Finally, almost two years after the fact, it's official: the Bush administration backed and encouraged the February 29, 2004 coup d'état against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

This is the message delivered by a long article entitled "Democracy Undone: Mixed U.S. Signals Helped Tilt Haiti Toward Chaos" by Walt Bogdanich and Jenny Nordberg in the U.S. journal of record , The New York Times, on Sunday, Jan. 30, 2006.

The Times' revelations, although obvious to most Haitians and international observers well before the fateful day when U.S. Special forces kidnapped Aristide from his home and exiled him to Africa, is important because it comes from the flagship publication of the U.S. establishment. In fact, the article's broad outlines are similar to that of a piece published by independent journalist Max Blumenthal in Salon. Com on Jul. 16, 2004 (see Salon article).

Nonetheless, Bogdanich and Nordberg provide important new details of the inner struggles and workings of the U.S. government.

In many ways, the article falls within the larger struggle that the U.S. liberal establishment is presently waging against George Bush and Dick Cheney's neo-conservative cabal, which has led the U.S. empire to the brink of disaster. Establishment media like the Times as well as high-ranking Democrats, who were cheering Bush only months ago, are now savaging the president and his clique for the war in Iraq, spying on American citizens, and alienating governments and peoples around the world. Now the liberals are adding the mess in Haiti to the list of Bush failures.

The main protagonist of the Times piece is former U.S. Ambassador to Haiti Brian Dean Curran, a Clinton appointee who complains that the Bush administration worked "to undermine the reconciliation process after disputed 2000 Senate elections threw Haiti into a violent political crisis," the Times reported.

Buttressing Curran's charges is Luigi Einaudi, the former U.S. representative to the Organization of American States, who said that"Haiti came to symbolize within the United States a point of friction between Democrats and Republicans that did not facilitate bipartisanship or stable policy or communication."

Indeed, Stanley Lucas, the infamous operative of the National Endowment for Democracy's International Republican Institute (IRI) in Haiti since 1998, is singled out as the principal U.S. agent responsible for ringleading Haiti's armed and "unarmed" opposition into intransigence against Aristide.

As early as July 2002, Curran was warning Washington that Lucas' role in Haiti "will, at best, lead to confusion as to U.S. policy objectives, which continue to eschew unconstitutional acts and favor negotiations and, at worst, contribute to political destabilization in Haiti."

Many will be skeptical that constitutionality and "negotiations" were ever really "U.S. policy objectives," as the terribly naive or disingenuous Curran contends. But the Times makes it clear that Lucas, by Curran's account, was central to encouraging "the opposition to stand firm, and not work with Mr. Aristide, as a way to cripple his government and drive him from power."

The story offers a penetrating account of how, "with Washington's approval, Mr. Lucas used taxpayer money to fly hundreds of opposition members - but no one from Mr. Aristide's Lavalas party - to a hotel in the Dominican Republic for political training that began in late 2002. Two leaders of the armed rebellion told The Times that they were in the same hotel during some of those meetings, but did not attend."

Those two leaders - Guy Philippe and Paul Arcelin - may have had secret back-room meetings at the luxurious Santo Domingo Hotel with Lucas and other "civil" opposition leaders, the Times reports. Politician Marc Bazin's representatives, who attended the 2002 meetings in Santo Domingo, told their boss that "more was going on than routine political training."

"The report I got from my people was that there were two meetings - open meetings where democracy would be discussed and closed meetings where other things would be discussed, and we are not invited to the other meetings," Bazin told the Times.

"Mr. Bazin said people who had attended the closed meetings told him that 'there are things you don't know' - that Mr. Aristide would ultimately be removed and that he should stop calling for compromise," Bogdanich and Nordberg write.

The Times story also singles out Otto Reich, former Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, and his successor, Roger Noriega, as the powers that kept Lucas operating despite Curran's objections.

Bogdanich and Nordberg deftly reveal Reich to be a liar. When interviewed by the Times, Reich claimed that Curran "never expressed any problems with Stanley Lucas to me, and I was his boss."

"Asked why his name showed up on cables as having received Mr. Curran's complaints, and why Mr. Curran's cables detailed discussions with him, Mr. Reich replied: 'I have absolutely no recollection of that. I'm not questioning it, I just have no recollection of that,'" the Times writes.

Curran called Reich's assertion that he never complained "a patent lie."

For all its weight and usefulness, the Times story is weak in many respects. It never refers to Aristide's overthrow as a coup d'état, and it lends credence to Curran's claim that Aristide "disappointed" him and engaged in "human rights abuses."

