U.S. Agents Sent to Help Protect Haitian Leader

The Clinton administration sent a team of diplomatic security agents to Haiti on Friday to help protect Haitian President Rene Garcia Preval while he purges his personal security force of suspected political assassins.

The administration decided to send the agents after Preval, who was inaugurated in February, expressed apprehension that his life might be in jeopardy if he tried to rid his own security force of undesirable elements without added protection.

The sudden U.S. action--and the expected purge by Preval--appeared to bolster complaints by critics that, nearly two years after the administration deployed U.S. troops to oust Haiti’s military junta, violence and corruption continue and the experiment in democracy is fragile.

Senior U.S. officials said the administration believes it needs to help safeguard Preval if only to protect its investment in the new Haitian democracy. U.S. troops spent a year in Haiti overturning the country’s military dictatorship and restoring Preval’s predecessor, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, to office.

U.S. officials said the team of agents, which includes more than 40 security officers, mostly from the State Department, flew to the capital, Port-au-Prince, with plans to proceed directly to the Presidential Palace. There was no indication of how long they would remain on duty.

Members of Preval’s own presidential security unit are suspected of having been involved in politically motivated assassinations, including the gunning down of two conservative politicians in Haiti on Aug. 20.

That Preval required U.S. help could prove a political embarrassment for the White House, which during the current presidential campaign has been trying to tout Haiti’s new democracy as one of President Clinton’s foreign policy successes.

Congressional Republicans have charged for months that the administration has been channeling tens of millions of dollars in U.S. aid to Haitian groups that have been suspected of involvement in political assassinations.

But administration officials defended the action Friday, arguing that Preval should receive credit for trying to strengthen Haiti’s political institutions and contending that the deployment of U.S. diplomatic security agents to help him was a justifiable expense.

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Indeed, the housecleaning that Preval promised is already underway. Officials said the two top security officers in Preval’s unit have been assigned to new duties away from the palace and that more transfers and firings appear likely.

Preval inherited a palace guard made up of agents loyal to Aristide and who, ironically, were trained under U.S. auspices; eight to 12 members of the unit are now under suspicion.

U.S. officials have been urging Preval to purge his security force of suspected murderers for months. Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott and National Security Advisor Anthony Lake visited him last spring to underscore U.S. concerns.

But officials said concern about Preval’s own security has been so intense that he was obliged to meet the two U.S. officials at the American ambassador’s residence instead of the Presidential Palace because of U.S. fears that the palace was unsafe.

Officials said that the administration has budgeted up to $3 million for the operation. Besides the agents dispatched Friday, the United States has a few hundred troops in Haiti; these are mainly combat engineers helping with construction projects.

The administration action Friday effectively confirmed that Washington shares Preval’s suspicions that members of the presidential security force in Haiti have been involved in political slayings and other crimes.

Antoine Leroy, one of the conservative politicians killed in August, was dragged from his Port-au-Prince home and shot several times in the head, witnesses said. The second, Jacques Florival, was brought by gunmen to Leroy’s house in handcuffs and shot in the head.

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In March 1995, Mireille Durocher, an anti-Aristide lawyer, was killed on a Port-au-Prince street. The FBI sent agents to help in the investigation.

U.S. officials insisted Friday that, despite the expected housecleaning, Preval himself was not in danger and that the addition of the U.S. diplomatic security force would heighten the protection of the president.

Times staff writer Norman Kempster contributed to this report.