Office of the Historian

354. Memorandum From William G. Bowdler of the National Security Council Staff to the Presidentʼs Special Assistant (Rostow)1

Washington, May 2, 1966.

SUBJECT

  • SIG Meeting: Haitian Contingency Paper

The situation in Haiti has “stabilized” itself again after the plotting of three weeks ago. But conditions continue to be sufficiently unstable to make a sudden upheaval a possibility at any time. Ambassador Timmons is coming from Port-au-Prince today to give the SIG the latest estimate.

The contingency paper before the SIG is an incomplete and not very lucid draft.2 The most important annexes (explained below) are missing. The paper itself was prepared according to a pre-determined standard format dictated by an IBM approach to problems and suffers from all the corresponding rigidities. My efforts to have papers tailored to individual country situations have foundered on bureaucratic requirements levied on ARA by higher authority.

The paperʼs principal value is that it identifies the various ways which the ball might bounce if Duvalier falls or a serious effort to dislodge him materializes. In trying to anticipate specific Latin American and Communist reactions to various contingencies and prescribe fixed courses of action, the paper is unrealistic, although there is some utility in at least thinking through the possibilities. What we do in a given situation will depend upon the circumstances prevailing at the time which may be quite different from those anticipated in the paper.

In the IRG/ARA review of this paper, I insisted on the preparation of three annexes which should be kept up to date:

a.
list of US personnel with Haitian expertise who could be used in Haiti or Washington in a crisis situation.
b.
list of acceptable Haitians in Haiti or in exile whom we could tap to man a provisional government.
c.
list of immediate economic measures which we could take following the fall of Duvalier to quiet unrest, buttress the provisional government and get the economy moving again.

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As you and I discussed earlier, these three lists, plus the military contingency plans, are the guts of realistic planning in that they will enable us to act with maximum speed in any situation.

The IRG agreed to include all three lists as annexes. They are in various stages of preparation but none ready to be included in the package which the SIG will consider tomorrow.

I recommend that at the SIG you take this position:

1.
The SIG should take note of the paper as a useful planning document.3
2.
The SIG should ask IRG/ARA to:
a)
complete the annexes and keep them up to date as a matter of top priority.
b)
revise the paper to make explicit references to the annexes and relate them to the corresponding sections of the paper.

WGB
  1. Source: Johnson Library, National Security File, Agency File, SIG, 6th Mtg., 4/19/66, Vol. I. Secret.↩
  2. Document 353.↩
  3. A Record of Agreements and Decisions of the SIG meeting of May 3 reported that the Group considered the draft contingency plans on Haiti and agreed that, if possible, the United States should avoid placing its forces in Haiti for any purpose other than rapid evacuation of U.S. and certain other citizens, and that the contingency plans should not be discussed with other members of the OAS. (Johnson Library, National Security File, Agency File, SIG, 6th Mtg., 4/19/66, Vol. I)↩