John Dimitri Negroponte
Skull & Bones ~ CFR
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/qclub.htm
John Dimitri Negroponte. Born in London on July 21, 1939, just before the outbreak of the second world war, he was the son of Dimitri, a Greek shipping magnate, and Catherine. He grew up in England, Switzerland and New York, where his father settled. He became a product of elite American institutions, educated at Phillips Exeter prep school in New Hampshire and at Yale, before being accepted at Harvard Law School. Negroponte is connected to Britain's royal family and British intelligence through his wife, Diana Villiers. Diana's father was Sir Charles Villiers, a merchant banker who would rise to become chairman of British Steel. Villiers had a powerful social conscience.
THE QUESTION IS:
Technically, how and when did John Negroponte become a United States Citizen?
ALEJANDRA C NEGROPONTE 4936 Lowell St WASHINGTON DC 20016 DIANA V NEGROPONTE 4936 Lowell St WASHINGTON DC 20016 JOHN D NEGROPONTE 4936 Lowell St WASHINGTON DC 20016 JOHN D NEGROPONTE Of STATE WASHINGTON DC 20590 MARINA H NEGROPONTE 4936 Lowell St WASHINGTON DC 20016Maps & Pictures http://cryptome.org/negro-eyeball.htm
Democracy Now Video:
Promoting the 'Ambassador of Torture': Bush Nominates Negroponte for Intel Czar
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/04/28/1449257
Video: http://play.rbn.com/?url=demnow/demnow/demand/2005/feb/video/dnB20050218a.
The Case Against John Negroponte
A Letter of Testimony - Sister Laetitia Bordes worked in El Salvador for almost a decade in the 1980 s and 90 s. She is the author of the book Our Hearts Were Broken. In this letter, Sister Bordes recalls a meeting with John Negroponte in 1982, when she was sent to Honduras on a fact-finding mission regarding the disappearance of women who had fled El Salvador after the assassination of Archbishop Romero. Thirteen years later, Ambassador Binns reported that the women, after savage torture, had been taken up in helicopters and thrown to the ground. In this letter, Sister Bordes explains a bit about the roles of The School of the Americas and Battalion 3-16, designed in part for the murder of Nicaraguan Sandinistas, who had overthrown the U.S. backed dictator Somoza in 1979.
"Fatal Secrets" - "When a wave of torture and murder staggered a small U.S. ally, truth was a casualty. Was the CIA involved? Did Washington know? Was the public deceived? Now we know: Yes, Yes and Yes." (by Gary Cohn and Ginger Thompson, Staff of The Baltimore Sun, whose article was originally published on June 11, 1995.) This article is lengthy and full and hard on the heart, but the cause of honesty requires that it be made available. This is the kind of knowledge with which we must arm ourselves if we are determined to never again permit such atrocities to take place under the eyes of our own government. One must ask oneself whether these are the kinds of abuses that would be permitted by a man who would nominate a man like John Negroponte to be our country's human rights spokesman.
What Message is Bush Trying to Send? This short article by Duncan Campbell for The Sun-Herald of Sydney, Australia, asks that question and mentions the very disturbing information that "Some members of the battalion [316] lived in the US, but were deported just as Mr. Bush's selection of Mr Negroponte was announced." What DOES this say about the current administration's "honor and integrity"?
The Purpose of These In-Your-Face Appointments - Mary McGrory, in the July 8, 2001 edition of The Washington Post comments that "Choosing Abrams makes laughable Bush's promise of increased civility and bipartisanship. Ditto his claims of being 'a uniter, not a divider'." This article does not hold back in presenting the far-from-honorable character of Elliott Abrams, whom Bush has already - with no requirement for congressional approval - been able to reinstall in the White House. But the fact that Negroponte may appear to be more of a "gentleman" than the snarling Elliott Abrams in no way justifies Negroponte as being fit in any fashion to be a representative for human rights. Why? Why is Bush making these outrageous nominations and appointments? The author suggests that "Cuban Americans who helped the president in the great fight for Florida are getting what he feels is their due. Bush owes them big time.http://www.geocities.com/ravencrazy/Negroponte.html
BACKGROUND FACTS
"From 1981 to 1985 Negroponte was US ambassador to Honduras. During his tenure, he oversaw the growth of military aid to Honduras from $4 million to $77.4 million a year. According to The New York Times, Negroponte was responsible for "carrying out the covert strategy of the Reagan administration to crush the Sandinistas government in Nicaragua." Critics say that during his ambassadorship, human rights violations in Honduras became systematic.
Negroponte supervised the creation of the El Aguacate air base, where the US trained Nicaraguan Contras and which critics say was used as a secret detention and torture center during the 1980s. In August 2001, excavations at the base discovered 185 corpses, including two Americans, who are thought to have been killed and buried at the site.
Records also show that a special intelligence unit of the Honduran armed forces, Battalion 3-16, trained by the CIA and Argentine military, kidnapped, tortured and killed hundreds of people, including US missionaries. Critics charge that Negroponte knew about these human rights violations and yet continued to collaborate with the Honduran military while lying to Congress.
..."In early 1984, two American mercenaries, Thomas Posey and Dana Parker, contacted Negroponte, stating they wanted to supply arms to the Contras after the U.S. Congress had banned further military aid. Documents show that Negroponte brought the two with a contact in the Honduran armed forces The operation was exposed nine months later, at which point the Reagan administration denied any US involvement, despite Negroponte's participation in the scheme. Other documents uncovered a plan of Negroponte and then-Vice President George H. W. Bush to funnel Contra aid money through the Honduran government.
During his tenure as US ambassador to Honduras, Binns, who was appointed by President Jimmy Carter, made numerous complaints about human rights abuses by the Honduran military and he claimed he fully briefed Negroponte on the situation before leaving the post. When the Reagan administration came to power, Binns was replaced by Negroponte, who has consistently denied having knowledge of any wrongdoing. Later, the Honduras Commission on Human Rights accused Negroponte himself of human rights violations.
Speaking of Negroponte and other senior US officials, an ex-Honduran congressman, Efrain Diaz, told the Baltimore Sun, which in 1995 published an extensive investigation of US activities in Honduras:Their attitude was one of tolerance and silence. They needed Honduras to loan its territory more than they were concerned about innocent people being killed.
The Suns's investigation found that the CIA and US embassy knew of numerous abuses but continued to support Battalion 3-16 and ensured that the embassy's annual human rights report did not contain the full story.
When President Bush announced Negroponte's appointment to the UN shortly after coming to office, it was met with widespread protest. However, the Bush administration did not back down and even went so far as to try to silence potential witnesses. On March 25, the Los Angeles Times reported on the sudden deportation from the United States of several former Honduran death squad members who could have provided damaging testimony against Negroponte in his Senate confirmation hearings. One of the deportees was General Luis Alonso Discua, founder of Battalion 3-16. In the preceding month, Washington had revoked the visa of Discua who was Honduras' Deputy Ambassador to the UN. Nonetheless, Discua went public with details of US support of Battalion 3-16.
Upon learning of Negroponte's nomination, Reed Brody of Human Rights Watch in New York commented:
When John Negroponte was ambassador he looked the other way when serious atrocities were committed. One would have to wonder what kind of message the Bush administration is sending about human rights by this appointment. "Help Defeat John Negroponte's Confirmation
http://www.nisgua.org/articles/urgent_action.htmSeeing Negroponte go from human rights abuser to UN ambassador to Iraq ambassador to now, Director of National Intelligence, should serve as a lesson.
When you don’t keep up consistent, principled opposition against people with bad records, you won't be able to stop them when you really need to.
(For more on Negroponte’s disturbing record, see the 5-part Baltimore Sun series, the NY Review of Books, The Nation’s David Corn, the Council of Hemispheric Affairs, Bill Press, SourceWatch and Common Dreams.)
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PENTAGON AND CIA COULD LOSE MOST BECAUSE OF NEW POSITION
http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/news/10947120.htm· A Cruel Joke: Negroponte, the arch authoritarian, teaching democracy to the Iraqis.
