Interview with Ambassador John P. Leonard -format

The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training
Foreign Affairs Oral History Project
AMBASSADOR JOHN P. LEONARD
Interviewed by: Charles Stuart Kennedy
Initial Interview Date: February 8, 2011
Copyright 2013 ADST

United States Ambassador to Suriname 1991-1994

• History of Suriname
• Ethnic groups
• Economy
• Minerals
• Army
• President Dési Bouterse
• Coups d’états
• Relations
• Dutch relations
• Dutch aid
• Narcotics trafficking
• Alcoa
• US policy
• Organization of American States (OAS)
• Relations with neighbors
• Promoting return to civilian rule

This is only the final part where he mentions Suriname:

Q: All right the next time we do this we will pick up Suriname.
Today is February 17, 2012. I think we left off you were on your way to Suriname was it?
LEONARD: When I finished up in Nicaragua, this would have been in 1991. I had
already been informed they were going to put me up for ambassador to Suriname. It
didn’t overly thrill me given the relative obscurity of Suriname, but nonetheless you don’t
turn down an ambassadorial appointment. I went back to Washington because my time in
Nicaragua was up. The Assistant Secretary for Latin American, Bernie Aaronson, said,
“Jack, I just wanted to let you know Suriname wasn’t what we had in mind for you. The
Bureau put you up to go to Bolivia. It got as far as the Undersecretary for Management.
He had his own guy, so his guy is the name that went over to the White House from the
State Department. We had to put you up for Suriname. Suriname was what we thought
the bureau would give you if Mrs. Chamorro lost the election.” I had actually gone back
to Washington several months before that because I had been told that I would have to go
up for a confirmation hearing. That was an interesting process in itself. The Bureau had
been having trouble getting hearings for its nominees because many Republicans,
including Senator Helms who was chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, were
not happy with the change in our policy towards Nicaragua even though Mrs. Chamorro
was elected. When I got back to Washington there was a confirmation hearing. I was told
there were three of us going up for a hearing. Myself, and our nominees to go to Guyana
and one other country. The person in that case was a nominee called Philip Hughes, a
political appointee. Senator Helms had been holding up Hughes and a nominee to go to
Guyana, George Jones, because he wasn’t happy with Jones. Jones had previously served
in Chile and Senator Helms was not pleased with our policy towards the Pinochet
government in Chile. George had been DCM there. Hughes had been sitting around for
months hoping to get a hearing before the committee and never had one. Then the
committee told the department that within a few days there would be a hearing and please
send up Leonard and Jones and Hughes. When I got to Washington these two were all
excited because they had been waiting a long time for this hearing. I hadn’t been waiting
at all. We got there on the duly appointed hour in the hearing room of the Foreign
Relations Committee. We sat around for awhile waiting to begin. Finally in came Senator
Helms and Senator Dodd who was the ranking Democrat on the committee. Senator
105
Helms called the proceedings to order. He swore us all in and then he proceeded to ask
me half a dozen questions, almost all about my experience in Nicaragua. The whole
matter took about half an hour at which point he gaveled the proceedings closed. That
was that. Poor Hughes and George Jones never got a word in edgewise. They had never
been asked a question. And the committee then later let the Department know OK for
Leonard but not for Hughes and Jones. They still had to wait. By that time I was already
back in Nicaragua wrapping things up and getting ready to leave. Poor Jones and Hughes
did ultimately get hearings several months later but they were forced to cool their heels
waiting and waiting. Meanwhile I went on to Suriname.
