Negroponte Nomination Bemoaned

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Fri, 4 Mar 2005 06:36:31 -0600

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Negroponte Nomination Bemoaned

 

By Tim Rogers

Tico Times Nicaragua Correspondent

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GRANADA – U.S. President George W. Bush's Feb. 17 nomination of John

Negroponte as the United States' first National Intelligence Director

is turning heads – and stomachs – in Nicaragua, a country all too

familiar with this former Cold War warrior's human-rights track record.

 

While the mainstream U.S. media has largely whitewashed Negroponte's

dark past in Central America ( " [Negroponte's] entire life has been a

lesson in quiet and measured diplomacy, " Robin Roberts, of ABC's Good

Morning America, cheerfully reported on Feb. 18), many Nicaraguans who

remember him from when he served as the U.S. Ambassador to Honduras in

the 1980s are being less kind in their assessment of the newest Bush

appointee.

 

 

" Negroponte is one of the leading terrorists at the service of U.S.

expansionism, " Father Miguel D'Escoto, Nicaragua's former Minister of

Foreign Relations under the Sandinista government, told The Nica Times

this week. " His nomination is further evidence that Bush is one of the

principal terrorists in the world. "

 

NEGROPONTE, 65, was the U.S. Ambassador to Honduras from 1981-1985,

during which time he helped to carry out the U.S.-sponsored

counterrevolutionary war in Nicaragua, which claimed some 30,000 lives

during the `80s.

 

Negroponte reportedly oversaw the training of Contra rebels at

Honduras' El Aguacate Airbase, a secret detention and torture center

where the corpses of 185 people – including two U.S. citizens – were

uncovered in 2001, according to human rights group Equipo Nizkor.

 

The ambassador was also allegedly involved with Honduras' notoriously

brutal Battalion 3-16 death squad, which kidnapped, tortured and

killed hundreds of Hondurans in the early `80s. According to a 1995

investigation by the Baltimore Sun, Battalion 3-16 used " shock and

suffocation devices in interrogations. Prisoners often were kept naked

and, when no longer useful, killed and buried in unmarked graves. "

 

The Baltimore Sun also reported that Rick Chidester, a former

Negroponte aide in Honduras, said he had been ordered to remove

allegations of torture and executions from his draft of the 1982 human

rights report on Honduras. The omission served to justify an increase

in U.S. military aid to that Central American country from $4 million

to $77.4 million during Negroponte's tenure there.

 

NEGROPONTE'S actions in supervising the U.S.' war against Nicaragua

were condemned as an " unlawful use of force " by the World Court, in a

judgment backed by two U.N. Security Council resolutions and vetoed by

the United States.

 

While Negroponte's grisly past in Central America was the topic of

heated debate in the U.S. Senate, following Negroponte's 2001

nomination to the post of U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations,

ultimately it did not block his confirmation.

 

Negroponte, the current U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, has consistently

denied any knowledge of Honduran death squad activity during his

tenure there, and he was never called in as a defendant in the

Iran-Contra Hearings.

 

ALTHOUGH Negroponte has now survived three Senate confirmations since

his post in Honduras, his recent nomination to the post of U.S.

Intelligence Director, where he would oversee 15 U.S. intelligence

agencies, has raised new fears in Central America of a return to

aggressive U.S. policies of the past.

 

" The naming of Negroponte by George W. Bush is consistent with a

policy of terror and imperialist expansionism characterized by

(Bush's) government, " charged Celia Medrano, the former director of

the Central American Human Rights Commission. " Negroponte is being

positioned as a strategic piece in the U.S.' game of global

domination. Nothing good can come of this. "

 

Tómas Borge, the only surviving founder of the Sandinista National

Liberation Front and former Minister of the Interior, told The Nica

Times this week that Negroponte " is the perfect politician to carry

out the U.S.' politics of global domination, international repression,

foreign occupation and destabilization. "

 

Borge, who was in charge of domestic security policies during the war

against the Contra rebels in the 1980s, added sardonically: " I would

like to congratulate Bush for picking the perfect man for the job. "

 

SOME Nicaraguans remember Negroponte fondly.

 

Adolfo Calero, the former head of the northern front Contras,

remembers Negroponte " with much respect " as an ambassador who was

" very prepared " and politically savvy.

 

Calero told The Nica Times this week that Negroponte was his " contact

point " with the U.S. government during the Contra war. Calero said

Negroponte set up several meetings in Honduras between him and U.S.

congressmen and members of the U.S. National Security Agency in the 1980s.

 

The former Contra and Nicaraguan congressman said his relationship

with Negroponte was positive because their interests " coincided. "

Calero qualifies the U.S. ambassador's nomination as intelligence czar

as a " definite positive. "

 

BUT most seem to view Negroponte's nomination as the next step in an

Orwellian script.

 

" How much longer can the world allow the rogue behavior of the United

States? " lamented Father D'Escoto, the Maryknoll priest-turned

revolutionary. " The United States is the biggest lie ever; it is

nothing of what it claims to be. It is a sad, sad, sad situation. "