"Do as We Say"

As U.S. Ambassador to Haiti, Clinton Knox, 64, seemed to have no need for the bodyguards that protect American envoys in other turbulent countries. Thus he was unsuspecting of danger as he drove to his home outside Port-au-Prince last week. Suddenly, a blue car shot in front of his black Chrysler. A woman and two men, one of them carrying a gun, jumped out and warned: "Do as we say, and no harm will come to you." They forced Knox into an upstairs sitting room of his house.

That was the start of a harrowing, 20-hour ordeal for Knox, one of the U.S.'s few black ambassadors, and his second in command, Ward Christensen, who was held when he called at the residence later. The kidnapers demanded the release of 31 political prisoners held in the infamous Dessalines barracks. They picked Knox as hostage because, as he explained later, "I had a certain influence here."

Knox immediately called Jean-Claude ("Baby Doc") Duvalier, Haiti's 21 -year-old President for Life. The Haitian government said that it could not find or identify 19 of the requested prisoners, but agreed to release the other twelve. The mustachioed leader of the kidnapers then demanded a ransom of $1,000,000. In Washington, Secretary of State William Rogers flatly refused to pay the sum out of fear of encouraging kidnapers elsewhere.

Acting as an intermediary, French Ambassador Bernard Dorin persuaded the Haitian government to pay as much of the ransom as it could raise within the kidnapers' four-hour time limit --$70,000. He then persuaded the kidnapers to take the money and the dozen released prisoners and go to Mexico. Kidnapers and hostages drove together to the airport, then parted company beside the four-engine DC-6B.

In Mexico, the kidnapers' leader turned out to be Raymond Napoleon, 24, a primary-school teacher, whose relatives are being held in jail. "I belong to no party," he declared, "but I am part of a group of students and teachers who are fighting the Duvalier government." The twelve prisoners he had freed included several student leaders and a union leader, Ulrick Jolly, who had spent most of the past ten years in jail. The 13th prisoner, Ambassador Knox, who plans to resign soon anyway, flew to Washington declaring, understandably, "I need a rest."

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