1978–1979: (The Elko/Flood Scandal Breaks, Rigaud Sails to Cuba and Is Rescued by the Coast Guard, the Sunday New York Times Magazine Asks Why We Resumed Aid…

1978–1979: (The Elko/Flood Scandal Breaks, Rigaud Sails to Cuba and Is Rescued by the Coast Guard, the Sunday New York Times Magazine Asks Why We Resumed Aid, Aristide’s First Published Article in Bon Nouvèl, the Human Rights League’s Twenty Brave Signatories, HASCO Workers Elect Their Own Bosses, and Duvalier-Only Elections for the National Assembly): To the dinosaurs’ growing anxiety, events thousands of miles away in a Los Angeles courtroom were giving fresh impetus to the exile community’s cries for scrutiny of U.S. aid to Haiti. The Haitian Diaspora — a mere handful of mostly elite and political exiles before the Duvaliers — had grown into a dynamic, well-established community numbering nearly a million, many with citizenship and tax obligations, increasingly learning how to make themselves heard politically. One young noir seminarian studying abroad whose article was published in 1979 in the Port-au-Prince Catholic monthly Bon Nouvèl was destined to be heard from again: Jean-Bertrand Aristide. The bribery conviction of a congressional aide in a Los Angeles court proved to be the same Stephen Elko who had appeared in Port-au-Prince in 1973 as emissary for Dapper Dan Flood; in return for a reduced sentence, the aide told stories of sacks of cash, secret trips, and corruption, goading the House Ethics Committee into hearings on influence-peddling. All of this confirmed what Lucien Rigaud, still holed up in the Mexican embassy, had been saying — the U.S. Justice Department sought safe passage for Rigaud to testify, but Haiti balked. Impatient, Rigaud managed to slip past his captors and, though he had never sailed before, commandeered a small sailboat into the Gulf of La Gonâve and sailed toward Cuba; rescued by the U.S. Coast Guard, he was whisked to Guantánamo Bay for medical treatment and then to the U.S. for debriefing. The story broke in the Sunday New York Times Magazine under the headline Baby Doc’s Haitian Terror, asking why the U.S. had resumed sending foreign aid. The Carter administration’s internal debate over human rights and diplomacy raged all winter and spring, with the idealists headed by Under Secretary Warren Christopher gaining the upper hand; Terence Todman was reassigned — a move applauded by the Nation in an editorial entitled The Good Riddance of Terence Todman. In response to international pressure, Duvalier sought to carry water on both shoulders: Max du Plessy was allowed to found a Human Rights League, though only twenty people were courageous enough to openly sign up; HASCO workers were given the nod to elect their own union bosses after complaining that existing stewards were management stooges; striking interns at the State Medical School who protested inadequate supplies were startled to receive a visit from the Chief of State, who listened attentively and was cheered as he left. In this flurry of activity, the regime even announced elections for the unicameral National Assembly for March — only Duvalierists allowed to run, deputies’ powers limited at best, but for a country that had not held even such an event in several years, it seemed like progress.