Part 1 HERE, Part 2 HERE

Surviveandheal15 Lives On!!**

By: Anonymous
February 26th, 2021

(**Note: This is NOT a QAnon Article. This author does NOT believe in QAnon AT ALL.)

“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.”
– Marie Curie

“… the real significance of this scandal for me […] is the link to contemporary slavery and trafficking. I can’t say to what extent, but there is human trafficking happening through the Clinton’s [Caracol] Complex. And mining has always been historically linked to trafficking, slavery, and labor exploitation.”
— Monica Petersen, Research Fellow and Assistant to the Director at the Human Trafficking Center at the University of Denver, in January 2016 Facebook Post (LINK)

The Laura Silsby Case: Another Clinton-Connected Human Trafficking Scandal in Haiti

It is again important to note Monica Petersen specifically wrote about “two huge human trafficking scandals” happening in Haiti that allegedly led back to the Clintons, in her 2016 Facebook post. However, she only specifically says that human trafficking was occurring at the Caracol complex in northern Haiti. So where was the other “human trafficking scandal” in Haiti, if there indeed was one? It is therefore very important to bring up the Laura Silsby human trafficking scandal in Haiti in 2010, that occurred 6 years before Petersen’s death. Unlike Monica Petersen, the Laura Silsby case was actually covered by a pretty wide range of mainstream news outlets at its time around 2010. Since then however, there has ALSO been a resounding “mainstream media silence” about this Clinton-connected scandal as well. Laura Silsby was a supposed Baptist missionary, who along with other “missionaries” from the “New Life Children’s Refuge” charity in Boise, Idaho, travelled to Haiti in 2010, after the devastating January 2010 earthquake in Haiti that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives. Silsby and her fellow missionaries were supposedly in Haiti to “rescue” children who had been left orphaned by the earthquake. However, only 3 weeks after the earthquake, Silsby and 10 other missionaries from her charity were arrested by Haitian authorities for attempting to illegally take 33 children across the Haitian border into the Dominican Republic. Very significantly, the Harvard Human Rights Journal published an in-depth study of the Silsby human trafficking case by Law School Professor Shani King, titled “Owning Laura Silsby’s Shame: How the Haitian Child Trafficking Scheme Embodies the Western Disregard for the Integrity of Poor Families.” Quoting from Professor King’s article:

“On January 29, 2010, less than three weeks after the earthquake, Haitian authorities arrested ten U.S. Baptist missionaries for attempting to take 33 children by bus across the border into the Dominican Republic without proper documentation. A week later, the missionaries were charged with child kidnapping and criminal association. While the missionaries claimed good intentions and ignorance of Haitian laws, Haitian prosecutors argued that there had been intentional wrongdoing. In the course of a month, President Clinton brokered the release of all the missionaries, except for the group leader, Laura Silsby.

While Laura Silsby awaited trial, the press brought to light several facts that raised serious suspicions about her intent to traffic or smuggle the children as part of a grey adoption scheme. In 2009, Silsby visited Haiti with the stated intent to establish an orphanage. At the time, Silsby faced numerous court cases in the U.S. for bad debt and unpaid wages. In November 2009, she registered her New Life Children’s Refuge charity at an address in Boise, Idaho, and a month later the house was repossessed for lack of payment. In the midst of her personal debt crisis, the January earthquake struck Haiti, and Silsby organized a mission to “gather 100 orphans from the streets” of Haiti and take them to a shelter in the Dominican Republic. The children would be housed in a leased hotel because Silsby’s purported charity did not yet manage an orphanage or own any property in the Dominican Republic. U.S. authorities later stated that New Life Children’s Refuge was not listed as a U.S. nonprofit or as a U.S. international adoption agency. In March, after her arrest, evidence was introduced in Silsby’s case showing that on January 26, 2010, she had previously attempted to take a different group of 40 children across the border. Haitian and Dominican authorities turned her away for lack of authorizing documents. Three days later she attempted to cross over with the second group — the 33 children — again without proper documentation.

[…] After the earthquake, the Haitian government tried to crack down on unauthorized adoptions to avoid child trafficking. In addition, the Dominican consul in Haiti had personally warned Silsby that she lacked the necessary paperwork to take children out of the country and risked arrest. On March 17, 2010, after careful verification of identities by the Social Welfare Ministry of Haiti, 32 out of the 33 children were returned to their families (the last one being returned shortly thereafter), thus confirming that none of the children were orphans. […] Suspicions about Silsby’s intent to smuggle or traffic the children to the Dominican Republic further increased, when on March 19, 2010, Silsby’s legal advisor — Jorge Torres-Puello, an American-Dominican living in the Dominican Republic as a fugitive — was arrested and accused of human trafficking. U.S. authorities revealed that Torres-Puello was ‘linked to a network that trafficked in Haitian and Central American children and [was] wanted in the United States, El Salvador and Costa Rica. His wife was already imprisoned in El Salvador and ‘faced charges of presumed sexual exploitation of minors and women.’

Despite Silsby’s stated intent to take the children over the border to an unauthorized orphanage and her connections to human traffickers such as Torres-Puello, the courts eventually dropped the kidnapping and criminal association charges against her. Silsby was instead convicted under the additional charge of organizing illegal travel, sentenced to time served (3 months and 8 days), and released on May 17, 2010. In the end, her sentence was based on the least polemic charge against her. The pressing issue — whether Silsby intended to deliver the children into trafficking rings or grey adoption markets — was not addressed or resolved.’’

Jorge Torres-Puello, the “lawyer” who mysteriously showed up in Haiti to defend Laura Silsby and her incredibly shady group of fellow “missionaries,” turned out to be a for-real child trafficker who was already on the run from the law himself and wanted in multiple countries, including the US! As if this could not get any sketchier, Professor King at the beginning of his article states that, “Despite evidence of association with child traffickers, the Haitian justice system- prodded in part by President Clinton’s diplomatic efforts on behalf of the missionaries- determined that none of the missionaries were guilty of illegal activities, except the leader Laura Silsby…” So we have a source no less reputable than the Harvard Human Rights Journal, stating that Bill Clinton himself “prodded” Haitian authorities to quickly release all these “missionaries” except Silsby, who herself was quickly released after just a few months also. This was in spite of the fact that the question of whether Silsby and her co-conspirators “intended to deliver the children into trafficking rings” was NOT “addressed or resolved.” Again, based on my own Google search query for “Laura Silsby,” there was a brief flurry of articles and reports from mainstream press agencies about the Silsby case after her arrest in 2010… followed by a virtual “media silence” from then on. The Laura Silsby case was quite obviously a Haitian human trafficking scandal that led directly back to the Clintons… could this have been the other “huge human trafficking scandal” that Monica Petersen was referring to in the January 2016 Facebook post?

Possible Steps Forward for Investigators and Activists

The circumstances of Monica Petersen’s death in Haiti is shrouded in a virtual media silence, accompanied by a trickle of social media posts that shed a deeply disturbing light on what the actual circumstances of Petersen’s death may have been. At the same time, I fully realize that I am writing this in February 2021, only a little over a month after a mob of Trump supporters, many of them quite openly QAnon conspiracy supporters, stormed the US Capitol. Trying to have a serious discussion about Monica Petersen’s investigation of human trafficking in Haiti, and it’s possible connection to the Clintons, is obviously an extremely difficult task. I fully get that putting “Clintons” and “human trafficking” together in the same sentence, invites every kind of ludicrous conspiracy theory imaginable. In my own defense, I have tried to stick to the most reputable sources possible in my investigation of Monica Petersen’s time spent in Haiti and her death there. I strongly feel that in order to “break through” the wall of media-generated misinformation and hysteria generated by the current “QAnon craze,” it is essential to look at the existing facts about Monica Petersen and Haiti as they actually are, and NOT ignore the available evidence that is clearly “hiding in plain site.”

I definitely believe that in order to make any progress in figuring out what actually happened to Monica Petersen, at least as I perceive it, there are four main “areas” that clearly need to be looked at:
1.) What really were Monica Petersen’s contacts with Caracol workers, and possibly their family members and friends, as well as other Haitian activists, during her time conducting human trafficking investigations in Haiti during 2015–16? Do other documented forms of labor trafficking and labor exploitation known to occur at the Caracol factory and surrounding communities, be able to shine more of a light on Petersen’s findings about what may have been occurring at Caracol?

2.) Was there anything at all to Petersen’s speculation that labor trafficking may have been occurring at the Morne Bossa gold mine that is very close to the Caracol complex? Or in other words, was Petersen’s speculation that Haitian workers may have been forced to labor at the gold mine for “little or no wages” in anyway true?

3.) Petersen alleged human trafficking may be happening near Cap-Haïtien in northern Haiti, a region of the country that in particular has a history of being destabilized by right-wing counter-insurgencies against populist movements. These counter-insurgencies are themselves undoubtedly supported by the “covert operations” of foreign intelligence agencies, corporate interests, and private military contractor firms like DynCorp and many others with a presence in Haiti. As seen in Haiti and in many other “conflict areas” in other parts of the world, this kind of highly-unstable social environment can be a “breeding ground” for drug trafficking and other kinds of criminal activities, and in its worst forms, can be an environment that enables child trafficking and human trafficking in various forms. Could this “nexus” of a highly-unstable political situation, drug trafficking and covert operations have anything to do, if at all, with Petersen’s allegation that human trafficking was happening at Caracol?

4.) Monica Petersen worked at the Human Trafficking Center roughly in the time period of 2014–2016. Do any of her academic colleagues, or other students or people connecting with the HTC, possibly have relevant information about the investigations that Petersen was doing in Haiti?

I.) In regards to Monica Petersen’s time in Haiti, clearly the most important lead is Petersen’s own statement that human trafficking was happening to some unknown extent at the Caracol Industrial Park. Again, was it workers at Caracol who told her this? This would seem most logical, since Petersen said she personally visited Caracol in 2015 and talked to workers about working conditions at the factory. The Caracol Complex, as well as the nearby Morne Bossa gold mine, are both themselves only about 16 and 6 miles respectively from Cap-Haïtien, a major population center and shipping container port for the north of Haiti. There is a 2013 report about the Caracol Industrial Park from “Gender Action,” a gender equality advocacy organization based in Washington D.C.. The report provides a very in-depth field investigation of working conditions at the Caracol factory and other detailed analysis about the lives of workers at Caracol and people in the communities surrounding the Caracol factory, as well as a detailed report about the financing and development of the Caracol Industrial Park. The report was released pretty shortly after the Caracol factory began operating in 2012, and was prepared by American researchers with research support work provided by Faculty members of the Social Sciences Department at the Université d’Etat d’Haïti in Port-au-Prince. These Haitian and American researchers personally visited the Caracol area in Haiti multiple times in 2013 and interviewed over two dozen Caracol workers and people from the communities surrounding the factory complex for this field research report. This was only about 2 years before Monica Petersen herself visited the Caracol complex to talk to workers there in 2015, according to the previously described Facebook post from 2016. The report’s investigation of the Caracol factory in 2013 found that 90% of the textile workers employed by S&H Global, the main employer at the Caracol complex, were female workers. Again, S&H Global is a subsidiary of the South Korean-based, global textile manufacturer Sae-A Traders, that itself has its own very notorious history of labor and other severe human rights abuses at their textile factories both at Caracol and in other parts of the world, as described already here.