· Life under Saddam somewhat prepares you for the Negroponte era.
http://www.coha.org/NEW_PRESS_RELEASES/New_Press_Releases_2004/04.20_Negroponte.htm
Stop Human Rights Obstructer John Negroponte!
Background of John Negroponte
The New York Times credits John Negroponte with "carrying out the covert strategy of the Reagan administration to crush the Sandinista government in Nicaragua" during his tenure as U.S. Ambassador to Honduras from 1981 and 1985. He oversaw the growth of military aid to Honduras from $4 million to $77.4 million a year. In early 1984, two U.S. mercenaries, Thomas Posey and Dana Parker, contacted Negroponte, stating they wanted to supply arms to the Contra army after the U.S. Congress had banned governmental add. Documents show that Negroponte connected the two with a contact in the Honduran military. The operation was exposed nine months later, at which point the Reagan administration denied any U.S. government involvement, despite Negroponte’s contact earlier that year. Other documents uncovered a scheme of Negroponte and then-Vice President George Bush to funnel Contra aid money through the Honduran government.
In addition to his work with the Nicaraguan Contra army, Negroponte helped conceal from Congress the murder, kidnapping and torture abuses of a CIA-equipped and -trained Honduran military unit, Battalion 3-16. No mention of these human rights violations ever appeared in State Department Human Rights reports for Honduras. The Baltimore Sun reports that Efrain Diaz Arrivillaga, then a delegate in the Honduran Congress and a voice of dissent, told the Sun that he complained to Negroponte on numerous occasions about the Honduran military’s human rights abuses. Rick Chidester, a junior embassy official under Negroponte, reported to the Sun that he was forced to omit an exhaustive gathering of human rights violations from his 1982 State Department report. Sister Laetitia Bordes went on a fact-finding delegation to Honduras in May 1982 to investigate the whereabouts of 32 Salvadoran nuns and women of faith who fled to Honduras in 1981 after Archbishop Oscar Romero’s assassination. Negroponte claimed the embassy knew nothing, but in 1996, Negroponte’s predecessor Jack Binns reported that the women had been captured, tortured, and then crammed into helicopters from which they were tossed to their deaths.
According to the Los Angeles Times, shortly after Negroponte’s nomination was decided, the U.S. government revoked the visa of General Luis Alonso Discua Elvir, who was Honduras’ deputy ambassador to the UN. General Discua was the commander of the Battalion during Negroponte’s tenure as ambassador. He has publicly claimed to have information linking Negroponte with the battalion’s activities. His testimony would be invaluable in illuminating Negroponte’s collusion with Honduran opponents on Capitol Hill. In 1994, the Honduran Human Rights Commission charged Negroponte personally with several human rights abuses.
On August 27, 1997, CIA Inspector General Frederick P. Hitz released a 211-page classified report entitled "Selected Issues Relating to CIA Activities in Honduras in the 1980s." This report was partly declassified on October 22, 1998, in response to persistent demands by the Honduran human rights ombudsman. You can read parts of the document on the National Security Archives website. Only senators and their staff who have security clearance can read the report in its entirety. It is absolutely critical that every senator read and consider the entire report before approving Negroponte’s nomination. Negroponte is highly respected in diplomatic circles as "a man who speaks five languages but knows when to keep silent." Due to his urbane temperament and broad support in the professional diplomatic field, it will be very tempting for senators to whisk his nomination through.Suggested Actions
In order to effectively oppose Negroponte’s nomination and its tremendous repercussions, grassroots activists must be vigilant in persistently communicating their opposition with their senators. At this moment, staffers for senators on the Foreign Relations Committee are gathering materials and issuing subpoenas for the hearing on Negroponte’s nomination. Due to their placement on the Foreign Relations Committee, the following senators’ support is particularly important:
Joseph Biden (D), DE, Chair 202-224-5042, senator@biden.senate.gov"
Barbara Boxer (D), CA 202-224-3553, senator@boxer.senate.gov
Christopher Dodd (D), CT 202-224-2823, senator@dodd.senate.gov
Richard Lugar (R), IN 202-224-4814, senator_lugar@lugar.senate.gov
Sam Brownback (R), KS 202-224-6521 senator@brownback.senate.gov
Paul Sarbanes (D), MD 202-224-4524, senator@sarbanes.senate.gov
John Kerry (D), MA 202-224-2742, senator@kerry.senate.gov
Paul Wellstone (D), MN 202- 224-5641, senator@wellstone.senate.gov
Charles Hagel (R), NE 202-224-4224, senator@hagel.senate.gov
Robert Torricelli (D), NJ 202-224-3224, senator@torricelli.senate.gov
Gordon Smith (R), OR 202-224-3753, senator@smith.senate.gov
Lincoln Chafee (R), RI 202-224-2921, senator@chafee.senate.gov
Bill Frist (R), TN 202-224-3344, senator@frist.senate.gov
Russell Feingold (D), WI 202-224-5323, senator@feingold.senate.gov
Craig Thomas (R), WY 202-224-6441, senator@thomas.senate.gov
If you don’t live in one of these states, please still call your senator as the nomination will go to the Senate floor for debate and vote if it is approved in the Foreign Relations Committee.
http://www.maryknoll.org/GLOBAL/ALERTS/no_negroponte.htm
US Martyrs Pose Questions for Negroponte
http://www.counterpunch.org/solo10282003.htmlUS nuns murdered in El Salvador 4
In 1981, a couple of decades before Rachel Corrie was murdered, the bodies of four women were found in a shallow grave in a rural district not far from San Salvador, El Salvador's capital. They had been raped and shot dead by members of the Salvadoran army on the orders of senior officers. In the context of the time, the atrocity would hardly have merited reporting. But the women were United States citizens. Two were religious sisters of the New York based Maryknoll order, Ita Ford and Maureen Clarke. One was an Ursuline Sister, Dorothy Kazel, the fourth a lay missioner, Jean Donovan. By virtue of their nationality, the story did make the news, just--the back page of the New York Times, to that paper's eternal shame.
Those four women had helped defend Salvadorans from the terror unleashed against their own people by the Salvadoran government with support from the United States administrations of Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. They gave their lives working alongside vulnerable people and communities in El Salvador. The murders followed the assassination in 1980 of Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero. The women's deaths were manipulated by the US government and its ever-pliant news media. The full facts took years to emerge. US ambassador to the UN, Jean Kirkpatrick, falsely accused the women of having supported the Salvadoran armed opposition, the FMLN. In fact, the four women were passionate advocates of non-violence, accompanying the rural villagers they served while caught up in a violent civil war.
Ambassador Kirkpatrick's statements on the case of the four women were to be expected from an unrepentant supporter of the bloodthirsty Argentinian military dictatorship. Her successor at the UN was Vernon Walters, former deputy director of the CIA, co-organiser of the continent wide terrorist blueprint Plan Condor and promoter of Ronald Reagan's terrorist war against Nicaragua. In 1986 Vernon Walters threw in the face of the UN his government's rejection of the International Court of Justice verdict convicting the US of terrorism against Nicaragua.
Kirkpatrick's and Walters' apologetics for mass murder helped John Negroponte, then US ambassador to Honduras, cover up his support for the systematic forced disappearances used to destroy Honduran civilian opposition to the presence of Contra bases in their country. Thomas Pickering, US ambassador to El Salvador at the time, also gave misleading information on local army and paramilitary murders, probably an essential qualification for his subsequent posting in 1989 as US ambassador to the UN, taking over from Vernon Walters.
