CRISIS IN THE CARIBBEAN : DEA Effort to Question Aristide Turned Aside

The Justice Department turned down a request last week by federal investigators to question exiled Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide about an allegation that he accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars from the leader of the Medellin drug cartel, senior Justice officials confirmed.

The officials said the Drug Enforcement Administration’s request to interview Aristide was denied because investigators had no corroboration for the allegation, which came from a single informant for the DEA.

Sources said the informant had provided both reliable and unreliable information to the DEA in the past.

Political considerations played no role in the decision, officials said. When the allegation surfaced in Miami, Deputy Atty. Gen. Jamie S. Gorelick told federal law enforcement authorities there to “play it by the book,” officials said.

The informant alleged that Aristide had accepted the money from a representative of the late Colombian drug kingpin Pablo Escobar with the understanding that Aristide would provide protection for the drug barons in moving narcotics through Haiti. The same source also made narcotics-related allegations against at least two members of Haiti’s ruling junta.

The informant showed deception in taking a lie detector test on aspects of his allegations, but not all, sources said.

“But you couldn’t say he passed with flying colors,” one noted.

“There was considerable skepticism about the assertion, for which there was no hard evidence found,” a senior official said.

The Justice Department’s undercover review committee denied authority to question Aristide directly because there was no supporting information for the charge against him, a source familiar with the matter said.

“What do you do? Ask him if he took a large amount of money from an Escobar guy? He’d say no. So where does that get you?” a senior department official said.

Sources who could corroborate or undercut the allegations are now in Haiti, one official said, and if federal authorities get access to them, the matter can be pursued.

“There was no gnashing of teeth at the DEA over the decision,” a source close to the investigation said.

It could not be learned when Aristide was alleged to have taken the cash payment from Escobar’s representative.

Escobar, leader of the notorious Medellin cocaine cartel, was killed Dec. 2 in a shootout with Colombian security forces near his Medellin hide-out.