The 2013 Gender Action report states that there are two recognized labor unions that represent the workers at Caracol. These unions are the Union of Valiant S&H Global Workers (SOVASHG), and the Union of Global Sae-A Workers (SOGSA). SOVASHG and SOGSA are essentially union “locals” at Caracol, that are each part of different national confederations of workers in Haiti. SOVASHG is organized through “Batay Ouvriye” (“May 1st- Workers’ Fight Federation”), a national workers’ confederation in Haiti that has been active in organizing workers for the Disney corporation and other workers in Haiti since the 1990s. SOGSA is organized through the “Autonomous Federation of Haitian Workers” (CATH), another national labor confederation in Haiti that represents mostly assembly workers and has roots in the Latin American trade union movement. Is it possible Petersen may have also been in touch with trade union representatives from these unions representing Caracol workers? Even if she was not, representatives from these unions, in addition to the Caracol workers themselves, would be potential resources to turn to for information about what has really been going on at Caracol. More up-to-date field reports about conditions at and around the Caracol complex in Haiti would be enormously helpful in this regard. If it was not Caracol workers, then who else in Haiti could have told Petersen about human trafficking at Caracol? Petersen also said in her 2015 Facebook post that she was seeking to work with “pro-sex worker” support organizations in Haiti. Was Petersen able to successfully make contact with such an organization or organizations? If Petersen did really have contacts with Haitian social justice-oriented groups that support sex workers, such a group or groups could have more information about Petersen’s time spent in Haiti, and maybe even about the circumstances of her death.

Labor trafficking is known to occur at the Caracol complex and surrounding communities. By “labor trafficking,” I mean in the broadest sense of the term, the various ways in which workers can be forced, via different forms of coercion of varying severity, to perform all different kind of labor for either no or very little monetary compensation. The Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act (TVPA), passed by the US Congress in 2000 to protect victims of trafficking, defines “labor trafficking” as follows: “the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services, through the use of force, fraud or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage or slavery.” The US Department of Health & Human Services released a “fact sheet” about human trafficking that describes two main forms of labor trafficking: the first is debt bondage or bonded labor, which the report describes as “the most widely used method of enslaving people.” Debt bondage, or “working off a debt,” occurs when workers are forced to provide labor to an employer and/or some kind of loan shark as a means of repayment of money loaned to them, often lent to the workers at very high, usurious interest rates. Workers are robbed of the value of their labor in this situation, because the value of the labor they provide is more than the original sum of the money lent by loan sharks to workers. Workers who have to work off debt therefore loose out on a very significant amount of pay in these kinds of situations. The second and even more severe form of labor trafficking described by the report is forced labor, essentially modern slavery, where “… victims are forced to work against their own will, under the threat of violence or some other form of punishment.” The connections between child sex trafficking and various forms of labor trafficking are clear. As the DHHS report states, “…[worldwide] there are an estimated 246 million exploited children aged between 5 and 17 involved in debt bondage, forced recruitment for armed conflict, prostitution, pornography, the illegal drug trade, the illegal arms trade and other illicit activities…” It is again worth repeating that the Human Trafficking Center, Monica Petersen’s former employer, specifically specializes in researching and investigating all different kinds of labor trafficking at an academic level.

The people of Haiti are long known to suffer some of the worst poverty in the entire Western hemisphere, and various forms of debt labor, or “labor servitude,” can clearly be found in Haiti and throughout the low-wage countries of the third world. It is very important to point out however, that the 2013 Gender Action report described above found through its own field investigation of Caracol, that various forms of debt bondage were definitely commonplace amongst Haitians workers at the Caracol complex. The Gender Action field report found that small-scale money lenders, or loan sharks, were actively lending money to workers at the Caracol complex at often very high interest rates, especially considering the extremely low wages Caracol workers received to begin with. At least in some cases, these money lenders at Caracol were known to take away from Haitian workers their government ID cards or their Caracol work ID cards, as a form of collateral until the money owed to them, plus interest, was paid by the Caracol workers.

The Caracol field report includes a picture of the windshield of a Haitian money lender’s vehicle parked right outside the front entrance of the Caracol factory at closing time. The windshield of the vehicle is completely covered in the ID cards of Haitian workers that the money lender had taken from the Caracol workers as collateral, until they paid back the money loaned to them by the lender. Having your ID card taken away from you and being forced to labor at a textile sweatshop until you find a way to repay or work off your debt, is clearly a severe form of debt bondage or involuntary servitude, especially for the extremely low-wage textile workers in Haiti. As the Gender Action report found, the average wage of the Caracol textile workers laboring for S&H Global in 2013 was the equivalent of $4.57 a day. To put this in some context, a more recent 2019 report from the AFL-CIO’s Solidarity Center, “The High Cost of Low Wages in Haiti,” states that the average minimum wage for export apparel workers (of which the Caracol workers are definitely included) was only 420 gourdes, or $5.07 a day. According to the Solidarity Center’s findings, this wage is more than 4 times less than the estimated cost of living for workers in Haiti.

The Gender Action report’s interviews with Caracol workers, revealed widespread sentiment from the Caracol workers that they could barely subsist on the wages paid to them at the factory, if they could subsist on the wages at all. The report stated that of the interviews the researchers conducted with a dozen Caracol workers, only one worker interviewed said she could save any money from her wages at the Caracol factory (and she herself lived rent-free with her parents!) As the report also stated, the “daily minimum wage [at Caracol] neither enables workers to climb out of poverty nor provides sustained demand for small business services, needed to develop north Haiti…” One other Caracol worker interviewed said his wages were “just better than nothing at all”, another worker said, “More or less, my life is slightly better now. But the salary isn’t enough and I can’t buy almost anything I need.” Other workers reported planning to return to school to try to find better paying work than what they had hoped for at the Caracol factory. The 2013 report even stated that the small number of food vendors that congregated right outside the Caracol factory to provide meals to Caracol workers on their lunch break, were themselves not able to make ends meet, because they had to sell so many meals on credit to the struggling Caracol workers. Poverty wages were so severe at Caracol that workers were literally going into debt just trying to feed themselves during their workdays. Very significantly, these statements about working conditions from Caracol workers very much corroborate what Monica Petersen herself claimed that she heard herself from workers at Caracol, when she went there to investigate working conditions only two years later in 2015. Again, Petersen reported hearing from workers that wages at Caracol were “too low & below contracts & legal minimum wage in Haiti.”

These reports clearly show that the Caracol complex and surrounding communities struggle with a high concentration of very low-wage, mostly female workers suffering from various forms of harassment and labor and other human rights abuses. Caracol workers are known to be threatened with sexual harassment while at work, and struggle to make it, if at all, on poverty wages paid at the factory while often being preyed upon by predatory lenders operating nearby. Given this overall environment of poverty and exploitation known to exist at Caracol, it is all the more chilling to consider Monica Petersen’s claim in 2016 that an actual human trafficking operation was happening to some unknown extent at the Caracol complex. Human traffickers and child abusers of all types are well known for preying upon and abusing the most impoverished and vulnerable people in any society. Given the high level of deprivation already clearly existing amongst the workers and surrounding communities at the Caracol complex in Haiti, this makes Petersen’s claim about human trafficking all the more disturbing.

II.) Given the relevant social media information available, I definitely think the Morne Bossa gold mine, located only a little under 15 miles from the Caracol factory in northern Haiti, deserved further scrutiny. Petersen stated the following specific to the Morne Bossa mine in the 2016 Facebook post: “I’d like to go see for myself who’s laboring at Morne Bossa, but I would hypothesize that the Dominicans are doing the contractual oversight of the mining, while marginalized Haitians are being exploited for low or no cost labor in dangerous mining conditions.” To be 100% clear, given the limited context of the Facebook post, Petersen is only speculating here that Haitian laborers might be being exploited as “low or no cost” labor at the gold mine, which I think by any reasonable assessment is a very severe form of labor trafficking. It goes without saying that mining is an extremely dangerous job occupation anywhere. Mining gold in Haiti only massively increases the danger posed by this kind of labor, considering that Haiti has a long history of extreme poverty, and of having a weak state with a very limited ability to enforce its own laws and regulations compared to the law enforcement power of any first world country.

I know this is a bit of my own speculation here, but I think it is safe enough to say that if Petersen was anywhere near correct in her speculation that some kind of labor trafficking operation to provide laborers might have been occurring at the Morne Bossa gold mine, this kind of highly-coerced, debt bondage or forced labor-type situation could probably not occur without significant “outside help.” Having to labor for gold in Haiti for no or almost no pay at all, would definitely seem to require a level of coercion far greater than just taking your ID card away from you until you repay a debt. In my opinion, labor trafficking of this scale could probably only really occur with the complicity of at least some highly corrupted elements of the Haitian and International “security state.” By this “security state”, I mean the Haitian police, armed forces, paramilitary groups and the myriad of private defense contractors with a history of operating in Haiti, including DynCorp and many others, along with the US intelligence agencies undoubtedly “lurking” in the shadows behind many of these private military contractor firms. These foreign-based, private military contractors and intelligence agencies have a long history of training and otherwise propping-up the Haitian armed forces, paramilitary groups and polices services, themselves long-known for their own history of brutal human rights abuses in Haiti.

The Morne Bossa gold mine is located fairly close to another sizable gold mine in Haiti, the Grand Bois gold mine, located only about 18 miles away. The Morne Bossa and Grand Bois gold mines reportedly contain an estimated 740,000 ounces, or over 23 tons, of gold. At the current gold price at close to $3,000 an ounce (2025 prices), the current estimated value of the combined gold wealth of the two nearby mines in northern Haiti is over $2.2 billion worth of gold. As previously described in regards to Monica Petersen’s Facebook postings, Petersen clearly deeply believed that the Clintons were engaged in all kinds of nefarious actions to secure at least of a “chunk” of the gold wealth of Morne Bossa for themselves and their political cronies in Haiti and elsewhere. Considering this, there is plenty of evidence independent of Petersen’s observations that Morne Bossa, and the Grand Bois gold mines have a long history of very suspicious owners, including Hillary’s own brother Tony Rodham, and there is plenty of independent evidence that both the Morne Bossa and Grand Bois mines have been excavated to a significant degree, and possibly already mined for an unknown amount of gold for many years now.

High-ranking elected members of the Haitian government have repeatedly made allegations that the Morne Bossa mine has been a site of corruption and theft of mineral wealth also for many years now. As previously stated, the US-based VCS mining company, on which Hillary’s own brother Tony sat on the Board, acquired the gold mining permit for Morne Bossa in 2012, the very same year the Caracol factory went into operation (Tony Rodham himself died in 2019.) As the Washington Post also reported in 2015, after the gold mining permit for Morne Bossa was rewarded to VCS in 2012, members of the Haitian Senate publicly denounced the project, saying that gold mining at Morne Bossa was a potential environmental disaster and “waste of resources,” and ultimately the permit was put on hold. A report from the Inter Press Service states that Haitian Senators have publicly opposed gold mining at Morne Bossa, because they say the mining permits granted for Morne Bossa and other mines are unconstitutional, because the permits were based on a 1997 Mining Convention on Haitian mining laws that was not approved by the Haitian Parliament. According to these Mining Convention laws, the Haitian state only receives a tiny 2.5% of the value of the gold mined at Morne Bossa as a “royalty fee,” which is obviously a scandalously-low amount of compensation for the impoverished Haitian people, compared to the amount of mineral wealth potentially available at Morne Bossa.

However, despite whether or not gold mining at Morne Bossa has been “permitted” by the Haitian government or occurred under illegal conditions, there is plenty of visual evidence to show that mining activity of some sort has indeed occurred at Morne Bossa for many years now. Google Map satellite images clearly show that a significant amount of excavation has occurred at both the Morne Bossa and Grand Bois mines, including plenty of visual evidence that large amounts of soil and earth have been removed from both sites, and clearly-seen roads have been built to provide access to both mining sites.

Based on my examination of the available information on the internet, there seems to be a very limited amount of information available about the true extent of what has been going on at Morne Bossa, which of course has its own very eerie similarity with the media silence about Monica Petersen herself. However, based on the most recent information I could find, there is very good reason to believe the Clinton-connected VCS Mining company still owns Morne Bossa to this day! A 2023 press release states that VCS Mining more recently changed its name to “Resource Générale Corporation”, and owns Morne Bossa through a wholly owned subsidiary.

