No, the U.S. did not try to overthrow President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in Haiti

The New York Times’ recent exceptional reporting on the cruel indemnity imposed by France on newly independent Haiti in the early 19th century and its profoundly damaging impact on the impoverished country to this day, unfortunately, was marred by a gross distortion of recent history.

In particular, the assertion that the United States collaborated with France to mount a coup against Haiti’s democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a claim made by former French officials, is not true.

It is true that, as U.S. ambassador, I consulted with key international counterparts in Haiti, including the French, in the diplomatic effort I led to forge compromise among the political protagonists and to prevent the deteriorating situation from collapsing altogether.

The responsibility of Aristide and his associates for employing criminal street gangs to intimidate and terrorize political opponents was, in this context, a matter of acute concern for the United States and its international partners. But it was never U.S. policy to seek or support the ouster of Aristide, whom we recognized as the country’s duly elected leader.

Our negotiations were centered on governance reforms and the completion of Aristide’s term in office. This, in fact, was a major point of friction between France and the

United States. I was chastised not infrequently by French officials — including by the philosopherenvoy Regis Debray during his consequential visit to Port-au-Prince in December 2003 — for what they portrayed as U.S. policy to prop up a violence-prone dictator. This was also the virtually unanimous view of the United States held by Haitian opposition political parties and the broad group of civil-society organizations against Aristide.

Over many months, I did everything I could to achieve a negotiated resolution of the political impasse and to salvage Aristide’s presidency until, in the tumultuous final days in late February 2004, I urgently turned my attention to thwarting lawless rebels from taking over the government and ultimately to saving Aristide’s life — this, as the capital descended into anarchy.

I can only account for these recent non-factual French assertions of U.S. complicity in Aristide’s ouster as a reflection of what France itself desired and may have been about. I learned from the series more than I understood at the time about the depth of France’s animus toward Aristide and its desire to see him gone. It seems reasonable now to speculate about potential links to the rebellion that swept Aristide from power, but that episode remains shrouded in mystery.

I can also imagine that the French, who were not privy to our intensive efforts to outmaneuver contending lawless parties or to the circumstances of Aristide’s request to me for a U.S. rescue, must be assuming that the United States had itself cynically engineered the outcome they had been seeking all along. Both the French ambassador and Debray — on a subsequent visit to Haiti — vehemently upbraided me for not having consulted with the French during those final days of the crisis and, in particular, with regard to Aristide’s departure. Again, they knew nothing about the intensive discussions I had with Aristide, at his behest, in the nighttime hours before we agreed to dispatch a plane to carry him to safety.

It is true, as the Times reports, that the French did become involved once that plane had left Haitian airspace. To our surprise, Aristide had chosen South Africa as his destination, but U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell did not reach the South African president to convey the request until after the plane had taken off from Port-auPrince, and he was met with an unexpected rebuff. (South Africa said yes, but needed to delay receiving Aristide for a matter of weeks.) My understanding is that Powell then contacted the French, in the hope that they could find a temporary exile for the former president somewhere in Africa.

It is notable that no evidence was presented in support of such a historically consequential claim; indeed, there is none. The archives will yield no U.S. decision memo or meeting record in which a policy or plan is approved at any point to partner with France to overthrow Aristide, let alone any instruction to me to implement such a momentous scheme. I would have emphatically confirmed this, had I been given the opportunity prior to the series’ online publication.

In the almost 20 years since these events, no U.S. government official from that time has stepped forward to confess or admit U.S. complicity in Aristide’s fall from power, and there was never the slightest leak to this effect — which, if the allegation were true, would be extraordinary in Washington, D.C.

Damage has been done to the historical record — and to the reputations of sundry U.S. officials who have maintained the truth about U.S. policy and actions in Haiti in 20032004.