Español

On Feb. 17, 2005, President Bush surprised both Washington insiders and human rights activists by nominating John D. Negroponte, then U.S. ambassador to Iraq, to the newly created position of director of national intelligence. Political observers hardly expected a career diplomat to be selected to oversee the nation’s 15 intelligence agencies, while human rights advocates were shocked that such responsibility would be offered to a man who may have supported human rights abuses by CIA-trained Honduran security forces when he served as U.S. ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985. 

Negroponte’s human rights record in Honduras has been the subject of public and political scrutiny in recent years. When President Bush nominated Negroponte to the post of U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in May 2001, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee spent several months assembling and reviewing documentation related to his service in Honduras. In the years since Negroponte held the post, government reports, press investigations and witness testimonies have supplied evidence supporting allegations that the ambassador condoned or at least turned a blind eye to egregious human rights violations in Honduras. 

When the U.N. appointment was announced, the press devoted coverage to exploring Negroponte’s questionable background and human rights organizations launched campaigns to stop the appointment. However, on Sept. 14, 2001—just three days after the terrorist attacks on the United States—the Senate, clearly anxious to fill this important post in a time of international crisis, set aside its concerns about Negroponte’s record and approved his nomination. 

On May 7, 2004, a sense of urgency again took hold of the Senate when it confirmed Negroponte to the post of U.S. ambassador to Iraq just 17 days after President Bush announced the nomination. Although it was undeniably important to have an embassy team in place well in advance of the June 30 handover of power to an Iraqi governing body, the Senate for the most part neglected to reexamine the questionable human rights record of the man they approved to oversee Iraq’s transition to democracy. 

And on April 21, 2005, despite new revelations regarding Negroponte’s involvement in illegally supporting the Contra war against Nicaragua, he was again easily confirmed as the nation’s first director of national intelligence by a vote of 98 to 2. The two dissenting votes came from Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), a long-time critic of Negroponte, and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee who offered some of the toughest questions during the confirmation hearing. 

Wyden compared Negroponte’s version of what was happening in Honduras in the early ‘80s with the opinions of the CIA, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and Honduras’ human rights commissioner, noting: “It is almost as if you were an ambassador to a different country.” Wyden also asked Negroponte if he supported the current policy of “rendering suspected terrorists to countries with a long record of torture and barbaric practices,” to which Negroponte replied he would comply with current law. 

Negroponte in Honduras 

During Negroponte’s tenure in Honduras, the United States was using the country as a base of operations for the Contra war in Nicaragua and the larger war against Communism in Central America. In the name of “national security,” Honduran security forces—including members of the CIA-trained military intelligence Battalion 3-16—were committing serious human rights abuses against civilians who were supposed subversives. These violations of international law included kidnapping, torture and murder. 

The Honduran press published hundreds of stories of illegal detentions and abductions, Honduran citizens and human rights groups sought help from the justice system to locate missing persons, and families of the disappeared and at least one Honduran politician made direct requests for Negroponte's assistance. Nevertheless, the ambassador consistently denied—both to Congress and in the international press—that officially sanctioned abuses were taking place. 

The failure to report these violations undermined one of the embassy’s critical obligations: to inform Congress of events that might bear on foreign aid and policy decision making. Federal law requires the State Department to provide annual reports to Congress on human rights practices in countries receiving U.S. foreign assistance, and the State Department relies on U.S. embassies to provide the bulk of the information for these reports. Yet Negroponte and other high-level embassy officials reportedly encouraged their underlings to refrain from reporting on rights abuses. 

Rick Chidester, a junior embassy official in Honduras, told The Baltimore Sun that he was directed by his superiors to omit from his 1982 human rights report information he had gathered on military abductions and torture. (He later said the Sun had misquoted him.) The resulting sanitized State Department report contains inaccurate statements such as: "Student, worker, peasant and other interest groups have full freedom to organize and hold frequent public demonstrations without interference. ... Trade unions are not hindered by the government." In fact, it was these groups that had been targeted as so-called subversives and were suffering the brunt of abuses. 

