cormacobear
14th January 2007, 19:53
John Negroponte Kissengers Lazy Evil Heir
Negroponte was born in London to, Dimitri John and Catherine Coumantaros Negroponte. His father was a Greek shipping magnate. He graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy in 1956, and Yale University in 1960. He was a member of the Psi Upsilon fraternity, alongside William H.T. Bush, the uncle of President George W. Bush, and Porter Goss, who served as Director of Central Intelligence and director of the C.I. Agency under Negroponte from 2005 to 2006
A former aide to Henry A. Kissinger, he had criticized his patron for making too many concessions to the North Vietnamese in the previous decade. professional diplomat who loyally implemented Reagan administration policies in Central America when the United States closed its eyes to crimes by Third World Fascists because they were partners in a larger anti-communist crusade.
John Dmitri Negroponte arrived in Tegucigalpa, Honduras as ambassador in December 1981 at age 42. Honduras had just become key to the Reagan administration's strategy of rolling back communism in Central America. Honduras would become the principal staging ground for U.S.-backed contra rebels. Under Negroponte’s oversight Honduras witnessed a huge increase in military funding from $3.9 million in 1980 to $77.4 million in 1984. “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.” “The death toll in Nicaragua from the U.S. terrorist war based in Honduras per capita relative to population would be the same as about 2 1/2 million dead in the United States which turns out to be higher than the total number of American deaths in all wars in U.S. history, including the Civil War.” According to a November 1985 CIA report, which has since been partly declassified most of the hundreds of “Disappearances” in Honduras during Negroponte’s tenure were the work of the Honduran Anti-Communist Liberation Army, or ELACH. A 1997. CIA study identified ELACH as a "death squad". "There are two ways you can manage reporting," said Burghardt, who is now director of seminars at the East-West Center in Hawaii. "One way is to make sure that reports are balanced. The other is to steer people away from reporting on certain topics, and lie about what is going on. Negroponte's approach was the former, not the latter."
Zenaida Velasquez, a human rights activist whose brother was kidnapped has vigilantly pursued Negroponte regarding this issue. Their paths first intersected in 1983, when Velasquez asked for the ambassador's help in tracing dozens of Hondurans, including her brother, allegedly kidnapped by agents of the U.S.-backed Honduran military. Little came of the meeting, and the disappearances continued for at least another year. Through her efforts the CIA, an official Honduran ombudsman and an international human rights court have all acknowledged that the Honduran army was responsible for her brother Manfredo's kidnapping and presumed killing.
Recently de-classified internal CIA cables that John D Negroponte had sent to Washington while ambassador to Honduras in 1980's show he played central role in managing United States' illegal covert war against Nicaragua's leftist government; “…cables show Negroponte worked closely with William J Casey, then director of central intelligence, on Reagan adm's anti-Communist offensive in Central America”
More recently Negroponte has served as Ambassador to Iraq, where he presided over the largest US embassy in the world, manned by thousands of employees, fortified within the Green Zone. Baghdad was his fifth post following his assignment as the U.S. representative at the United Nations. Where he was known to tow the party line preventing any action on US international crimes. Since Iraq’s decent into further chaos under his oversight Bush saw fit to create a cabinet post for his old friend, director of U.S. intelligence. A powerful position with no set portfolio parameters. Fortunately for the people of the world Negroponte seems to have grown lazy in his dotage and on most workdays , the nominal boss of U.S. intelligence, John D. Negroponte, can be found at a private club in downtown Washington, getting a massage, taking a swim, and having lunch, followed by a good cigar and a perusal of the daily papers in the club’s library. “He spends three hours there [every] Monday through Friday,” gripes a senior counterterrorism official, noting that the former ambassador has a security detail sitting outside all that time in chase cars. Others say they’ve seen the Director of National Intelligence at the University Club, a 100-year-old mansion-like redoubt of dark oak panels and high ceilings a few blocks from the White House, only “several” times a week. Finding this regime too strenuous after less than two years on the job Negroponte traded a “cabinet-level job for a post that essentially requires him to handle tasks that Condoleezza Rice would rather not deal with.” Top congressional officials responded angrily to the news of Negroponte's departure. "I think he walked off the job, and I don't like it," said Senator John Rockefeller 4th of West Virginia, the new chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
With such a long and disturbing career and the power he wields so near the seats of power we the undefended and unrepresented masses can only hope this recent trend towards apathy endures. Should his previous rigor return we can only imagine nightmarishly what other massive human rights and war crimes we’ll find him at the center of in the years to come.
i John Negroponte Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Negroponte
ii Michael Dobbs Washington Post, Monday, March 21, 2005,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/artic...-2005Mar20.html (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52001-2005Mar20.html)
iii Sister Laetitia Bordes, s.h., afrocubaweb, NEW RIPPLES IN AN EVIL STORY, /01, http://afrocubaweb.com/negroponte.htm
iv Thursday, June 24th, 2004, Noam Chomsky on John Negroponte's Career ,
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/06/24/1423212
v CIA Inspector General Frederick P. Hitz on CIA activities in Honduras
vi Michael Dobbs Washington Post, Monday, March 21, 2005,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/artic...-2005Mar20.html (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52001-2005Mar20.html)
vii Shane, Scott. "Cables Show Central Negroponte Role in 80's Covert War
Against Nicaragua", The New York Times, 2005-04-13, p. A14. (preview only)
viii Thursday, June 24th, 2004, Noam Chomsky on John Negroponte's Career ,
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/06/24/1423212
ix Jeff Stein, March 3rd, 2006, Congressional Quarterly,
http://public.cq.com/public/20060303_homeland.html
x Mark Mazzetti and David E. Sanger, Published: January 4, 2007, U.S.
