[News] Negroponte's criminal history

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Council On Hemispheric Affairs

Monitoring Political, Economic and Diplomatic Issues Affecting the Western 
Hemisphere

Memorandum to the Press 04.20

Tuesday, April 27, 2004

Word Count: 5,008

ATTENTION

Senate Foreign Relations Committee is right now holding confirmation 
hearings on John Negroponte to be U.S. ambassador to Iraq.

COHA is here re-releasing its memorandum issued last Thursday on 
Negroponte's controversial stint as ambassador to Honduras, 1981-85.



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 a 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 honorableman.



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 since 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 
carrierin the U.S.-backed Contra war against Nicaragua's leftist Sandinistas.





Negroponte Arrives in Tegucigalpa

Negroponte replaced Jack Binns, who had been President Carters 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.





Negroponte Doctors Human Rights Reports

There is no question that Negroponte and the rest of the senior embassy 
personnel must have known about the disappearances and tortures of Honduran 
leftists since some of the most widely-distributed newspapers in the 
country carried at least 318 stories about such military abuses in 1982 
alone.  Negroponte also had direct contact with General Gustavo Alvarez 
Martinez, by then the chief of the Honduran armed forces and the secret 
head of Battalion 316.  Negroponte himself has insisted that on occasion he 
requested the release of a torture victim when the story was close to 
breaking in the U.S. press.  This happened in the 1982 case of the arrest 
and torture of journalist Oscar Reyes and his wife, Gloria.  Clearly, 
Negroponte and the embassy knew enough about these cases to act 
appropriately on occasion and when compelled by circumstances to do so.





Negroponte Introduces the Hard Line

The replacement of Binns by Negroponte reflected a shifting foreign policy 
strategy for Central America, witnessed by the introduction of the Reagan 
administration's hard-line policy and its implementation by Elliot Abrams; 
regarding Honduras, it was represented by the zealotry of the ambassador in 
Tegucigalpa, John Negroponte.



Negroponte's objective in Honduras was eerily familiar to the Bush 
administration's present goal in Iraq.  The U.S. government, again, is 
attempting to implement a democratic format in a country that has not yet 
chosen to do it on its own, and not necessarily by democratic means.  To 
implement this complex task will inevitably create a less than ideal 
situation for the ambassador to fulfill his instructions.  But given 
Negroponte's well-practiced M.O. of dark box chicanery, the spread of false 
information and outright lying, it is doubtful that he will be any less 
controversial or contrived in his task of successfully introducing 
democracy in Iraq than he was in Honduras, perhaps because democracyis not 
exactly his stigmata.  John Negroponte is preeminently 
an-ends-justifies-the-means operator.  He repeatedly in the past has proven 
that he is willing to employ practices which seem to be the antitheses of 
the definition of democratic, in democracys good name.  Negropontes career 
has been one where in his professional life he has shown a willingness to 
use authoritarian means to professedly advance democracy.





Which Man is Negroponte?

To his admirers, Negroponte is a distinguished career senior foreign 
service officer who has served his country well in a number of important 
posts.  To his detractors, Negroponte is a blunt, self-serving opportunist 
who aggressively (to a point well past overkill) took on what he perceived 
as being the ideological ethos of whatever administration he was serving at 
the time, even if it meant stretching credulity, ethics and personal 
honesty to the breaking point.  Perhaps a more accurate assessment of his 
performance is that he misused his authority and egregiously flouted decent 
standards of professional behavior, while scarcely looking 
backwards.  Rather than a paragon of democratic virtues, Negroponte is a 
man who has to be seen as the anti-Christ of democracy, repeatedly dragging 
its noble cause through offal.  Negroponte's nomination, along with the 
earlier appointments of Cold War stalwarts such as Otto Reich and Elliot 
Abrams, as well as Senator Helmsprotégé, Roger Noriega, to key hemispheric 
posts by President Bush, represents a throwback to an era when human rights 
and democratic processes were routinely suffered in the name of halting 
purported efforts by Moscow to expand Communism throughout the hemisphere.