A declassified 1997 CIA inspector general’s report gives further evidence of efforts within the embassy to suppress information. In reference to the case of the Rev. James Carney, the report cites one source, whose name is blacked out, as explaining that there was “no further reporting on the prisoner executions [because] the event had been reported previously and there was concern on the part of Negroponte that over-emphasis would create an unwarranted human rights problem for Honduras.” According to the same report, Negroponte’s “concerns” were enough to prompt the suspension of further investigations into the executions. 

Because the Foreign Assistance Act prohibits military aid to any government that "engages in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights,” these omissions influenced determinations of U.S. policy and assistance levels. The absence of information on disappearances and torture in the 1982 and later human rights reports cleared the way for increases in military aid, which shot up astronomically—from $4 million to $77 million—during Negroponte's ambassadorship. That increase in funding was vital to the U.S. effort to support the Contras and overthrow the Sandinsta government of Nicaragua. 

New evidence raises questions 

President Bush announced his intention to nominate Negroponte to the U.N. post in March 2001 and formally submitted his name for consideration in May. Subsequent to Negroponte’s previous appearance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, for the review of his nomination as ambassador to the Philippines in 1993, substantial information regarding the U.S. policy and role in Honduras in the 1980s was released into the public record. In 1995 The Baltimore Sun published a series of articles about human rights abuses committed by the Honduran military with the knowledge of the U.S. government, and this prompted the CIA to conduct an internal review of its activities during that period. 

In light of these and other reports, which raised questions about Negroponte’s role in Honduras, Democratic members of the Senate committee sought further government information before considering his U.N. nomination. Because of delays in obtaining requested information from the executive branch and the CIA, the nomination hearing was postponed until September. Senators also reviewed documents from the State and Defense departments. 

During the nomination hearing, which took place on Sept. 13, Senators of the Foreign Relations Committee asked Negroponte if the embassy failed to fully report the human rights violations that were taking place or provided “misleading reporting.” Negroponte replied that hard information was hard to come by and that he had “no large-scale reporting and evidence and information to the extent of these — of such violations as might have occurred.” 

He defended his claim, made in a 1982 letter to the Economist magazine, that “it is simply untrue to state that death squads have made their appearance in Honduras” and reasserted, “I didn’t see any such activities.” He also challenged the veracity of some of the sources cited in CIA reports that were used as evidence that he suppressed or misreported information on human rights abuses. 

In contrast, Negroponte’s predecessor in Honduras, Jack R. Binns, apparently was well aware that state-sponsored abuses were taking place and reported his concerns to Washington. In June 1981, Binns sent a cable to Washington stating, “I am deeply concerned at increasing evidence of officially sponsored/sanctioned assassinations of political and criminal targets, which clearly indicate GOH [government of Honduras] repression has built up a head of steam much faster than we had anticipated.” 

A briefing book that Binns’ embassy staff prepared for Negroponte prior to his arrival in November 1981 stated that the “GOH security forces have begun to resort to extralegal tactics—disappearances and, apparently, physical eliminations—to control a perceived subversive threat.” In response to Senate questions, Negroponte commented, “I do not recall the briefing book, although it is entirely likely that such a book was prepared for my review. Nor do I recall reviewing any specific cables of Ambassador Binns regarding … the human rights situation.” 

These reports surely warranted the attention of the new ambassador. Furthermore, during Negroponte’s first full year in office, Honduran newspapers published over 300 stories on military abuses, and in August 1982 ousted Honduran intelligence chief Leonidas Torres Arias held a press conference in Mexico claiming there was an active “death squad” headed by Gen. Gustavo Alvarez Martínez, a man with whom Negroponte was in regular, close contact. 

At the 2001 Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, the late Sen. Paul Wellstone (D-Minn.), who along with Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) voted against the ambassador’s nomination, pressed the ambassador on his silence in the face of evidence of serious rights violations. “I just can't understand why you were not more outspoken, why you were not more public, and, even today, why you seem unwilling to acknowledge the fact that, indeed, the state was involved,” Wellstone said. “It was widespread. People were murdered." 

Negroponte responded by citing a 1983 op-ed article he wrote for the Los Angeles Times and speeches he gave during that period as proof that he did speak out on the issue. Yet his op-ed piece merely refers to human rights as a "soft spot in Honduras' otherwise positive political record," and asserts that “there is no indication that the infrequent human-rights violations that do occur are part of deliberate government policy.” 

