[North-NV-Greens] Fwd: [usgp-dx] By Appointing Negroponte Bush Is Rubbing Our Noses In It

Thu Feb 17 23:53:57 PST 2005

>
>
>Hello:  If we needed any further proof that Mr. Bush couldn't care less
>about the principles on which this nation was founded, his appointment of
>Mr. Negroponte ends the discussion.  A brute will now be the most powerful
>head of of spies and cloak and danger and back alley people probably in
>human history.  And the mainstream press, in its initial response, printed
>almost nothing but kudos about this "experienced" diplomt.  He is
>experienced all right.  Ugh.
>     Mr. Bush, by appointing him, is rubbing our noses in it.  If we
>thought we were in deep trouble before, we've got a lesson coming.  This
>man is a threat to democracy and human rights and the civilized conduct of
>diplomatic affairs.  We have furthe reason to be scared:  Very scared!  I
>am.
>     The following appeared in Sam Smith's indispensable The Progressive
>Review. Sam, lock your door tonight.  We must all lock our doors but if
>the midnight knock on the door comes, it will already be too late.  I am
>truly frightened.  Peace. Richard Walton, RI.
>
>MEET YOUR NEW CZAR, BUILDER OF OUR FIRST MAJOR TORTURE CENTER
>
>WIKIPEDIA - Negroponte was born in London. His father was a Greek shipping
>magnate. He graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy in 1956 and 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 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 million a year. At the time, Honduras was ruled by an elected but
>heavily militarily-influenced government. .
>
>Negroponte supervised the construction of the El Aguacate air base where
>Nicaraguan Contras were trained by the US, 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 (commonly referred to
>as a "death squad") 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 Óscar 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 Sun'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.
>
>The question of what John Negroponte knew about human rights abuses in
>Honduras will probably never be answered definitively, but there is a
>large body of circumstantial evidence supporting the view that Negroponte
>was aware that serious violations of human rights were carried out by the
>Honduran government with the support of the CIA. Senator Christopher Dodd
>of Connecticut, on 14 September 2001, as reported in the Congressional
>Record, aired his suspicions on the occasion of Negroponte's nomination to
>the position of UN ambassador: "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."  Among other
>evidence, Dodd cited a cable sent by Negroponte in 1985 that made it clear
>that Negroponte was aware of the threat of "future human rights abuses" by
>"secret operating cells" left over by General Alvarez after his deposition
>in 1984.
>
>WIKIPEDIA
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Negroponte#Ambassador_to_Honduras
>
>DODD COMMENTS
>http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2001_cr/s091401.html
>
>MARYKNOLL GLOBAL CONCERNS - 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. . .
>
>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.
>
>http://www.maryknoll.org/GLOBAL/ALERTS/no_negroponte.htm
>
>GHALI HASSAN, COUNTERPUNCH, 2004 - At the time Mr. Negroponte was in
>Honduras, Honduras was a military dictatorship. Kidnapping, rape, torture
>and executions of dissidents was rampant. The military top and middle
>ranks were U.S-trained at the School of the Americas, the Harvard version
>of the CIA, based in Fort Benning, Georgia. According to Human Rights
>Watch, graduates of the SOA are responsible for the worst human rights
>abuses and torture of dissidents in Latin America. Some of its 60,000
>graduates are notorious Manuel Noriega and Omar Torrijos of Panama. . .
>
>http://counterpunch.org/hassan06042004.html
>WORLD SOCIALIST - Honduras was not Negroponte's first introduction to US
>covert operations and mass killing. He began his climb up the national
>security establishment ladder as a political affairs officer at the US
>Embassy in Saigon from 1964 to 1968, a position that often serves as a
>cover for CIA operatives. From 1969 to 1971, he was an aide to Henry
>Kissinger in the Paris negotiations with the Hanoi government, reportedly
>criticizing Kissinger for making too many concessions to the Vietnamese.
>>From 1971 to 1973, he oversaw operations in Vietnam for the National
>Security Council, then headed by Kissinger. Thus, for nine years he played
>a direct role in prosecuting a US war that killed millions of Vietnamese.
>
>http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/apr2004/negr-a21_prn.shtml
>
>TERRY ALLEN, IN THESE TIMES - According to a 1995 four-part series in the
>Baltimore Sun, hundreds of Hondurans were kidnapped, tortured and killed
>by Battalion 316, a secret army intelligence unit trained and supported by
>the Central Intelligence Agency. As Gary Cohn and Ginger Thompson wrote in
>the series, Battalion 316 used "shock and suffocation devices in
>interrogations. Prisoners often were kept naked and, when no longer
>useful, killed and buried in unmarked graves." Members of Battalion 316
>were trained in surveillance and interrogation at a secret location in the
>United States and by th
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-- 
Paul Etxeberri

"Forests precede civilizations and deserts follow"   ---Chateaubriand