The world of buying and selling mines and mineral resources is clearly an incredibly elitist and “stratospheric” social and financial world. In this regard, it is very important to point out that back in 2011, the Mercer Gold Corp. mining corporation announced that it had signed a Letter of Intent to purchase a 100% stake in Tony Rodham’s VCS Mining. This was only a year before VCS actually received the permit from the Haitian government to mine gold at Morne Bossa. From what I can tell, Mercer Gold Corp. must have ultimately passed on the deal. Very significantly though, Mercer Gold’s own press report states that VCS Mining was very involved in drilling for gold at Morne Bossa at the time Mercer was considering buying the mine. Mercer’s report states that “…VCS completed 9 drill holes in the last 3 months” at the time of the press release.

So very significantly, there is evidence that VCS Mining was actively drilling, and presumably extracting significant volumes of gold, back when Tony Rodham himself was still alive. Mercer Gold Corp. also owns the “Guayables” gold mine in Colombia, a nation that historically has been one of the world’s great sources of gold. Whether coincidentally or not, it is also worth pointing out that Mercer Gold Corp. happens to share its name with the immensely powerful Mercer family. Robert and Rebekah Mercer of this family, are widely reported as being among the most influential and pivotal financial backers of Donald Trump’s 2016 Presidential election campaign.

Significantly, as documented here, Monica Petersen herself said she heard about ongoing mining activity occurring at Morne Bossa. She also discusses how at least one Presidential Administration in Haiti has allegedly worked in a “crony” manner with the Clintons to try to begin mining gold at the Morne Bossa mine through VCS Mining. As Petersen states in Robinson’s January 4 2016 Facebook post, “Mining was set to commence [at Morne Bossa] in 2012, but the Haitian Senate opposed it. President Michel Martelly did not, but has been unable to make progress in the Haitian Mining Conventions & laws in order for VCS Mining to move ahead, as they had hoped for before Martelly left office […] Several articles have pointed out that mining activity at Morne Bossa over the last two decades oddly corresponds to the first & second coups of former President Aristide. Haitian mining laws were revised during both coups when Aristide was ousted from office. Bill Clinton’s administration backed those coups throwing Aristide out.” Significantly, Petersen makes mention here of the incredibly unfair Haitian Mining Convention laws mentioned above. She describes how these mining laws, which grant only a minuscule portion of Morne Bossa’s wealth to the Haitian people, were put into place after the coups against Aristide that were backed by the Clinton Administration. Considering all this, it is again worth considering Monica Petersen’s speculation that labor trafficking of some form could have been happening at the Morne Bossa mine, along with her specific allegation that human trafficking really was occurring at the nearby Caracol factory complex. If there is truth to any of this, the true extent of any potential labor and human rights abuses occurring at the Morne Bossa gold mine definitely need to be investigated.

III.) When it comes to the history of the security state or “deep state” in Haiti, there is clearly a very dark history of multinational corporations acting in deep collusion with the US national security state to repress populist movements in Haiti that have sought to raise living standards in one of the poorest countries in the Western hemisphere. Significant to Monica Petersen’s human trafficking investigations, is the fact that Cap-Haïtien, close to where Petersen’s alleged human trafficking was occurring, itself has a history of being a “base of operations” for the anti-Aristide counter-insurgency coups that drove Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide from office. Aristide, a former Jesuit Priest, came to power with the support of the left-leaning, populist “Lavalas” political movement in Haiti. When in office, Aristide made extensive efforts to raise the minimum wage for workers in Haiti, one of the lowest-paid and most-exploited labor forces in all of the Western Hemisphere. He faced two coups that drove him from office twice, once in the early 90s, and another coup in the early 2000s during Aristide’s second presidency. These coups against Aristide were backed by right-wing elements of his own military and security state, including brutal paramilitary organizations like the “FRAPH” death squads. The Human Rights Watch organization states that FRAPH members “… took part in the killing of at least 4,000 people as well as in thousands of rapes and acts of torture.” These coups against Aristide occurred with the active support and complicity of the wealthiest classes in Haiti and the western multinational corporations intent on exploiting an incredibly cheap labor pool in Haiti for themselves. Dr. Paul Farmer’s well-known book “The Uses of Haiti,” details this story in great detail, especially providing evidence of both the Clinton and Bush Administrations’ complicity in the impoverishment of Haiti. In particular, Farmer’s book discusses how America’s ostensible mission to restore Aristide to power after the first coup against him in the early 90s during the Clinton Administration, was really a ruse for forcing him to accept neoliberal concessions in return for being allowed to return to power. These concessions forced Aristide to abandon efforts to raise living standards for Haitian workers and contributed to further impoverishment of Haiti.

In regards to Monica Petersen’s investigation in Haiti, it is important to point out that the counter-insurgents did completely take over Cap-Haïtien for nearly a month in February 2004, and used it as a base to a significant degree, to launch their second coup against Aristide, which was successful in driving him from office a second time in the early 2000s. Cap-Haïtien is very close to both Caracol and the Morne Bossa mine, the known subjects of Monica Petersen’s investigations into human trafficking during her time in Haiti. According to an AP press report, a significant leader of the second coup against Aristide was Guy Philippe, who was a high-ranking Haitian police commander in Cap-Haïtien at the time of the second coup against Aristide. Perhaps not coincidently at all, the same Guy Philippe is also a very high-level drug trafficker. The AP report states that Philippe “received between $1.5 and $3.5 million from drug traffickers from 1999 to 2004” when he was a police commander in Cap-Haïtien. Philippe and other Haitian police “… took the money in exchange for ensuring safe passage for cocaine shipments from Colombia and other countries that went through Haiti on their way to Miami and other U.S. destinations.” In 2017, Guy Philippe was “whisked” out of Haiti to the US on drug money laundering charges. He took a plea deal in a courtroom in Miami where he avoided a potential life sentence for cocaine trafficking.

When people look into the realm of what could be called “deep politics,” there is plenty of evidence to show that there is a long-standing association between drug trafficking and covert intelligence operations conducted by US Intelligence agencies. The history of the US supporting counter-insurgencies that themselves were deeply involved in drug trafficking is nothing new. In the 1980s, the CIA and the US Intelligence community heavily supported the Contras, a right-wing counter-insurgency who fought against the leftist Sandinistas in El Salvador. The Contras themselves were notorious for working with South American drug cartels to traffic huge amounts of narcotics to the US in the 80s. Going further back to the Vietnam war era, the “Golden Triangle” region of Laos, Thailand, and Myanmar in southeast Asia was notorious during the Vietnam War for being a huge source location for opium and heroin, much of which was trafficked out of the Golden Triangle with the complicity of the CIA and the Western intelligence agencies before, during and after the Vietnam War. Books such as Alfred McCoy’s “The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia” and Henrik Krüger’s “The Great Heroin Coup: Drugs, Intelligence & International Fascism,” provide a great deal of information about the significance of the Southeast Asian opium trade as being a very “significant factor” in intelligence-backed covert operations during the Vietnam War era and beyond. In regards to Haiti and its history of counter-insurgency movements supported by narco-traffickers, I definitely recommend reading researcher Jeb Sprague’s 2012 book “Para-militarism and the Assault on Democracy in Haiti.” In the book, Sprague goes into extensive detail about the history of the formation of the two major right-wing, counter-insurgency movements against Aristide, which as Sprague documents were supported by elements of the US Military, US Intelligence agencies, and the “transnational elite” both in Haiti and abroad. As Sprague describes in detail, there is significant evidence both coups against Aristide were supported by Haitian narco-traffickers, and corrupt elements of the Haitian state and Haitian paramilitary groups who were complicit in the drug trafficking. The new President who assumed power after Aristide was ousted the second time, Gerard Latortue, had a cousin, Youri Latortue, a former Haitian Armed Forces member who was a significant leader in the second coup, and who was also alleged to be a major drug trafficker in his hometown of Gonaïves, Haiti. Sprague’s book also documents Guy Philippe as being a major leader of the second coup, and Philippe is of course documented as being a major drug trafficker as well. The connections between narco-trafficking and counter-insurgency movements are clear in Haiti.

Furthermore, the Haitian civilian population in general, have been victim to decades of extreme paramilitary and death squad-backed violence, violence that has occurred with the complicity and direction of multiple Haitian dictatorships and presidential administrations. The FRAPH death squads that terrorized and murdered Haitian supporters of Jean-Bertrand Aristide in the 90s, were according to Sprague and many other sources, arguably a direct descendent of the murderous “Tonton Macoute” death squads. The Tonton Macoute was a paramilitary force that murdered and otherwise committed extreme acts of violence against untold numbers of Haitian civilians for decades. These death squads were notorious for operating as the brutal enforcement arm of the “Papa Doc” and “Baby Doc,” Francois and Jean-Claude Duvalier father-and-son dictatorship that ruled Haiti from the 1950s through the 1980s. It clearly cannot be forgotten that for decades, Haitian civilians across the board have been severely terrorized, and displaced from their families and hometowns, as a direct consequence of all this paramilitary-backed violence against them.

So again, what is the significance of all this to Monica Petersen’s human trafficking investigations in Haiti? We can already see that the region of Haiti Petersen alleged human trafficking was occurring in, has a long history of being severely destabilized by counter-insurgencies driven by paramilitary and military groups known to support themselves extensively through drug trafficking. This drug trafficking itself has a long history of corrupting major elements of the Haitian state. Beyond even this, is the “background” of decades of paramilitary-backed violence against Haitian civilians that has happened throughout Haiti. Considering all this as context, when again you consider Petersen’s claims of human trafficking occurring in Haiti, you have to consider the human trafficking that has horrifically been known to occur in other areas of the world subjected to war and severe trauma and displacement of the civilian population. In particular, the civilian population of Serbia and other Balkan states were terrorized, severely displaced, and otherwise traumatized by the civil war and US and NATO coalition-led prolonged bombing campaign in the 90s and early-2000s. It was amidst this overall environment of displacement and trauma, that human trafficking reared its head. Evidence for this is mostly clearly seen with the conduct of DynCorp and certain DynCorp employees, with their involvement in trafficking underage girls and women during the war in the Balkan states of former Yugoslavia. The connections between conflicts areas, paramilitary and private military contractor groups, and human trafficking can clearly be discerned. Considering all this, I think you again have to consider that DynCorp and other private defense contractors have their own extensive history in Haiti, especially when it comes to training United Nations troops who themselves have been criminally complicit in child sex abuse and child sex trafficking in Haiti. This condition of many civilians in Haiti, seems exactly like the same kind of traumatized, displaced condition of civilians seen in other conflicted regions of the world, where Western intelligence agencies and private contractor firms have their own notorious history of often “pulling the strings” behind the curtains. This “string-pulling” is often seen to involve these Intelligence agencies and defense contractors supporting counter-insurgency de-stabilizations in foreign countries, to the benefit of the wealthiest classes in the US and abroad. In its worst “manifestations”, as horrible as it is to say, this kind of environment seems clearly “ideal” for human traffickers to prey on victims.

Monica Petersen’s investigation of the Caracol complex near Cap-Haïtien in northern Haiti in 2015, occurred in a region with a long history of these kind of criminal elements operating with relative impunity from the weak Haitian state. In terms of specific allegations of human trafficking, all we have to go on is Petersen’s specific allegation that human trafficking of some kind was happening at the Caracol complex. If this human trafficking claim is in anyway true, I think you have to ask: do any of these long-operating criminal elements in Haiti, i.e. the narco-traffickers, corrupt Haitian paramilitary groups, military and police, US defense contractors, and intelligence assets operating deep in the shadows, have anything to do with such an alleged human trafficking operation happening at the Caracol complex?

