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Gold9472
02-17-2005, 11:56 AM
Negroponte named as intelligence czar
‘We're going to stop the terrorists before they strike,’ Bush says

(Note From Gold9472: He played a BIG PART in the Iran/Contra Affair)

Updated: 10:43 a.m. ET Feb. 17, 2005 WASHINGTON - President Bush on Thursday nominated Iraq Ambassador John Negroponte to be the nation's first new national intelligence director.

"John will make sure that those whose duty it is to defend America have the information we need to make the right decisions," Bush said at the White House. "We're going to stop the terrorists before they strike."

Responding, Negroponte called the new job “the most challenging assignment I have undertaken in more than 40 years of government service.” Said Bush, “He understands the power centers in Washington.”

The nomination will have to go through the Senate Intelligence Committee for confirmation.

The choice of Negroponte came as a surprise, as his was not among the names suggested in recent weeks as a contender.

However, Negroponte was at the White House two days ago, and was offered the job at that time, NBC News learned.

Confirmed as ambassador on May 6, 2004, Negroponte, 65, had earlier been the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations since Sept. 18, 2001.

From 1997 to 2001, Negroponte was executive vice president for global markets at The McGraw-Hill Companies.

Negroponte was a career diplomat from 1960 to 1997, serving at eight different posts in Asia, Europe, and Latin America, according to his State Department biography. He also held important positions at the State Department and the White House.

Bush said Negroponte's qualifications included the fact that he "has spent the better part of his life in our foreign service."

A Member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the American Academy of Diplomacy, he is a graduate of Yale University.

No confirmation problem seen
Negroponte’s confirmation to the United Nations post was delayed a half-year mostly because of criticism of his record as the U.S. ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985. In Honduras, he played a prominent role in assisting the Contras in Nicaragua in their war with the left-wing Sandinista government.

Human rights groups alleged that Negroponte acquiesced in human rights abuses by Honduran death squads funded and partly trained by the CIA. Negroponte testified during the hearings for the U.N. post that he did not believe death squads were operating in Honduras.

But a leading congressional Democrat on intelligence told NBC that Negroponte will have strong support for confirmation.

Negroponte's biggest problem in the new post will be preserving his intelligence prerogatives from Pentagon encroachments, the Democrat added. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had initially opposed creating the intelligence post and only endorsed it after it was clear that it was going to happen.

In recent years, Negroponte was one of the few figures in the administration who successfully bridged the divide between the diplomats led by then Secretary of State Colin Powell and the hardliners led by Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney.

Bush nominated Lt. Gen. Michael Hayden, currently head of the National Security Agency, to be Negroponte's deputy. Hayden is the longest serving director of the secretive codebreaking agency and has pushed for changes, such as asking longtime agency veterans to retire and increasing reliance on technology contractors.

A military deputy could placate Pentagon critics who fear that the new bureaucracy will become an obstacle to troops in the field getting operational intelligence.

It took time
Even before the name was revealed, White House press secretary Scott McClellan defended the lengthy period of time it took to find a nominee.

“This is a position of critical importance and the president wanted to make sure he gets it right,” Bush’s spokesman said. “This individual will have the full authority to do the job that needs to be done and will have the full confidence of the president of the United States.”

The Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks on New York and Washington were the impetus for legislation passed by Congress and signed by Bush, creating the new position. The bill represented the most sweeping intelligence legislation in over 50 years.

Gold9472
02-17-2005, 12:08 PM
Interesting tidbit about John Negroponte...

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml%3Fi=20020311&s=corn

"John Negroponte was US Ambassador to Honduras and facilitated a clandestine quid pro quo deal, under which the Reagan Administration sent aid to Honduras in return for Honduran assistance to the contras, at a time when Congress had banned the Administration from assisting the contras. Negroponte's embassy also suppressed information about human rights abuses committed by the Honduran military. Negroponte is currently our UN ambassador."

Nowhereman
02-17-2005, 03:14 PM
Negroponte means balck pope in Italian.

Gold9472
02-17-2005, 03:19 PM
Negroponte means balck pope in Italian.

Corrupt means Corrupt in English.

Gold9472
02-17-2005, 05:37 PM
John Negroponte's Biography According To Wikipedia...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Negroponte

Gold9472
02-17-2005, 07:01 PM
Ambassador to Honduras

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 $77.4 million a year. At the time, Honduras was ruled by an elected but heavily militarily-influenced government. According to The New York Times, Negroponte was allegedly involved in "carrying out the covert strategy of the Reagan administration to crush the Sandinistas government in Nicaragua." Critics say that during his ambassadorship, human rights violations in Honduras became systematic.

Negroponte supervised the construction of the El Aguacate air base where Nicaraguan Contras were trained by the US, and which some critics say was used as a secret detention and torture center during the 1980s. Allegedly, 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 suggest that a special intelligence unit (commonly referred to as a "death squad") of the Honduran armed forces, Battalion 3-16, possibly trained by the CIA and the Argentine military, may have kidnapped, tortured and killed hundreds of people, allegedly 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. However, 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. It is unclear when or how Mr. Binns received this information and when it was known at the embassy.

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 together 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 introductions of some of the individuals. Other documents allegedly detailed 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 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 some circumstantial evidence supporting the view that Negroponte was aware that serious violations of human rights were carried out by the Honduran government, allegedly 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.

frindevil
02-17-2005, 07:05 PM
Like we were yapping about earlier Gold, people don't get to that level in Government and not have a dirty record of some sort. Or in business perhaps?

And that's the truly disgusting aspect.

Gold9472
02-17-2005, 07:09 PM
Like we were yapping about earlier Gold, people don't get to that level in Government and not have a dirty record of some sort. Or in business perhaps?

And that's the truly disgusting aspect.

I'm sorry... could you repeat that? :D

Gold9472
02-17-2005, 07:12 PM
Like we were yapping about earlier Gold, people don't get to that level in Government and not have a dirty record of some sort. Or in business perhaps?

And that's the truly disgusting aspect.

Well, Negroponte worked for Government and Business... What does that tell you?

Remember, it's proven that corporations care more about the bottom dollar than the people they're selling their products to. If our elected officials are interchangeable with their corporate counterparts, then why should their priorities be any different?