A word of background about Suriname. It became a Dutch colony in the18th century
after one of the endless European wars, this one involving the UK and Holland, as a
settlement of the war in one of the treaties. Suriname which had been a British Colony
became a Dutch colony. The Dutch ceded holdings to the UK, in this case the island of
Manhattan, and part of the colony outside of Manhattan. So Manhattan and the
Manhattan colony became British and Suriname became Dutch. At the time probably the
Dutch thought they had gotten the better of it because Suriname, or what then became
Dutch Guyana, was a sugar colony. Very profitable for the European mother country. The
whole history of Suriname from the time of its European settlement up until the 20th
century was a history of the Dutch bringing in labor to work the sugar plantations. First it
was black slaves from Africa. They were emancipated in 1865, and the Dutch brought in
indentured servants. They hired people from India who were brought to Suriname on
contracts and worked on the plantations for a specified number of years. Virtually every
single one of them, once their contract was up, fled the plantations and became merchants
and small farmers on their own. When those contracts were up, the Dutch authorities
hired people to come to Suriname from the island of Java in the East Indies. So the ethnic
makeup of Suriname was very interesting. About 40% to 45% of the ethnic makeup when
I was there were descendents of the African slaves. This group dominated the civil
service and the small farmers. About another 40% were from East India. They dominated
the Surinamese economy. About 10% or so were people from Java. They were mostly
small farmers. The rest was a very eclectic mix of a handful of native American people,
Chinese, and a handful of Dutch who stayed on in the colony. So it was a fascinating
place ethnically. In the 1970’s there came to power in Holland a socialist government
which found the notion of having colonies a huge embarrassment. They sought to divest
the Netherlands of its remaining colonies which were few in number, Suriname being the
largest. Their holdings included the islands of Curacao and Aruba in the Caribbean. They
tried to persuade these places to become independent. Suriname already had a great
measure of local autonomy. It had its own parliament. Foreign affairs and security
matters were handled by the Dutch in The Hague, but Dutch Guyana had a great deal of
local autonomy. It was well known that if there were a plebiscite for the people of Dutch
Guyana that independence would probably fail. So the Dutch decided there would not be
a plebiscite on independence but instead they would leave it to the little local parliament
to decide whether or not the country would become independent. The Dutch government
had already made it clear that it favored independence. In Suriname public opinion
divided along ethnic lines. Almost every member of the black community wanted
independence. Virtually every member of the Indian community wanted to remain a
106
Dutch colony and the Javanese were kind of all over the map as were the other very small
ethnic groups in Suriname. In the end in the parliament, the vote for independence was
won by one vote.
Q: Ouch!
LEONARD: The story which was told numerous times in Suriname, I can’t swear that it
is true but it was certainly well believed by most, was that this one vote was that of an
Indian parliamentarian, an Indian member of the local parliament, who was bribed and
voted for independence. So that was how Suriname became independent. This was in
about 1975. The Dutch were prepared to be very generous with Suriname. It was a
prosperous colony and on paper at least showed every prospect of continuing to be a
prosperous independent country because it had the great advantage of having a well
developed aluminum industry. There were bauxite mines in Suriname, plenty of them.
They produced a high grade quality bauxite. There were smelters to produce what is
called alumina which is the first step on the way to making aluminum. And in addition a
fair amount of finished aluminum was produced in Suriname. All of this was controlled
by two companies, Alcoa and a large company called Billiton. Although there were
always wide variations in prices of bauxite and alumina and aluminum itself, depending
on the condition of the world market, this was a very prosperous industry. So on paper at
least the newly independent Suriname should probably be able to do quite well.
Unfortunately the Surinamese went to the Dutch with one particular request as
independence was approaching. That request was that the Dutch help them establish a
Surinamese army. Well you might ask, what on earth would Suriname need with an
army. I don’t know how much thought anybody gave to that. Suriname had its own police
force, a colonial police force that would become the police force of the newly
independent country. Certainly there weren’t any particular enemies to Suriname they
could hope to do much against in the event of a war which seemed then and seems still
today to be so unlikely as to be almost unthinkable. Who would go to war with
Suriname? The Surinamese insisted that they wanted an army. I have always felt that
what they really wanted was to have an army which could be brought out to go and
march down the street for parades on independence day every year. If they really were
concerned about security matters then an expanded police force or territorial police force,
something along the lines of what Costa Rica has, would have done just fine. But the
Dutch were anxious to see independence quickly so they agreed to help them set up an
army. What they did was go around to members of the Dutch armed forces, who were of
Surinamese descent, of whom there were quite a few, although none were officers. They
went to these guys and canvassed them and said, “Look, anybody who would be willing
got go back and became the basic cadre of a new Surinamese army, we will help to set up
the army, we will help equip it. We will support your pay allowances in this new army
and so forth.” So they were able to attract a fair number of Surinamese noncommissioned officers to serve in this new army, to leave the Dutch Army and become
the officer cadre of this new army. Among those who agreed to this was Dési Bouterse.