Jean Kirkpatrick, Vernon Walters, Thomas Pickering, John Negroponte and other US government representatives sent clear signals that the local military in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala were to be allowed a free hand by the United States government to murder tens of thousands of civilians and anyone who spoke out against the slaughter. Perhaps the defining climax to the sickening murder campaign came in 1989 when the Salvadoran army killed six Jesuit academics and two of their domestic staff at the University of Central America in San Salvador. These crimes were made possible because the United States government consistently tried to conceal its institutional role in funding, training and supporting the military and paramilitary perpetrators. The Iran-Contra scandal was the culmination of that sustained program of regional deceit. http://www.counterpunch.org/solo10282003.html
In March and August of 1997, after years of prevarication and disingenuous manoeuvring, US government officials made available some of the documentation. Over 50% of it was blacked out. Valladares and his team found themselves examining page after page of erasures. The insulting farce Valladares was subjected to confirms the US government and John Negroponte have plenty to hide. Honduran government requests for information from the Argentinian government, whose military trained the Contra in Honduras, also drew a blank.
....How high in the embassy hierarchy does the cover up reach? Given the circumstances of the time, suspicion points firmly to John Negroponte himself.
http://www.counterpunch.org/solo10282003.html
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New ripples in an evil story
By Sister Laetitia Bordes, s.h., [14 May 2001]
John D. Negroponte, President Bush's nominee as the next ambassador to the United Nations? My ears perked up. I turned up the volume on the radio. I began listening more attentively. Yes, I had heard correctly.
Bush was nominating Negroponte, the man who gave the CIA backed Honduran death squads open field when he was ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985.
My mind went back to May 1982 and I saw myself facing Negroponte in his office at the US Embassy in Tegucigalpa. I had gone to Honduras on a fact-finding delegation. We were looking for answers. Thirty-two women had fled the death squads of El Salvador after the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero in 1980 to take refuge in Honduras. One of them had been Romero's secretary. Some months after their arrival, these women were forcibly taken from their living quarters in Tegucigalpa, pushed into a van and disappeared. Our delegation was in Honduras to find out what had happened to these women. John Negroponte listened to us as we exposed the facts.
There had been eyewitnesses to the capture and we were well read on the documentation that previous delegations had gathered.
Negroponte denied any knowledge of the whereabouts of these women. He insisted that the US Embassy did not interfere in the affairs of the Honduran government and it would be to our advantage to discuss the matter with the latter. Facts, however, reveal quite the contrary.
During Negroponte's tenure, US military aid to Honduras grew from $4 million to $77.4 million; the US launched a covert war against Nicaragua and mined its harbors, and the US trained Honduran military to support the Contras.
John Negroponte worked closely with General Alvarez, Chief of the Armed Forces in Honduras, to enable the training of Honduran soldiers in psychological warfare, sabotage, and many types of human rights violations, including torture and kidnapping. Honduran and Salvadoran military were sent to the School of the Americas to receive training in counter-insurgency directed against people of their own country. The CIA created the infamous Honduran Intelligence Battalion 3-16 that was responsible for the murder of many Sandinistas. General Luis Alonso Discua Elvir, a graduate of the School of the Americas, was a founder and commander of Battalion 3-16. In 1982, the US negotiated access to airfields in Honduras and established a regional military training center for Central American forces, principally directed at improving fighting forces of the Salvadoran military.
In 1994, the Honduran Rights Commission outlined the torture and disappearance of at least 184 political opponents. It also specifically accused John Negroponte of a number of human rights violations. Yet, back in his office that day in 1982, John Negroponte assured us that he had no idea what had happened to the women we were looking for.
I had to wait 13 years to find out. In an interview with the Baltimore Sun in 1996 Jack Binns, Negroponte's predecessor as US ambassador in Honduras, told how a group of Salvadorans, among whom were the women we had been looking for, were captured on April 22, 1981 and savagely tortured by the DNI, the Honduran Secret Police, before being placed in helicopters of the Salvadoran military. After take off from the airport in Tegucigalpa, the victims were thrown out of the helicopters. Binns told the Baltimore Sun that the North American authorities were well aware of what had happened and that it was a grave violation of human rights. But it was seen as part of Ronald Reagan's counterinsurgency policy.
Now in 2001, I'm seeing new ripples in this story. Since President Bush made it known that he intended to nominate John Negroponte, other people have suddenly been
disappearing, so to speak. In an article published in the Los Angeles Times on March 25 Maggie Farley and Norman Kempster reported on the sudden deportation of several former Honduran death squad members from the United States. These men could have provided shattering testimony against Negroponte in the forthcoming Senate hearings. One of these recent deportees just happens to be General Luis Alonso Discua, founder of Battalion 3-16. In February, Washington revoked the visa of Discua who was Deputy Ambassador to the UN. Since then, Discua has gone public with details of US support of Battalion 3-16.Given the history of John Negroponte in Central America, it is indeed horrifying to think that he should be chosen to represent our country at the United Nations, an organization founded to ensure that the human rights of all people receive the highest respect. How many of our Senators, I wonder, let alone the US public, know who John Negroponte really is?
Sister Laetitia Bordes, s.h.
282 Shoreview Avenue
Pacifica, CA 94044
Tel. (650) 359-6635
e-mail lbordes@jps.nethttp://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/47/385.html
Democracy Now Video: (with Sister Laetitia Bordes)
Promoting the 'Ambassador of Torture': Bush Nominates Negroponte for Intel Czar
http://play.rbn.com/?url=demnow/demnow/demand/2005/feb/video/dnB20050218a .Facing the Nightmare of Negroponte
The nightmare which the people of Central America lived through in the 80's and 90's wasn't like the nightmares some of us have experienced. Theirs was real and they keep having to revisit it.
The nomination of John Negroponte as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations conjures up the worst of that long nightmare and it is unthinkable that President Bush would actually place Negroponte in this seat. John Negroponte was a major player in some of the worst atrocities committed against the people of that region. We must stop the confirmation of this man to any government position, but especially as our representative to the United Nations.
In the following moving personal account, Sister Laetitia Bordes tells of her face-to-face encounter with Negroponte when he was U.S. Ambassador to Honduras in 1982:
http://www.change-links.org/Negroponte.htm===========================================
Nominating a Liar and Killer to Head America's new KGB
Dave Lindorff
February 17, 2005
What makes Negroponte the perfect candidate to be America’s KGB chief is his refined cover. He has the Republicans on the Republican-dominated Intelligence Committee in his pocket anyhow, and as a career diplomat, urbane and fluent in five languages, he also appeals to the mushy national security state Democrats like John Rockefeller (D-W. VA), Evan Bayh (D-Indiana), Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Ron Wyden (D-Oregon), who will be asked to join in rubber-stamping his nomination. If his appearance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, during hearings on his nomination for the post of ambassador to Iraq is any indication, he will breeze through this next "test.' Democratic Senators Chris Dodd (D-Connecticut) and Joseph Biden (D-Del.) gushed over him at those earlier hearings, and didn't ask anything about his role in promoting death squad activities or in covering up human rights abuses in Central America, which included the murders of several dozen priests and nuns.
Americans concerned about our vanishing civil liberties, and about the expanded use of official state terrorism against American citizens and resident aliens since 9/11 should be concerned about this appointment, however. The new intelligence chief will be responsible for overseeing the nation’s vast $100-billion spying operation and its ballooning, largely secret budget.
This man's record is worse than not encouraging--it's downright terrifying.
Negroponte deliberately falsified State Department human rights reports every year of his ambassadorship in Honduras. According to the Maryknoll Order, many U.S. missionaries and other religious activists were murdered in that country in the 1970s and especially the early 1980s by CIA-trained Honduran soldiers of the so-called Battalion 3-16, whose operations they claim Negroponte oversaw, or "at best overlooked."
Even The New York Times, which has rarely met a covert operation it didn't support, credits Negroponte with "carrying out the covert strategy of the Reagan administration to crush the Sandinista government in Nicaragua"--an effort which the paper fails to note was illegal, and which ultimately included the trading of guns for drugs on CIA-financed aircraft. Negroponte helped with this massively corrupt and illegal war effort of the Reagan administration even after it had been expressly banned by the U.S. Congress.