IV.) Monica Petersen worked at the Human Trafficking Center (HTC) at the University of Denver roughly in the time period of 2014–2016, and took courses at and had an association with the HTC possibly before 2014. Before its permanent closure in June 2021, the Human Trafficking Center had a graduate student staff and many alumni who worked all over the world, conducting research into various forms of human trafficking and forced labor-related situations. In addition, academics from a number of Universities have conducted various kinds of research and taught courses in association with the HTC, while the graduate program was still in existence. With the exemption of Professor d’Estree himself, I am not trying to make any unfair accusations towards anyone in this academic community at all. Could any of these people associated with the HTC be able to shine more of a light on Monica Petersen’s activities and academic research at the HTC? Could any of these HTC-associated academics possibly have information about what Monica Petersen was truly investigating in Haiti? The same questions could be asked to other academics, students, and any people otherwise associated with the larger Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver. Petersen received her Masters Degree from the Korbel School in 2014, and the HTC was a part of the Korbel School before being shut down by the Korbel School administration. Could any of these people associated with the HTC and/or the Korbel School have information about Monica Petersen’s Masters Thesis from the Korbel School, which again to my knowledge is not publicly available to this day? Considering that Petersen had a history of investigating human trafficking in Haiti, and her Masters Degree focuses on studying human trafficking, there is a real possibility Petersen’s Masters Thesis could have something to do with her investigations in Haiti. Petersen’s Thesis could potentially contain information useful to determining more of what she was really doing in Haiti, and possibly the real circumstances of her death.

I feel the most important thing to end with is this: I truly believe that if Monica Petersen was correct that human trafficking was happening at the Caracol complex, then the VOICES of the WORKERS at CARACOL need to be HEARD and understood to make any sense of this situation. The Caracol workers themselves, and their family and friends in the surrounding communities in Haiti, are clearly the only ones who can give the full scope of any alleged criminality occurring at Caracol. Unless their voices are heard, I do not believe there will be justice for Monica Petersen and the People of Haiti.

SOLIDARITY, STAY SAFE!!

Part 1 HERE, Part 3 HERE

**Surviveandheal15 Lives On!!**

By: Anonymous
February 13th, 2021

“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.”
– Marie Curie

“… the real significance of this scandal for me […] is the link to contemporary slavery and trafficking. I can’t say to what extent, but there is human trafficking happening through the Clinton’s [Caracol] Complex. And mining has always been historically linked to trafficking, slavery, and labor exploitation.”
— Monica Petersen, Research Fellow and Assistant to the Director at the Human Trafficking Center at the University of Denver, in January 2016 Facebook Post (LINK)

These seven social media posts about Monica Petersen and her death in Haiti described in detail in the first part of this article raise a significant number of really important questions: We can clearly see that Monica Petersen was actively seeking out workers’ rights organizations as allies or resources of some sort in her investigation into human trafficking in Haiti. As discussed previously, according to a January 2016 Facebook post, Monica Petersen said she herself went to the Caracol Industrial Park, or somewhere near it, sometime in August 2015 (again, direct quote from her: “Caracol is a garment exporting zone, a field site I visited in August to check out the conditions of the workers (conclusion: working conditions okay, working wages too low & below contracts & legal minimum wage in Haiti.)” So from this quote, we know Petersen talked either directly to Caracol workers or those close to them, during her 2015 trip to the factory complex in northern Haiti. From these posts, we can also see Petersen as well had a deep level of knowledge about Haitian politics, the Haitian mining industry and the Clinton’s history of alleged corruption in Haiti. Petersen makes very serious allegations that the Clintons have repeatedly rigged or influenced elections and supported coups in Haiti, at least in part for the purpose of trying to exploit the mineral resources at the Morne Bossa mine in Haiti. This all definitely seems to indicate that Petersen must have had significant first-hand contacts with other worker rights activists and/or other politically knowledgable people while in Haiti. Considering that Petersen was a Research Fellow and Assistant to the Director at the Human Trafficking Center at the University of Denver, this certainly seems plausible to say the least.

Since Petersen reported that human trafficking was occurring at Caracol, who told her this? Did workers at the Caracol plant tell her this, or did she hear this from somewhere else, maybe other activists in Haiti? Since Petersen specifically mentions two “human trafficking scandals” in Haiti tied to the Clintons, where in Haiti was the other human trafficking scandal occurring, if one was indeed occurring? It is important to note that it is very clear from these Facebook posts that Petersen was deeply critical of the Clinton’s conduct in Haiti from a decidedly left-leaning, “anti-imperialistic” perspective. Petersen derided the Clintons for treating Haiti as yet another third world country to be exploited for its natural resources. Her whole background and purpose for being in Haiti obviously does NOT indicate a person driven by some stereotypically right-wing, pro-Trump “crusade” against the Clintons, to say the least.

After Petersen’s death, we can see that Bella Robinson appeared deeply confused, distraught, and quite possibly very frightened. It is true that as reported in the 2016 Post article, Robinson denied that Petersen’s death in Haiti had anything to do with the Clintons. However, we can see from all these OTHER posts that Kessler did NOT reference, that there is a decidedly different picture to be seen. Shortly after Petersen’s death in November 2016, Robinson ALSO posted that Petersen was investigating the Clinton’s possible ties to a “pedophile ring,” that Petersen’s family was being kept in the dark about the circumstances of her death, and that she knew information about Petersen’s death that she did not want to discuss publicly. Robinson does also state that she received word that Petersen committed suicide and left a note, but at the same time she comments on the complete lack of reporting about Petersen’s death other than from Petersen’s own Facebook page and a few “fringe” websites. It is worth repeating that til this day in February 2021, Kessler’s 2016 Washington Post article is the ONLY article from any mainstream news agency I could find about Monica Petersen’s death. Additionally, a childhood or family friend of Petersen’s states that they found out through some unknown source that she was murdered. Where could she have heard this from?

Kessler only mentions the Caracol factory at one point in his 2016 Post article, and I honestly think this is where we also catch Kessler in a straight-up lie in his article. Kessler says this regarding the Caracol factory and Monica Petersen: “On Dec. 4 [2016] the InfoWars.com website- run by Alex Jones, big booster of President-elect Donald Trump — posted a Youtube video titled ‘Haiti PIZZAGATE: Death of Child Trafficking Investigator.’ It falsely claimed ‘she had just begun investigating the correlation regarding the Clinton’s Foundations Caracol Industrial Park Complex and its connection to a human trafficking network when her life was cut short.’” Ignoring the Alex Jones reference here for a minute, it is most important to note that Kessler is saying here that Alex Jones’s claim that Monica Petersen was investigating human trafficking associated with the Caracol factory is “false.” Or in other words, Kessler is clearly saying that Petersen was NOT investigating human trafficking involving Caracol. How can Kessler truthfully dismiss ANY claims about human trafficking and Caracol, no matter who is saying it, when at the same time Kessler is blatantly ignoring in his article the actual January 2016 Facebook post (HERE), where Petersen makes the specific claim that human trafficking is happening at Caracol?

It seems obvious here that Kessler is trying to pull a misdirection-type trick, by dismissing the credibility of the Caracol human trafficking allegation in a rather insidious and simple way: in his article, he only refers to crazy-old, Pizzagate-loving, Alex Jones as being the one who made this particular allegation about Caracol and human trafficking, NOT the one who actually said it, Monica Petersen. For the average Washington Post reader reading Kessler’s article, they will see the Caracol human trafficking allegation coming out of Alex Jones’s mouth, and probably will dismiss this allegation entirely because they read it in his article right next to the words “Alex Jones,” “InfoWars.com,” “PIZZAGATE” and “big booster of President-elect Donald Trump.” This certainly makes you wonder if this was Kessler’s whole intention in the first place. Again, this is the ONLY time Kessler mentions the Caracol factory in his whole article about Petersen’s death.

Given that Kessler literally traveled with Hillary Clinton as a reporter and “travel blogger” while she was Secretary of State, Kessler’s blatant omission of so much relevant information in this article is incredibly suspicious. The way he very obviously uses Alex Jones to try to dismiss the credibility of the Caracol human trafficking allegations, is all the more striking. Considering the media “blackout” on Monica Petersen’s death from the rest of the mainstream media, it is all the more shocking. In addition, it is worth pointing out that Glenn Kessler has personally been involved in at least one other major foreign policy controversy: the Valerie Plame affair, when the Bush Administration, acting through their proxy “Scooter” Libby, Dick Cheney’s Chief of Staff at the time, publicly outed the identity of CIA undercover agent Valerie Plame.

As Kessler himself stated in a Tweet from back in 2018, Scooter Libby, clearly acting as the “fall guy” in this whole affair, told the FBI that he talked to only one journalist about Valerie Plame: Glenn Kessler. When Libby was brought up on perjury and obstruction of justice charges and later tried and convicted, during Libby’s trial, Glenn Kessler showed up as a defense witness, and testified that he did not in fact talk about Valerie Plame with Scooter Libby. While Kessler’s involvement in the whole Plame case still appears to be shrouded in mystery, the fact that Kessler is so directly involved in such a sensitive national security scandal, as well as all of his elite connections mentioned above, do seem to indicate the Kessler is a significant “player” in establishment circles in DC. Whatever the full circumstances by all indications, Kessler was both an insider to the Bush Administration, and a major insider to Hillary’s inner circle when she was Secretary of State.

Claude d’Estree, DynCorp, and Monica Petersen’s Death

Professor d’Estree was the Executive Director of the Human Trafficking Center when Petersen passed away in 2016, and as he himself said, he employed Petersen as his Assistant and as a Researcher at the HTC up until 2016. As stated previously, d’Estree is quoted by Kessler in his 2016 Washington Post article as saying that Petersen’s death was caused by “suicide but the circumstances are not clear.” d’Estree is also quoted by Kessler as saying that Petersen was not in Haiti to investigate human trafficking or the Clinton Foundation, at the time of her death in Haiti in 2016. Apparently, d’Estree meant to say that Petersen was not investigating these particular things on her specific trip to Haiti in November 2016 when she died, but he is very notably not clear about this. He also does not mention in the Post article that Petersen was in fact investigating human trafficking in Haiti the previous year, even though the very same Post article does reference the 2015 Facebook post where Petersen herself states this, later on in the same article.

Considering the publicly available information, I do want to be careful. I do not want to make any unfair accusations at all against the Human Trafficking Center as an organization, or the individual researchers and academics who work and contribute research there. However, there are still certain things that appear obvious. From the publicly available social media posts described above, we do know that in Bella Robinson’s January 2016 Facebook post, Monica Petersen said she went to the Caracol factory complex sometime in August 2015 and talked to workers, or those close to the Caracol workers, there. From this post, we know she said she heard claims of some kind of human trafficking happening at the Caracol complex. We also know there has been resounding mainstream media silence about anything to do with Petersen’s death since 2016, and from what I can tell, that silence extends to the Human Trafficking Center as well, at least since the time of Petersen’s death.

Considering all this, I think it is really important to point out a couple pieces of publicly available information about Professor d’Estree’s own employment history, who is the current Executive Director of the HTC, that may be relevant. Considering that Monica Petersen worked directly for d’Estree, I think this information about d’Estree’s own background is all the more disturbing. Professor d’Estree’s own resume (archived link HERE) shows that he has a very distinguished academic and work background. d’Estree has a JD from Northeastern Law, and has taught law and human rights related courses at various Universities, as well as served as Special Rapporteur to the United Nations Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking. However, at the same time, d’Estree’s resume also states that from 1999 to 2002, d’Estree worked, in some capacity, for the DynCorp defense corporation. Specifically, his resume lists his employer from 1999–2002 as “United States Attorney’s Office, District of Columbia/DynCorp,” in Reston, Virginia. Reston is also very close to McLean, VA, the corporate headquarters for DynCorp.

To be clear, I do not know why d’Estree on his resume specifically lists his employer as “United States Attorney’s Office, District of Columbia/DynCorp” for the time period of 1999–2002. The fact that he phrases it this way suggests obviously being jointly employed by both the defense contractor and the DC DOJ’s office, which does not make a lot of sense for someone presumably working on behalf of a Federal Prosecutor’s office. In fact, on his resume, d’Estree does go into more detail about what he was doing when he had this job in Reston, VA. Quoting d’Estree: “Supervisor: Supervised the daily operations of a team of contract lawyers and data analysts in the Asset Forfeiture Unit, Criminal Division. Prosecutions included international drug, human smuggling, and white-collar fraud.” So from this we see d’Estree is claiming he worked directly for the Criminal Division of the DC DOJ’s office, and that at least some of the DOJ’s prosecutions he worked on in a supervisory capacity, specifically had to do with human trafficking. At another point in his resume, d’Estree goes into further detail about what he was doing working for the DC DOJ’s office “/” DynCorp: “Supervisor: Teaching and training of Assistant US Attorneys and paralegals in asset forfeiture law and financial investigations. Asked by the U.S Attorney to develop, implement and teach research and writing curriculum for the entire support staff in the nation’s largest U.S. Attorney’s Office.” So according to d’Estree’s resume, not only was he personally involved with criminal prosecutions at the DC DOJ’s Office, he was also involved, at a very senior level, in the actual job training and design of the education curriculum of a large swath of the DC DOJ office’s employees, if his resume is accurate. All of this clearly demonstrates a deep connection between Claude d’Estree himself and the Department of Justice.

