Word: ported
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...waiting on the darkened runway of Francois Duvalier international airport grew increasingly edgy. They had been keeping a tense vigil since 1 a.m., waiting for Haiti's President-for-Life Jean-Claude ("Baby Doc") Duvalier. A day earlier, Duvalier had sent an urgent message to the U.S. embassy in Port-au-Prince, the capital. It implored the Americans to help him and his family flee the country that, after 28 years, was no longer under their control. Now Duvalier was two hours late. The Americans at the airport wondered if he had changed his mind or if the furtive escape...
That was asking too much. As the significance of the day's events sank in, tens of thousands of people in Port-au-Prince chanted jubilantly, "He flew away; he flew away!" Others proclaimed, "Vive America!" and waved the Stars and Stripes, as well as banners of red and blue, the colors of Haiti's flag before it was replaced in 1964 by Jean-Claude's father and predecessor as President-for-Life, Francois ("Papa Doc") Duvalier...
...within hours, to the vast embarrassment of the Reagan Administration, the pudgy dictator appeared in the capital, Port-au-Prince, like a spirit conjured up by practitioners of voodoo, Haiti's folk religion. Baby Doc cruised through the streets in a BMW, surrounded by a bevy of armed outriders. In a radio broadcast to the country, he used an old Creole saying to brag, "I am here, strong and firm as a monkey's tail...
...foreign government has fallen, and virtually unheard of when the affected country is a U.S. ally. To compound that anomaly by issuing a report that was incorrect as well may be unprecedented. During the afternoon, when Duvalier was reported to have been seen riding through the streets of Port-au- Prince, Haiti's capital, the seriousness of the diplomatic gaffe gave way to a spirited round of pass-the-buck...
Quickly, a picture of bumbling emerged. It turned out that late last week the U.S. embassy in Port-au-Prince sent an "alert" to the State Department, reporting rumors that Duvalier had fled the country. Haiti is perennially a hotbed of gossip, and inaccurate reports had already generated a premature celebration on Thursday night in Miami, where one person was killed. The message thus could hardly be taken as sounding the final, definitive toll for the Duvalier dynasty, but the State Department relayed the "alert" nonetheless to the White House Situation Room for the National Security Council. According to State...