To Iraqis used to Saddam Husseins inflexible rule, his cynicism and 
indifference to the suffering of others, Negropontes arrival in Baghdad 
will require no prolonged adaptation to the rule or style of Americas new 
pro-consul in the country.  They will have exchanged one man on horseback 
for another.  For those who are familiar with his professional history, it 
will take a clothespin on ones nose for his Iraqi audience to stomach any 
speech that he makes touting democracy.





Negroponte's Recent Past

After Negroponte had been nominated for the U.N. Ambassadorship, he was 
scheduled for a potentially withering cross-examination by his detractors 
on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for his actions in Honduras, as 
part of his confirmation hearings that were being conducted for that 
post.  But he was spared any further scrutiny by the occurrence of 9/11 and 
the overpowering feeling in the Senate that the U.S. must quickly fill the 
existing UN vacancy, by a peremptory vote.  Thus, rather than be submitted 
to exacting querying, the process then turned out to be little better than 
a pro-forma interrogation.



This scenario is sure to be replicated when it comes to the Iraq post.  The 
nomination is another in a series of disturbing foreign relations moves by 
the Bush administration and the Secretary of State, Colin Powell, which has 
had its ramifications when it comes to Latin America.  After all, 
Negroponte played a key role when it came to manipulating a string of weak 
leaders in Mexico and Chile in order to persuade them to fire their 
respective ambassadors to the UN because they opposed Negroponte's position 
on Iraq.  Negropontes complicity in efforts to obtain the discharge of 
Mexicos ambassador Adolfo Abullar Zinnser and Chile's Juan Gabriel Valdes 
scarcely differed from his purported perjured testimony in which he covered 
up the full extent of his knowledge of the human rights abuses committed by 
the Honduran military during his stay in that country, and his testimony 
over the details of his involvement in the Iran-Contra scandal.  He also 
admitted to the illicit diversion of U.S. aid to Honduras for the Contra 
forces, which normally should have disbarred any attempt to let him into a 
higher posting.  Unfortunately, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and 
its chairman can be counted on to do themselves little honor by 
trivializing their advice and consent responsibility when it comes to 
sending off this appointee to Baghdad.



General Luis Alonso Discua Elivir, a former Honduran death squad commander 
who claimed that he would spill the beanson Negroponte unless his family 
was allowed to remain in this country, had his U.S. visa revoked in 
2001.  It would be perhaps of interest to hear this mans testimony and have 
Negroponte respond to the huge amount of material implicating him in 
playing a sedulously deceitful role after being posted to 
Honduras.  Despite an abundance of reporters, scholars and former 
governmental officials who have publicly raised questions about Negropontes 
record, no public witnesses were invited to try to establish before the 
Senate Foreign Relations Committee that Negroponte was not qualified for 
his appointment to the UN post.  Therefore, what should have been an 
occasion of close scrutiny over serious charges of malfeasance in office, 
will instead be afforded no better than a cursory screening which will be 
more of a celebration than an examination.




Complicity with Death Squad Leaders

             During his ambassadorship in Honduras from 1981 to 1985, 
Negroponte was known to have close working ties to that nations most 
egregious local abuses of human rights.  One of the most notable of these 
unsavory characters was then-Colonel Gustavo Alvarez Martinez, at the time 
Hondurasmilitary chief and the de facto strongman of the country.  Promoted 
to general, Alvarez was later assassinated after returning from the U.S., 
where he had sought refuge from his senior military colleagues, who 
purportedly later had him murdered after he had refused to share with them 
the alleged large bribes that he had received via the U.S. embassy.  This 
largesse was a reward for facilitating the conversion of his country into a 
base to wage the Contra war against the incumbent leftist Sandinista 
government in Nicaragua.



            Alvarez was perhaps most infamous for his close connections to 
the death squad that became know as Battalion 316.  This Alvarez-created 
unit, which received training in torture techniques from Argentine dirty 
warveterans and the CIA (according to the Pulitzer prize-winning Baltimore 
Sun series which in part examined Negropontes controversial role in 
Honduras), is widely suspected of disappearingover 180 suspected 
subversivesin the early 1980s.  At the time, any Honduran opposed to that 
countrys use as a staging ground for President Reagans anti-Sandinista 
campaign was generally considered a subversive.





