CARIBBEAN

“The Bayou of Pigs,” FBI agents called the fiasco.  Armed with assorted rifles and handguns, a motley crew of neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klansmen set off last week to invade the Caribbean island of Dominica.  On D Day they piled into a rented van in New Orleans and set off for a rendezvous with a yacht bound for Dominica and glory.  But as things turned out, their driver was a Federal agent.  When they reached their point of embarkation, an FBI SWAT team jerked open the van door and seized them.  “It was a textbook arrest,” said FBI agent Clifford Anderson.  “They were searched, handcuffed – and removed.”

The leader of the group was Michael Eugene Perdue, 32, a former Green Beret from Houston, Texas.  Perdue’s raiders included Don Black, 27, Grand Wizard of the Alabama KKK; Wolfgang Droege, 31, an operative of some prominence in the KKK of Canada, and William Prichard Jr., 30, a truck driver who had once belonged to the American Nazi Party.

Mystery:  Why the raiders had set their hearts on Dominica was something of a mystery.  Only 29 miles long and 16 miles wide, the island ranks as one of the poorest and least developed of Third World countries.  Bananas and citrus fruits are its only cash crops.  Two hurricanes in 1979 all but wiped out its homes and its road system.  Independent for only the past three years, it has been shaken by strikes and political unrest.  Most of its 80,000 citizens re black, the descendants of slaves.  Racists seem unlikely invaders.  “I don’t think it was a Klan operation,” said David Duke, a former high-ranking Klansman.  “But if somebody wants to set up a mercenary force, they don’t recruit from the Boy Scouts.”

On Dominica, the government of Prime Minister Mary Eugenia Charles believed that the raiders wanted to transform the island into a haven for hot money and investors on the lam such as Robert Vesco.  “There had been attempts by certain people in the prior administration to give Dominican nationality to people who call themselves or have been made stateless,” said police commissioner Oliver Phillip.  “We are told that passports were to have been sold for up to $10,000.”  The leader of the prior administration – Prime Minister Patrick John – has been under arrest since March for attempting to overthrow the present regime.  If an American jury finds Perdue’s raiders guilty of trying the same thing, they could get $22,000 in fines and 32 years in jail.
 
Source unknown.  Scan of the clipping found online with no publication details.
 

Comments are closed.