1957–1961: (Extraordinarily Resistant: $40.4 Million in Four Years, the Klein and Saks Report That Gathered Dust, the Cri de Jacmel, and Rusk’s $2,800,000 Lu…

1957–1961: (Extraordinarily Resistant: $40.4 Million in Four Years, the Klein and Saks Report That Gathered Dust, the Cri de Jacmel, and Rusk’s $2,800,000 Lunch at Punta del Este): When Duvalier came to power the Gorgon’s head was an empty treasury — he quickly concluded the United States was the logical source of replenishment, and his hopes found sympathetic hearing in Foggy Bottom among officials who could still regard Duvalier as a standard-bearer of Caribbean democracy. His first move seemed encouraging: he took on the consulting firm Klein and Saks for a $338,000 financial and fiscal survey, though nobody could then know he had not the least intention of following the recommendations. By the end of 1961, in budget support or economic assistance grants — outright gifts — Duvalier had received $24.4 million from Washington, plus $7.2 million in technical assistance and $4 million in American foodstuffs, a four-year total of $40.4 million equaling two-fifths of all U.S. aid to Haiti during the preceding twenty-five years. Duvalier’s Cri de Jacmel of June 21, 1960 — dedicating a coffee wharf built by American benefactions — warned that Haiti had to choose between the two great poles of attraction in the world today, while Information Minister Blanchet intimated that $150 million might suffice. In 1960, American aid totaled $9.3 million, equal to thirty percent of Haiti’s budget — the third highest level of U.S. aid anywhere in the world. At Punta del Este in January 1962, when the OAS was seeking to contain Castro, Foreign Minister Chalmers abruptly delivered a pro-Castro address then sidled up to Dean Rusk in the hotel lobby to remark that Haiti was a poor nation whose vote could not but be influenced by its need for aid. Haiti thereupon promptly joined with the United States, and desk officers back in Foggy Bottom grinned over the quip that Rusk’s expense account read: Breakfast $2.25, Lunch with Haitian Foreign Minister $2,800,000.00.