This article is about Haiti, not Mexico, but the old phrase applies.
The multi-page (I've linked you to the single page version, not the 11 page version) article dissects the U.S. involvement in Haiti, and how official foreign policy was undermined by the International Republican Institute, "one of several prominent nonprofit groups that receive federal funds to help countries develop the mechanisms of democracy."
Of all the groups, though, the I.R.I. is closest to the administration. President Bush picked its president, Lorne W. Craner, to run his administration's democracy-building efforts. The institute, which works in more than 60 countries, has seen its federal financing nearly triple in three years, from $26 million in 2003 to $75 million in 2005. Last spring, at an I.R.I. fund-raiser, Mr. Bush called democracy-building "a growth industry."
Let's not forget what else I.R.I. has supported in Latin America:
A year later, the I.R.I. created a stir when it issued a press release praising the attempted overthrow of Hugo Chávez, the elected president of Venezuela and a confrontational populist, who, like Mr. Aristide, was seen as a threat by some in Washington. The institute has since told The Times that praising the attempted coup was wrong.
Ah yes, democracy in action: the attempted coup.
"There was a change in policy that was perhaps not well perceived by some people in the embassy," Mr. Reich said, referring to Mr. Curran. "We wanted to change, to give the Haitians an opportunity to choose a democratic leader," said Mr. Reich, one of a group of newly ascendant policy makers who feared the rise of leftist governments in Latin America.
Told of that statement, Mr. Curran said, "That Reich would admit that a different policy was in effect totally vindicates my suspicions, as well as confirms what an amateur crowd was in charge in Washington."
In essence, the institute worked in opposition to the State Department, claimed to represent the Bush adminstration and that the State Department did not, and got involved in internal partisan struggles inside Haiti.
Bridging the divide between Mr. Aristide and his opponents would have been difficult in even the best of circumstances. But what emerges from the events in Haiti is a portrait of how the effort to nurture democracy became entangled in the ideological wars and partisan rivalries of Washington.
"What you had was the constant undermining of the credibility of the negotiators," said Luigi R. Einaudi, a respected veteran diplomat who led the international effort to find a political settlement on behalf of the Organization of American States.
Looks like I'm going to be having more Reagan foreign policy flashbacks.
Mr. Curran said he wanted to believe in Mr. Aristide but slowly became disillusioned. "I had many conversations with him about the police, about human rights abuses," Mr. Curran said. "And in the end, he disappointed me."
Even so, Mr. Curran said, his mission was clear. "The promotion of democracy was at the very heart of what I was doing in Haiti," he said. Clear, too, was how to go about that: supporting Mr. Aristide's right to office while working to foster a compromise. "That was the officially stated policy," Mr. Curran said. "Those were my instructions."
Mr. Curran was supposed to have help from the I.R.I., which had been active in Haiti since 1990. Along with the National Democratic Institute, the I.R.I. was formed in the early 1980's after President Ronald Reagan called on Americans to fight totalitarianism.
Its board includes Republican foreign-policy heavyweights and lobbyists, and its chairman is Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican, who did not answer requests for an interview. The group's financing comes from the Agency for International Development, as well as the State Department, foundations and corporations like Halliburton and Chevron.
McCain! What a maverick!
Of course, the Bush team was a fine collection of experts.
Mr. Curran sent his cables to the Bush administration's Latin American policy team, records show. In addition to Mr. Reich, then assistant secretary of state for Latin American affairs, that group included Elliott L. Abrams, a special assistant to the president and senior director for democracy and human rights, and Daniel W. Fisk, a deputy to Mr. Reich.
These men were veteran fighters against the spread of leftist political ideology in Latin America, beginning with Fidel Castro and Cuba. Mr. Fisk's former boss, Jesse Helms, then a Republican senator from North Carolina, had once called Mr. Aristide a "psychopath," based on a C.I.A. report about his mental condition that turned out to be false.
In the 1980's, Mr. Reich and Mr. Abrams had become ensnared in investigations of Reagan administration activities opposing the socialist government of Nicaragua. The comptroller general determined in 1987 that a public diplomacy office run by the Cuban-born Mr. Reich had "engaged in prohibited, covert propaganda activities." In 1991, Mr. Abrams pleaded guilty to withholding information from Congress in connection with the Iran-contra affair. He was pardoned by the first President Bush.
The I.R.I. did democracy training seminars, in the Dominican Republic, at a hotel owned by the Fanjul family. The Fanjul connection is a story in itself, as the Fanjuls in Florida are linked to anti-communism and anti-Castro activity, not to mention their political reach into both parties...Some more. That the hotel is own by the Fanjuls is less remarkable than that the democracy training only included those who were opposed to the elected government of Haiti. So Aristide didn't need any democracy training?
Among the trainers brought in was Brian Berry, who worked on George W. Bush's 1994 primary campaign for Texas governor.
Mr. Berry had an interest in the Caribbean. He said he had a small bag of sand from the Bay of Pigs; he said he looked forward to returning it to "a free Cuba beach" when Mr. Castro was gone. Mr. Berry said he volunteered for I.R.I., to further the cause of democracy.
It gets even better. At these meetings, there were reportedly another set of parallel, secret sessions, in which the participants discussed how to depose Aristide. The bonus? Armed rebels claim to have been participants.
For those who are not familiar with the actions of the rebels, the article goes through a summary, but the short version is that they seized power in February 2004, and Haiti has degenerated ever farther into violence and misery.
But that's not even the worst of it. On top of everything else, I saved the best for last. I.R.I. and the man who most people in this story point to as the lynchpin in the failed democracy building effort?:
When Mr. Curran and Mr. Einaudi went to Haiti, they said, they believed that working with the elected government, whatever its flaws, would help a young but already sputtering democracy take hold. They said they believed that the people making policy in Washington shared that hope. Then, they said, they ran into something larger.
"Haiti is a tragedy, and it is a tragedy of partisanship and hate and hostility," Mr. Einaudi said. "These were divides among Haitians and they are also divides among Americans, because Haiti came to symbolize within the United States a point of friction between Democrats and Republicans that did not facilitate bipartisanship or stable policy or communication."
Mr. Fauriol said that the I.R.I., too, was frustrated with the interim government. "We've got to deal with reality and the reality is rather imperfect," he said. Even so, he wrote last spring that "Haiti's democratic hopes have been given another chance." The institute's activities in Haiti no longer include Mr. Lucas. He now works for the group's Afghanistan program.
Afghanistan. Great!
Posted by binky at January 29, 2006 09:22 AM | TrackBack | Posted to International Affairs