United States. Therefore my fifth and final 
     request is to hear--from the Army's perspective--how 
     information contained in the seized materials was shared with 
     other

[[Page E921]]

     members of the multilateral forces and how that contributed 
     to the successful prosection of the overall mission.
       The restoration of Haiti's legitimate government was a 
     great success for the cause of democracy in general and the 
     foreign policy of President Clinton in particular. UN 
     Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who I met with 
     yesterday, agrees with me and I know you do too. For that 
     reason, I hope you will assist me in my effort to learn more 
     about our operation in Haiti. I look forward to hearing from 
     you, and I hope you will personally contact me if you have 
     any questions.
           Sincerely,
                                                John Conyers, Jr.,
                                               Member of Congress.

  I will have a copy of today's Congressional Record for May 24, 1996, 
delivered to his office in case my letter was lost before. I look 
forward to my good friend's response.

                [From the New York Times, Feb. 6, 1996]

             Cables Show U.S. Deception on Haitian Violence

                           (By Larry Rohter)

       Port-au-Prince, Haiti, February 5.--In the months after the 
     United States invasion of Haiti, American officers repeatedly 
     told their troops that the country's most dreaded 
     paramilitary group was actually a legitimate opposition 
     political party. ``They're no different from Democrats or 
     Republicans,'' soldiers in Haiti dutifully echoed when asked 
     about their instructions.
       But a review of classified cables sent by the American 
     Embassy in Haiti to the Defense and State Departments shows 
     that for a year before the invasion in September 1994 the 
     Pentagon knew that the official version was not true.
       Within weeks of the founding of the Front for the 
     Advancement and Progress of Haiti, the papers indicate, 
     American intelligence agencies had concluded the group was a 
     gang of ``gun-carrying crazies'' eager to ``use violence 
     against all who oppose it.''
       ``All over the country, Fraph is evolving into a sort of 
     Mafia,'' a cable from the office of the American military 
     attache in Port-au-Prince warned in the spring of 1994, using 
     the group's acronym. ``Its use of force to intimidate and 
     coerce is sanctioned by the local military, which derives 
     both political and especially material benefits from their 
     relationship.''
       With United States troops now in Bosnia pursuing some of 
     the same objectives as in Haiti, the documents raise 
     questions about the soliders' mission, the information they 
     are given by superiors and the action they take in the field.
       Human rights observers and others who have seen the papers 
     say they also raise the question whether the military ordered 
     American troops to ignore human rights abuses committed 
     before they arrived.
       What remains uncertain is why the Pentagon took a public 
     stance clearly at odds with the classified information it had 
     collected in Haiti.
       A Pentagon official denied today that there was any 
     conflict between the official position and the inside 
     information: ``If daylight is perceived between our public 
     and private perceptions, that's wrong. We agreed on what 
     Fraph was. Fraph was a political movement, but clearly a 
     political movement with a substantial thug element to it. It 
     was clear to us that Fraph represented a potential threat. 
     That didn't change. There were efforts, clearly, in the 
     initial weeks of the intervention to calm the rhetoric and 
     reduce the likelihood that there would be violent 
     confrontations--and that was relatively successful.''
       Ira Kurzban, an American lawyer who has reviewed the cables 
     on behalf of the Haitian Government, said, ``There is 
     absolutely no ambiguity in these documents with respect to 
     the fact that Fraph was an instrument of repression under the 
     control of the Haitian military.''
       In a telephone interview from the Maryland jail where he is 
     being held for deporatation, Emmanuel Constant, the founder 
     of Fraph, said that from the moment American troops landed he 
     was under pressure from the United States military to help it 
     maintain ``a form of balance in Haiti'' between groups 
     supporting President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and those 
     opposing him.
       Mr. Constant said he was told by the American military 
     early in October 1994 that ``I should ease up the tension and 
     avoid confrontation'' by ``giving a speech in which I 
     promised to be a constructive opposition to Aristide.'' That 
     speech was delivered soon afterward, and Mr. Constant 
     maintained it ``was approved by the U.S. Government, by the 
     embassy people'' in advance.
       In the interview, Mr. Constant acknowledged that he had 