Negroponte also claimed he “did a lot in the area of quiet diplomacy.” He said he expressed concern over rights abuses to Honduran government officials, including the president and military commanders, and urged them to correct what he described as “deficiencies” in the country’s law-enforcement system. 

The ambassador also downplayed meetings he held with leaders of the Nicaraguan Contras in the 1980s after Congress had passed the Boland Amendment, which banned aid to the Contras. He claimed that he met only with "civilian" leaders of this paramilitary group "to show interest in their situation." Negroponte also held several meetings with Oliver North, the National Security Agency official at the center of the secret deals to provide funding to the Contras through the illegal sale of arms to Iran. 

Three weeks before President Bush announced his intention to nominate Negroponte to the U.N. post, the State Department revoked the visa of former Battalion 3-16 commander Luis Alonso Discua Elvir. Discua had been living in the United States since 1996, officially serving as Honduras’ deputy representative to the United Nations. However, he had not been fulfilling the duties of his post, thereby violating the terms of his diplomatic visa. 

Some State Department officials marveled at the unprecedented speed of Discua’s removal, leading some observers to believe that the timing of his forced departure was not coincidental. Two other former Battalion 3-16 members, José Barrera Martínez and Juan Angel Hernández Lara, were deported from Canada and the United States, respectively, earlier in the year. 

In contrast to the Senate hearings for Negroponte’s confirmation as U.N. ambassador, senators voting on his nomination to the Iraq post raised few questions about his record in Honduras. Many senators expressed approval of his service in the U.N. position and a desire to not rehash past issues. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted unanimously to approve the nomination, and when it moved to the full Senate, it was passed on a voice vote rather than given full debate on the Senate floor. 

Only three senators—Mark Dayton (D-Minn.), Richard Durbin (D-Ill.), and Tom Harkin (D-Iowa)—voted against confirming the nomination. Sen. Harkin alone spoke out against Negroponte’s confirmation, citing his “callous disregard for human rights abuses through his tenure as U.S. ambassador to Honduras.” 

Negroponte was the senior President Bush’s ambassador to Mexico from 1989 to 1993, where he was involved in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) negotiations. His confirmation to that post, coming on the heels of the Oliver North trial, stalled when some senators questioned his role in the Iran-Contra affair. However, by the end of his tenure in Mexico, he had received considerable praise for his work from Democrats and Republicans alike. 

In 1993 the Senate unanimously confirmed his nomination by President Clinton to fill the post of ambassador to the Philippines. It was during his tenure in the Philippines that questions regarding his human rights record in Honduras came to light; he initially refused comment to the press but later defended his actions. In 1997, he reportedly was in line for appointment as ambassador to Greece, but retired from diplomatic service to take a job in the private sector with the McGraw-Hill Companies. The Greece ambassador appointment process would have required a Senate hearing that undoubtedly would have delved into his past in Honduras. 

A U.S. foreign service officer since 1960, Negroponte also acted as liaison officer for the Vietnam peace talks (1968-1969), assistant to Henry Kissinger and chief of the Vietnam office of the National Security Council staff (1970-1973), counselor for political affairs in Ecuador (1973-1974), consul general to Greece (1975-1977), assistant secretary of state for oceans and fisheries affairs (1977-1979); deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs (1980-1981), assistant secretary of state for oceans and international environmental and scientific affairs (1985-1987), and deputy assistant to the president for national security affairs (1987-1989). In the late 1990s he helped negotiate the controversial U.S. military exit from Panama. 

National Intelligence Director Negroponte 

Negroponte’s confirmation as the country's first national intelligence director is puzzling because he has no direct intelligence experience. In fact, his role in Honduras shows he may be willing to manipulate information for political purposes. Negroponte has unprecedented oversight over the 15 U.S. intelligence agencies. All other intelligence directors, including the head of the CIA, report directly to him, and he gives daily intelligence briefs to the president, a duty previously assumed by the director of the CIA. He is responsible for setting precedents and defining the role of this office. 

Since taking office in April 2005, Negroponte has drawn criticism from activists and some Democrats for being evasive or misleading about intelligence programs. During a Senate Intelligence Committee discussion on the National Security Agency’s domestic surveillance program, Sen. Feingold asked Negroponte if there were other intelligence gathering programs on which the full committee had not been briefed. Negroponte declined to answer. He also told reporters that the government was not monitoring domestic calls without warrants just days before USA Today reported that the NSA was logging millions of domestic calls. President Bush has given the director of national intelligence additional powers since the position’s inception. Negroponte now has the authority to exempt public corporations from accounting obligations including disclosure of financial records to investors.  