Despite this additional information, what is left conspicuously unclear is exactly what d’Estree’s relationship was with DynCorp during this period that d’Estree was working on behalf of the DOJ. Since d’Estree also lists DynCorp as his employer during the period 1999–2002, but provides no further detail about what exactly he was doing for DynCorp specifically on his resume, this seems like a rather glaring absence of information. d’Estree does say that he was supervising “contract lawyers and data analysts” while working for the DOJ. Since d’Estree was supervising workers who were “independent contractors” for the DC DOJ’s office, maybe d’Estree was also an independent contractor, and maybe he was contracting out his legal services to both the DOJ and to DynCorp during this time? Whatever d’Estree’s employment relationship really was with both the DOJ and with DynCorp, the fact that d’Estree had this very close yet still partially unknown relationship with both entities gets way more suspicious when you consider what was going on with DynCorp during this exact same time period. In the late 90s and early 2000s, DynCorp itself was under massive public scrutiny for the corporation and multiple employees being criminally complicit in human trafficking in Yugoslavia. This was during and after the NATO and Clinton Administration-led war against Yugoslavia in the late 90s.

A 2002 New York Times article “America’s For-Profit Secret Army,” details some of the horrific crimes against women and children by DynCorp employees during and after the war in the Balkan states: “In Bosnia, employees of DynCorp were found to be operating a sex-slave ring of young women who were held for prostitution after their passports were confiscated […] In late September [2002], DynCorp settled charges- for an undisclosed sum — brought by a whistle-blower the company had fired after he complained of a sex ring run by DynCorp employees in Bosnia […] Two employees made similar accusations: that while working in Bosnia… DynCorp employees kept underaged women as sex slaves, even videotaping a rape. Among the charges was that while the DynCorp employees trafficked in women — including buying one for $1,000 — the company turned a blind eye […] two employees who blew the whistle were fired. Ben Johnston, one of them, said in Congressional testimony: ‘DynCorp employees were living off post and owning these children and these women and girls as slaves.’” Another whistleblower, Kathryn Bolkovac, was fired from DynCorp after reporting to her superiors that her colleagues at DynCorp were involved with a sex trafficking ring that trafficked underage girls in collusion with organized crime, in Bosnia in the late 90s. The 2011 Hollywood movie “The Whistleblower” was made about Bolkovac’s story.

To be clear, I have no idea about the nature of the cases d’Estree helped investigate and prosecute while working for the DOJ and no idea if any of his investigations had anything to do with DynCorp itself. Again, it has to be said though, that all of d’Estree’s investigations for the Criminal Division of the US Attorney’s Office, as well as (presumably) DynCorp in some unknown capacity, into human trafficking, clearly occurred at the exact same time that DynCorp was massively, criminally complicit in human trafficking in the Balkan states. Professor d’Estree himself also has some very deep connections to the “military-industrial complex” that go beyond DynCorp. d’Estree has a personal connection to NORAD and NORTHCOM, America’s giant air defense and DOD military complex based in Colorado Springs. According to his resume, d’Estree sits on the “Core Curriculum Committee of the Homeland Security/Defense Education Consortium” at NORAD/US NORTHCOM.

I feel that yet again this is one of those situations where we have a bunch of clearly disjointed, incoherent facts, without the big picture, but it can safely be said the facts available here are undeniably disturbing. Again, considering what we know about Monica Petersen’s activities in Haiti and the subsequent near-total media silence about this information, I think it is very reasonable to ask: what could Professor d’Estree and the Human Trafficking Center know about Petersen’s death that the public does not? We know that only 8 years before d’Estree became Executive Director of the Human Trafficking Center in 2008, he supervised a team of attorneys and analysts at the DOJ, where d’Estree’s team spent at least part of their time specifically investigating and prosecuting human trafficking cases. This was during the exact same time period that DynCorp and the rest of the defense corporations were profiting massively off the bombing and military campaign against Yugoslavia, which of course was spearheaded by the Clinton Administration. Fast-forward 16 years, and the same d’Estree shows up in Glenn Kessler’s 2016 Post article after Petersen’s death, quite explicitly saying that Monica Petersen was not investigating the Clinton Foundation. This was less than a year after Petersen clearly stated in Bella Robinson’s January 2016 Facebook post that she had at least heard of human trafficking happening at the Clinton’s Caracol complex. So again, what the hell are we supposed to make of this? A reasonable person could say that d’Estree is seriously covering-up for information that links Petersen’s death to the Clintons.

Without a doubt, this makes d’Estree’s past work for DynCorp all the more suspicious. A really cynical person might look at d’Estree’s supervisory role working for both the D.C. US Attorney’s Office and for DynCorp investigating human trafficking cases, and see that someone in that particular position was very well placed to potentially know which particular criminal cases DynCorp was legally liable for, during the time period d’Estree worked there. If one were to continue on the “cynical path” and speculate if d’Estree could have been some kind of “intelligence plant”, again, that kind of job at the US Attorney’s Office would clearly work very well for someone in that position to “steer away” from investigation and prosecution, cases that could have legal liability for DynCorp. I know this is speculation, and there is no way to know anything without at least knowing some details of the actual investigations d’Estree did while at the D.C. US Attorney’s Office. However, given the suspicious death of d’Estree’s own Assistant, Monica Petersen, I think it is at least reasonable to ask, what really was the nature of d’Estree’s “employment relationship” with DynCorp from 1999 to 2002?

The “relationship” between DynCorp and human trafficking is a truly long and sordid one, but I think it is also worth mentioning that this “relationship” may possibly even extend to Jeffrey Epstein! (It goes without saying, the “relationship” between Bill Clinton and Jeffrey Epstein is ALSO its own horrific story). Long-time intelligence and covert operations researcher Daniel Hopsicker wrote a blog post looking at this alleged relationship between Epstein and DynCorp. In his post, Hopsicker notes that there have been a number of reports on the internet that an aircraft with the tail number “N474AW” was at one point used by Epstein on at least one of his recorded flights. As it turns out, there was another aircraft also registered with the tail number N474AW, that Hopsicker describes as a military-type, “US light attack and observation aircraft.” This particular airplane, with the same exact tail number of the other aircraft used by Epstein, Hopsicker identifies as being “owned by DynCorp or the CIA.” Wayne Madsen, a writer and former NSA and Office of Naval Intelligence analyst, also reported about this particular plane. As Madsen reported, in 2002 there is a record of a Bell helicopter registered with the tail number N474AW, which flew from Epstein’s Zorro Ranch in New Mexico to an airport outside of Albuquerque. Four years later in 2006, another plane, a Bronco twin-turboprop light attack and observation aircraft, also registered with the same tail number (N474AW), crashed in Colombia while flying a drug eradication mission there in 2006. The name of the pilot, who survived the crash but was badly injured after ejecting from the airplane, was not released due to “national security” reasons. According to FAA records, the airplane that crashed in Colombia was owned by the US Department of State and was contracted to DynCorp for use in “counter-insurgency” and “counter-narcotics” operations in Colombia. As Madsen notes, “the congruence of Epstein’s Bell N474AW and DynCorp’s Bronco N474AW is noteworthy. In 2002, the year Epstein’s aircraft fleet stands accused of flying underage teen girls, some between the ages of 12 and 15, coincides with DynCorp’s trafficking in underage females between the ages of 12 and 15 from Kosovo and Bosnia in the Balkans.”

DynCorp also has a very significant history in Haiti. The defense corporation has received huge, multi-million dollar contracts to train United Nations peacekeepers in Haiti, as well as train Haitian police. In 2008, DynCorp received a contract to train 400 Haitian police officers. In 2013, the defense corporation received a $48.6 million contract from the US Department of State to train soldiers from the U.N. military mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), as well as train Haitian National Police (HNP) members. The U.N. soldiers in Haiti that DynCorp has a long history of training, themselves have their own very notorious history of involvement in child sex abuse and child sex trafficking in Haiti. According to the Associated Press, from 2004 to 2016, there were 150 reported allegations of abuse and exploitation of Haitians by U.N. soldiers. As Foreign Policy reported, “From 2003 to 2007, 134 [U.N] peacekeepers from Sri Lanka operated a child sex ring [in Haiti], luring children on the poverty-stricken island with candy and bits of cash […] After a U.N. report incriminated them, most were sent home, but none faced jail time.”

Finally, I think it is worth bringing up again that Monica Petersen specifically mentions her Masters Thesis from the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver, of which the Human Trafficking Center, the graduate program Petersen worked for, is a part of. In the January 2016 Facebook post shared by Robinson, Petersen said her Thesis focused on “modern structural slavery” and “disaster capitalism.” Did Petersen’s Thesis have to do with Haiti? Did it have anything to do with her research on human trafficking there? As far as I know, Petersen’s Masters Thesis is not publicly available, and the Human Trafficking Center or larger Josef Korbel School has not released her Thesis. If there is anyone in a position to know about Monica Petersen’s Masters Thesis, it definitely seems like it could be Professor d’Estree, who employed Petersen both as his Assistant and as a Researcher at the Human Trafficking Center, before her death in Haiti.

Sae-A Trading: Manufacturing Employer at Caracol Industrial Park: Severe labor rights violations and sexual harassment allegations

The “anchor tenant” at the Clinton Foundation-sponsored Caracol garment manufacturing complex is S & H Global, S.A. which is a subsidiary of Sae-A Trading Co. Ltd. Sae-A is a global clothing manufacturer headquartered in South Korea, with yearly sales well over a billion. It has factories all over the world, in Central America, Southeast Asia, and Haiti. Sae-A has been the employer of the mostly-female Haitian workforce at the Caracol factory since Caracol began operations in 2012. The company has been accused of extremely serious labor violations by workers at two of its factories in Nicaragua. In a 2013 report from “Worker Rights Consortium,” workers reported that Sae-A managers at its factories in Nicaragua engaged in incidents of serious physical violence against protesting workers, after Sae-A workers alleged that management fired 16 workers in retaliation for protected union activities. The report found that “Sae-A brutally violated these workers’ [labor] rights by directing and paying a mob of more than 300 other workers — while on paid company time — to attack these employees with scissors and metal pipes, and failing to instruct its managers and security guards to intervene and prevent this violence. […] At least six of the victims reported serious injuries including a broken nose, black eyes and stab wounds, and at least one case where the victim was stabbed in the face.” The Worker Rights Consortium report details numerous other reported incidents by Sae-A workers, where Sae-A managers repeatedly intimidated, harassed and fired union supporters at it factories in Nicaragua.

Furthermore, it is very important to point out that Sae-A managers have also been accused by Haitian workers at the Clinton’s Caracol factory of both sexual harassment and other serious workers rights violations. In 2012, the New York Times reported that before the Caracol Industrial Park deal was sealed in 2012, “the AFL-CIO sent a detailed memo to American and international officials describing ‘acts of violence and intimidation’ and declaring the company ‘one of the major labor violators.’” As ABC News reported, “a group called Better Work Haiti published a report finding the [Caracol] factory was noncompliant in the areas of sexual harassment, bullying and humiliation of employees. Yannick Etienne, a labor organizer, told ABC News she received reports from Sae-A workers that they had to provide sexual favors to [Sae-A] supervisors in order to obtain jobs in the factory […] When ABC News asked to speak with workers, one company official spoke in Korean to another, saying, ‘I don’t think you should allow that.’ Eventually, three workers were taken from another part of the factory to be interviewed. Haitians are just eager for the work, said one of the workers, Mileon Fontila, as her managers looked on.”

