Haiti Unit Formed by CIA Tied to Illegal Drugs, Report Says
The CIA created an intelligence service in Haiti to fight drug trafficking, but the unit became an instrument of terror and its officers engaged in drug trafficking, according to a published report.
Senior members of the unit, which produced little information about narcotics, committed acts of political terror against supporters of exiled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, including interrogations and torture, the New York Times reported today.
Members of the unit also threatened last year to kill the local chief of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, the paper reported.
The CIA cut its ties to the Haitian organization shortly after the 1991 military coup against Aristide.
Three former chiefs of the Haitian unit, the National Intelligence Service, are 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 of military leaders blocking Aristide’s return to power.
Aristide’s supporters have said the CIA is undermining Aristide’s ability to return to power with analyses skewed by misplaced trust in his military foes.
A review of the CIA’s activities in Haiti shows the agency failed to ensure that money spent training and equipping the service from 1986 to 1991 was used to fight drugs.
Until Aristide was ousted in 1991, the agency paid key members of the junta now in power for political and military information, the paper said.
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