Letter to Washington Times on IRI and Haiti

February 22, 2006

To The Washington Times Editor:

I find it odd that neither Mr. Craner nor Mr. Holley refer Times' readers to any sort of documentation that might substantiate their defense of the IRI's activities in Haiti during the period 2000-2004, as challenged in the NYT article, "Mixed signals Helped Tilt Haiti toward Chaos."
A search of the USAID website, http://www.dec.org where IRI's quarterly reports are supposed to be filed, shows that not a single report was made available for public consumption from late 1998 until early 2005. There is no way for the public to account for the entire period that is the subject of the original NYT article, other than to take the IRI's word for it. 

The two IRI quarterly reports from 2005 that have been published demonstrate that IRI's project with USAID commenced in September of 2001. Where are the reports from this important period? Why have they not been published? Presuming that there is some truth to the NYT article, one might be alarmed to find that the IRI's activities have only increased in Haiti since the ouster of Jean Bertrand Aristide in February of 2004. For example, the IRI was allocated an extra $1.8 million for their Haiti project between April and June of 2005, and several sources, including controversial IRI program officer Stanley Lucas himself, indicate that he remains engaged in some capacity with the IRI's ongoing Haiti program. 

One particular case in point demonstrates that we might wish to look more closely at just what exactly the IRI is doing in Haiti, and whether their activities are truly "bipartisan" and "democratic." In their April-June 2005 quarterly report, the IRI states that they "worked with Hans Tippenhauer of Fondation Espoir to develop a skills-building project for youth in [political] parties, in particular those running for office." The IRI report does not mention that Mr. Tippenhauer is a prominent member of the political opposition Group of 184, who agitated most loudly for Aristide's ouster before his removal. The G-184 played quite a role in their own right, in "tilting Haiti toward chaos." Now, at least one of their prominent members is working directly with the IRI.

Unlike Mr. Craner, Mr. Tippenhauer takes pride in the role that his organization played in "pushing Aristide out." In several interviews, Mr. Tippenhauer confirmed with me that he had received approximately $40,000 from the IRI for this work, and, through his Fondation Espoir, since after Aristide's removal, Mr. Tippenhauer has also received over $200,000 from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). Not only is he working closely with two controversial U.S. NGOs that receive most of their funding from the U.S. government, Tippenhauer is a campaign advisor to independent Presidential candidate and former G-184 leader, Charles Henri Baker. 

If what Mr. Craner says on behalf of the IRI's activities in Haiti is true, the easiest way for the IRI to clear their name would be to 'open the books,' let the public see, at the least, their regularly filed quarterly reports for USAID, and, ideally, their internal records concerning their programs in Haiti for the period in question, which, given what I have cited above, would include details concerning their activities right up to the present day. 

Anthony Fenton
Freelance Journalist/Researcher
Vancouver, B.C., Canada