U.S. ACCUSED OF ENFORCING NEUTRALITY LAWS SELECTIVELY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000504880011-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 8, 2012
• Sequence Number: 11
• Publication Date: January 14, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504880011-8 STAT
ARTICLE APPEARED
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
14 January 1985
U.S. accused of enforcing
neutrality laws selectively
' By James O'Shea
Chicago Tribune
WASHINGTON-Claude Perpignand is a Haitian na-
tive, now an American citizen, who jumped at a chance
'to help when a group approached him in New York a
few years ago with a 'plot to invade Haiti.
When Perpignand was a small boy in Port-au-Prince
25 years ago, his attorney says, his father was riddled
with bullets and dragged through the streets to serve as
.an example to those who dared oppose right-wing
dictator Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier, father of the
current president.
Tommy Posey, 38, is a produce dealer in Alabama
'.who belongs to Civilian Military Assistance, a group
-helping rebels in Nicaragua in their effort to topple the
,leftist Sandinista government there.
Posey and others say they have not actually fought in
Nicaragua, but they have traveled often to Central
America and two of their members were shot down in a
rebel helicopter over Nicaragua last year in what the
Sandinistas called a combat situation.
ALTHOUGH THE GOALS of the two men might seem
similar, the "fortunes of war" have turned out differ-
ently for Posey and Perpignand. Posey and the Civilian
Military Assistance got a pat on the back for forays
into Central America from none other than President
Reagan, who views the Marxist-oriented Sandinistas as
'a threat to U.S. security. -
But Perpignand ended up in a New Orleans jail,
prompting accusations that the Reagan administra-
.tion's diplomatic goals color its enthusiasm for enfor-
cing the law back home.
Indeed, when asked about the propriety of Civilian
-Military Assistance activities in an October interview
with Scripps-Howard Newspapers, the President
equated the group's actions with American participa-
l.ion in the "Flying Tigers," World War II volunteers
.who flew cargo in China and Burma before the United
States declared war on the Japanese.
"I have to say that it is quite in line with what has
'been a pretty well-established tradition in our country,"
.he said. "I'm not a lawyer, so I never asked about the i
actual.legality of anything of that kind. I would be
-inclined not to want to interfere."
BUT THERE WERE no accolades for the crew that'
included Perpignand. 'Several "comrades in arms" i
turned out to be federal agents well aware of laws that
prohibit private citizens from launching invasions of
other countries.
Perppinand may have joined an invasion force that
"couldn t have overrun a day-care center," in the
words of his own lawyer, but the U.S. Justice Depart-
ment had 55 hours of videotapes recording the plot to
overthrow the right-wing regime in Haiti, whose ex-
treme poverty and anticommunist policies brought it
$46 million in U.S. aid last year.
As a result, Perpignand and most of his comrades
pleaded guilty after sitting in jail for quite a while, and
he is engaged in a court fight accusing the Reagan
administration of enforcing U.S. neutrality laws only
when it suits foreign policy goals.
"Here you have a government on one hand condoning
and supporting a violation of the law in Nicaragua, and
suppor a re e s trying to opp e the San finis as, a-
regime a as a op a some o the same oppressive
practices.that it condemned before it came into power.
The Reagan administration understandably feels un-
comfortable with a government in Nicaragua that it
views as another Cuba.
Haiti is run by Duvalier's son, Jean Claude Duvalier,
who has a lifetime hold on the presidency. He main-
tains a- virtual police state and lures U.S. aid by
capitalizing on U.S. support for anticommunist govern-
ments.
on the other sand it is expending public funds to set
people up" for arrest, said Ramsey Clark, former U.S.
attorney general and now a New York lawyer for
Perpignand.
"Even you or I with our obvious disadvantages could
go through the Haitian community here like the Pied
Piper. They are an exiled community with a strong pull
to go home."
CLARK ALLEGED that the Reagan administration
enforces the neutrality laws only when friendly right-
wing governments are involved, but a Justice Depart-.
ment spokesman denied that a double standard exists.
There is no question that it is against American law
for private citizens to play John Wayne and launch
assaults on foreign lands. In 1794, Congress enacted the
Neutrality Act, which prohibits private citizens from
embarking on paramilitary expeditions against a nation
with which the nation is at peace.
"Whoever, within the U.S.," the law's sweeping
language says, "knowingly begins or ... provides,
prepares, furnishes money for or takes part in any
military or naval expedition or enterprise to be carried
on from [the U.S.1 against the territory of any foreign
prince or state" can be fined as much as $3,000 or be
sentenced to three years in jail or both.
There also is no question that there are highly
charged political feelings on both sides of the question.
THE U.S. HAS not declared war against Nicaragua.
But it is no secret that the Central Intelligence Agency
Continued
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 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504880011-8 2
Many Haitian natives in the U.S. understandably
despise the fear and poverty that grip Haiti, despite
Duvalier's promise for improvements in human rights.
But under American legal principles, emotions and
politics don't justify enforcement of the law in one case
but not another.
Federal prosecutors used the neutrality law to
ensnare Perpignand and a handful of others, Clark
said, all of whom had been lured to New Orleans by
federal agents in an elaborate trap.
NO SUCH ENFORCEMENT efforts have been direct-
eed against Civilian Military Assistance or many of the
:other groups directing private aid to the rebels in
;:Nicaragua, according to a report by the Central Ameri-
,can Project, a private research organization that stud-
ied aid to the rebels.
The Justice Department says the two cases are
different.
"If you have some group in the southern [U.S.] that)
keeps getting into a boat with a rusty sword and al
shotgun and heading for Haiti, that's against the law,"
a department spokesman said, because it is a blatant
violation easy to prove in court.
Civilian Military Assistance, he said, knows the
technicalities of the law and takes care to avoid any
blatant missteps. As a result, he said, there is no proof
of any illegality in this situation under the department's
policy on_ enforcement of the neutrality law.
The department said the Haitians took elaborate
steps within the U.S. to launch the invasion, including
trips to an island up the Mississippi River where the
forces were to train.
"They knowingly prepared for an invasion from
within the U.S.," the spokesman said. In contrast, he
said, Civilian Military Assistance gathers equipment
and delivers it to Central American nations, such as
Honduras, that are not the target of an invasion. j
MOREOVER, THE department said there is nothing
illegal about private shipment of equipment or aid to
Central America even if it ends up in the hands of the
rebels, as long as the proper export licenses are
obtained.
"The act generally has been construed as not prohib-
iting the private support of military expeditions that
have been organized in, and launched from, countries
other than the U.S.," according to an October, 1984,1
Justice Department letter to the Senate Foreign Rela-
tions Committee spelling out the enforcement policy on
the Neutrality Act. .
But Clark said the department's policy is lawless.
Clark has filed an appeal of Perpignand's case, charg-
ing that the Reagan administration is selectively enfor-
cing the neutrality law.
SOME INDICATION exists that the Justice Depart-
ment does not enforce the Neutrality Act as vigorously
as other laws. A report last April by the General
Accounting Office, the congressional investigative
,agency, said the department does prosecute isolated
cases against Cuba, a nation that the Reagan adminis-
tration dislikes more than Nicaragua.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504880011-8