Media Omissions on Negroponte's Record

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Media Omissions on Negroponte's Record

 

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MEDIA ADVISORY:

Media Omissions on Negroponte's Record

 

February 22, 2005

 

George W. Bush's February 17 nomination of John Negroponte to the newly

created job of director of intelligence was the subject of a flurry of

media coverage. But one part of Negroponte's resume was given little

attention: his role in the brutal and illegal Contra war against the

Sandinista government of Nicaragua in the mid-1980s.

 

From 1981 to 1985, Negroponte was the U.S. ambassador to Honduras, a

country that was being used as a training and staging ground for the

CIA-created and -backed Contra armies, who relied on a terrorist

strategy

of targeting civilians. Those years saw a massive increase in U.S.

military aid to Honduras, and Negroponte was a key player in organizing

training for the Contras and procuring weapons for the armies that the

United States was building in order to topple the socialist Nicaraguan

government (Extra!, 9-10/01).

 

Negroponte's ambassadorship was marked by another human rights scandal:

the Honduran army's Battalion 316, which operated as a death squad that

tortured, killed or disappeared " subversive " Hondurans-- and at least

one

U.S. citizen, Catholic priest James Carney. Despite regular reporting

of

such crimes in the Honduran press, the human rights reports of

Negroponte's embassy consistently failed to raise these issues.

Critics

contend that this was no accident: If such crimes had been

acknowledged,

U.S. aid to the country's military would have come under scrutiny,

which

could have jeopardized the Contra operations.

 

Many reports included brief mentions of Negroponte's past. The New

York

Times (2/18/05), for example, noted that " critics say " that Negroponte

" turned a blind eye to human rights abuses " in Honduras. But the Times

(like most mainstream reports) quoted no critics on the subject; to get

a

sense of what Negroponte's critics actually said, you had to tune into

Pacifica Radio's Democracy Now (2/18/05), where Peter Kornbluh of the

National Security Archive said that Negroponte " essentially ran

Honduras

as the Reagan administration changed it from a small Central American

country into a territorial battleship, if you will, to fight the Contra

war and overthrow the Sandinista government. He was really the head

person

in charge of this whole operation, which became a massive paramilitary

war

in the early 1980s. "

 

Kornbluh added that declassified documents from those years show

Negroponte had " stepped out of being U.S. ambassador and kind of put on

the hat of a C.I.A. station chief in pushing for the Contras to get

more

arms, in lobbying and meeting with very high Honduran officials to

facilitate U.S. support for the Contras and Honduran cooperation, even

after the U.S. Congress terminated official support for the Contra

war. "

 

The night of Bush's announcement, network news broadcasts woefully

understated or misrepresented this history. On NBC Nightly News

(2/17/05), reporter Andrea Mitchell glossed over Negroponte's Honduran

record: " As Ronald Reagan's ambassador to Honduras, he was accused of

ignoring death squads and America's secret war against Nicaragua. "

While

Negroponte might be accused of ignoring Honduran death squads, no one

could credibly suggest he was ignoring " America's secret war against

Nicaragua. " The documentary evidence, as Kornbluh explained, suggests

that he was intimately involved with running it. ABC's Good Morning

America Robin Roberts turned this reality on its head (2/18/05), noting

that Negroponte's " entire life has been a lesson in quiet and measured

diplomacy " and that " he generated controversy long after a stint in

Honduras when he denied he knew anything about the work of Contra rebel

death squads. "

 

Some reporters simply soft-pedaled the history; as CNN reporter Kitty

Pilgrim put it (2/17/05), " During his four-year stint as U.S.

ambassador

to Honduras, he had a difficult balancing act in the battle against

Communism in the neighboring Sandinista government in Nicaragua. "

(Sandinista Nicaragua, of course, was not Communist, but a country with

a

mixed economy and regular elections, one of which voted the Sandinistas

out of power in 1990.) Pilgrim's CNN colleague, Paula Zahn (2/17/05),

complained that " the critics are already out there sniping at him. "

 

Fox News reporter Carl Cameron (2/17/05) noted that " the only partisan

criticism noted Negroponte's role as U.S. ambassador to Honduras in the

'80s, when he played a key role in the Reagan administration's covert

disruption of Communism in the Nicaragua. " In this case, " covert

disruption " stands in as a euphemism for a bloody guerrilla war that

took

the lives of thousands of civilians. Cameron went on to note that the

" partisan " remarks " came from a member of the House, which has no vote

on

his nomination. "

 

NPR reporter Mary Louise Kelly made similar observations (2/17/05),

noting

that previous confirmation hearings generated " a lot of questions about

the role he played during the early '80s when he was the ambassador to

Honduras. " Kelly seemed aware of this history, but thought it a

settled

matter: " He has already dealt with those issues and obviously answered

them satisfactorily-- he was confirmed for that job at the United

Nations. "

 

Some pundits were remarkably lenient in the standards by which

Negroponte

should be judged. Fox News Channel commentator Charles Krauthammer

explained (2/17/05) that " he was the ambassador in Honduras during the

Contra war. So he clearly knows how to deal with clandestine

operations.

That was a pretty clandestine one for several years. And he didn't end

up

in jail, which is a pretty good attribute for him. A lot of others

practically did. "

 

In general, right-wing pundits and commentators were much more likely

than

mainstream news reporters to cite Negroponte's shady past-- as proof

that

he is the right man for the job. On CNBC (2/17/05), Tony Blankley

happily

summarized Negroponte's human rights record: " Negroponte is not just

some

ambassador. He has a track record. Starting in Honduras in 1981, he was

the ambassador who oversaw the management when the Argentines turned

over

the covert operations against the Nicaraguans. He took over that

responsibility. He managed it operationally. The CIA was very impressed

with the way he handled that. "

 

After James Warren of the Chicago Tribune disagreed (calling the Contra

war an " at times slimy operation " ), Blankley offered a blunt response--

" Well, we won " -- which host Lawrence Kudlow endorsed: " We did win.

Thank

you, Tony. I was just going to say, you know, the forces of freedom

triumphed with a little bit of help from the right country. "

 

Fox News Channel's Fred Barnes took the same line (2/19/05): " I would

say

on Central America, I give John Negroponte credit, along with people

like

Elliott Abrams and President Reagan, for creating democracy in all

those

countries in Central America, in Nicaragua, in El Salvador and in

Honduras, where Marxists were going to take over, they fought them

back. "

By way of balance, Fox pundit and NPR correspondent Juan Williams noted

that while he didn't " have any love for Marxists, " it was important to

note " what death squads do to people, and you understand that nuns were

involved, Fred, then you think-- wait a second-- excess is not to be

tolerated in the name of democracy. " Barnes' response: " Well, now that

we

have democracy, there are no death squads. "

 

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