One would think that kind of insult to the Congress would elicit at least some opposition to Negroponte’s appointment, but not a word about it came up during his ambassadorship hearings (Sen. Dodd actually said, "I happen to feel he's a very fine Foreign Service officer and has done a tremendous job in many places."), and it seems unlikely he’ll be asked about it this time around.
Come to think of it, that's probably about the way members of the Communist Party Central Committee probably responded to each new appointment to head the U.S.S.R.'s intelligence apparatus... http://www.pej.org/html/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=1913&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
President Bush is strengthening his cabinet's capacity to mislead Congress and trample civil liberties.The appointment of John Negroponte to be director of National Intelligence is the latest evidence that President Bush is strengthening his cabinet’s capacity to mislead Congress and trample civil liberties.
The nomination of John Negroponte to the new post of director of National Intelligence (DNI) caps a remarkable parade of Bush administration senior nominees. Among the most recent:
• Alberto Gonzales, confirmed as attorney general: the lawyer who advised the president he could ignore the US War Crimes Act and the Geneva Conventions on torture and create a “reasonable basis in law…which would provide a solid defense to any future prosecution.”
• Michael Chertoff, confirmed as Secretary of Homeland Security: the lawyer who looked the other way when 762 innocent immigrants (mostly of Arab and South Asian descent) were swept up in a post-9/11 dragnet and held as “terrorism suspects” for several months. The dictates of PR trumped habeas corpus; the detentions fostered an image of quick progress in the “war on terrorism.”
• John Negroponte: the congenial, consummate diplomat now welcomed back into the brotherhood. Presently our ambassador in Baghdad, Negroponte is best known to many of us as the ambassador to Honduras with the uncanny ability to ignore human rights abuses so as not to endanger congressional support for the attempt to overthrow the duly elected government of Nicaragua in the ‘80s. Negroponte’s job was to hold up the Central American end of the Reagan administration’s support for the Contra counterrevolutionaries, keeping Congress in the dark, as necessary.
*Introducing…Elliot’s Protégé*
Stateside, Negroponte’s opposite number was Elliot Abrams, then assistant secretary of state for Inter-American affairs, whose influence has recently grown by leaps and bounds in the George W. Bush administration. Convicted in October 1991 for lying to Congress about illegal support for the Contras, Abrams escaped prison when he was pardoned, along with former Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger (also charged with lying to Congress), former National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane and three CIA operatives. Indeed, their pardons came cum laude , with President George H. W. Bush stressing that “the common denominator of their motivation…was patriotism.” Such “patriotism” has reached a new art form in his son’s administration, as a supine Congress no longer seems to care very much about being misled.
President George W. Bush completed Elliot Abrams’ rehabilitation in December 2002 by bringing him back to be his senior adviser for the Middle East, a position for which the self-described neoconservative would not have to be confirmed by Congress. Immediately, his influence with the president was strongly felt in the shaping and implementation of policy in the Middle East, especially on the Israel-Palestine issue and Iraq. Last month the president promoted him to deputy national security adviser, where he can be counted on to overshadow—and outmaneuver—his boss, the more mild-mannered Stephen Hadley.
It is a safe bet that Abrams had a lot to do with the selection of his close former associate to be director of National Intelligence, and there is little doubt that he passed Negroponte’s name around among neocon colleagues to secure their approval.
As mentioned above, like Abrams, Negroponte has a record of incomplete candor with Congress. Had he been frank about serious government-sponsored savagery in Honduras, the country would have forfeited U.S. aid—thwarting the Reagan administration’s use of Honduras to support the Contras. So Negroponte, too, has evidenced Abrams-style “patriotism.” Those in Congress who still care, beware.
Civil Liberties At Stake
The liberties that Gonzales, Chertoff and Negroponte have taken with human rights are warning signs enough. The increased power that will be Negroponte’s under the recent intelligence reform legislation makes the situation still more worrisome.
How many times have we heard the plaintive plea for better information sharing among the various intelligence agencies? It is important to understand that the culprit there is a failure of leadership, not a structural fault.
I served under nine CIA directors, four of them at close remove. And I watched the system work more often than malfunction. Under their second hat as director of Central Intelligence, those directors already had the necessary statutory authority to coordinate effectively the various intelligence agencies and ensure that they did not hoard information. All that was needed was a strong leader with integrity, courage, with no felt need to be a “team player,” and a president who would back him up when necessary. (Sadly, it has been 24 years since the intelligence community has had a director—and a president—fitting that bill.)
Lost in all the hand-wringing about lack of intelligence sharing is the fact that the CIA and the FBI have been kept separate and distinct entities for very good reason—first and foremost, to protect civil liberties. But now, under the intelligence reform legislation, the DNI will have under his aegis not only the entire CIA—whose operatives are skilled at breaking (foreign) law—but also a major part of the FBI, whose agents are carefully trained not to violate constitutional protections or otherwise go beyond the law. (That is why the FBI agents at Guantanamo judged it necessary to report the abuses they saw.)
This is one area that gives cause for serious concern lest, for example, the law enjoining CIA from any domestic investigative or police power be eroded. Those old enough to remember the Vietnam War and operation COINTELPRO have a real-life reminder of what can happen when lines of jurisdiction are blurred and “super-patriots” are given carte blanche to pursue citizen “dissidents”—particularly in time of war.
Aware of these dangers and eager to prevent the creation of the president’s own Gestapo, both the 9/11 Commission and Congress proposed creation of an oversight board to safeguard civil liberties. Nice idea. But by the time the legislation passed last December, the powers and independence of the “Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board” had been so watered down as to be a laughingstock. For example, the Board’s access to information from government agencies requires the approval of the DNI and the attorney general, who can withhold information from the Board for a variety of reasons—among them the familiar “national security interests.” In addition, the Board lacks subpoena power over third parties. Clearly, if the Board does not have unfettered access to information on sensitive law enforcement or intelligence gathering initiatives, the role of the Board (primarily oversight and guidance) becomes window dressing. In short, the Board has been made lame before it could take its first step.
“What the hell do we care; what the hell do we care” is the familiar second line of “Hail, Hail, the Gang’s All Here.” Suffice it to say that, with Chertoff, Abrams and now Negroponte back in town, those concerned to protect civil liberties here at home and to advance them abroad need to care a whole lot.
Corruption, Politicization of Intelligence
Gen. William Odom, one of the most highly respected and senior intelligence professionals, now retired, put a useful perspective on last summer’s politically driven rush into wholesale intelligence reform. In a Washington Post op-ed on Aug. 1, he was typically direct in saying, “No organizational design will compensate for incompetent incumbents.” I believe he would be the first to agree that the adjectives “careerist and sycophantic” should be added to “incompetence,” for incompetence often is simply the handmaiden of those noxious traits. And the failure of the 9/11 Commission and the Congress to insist that real people be held accountable is a major part of the problem.
Intelligence reform in a highly charged political atmosphere gathers a momentum of its own, and the reform bill Congress passed late last year is largely charade. The “reforms” do not get to the heart of the problem. What is lacking is not a streamlined organizational chart, but integrity. Character counts. Those who sit atop the intelligence community need to have the courage to tell it like it is—even if that means telling the president his neocon tailors have sold him the kind of suit that makes him a naked mockery (as with the fashion designed by Ahmed Chalabi).
Is John Negroponte up to that? Standing in the oval office with Gonzales and Chertoff, will Negroponte succumb to being the “team player” he has been…or will he summon the independence to speak to the president without fear or favor—the way we used to at CIA?
It is, of course, too early to tell. Suffice it to say at this point that there is little in his recent government service to suggest he will buck the will of his superiors, even when he knows they are wrong—or even when he is aware that their course skirts the constitutional prerogatives of the duly elected representatives of the American people in Congress. Will he tell the president the truth, even when the truth makes it clear that administration policy is failing—as in Iraq? Reports that, as ambassador in Baghdad, Negroponte tried to block cables from the CIA Chief of Station conveying a less rosy picture of the situation there reinforces the impression that he will choose to blend in with the white-collar, white, White House indigenous.