We can clearly see from reports that Sae-A managers have been accused of sexual harassment, including the specific claim that Haitian workers had to provide sexual favors to Sae-A managers to get jobs at the Caracol factory. This is in addition to other serious human rights abuses reported by workers at the Caracol factory, not to mention the massive, anti-labor “campaign of terror” Sae-A management launched against its workers in Nicaragua, that literally included fomenting a brutal mob attack on its own workers. Considering that America’s largest labor confederation, the AFL-CIO, specifically described Sae-A as “one of the major labor violators,” and considering it is reported that the Clinton’s were “instrumental” in the creation of the Caracol plant every step of the way, it is suspicious to say the least that the decision was made to let Sae-A be the “anchor” manufacturer at the Caracol complex.

Given all this as context, we have to again consider Human Trafficking Center Researcher Monica Petersen’s claim from 2016 that human trafficking was happening to some unknown extent through the Caracol plant complex. To be 100% clear, allegations of labor rights violations and sexual harassment claims against certain Sae-A managers, is obviously not the same thing as alleging Sae-A’s complicity with some kind of actual human trafficking operation at the Caracol complex. However, if what Monica Petersen said about human trafficking at the Caracol complex was in anyway true, it goes without saying that Sae-A’s extremely dark history of worker rights’ violations has to be looked at with whole new magnitude of suspicion.

Historical Context: FBI Whistleblower Sibel Edmond’s allegation of the Clinton’s corruption of the appointment process for Federal Judges

As shocking as it is to consider Monica Petersen’s allegations of human trafficking at the Clinton’s Caracol plant, I think it is important to consider the claims of another, very credible whistleblower against the Clintons: Sibel Edmonds. Edmonds worked as as a contract employee in the FBI’s translation department for 6 months after 9/11, before she was fired by the Bureau. After her firing, Edmonds filed complaints and a lawsuit against the US government, alleging serious wrongdoing, criminal activities, and cover-ups she alleged she witnessed while at the FBI. Edmonds reports of wrongdoing included the following: cases of espionage within the FBI, DOD, and Department of State; cases of cover-up of information and leads pre and post 9/11, under the excuse of protecting certain diplomatic relations; cases of intentional blocking and mistranslation of crucial intelligence by FBI translators and management; and cases of foreign entities bribing certain government officials and elected representatives.

Very significantly, as the New York Times reported, the Inspector General of the DOJ found Edmonds credible in her allegations, saying that her allegations “were supported” and were a “significant factor” in the FBI deciding to fire her. Notoriously, the Bush Administration under Attorney General John Ashcroft used the state secrets privilege twice to “gag order” Edmonds and silence her. Former CIA Intelligence officer Philip Giraldi wrote the following about Edmonds: “To stop Sibel from telling her story, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft subjected her to a state secrets privilege gag order after her appearance on CBS’s 60 Minutes in October 2002 that not only forbade her providing details of her employment with FBI but also made the ban retroactive so that anything related to her case would be considered a state secret […] Why should Sibel be heard? Mostly because her story, if true, involves corruption at the highest levels of government…” The “Liberty Coalition,” a coalition of liberal and conservative government watchdog groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union and others, found Edmonds to be credible in her allegations. The ACLU reported the following about Edmonds: “While an FBI translator, Edmonds discovered poorly translated documents relevant to the 9/11 attacks and reported the shoddy work to her supervisors. She also expressed concerns about a co-worker who had previously worked for an organization under FBI surveillance and had a relationship with a foreign intelligence officer under surveillance. […] Even though she followed all appropriate procedures for reporting her concerns up the chain of command, Edmonds was retaliated against and fired. After her termination, many of Edmond’s allegations were confirmed by the FBI in unclassified briefings to Congress. More than two years later, in May 2004, the Justice Department retroactively classified Edmonds’ briefings, as well as the FBI briefings, and forced Members of Congress who had the information posted on their Web sites to remove the documents.”

The US government clearly went to extreme lengths to silence Edmonds about what she knew about corruption during the Bush Administration. Considering all this, it is all the more shocking to consider what Edmond’s has to say about corruption allegedly occurring during the Clinton Administration in the 90s. In a 2020 Youtube video, Edmonds relates an allegation she claims she heard from a government whistleblower who was a high-ranking FBI agent. According to Edmonds, this FBI agent made the following extremely serious allegations of corruption occurring during the appointment process of Federal Judges during the Clinton Administration. Edmonds states in the video:

“One of my, not publicly known at the time, FBI whistleblowers, was a senior executive agent, but before he became [a senior] agent, in early-mid 90s, and this is a documented case people, because he went and he complained to the [Department of Justice] I.G. [Inspector General]’s Office … its on the record by the way … sometime between ’93 and ’97 … when he was a rookie agent, one of the first jobs he had as a FBI new agent was to conduct background checks for those Federal Judges, candidates, that each President appointed … [i.e.] ‘I’m proposing this, and this, and this Judge, for Federal bench’ … So what happens is at that point, the FBI goes and conducts background checks to make sure, theoretically, that [the Judges] are clean, that they are fit to be appointed, and then they let the President know, and the President says, ‘oh, I’m gonna push this guy,’ So that’s theoretically.

Now, in practice … so the Agent was, of course … naive and green, so he’s running background checks on some of these Judges, and finds out which ones have extramarital affairs … which ones are pedophiles or they are into child pornography, and then he would submit the [background checks] to the FBI, so that they would process it, and eliminate those Judges, and what he ended up seeing happening was that, all the ‘squeaky-clean’ [Judges] were discarded for Federal benches, important Federal Court Judges, especially the FISA Court Judges. They made sure only the dirtier, the more qualified, because for FISA Court Judges, the ‘rubber stamp’ Judges, they needed to have the crappy, crooked, criminal ones that they could get anything they want from.”

According to Edmond’s high-level FBI source, the Clinton Administration showed a deliberate, deeply corrupt pattern of “weeding out” morally and ethically honest Judges for appointment to Federal benches. Instead, at least in some cases, the Clinton Administration allegedly selected the most personally corrupt Judges for appointment to Federal benches, including Judges who were found by the FBI to be pedophiles and users of child pornography. Again, according to Edmonds, the rationale for doing this was so the Clinton Administration could have leverage and control over the corrupt, and at least in some cases, pedophile Judges that they nominated to Federal benches, so that the Clintons “could get anything they want from [them].” Considering Monica Petersen’s claim that human trafficking was happening at Caracol, and Bella Robinson’s claim (in her Facebook post) that Petersen was investigating the Clintons’ “possible ties to a pedophile ring” before her death in Haiti, Edmond’s allegations take things to an even darker level. With Sibel Edmonds, we see that this is not even the first time the Clintons have specifically been accused by a credible whistleblower of using pedophilia and child pornography as a “machiavellian” means for their own self-enrichment, and advancement of their own political power via blackmail. If the Clinton’s were fine in the 90s with appointing Federal Judges who they knew to be pedophiles and otherwise “crappy, crooked, criminal” characters, is it possible the Clintons simply repeated this same sort of horrific “practice” in Haiti 20 years later? If there really was some kind of human trafficking/pedophile ring operating out of Caracol, you have to ask, were the Clintons in some way profiting off of it? Were the Clintons yet again gaining “blackmail power” from their knowledge of those involved with this alleged human trafficking ring being run out of Caracol?

Part 3 HERE

**Surviveandheal15 Lives On!!**

Part 2 HERE, Part 3 HERE

By: Anonymous
February 13th, 2021

(**Author’s Note: This is NOT a “QAnon” Article. This author does NOT believe in QAnon AT ALL. This author furthermore does not intend to promote ANY QAnon conspiracy theories with this article, in ANY way.)

“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.”
– Marie Curie

“…the real significance of this scandal for me […] is the link to contemporary slavery and trafficking. I can’t say to what extent, but there is human trafficking happening through the Clinton’s [Caracol] Complex. And mining has always been historically linked to trafficking, slavery, and labor exploitation.”
— Monica Petersen, Research Fellow and Assistant to the Director at the Human Trafficking Center at the University of Denver, in January 2016 Facebook Post (LINK)

Synopsis:
From Facebook posts, we know that University of Denver Human Trafficking Center Researcher Monica Petersen took a series of trips to Haiti in 2015 and 2016 to investigate human trafficking. We know that she went to talk to Haitian workers, or those very close to them, about working conditions at the Clinton Foundation-sponsored Caracol textile factory in northern Haiti. From a January 2016 Facebook post, we know that Monica Petersen received some kind of report about human trafficking allegedly happening at this Caracol textile factory. Beyond this, we know almost nothing. Petersen officially passed away in Haiti in November 2016, but the circumstances of her death and events leading up to it are still very unclear until this day. A single Washington Post article from December 2016, is the only article I could find about Monica Petersen’s death from any mainstream news agency as of this writing. The silence in the media about Petersen’s death in 2016, is both incredibly revealing and disturbing at the same time, potentially telling us a great deal about the true level of censorship we live with in our society. What really happened to Human Trafficking Center Researcher Monica Petersen? Was she correct in her statement before her death that human trafficking was occurring at the Clinton-sponsored Caracol textile factory in Haiti?

There is clearly a very very oddly limited “hodgepodge” of social media information regarding Petersen’s death. My search for answers to her death, led me to look deeply into this “hodgepodge” of very limited information. The results of this research is this story. What I found in my opinion only greatly deepened the suspiciousness about Petersen’s death, and what her investigation in Haiti may have truly revealed. The blatant media black-out and obfuscation of relevant, publicly available information about Petersen’s death is very very striking. It is obvious from reading reporter Glenn Kessler’s single 2016 Post article, the only mainstream press about Monica Petersen’s death to this date, that Kessler is misrepresenting and omitting from disclosure, highly relevant social media posts about Petersen’s investigation into the Clinton-sponsored Caracol factory in Haiti. It is also worth mentioning that when Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State, Glenn Kessler in his duties as reporter traveled with Clinton frequently and “for several years wrote a blog about his experiences on those trips.” In this article, I seek to expose to the best I can, the full scope of the publicly available, relevant social media posts that shine light on Petersen’s human trafficking investigation and her death in Haiti. As can be clearly seen in these online postings, some of the key people involved in these communications, were decidedly left-wing, social justice-oriented activists, not the sort of people you could label as right-wing, pro-Trump QAnon conspiricists. Facebook posts about Monica Petersen’s death were shared predominately on right-wing, pro-Trump message boards and other social media sites after her death in November 2016. However, just because these messages were shared mostly on these kinds of sites, does not change the content of the messages themselves, nor the background of the activists who posted the messages. The subsequent media silence about the circumstances of Petersen’s death, may speak volumes about the level of criminality against the people of Haiti Monica Petersen was seeking to expose.

Background about Monica Petersen

According to her obituary, Monica Petersen worked as a Research Fellow and Assistant to the Director of the Human Trafficking Center (HTC) at the University of Denver. Petersen officially passed away in Port-au-Prince, Haiti on November 13th, 2016. The Human Trafficking Center graduate program provides “the only two-year graduate level training program in forced labor, human trafficking, and international migration issues in the U.S.” Monica Petersen was born and raised in Ames, Iowa, her life growing up included active involvement with her local 4-H club, and many school activities. She received a bachelors degree in Anthropology from Western State College of Colorado, and in 2014, Petersen received a Masters Degree in International Development with a concentration in Human Trafficking from the Josef Korbel School of International Studies, at the University of Denver. The Human Trafficking Center, for whom Petersen also worked, is a part of the larger Josef Korbel School of International Studies. (**Very important update: according to the Human Trafficking Center’s Facebook page, the Human Trafficking Center permanently shut down at the University of Denver as of June 2021. Also very notably, according to the HTC’s statement about its closing on its Facebook page, there is a description of all of the HTC’s academic accomplishments over a nearly 20 year period of operation at the U. of Denver. But at the same time, within the statement there is no explanation for why the decision was made to shut the Human Trafficking Center program down, other than that the Korbel School “decided to close” the program).

