First of all, “the book” is ultimately not about Guyana. Yes, it took place here, and it involved many Guyanese, but it’s essentially about a US State Department sub-culture bubbling in the US visitor-visa scam that is found in several US embassies around the world. More specifically, “the book” is largely about one US Embassy employee, Thomas Carroll, who operated in Guyana like an undercover Mafia Don, bribing officials, ordering violence on individuals, raking in millions, and behaving all the while like a character in a Quentin Tarantino film.
Currently the subject of fevered discussion among Guyanese everywhere, the book, The Thomas Carroll Affair, is the work of an American writer, David Casavis, based on his interviews, readings and research. Bestriding virtually every page of the publication is the reality or the spectre of Thomas Carroll, an American Foreign Service Officer (FSO) running rampant in Guyana with an arrogance and a bravado that apparently fooled even his boss, then US Ambassador Mack. Amid whispers about his doings, Carroll appeared untouchable even as persons seeking his help to procure a visa were patrolling in front of his Duncan Street house at night. To run his racket, Carroll had policemen and government officials in his pocket, and thugs at his command. Although he would eventually be tripped up by his own arrogance, Carroll was a master at the scheme he presided over, raking in so much money, always in US dollars, that getting it out of the country would become one of his problems.
Dismissing the book as “bad writing” is misguided. Its New York-based author, David Casavis, is using a somewhat staccato style of short declaratory sentences (early Hemingway, to a degree) to depict the intrigue involved. His sentences could have been written for the Jack Webb character in the television crime series Dragnet, or for the likes of New York gossip columnist Walter Winchell. Here’s a sample: “They were undercover. They contacted Joe after the Embassy had sent him packing. Joe told them his story. They listened carefully. Then they asked Joe to keep quiet about it. The two men then boarded a plane back to Washington. The woman stayed.” Each line could be a caption under a photograph. They present a complex series of actions in seven brief bursts. They build tension.
Casavis’ punctuation is occasionally erratic, and his book misses the mark on some Guyana trivia (It’s not true that “there are almost no Amerindians in Georgetown”; the “maribunta” is not an ant; “steelbands from Trinidad” don’t play at Palm Court) but he brings us this startling picture of the apparatus behind the staid American Embassy walls in Kingston. From Casavis we know that there is a pattern on visitor visa applications – 65 per cent will be refused – so a FSO with a high approval rate will become suspect, but the Embassy can handle up to 150 visa requests daily, so the juggling of a few each day would go unnoticed.
He tells us of the ongoing bonanza inside the Embassy. “It is not unusual for a Junior Officer to accrue between US$10,000 and $100,000 in cash through visa sales.” Consequently, Casavis says, “American Embassies and Consulates abroad are honeycombed with illegal visa-brokering operations.”
The book is aptly named. It is truly about Thomas Carroll – a keen mind and a powerful ego seeing an opportunity to get rich and pulling out all the stops to achieve his end. Carroll, in the FSO chair, recognized the visitor-visa system as a safe bet. Writes Casavis: “So much latitude is given to the Consular Officer’s decision that it is impossible, in review, to tell whether he was corrupt, incompetent, inefficient, alcoholic, or simply lazy. It is difficult to tease out what was corrupt after the fact.” Information after the fact is also absent in the visa section because the application records are shredded after one year.
Starting with an encounter at Palm Court, where he was asked to help approve a visa for someone’s cousin, Carroll began selling visitor visas. He would eventually gravitate to using visa brokers, each with a code name, and he had his visa clients give a secret hand signal when they got to the FSO’s window. “News travels fast in Guyana’s tight-knit communities,” writes Casavis. “It wasn’t long before the drumbeats telegraphed that Carroll was willing and able.”
The author presents sharp analysis of his subject. He says: “Carroll was a predator. He was the worst kind of predator because he knew the system. He knew how far he could take it. He also understood the nature of the hierarchy and the corruption within it. He had the normal drive for power; that was not what set him apart. He also wanted money, a great deal of money.” Casavis also has a good eye for drama: he writes tellingly of the role played by diamond trader Joe De Agrella whose relentless accusations against Carroll, culminating in an interview with US Ambassador Mack, eventually led to Carroll’s demise as State Department security officers came to Guyana on his trail. A heated encounter in the US Embassy with the three principals – Carroll, Mack and De Agrella – could be a cinematic gem.
On the whole Casavis has delivered a superb unravelling of this incredible American Embassy subculture, functioning full blown in Kingston but almost completely unknown to most of the Guyanese masses who pass it every day oblivious to that bustling world of deception and power just yards away.
The book is not an historical treatise on Guyana; it was not so directed. Indeed, it is subtitled ‘A Journey Through the Cottage Industry of Illegal Immigration.’ It is a fair criticism that Casavis does get mired in hyperbole sometimes, his forays into philosophy can become irritating, and the quality of the printing is poor, but ultimately he has given us an enthralling account of corruption on the boil that has the rubric “movie” flickering on every page. All the ingredients are there – the dominant Mafia-like Carroll, both arrogant and racist; the militaristic enforcers he controlled; the inner sanctum restaurant meetings; the Joe De Agrella confrontation that eventually led to Carroll in jail in his homeland; the mighty USA State Department revealed in bare-faced corruption.
Two other comments: Casavis’ difficulty in getting his manuscript published was not, as has been asserted, because it was deemed too inflammatory. The author himself reports that the original hesitation was principally based on the subject matter being seen as “not American enough” for the American market, and this appraisal probably led to the emphasis on the American figure who now dominates the published manuscript.
It is also worth noting that once again, in the Caribbean tradition, it has taken a rank outsider to tackle the task of writing about a scandal in our country that none of our local pundits has engaged.
Ultimately, says the author, “Thomas Carroll was a violent man who became even more violent as his tour in Guyana progressed. He used both physical and mental violence to get what he wanted. He thought he had created the perfect system. He thought he had the goods on everyone, too.”
