Former U.S. Special Envoy for Haiti Dan Foote said on Friday in an exclusive interview on The Michael Patrick Leahy Show that Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland and former U.S. Ambassador to Haiti Michele Sison “teed up” the deal with unelected leader of Haiti Ariel Henry to delay elections in the country.
Foote’s stunning revelation confirms “that the Biden Administration helped cause the current chaos in Haiti by scuttling free and fair elections in that Caribbean nation back in 2021,” as Todd Bensman, senior fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, told Stephen K. Bannon in Saturday’s edition of WarRoom:
“So this was a year before the midterms. Everybody was thinking already, how we were in the campaign season. For the midterm elections, 2022, this thing is just growing by leaps and bounds. Thousands more were on the way. They had to do something dramatic and deterring to liquidate that camp,” Bensman answered.
“What they came up with was deportation flights, ICE Air putting thousands of them on flights back to Port au Prince, which is the most horrifying thing that any of these Haitians could contemplate because they had spent tens of thousands of dollars getting this far. They thought they were on the cusp of getting into the U.S. The administration needed, in order to do deportation flights like Trump [did during his administration], you have to have permission from the receiving country. At that time, you had Dr. Ariel Henry as the provisional prime minister of Haiti. The former president [Jovenel Moïse] had just been assassinated the month before. And there were big elections coming up where he [Dr. Ariel Henry] might get swept out and somebody else might get put in for Haiti,” he continued.
They were going to have their first parliamentary elections, their first legitimate presidential elections in two months, but the Biden administration is worried about the 2022 elections. And they had to get rid of this camp right away. And that’s what they did,” Bensman explained.
Foote, who was appointed as special envoy in July 2021, exited the position two months later after it was revealed thousands of Haitians were deported back to Haiti – when the country was not in a position to absorb the migrants – allegedly in exchange for the country’s elections to be postponed at the request of Henry, who has served as the acting Prime Minister of Haiti and the acting President of Haiti since July 2021 after the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse.
In his resignation letter, Foote said at the time that he did not want to be associated with the United States’ “inhumane, counterproductive decision to deport thousands of Haitian refugees” back to the island nation.
Victoria Nuland / US Embassy Moldavia
He also said his recommendations were “ignored and dismissed” by the State Department while he was serving as special envoy.
Foote reiterated his stance during Monday’s edition of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show, saying the State Department on “many occasions” has ignored “viable recommendations,” adding that he would not “in a million years” accept another job with the State Department.
In regards to the State Department’s deal with Henry for his country to absorb thousands of migrants in return for delayed elections, Foote said he believes Nuland, who recently announced her retirement, and Sison “teed up” and “schemed out” the arrangement.
“I’m pretty sure they teed that up. The two of them, I believe, came into the Foreign Service together 40 years ago. They’re buddies and fast friends from long ago and obviously, Secretary Blinken had a chop off on this and the National Security Council, etc., but I’m pretty sure this was the path of least resistance conceived in Port-au-Prince by Michele and then schemed out with her frat girl buddy, Victoria Nuland,” Foote said.
“After two months of seeing that the ambassador in Port-au-Prince and Washington was – for no reason clear to me – invested in this Ariel Henry de facto guy that they had anointed and was not terribly interested in a Haitian-led political accord of a consensus of institutions that represent the Haitian people…I had a major issue,” Foote added. “I knew Henry would fail and I didn’t want to fail. That was my job. And then when I saw the Del Rio encampment on the nightly news and they reported they’d all be deported, I went into work and I said, ‘Are you kidding me? You’re gonna deport these people back to Haiti? Don’t you think you should have informed the special envoy?”
Born in Syracuse, New York, Foote graduated from a public high school in the Buffalo, New York area where he was a sports star. He played varsity football at Columbia University, then worked for several years as a bond trader before joining the Peace Corps, where he served in Bolivia for two years. After coaching football and teaching Spanish in California, he joined the Foreign Service in 1998. He had extensive experience serving in Latin America, the Middle East, the Dominican Republic, and Haiti, and served as U.S. Ambassador to Zambia from 2017 to 2020. After his resignation from the Foreign Service in September 2021, he returned to Buffalo, New York, where he now resides.
Instead of working for the State Department, Foote said he would go to work “for” or “with” the Haitians to represent the country as a “stable Haiti” is in the “best national security interest” for the U.S.
“The Haitians need to be represented and I don’t care about money, I don’t care about having my corner office at an embassy anymore – Haiti can be fixed, and I can play a role, but I can’t play a role working for any international organization or the U.S. government,” Foote said.
Foote said if he was given the chance to give advice to President Joe Biden on how to help stabilize Haiti, he would advise that the U.S. and international community stop “intervening” in the Caribbean country’s affairs.
“I realize we did nothing but drive the place in the ground…We’re getting ready to do it again. If I would have the president’s ear for one minute, I’d say, ‘Mr. President, leave the Haitians alone until they present a political solution to the international community.’ And at that point, we need to help and support them,” Foote explained. “The U.S. has had a ton of problems coming up with resources, money, and contributing nations both to help with the security of Haiti and for development. Nobody wants to give more money to Haiti because we’ve been pissing it into the ocean for so long.”
“If the Haitians have their own plan forward, all of a sudden the international community is going to say, ‘Oh my God, they did the impossible. We never thought they could unite to do this.’ It will be much easier to attract, support, military intervention, or police intervention, or whatever,” Foote added. “You can’t intervene militarily without a trusted partner on the ground in Haiti, or who are we fighting for?”
Listen to full interview:
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