The supreme irony is that President Bush seems blissfully unaware that the politicization that Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and he have fostered in the intelligence community has lost them an invaluable resource for the orderly making of foreign policy. It pains me to see how many senior careerists at CIA and elsewhere have made a career (literally) of telling the White House what they think it wants to hear.
If that proves just fine with the new DNI and he contents himself with redrawing wire diagrams, the security of our country is in greater danger. If, on the other hand, Negroponte wants to ensure that he and his troops speak truth to power–despite the inevitable pressure to fall in line with existing policy—he has his work cut out for him. At CIA, at least, he will have to cashier many careerists at upper management levels and find folks with integrity and courage to move into senior positions. And he will have to prove to them that he is serious. The institutionalization of politicization over the last two dozen years has so traumatized the troops that the burden of proof will lie with Negroponte.
The President’s Daily Brief
The scene visualized by President Bush yesterday for his morning briefing routine, once Negroponte is confirmed, stands my hair on end. I did such morning briefings for the vice president, the secretaries of State and Defense, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the National Security Assistant from 1981 to 1985—each of them one-on-one. Our small team of briefers was comprised of senior analysts who had been around long enough to earn respect and trust. We had the full confidence of the CIA director; when he was in town we would brief him just before lunch, hours after we had made the rounds downtown.
When I learned a few years ago that former director George Tenet was going down to the oval office with the briefer, I asked myself, “What is that all about?” The last thing we wanted or needed was the director breathing down our necks. And didn’t he have other things to do?
We were there to tell it like it is—and, in those days, at least, we had career protection for doing so. And so we did. If, for example, one of those senior officials asked if there was good evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and we knew that the serious, honest analysts thought not, we would say “No sir.”
But you ask, “Even if the director has said it was a ‘slam dunk?’” Yes. Even after the director had said it was a slam dunk! But bear in mind that in those days the task was not so heroic. We did not have the director standing behind us to “help.”
From what President Bush said yesterday, John Negroponte, the man farthest removed from substantive intelligence analysis—not to mention the background and genesis of the briefing items chosen for a particular day—will be the president’s “primary briefer.” I am told that President Bush does not read the President’s Daily Brief, but rather has it read to him.
Who will do the reading? Who will attempt to answer the president’s questions? Will there be a senior analyst there in a supporting role? Will s/he have career protection, should it be necessary to correct Negroponte’s answers? Will Negroponte ask CIA Director Porter Goss to participate as well? Will the briefer feel constrained with very senior officials there? Will s/he be able to speak without fear of favor, drawing, for example, on what the real experts say regarding Iran’s nuclear capability and plans? These are important questions. A lot will depend on the answers.
We had a good thing going in the ‘80s. Ask those we briefed and whose trust we gained. It is hard to see that frittered away. Worst of all, the president appears oblivious to the difference. I wish he would talk to his earthly father. He knows. http://www.gnn.tv/headlines/1199/Hail_Hail_The_Gang_s_All_Here_Negroponte_Will_Fit_Right_In
**At the Senate hearing about Negroponte's nomination for UN Ambassador, Sen. Joe Biden, then Chair of the Foreign Relations Cmte, made excuses for Negroponte’s actions in Honduras.
Negroponte Joins Dark Power Shadows
Now folks, this is your President speaking. You all elected this piece of shit, the least you can do is vote his proteges out of office in 2006.
Havana, Feb 18 (Prensa Latina) The George W. Bush government is a team of shadows whose highest ranking officials rank among the darkest of US reactionary political fauna, Granma newspaper´s international page denounces Friday.
According to the paper, each time Bush nominates an official for a post, he picks the worst of all, and together, they make up the worst, gloomiest, cruelest and most messianic administration of all.
His recent nomination of John Negroponte as first national intelligence chief, a position above the country´s spying network, with huge powers and a large budget, proves the above-mentioned assessment.
From now on, Negroponte will direct US spies and the agents who torture and scheme assassinations and coups in the world.
As ambassador to Iraq for less than a year, he became the US proconsul, the figure on which the "Government" of Iyad Allawi counts for all decisions, the mastermind of atrocities such as the rocking of Fallujah, torture camps, assassination of journalists and shut down the numerous irregularities, frauds and bribes.
His dossier is as sordid as his role in Iraq.
On his recent appointment, Bertha Oliva, coordinator of the Committee of Families of Missing in Honduras, where he worked as ambassador and was close to the military regime between 1981 and 1985, said, "that is incredible," the US even made up a post to please a disastrous character of the history of Honduras and Central America."
In Honduras, Negroponte played a decisive role in the organization, training and weapon supplying of the counterrevolutionary forces fighting the Sandinista National Liberation Front during the Ronald Reagan mandate.
His reign there contributed to the increase of human right violations and tortures, missing of leftwing members and the creation of an intelligence squad that kept assassinations silent.
The newly-nominated intelligence director was an assistant to the National Security Agency in the George H Bush administration, and ambassador to Mexico and the Philippines.
When the Senate took six months to name him ambassador to the UN, Negroponte stated, "I do not think death squads operated in Honduras."
Since he was used to saying lies, it was obvious Bush set eyes on him, although his attempts to materialize the UN Security Council approval of the aggression on Iraq failed short.
According to Mexican La Frontera.info newspaper, John Negroponte is a hawk with a reputation for combining an iron-shaped character with a velvet glove," and closely tied to the Iran-Contra case.
The online daily said Negroponte promoted repression, and the Nizkor organization accused him of overseeing the Aguacate air base where the Nicaraguan counterrevolutionary forces were detained and torture.
Several corpses of alleged 185 people murdered and buried at the base were found in August.
Thanks John, the White House provided the Honduran military regime with over one billion USD allowing feed the Battalion 316 the Central Intelligence Agency and the Argentine military regime trained.
Allegedly, the Battalion 316 was involved in the missing of 140 people.
The Torrediconfine.org website reported Negroponte was the highest US official connected to the aggression on Honduras; therefore, the Nuremberg laws against people responsible for war crimes can be applied to him.
However, instead of taking him to court, the Bush administration designated him US ambassador to the UN in 2001.
In July 1995, the Baltimore Sun newspaper headlined: "Honduras: when Negroponte and the Argentine Army members turned it into the inferno."
"When a wave of torture and murders shake a small ally to the US, the truth is included in casualties. Did the CIA involve in it? Was Washington aware of it? Did they deceive the public?," indicated the paper.
"Now we do learn from it: yes, yes and yes," Granma concludes.
ef/ecq http://www.plenglish.com/Article.asp?ID=%7B02A90D34-C4F6-4A3B-84E8-C55C54A1F29B%7D&language=EN
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Negroponte's deputy, Lt. Gen. Mike HaydenThu Feb 17, 2005 13:3564.140.158.59
Stop Human Rights Obstructer John Negroponte
Act immediately to prevent Senate approval of
Negroponte for Ambassador to the UN
John Negroponte
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
John Dimitri Negroponte (born July 21, 1939) (pronounced neg-row-pontee) is the current United States ambassador to Iraq and the nominee as the first U.S. Director of National Intelligence. A career diplomat who served in the United States Foreign Service from 1960 to 1997, Negroponte served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations from September of 2001 until June 2004. As ambassador to Iraq, Negroponte oversees the largest American diplomatic facility in the world.
He is a controversial figure because of his involvement in covert funding of the Contras in Nicaragua (see Iran-Contra Affair) and his covering up of human rights abuses carried out by CIA-trained operatives in Honduras in the 1980s.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Negroponte
==============================
Bush to name John Negroponte as national intelligence chief
... Bush on Thursday named John Negroponte as the first national intelligence director to coordinate the work of all 15 intelligence agencies of the United States. ...
