Details of U.S. support for Aristide opposition

Excerpt:

Both before and after the Feb. 29, 2004 coup d'État in Haiti, Washington infiltrated "democracy promotion" programs (also known as "democracy enhancement") into almost every sector of Haitian civil society: political parties, media, human rights groups, student groups, vote monitoring organizations, business associations, and labor organizations.

Recently declassified National Endowment for Democracy (NED) documents reveal that a "leftist" workers' organization, Batay Ouvriye (BO), which promoted and called for the overthrow of the constitutionally elected government of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was the targeted beneficiary of a US $99,965 NED grant routed through the AFL-CIO's American Center for International Solidarity (ACILS). Listed in NED's "Summary of Projects Approved in FY 2005" for Haiti, the grant states, "ACILS will work with the May 1st Union Federation- Batay Ouvriye [ESPM-BO] to train workers to organize and educate fellow workers."

[Jeb Sprague, "Coup payoff in Haiti: BO's "smoking gun," the $100,000 NED grant," THIS WEEK IN HAITI, Haiti Progres, January 4 - 10, 2006 Vol. 23, No. 43]

Read the full article here, backup link here.

On a personal note, if I'm not mistaken, I actually met with the representative of Batay Ouvriye mentioned in the article while I was in the Dominican Republic earlier this year. He was a talkative fellow.