This is an important year, of course, not only in Venezuela, but throughout the hemisphere, in the sense that there are many presidential elections taking place. Now the N.E.D. program officer told me that Venezuela, Haiti, Ecuador, and Bolivia are the four top priority countries for the N.E.D. in 2006, looking ahead to 2006 and, of course, Cuba is the perennial top of that list. They're a special exception, because the Department of State earmarks a certain amount of funds for the N.E.D.'s work in Cuba. In fact, they doubled the amount of money being used to subvert revolutionary Cuba in 2005.

Now, what they’re doing with the Foundation of the Americas is, in fact, on the board of directors there you have a former coup plotter in the form of Beatrice Rangel, who not only played an active role, when she was an advisor to former Venezuelan president Perez in the late 1980s, literally carrying bags of money, according to William Robinson, to Nicaraguan Contras operating out of Venezuela, but she is the person, Rangel, who facilitated this N.E.D. program with this Canadian think tank, and she herself said that, you know, Canada enjoys this perception, and N.E.D.'s outsourcing to Canada is just another way for the N.E.D. to penetrate Venezuelan civil society.

But in the case of Haiti, getting back to that point, what we’re seeing is the N.E.D. works very closely with the International Republican Institute. One of the N.E.D.’s primary grantees in Haiti is a key member of the Group of 184 political opposition to Aristide, named Hans Tippenhauer. He heads up an organization that works with Haitian youth. Typically we see the N.E.D. working with Haitian youth, with Haitian women, but what they're doing – Mr. Tippenhauer, he was one of the first people to call the rebels, the paramilitaries that entered from the Dominican Republic in 2004, he referred to them as “freedom fighters,” and he get grants from, not only the N.E.D., but also the I.R.I., and he also happens to be on the campaign of an independent presidential candidate named Charles Henri Baker, who was also one of the leaders of the Group of 184. He’s a sweatshop owner there and a brother-in-law of Andy Apaid, another leader of the Group of 184, who recently has been pressuring, with other members of the elite, such as Reginald Boulos, for the United Nations [inaudible] to force to enter the poor neighborhoods and commit more atrocities, so as to enable this process of consolidating elite rule in Haiti to take root.

And so, Hans Tippenhauer, as he doubles as a campaign manager for the Group 184 political candidate, the business candidate, basically a candidate that the U.S. is supporting, he is also working to penetrate Haitian civil society on a level that will allow, in the long term, this neo-liberal vision, this corporate vision of Haiti to take root, the so-called democracy, because the National Endowment for Democracy does promote some form of democracy. It’s a very narrow institutional form, kind of like we see in Canada.

It is ironic that we have elections going on here in Canada right now, but we don't see the National Endowment for Democracy or the International Republican Institute here trying to manipulate the political environment, because we’re already on page with the State Department. We’re already on page with the N.E.D., so we don’t need their guidance, but a place like Haiti, where there were -- where popular democracy was beginning to take root, even though in the face of a massive economic embargo and in the face of destabilization by these very organizations, it is very necessary that these organizations are in Haiti right now playing this fundamental role, behind the scenes, I should say, because the mainstream media has not written a single story about what these organizations are doing behind the scenes to effect political change in Haiti today.

AMY GOODMAN: Independent journalist, Anthony Fenton. We will return with him in a minute.

AMY GOODMAN: We return to our interview on Haiti with independent journalist Anthony Fenton, co-author of the book, Canada in Haiti: Waging War on the Poor Majority.

AMY GOODMAN: Anthony Fenton, one of the people that you have written and talked about is Ira Lowenthal. I remember him from, well, more than a decade ago in the midst of the first coup against President Aristide in 1991 to ’94, working for USAID in-country in Haiti. What is his role today?

ANTHONY FENTON: Well, after the coup, Ira Lowenthal reentered Haiti. Now, he had had to leave, I believe, in 2002, because he was getting too hot. He was up to some activities that were being scrutinized by the Haitian government. Now, he joined and helped create the Haiti Democracy Project in 2002, in late 2002, and then he supported the emergence of the Group of 184 shortly thereafter, which is basically the Haitian version of the Haiti Democracy Project. I mentioned the Boulos family. Rudolph Boulos is a board member, founding board member of the Haiti Democracy Project, as well, and he's actually running for Senate in the area of Haiti where they plan to develop free-trade zones and open up a whole swath of sweatshops.

But Ira Lowenthal, he was working for the Americas Development Foundation, which is one of the key organizations implementing these so-called Democracy Enhancement projects prior to the coup. After the coup, he had a brief stint with them, and then he moved on to this other organization called the United Nations Office for Project Services. Now, it's a very interesting organization that does reconstruction work, and they're working -- they're called the self-financing arm or management services arm of the United Nations, very obscure and little known, but Ira Lowenthal became the director of this organization in Haiti just after the coup, and he helped set up registration centers for the elections, and he's played an integral role in the sort of infrastructure of carrying out this election process.

Now, he stepped down as director of UNOPS, and UNOPS currently gets a $3 million contract from USAID to work and funnel money to the political parties -- the "approved” political parties, most of which happen to comprise the former political opposition to Aristide, the Democratic Convergence. Now Ira Lowenthal is a key consultant for UNOPS today, and in fact, there’s a Canadian by the name of Jean-Francois Laurent, who directs the UNOPS activities in Haiti. But Ira Lowenthal, anyone I speak to, everyone speaks glowingly of him in the democracy promotion community. He's an old hand there, as you’ve said. He had links to the Boulos family back in the previous coup period, and, of course, the Boulos family is said to have had relations with FRAP, the paramilitary organization set up by the C.I.A. in order to destroy the popular movement at that time.