John Negroponte Named for US Intelligence Chief Sofia News Agency
Bush taps Negroponte as new spy overseer Turkish Press
Bush Nominates Negroponte As Intel Chief Guardian
ABC News - Ireland Online -
all 310 related »
http://nicaragua.newstrove.com/
Bush named Lt. Gen. Mike Hayden, who has served as director of the National Security Agency since March 1999, as Negroponte's deputy. He is the longest serving director of the secretive codebreaking agency and has pushed for changes, such as asking longtime agency veterans to retire and increasing reliance on technology contractors. "If we're going to stop the terrorists before they strike," Bush said, "we must ensure that our intelligence agencies work as a single, unified enterprise." Negroponte, 65, was at the United Nations when he was tapped to take on the delicate job of transforming the U.S.
http://nicaragua.newstrove.com/
Bush names first national intelligence director
Published in Dailybreeze.com - Indexed on Feb 17, 2005 Similar pages
Relevance:
Responding, Negroponte called the new job "the most challenging assignment I have undertaken in more than 40 years of government service." Said Bush: "He understands the power centers in Washington." Bush named Lt. Gen. Mike Hayden, who has served as director of the National Security Agency since March 1999, as Negroponte's deputy. He is the longest serving director of the secretive codebreaking agency and has pushed for changes, such as asking longtime agency veterans to retire and increasing reliance on technology contractors.
http://nicaragua.newstrove.com/
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... Congressional investigations into Iran-Contra, and with the expose by Gary Webb
of the ... he just an "old friend?" Or is he like John Negroponte, "uniquely suited ...
... possessed; they are communist." Negroponte will now ... Managing Director, Riverside
Holdings: John Lancaster Managing ... Like Moore, Gary Webb, a former reporter for ...
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On December 10, 2004 former investigative reporter for the San Jose Mercury News Gary Webb - who had been on the CIA's "black list" ever since he broke the story of the agency's VILE involvement in flooding the poor black neighborhoods of L.A. with cocaine in the early 1980s - was found dead in his Sacramento area home, an apparent suicide according to the coroner. There was a gunshot wound through his head. No! - make that TWO (possibly three) gunshot wounds, apparently from his father's old .38 caliber revolver. [Please see our articles, "The Drug Epidemic, Viruses, Ebola, and AIDS" and "Material Developed by Gary Webb on the Importation of Drugs into the Neighborhoods of the Poor" for a "run-down" or synopsis on Webb's article, "Dark Alliance;" please also see our story as to why the elites (and the CIA) targeted the poor black neighborhoods of the country in this fashion, "The Utility of Police Brutality in the Elite's War Against the Poor;" finally, we urge you to read our article on the CIA's obscene involvement in the drug trade entitled, "A Short History of the CIA's Involvement in the Drug Trade."]
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2005/01/309640.shtml
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... Witheld information during Iran-Contra scandal but was pardoned in 1992. A protege
of Reagan's UN envoy, Jeane Kirkpatrick. John Negroponte Bush choice for UN ...
Results 1 - 10 of about 15,900 for John Negroponte + Iran Contra
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Stop Human Rights Obstructer John Negroponte
... to two misdemeanor counts of lying to Congress during the Iran Contra hearings and ...
we can keep out former US Ambassador to Honduras John Negroponte who played ...
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On August 27, 1997, CIA Inspector General Frederick P. Hitz released a 211-page classified report entitled "Selected Issues Relating to CIA Activities in Honduras in the 1980s." This report was partly declassified on October 22, 1998, in response to persistent demands by the Honduran human rights ombudsman. You can read parts of the document on the National Security Archives website. Only senators and their staff who have security clearance can read the report in its entirety. It is absolutely critical that every senator read and consider the entire report before approving Negroponte’s nomination. Negroponte is highly respected in diplomatic circles as "a man who speaks five languages but knows when to keep silent." Due to his urbane temperament and broad support in the professional diplomatic field, it will be very tempting for senators to whisk his nomination through.
http://www.maryknoll.org/GLOBAL/ALERTS/no_negroponte.htm=====================================
"Look," Negroponte says,Fri Feb 18, 2005 00:16======================================================
About John Negroponte - Biography and ControversiesThu Feb 17, 2005 18:58About John Negroponte - Biography and Controversies
http://www.california-recall.com/articles/article-136181083090027.html
OVERVIEW - About John Negroponte - Biography and Controversies - John Dimitri Negroponte was born on July 21, 1939 in London. His father was a Greek shipping magnate. He graduated from Yale University in 1960. He later served at eight different Foreign Service posts in Asia, Europe and Latin America; and he also held important positions at the State Department and the White House. From 1997 until his appointment as ambassador to the UN, Negroponte was an executive with McGraw-Hill. He speaks five languages.
John Dimitri Negroponte has been the United States ambassador to the United Nations since September 2001. He is a career diplomat who served in the US Foreign Service from 1960 to 1997. On April 19, 2004, Negroponte was nominated by US president George W. Bush to be US ambassador to Iraq after the June 30 handover.
His appointment to the UN post was a controversial one because of his involvement in covert funding of the Contras and his covering up of human rights abuses in Honduras in the 1980s. He is seen by many as a terrorist sponsor for supporting the Contra insurgency against the left wing Sandinistas, the first ever democratically elected government of Nicaragua. He is also acused of inciting Contra attacks on civilians.
From 1981 to 1985 Negroponte was US ambassador to Honduras. During his tenure, he oversaw the growth of military aid to Honduras from $4 million to $77.4 million a year. According to The New York Times, Negroponte was responsible for "carrying out the covert strategy of the Reagan administration to crush the Sandinistas government in Nicaragua." Critics say that during his ambassadorship, human rights violations in Honduras became systematic.
Negroponte supervised the creation of the El Aguacate air base, where the US trained Nicaraguan Contras and which critics say was used as a secret detention and torture center during the 1980s. In August 2001, excavations at the base discovered 185 corpses, including two Americans, who are thought to have been killed and buried at the site.
Records also show that a special intelligence unit of the Honduran armed forces, Battalion 3-16, trained by the CIA and Argentine military, kidnapped, tortured and killed hundreds of people, including US missionaries. Critics charge that Negroponte knew about these human rights violations and yet continued to collaborate with the Honduran military while lying to Congress.
In May 1982, a nun, Sister Laetitia Bordes, who had worked for ten years in El Salvador, went on a fact-finding delegation to Honduras to investigate the whereabouts of thirty Salvadoran nuns and women of faith who fled to Honduras in 1981 after Archbishop Oscar Romero's assassination. Negroponte claimed the embassy knew nothing. But in a 1996 interview with the Baltimore Sun, Negroponte's predecessor, Jack Binns, said that a group of Salvadorans, among whom were the women Bordes had been looking for, were captured on April 22, 1981, and savagely tortured by the DNI, the Honduran Secret Police, and then later thrown out of helicopters alive.
In early 1984, two American mercenaries, Thomas Posey and Dana Parker, contacted Negroponte, stating they wanted to supply arms to the Contras after the U.S. Congress had banned further military aid. Documents show that Negroponte brought the two with a contact in the Honduran armed forces The operation was exposed nine months later, at which point the Reagan administration denied any US involvement, despite Negroponte's participation in the scheme. Other documents uncovered a plan of Negroponte and then-Vice President George H. W. Bush to funnel Contra aid money through the Honduran government.
During his tenure as US ambassador to Honduras, Binns, who was appointed by President Jimmy Carter, made numerous complaints about human rights abuses by the Honduran military and he claimed he fully briefed Negroponte on the situation before leaving the post. When the Reagan administration came to power, Binns was replaced by Negroponte, who has consistently denied having knowledge of any wrongdoing. Later, the Honduras Commission on Human Rights accused Negroponte himself of human rights violations.
Speaking of Negroponte and other senior US officials, an ex-Honduran congressman, Efrain Diaz, told the Baltimore Sun, which in 1995 published an extensive investigation of US activities in Honduras:
Their attitude was one of tolerance and silence. They needed Honduras to loan its territory more than they were concerned about innocent people being killed. The Suns's investigation found that the CIA and US embassy knew of numerous abuses but continued to support Battalion 3-16 and ensured that the embassy's annual human rights report did not contain the full story.