Intelligence chief asked for shift to State Department,
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/01/04/news/intel.php
Negroponte was born in London to, Dimitri John and Catherine Coumantaros Negroponte. His father was a Greek shipping magnate. He graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy in 1956, and Yale University in 1960. He was a member of the Psi Upsilon fraternity, alongside William H.T. Bush, the uncle of President George W. Bush, and Porter Goss, who served as Director of Central Intelligence and director of the C.I. Agency under Negroponte from 2005 to 2006
A former aide to Henry A. Kissinger, he had criticized his patron for making too many concessions to the North Vietnamese in the previous decade. professional diplomat who loyally implemented Reagan administration policies in Central America when the United States closed its eyes to crimes by Third World Fascists because they were partners in a larger anti-communist crusade.
John Dmitri Negroponte arrived in Tegucigalpa, Honduras as ambassador in December 1981 at age 42. Honduras had just become key to the Reagan administration's strategy of rolling back communism in Central America. Honduras would become the principal staging ground for U.S.-backed contra rebels. Under Negroponte’s oversight Honduras witnessed a huge increase in military funding from $3.9 million in 1980 to $77.4 million in 1984. “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.” “The death toll in Nicaragua from the U.S. terrorist war based in Honduras per capita relative to population would be the same as about 2 1/2 million dead in the United States which turns out to be higher than the total number of American deaths in all wars in U.S. history, including the Civil War.” According to a November 1985 CIA report, which has since been partly declassified most of the hundreds of “Disappearances” in Honduras during Negroponte’s tenure were the work of the Honduran Anti-Communist Liberation Army, or ELACH. A 1997. CIA study identified ELACH as a "death squad". "There are two ways you can manage reporting," said Burghardt, who is now director of seminars at the East-West Center in Hawaii. "One way is to make sure that reports are balanced. The other is to steer people away from reporting on certain topics, and lie about what is going on. Negroponte's approach was the former, not the latter."
Zenaida Velasquez, a human rights activist whose brother was kidnapped has vigilantly pursued Negroponte regarding this issue. Their paths first intersected in 1983, when Velasquez asked for the ambassador's help in tracing dozens of Hondurans, including her brother, allegedly kidnapped by agents of the U.S.-backed Honduran military. Little came of the meeting, and the disappearances continued for at least another year. Through her efforts the CIA, an official Honduran ombudsman and an international human rights court have all acknowledged that the Honduran army was responsible for her brother Manfredo's kidnapping and presumed killing.
Recently de-classified internal CIA cables that John D Negroponte had sent to Washington while ambassador to Honduras in 1980's show he played central role in managing United States' illegal covert war against Nicaragua's leftist government; “…cables show Negroponte worked closely with William J Casey, then director of central intelligence, on Reagan adm's anti-Communist offensive in Central America”
More recently Negroponte has served as Ambassador to Iraq, where he presided over the largest US embassy in the world, manned by thousands of employees, fortified within the Green Zone. Baghdad was his fifth post following his assignment as the U.S. representative at the United Nations. Where he was known to tow the party line preventing any action on US international crimes. Since Iraq’s decent into further chaos under his oversight Bush saw fit to create a cabinet post for his old friend, director of U.S. intelligence. A powerful position with no set portfolio parameters. Fortunately for the people of the world Negroponte seems to have grown lazy in his dotage and on most workdays , the nominal boss of U.S. intelligence, John D. Negroponte, can be found at a private club in downtown Washington, getting a massage, taking a swim, and having lunch, followed by a good cigar and a perusal of the daily papers in the club’s library. “He spends three hours there [every] Monday through Friday,” gripes a senior counterterrorism official, noting that the former ambassador has a security detail sitting outside all that time in chase cars. Others say they’ve seen the Director of National Intelligence at the University Club, a 100-year-old mansion-like redoubt of dark oak panels and high ceilings a few blocks from the White House, only “several” times a week. Finding this regime too strenuous after less than two years on the job Negroponte traded a “cabinet-level job for a post that essentially requires him to handle tasks that Condoleezza Rice would rather not deal with.” Top congressional officials responded angrily to the news of Negroponte's departure. "I think he walked off the job, and I don't like it," said Senator John Rockefeller 4th of West Virginia, the new chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
With such a long and disturbing career and the power he wields so near the seats of power we the undefended and unrepresented masses can only hope this recent trend towards apathy endures. Should his previous rigor return we can only imagine nightmarishly what other massive human rights and war crimes we’ll find him at the center of in the years to come.
i John Negroponte Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Negroponte
ii Michael Dobbs Washington Post, Monday, March 21, 2005,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/artic...-2005Mar20.html (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52001-2005Mar20.html)
iii Sister Laetitia Bordes, s.h., afrocubaweb, NEW RIPPLES IN AN EVIL STORY, /01, http://afrocubaweb.com/negroponte.htm
iv Thursday, June 24th, 2004, Noam Chomsky on John Negroponte's Career ,
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/06/24/1423212
v CIA Inspector General Frederick P. Hitz on CIA activities in Honduras
vi Michael Dobbs Washington Post, Monday, March 21, 2005,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/artic...-2005Mar20.html (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52001-2005Mar20.html)
vii Shane, Scott. "Cables Show Central Negroponte Role in 80's Covert War
Against Nicaragua", The New York Times, 2005-04-13, p. A14. (preview only)
viii Thursday, June 24th, 2004, Noam Chomsky on John Negroponte's Career ,
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/06/24/1423212
ix Jeff Stein, March 3rd, 2006, Congressional Quarterly,
http://public.cq.com/public/20060303_homeland.html
x Mark Mazzetti and David E. Sanger, Published: January 4, 2007, U.S.
Intelligence chief asked for shift to State Department,
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/01/04/news/intel.php