Considering that Petersen’s Masters Degree had a focus on human trafficking studies, it is safe to say that she must have taken many classes that were part of the Human Trafficking Center curriculum, and knew quite a bit about the HTC, before 2014. Petersen worked with many social justice-oriented groups during her life, including the Social Wellness Advocacy Network, the Colorado Human Trafficking Council, and the Laboratory to Combat Human Trafficking. She gave an academic presentation about women victims of human trafficking at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Her social media postings show that Petersen had a significant academic history researching and combating human trafficking, and was also involved in social justice activism like advocating for the rights of sex workers. In 2014, Petersen wrote a blog post for the Human Trafficking Center blog, titled “Root Causes and Contradictions of the Displaced Youth along the U.S./Mexico Border.” In the post, Petersen talked in detail about how “free trade” polices instituted in Central America, and throughout the world, have contributed enormously to increased inequality between the US and Central America and other third world countries, and greatly increased global poverty. As Petersen wrote, this “break-down” in society in Central America has allowed an illegal “informal” economy of gangs and crime to flourish, and horrifically this has contributed greatly to increased child trafficking from Central American countries. Petersen clearly had a deep level of knowledge about economics and global politics, and their impact on human trafficking activities throughout the world. None of this background “fits” with the “QAnon narrative” pushed by our mainstream news constantly now, to say the very least. Before Petersen’s death, she appeared on a podcast about human trafficking and sex workers, hosted by Chris Sowa titled “Fighting the Trafficking Narrative from Alaska to Rhode Island.” By all accounts, Monica Petersen was committed to investigating and reporting on human trafficking and other social injustices up until the end of her life.

At the time of Petersen’s death in November 2016, the Director of the Human Trafficking Center was Professor Claude d’Estree. The 2016 Post article about Petersen’s death, quotes d’Estree as saying the following about Petersen’s death and time before that: “[d’Estree] had employed Petersen until June [2016] as a researcher and as his assistant, after which she moved to Haiti. He said she had been teaching at private pre-kindergarten-through-12 school, Union School Haiti, mainly to support herself, and had been exploring setting up a nongovernmental organization in Haiti. He said she committed suicide but the circumstances are not clear. d’Estree said Petersen had gone to Haiti a number of times, but she was not there to research human trafficking and was not investigating the Clinton Foundation. He said she had been a “brilliant” research fellow, working the past two years to produce a still unpublished article that critiqued a controversial book on the business of sex trafficking by Siddharth Kara.”

However, even within the 2016 Post article, Monica Petersen’s own Facebook post contradicts d’Estree’s claim that she was not in Haiti to investigate human trafficking. Later on in the same article, Kessler references a group of Facebook posts, one of which is a post Monica Petersen herself wrote in August 2015. In the post, Petersen says, “I’m down in Haiti for the next 3 wks doing fieldwork on human trafficking (i.e. ALL exploited labor sectors, not just sex).” It is true that Petersen took another trip to Haiti in 2016, so in fairness maybe d’Estree is saying that Petersen was not investigating human trafficking on Petersen’s particular trip to Haiti in late 2016, when Monica Petersen died. Still, why was d’Estree not clear about this in the Post article, and why would he at least not mention anything about what Petersen was doing on her 2015 trip to Haiti, when she clearly was investigating human trafficking?

However, this is just the beginning. What I think can be clearly seen in Glenn Kessler’s Post article, is that he very obviously only references certain Facebook posts about Petersen, her time in Haiti and her death. He clearly does not reference a number of other Facebook posts that are publicly viewable about Monica Petersen. The specific posts that Kessler very clearly omits from his article, just so happen to do with Petersen’s investigation into the Clinton-sponsored Caracol textile factory in northern Haiti, and how her death may possibly be related to this investigation. Bill and Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation were heavily involved in financing and otherwise supporting the construction and operation of the Caracol Industrial Park in northern Haiti, near the city of Cap-Haïtien. Caracol Industrial Park is a textile production factory that went into business in 2012.

A well-known picture shows Bill and Hillary Clinton posing with a large group of Haitian workers and factory managers at the Caracol Industrial Park for its inauguration ceremony in October 2012. A 2015 report from Politico stated that the Clintons “were instrumental at nearly every step” in the creation of the Caracol Industrial Park. As the BBC reported in 2016, the main employer at the Caracol factory is the South Korean textile corporate giant Sae-A Trading Co. The Caracol textile factory produces clothes for US Big Box retailers like Walmart, Target and Old Navy. Perhaps not coincidentally at all, after Sae-A got its contract to start producing clothing at Caracol, the corporation subsequently donated between $50,000 and $100,000 to the Clinton Foundation. A major disappointment with the Caracol factory, at least one that is publicly known, is that the total number of jobs created at the factory has fallen far short of initial projections. Bill Clinton said that Caracol would create 100,000 jobs “in short order,” but as of 2019, Sae-A Trading employed only about 13,000 workers at the Caracol factory complex, most of whom are female textile workers.

By far the most significant of the Facebook posts Kessler does NOT mention, is a January 4th, 2016 Facebook Post shared by Bella Robinson, a social justice activist from Rhode Island who was a friend of Monica Petersen. In the post, Robinson quotes Monica Petersen giving a “report” or “travel update” about her visit to Haiti. As shocking as it is to say, Robinson quotes Monica Petersen as stating the following about her visit in Haiti:

1.) She personally went to the Caracol Industrial Park in Haiti to investigate working conditions of the plant’s workers.
2.) She personally heard of and was possibly actively investigating claims of human trafficking happening at the Clinton Foundation-sponsored Caracol Industrial Park in Haiti.

Again, here is the Facebook Post (archived link HERE): In Bella Robinson’s Facebook post (from January 4th, 2016) quoting Monica Petersen, Petersen states the following: “Caracol is a garment exporting zone, a field site I visited in August to check out the conditions of the workers (conclusion: working conditions okay, working wages too low & below contracts & legal minimum wage in Haiti.)”

Later on towards the end of the same social media post by Monica Petersen, Petersen says the following: “..the real significance of this scandal for me […] is the link to contemporary slavery and trafficking. I can’t say to what extent, but there is human trafficking happening through the Clinton’s Caraol [sic] Complex.” This Facebook post was clearly only shared by Bella Robinson to her own group of friends on Facebook.

As obviously shocking as it is to hear allegations of actual human trafficking occurring at a Clinton Foundation-sponsored textile sweatshop in Haiti, Kessler’s 2016 Post article indeed confirmed that Bella Robinson knew Monica Petersen, and confirms the authenticity of at least one of Bella Robinson’s Facebook posts quoting Monica Petersen’s “report” of her trip to Haiti. In the Post article, Monica Petersen is named as an “acquaintance” of Robinson. Additionally, Kessler’s article states that “…Bella Robinson, a sex worker and activist in Rhode Island in January [2016] had posted a blog post that Petersen had shared on Facebook that had been critical of the Clinton Foundation’s work in Haiti.” Very very significantly, the Washington Post here does in fact acknowledge that Bella Robinson was sharing actual social media posts by Monica Petersen through her own Facebook posts.

Bella Robinson is a Rhode Island-based social justice activist, sex worker rights activist, and sex worker. She is the Executive Director of “COYOTE RI,” a support organization for current and former sex workers and trafficking victims. She is also a founding member of the “AMOR Network,” which describes itself as “an alliance of grassroots organizations, providing community support in Rhode Island and southern New England for victims of hate crimes and state-sponsored violence.” In addition, Robinson has a scholarly background investigating and writing about sex worker rights’ issues as well as sex trafficking. Her and Professor Elena Shih, an American and Ethnic studies Professor at Brown University, co-wrote a research paper titled “Organizing under Criminalization: Policing and Sex Worker’s Rights in Rhode Island.” In the paper, Robinson and Shih discuss the history of de-criminalization and re-criminalization of sex work in the state of Rhode Island, and the impact re-criminalization has had on the lives of sex workers in the state. Rhode Island de-criminalized prostitution for 30 years and re-criminalized it in 2009. Robinson and Professor Shih also have conducted research surveys where they interviewed sex workers in Rhode Island, and sex workers nation-wide, in order to try to better understand “the realities of consensual sex work and sex trafficking in the US.” The nation-wide survey Robinson and Shih conducted interviewed 1,494 sex workers. Professor Shih herself teaches courses in human trafficking, labor migration and sex work, amongst many other subjects at Brown University. Shih also serves on the Board of Directors of Robinson’s “COYOTE RI” organization. Bella Robinson clearly has a background both in researching and writing about the nature of sex trafficking and sex work, at an academic level. After Monica Petersen’s death in November 2016, many of Robinson’s Facebook posts concerning Petersen and her death in Haiti were shared or linked to across various right-wing, pro-Trump/QAnon message boards and websites. People critical of Robinson might try to say she is affiliated with the QAnon “movement” and therefore dismiss what she posted. However, Robinson’s background indicates a long involvement with left-leaning, social justice-oriented activism, amongst other information that does not suggest anything of her being affiliated with the “QAnon crowd.” It is clearly very hard to dismiss her social media posts as yet another QAnon “rant.” The same exact thing can be said about Monica Petersen. Monica Petersen passed away in Haiti in 2016, obviously before the current “QAnon craze” took hold. Petersen clearly had a very well-established academic and activist background researching and investigating human trafficking. Yet again, none of this fits into the “QAnon narrative” at all.

Despite this, the entire focus of Kessler’s 2016 Post article (titled “‘Pizzagate’ rumors falsely link death of sex-worker advocate to nonexistent Clinton probe”) is a “debunking job” against the supposed conspiracy theories that Petersen’s death had anything to do with the Clintons. In his Post article, Kessler states that after Petersen’s death in November 2016, the blog post that Robinson posted on Facebook quoting Monica Petersen the past January, was shared in a Reddit discussion thread and went viral. Kessler states that after the blog post went viral, “This then resulted in a flurry of “news stories” falsely claiming that Petersen had written the blog post and was killed for investigating the Clintons.” Kessler then quotes Robinson responding to her post going viral, quoting her as saying, “Some guy from Reddit found an old Facebook post on the Clintons and screen shot it and tagged it in this, and even after I confirmed that her death had nothing to do with the Clintons, he made up stories that the family couldn’t get answers.” Kessler quotes Robinson as saying that her comments “were taken out of context, and that she was actually trying to end the speculation.” Kessler further quotes Robinson as saying that,”Monica Petersen’s death is a PRIVATE family matter and it had nothing to do with the Clinton scandal. “ Here is the blog post linked to from the Kessler’s 2016 Washington Post article:

This post contains a total of 4 social media posts about Monica Petersen. The Post-linked imgur site contains two November 2016 Facebook posts from the University of Denver Human Trafficking Center (Petersen’s employer), and the “Laboratory to Combat Human Trafficking”, both of which announced and discussed the recent death of Monica Petersen. There is also an August 15th, 2015 Facebook post from Monica Petersen herself, where she discusses her upcoming trip to Haiti in 2015, stating: “I’m down in Haiti for the next 3 wks doing fieldwork on human trafficking (i.e. ALL exploited labor sectors, not just sex)[…]”. Finally, the Post-linked imgur site contains a January 3rd, 2016 Facebook post from Bella Robinson quoting Monica Petersen. In this post, Monica Petersen discusses the upcoming Haitian Presidential elections, and Petersen discusses the Clinton’s alleged corruption in Haiti. Probably NOT coincidentally at all, this particular Jan. 3rd, 2016 post from Petersen does NOT make reference AT ALL to human trafficking.

However, in Bella Robinson’s Jan. 4th, 2016 Facebook post (link is HERE) posted on Facebook the very next day, Petersen clearly states that “human trafficking” was allegedly occurring at the Clinton’s Caracol Industrial Park. It does not take a genius to figure out that Glenn Kessler, clearly deliberately chose to feature in his Post article the Petersen Facebook post that did not report alleged human trafficking at the Caracol complex, and blatantly ignores the post by Petersen where she clearly states that “human trafficking” is happening at Caracol Industrial Park (which again was posted on Facebook literally the next day.)