The new government in Suriname didn’t pay much attention to its new little army. It
didn’t have much for them to do. It pretty much ignored the army because I think what
they pretty much wanted was the ceremonial force to march up and down the street. So
107
within five years the inevitable happened. There was a dispute between the army and the
Surinamese government over pay and conditions. So the army staged a coup d’etat,
overthrew the government and sent them packing. This was in the early 1980’s. I say the
inevitable happened because in my experience in the Foreign Service, I have always felt
that rule number one, especially in a small country, of having an army is you better pay
attention to them and you better take good care of them, lest they turn their guns on you.
This little fledgling government in Suriname did not do that.
The Dutch government and the U.S. government and a lot of others were displeased in
the extreme at this turn of events in Suriname. We and the Dutch put a great deal of
pressure on this military junta to cede power and allow a return to civilian government.
They ultimately did so, but not before there had been a number of unpleasant happenings
in Suriname, among which was the murder of a number of politicians who had been
imprisoned by the military when they seized power. Those murders sent a real chill of
fear through the hearts of many of the Surinamese politicians. Bouterse, who installed
himself as the head of the junta, was widely blamed for these killings, although they do
remain somewhat murky. I don’t think anybody has ever been able to get all the
particulars about how these killings came about and who was ultimately responsible for
them. But Bouterse was certainly up to his neck in the midst of it all. The army ceded
power and things continued apace in Suriname. The economy unfortunately deteriorated
as Surinamese politicians found it impossible to maintain any kind of fiscal discipline.
About a month or even less before I was to arrive in Suriname, a second coup d’etat
occurred again fomented by the same people in the Surinamese military, let by Bouterse.
This was a bloodless coup. It was often referred to in Suriname as the telephone coup.
Bouterse, who was no longer head of the army, who had retired, still maintained control
over the army through his military friends. Bouterse once again became unhappy with the
performance of the civilian government. He picked up the telephone one day, called up
the president and in effect said you are out! That was all it took for the president and his
cabinet to resign from office and to cede power to a bunch of politicians who were all
loyal to Bouterse and were members of a political party that he had founded.
To show our displeasure with this event, my arrival in Suriname was delayed. Bouterse’s
people took over control of the government. When I arrived, there was a façade of
civilian government, but it was totally beholden to Bouterse although he had no official
role in it. So I was told to do everything I could to try and help bring about a return to
civilian government. The Dutch suspended aid to Suriname. We had a very small AID
program. It didn’t amount to much, but we did the same. We were also speechifying in
the Organization of American States and generally trying to help raise opposition to this
illegally installed government.
Q: Did we have any feel for sort of the position the government had because this still was
this leftist? Was this Rightist, what was it?
LEONARD: No, this was a government which aligned itself whichever way Bouterse
wanted. Bouterse had flirted for a time in his first period in office in the 80’s with a lot of
left wing rhetoric. But he was basically an opportunist, somebody who was out to make
108
money. While he was out of office in the 80’s word came that he was starting to get
involved in narcotics trafficking. By the time of the telephone coup there was a whole lot
of information suggesting that he was indeed deeply involved in narcotics trafficking. So
the ideology really was a minor factor. He was much more an opportunist who would
occasionally unburden himself of left wing rhetoric, but whose real interest was in power
for himself and in making money. A major concern was that Suriname was a glaring
exception to the general trend toward democratically elected governments in the area that
the Bush Administration was very proud of and wanted to see continue. Even in as small
a country as Suriname it was disturbing to us to see this kind of backsliding. Because as
inefficient and incompetent as the civilian government has been it at least had been
elected freely and was a legitimate government whereas Bouterse was simply an
adventurer.