When President Bush announced Negroponte's appointment to the UN shortly after coming to office, it was met with widespread protest. However, the Bush administration did not back down and even went so far as to try to silence potential witnesses. On March 25, the Los Angeles Times reported on the sudden deportation from the United States of several former Honduran death squad members who could have provided damaging testimony against Negroponte in his Senate confirmation hearings. One of the deportees was General Luis Alonso Discua, founder of Battalion 3-16. In the preceding month, Washington had revoked the visa of Discua who was Honduras' Deputy Ambassador to the UN. Nonetheless, Discua went public with details of US support of Battalion 3-16.
Upon learning of Negroponte's nomination, Reed Brody of Human Rights Watch in New York commented:
When John Negroponte was ambassador he looked the other way when serious atrocities were committed. One would have to wonder what kind of message the Bush administration is sending about human rights by this appointment.
http://www.california-recall.com/articles/article-136181083090027.html
=========================
THE HORROR OF JOHN DIMITRI NEGROPONTE AND EVERYTHING HE REPRESENTS
THE HORROR OF JOHN DIMITRI NEGROPONTE AND EVERYTHING HE REPRESENTS. ... THERE IS A REASON
WHY WE HAVE TOLD YOU THE STORY OF JOHN DIMITRI NEGROPONTE. ...
MORE:>>
================
SPOOKS FROM THE PAST
And there's no doubt about it: President Bush is enlisting the aid of the very best practitioners of REALPOLITIK in the world today to accomplish his dark, very menacing ends in Iraq. Terry Allan writes:
"Like SPOOKS from an abandoned B-Movie graveyard, officials of the Reagan-Bush era (i.e., the people who fought and won the homicidal Contra Wars in Central America in the 1980s) are emerging from the dirt and showing up inside the George W. Bush administration. THE LATEST RESURRECTION IS JOHN NEGROPONTE ...
http://www.antipasministries.com/oldnews/negroponte.html
You may reach Fred via email at fred@endtimesnetwork.com==================================================
Congressional Record: September 14, 2001 (Senate) Page S9431-S9433 NOMINATION OF JOHN NEGROPONTE Mr. DODD. Mr. President, yesterday the Foreign Relations Committee held a hearing to consider the nomination of John Negroponte to be the U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations. I was unable to attend yesterday's hearing because I was with my wife Jackie attending the birth of our daughter Grace. I believe that it was very important yesterday that the Committee hearing focused in part on a careful review of new information that has come to light related to Ambassador Negroponte's tenure in Honduras during 1981-85 to see whether Congress had been kept fully informed about all aspects of U.S. policy with respect to Honduras during his watch. I recognize, that this is not a normal week for the Senate or for the American people. President Bush has indicated that he wants the United States to be represented by an Ambassador at the United Nations as quickly as possible, particularly in light of this week's tragic events. I don't disagree with that view. However, the Foreign Relations Committee did have a responsibility to review the questions raised in connection [[Page S9432]] with this nomination. They discharged that responsibility yesterday. The Committee has proceeded expeditiously, professionally and fairly with Ambassador Negroponte's nomination. It requested and receive documents from the State Department and CIA. Those documents were reviewed, consisting of several thousand pages, the committee proceeded with the hearing yesterday and today the Senate is ready to act. There have been no undue delays. Let's review the time line of this nomination to date. The President announced his intent to nominate Ambassador Negroponte for the U.N. post on March 6. The nomination was not submitted to the Senate, however, until May 14, nearly four months into the Administration, by contrast, Madeleine Albright was nominated for the U.N. post on January 20, 1993 and confirmed six days later. On May 3, over a week before the nomination was submitted, the Committee Democrats wrote the President to request that the Administration provide documents to the Committee so it could review issues related to Negroponte's tenure in Honduras. On May 8, Committee staff submitted a list of requested documents to representatives of the White House and the State Department. The last document responsive to the original request of May 8 was not provided, however, until late July. The Committee staff reviewed several thousand pages of documents responsive to the request and determined that a number of documents which were still classified contained important information on questions raised about Ambassador Negroponte's tenure in Honduras. The chairman of the committee then requested that the State Department and CIA undertake a review of documents within the committee's possession that remained classified with a goal of making public as much information as possible in order to shed additional light on what role if any the United States played in the human rights abuses that were perpetrated against the Honduran people in the first half of the 1980s, and specifically what knowledge or involvement the United States Ambassador, at the time Mr. Negroponte, had in those abuses. The committee also offered to begin hearings prior to the August recess on U.N. issues, with another hearing to follow in September on issues related to Negroponte's service in Honduras. The administration chose to wait until September to begin the hearing process. So we are talking about a period of approximately fourteen weeks of working days of the Senate from the time the nomination was submitted until today. This compares quite favorably when compared to the Holbrooke nomination which took from February 1999 to August 1999 . Some conservative columnists have suggested that I and others are trying to re-fight the Central America conflict of the 1980's. Nothing could be further from the truth. Rather, I would argue that there is an effort underway in some quarters to rewrite the history of U.S. involvement in that conflict and sweep under the rug how politically painful and damaging that policy was. In the early 1980's, the Congress and the American people were told that the United States had no involvement in using Honduras in as a staging ground for a convert Contra program to overthrow Nicaragua's Sandinista government. Later, when the so called second Boland amendment cutting off assistance to the Contra was passed we were told that the United States was not violating that provision of law. That of course proved to be untruth as the Iran Contra Investigation demonstrated. Similarly we were told that the Honduran military was not as a matter of policy violating human rights of its citizens or that the Salvadoran High Command had no known or culpability for the torture and murder of the American church women or the Jesuit priests. Of course we now know that none of that was in fact true. It is indisputable that this fabric of untruths and half truths caused deep fissures in the Congressional-Executive branch relationship and in the trust of the American people in their government. Those fissures will only be fully healed if there is honesty and full candor between the Executive and the Congress. Our policy was also controversial throughout Central America. Tens of thousands of Central Americans lost their lives during the 1980's, many at the hands of their own governments. Tens of thousands more had their lives permanently marred by losses of loved ones. Fortunately, in 1987 Central American leaders took their fate into their own hands and crafted the Central America Peace Agreement. President George H. Bush, upon coming to office in 1989 embraced the peace agreement and reached out to the Congress in order to de-politicize Central America. Elections followed in Nicaragua, as did a negotiated settlement to the civil conflict in El Salvador. Honduras ceased to be a staging area for the U.S. backed contras. El Salvador and Honduras have undertaken to come to grips with the past by attempting to investigate and assign responsibility for the atrocities that occurred in their respective countries as an important step in the process of peace and reconciliation. Since Ambassador Negroponte was last confirmed by the Senate as Ambassador to the Philippines in 1993, a great deal of new information has come to light about the nature and extent of human rights abuses during his tenure in Honduras. This information also raised questions about the appropriateness of the U.S. Embassy's response and about whether Ambassador Negroponte had been forthright with the Committee in 1989 when I asked him questions about these matters. How has this new information come to light? It is the result of a number of investigations into this subject from 1992-1998: First in 1992, Leo Valladares, the Honduran National Commissioner for the Protection of Human Rights undertook to catalog the disappearances and other human rights abuses that occurred in Honduras in the eighties. That investigation is still ongoing. Prompted by the Valladares investigation the Baltimore Sun's undertook its own year long investigation which resulted in 1995 in a four part series detailing human rights abuses by a special Honduran military intelligence unit, the so called Battalion 316, and U.S. embassy links to that unit, and knowledge thereof. In 1996, this led CIA Director John Deutch to establish a Special Working Group within the agency to assess whether the allegations raised by the series were valid. Finally, the CIA Director tasked the CIA's Inspector General to resolve specific questions raised by the Working Group as it related to the death of an American citizen, Father James Carney, and about the CIA's relationship with members of the Honduran military who may have committed human rights abuses before or doing that relationship. The picture that emerges in analyzing this new information is a troubling one. Some of the key facts that the Committee put on public record during yesterday's hearing thanks to the cooperation of the State Department and CIA are the following: One, during 1980-84, the Honduran military committed most of the hundreds of human rights abuses reported in Honduras. These abuses were often politically motivated and officially sanctioned; two, Honduran military units were trained by the U.S.