Death Squad Ambassador: Senate Hearings Begin on Negroponte Iraq Appointme

[Say_What]

Council on Hempispheric Affairs editorial follows the Democracy NOW! article

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Two events happened last week that at first glance may not seem to be related. Honduras announced that it was withdrawing its troops from Iraq, following the lead of Spain's new government. The second event was that President Bush announced he was appointing John Negroponte to head up the U.S. embassy in Iraq. Perhaps the two events are just a coincidence, or maybe the Hondurans know something most of the world hasn't been told. And that is the record of John Negroponte as U.S. ambassador to Honduras during the 1980s.

Negroponte currently serves as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. But it is his reputation as ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985 that earned him a reputation for supporting widespread human rights abuses and campaigns of terror. As ambassador to Honduras, Negroponte played a key role in coordinating US aid to the Contra death squads in Nicaragua and shoring up a CIA-backed death squad in Honduras. During his term as ambassador there, diplomats alleged that the embassy's annual human rights reports made Honduras sound more like Norway than Argentina.

According to a four-part series in the Baltimore Sun, in 1982 alone the Honduran press ran 318 stories of murders and kidnappings by the Honduran military. In a 1995 series, Sun reporters Gary Cohn and Ginger Thompson detailed the activities of a secret CIA-trained Honduran army unit, Battalion 3-16, that used "shock and suffocation devices in interrogations. Prisoners often were kept naked and, when no longer useful, killed and buried in unmarked graves." In 1994, Honduras's National Commission for the Protection of Human Rights reported that it was officially admitted that 179 civilians were still missing.

Former official Rick Chidester, who served under Negroponte, says he was ordered to remove all mention of torture and executions from the draft of his 1982 report on the human rights situation in Honduras. During Negroponte's tenure, US military aid to Honduras skyrocketed from $3.9 million to over $77 million. Much of this went to ensure the Honduran army's loyalty in the battle against popular movements throughout Central America.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/04/27/1435207

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Negroponte: Nominee for Baghdad Embassy a Rogue for all Seasons

· Negroponte pressed Powell to pressure Chile’s and Mexico’s weak-willed leaders to discharge their U.N. ambassadors over Iraq votes.

· Negroponte has sordid human rights record in Honduras.

· A Cruel Joke: Negroponte, the arch authoritarian, teaching democracy to the Iraqis.

· Life under Saddam somewhat prepares you for the Negroponte era.

· Senate Foreign Relations Committee unlikely to closely scrutinize Negroponte nomination.

· Like the earlier nominations of Otto Reich, John Bolton and Roger Noriega, Secretary of State Colin Powell will have no trouble in describing this villain as an “honorable” man.

President Bush confirmed recent rumors by announcing on Monday that John D. Negroponte was being nominated to become this country’s ambassador to Iraq, a post that he would assume on June 30, when sovereignty ostensibly will be transferred to Iraqi authorities. But the Negroponte nomination must be seen as a profoundly troubling one, for the same nagging questions which were present during the summer of 2001 when Negroponte was nominated to be U.S. ambassador to the UN continue to persist. Enough time apparently has passed since a number of accusations first surfaced concerning Negroponte’s profound moral derelictions (which at least date back to the time that he served as U.S. ambassador to Honduras (1981-85)), for these again to be thoroughly aired. But if the past is any precedent, Negroponte will sail through the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the full Senate as if he was a Happy Warrior rather than the immoral reprobate that his record undeniably portrays him as being. Since then, Washington’s ability to slip into political amnesia regarding his reprehensible actions in Honduras will now once again be at play.

The central fact to the Negroponte story is that he misled Congress when some of its members attempted to question him about his complicity in helping to cover up his knowledge and direct personal involvement in the training, equipping and distracting attention from the heinous acts of Battalion 316, the Honduran death squad which at the time of Negroponte’s residence in Honduras was responsible for the murder of almost 200 Honduran dissidents opposed to their country being used as an “unsinkable aircraft carrier” in the U.S.-backed Contra war against Nicaragua’s leftist Sandinistas.

Negroponte Arrives in Tegucigalpa

Negroponte replaced Jack Binns, who had been President Carter’s ambassador to Honduras during 1980-81, after Binns had spoken out against mounting evidence of major human rights violations occurring in that country against political dissidents who dared to speak out against the growing involvement of Honduras in the secret Contra war against Sandinista Nicaragua. He made references to activities that were being carried out by a shady operation which came to be known as Battalion 316. A big part of this story is the flawed annual human rights reports, prepared every year by U.S. embassies around the world, which had to be presented to Congress, under terms of the Foreign Assistance Act. When it came to Honduras, this report was significantly expurgated first in Tegucigalpa by Negroponte, and then once again after it reached Washington, by then Assistant Secretary of State for Humanitarian Affairs, the infamous Elliot Abrams. Abrams, an obsessive cold warrior, had as little sympathy for human rights issues in Honduras as he was in favor of them when it came to Cuba. This operation subverted the law, and Abrams eventually confessed to his role in the Iran-Contra war, but was later pardoned by the first President Bush. This dominated Honduran realities during the early 1980s, which were to further deteriorate during Negroponte’s ambassadorial stint. The new ambassador’s mission was to ensure that the steady stream of U.S. aid to Honduras, aimed at preventing the spread of Communism by Sandinista Nicaragua, was to continue at any cost. Years later, in 1995, a former junior political officer, who had worked in the embassy under Negroponte, came forth with serious accusations concerning the human rights lapses of the Honduran army in the annual human rights report he was required to draft during the Negroponte era. This report was meant to be sent to Congress, but he claimed the charges had been eliminated or transformed by others by the time that the report had reached its ultimate destination.

<http://www.coha.org/NEW_PRESS_RELEASES/New_Press_Releases_2004/04.20_Negroponte.htm>

[Ganja Ninja]

1. As far as I'm conserned Negroponte is perfect for the job.

But don't give him any body guards and no bullet proof limo. Let him drive himself to work in a old toyota with four window flags and a flashing red, white and blue light on it.