Then opposition politician Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf would have become minister of finance if the 1985 abortive invasion had succeeded, Joe Wyllie, one of those who participated in the failed coup said.
Mr. Wyllie said Madame Johnson-Sirleaf, now President was included on a list of Liberians who would have been named by the invasion leader, then People's Redemption Council (PRC) commanding general, the late Thomas G. Quiwonkpah to the cabinet following the success of the invasion.
Mr. Wyllie said Mrs. Johnson-Sirleaf and other prominent Liberians were instrumental in financing the failed invasion planned to oust then Master Sergeant Samuel Kanyon Doe following the holding of the 1985 general elections to abort his inauguration.
Wyllie named late commerce minister James Holder, slain civil engineer Robert Phillips, Liberia Petroleum Refinery Corporation (LPRC) managing director Harry Greaves as prominent Liberians who collaborated with Madame Johnson-Sirleaf to ensure that the invasion was implemented.
"James Holder, Robert Phillips, Harry Greaves and Madame Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf herself were working 24 hours to put everything in place for the invasion," Wyllie, then deputy minister of defense in the Gyude Bryant led power sharing National Transitional Government of Liberia (NTGL) said.
Mr. Wyllie made the disclosure during his ongoing testimony at the continuing Institutional and Thematic Inquiry Hearings of Liberia's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) at the Centennial Memorial Pavilion in Monrovia.
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Wyllie said the lives of those on the list would have been endangered if Gen. Quiwonkpah was in possession of the list during the coup. He said he was in possession of the cabinet list while Quiwonkpah was in possession of the military list.
He said following the aborting of the invasion by loyalist government troops he tore the list and threw it in the Du River before going underground to escape the country.
Under the theme: "Understanding the Conflict Through its Principal Events and Actors," the ongoing hearings will address the root causes of the conflict, including its military and political dimensions.
The hearings are focused on events between 1979 and 2003 and the national and external actors that helped to shape those events.
The TRC was agreed upon in the August 2003 peace agreement and created by the TRC Act of 2005.
The TRC was established to "promote national peace, security, unity and reconciliation," and at the same time make it possible to hold perpetrators accountable for gross human rights violations and violations of international humanitarian law that occurred in Liberia between January 1979 and October 2003.
