FRANCOIS & JEAN CLAUDE DUVALIER
Presidents of Haiti
In 1957 Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier became Haiti's President-For-Life, establishing a strategic relationship with the US that lasted until 1971, when he was succeeded by his son Jean Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier. During the 30 years that they ruled with an iron hand, 60,000 Haitians were killed and countless more were tortured by the Duvaliers' Tonton Macoutes death squads. While Haiti became the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, the Duvaliers enriched themselves by stealing foreign aid money. In 1980, for instance, the International Monetary Fund granted Haiti a $22 million budget supplement. Within weeks, $16 million was "unaccounted for". Baby Doc made Haiti into a trans-shipment point for Colombian cocaine. Nevertheless, as long as Papa and Baby Doc were anti-communists, they could do no wrong in the US government's eyes. Their regime finally ended in 1986, when Baby Doc fled angry mobs of Haitians for asylum in France, with a fortune estimated at $400 million. It has been estimated that under Baby Doc's rule 40,000 Haitians were murdered.
KING FAHD BIN 'ABDUL - 'AZIZ
King of Saudi Arabia
King Fahd bin 'Abdul -'Aziz is the absolute monarch of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Fahd and 2000 related royals rule with an iron grip of medieval feudalism. Control over the lives of their citizens is total and arbitrary. Torture is common, and amputation is frequently ordered by the courts. Women have few rights, and adultery by women is punished by death by stoning. Executions by hanging are public -- there were at least 60 such executions in 1994. The main opposition is from Sunni Islamists, and hundreds are in prison. Saudi Arabia is supported by the United States and other western democracies because of the enormous oil wealth that lies below the country's desert sands, its pro-West stance, and the royal family's staunch anti-fundamentalist position. The irony of American policy in Saudi Arabia is that the US, the world's most vocal advocate for democracy, supports one of the most undemocratic regimes in the world.
GENERAL FRANCISCO FRANCO
President of Spain
General Francisco Bahamonde Franco was not the most popular leader in Spain during the early 1930s. A man of humble origins, he had worked his way up the military ladder fighting colonial wars in Africa. Franco, a staunch conservative, was infuriated when a Republican alliance of socialists, Marxists, and liberals won Spain's first free elections in 1936. So the General decided to restore order by force. Franco's Nationalists were losing the civil war, but military support from Hitler, Mussolini, and the US corporations that backed Hitler, turned the tide in his favor. Italy and Germany sent 6,060 trucks to Franco's fascists, but 12,000 were supplied by Ford, General Motors and Studebaker. The US claimed neutrality but didn't stop these companies from aiding Franco. The failure of the US and other democratic nations to assist Spain's democratic government was ultimately responsible for Franco's victory in 1939, and sadly, American volunteers who fought for the Republic were relentlessly persecuted during the US anti-communist hysteria of the 1950s. Under Franco, all political parties and labor unions were banned, books were burned, and dissenters were tortured and executed. Spain was ostracized by the international community, but the US considered Franco a Cold War ally and sank millions into the country. After Franco's death in 1975, Spain became a democratic republic once again. (Note: Spain is a parliamentary monarchy, with a Constitution since 1978 and democratic representative elections. Franco was not a President of Spain, but a "Generalísimo" supreme military commander).
ADOLF HITLER
Chancellor of Germany
As German bombs fell on London and Nazi tanks rolled over US troops, Sosthenes Behn president and founder of the US based ITT corporation, met with his German representative to discuss improving German communication systems. ITT was designing and building Nazi phone and radio systems as well as supplying crucial parts for German bombs. Our government knew all about this, for under a presidential order, US companies were licensed to trade with the Nazis. The choice of who would be licensed was odd, though. While the Secretary of State gave the Ford Motor Company permission to make Nazi tanks, he simultaneously blocked aid to German-Jewish refugees because the US wasn't supposed to be trading with the enemy. Other US companies trading with the Third Reich were General Motors, DuPont, Standard Oil of New Jersey, Davis Oil Co., and the Chase National Bank. President Roosevelt did not stop them, fearing a scandal might lead to another stock market crash or lower US moral. Besides, the same companies that traded with Hitler were supplying the US with its armaments, and some corporate leaders threatened to withdraw their support if Roosevelt exposed them. Henry Ford was a good friend of Hitler's. His book -- The International Jew -- had Inspired Hltler's Mein Kampf. The Fuhrer kept Ford's picture in his office, and Ford was one of only four foreigners to receive Germany's highest civilian award. As for Sosthenes Behn, at the end of the war, he received the highest civilian award for service to his country -- the United States of America.
