A Disputed Departure

By Lisa Takeuchi Cullen

The irony did not escape Luis Moreno. In the blackness before dawn on Feb. 29, the U.S. official waited with Jean-Bertrand Aristide on the tarmac of the Port-au-Prince airport for the Haitian President's getaway plane. Moreno recalled that he had escorted Aristide on his triumphant, U.S.-backed return to Haiti 10 years earlier. When Moreno expressed regret at the turn of events, he says, the soon-to-be exiled leader replied, "Sometimes life is like that."

By the time Aristide's plane touched down in the Central African Republic, however, he was not sounding philosophical. He accused the Americans of carrying out a "geopolitical kidnapping," claiming he had been forced out by a U.S.-led "coup d'etat." Members of the U.S. Congressional Black Caucus have called for an investigation, but Secretary of State Colin Powell dismissed the allegations as "absurd."

What's clear is that Aristide's exit was arranged in a hurry. According to the Americans who assisted him, he realized his days were numbered on the night of Feb. 28, as rebels moved on the capital. He called U.S. Ambassador James Foley to ask for help getting out. "You haven't thought where you're going until now?" Foley asked with exasperation, according to a senior State Department official. As diplomats scrambled to find him an asylum, Moreno, the second-in-command at the U.S. embassy, set out for Aristide's home.

When Moreno reached the house at around 4 a.m., Aristide answered the door, a few packed bags at his side. They shook hands. Then Moreno asked if he knew why he was there. "Of course," Aristide answered.

After they arrived at the airport to await a U.S.-chartered plane, Moreno asked Aristide for a letter of resignation as proof of a voluntary transfer of power. As his American-born wife Mildred sat in sullen silence, Aristide pulled the letter from her purse. In a single paragraph written in Creole, Aristide renounced his office: "The Constitution should not drown in the blood of the Haitian people...I agree to leave with the hope that there will be life and not death." The Boeing 757 finally arrived, and at 6:15 a.m. on Feb. 29, Aristide fled the country. "It was," Moreno recalls, "a dignified exit."

Not as Aristide recalls it. According to one of his advisers, U.S. officials leaned hard on the President in the hours before he left. Moreno told Aristide the U.S. could not stop rebels from killing him, says the adviser. The only escape was to leave under U.S. guard--at once. Escorted by armed U.S. soldiers into the plane, the President and his wife were forbidden to use the phone or peek out the window.

Aristide says he did not know his destination until he landed. In fact, the pilots did not know until the plane was over the Atlantic, when France secured the African country's pledge. By then, Aristide's fate was sealed. --By Lisa Takeuchi Cullen. Reported by Kathie Klarreich and Tim Padgett/Portau-Prince and Massimo Calabresi/Washington

With reporting by Kathie Klarreich and Tim Padgett/Portau-Prince and Massimo Calabresi/Washington