Promoting Human Rights to Save Face

             In response to recurrent journalist inquiries, as well as in 
formal proceedings, Negroponte repeatedly has denied or minimized any 
knowledge of charges that the Honduran military was behind the death squads 
and that such a force as Battalion 316 even existed.  Negroponte's attempts 
to dismiss the role of death squads have been undermined by his later 
boasts that, quite to the contrary, he personally intervened in a number of 
instances to secure the release of politically sensitive detainees being 
held by Honduran authorities.  Even if one grants this claim, such behavior 
on Negroponte's part was the exception rather than the rule, and perhaps is 
an indication of how he could have saved many more lives, if he had used 
his plenary position in Honduras to be a true advocate of human rights and 
human decency.



             One such apparently rare occasion in which he professedly 
intervened involved journalist Oscar Reyes, who was abducted after writing 
numerous articles critical of the Honduran military.  Former U.S. embassy 
spokesman Cresencio Arcos has verified that in July of 1983, Negroponte 
approached General Alvarez about his apprehensions over the just 
disappearedReyes.  It should be recalled that Arcos himself, as the embassy 
press officer, has been repeatedly accused by scholars studying Honduras 
during that epoch, of knowingly distributing false information to U.S. 
journalists stationed in Honduras at the time, and that he had entered into 
a familial relationship with a politically important Honduran family, 
allegedly not keeping his personal life entirely separate from his official 
responsibilities.



Prompted by protests from university students and a rash of newspaper 
publicity on Reyes at the time, it is unlikely that Negropontes request for 
the journalist's release was principally motivated by abiding human rights 
concerns.  Rather, the impetus for such singular concern in this case 
almost certainly was the fear that widespread coverage of the Reyes 
kidnapping could eventually make headlines in U.S. newspapers and bring 
unwanted publicity to his ambassadorship and the skullduggery in which it 
was involved.



             Recently released declassified documents that had been 
requested by the Senate for the Negroponte hearing were always on 
Negropontes mind because they repeatedly articulated a concern over any bad 
publicity that could becloud his reputation.  An undesirable outcome of 
this kind would have hardened opposition to President Reagans extremely 
controversial policy of trying to suck Honduras into the Contra war in 
exchange for secret bribes to a number of that countrys political and 
military officers, as well as hundreds of millions in U.S. funds being 
allocated for economic and military assistance programs to the Honduran regime.



             Another high-profile case in which Negroponte claims to have 
intervened was the disappearance of a suspected leftist, Inés Murillo.  A 
number of reports at the time stated that a U.S. Embassy (or perhaps a CIA) 
official had visited the Honduran torture facility known as INDUMIL, where 
Murillo was being held and tortured.  The daughter of a prominent local 
family, Murillo's parents were relentless in trying to locate their 
daughter, even taking out a full-page advertisement in the Honduran 
newspaper, El Tiempo.  Negroponte professedly vocalized concern over 
Murillo's status, again fearing bad press coverage, and brought up the 
matter when meeting with Honduran officials.  Four days later, Murillo was, 
in effect, narrowly saved from a certain death when she was publicly 
sentenced to two years in prison.





Contra Connections

             Starting in the early 1980s, Hondurans had become the primary 
U.S. support base for the Contra war.  The Honduran Army provided 
facilities and logistical support in a swath of territory adjacent to 
Nicaragua which became known as Contraland.Honduran channels were also used 
to funnel U.S. funds to the Contras, without disclosing their source, at a 
time when such funding to the rebels was prohibited by Congress, but was 
still flowing from other U.S. funding sources, including the CIA.



