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Suddenly came the White House announcement hardly anyone expected: Carter, Powell and Nunn were going to Port-au-Prince to make one last try at persuading the three top Haitian leaders to take the money and run. Literally take the money and run. The delegation was authorized to discuss just one thing with the Cedras crowd: how they would pack up to leave. U.S. officials denied they were offering any extra cash to the clique, but the three could in effect collect their own money -- the substantial wealth they are believed to have stashed abroad. And Washington would be happy to provide planes to fly them, their wives, mistresses and hangers-on out of Haiti into comfortable exile anywhere they chose. That meant they had to make it clear by Sunday noon, said a senior official, "when they would leave and under what circumstances." But the last-minute diplomacy, warned another official, did not stop the clock ticking on the invasion "by one minute or one second."
Mindful of Carter's reputation for free-wheeling -- as he had done when he followed his own agenda on a mission to North Korea last June -- Clinton Administration officials insisted that this time the former President was being held to a tightly limited brief. The delegation was not permitted to make any deals with the three Haitians, who all had to go: Armed Forces Commander Cedras, the de facto dictator; chief of staff Philippe Biamby, now thought to be the strongest of the trio; and police chief Michel Francois, once the chief tough guy. The Americans could only negotiate on "the modalities" of getting the three out of the country: how many family members each leader could take with him, how big a plane he would need, when it would take off and where it would go. If they could not decide by Sunday noon, Carter, Nunn and Powell were to come home and the invasion would proceed -- perhaps as early as the wee hours of Monday morning. But on Saturday, as they anxiously monitored the delegation's progress, some Administration officials acknowledged that Carter had already overstepped his limits by meeting with Emile Jonnaissant, Haiti's illegitimate president, something Clinton did not authorize or agree to.
It was hard to see how dispatching the Carter mission to Haiti could do Clinton anything but good. If it failed, and the President had to give the order to invade, he could at least contend he had really exhausted every possibility of reaching a peaceful settlement -- despite his declaration on Thursday night that he had already exhausted every diplomatic effort. He could call on three respected elder statesmen spanning a fairly wide political spectrum -- and all announced opponents of the invasion -- to back up that claim.
If the mission succeeded, Clinton would be spared, at least for the moment, what Democratic Senator John Glenn of Ohio calls "the Dover test." The reference is to the Air Force base at Dover, Delaware, where the bodies of U.S. servicemen and women killed overseas are taken; the test is to explain to grieving family members why their loved ones had to be brought home in flag- draped coffins. The President could claim that by displaying firmness and consistency and pushing right to the brink of invasion, he had finally scared Cedras and colleagues into a peaceful departure.