Q: I have interviewed somebody who was a very much earlier ambassador to Suriname,
who said that at one point when Cuba was flexing its muscles around in the area, we
were concerned about Cuban influence and sort of a military team had come down and
looked around to see what it would take to take over the country if the need came. It
didn’t happen but it showed some of our thinking at that time.
LEONARD: You have to remember at the time of Bouterse’s first coup the Soviet Union
still existed, and there were considerable worries about Cuban influence in Suriname
because Bouterse and a lot of the people around him spouted a lot of left wing rhetoric.
By the time of Bouterse’s telephone coup the Soviet Union was on the verge of collapse,
so there was a great deal less worry about the kinds of things which you are describing.
Q: But we have maintained relations all along.
LEONARD: Yes. We did not break off diplomatic relations with them. We treated with
the government in power although not with Bouterse. The Dutch were the real power
because of the aid money they held over the government’s head. We had to deal with
these fellows because they were in power. We did not break off relations. We simply did
not recognize this new government as being the legitimate one even though we of course
had to deal with it. We drew a distinction between having to deal with them and having to
deal with Bouterse. My policy was from the day I arrived I did not want to deal with him.
I would not talk with him or treat with him in any way, simply because I did not want to
do anything that would legitimize him. Particularly because of the increasing information
about his involvement in narcotics trafficking.
Q: Well as ambassador you come and you present your credentials as chief diplomat.
How did all this work?
LEONARD: I had to present my credentials to the chief of state even though we didn’t
recognize him as legitimate. This was simply a detail we chose to gloss over.
Q: It must have been kind of awkward for you.
109
LEONARD: Not really. I was used to dealing in awkward situations. I mean I had been in
Nicaragua where I had to deal with a government that we were waging a proxy war
against. So I didn’t find anything at all unusual about it.
Q: Did you have a reputation for being able to deal in ambiguous circumstances?
LEONARD: Well I don’t know if I did or not but as it turned out my experiences in
Nicaragua were good training for what I wound up dealing with in Suriname. So there
you have it. I don’t know whether I had that reputation or not.
Q: Well let’s take a couple of things. One what were American interests in Suriname?
LEONARD: On the political side was the concern that Suriname had fallen victim to an
illegal seizure of power. The Bush administration and before that the Reagan
administration had worked diligently to encourage the rise of Democratic regimes in
Latin America. When Reagan was in power a great many regimes were under control of
the military. To his credit Reagan set out to change that, and had considerable success as
did George Bush in changing that situation and fostering the rise of more democratically
elected governments in Latin America. Even though Suriname was unique in many ways
in Latin America, a Dutch colony as opposed to a Spanish one, language differences, its
unique ethnic makeup and whole history, still there was concern about any backsliding
anywhere in Latin America away from democratically elected governments. Secondly we
were concerned economically about the well being particularly of Alcoa which was the
larger of the two aluminum companies in Suriname. Billiton was a Dutch or English
company. We certainly did not want to see any threat to Alcoa’s operations and we did
not want a government in power which would even flirt with the idea of expropriating
Alcoa. So there was that kind of hovering in the background. Those were our two
paramount interests in Suriname.
Q: Did the OAS play any role in there?
LEONARD: Not a large one, but there was indeed condemnation, and we pushed the
OAS for a condemnation of this illegal seizure of power in Suriname. We also brought
that up at the UN. The idea was to convince this government in Suriname, which was
basically installed by the former military dictator, that the world community was
watching them, was against them, and very much wanted to see a return to real civilian
rule in Suriname through new elections. That was our tried and true formula. New
elections under international supervision. The OAS did play a relatively small role. The
bulk of the pressure on this government in Suriname had to come from us because we
were of course the big dog in the pound, and from the Dutch because they had control
over very sizable economic assistance funds for Suriname. These had been increasingly
important because the Surinamese had mismanaged their economy very badly and the
country was starting to suffer from very serious inflation. The Dutch were in a position to
make a real difference in Suriname. Of course they were not prepared to provide aid,
except the humanitarian kind, to this illegitimate government in Suriname.