             During his stint in Tegucigalpa, Negroponte expanded the 
embassy staffs size ten-fold and it came to house one of the largest CIA 
deployments in all of Latin America.  The same scenario inevitably will be 
the case in Baghdad once Negroponte initiates his ambassadorship, and 
presides over what is being touted as the largest U.S. overseas diplomatic 
mission in the world, with anywhere from one to three thousand personnel 
being employed there.  Hondurans frequently referred to Negroponte as the 
U.S. proconsulof the country, as his arrogant and stealthy style of 
operating was more like that of an intelligence officer than a traditional 
diplomat, redolent of his days as a young agent in Vietnam.  Utilizing this 
persona, he was able to guarantee the cooperation of a Honduran base for 
the Contra rebel army through his domination of compromised local officials 
and institutions.






Negroponte and the Boland Amendment

             Negroponte also played a primary role in organizing such 
pro-Contra projects as a regional U.S. counterinsurgency training center at 
Puerto Castilla and the construction of the controversial $7.5 million 
highway to Puerto Lempira, which passed through a virgin strand of mahogany 
trees towards the countrys eastern coast.  Such a road would facilitate the 
flow of supplies to the U.S.-directed Nicaraguan right-wing contras.  In 
spite of U.S. AID regulations stipulating that such a U.S.-funded project 
must have an environmental impact study conducted before construction could 
commence, Negroponte huffily overruled such legal niceties and resorting to 
expletives, ordered the road to be built in spite of the illegalities 
involved and the protests of an AID official who had been sent from 
Washington to argue his case.  Support of Honduran aid to the Contras at 
the time also violated Congressional prohibitions, such as the 1982 Boland 
amendment, which banned the use of U.S. funds for military equipment, 
military training or advice, or other support for military activities, to 
any group or individual not part of a countrys armed forces, for the 
purpose of overthrowing the government of Nicaragua or provoking a military 
exchange between Nicaragua and Honduras.



             In exchange for General Alvarez's total collusion in support 
of Contra operations in Honduras, Washington offered full political and 
economic support to that country's corrupt military.  U.S. military aid to 
Honduras swelled from $3.9 million in 1980 to $77.4 million by 
1984.  Between 1981 and 1986, more than 60,000 U.S. soldiers and members of 
the National Guard traversed Honduras in over 50 military exercises meant 
not so much to intimidate the Sandinistas as to covertly transfer arms to 
the Contras.  Cynically enough, upon recommendation by Negroponte and 
others, the Reagan administration obscenely awarded Alvarez the Legion of 
Merit in 1983 for encouraging democracy.





By Whatever Means Necessary

             John Negroponte was sent to Tegucigalpa with the mission of 
keeping U.S. aid flowing into Honduras for the Contras by whatever means 
necessary.  Under Negropontes direct guidance, the U.S. Embassy in 
Tegucigalpa turned a blind eye to glaring evidence of systematic human 
rights abuses by Honduran officials.  Recently declassified State 
Department papers also reveal the lengths that Negroponte would go to in 
order to protect the victimizer, rather than the victims, of human rights 
abuses.  In 1982 alone, there were over 300 newspaper articles in the 
Honduran press reporting the illegal detention of university students and 
the abduction of union leaders.  Colonel Leonidas Torres Arias, a 
disgruntled former intelligence chief of the Honduran armed forces, stated 
in a 1982 news conference that Battalion 316 was indeed a death squad, 
citing three of its victims by name.  Efrain Diaz Arrivillaga, a Honduran 
congressional delegate, also said that when he spoke about the militarys 
abuses at the time to Negroponte, he was met with an attitude&of tolerance 
and silence.  In addition, organizations such as the Committee of the 
Relatives of the Disappeared visited the U.S. embassy to complain that the 
Honduran military was holding suspected dissidents in clandestine jails 
such as INDUMIL, to a totally unmoved Negroponte.



             Recent reports have further established that Negroponte was 
very well aware of human rights abuses in Honduras, and any doubts he had 
about individual cases were politically motivated rather than the product 
of genuine caution or any high evidential standard.  In Search of Hidden 
Truths, co-authored by the Honduran Human Rights Commissioner, documents 
recently-declassified reports which provide solid evidence that the U.S. 
was minutely aware of human rights abuses committed by the Honduran 
military in the 1980s, in spite of Negropontes persistent claims to the 
contrary.  In addition, declassified State Department documents also 
establish that in October of 1984, after General Alvarez had been deposed 
by the Honduran armed forces, Negropontes embassy was finally willing to 
acknowledge that, responsibility for a number of the alleged disappearances 
between 1981 and March 1984 can be assigned either directly or indirectly 
to Alvarez himself.



