1978 to 1979 · Haitianspan
A bribery case in Los Angeles reopens the question of American aid
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A bribery conviction in a Los Angeles courtroom reached Haiti by an indirect route. The convicted congressional aide was Stephen Elko, who had turned up in Port-au-Prince in 1973 on behalf of Representative Daniel Flood. Trading testimony for a shorter sentence, he described the cash, the trips and the arrangements, and the House ethics committee opened hearings on influence peddling. His account matched what Lucien Rigaud had been saying from the Mexican embassy in Port-au-Prince, where he had taken refuge with documents. The Justice Department asked for safe conduct so that Rigaud could testify and Haiti refused, so Rigaud got past his guards, took a small sailboat into the Gulf of La Gonave although he had never sailed, and steered for Cuba. The Coast Guard picked him up. The New York Times Magazine ran the story and asked why American aid had been resumed. Duvalier answered the pressure with gestures: a human rights league that twenty people were brave enough to sign, elections for an assembly in which only Duvalierists could stand. A seminarian named Jean-Bertrand Aristide published his first article in Bon Nouvel.
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