During Negroponte’s nomination hearing for the ambassadorship to Iraq, Sen. Harkin said: “We need someone in Iraq who has a sterling record, an unassailable record in terms of his or her support for fundamental human rights and for the rule of law, someone who has no blot on their career record of having been involved in the kind of abuses that have come to light recently in Iraq under our military jurisdiction. After the terrible revelations of the abuses under our watch at the prison at Abu Ghraib … I believe nominating Ambassador Negroponte to this vital post would send entirely the wrong message.” 

Unfortunately, the “wrong message” was sent once again with Negroponte’s confirmation as national intelligence director. A man accused of ignoring credible intelligence in order to support Reagan’s Cold War foreign policies in Central America is now responsible for filtering and providing all intelligence to the Bush administration. Abuse and torture have been−and evidence suggests they continue to be−perpetrated by U.S. personnel in the name of obtaining intelligence. There is increased concern that programs like those that include warrantless domestic spying are usurping civil rights in the name of “national security.” 

The national intelligence director has a questionable human rights record, has repeatedly stated that he supports renditions to countries that, according to the State Department, practice torture, and he refuses to disclose information on intelligence programs to elected lawmakers. In light of these facts, there should be great concern not only for the quality of intelligence gathered but also for the manner in which the government acquires information. 

For more information 

"Bush Picks Envoy to Iraq to Be New Overseer of Spy Agencies." Douglas Jehl and Elisabeth Bumiller. The New York Times; Feb. 17, 2005. 

"Intelligence Nominee Comes Under Renewed Scrutiny on Human Rights." Scott Shane. The New York Times; Feb. 19, 2005. 

“An Exquisite Danger; John Negroponte's Record in Honduras Does not Inspire Confidence About His Appointment as US Ambassador to Iraq.” Duncan Campbell. The Guardian/UK; June 2, 2004. 

"The Full Negroponte; From top to bottom, John Negroponte is the wrong ambassador to Iraq." Matthew Yglesias. The American Prospect Online; Apr 18, 2004. 

“Congress Ignores 'Dirty War' Past of New Iraq Envoy.” Jim Lobe. Inter Press Service; April 30, 2004. 

S. Hrg. 107-781. Nomination of Hon. John D. Negroponte to Serve as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. Hearing Before the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, 107th Congress, First Session. Sept. 13, 2001. (PDF or text) 

CIA Stipulations to Facts Regarding Honduran Military Activities and U.S. Intelligence in Honduras in the 1980s. Except from the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on the nomination of John D. Negroponte to serve as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations; Sept. 13, 2001.

“Contra Aide.” Sarah Wildman. The New Republic; March 8, 2001.

“A carefully crafted deception.” The Baltimore Sun; June 18, 1995. 

“Former envoy to Honduras says he did what he could.” The Baltimore Sun; December 15, 1995. 

”Bush’s UN Pick Faces Battle Over Contra Role.” Los Angeles Times; March 25, 2001. 

”Bush Nominates ‘Dirty Tricks’ Diplomat to UN.” San Antonio Current; April 17, 2001. 

 “What Did Negroponte Hide and When Did He Hide It?” Los Angeles Times; April 19, 2001. 

“Negroponte Takes Up Post as Chief U.S. Envoy at U.N.” Washington File, United Nations; Sept. 19, 2001. 

“Honduras: Former Battalion 3-16 members conveniently removed from scene.” Central America/Mexico Report; April 2001. 

“New ripples in an evil story.” Laeitia Bordes; July 2001. (Commentary on Negroponte’s U.N. ambassadorship nomination by a nun who attempted to seek information on disappearances from Negroponte in 1982.) 

"Update: The Panama Canal Base Negotiations." Adam Isacson and Susan Peacock. From Center for International Policy. Oct. 30, 1996. 

The United States in Honduras, 1980-1981: An Ambassador’s Memoir.” Jack R. Binns. McFarland & Co., 2000. 

Letter to the Editor. John Negroponte. The Economist, 1982.