             Recently declassified cable traffic indicates a persistent 
inclination on Negropontes behalf to wholeheartedly believe rather pitiable 
excuses offered by General Alvarez to explain any human rights abuses.  For 
example, in a 1983 letter, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Inter-America 
Affairs Craig Johnstone conveyed to Negroponte that a number of guerrillas 
had been captured and executed by elements of the Honduran armed 
forces.  Negropontes response was to accept General Alvarez's lame excuse 
that the six detainees were shot dead while trying to escape.  However, 
when dealing with protests coming from human rights activists and political 
dissidents, the exact opposite was true when it came to assessing the 
quality of the information concerning allegations by Honduran human rights 
groups, such as CODEH, on violations by the armed forces.  These were 
routinely met with skepticism if not total denial by Negropontes embassy, 
and often, by the ambassador himself.



             Further discrediting Negroponte's bona fides on the countrys 
human rights situation are statements by Jack Binns, his immediate 
predecessor as ambassador to Honduras from 1980 to 1981.  At the time, 
Binns warned State Department officials of what he described as increasing 
evidence of officially sponsored and/or sanctioned assassinations of 
political and criminal targets.  Binns also has stated that there was no 
way for Negroponte not to know the grim facts of life in Honduras.  Thomas 
Enders, then Binnssuperior as Assistant Secretary of State, has admitted 
that he told Binns not to report human rights abuses through official 
channels in order to keep U.S. aid flowing in Honduras by any 
means.  Enders confessed his transgressions at a later date, something that 
Negroponte has failed to do, let alone even consider.





Blatant Contradictions in Human Rights Reports

Instances of disappearances, harassment and abductions of political 
dissidents all escalated under Negroponte, yet the annual Human Rights 
Reports prepared by the ambassadorial staff for the State Department's 
Bureau of Humanitarian Affairs were masterpieces of cunning redaction or 
invention, consistently downplaying human rights abuses and denying that 
any evidence existed of systematic violations by manipulating language and 
statistics.  For example, the 1982 report prepared for the State Department 
by Negropontes staff asserted, Legal guarantees exist against arbitrary 
arrest or imprisonment, and against torture or degrading treatment.  Habeas 
Corpus is guaranteed by the Constitution, Honduran law provides for 
arraignment within 24 hours of arrest.  This appears to be the standard 
practice.  All of this is absolute rubbish, and is not even true today, let 
alone in the early 1980s.  In fact, Honduran judicial procedures are 
routinely given the worst ratings by Transparency International.  In 
reality, extra-legal abductions by the military were rampant at the time 
and widely reported as well.  In addition, as was acknowledged in 
declassified State Department documents at the time, the judicial system 
was (and still is) almost entirely corrupt.  Relativesrequests for 
information or visitation rights for imprisoned family members were met 
with stonewalling, as court and military officials asserted that there was 
no record of the individual being detained, and thus no assistance was 
given in locating them.  The U.S. embassy was often asked to help find 
relatives or use its influence to gain the individuals 
release.  Negropontes awareness of at least a substantial number of these 
abductions is beyond dispute.





Honduras or Norway?

             Curiously enough, the aforementioned Reyes case did not even 
deserve any mention in Negropontes 1982 Human Rights Report, despite 
widespread media coverage and his self-professed personal 
involvement.  However, the following was included in the report: No 
incidence of official interference with the media has been recorded for 
several years.  It was difficult even for embassy staff in Honduras to take 
the human rights reports seriously, as they appeared to be in such blatant 
denial of what U.S. officials were witnessing in Honduras on a daily 
basis.  Rick Chidester, then a U.S. embassy aide in Honduras, has been 
quoted as jocosely wondering at the time whether they actually had not just 
prepared the human rights report on Norway.





