[FOREIGN] >> I think
the ITR was the proper mechanism, but it was cumbersome and
it took a lot of concentration and time to make decisions.
A lot of people seem to think that our group the reconstruction
commission was getting money we didn't, we never took any donations,
the donors put their money in a special account of the World Bank,
and then when the IHRC approved the expenditure,
then the proposal was funded by funds being released from the World Bank.
What we did, was once the World Bank released the money,
for an approved project, we said here's the project,
here's what the money is, here's who got the money.
And then after the money was spent,
we had an after action audit, which evaluated how it was spent.
And that's what we did that two years that I was the co chair the ICRC
with the Prime Ministers of the governments of Provar and Montreal.
That's what we did.
And we had those reports and people can find them read them,
it's all a matter of public record.
But I never touched any of that money.
I was always surprised that people would suggest that.
Through the Clinton Foundation we raised,
I raised $30 million in emergency fund agent.
President Bush and I together raised 50 million more.
And all that money has been documented, 100% of it went to Haiti.
And what we did with that and building new businesses and things, and
then I set up a Haiti action network with an alliance of business people and
they have, this is 9 years later we're still working at this, almost 10 years.
They have raised and deployed more than $500 million.
Now, along the way we've had some setbacks.
The iron market burned and was never properly insured.
And now because of all the domestic unrest, the Best Western,
then a close and we don't know yet if we can save the merrier.
But in terms of what we did, I think we ran up a pretty good school,
raise a lot of money, create a lot of jobs helped a lot of existing patient
businesses to expand and support a lot of NGOs that were Haitian,
and doing well and I think, I tried to build.
The money that I raised or the partners that I made.
We were trying to build Haiti through the Haitians.
I didn't want it to be an outside job, I wanted it to be an inside job.
And huge number of people were helped but it couldn't overcome,
a lot of the self-inflicted
wounds of all this political dysfunction in the last few years.
So what I wanted to do, was to develop energy-efficient,
water efficient, sanitary housing in a range of costs
anywhere from tiny houses, small houses the $2,000 up to what we're quite
comfortable houses in about $30,000 and we were gonna construct model homes.
And then, have people come and look at it and then try to develop a plan to build
these houses, but the people that would buy them would have a lot of choices.
And, the real problem in the beginning
was the difficulty in establishing title.
Which I still think is a problem that Haitians are gonna have to solve.
Since so much of this in Haiti's done sort of honor and heart basis,
we still could have done a lot of if there had been strong support for it.
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It may be that I overestimated, what I thought would be the likelihood.
I thought when people saw these things and
saw how many jobs we could create and how many people we can move into homes.
And how good it would be for the economy, that there would be a new energy and
willingness to resolve these land tiding problems and I was wrong.
I feel so bad about that.
Because I worked so
hard on it and I was determined that it would be corruption free.
They will all be over and above board, all these people who were selected,
I think there were about 60 finalists,of 40 something like that.
I was determined that it will all be transparent and
maybe I made a mistake, maybe I should have just been working on something else.
I still believe that, if you're going to build a modern society,
you have to have a lantern in my system.
I still love the country and I love the people and
I think they're highly intelligent, and
gifted in many ways that are common to poor people around the world,
and in many ways that are unique to their culture, and to the land.
To me a metaphor for the possibility of Haiti remains the Citadel.
Here we are, after 200 years plus, or almost 200 years plus.
And it's still the most impressive building in the Caribbean.
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Built by,
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The descendants of slaves.
Not a single person had a college degree.
Not a single trained architect.
Dragging those heavy stones up straight, sheer cliffs.
The thing that I would like for people to know about Haiti is that
there's a fundamental goodness and energy about the people.
And an almost unlimited capacity.
And they've been worked over for 200 years by outsiders and
then by their own people who got a hold of political power and
use that very often the way outside or 10.
And I don't think that this country will ever realize its full potential,
until it builds systems that bring everybody together and
make good decisions and an open an honest way.
I think, it's but I'd do it again tomorrow
even with all the false charges that were raised about me and all that.
I just love the place, I like the people and
I also can't stand to see unfulfilled potential.
And I do believe that a lot of Haiti's
problems historically have come from people outside and
inside trying to take advantage of the people and their resources.
And I think if this is a very important time for us to try to rebuild it, but
if it would, you got all these problems down there now it's big, it's impossible.
You can't get somebody to go invest in a country where there's nothing but riots,
it's tough now.
>> On the tenth anniversary, what are your actions about the country.
>> Well, I thought we did a good job of recovering
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In the immediate aftermath pretty good job of cleaning up and
rebuilding Port-of France.
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A fair job of trying to spread economic opportunity throughout the country.
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A good, but uneven job of trying to empower the NGOs that were running,
schools and health clinics and other things.
And.
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We didn't do very well in eliminating
the endemic problems of political and
economic practices that just will never do anything but
run off investors and break hearts.
There's still too many people who want to take their ride on Haiti's back,
and we've got to keep working.
When Hillary and I went to Haiti on a delayed honeymoon in 1975,
I fell in love with the place.
I have always liked the people.
I found many of them that I admire.
I've always thought that it was crippled by a political system
less worthy than the best of its people.
And, sooner or later you, look at what's going on now,
the country will rise or fall based on its ability.
To inspire confidence and patients and
in neighbors and investors and other people and in themselves.
And the kinda of problems that we have down, there
very often involve things that nearly everybody knows shouldn't be done.
And the Haitians are highly intelligent people.
They know exactly how best to organize things,
how best to do things on hope we can at least get back to the way we were.
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When I first went to work there, I think.
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There's so much you could do in such a short time.
It could be lightning fast, and but
people wear out working in a place where there's always one more obstacle,
and that painful sight, you didn't help enough,
here let me put this chain on your ankle.
So I think it's a work in progress.
We have to wait and see what happens.
But it's very, very bad now, all this trouble and
it would be a tragedy to let it go.
Because of the people and their history, they've overcome so much.
And yet, like most people, they live with a lot of self inflicted wounds.
And we're either gonna do better or we're not.
I hope we do better.
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