     been an informant of the Central Intelligence Agency before 
     the American invasion but said he now feels betrayed ``They 
     have the wrong man in jail,'' he said.
       Haitian Government officials and foreign diplomats here 
     said it appeared the Defense Department and American 
     intelligence agencies were acting to weaken Mr. Aristide, 
     whom they had long distrusted. These officials suggested that 
     United States Government agencies may also have been trying 
     to protect Haitian informants who might be useful in the 
     future but had been discredited by the collapse of the 
     military dictatorship that overthrew Mr. Aristide.
       In separate raids on the headquarters of Fraph and the 
     Haitian armed forces after the invasion, American troops 
     seized more than 150,000 pages of official documents, which 
     were taken to the United States. Haiti has demanded their 
     return.
       Several hundred pages of United States documents relating 
     to Fraph were obtained last year by the Center for 
     Constitutional Rights for a suit filed in Federal Court in 
     Brooklyn by Alerte Belance, an Aristide supporter now living 
     in New Jersey. She says the group abducted her in Haiti in 
     1993 and attacked her with a machete, cutting off one of her 
     arms, an ear, and parts of her nose and tongue before leaving 
     her for dead.
       Human rights groups say such brutality was typical of 
     Fraph, which they hold responsible for many of the more than 
     3,000 deaths during Mr. Aristide's exile, from 1991 to 1994.
       The Center for Constitutional Rights has filed a motion for 
     a default judgment against Fraph, which has failed to respond 
     to the suit. But Ms. Belance's lawyers have asked the 
     presiding judge to delay any award of damages until their 
     client obtains additional documents, including tens of 
     thousands of the pages seized by American troops from Fraph's 
     headquarters.
       ``These documents are relevant to establish that Fraph was 
     acting under color of official authority when it carried out 
     the torture of Alerte Belance, and therefore violated 
     international law,'' the Center for Constitutional Rights 
     contended in court papers filed last month.
       Cables that have already been declassified by the Defense 
     Intelligence Agency as part of the suit indicate that 
     American intelligence agencies had a broad network of 
     informants both within the Haitian armed forces and Fraph. In 
     public, however, all parties denied that they were connected.
       Soon after Fraph was formed, a State Department cable on 
     Oct. 28, 1993, concluded, ``Their effectiveness is a function 
     of the willingness of their patrons'' in the Haitian Armed 
     Forces ``to use intimidation and violence (carried out by 
     armed civilian attaches) to `enforce' their political 
     initiatives.''
       By December, the military attache in Port-au-Prince was 
     warning the Pentagon that repression by Fraph in Haiti's 
     southern peninsula ``has increased considerably.''
       When in the spring of 1994 American officials began 
     interviewing refugees who had fled by sea, they obtained an 
     even clearer picture of Fraph's violent methods. Some 
     testimony came from Fraph members who said they had fled in 
     disgust.
       ``When they kill and rape people, we (new members) are 
     forced to sit and watch,'' a cable quoted a former Fraph 
     operative as saying, adding, ``He also related that later in 
     the initiation process you are forced to participate in the 
     killings and rapes.''
       But that information was apparently withheld from American 
     troops after they intervened on Sept. 19, 1994, to restore 
     President Aristide and his Lavalas movement. Radio broadcasts 
     to Special Forces units in the Haitian countryside, for 
     example, described Lavalas and Fraph as competing political 
     parties equally dedicated to the country's well-being.
       The documents suggests that the American military's 
     willingness to work with Fraph began to diminish only after a 
     radio conversation between Mr. Constant and other leaders of 
     the group was intercepted. According to a cable sent on Oct. 
     3, 1994, they were ``threatening to break out weapons and 
     begin an all-out war against the foreigners'' and ``named an 
     American official as their first target.''
       By January 1995, the State Department was denying that the 
     United States had ever treated Fraph as anything but thugs. 
     The Secretary of State's office said of Fraph in a cable to 
     the American Embassy in Haiti, ``We viewed it as basically a 
     rent-a-mob group financed by the military for recruiting 
     purposes and dependent upon the military leaders' ability to 
     punish/reward.'' In addition, the unclassified cable said, 
     ``we appreciate the embassy's consistent hard line on Fraph 
     and strongly endorse the embassy's latest clarification of 
     our position.''

                          ____________________