The billion-dollar Haiti debacle– and Aristide’s paid agents who made it happen

America’s billion-dollar Haiti debacle can be traced to influence-peddling payments that former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide made to Washington operators.

It started in 1994, when Aristide raided the Haitian teachers’ union pension fund to pay a $55,000-a-month fee to the law firm of former Rep. Michael Barnes (D-Maryland) to pressure then-President Bill Clinton to restore the Marxist leader with US military force, while TransAfrica leader Randall Robinson went on a hunger strike to reinforce from the streets what Barnes was doing behind the scenes.

Aristide trusted Barnes, who had led a vicious but unsuccessful effort to sabotage President Reagan’s resistance to Soviet expansion in Central America and the Caribbean.

Ditto for the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) which pushed hard for the US to invade Haiti to reinstall Aristide in 1994, while members now echo his allegations that American troops forced him into his latest exile.

Haitian-Americans are asking if people in Washington are on the take. "We have to wonder if some of the Congressional Black Caucus may have profited from their relationship with Aristide," a Haitian-American lawyer in Broward County told the Washington Times.

Many Haitian-Americans believe the CBC has usurped the political influence of the ethnic communities the it purports to represent – thanks to influence-peddling deals that the Aristide regime cut with former CBC leaders and their colleagues on Capitol Hill.

According to the Times, the money includes $571,326 that Aristide paid to the lobbying firm headed by former CBC leader Ronald V. Dellums in 2001-2002, and $367,967 to an influence-peddling group headed by the wife of TransAfrica’s Robinson.

"What he got for that money is for [Democratic U.S. Reps.] Maxine Waters and Charlie Rangel to speak out for him," said Garry Pierre-Pierre, founder and publisher of Haiti Times.