110
Q: OK, now when did you arrive there?
LEONARD: Let’s see, It would have been 1991.
Q: And when did you leave?
LEONARD: 1994. I was there for three years.
Q: What were you up to?
LEONARD: My marching orders from Washington were to work with the Dutch to bring
about a return to legitimate civilian rule in Suriname. The Dutch did this by withholding
the bulk of their aid funds to Suriname. We lent our weight by trying to bring pressure
against Suriname in international bodies such as the UN, the OAS, by publicizing the
illegitimacy of the de facto government in Suriname. Both of us did this by going in and
jawboning the leaders of this de facto government and telling them that they had to cede
power. We went around very visibly, very publicly trying to encourage both public
opinion in Suriname and the legitimate political parties, those who had their
representatives ousted, to join us in demanding a return to legitimate rule. This was often
difficult because the former dictator Bouterse, the real power behind the de facto
government, was in may ways like a town bully in a little town in the wild west in the
United States. People were very much afraid of him because of the killings that occurred
when he was head of his military junta and because of his reputation as a very ruthless
man who would certainly not stop at killing people if that were seen to be to his
advantage. It took a great deal of our trying to reassure these politicians that it really in
the end was up to them to step forward and demand the return of civilian rule in
Suriname. It took the better part of a year to bring about that transition but ultimately it
was agreed. As I recall it was agreed that the de facto government would agree to new
elections in Suriname.
Q: Well OK here you are, in the first place why did they accept you? What was in it for
the people who had powers of control to have the American ambassador screwing things
up for them?
LEONARD: Well perhaps they thought I wouldn’t screw things up for them. Perhaps
they thought they would ingratiate themselves with me. Perhaps they were afraid that any
refusal by them to accept me as the American ambassador would result in more serious
pressure from us against them. I can’t speak to the whole range of calculations that went
through their minds, but I think they understood that refusing to accept an American
ambassador would not be a wise move on their part.
Q: Go back to the American side. I mean this is not a normal assignment saying OK it is
Suriname or something. They sent somebody who is known as being hard nosed and
dealing with difficult situations. I mean there was a task to be done.
111
LEONARD: Right. On our side we had not anticipated the telephone coup. Indeed I had
been confirmed as ambassador before it happened. It serendipitously turned out I was
probably as well qualified as anybody to deal with this unusual situation of having a
government which had seized power and illegally ejected the legal government. This
wasn’t something that struck me as being a strange situation but rather as a challenge.
Here was another problematic small country that had gotten itself into a huge mess and
with some luck and some smoke and mirrors maybe we can help them find their way out
of this mess one way or another.
Q: Well did you see any other country or element in other countries wanting to profit by
this? Well again I am thinking of Cuba.
LEONARD: The Cubans by that time were focused on their own survival. They didn’t
have time to offer any kind of aid or comfort to this government in Suriname and neither
did the Soviets of course who were in the process of collapsing. They were alone.
Q: Venezuela of course, this is way before Chavez and all.
LEONARD: Long before Hugo Chavez. So they were alone and that probably played a
role in their sudden realization that perhaps it might be just as well to cede power back to
a legitimate government because they had no one to turn to. They tried to ingratiate
themselves with the government of Brazil. The Brazilians are notoriously reluctant to get
involved in the affairs of other countries, but certainly the Brazilians were in no position
to offer them any great comfort. The Brazilian attitude at that time was: we can be
comfortable with any kind of government in Suriname and we aren’t going to raise a fuss
over this usurpation of power, but on the other hand if other countries want to make an
issue over it, we are not going to make a fuss over that either. So this de facto
government in Suriname really had nowhere to go.
Q: Did the French have any influence or anything like that?
LEONARD: The French, of course, being right next door in French Guiana, they were
always quite interested in what was going on in Suriname but they didn’t feel any great
concern over matters. They were never going to be as active as we or the Dutch were in
trying to bring about a return to legitimate government. Their main concern was their
own hard little piece of France there in French Guiana. Their calculation was whoever is
running Suriname is not going to pose much of a threat to us; they were quite relaxed. On
the surface they would occasionally join in the criticism of the illegal seizure of power in
Suriname. It wasn’t something they were going to make an issue of.
