Office of the Historian

365. Information Memorandum From the Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs (Oliver) to Secretary of State Rusk1

Washington, February 6, 1968.

SUBJECT

  • OAS/CIAP Technical Assistance for Haiti

On September 16, 1966, at the request of Joseph E. Johnson, President, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, you received Galo Plaza who proposed an OAS “plan” for Haiti. Quiet discussions on this topic were held between departmental officers and officials of the OAS/CIAP in the ensuing months and a general program, a substantial refinement of Plazaʼs plan, was developed. The SIG, on July 27, 1967, “agreed to give political support, and financial support as required … for the purpose of providing Latin American technical assistance to Haiti … provided … qualified French-speaking Latin Americans can be found and recruited.”2

OAS/CIAP sent several exploratory missions to Haiti during 1967, and in January 1968 the Haitian government formally requested an OAS/CIAP technical assistance mission of about thirty people. At its regular meeting on January 22, 1968, the CIAP formally supported the Haitian request and called upon the member countries of the Inter-American system to join in a special multilateral effort in order to carry out this program. Haitian support of the OAS/CIAP program was confirmed during the CIAP sub-committee review of Haiti January 29–February 2, 1968. Recruiting for the team has already commenced and [Page 845] OAS/CIAP hopes to have the first experts on board in Haiti within weeks.

While experience in Haiti during recent years has shown how difficult it is to operate meaningfully in that tragic country, we hope that this OAS/CIAP effort will establish an OAS “presence” in Haiti which will be instructive for the individual Latin American governments and useful in case of emergency.

  1. Source: Johnson Library, National Security File, Country File, Haiti, Vol. V. Secret. Drafted by Long on February 5. The date is handwritten on the memorandum. A marginal handwritten note by Bowdler reads: “Walt—Pls. Read.”↩
  2. Document 364.↩