The story also implies that Clinton and the Democrats were somehow less meddling and more well-meaning than Bush's administration. In fact, there are only differences of approach and style. Since the U.S. intervention in 1994, Clinton demanded neoliberal reform, denied Aristide the three years he'd spent in exile, and exerted heavy political pressure on the government of President René Préval. Clinton began the U.S. aid cut-off to Haiti in 2000 when Préval was still in office.

In short, Lucas was not a rogue agent of a rogue institution subverting U.S. goals, as the article suggests. Lucas and IRI are just more aggressive, uncompromising, and brutal in pursuing the empire's goals.

These shortcomings aside, Bogdanich and Nordberg do clearly demonstrate how "a democracy-building group close to the White House, and financed by American taxpayers, undercut the official United States policy and the ambassador assigned to carry it out."

Indeed, one is reminded of how the U.S.'s "invisible" government of the CIA and Pentagon sabotaged the Clinton administration's first attempt to restore Aristide in October 1993, when a few dozen FRAPH thugs theatrically scared away the U.S. troop carrier Harlan County.

It is nice to see Stanley Lucas exposed once again, as he was by Blumenthal, as a lying agent of Washington. Bogdanich and Nordberg easily dispel his clumsy misrepresentations. For example, Lucas claims to not know "rebel" leader Guy Philippe. But the Times reports that Philippe calls Lucas "a good friend" whom he has know for years. Philippe also says he met Lucas in Ecuador "once or twice" in 2000 or 2001. Is it chance that those meetings coincide with the start of Guy Philippe's rise as a "rebel" leader?

Now working for IRI in Afghanistan, Lucas was not allowed by his bosses to talk directly to the Times. Perhaps they feared he might make the kind of revelations that a boasting Emmanuel "Toto" Constant, the FRAPH death squad leader, did about being a CIA agent in a 1996 CBS-TV "60 Minutes" interview.

Bogdanich and Nordberg also produced a video program entitled "Haiti: Democracy Undone," which expands on their Times' investigation. It premiered this week in Canada and in the U.S. on the Discovery Times Channel.

In the face of mounting international pressure, on Jan. 29 Haitian de facto authorities allowed political prisoner Father Gérard Jean-Juste to provisionally leave his jail cell and fly to Miami to obtain medical treatment for recently contracted pneumonia as well as leukemia, with which he was diagnosed almost two months ago (see Haïti Progrès, Vol. 23, No. 39, 12/7/2006).

Accompanied from Haiti by one of his North American lawyers, Bill Quigley, Jean-Juste flew on American Airlines to Miami where he was met at the airport by about 25 people, including leaders from Veye Yo, the Miami-based popular organization he helped found in the 1980s when he directed the Haitian Refugee Center. Among those in the welcoming committee were Lavarice Gaudin, Farah Juste, Lucie Tondreau, Veronique Fleurimé, and Reginald "Konpè Rere" Boyer. North American supporters like Jack Lieberman, Carolyn Thompson, and Steve Forester were also on hand.

Jean-Juste was then driven directly to Jackson Memorial Hospital, where Dr. Paul Farmer of Partners in Health awaited him to do an examination. He was admitted to the hospital and will spend several days receiving tests and treatment.

"The doctor performed a biopsy, and we'll have results in about three days," reports Tony Jean-Thénord, a Veye Yo leader, on Jan. 31. "His neck is still swollen. But he is in good spirits, fighting spirits, as usual."

Jean-Juste had been held without charges in jail for 192 days, since he was arrested on Jul. 21, 2005 after helping to officiate at the funeral of assassinated journalist Jacques Roche, who was also his cousin (see Haïti Progrès, Vol. 23, No. 20, 7/27/2005). He was accused informally of organizing Roche's murder, although he was out of the country at the time.

A Haitian judge last week dismissed those charges but brought others against the priest for illegal weapons possession and criminal conspiracy (see Haïti Progrès, Vol. 23, No. 46, 01/25/2006). Jean-Juste's lawyers are appealing the indictment.

Unless the indictments are dismissed on appeal, Jean-Juste has agreed to eventually return to Haiti to stand trial.

Meanwhile, on Sunday, thousands of Haitians spontaneously massed outside the Veye Yo meeting hall on Little Haiti's 54th Street, expecting Jean-Juste to show up. The Miami Police began to get aggressive with the crowd and Veye Yo leaders had to call Representative Kendrick Meek. He intervened with the Miami police chief, diffusing the confrontation. The demonstrators rallied all day until about 9 p.m.

"It was a very joyous day for the Haitian community in Miami," said Lavarice Gaudin.