Q: Now you had that vast hinterland in Brazil and all. Did that, I mean did anything sort
of come through the borders or go out of there. you mentioned drugs. How did this work?
LEONARD: The only thing that went across that very isolated border were Brazilian
gold miners. They would filter across the border into the hinterlands of Suriname and pan
for gold in some of the rivers in the jungle. That was the only activity in that part of the
112
jungle. There was no road from Suriname into Brazil. I traveled into the hinterlands of
Suriname a number of times and believe me there was very little out there.
Q: Were there indigenous people in the area, or were they, how were they treated?
LEONARD: There were a very few Amer-Indians left in Suriname. Their numbers were
literally in the thousands and not the tens of thousands. There was one group in the
hinterlands that was very interesting to me. These were the so called bush negroes. They
were the descendants of African slaves who had escaped from plantations in Dutch
Guyana and fled into the jungle and had managed to evade recapture. What they did was
to set up villages and recreated their old life in Africa. In the 20th century many
anthropologists in Holland became very interested in these people who had managed to
recreate and preserve their traditional way of life deep in the jungles of Suriname. They
were darlings of the Dutch government which felt very protective about them and took
pains to support them and provide them with economic support so they could maintain
their traditional way of life in the jungles of Suriname. This was not a large population,
20,000 or 30.000 people at most, but they were fascinating. They had managed to
recreate and preserve their traditional way of life in Suriname. It was fascinating. They
would welcome visitors. You had to fly in. That was the only practical way. You could
go in up the rivers but that took forever. You could fly into one or more of their villages,
and they were happy to have a small number of visitors come in and they would explain
their traditions and their way of life.
Q: Did we have a Peace Corps there?
LEONARD: We had no Peace Corps while I was there. We were always on the lookout
for opportunities to get the Peace Corps in again. As I recall they had been in Suriname
for a time, but after the first coup d’etat in the 80’s they had left.
Q: What were you and your embassy doing during those three years?
LEONARD: My first year was almost entirely taken up with working with the Dutch
embassy to bring about a return of civilian rule. That involved endless jawboning with
the de facto government and endless trying to prop up and reinvigorate the figures in the
government which had been overthrown, and to persuade them that they had to become
more active in demanding a return to civilian government. I had a very small embassy. I
had a number two who was the DCM. He was basically also our economic officer. He did
all of the usual stuff. He had a junior officer to help him to do the mandatory reporting on
Suriname’s economy. Basically following the aluminum industry. I had a one person
consular section and an administrative officer who also served as the GSO. I had a
miniscule station as well. They proved useful in many ways which I can generally refer
to. It was a very small embassy. The consular section didn’t have a tremendous amount
of work. We had the usual visa work. We would occasionally have to deal with was an
American who washed up who was running away from the French Foreign Legion. The
French Foreign Legion had a detachment in French Guiana. Once or twice a year we
might get a deserter from the Foreign Legion who managed to get across the river that
113
formed the border between Suriname and French Guiana and would show up at our
embassy seeking repatriation back to the United States. We usually tried to do whatever
we could to help these guys when those occasions, arose. We also had one military
attaché, army, who was resident in Suriname. He proved to be absolutely invaluable. He
was an American Lt. Colonel who was of Dutch extraction so he spoke fluent Dutch. He
had been born in what is now Indonesia when it was still a Dutch colony, before it got
independence in the early 1950’s. He spoke fluent Dutch. He was army so he proved
invaluable in our efforts to reach out and influence this little Surinamese army and help
the legitimate government, once it was restored, to help them get control over their old
armed forces. Those armed forces were still very much under the thumb of the former
dictator.
Q: We will put here various incidents that happened during the time you were there.
LEONARD: Talk about the return to civilian rule and the struggles of the civilian
government to try and get control in particular over its own security forces.
Note: This interview was not completed prior to Ambassador Leonard’s death.
End of interview