--members of these units have been linked to death squad activities such as killings, disappearances, and other human rights abuses; three, the CIA's reporting of human rights abuses was inconsistent. Reporting inadequacies precluded CIA headquarters from understanding the scope of human rights abuses; four, the responsibility for monitoring and taking action against domestic subversion in Honduras was first the responsibility of a special unit of the Public Security Forces, FUSEP; five, at the recommendation of a joint U.S./Honduran military seminar, this responsibility was transferred in early 1984 to a new unit (which came to be known as Battalion 316) under the supervision of the Military Intelligence Division of the Armed Forces General Staff; and six, the FUSEP special unit and Battalion 316 counter terrorist tactics included torture, rape and assassination against persons thought to be involved in support of the Salvadoran guerrillas or part of the Honduran leftist movement; seven, as many as 250 instances of human rights abuses in Honduras are officially documented, including disappearances, torture, extra judicial killings; and eight, at least one death [[Page S9433]] squad was known to have operated during 1980-84. This death squad was called ELACH, The Honduran Anti-Communist Liberation Army. There is information linking this death squad to chief of the National Intelligence Directorate of the Honduran Public Security Forces. When Ambassador Negroponte came before the committee in 1989 in the context of his nomination to the position of US Ambassador to Mexico, I asked him a number of questions related to his tenure in Honduras, two questions dealt with human rights. Given what we know about the extent and nature of Honduran human rights abuses, to say that Mr. Negroponte was less than forthcoming in his responses to my questions is being generous. I would ask that the my exchange with Ambassador Negroponte during that hearing in printed in the Record at this point. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows: Excerpt From Hearing Record Senator Dodd. That Battalion 316, I said ``alleged,'' but, in fact, was that a death squad? Was that the name of a death squad operating either within the Honduran military or with their approval? Ambassador Negroponte. I do not recall knowing it as the 316th Battalion. In fact, some of what I am saying now may be based on trying to reconstruct events after having discussed this issue with individuals long after the fact, for example, when Mr. LeMoyne wrote his story. But I recall it to have been an intelligence unit. Again, I have never seen any convincing substantiation that they were involved in death squad type activities. Mr. DODD. I know there will be those who say, that it isn't terribly important that the Honduran military committed human rights abuses more than fifteen years ago in some cases. Moreover, in relative terms those abuses in Honduras paled in comparison to what to else where in Central America. My response to that is that the Senate has a duty and responsibility to be a partner in the fashioning of U.S. foreign policy, and the only way it can be a full partner is if we in this body are kept fully informed. When it came to our ability to be full partners with respect to U.S. toward Honduras or elsewhere in Central America, I would tell you that we were unable to do that because we were flying blind. It gives me great pause as I ponder how to vote on this nomination to think that someone as intelligent and capable as Ambassador Negroponte would treat this committee and this body so cavalierly in his responses to my questions. I wonder who he thinks he works for? I was also troubled by Ambassador Negroponte's unwillingness to admit, that as a consequence of other U.S. policy priorities, the U.S. embassy, by acts of omissions ending up shading the truth about the extent and nature of ongoing human rights abuses in the 1980s. Moreover, in light of all the new information that I have just mentioned, I do not know how Ambassador Negroponte can continue to believe that it was simply ``deficiencies in the Honduran legal system coupled with insufficient professionalism of law enforcement authorities that ``led at times to abuses of authority by Honduran police officials.'' And, quoting his written answer to a committee question on this subject that, ``I did not believe then, nor do I believe now, that these abuses were part of a deliberate government policy.'' The InterAmerican Court of Human Rights had no such reluctance in assigning blame to the Honduran government during its adjudication of a case brought against the Government of Honduras by the InterAmerican Commission on Human Rights in 1987. In deciding the case of Honduran citizen Velasquez Rodriquez the Court found that ``a practice of disappearances carried out or tolerated by Honduran officials existed between 1981-84.'' And, as I mentioned earlier, based upon an extensive review of U.S. intelligence information by the CIA Working Group in 1996, the CIA is prepared to stipulate that ``during the 1980-84 period, the Honduran military committed most of the hundreds of human rights abuses reported in Honduras. These abuses were often politically motivated and officially sanctioned.'' Moreover, Mr. Negroponte should have been forewarned to look for signs of government sponsored human rights abuses in light of concerns that his predecessor Ambassador Jack Binns, a career foreign service officer, had raised with the State Department concerning the mind set of the architect of Honduras' domestic countersubversion program with respect to a willingness to extrajudicial means in the context of such programs. Ambassador Binns was speaking about General Gustavo Alvarez who became Commander in Chief of the Honduran Armed Forces in 1982, and who had been Commander of Honduran Public Security Forces, FUSEP, from 1980-82. Based upon the Committee's review of State Department and CIA documents, it would seem that Ambassador Negroponte knew far more about government perpetuated human rights abuses than he chose to share with the committee in 1989 or in Embassy contributions at the time to annual State Department Human Rights reports. For example, a Negroponte cable summarizing meetings between Congressman Solarz and Honduran government officials in January 1985 makes note of a Honduran official's concerns about future human rights abuses due to ``fears that there might still be some ``secret operating cells'' left from the Alvarez era,'' here referring to General Alvarez who had headed the Honduran armed forces until he was removed in 1984 by his fellow officers. I don't quite know the difference between a ``death squad'' and ``secret operating cells'', but since Ambassador Negroponte is officially on record as saying that no death squads existed in Honduras during his tenure, there must be some difference. There are also discrepancies with respect to when he became aware of certain cases where Honduran authorities were secretly detaining and torturing Hondurans suspected of subversion. And how he chose to report those cases to Washington. The case of dual national Ines Consuelo Murillo comes most readily to mind. Her detention and torture was described in detail on April 15, 1995 in the Baltimore Sun. These are but a few examples. There were others which taken together, paint a very mixed picture of whether the U.S. embassy was doing much to discourage Honduran government practices or how comprehensively it was collecting and reporting on such abuses. Having said that, there were no ``smoking guns'' in the documents that have been provided to the Committee. I know that this week is not just any week. I also know that the President is anxious to have an ambassador at the United Nations is a high priority, particularly in light of recent events. I will not stand in the way of the Senate moving forward with this nomination. I believe that yesterday's decision by the Committee on Foreign Relations to put on the public record all the additional declassified information that it has compiled in reviewing this nomination will contribute to the healing and reconciliation that is still ongoing in Honduras. Finally I would say a word of caution to other career foreign service officers, particularly junior officers, that they not consider this nominee's lack of candor before the committee as a model to be emulated. A United States Ambassador is a representative of the United States Government and ultimately works for the American people. That means that our ambassadors have an obligation to be truthful and forthcoming in relations with Congress as we are the people's representatives. If they are under instruction to withhold information as a matter of policy they should say so. Then, we can take it up with their superiors if we choose to do so. In my estimation, Mr. Negroponte did neither in his dealings with the Congress. I am deeply saddened to come to that judgement. Having said that Ambassador Negroponte has had a distinguished career and on balance has discharged his responsibilities ably and honorably. For that reason, I intend to give him the benefit of the doubt in light of how extremely polarized relations between the Congress and the Executive were over U.S. policy in Central America when he was serving as Ambassador in Honduras. I will therefore support his nomination to the position of the U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations. http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2001_cr/s091401.html===================================================================THE DEATH OF GARY WEBB = NOMINATION OF JOHN NEGROPONTEThu Feb 17, 2005 20:23
