How on earth did a Haitian war criminal and paramilitary commander seemingly blackmail the CIA… and win? How is it that one man stood in opposition to the greatest boogeyman in covert intelligence, not only didn’t wind up dead, but got what he wanted? Emanuelle Constant is probably a name you haven’t heard before, but in December of 1995, he was facing deportation to Haiti for crimes that he committed between 1991, and 1994; a time during which the democratically elected Haitian president, Jean Bertrand Aristide, was removed from office by a military coup. A time during which the CIA wove it’s tendrils throughout the entirety of Haiti, from it’s military, to it’s intelligence service, to paramilitary groups that roamed the country, terrorizing supporters of democracy.
To understand how one man brought the most feared intelligence agency in the world to heel, you have to understand the story of how the United States invaded Haiti in order to stop a coup that was backed by the United States.
