(Ken Silva, Headline USA) As Haiti continues to deal with an estimated 4,000 prison inmates who recently escaped two of the island’s largest prisons, a new report in The Grayzone reveals that the CIA helped engineer a jailbreak more than 20 years ago as part of a coup against the Caribbean country’s former government.
According to The Grayzone, the CIA was responsible for a 2002 jailbreak in which a bulldozer smashed through local prison walls, allowing armed supporters of Amiot Métayer, a gang leader imprisoned weeks earlier for harassing Haitian political figures, to overrun the facility. The breakout set in motion a violent regime change campaign, which ultimately ousted popular anti-imperial President Jean-Bertrand Aristide from office on February 29, 2004.
The Grayzone reported Friday that the CIA was responsible for that series of events.
Citing CIA documents obtained through a records request, the publication reported that a veteran CIA operative had been in a meeting with disloyal local police officers and coup plotters in Gonaïves the night prior to the 2002 jailbreak. According to the CIA records, Haiti’s then-President Aristide accused the CIA officer, Janice Elmore, as being responsible for the jailbreak and ensuing instability in his country.
“Evidently, Elmore was well acquainted with ‘questionable individuals’ in Haiti who had an interest in Aristide’s downfall, and were later implicated in the February 2004 coup,” The Grayzone reported.
“That she met with them and their allies the night before the Gonaïves jailbreak is close to smoking gun proof of US foreknowledge of that act, and a strong indication the foundations of Aristide’s forced expulsion were being consciously laid well in advance.”
The Grayzone also quoted an anonymous former U.S/ embassy staffer in Port-au-Prince, who described Elmore as stridently “anti-Aristide,” and married to a member of a U.S. special operations force.
Even more interestingly, the outlet documented Elmore’s ties to the Iran-Contra scandal—specifically, to the alleged cocaine smuggling operation carried out by Nicuraguan rebels in the 1980s with the CIA’s blessing.
A DEA whistleblower reportedly told the Justice Department’s Inspector General in 1997 that he reported directly to Elmore in El Salvador during the Iran-Contra scandal. The whistleblower reportedly described Elmore as a CIA officer operating undercover as a State Department embassy political officer.
“Elmore was subsequently interviewed behind closed doors by the House Intelligence Committee about her knowledge of CIA drug trafficking,” The Grayzone said.
“Her testimony has never been released. At the time, former LAPD narcotics investigator Michael C. Ruppert charged that while in El Salvador, she ‘routinely met’ with ‘military and political leaders’ and ‘used sexual liaisons to gather intelligence and protect drug operations.’
Neither Elmore nor the CIA commented for the publication’s article.
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.
