White House and Embassy in Haitian Capital Blame Each Other on Coup Report

The White House announced Friday that Haitian dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier had fallen from power and fled the country, then reversed itself a few hours later when it became clear that Duvalier was still in control.

Embarrassed White House officials blamed the mistake on a faulty report from the U.S. Embassy in Haiti.

Embassy officials contended that they had never issued such a report, but the White House insisted that they had and that the report had gone so far as to say that a new government had been formed in Port-au-Prince, the capital.

The State Department, which at first backed up the embassy version, later agreed with the White House that it had acted on an embassy report saying the government had collapsed and Duvalier had fled.

Wherever the blame lies, the Administration’s blunder touched off cheering celebrations by hundreds of refugees in Miami’s “Little Haiti” and demonstrations at the Haitian Consulate in New York.

A Ploy Suspected

Some Haitian leaders in Brooklyn, home of 200,000 Haitians, refused to believe the Administration’s subsequent announcement that Duvalier was still in power and called the announcement a ploy to calm violent crowds in their homeland.

A White House official, who declined to be identified, said the embassy’s report was relayed by the State Department to the National Security Council at 7:23 a.m. EST on Friday.

“The first thing to remember,” he said, “is that we were dealing with a confusing local situation. But the initial report said that the Duvalier government had fallen, that he had fled Haiti and that a new government had been formed.”

According to the official, the information was conveyed immediately to national security adviser John M. Poindexter and President Reagan, who was preparing to leave to attend memorial services in Houston for the crew of the space shuttle Challenger.

Shortly after 9 a.m., accompanying Reagan aboard Air Force One, White House spokesman Larry Speakes broke the news of the embassy’s report to a pool of five reporters accompanying the presidential party.

Original Announcement

“The White House was informed shortly before 7:30 a.m. EST that the government of Haiti has collapsed and the leadership, including Duvalier, had fled the country,” he said.

Reporters relayed the news back to Washington immediately by radio. But even as the news spread rapidly across the country, Duvalier rode through the streets with a heavy military escort and went on radio to say he was “strong, firm as a monkey’s tail.”

The White House then began receiving conflicting reports of Duvalier’s status, White House spokesman Edward P. Djerejian said. By 11 a.m., he said, “the information was that there was no change of government and that martial law had been declared and all non-government radio stations were closed. There were reports of sporadic gunfire and looting and heavy military presence on the streets.”

That information, he said, was relayed to Reagan and other officials as well as the media, which sent out an immediate correction of the earlier announcement.

Spokesman Is Pressed

En route back to Washington aboard Air Force One, reporters pressed Speakes to explain how the Administration could announce the collapse of the government without being certain of the facts.

“The State Department advised us, quoting the deputy chief of mission in Haiti at 7:23 a.m.,” he said.

Department spokesman Bernard Kalb was vague in trying to explain the erroneous announcement, saying only that it was caused by “conflicting reports and rumors.”

“There were a variety of conflicting reports, and some might have tilted in that direction (of a collapse),” he said. “I can’t offer you the specific post-mortem of how precisely these things happen.”

However, Charles E. Redman, Kalb’s deputy, said later that the initial report from the embassy, conveyed by the State Department to the White House, “did say the government had fallen and Duvalier had fled.”