Now the Boulos family again, it has been widely reported that they may be linked along with the Apaids to death squad activity in Cite Soleil, anti-Lavalas gangs that are designed to destroy the popular support for the calls of demanding the return of Aristide or demanding the right to vote for the candidate of choice, now Rene Preval. But Ira Lowenthal has played an instrumental role. In fact, every week this organization, UNOPS, to give you an example of the sort of familial relations there, they meet with the I.R.I., the N.D.I., with USAID, and with I.F.E.S, which is linked to the I.R.I. The chairman of I.F.E.S. is a former Reagan advisor and a Bush appointee as U.N. ambassador just before the 9/11 attacks in 2001, William Hybl.

So you see this family meeting on a weekly basis, coordinating their activities. They’re funneling millions of dollars to the political parties, by way of giving them credits for TV advertising, for pamphlets, for t-shirts and all sorts of other activities. And, of course, this is all geared towards -- they're hoping, I think, right now, that there will be a run-off election, sort of like there was in Liberia, where the International Republican Institute and these other organizations played a central role, as well, because if there’s a run-off election -- and it’s possible that one of their rightwing candidates, perhaps such as Marc Bazin, who's running under the Lavalas name today, but of course was a World Bank candidate that Aristide beat in a landslide in 1990 -- they're hoping that one of these candidates, maybe it'll be Henri Baker, will be able to win in a run-off.

But there’s also the terror card that they're holding over their heads. The paramilitaries that entered in 2004 like Guy Philippe. Other well known NARCO traffickers, the nephew of the current Prime Minister, Gerard Latortue, his name is Youri Latortue, the mere mention of his name in Haiti, strikes the fear in the people's eyes when you speak to them, and this person is running for senate in the Artibonite region. And the possibility of a violent intervention in this election process is in the background, and it looms, and people like Ira Lowenthal and these other organizations, the N.E.D., they are well aware of this, and so it will be interesting to see how it plays out.

AMY GOODMAN: And the role, Anthony Fenton -- you're speaking to us from Vancouver, Canada, in the midst of your own elections -- of Canada and the current candidates in the coup of 2004, as well as what you understand is the U.S. role that forced Aristide out?

ANTHONY FENTON: Well, indeed, Canada in September hosted a meeting with members of Haiti's private sector with that think tank that I mentioned earlier that's getting N.E.D. funding, FOCAL, the Foundation for the Americas. Reginald Boulos, one of the long-time elites who supported this U.S. vision for Haiti and has long-standing ties to Washington, he was invited to this meeting. And what you were seeing is Canada supporting whole-heartedly. In fact, Roger Noriega, former Secretary of State for the western hemisphere, came to Canada just after the coup with Adolfo Franco from USAID. Franco, incidentally, has refused to be interviewed on the question of USAID's activities on the democracy promotion side in Haiti recently. But they came to Canada just after the coup with the intention of asking Canada to play a leadership role in Haiti, and Canada quickly acquiesced.

In fact, when I was in Haiti in September with a couple of other Canadian journalists, we interviewed a top-level Canadian diplomat, and he was boasting how finally in Haiti there's a government that's being ruled by the transnational elite in the private sector and civil society. And Canada's job is to stand on the frontlines diplomatically, politically, and they're also helping out militarily, and on the intelligence side, to prop up this illegitimate regime that was installed by the United States, that was imported from Florida and installed -- imposed on the Haitian people. And so Canada is playing an increasing role and they are expecting to play -- in fact, this high level diplomat told us Canada is sort of like earning its stripes in Haiti, because there is going to be a coming transition, and he mentioned Cuba specifically, and of course, strategically where Haiti is situated -- the State Department in 2005 listed Haiti and Colombia as the two primary strategic states -- so it's very important that they take control of Haiti.

There is a Dominican Republic interest there, as well. They are possibly establishing military bases there. The U.S. has for a long time dictated the Dominican military’s policies for the region, and the Canadian government here, what we're seeing, is under the liberal government that is about, it appears, to lose power to a neo-conservative electoral coup, if you will, led by Canada's Conservative Party and Stephen Harper, who is a well-known admirer of George Bush. Canada, the liberal government, initiated a rightwing shift over the past decade, that we’ve seen a new role for Canada in the Americas. In fact, this high-level diplomat referred to the destiny of Canada and the Americas being fulfilled through their role in Haiti today.

AMY GOODMAN: Anthony Fenton is our guest. He's speaking to us from Vancouver, Canada. And the proof of the involvement of the U.S. government in the coup that forced out President Aristide February 29th, 2004?

ANTHONY FENTON: Well, in 2003 there was a meeting held in Ottawa called the Ottawa Initiative on Haiti. At the time, it was a secret high level round table that did not involve any Haitians, although it was a meeting that was designed to discuss the future of Haiti. It was leaked by the host of that meeting, a Canadian Member of Parliament named Denis Paradis, to a Quebec magazine, that the possibility of removing Aristide and installing a U.N.-style trusteeship was discussed. This was quickly glossed over, and the Canadian government retracted that this was discussed, but after the coup I submitted a Freedom of Information Act request and did receive some of the documents, which seem to corroborate what was leaked at the time, that there were high-level meetings being held not only in Ottawa, but other follow-up meetings, I understand, in Washington and in El Salvador that planned the overthrow of Aristide on the diplomatic side.




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