Promoting Democracy Only When Necessary

             Before being sent to Washington, the embassys human rights 
reports were being carefully edited to clearly correspond to Negropontes 
own ideological sentiments and mission rather than to objective facts.  One 
must realize that Negroponte did not look upon the report as being routine, 
but rather as a potentially explosive document whose revelations must be 
contained.  What is certain is that Negroponte hypocritically set an 
incredibly high standard of proof for the inclusion of evidence of any 
wrongdoing by Honduran authorities, but repeatedly questioned the 
legitimacy of various human rights leaders in the country, which was 
certainly not in conformance with existing State Department 
practices.  Someone with such a distinguishedForeign Service career as is 
routinely claimed for Negroponte by those whose capacity for righteous 
indignation such as former Assistant Secretary of State Bernard Aronson and 
U.N. ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick is quite low, if it existed at 
all.  They would surely have known that in spite of their fulsome praise 
for Negroponte, such embassy reports are not intended to be exclusively 
based on facts and be admissible in court, but rather are also meant to 
include anecdotal information from ordinary citizens and the media 
concerning human rights abuses, which were myriad in Honduras at the time, 
and of which Aronson and Kirkpatrick have been aware.  Negroponte broke 
with this practice by requiring that all testimonies be in the form of 
public affidavits.  This criterion could only be met at great risk to the 
personal safety of those who wanted to come forward and reveal the truth 
behind the human rights violations occurring at the time, but were fearful 
of doing so.



             The juxtaposition of the Human Rights Reports for Honduras and 
Nicaragua provides a striking contrast of exactly what purpose the 
documents served.  While the embassy-produced Human Rights Reports for 
Honduras were characteristically incredulous over allegations of abuses by 
the military, in Sandinista Nicaragua the reports were manipulated to have 
the U.S. public believe that atrocities committed by the Sandinista 
government were of a gross nature and a daily event, which was far from the 
truth.  The Embassy reports provided by Negroponte's office appeared to 
state whatever was necessary in order to assuage the concerns of the 
Democratic majority in Congress as to what was happening in the area, 
disregarding the murderous realities that average Hondurans confronted on a 
daily basis.  The skewering of human rights reports thus appear to have 
been an exceedingly serious instrument in the Negroponte Embassy's arsenal, 
aimed at promoting his full-time efforts to abet the overthrow of the 
Sandinistas in Nicaragua, and were not at all intended to strengthen 
democratic institutions by actually reporting on human rights violations, 
or saving lives in that country.  There is ample reason to believe that 
charges of complicity in the murder of a Chilean constitutionalist general, 
that were leveled against Henry Kissinger in a U.S. court, could very well 
have been duplicated against Negroponte in a civil proceeding involving his 
own lawless behavior.





The Worst Man for the Job

             Negroponte's mental and moral flaws in the area of human 
rights should be prompting serious concerns over the disservice that his 
appointment would do to the diminished standing of this countrys already 
tattered reputation over its troubled Iraq policy.  As a would-be harbinger 
of democracy to Iraq, it would be little more than a cruel joke to pretend 
that this man had a bone of democratic rectitude to him.  Given 
Negroponte's tawdry record in Honduras, some observers contend that the 
original Negroponte nomination to the UN offered one more example of 
Secretary Powell's lack of standards when it comes to State Department 
policy, and that his testimonials of the honorable nature of such nominees, 
as was equally true of his nomination of Otto Reich, John Bolton and Roger 
Noriega, whom Colin Powell defended as honorable men,are totally at 
variance with reality.  The nomination of such a tainted figure as 
Negroponte to one of the most prominent posts available today to a U.S. 
diplomat should represent an insult to the international community, as well 
as a hollow affront to the memory of the victims of the Central American 
wars of the 1980s, and can only result in a further diminution of the 
reputation of this country for civic rectitude at a very difficult moment 
in its history.





This analysis was prepared by Larry Birns and Jenna Wright, with archival 
contributions by Jeremy Gans and Matthew Tschetter



Mr. Birns is the director of the Washington based Council on Hemispheric 
Affairs, where the other authors are research fellows.



Issued 27 April, 2004



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