If you think this reeks of a completely blatant and obviously selective omission of factual information on Glenn Kessler’s part as a journalist, to say the very least, as horrible as it is to say, this is just the beginning. One thing I immediately noticed when I did a Google news search query for “Monica Petersen.” As of February 2021, Glenn Kessler’s Washington Post article about Monica Petersen was literally the only mainstream news article about Petersen’s death I could find anywhere from any remotely “mainstream” news agency. I mean anywhere. I could not find another article about Monica Petersen’s death from any other news agency other than the Washington Post. (If I am wrong about this, please tell me). I could not even find an article in the Denver Post, Petersen’s hometown paper at the time of her death. Just looking at the absolute absence of any other mainstream reporting about Petersen’s death, I cannot help but feel that there has to be some kind of orchestrated “clamp-down” on information in regards to Petersen’s death.

Also very strikingly: one thing should be immediately noted about Glenn Kessler’s past employment history: as Kessler’s Wikipedia page notes, in his job duties as a journalist he “… traveled with three different Secretaries of State- Colin Powell, Condeleeza Rice, and Hillary Clinton — and for several years wrote a blog about his experiences on these trips.” Glenn Kessler, the author of the only news article about Monica Petersen’s death from any mainstream news source pretty much anywhere, also just so happens to be the…. former personal travel companion to and blog writer for Hillary Clinton herself!!

If this does not reek even deeper of massive conflict of interest and journalistic malpractice, it yet again gets worse. I will return to Kessler’s Post article later, but first I think it is most important to do what the Post clearly does not: provide archived links and descriptions of all the Monica Petersen-related social media posts I could find on the internet that had information relevant to her death and time spent in Haiti. I present these posts in chronological order, as best as I can discern their chronological order. From 2015 to roughly November 2016, both Bella Robinson, quotes from Monica Petersen in Robinson’s posts, as well as Facebook comments from Petersen’s friends shortly after her death, shed light on deeply troubling information about Petersen’s time in Haiti as well as her death there, to say the very least. As will be clearly seen, Kessler’s December 2016 Post article references almost none of the highly relevant information that is publicly available. The fact that Kessler published this article in the Post in December 2016, after all this information was publicly viewable on social media, denies any excuse that he did not have access to this information.

Time Line of Monica Petersen-Related Facebook Posts

8/15/2015 Post:
Personal Facebook post from Monica Petersen herself. Kessler does reference this post in his 2016 article. In this post, Petersen is asking some questions to an unknown Facebook page she recently joined. Petersen states that she is visiting Haiti “… for the next 3 wks doing fieldwork on human trafficking (i.e. All exploited labor sectors, NOT just sex). She describes herself as a “social anthropologist who wants to do solid research on [human trafficking].” Petersen says that as part of her field research, she is seeking to work with sex worker rights organizations in Haiti that are truly “pro-sex worker orgs,” and not what she considers to be “sex trafficking savior” organizations seeking to “rescue” sex workers. She goes on to say “rescuing people” is a “stupid & imperialist concept.” Bella Robinson responds to Petersen’s post, suggesting she look into one such organization she might want to work with in Haiti, the “American Jewish World Service.” Petersen then thanks Robinson on the message thread, saying that she was searching for their office or their representatives in Haiti while she herself was in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, but that she could not yet find them and was trying to reach them.

1/03/2016 Post:
Kessler’s Post article states that Robinson posted this in January 2016. Kessler does reference this particular post in his 2016 article. Robinson’s Facebook post quoting Monica Petersen. As stated previously, Petersen discusses the Clinton’s alleged corruption in Haiti, specifically she states her belief that the Clintons planed to “loot” Haiti for gold and work in some conjunction with groups from the Dominican Republic to accomplish this purpose. Petersen also speculates that a partner of Haitian President Michel Martelly (who she calls “Martelly’s guy”) is going to steal the upcoming Haitian Presidential Election, and speculates that the Clintons’ alleged gold mining “plans” were going to be responsible for the steal. Also very significantly, Monica Petersen refers to her Masters Thesis from the Josef Korbel School of International Studies, of which the Human Trafficking Center, for whom she also worked, is a part of. Petersen says her Thesis focuses on researching “modern structural slavery,” and “disaster capitalism.”

1/04/2016 Post:
Bella Robinson’s post quoting Petersen’s “report” from Haiti. Glenn Kessler DOES NOT refer at all to this specific post in his 2016 Post article. This is the specific Facebook post where Petersen says that human trafficking is happening through the Clinton’s Caracol Industrial Park. From the beginning of the post, it is clear Petersen is back in Haiti doing field work like on her previous 2015 trip. In her post, Petersen continues to describe her investigation into Clinton-related corruption in Haiti. Petersen discusses the Morne Bossa gold mine in the north of Haiti. The North Carolina-based VCS mining company, on which Clinton’s brother Tony Rodham sat on the board, got the permit to mine gold at the Morne Bossa mine in 2012. In the post, Petersen describes how the Clintons may have allegedly worked with the Haitian Presidential Administration of Michel Martelly, in a “crony” manner, to attempt to begin mining gold at Morne Bossa in 2012. As Petersen also describes, the Clinton Foundation established the Caracol Industrial Park at the same exact time in 2012, and Caracol is fairly close to the Morne Bossa mine. Petersen speculates whether the Clintons may have had some ulterior motive for establishing the Caracol textile factory and beginning mining gold at Morne Bossa at the same time, wondering if it was just “easy money” for the Clintons or if there was something more to it.

It is very important to point out here that this January 4 2016 Facebook post quoting Monica Petersen, contains very significant information about her activities in Haiti that closely corroborates what Petersen is quoted as saying in Kessler’s 2016 Washington Post article, in Petersen’s August 15 2015 Facebook post referenced in his article. Very significantly, in the January 4 2016 post, Petersen states that she visited the Caracol Industrial Park in 2015, saying the following: “Caracol is a garment exporting zone, a field site I visited in August [2015] to check out the conditions of the workers (conclusion: working conditions okay, working wages too low & below contracts & legal minimum wage in Haiti).” This very closely matches with what Petersen stated in her own Facebook post dated August 15 2015 (as referenced by the Washington Post), where she said: “I’m down in Haiti for the next 3 wks doing fieldwork on human trafficking (i.e. ALL exploited labor sectors, not just sex)”. There is clearly corroboration from both these Facebook posts, that Petersen was actively investigating human trafficking in Haiti and that she personally visited the Caracol complex sometime in August 2015. From these posts, we know that Petersen states that she intended to investigate a potentially wide range of human trafficking activities occurring in Haiti (i.e., across “ALL exploited labor sectors”). It therefore clearly makes sense that as Petersen herself is quoted as saying, she would go and talk with textile workers at the Caracol complex, since the textile export industry across Haiti is notorious for its incredibly exploited, low-wage workforce. So again, there is very significant corroboration of information regarding Monica Petersen’s activities in Haiti, from both Petersen’s August 2015 Facebook post, and this January 4 2016 Facebook post quoting her less than half a year later. This in my opinion, provides very significant evidence to support the validity of Petersen’s comments quoted in Robinson’s January 4 2016 Facebook post presented here. Again, Glenn Kessler quite conspicuously neglects to mention at all this January 4 Facebook post in his Washington Post article.

Petersen states that the main buyers for Caracol’s garment exports are Gap, Target and Wal-Mart, all of which are corporations Petersen states are “linked” to the Clintons. Petersen states that “family money, not local livelihoods” were motivating the Clintons to develop the Caracol garment factory. Petersen goes on to discuss how she believes that Hillary Clinton, in her role as Secretary of State,”ensured” that Michel Martelly won the “rigged” Haitian Presidential elections in 2010, and that the Clintons wanted Martelly’s “hand-picked successor” to win the 2016 election. Petersen states that the Clintons wanted Martelly’s successor government to allow Tony Rodham’s VCS Mining to begin mining at Morne Bossa. Petersen also states that the time period of mining activity at Morne Bossa “oddly corresponds” to the first and second coups against Haitian President Aristide. Petersen discusses the lack of an assessment of the environmental risks of mining at Morne Bossa, warning about the threat mining at Morne Bossa posed to farmers and the surrounding ecosystem. Petersen states that regardless of the actual amount of mineral wealth available in Haiti, the Clintons viewed Haiti as just another third world country to exploit: “a couple billion here, there, everywhere adds up.”

Most crucially, towards the end of her post, Petersen states the following: “I can’t say to what extent, but there is human trafficking happening through the Clinton’s Caraol [sic] complex. And mining has always been historically linked to trafficking, slavery and labor exploitation.” Petersen goes on to speculate about the nature of the workforce at the nearby Morne Bossa mine, believing that Dominicans were most likely the contracted managers at the mine, and Haitian workers were most likely being exploited as laborers at the mine as “low or no cost” labor. Petersen states at the end of her post: “That’s two huge human trafficking scandals, an environmental degradation scandal, a social displacement scandal, a Presidential election scandal, a scandal with billions in unaccounted for earthquake aid…all leading back to the Clintons racist cronyism in Haiti.” Significantly, Petersen specifically mentions two human trafficking scandals, but in this post, and from what I can find on social media, Petersen only specifically made claims about human trafficking happening at the Caracol factory in Haiti. So if Petersen said “two huge human trafficking scandals” were occurring in Haiti that linked back to the Clintons, where else could the other alleged human trafficking be happening in Haiti??

November 2016 Post:
Personal Facebook post from Bella Robinson. Kessler DOES NOT refer at all to this specific post in his 2016 Post article. Robinson posted this in the comments section of the “My favorite abolitionist” Facebook group, a pro-sex worker and pro-LGBT Facebook group, soon after Petersen’s death in November 2016. Robinson posted the following, “RIP Monica Petersen: It seems that Monica was in Haiti investigating the Clintons possible ties to a pedophile ring. Monica family hasn’t been able to get any straight answers about her death.”

November 2016 Post:
What appears to be Bella Robinson on Facebook, is commenting with another unknown poster. Kessler does NOT reference this Facebook post in his 2016 article. Robinson’s name and profile picture is partially “smudged out” but part of her distinctive Facebook profile picture and a chunk of her name can be seen in the photo. An unknown Facebook poster asks Robinson questions about Petersen’s recent death. Petersen responds, saying, “All I know is she committed suicide and she left a note. I don’t know the cause of death or anything else. I can’t even find any public record of media that mentions her death other then her own FB page, and redditt, and a few spin offs.” Robinson goes on to give details to the other poster about Petersen’s upcoming memorial service at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver, on November 18th, 2016.

November 2016 Post:
Personal Facebook post from Bella Robinson, posted sometime after Petersen’s death in November 2016. Kessler does NOT reference this Facebook post in his 2016 article. Robinson shares a Reddit discussion thread about Monica’s Petersen’s death on Facebook. One of her friends comments, asking, “How credible the Reddit link and discussion? Robinson responds, saying, “I found out what happened, and if you message me I will explain. I don’t think it is appropriate to post what I know in public.”

November 2016 Post:
This Facebook post is a discussion thread about Petersen’s recent death on the Human Trafficking Center Facebook page, posted shortly after Petersen’s death. Kessler does NOT reference this Facebook post in his 2016 article. In the discussion thread, a poster states: “The alt.right and faux news site went nuts today, hinting that Clinton had [Monica Petersen] killed for investigating her. Please, can you or the family issue a statement to stop this inane conspiracy garbage?” In the thread, the Human Trafficking Center then responds to this poster, saying, “It’s actually best to ignore them. It will only feed the flames of their craziness.” However, in the very same discussion thread, another poster, claiming to be a childhood friend of Monica Petersen, says the following: “[Monica] was my classmate growing up and I got word she was murdered. A statement would be nice so rumors do not swirl.” Another poster on the thread comments,”I sincerely hope you were able to get hold of [Petersen’s] notes…. you may get some answers from them…”

Part 2 HERE