HASSAN II
King of Morocco
Like his former ally, the Shah of Iran, King Hassan ll of Morocco spares himself no earthly delight. He has seven principal palaces, keeps 260 horses in just one of his many stables, boards most of his camels, ostriches, and zebras with his 945 head of cattle at his 1500 acre dairy farm, and he's got a couple of harems. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate in Morocco is over 20%, and 95% of the population lives in abject poverty, sheltering in makeshift huts in the country's increasingly swollen cities. Citing dubious historical ties, in 1975, Hassan took his nation into a war in the Western Sahara that is costing the country over $l million a day. Although the International Court of Justice ruled that Morocco has no historical claims to the territory, the US continues to back Hassan diplomatically and financially in his war to annex the area. The US also takes an active role in stopping coup attempts against the King. According to one dissident, the CIA gave Hassan a video tape that enabled him to catch the plotters in the act. The favor was returned when Hassan visited Washington in 1982 -- he and President Reagan agreed that the US could use Morocco as an emergency base for its planes. Although Hassan has been less repressive in recent years, members of the opposition are still arrested and tortured. But as his people start to make connections between the rising cost of living and the war in the Sahara, criticism grows, and even the CIA has admitted that Hassan may not be able to keep the lid on dissent much longer.
FERDINAND MARCOS
President of the Philippines
Ferdinand Marcos began his career with a bang. At age 21, convicted of gunning down Julio Nalundasan, his father's victorious opponent in the Philippines first national elections, he went to prison. He was later release by a Supreme Court Justice who, like Marcos and his father, was a Nazi collaborator. Despite Marcos's record as murderer, fake WWll hero and Nazi agent, he was elected Philippine President in 1965. Under Marcos, the Philippine national debt grew from $2 billion to $30 billion, but US corporations in the Philippines prospered, perhaps explaining why the US didn't protest Marcos's imposition of martial law in 1972. The Marcoses enjoyed a luxurious lifestyle, and they salted away billions of dollars in the course of their US-backed rule between 1965 and 1986.
The Carter Administration engineered an $88 million World Bank loan to Marcos, increased military aid to him by 300%, and called him a "soft dictator". But a 1976 Amnesty International report identified 88 government torturers, and stated that alleged subversives had their heads slammed into walls, their genitals and pubic hair torched, and were beaten with clubs, fists, bottles, and rifle butts. By 1977, the armed forces had quadrupled and over 60,000 Filipinos had been arrested for political reasons. Yet, in 1981, Vice President George Bush praised Marcos for his "adherence to democratic principals and to the democratic processes". Marcos was overthrown in 1986 by followers of Corazon Aquino, widow of an assassinated opposition leader.
Ferdinand and Imelda fled to Hawaii, only to be indicted in 1988 for fraud and tax evasion. Marcos died in 1989. Imelda returned to the Philippines in 1991 and stood unsuccessfully in the Presidential elections of 1992. In 1993 she was sentenced to 18 years imprisonment for criminal graft and to other long sentences for corruption. She is still free while she appeals. She was elected to Congress in May 1995. Meanwhile, in it attempts to recover the lost Marcos billions from Swiss bank accounts and other shadier locations the Philippines Government has, after paying its US lawyers, recovered the princely sum of $2,000.
MAXIMILIANO HERNANDEZ MARTlNEZ
General of El Salvador
Maximiliano Hernandez Martinez seized power El Salvador in a 1931 coup. His philosophy with regard to human rights was clear -- "It is a greater crime to kill an ant than a man," said the General.
Hernandez Martinez initiated an anti-communist purge in 1932 in El Salvador. Subsequent massacres left 40,000 peasants dead and wiped out the country's Indian culture. An uprising, six weeks later, organized by El Salvador's Communist Party founder, Farabundo Marti, failed, and was followed by the crackdown on "communists". Roadways and drainage ditches were littered with bodies. Hotels were raided, individuals with blond hair were dragged out and killed as suspected Russians. Many were executed and then shoved into mass graves they had first been forced to dig. U.S. warships were stationed off-shore, ready to send in Marines to aid the General in case he ran into serious opposition. Hernandez Martinez was run out of the country in 1944, but his memory was celebrated as recently as 1980, when the Maximiliano Hernandez Martinez Brigade carried out a series of death-squad assassinations of prominent Salvadoran leftists. Farabundo Marti, killed during the purge, has also left a legacy -- the rebels who fought the U.S. backed government of El Salvador during the 1980s, call themselves the FMLN, the Farabundo Marti Liberation Front.
MOBUTU SESE SEKO
President of Zaire
When Zaire's first elected President, Patrice Lumumba, appeared to be getting too close to socialism, US companies feared they might lose control of Zaire's precious cobalt, copper, and diamonds. So the CIA stepped in, assassinated Lumumba, and replaced him with Mobutu Sese Seko. Since 1965, Mobutu has been the US's main man in Central Africa. Mobutu has amassed an estimated $5 billion personal fortune at his nation's expense. He is perhaps the only world leader who could pay his national debt from his own bank account. In fact, there seems to be no division between his pocket and the national treasury. In 1974, when the US sent $1.4 million to assist troops fighting a civil war, Mobutu pocketed the entire sum. And no foreign company sets itself up in Zaire without a tribute to Mobutu. Although Zaire has more resources than most other countries in the region, it is the fifth poorest. Malnutrition takes the lives of one-third of Zaire's children, and one child out of two dies before age five. But Mobutu has vowed to keep the world safe for democracy and according to Amnesty International, in the name of anti-communism, he imprisons and tortures, often without trial, anyone who threatens his power base. While some members of Congress grumble about giving assistance to Mobutu, they continue to reward his work against communism and his warm reception of American corporations.
