The Evil One is back

wallyburger · February 17th, 2005, 12:34 PM

Negroponte Selected As Intelligence Chief
Feb 17, 2:14 PM (ET)

By KATHERINE SHRADER

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush on Thursday named John Negroponte, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and currently the administration's top representative in Iraq, to be America's first national intelligence director.

Announcing the move, Bush said that Negroponte understands global intelligence needs because he's had a long career in the foreign service. Bush said he wants Negroponte to be his clearinghouse for intelligence and make decisions on the intelligence budgets for 15 government agencies.

"John will make sure that those whose duty it is to defend America have the information we need to make the right decisions," the president said.

Bush said Negroponte's office will be outside of the West Wing because it's important that he be apart from the White House. "Nevertheless, he will have access on a daily basis in that he'll be my primary briefer," Bush said.

Negroponte said if confirmed he plans to "reform of the intelligence community in ways designed to best meet the intelligence needs of the 21st century."

Bush named Lt. Gen. Mike Hayden, who has served as director of the National Security Agency since March 1999, as Negroponte's deputy. He 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.

Discussing the authority that Negroponte will have, Bush said that "people who control the money, people who have access to the president generally have a lot of influence. And that's why John Negroponte is going to have a lot of influence. He will set the budgets."

The amount the United States spends on intelligence is classified, but is thought to total nearly $40 billion annually.

Negroponte, 65, was at the United Nations when he was tapped to take on the delicate job of transforming the U.S. presence in Iraq from that of an occupier to that of an adviser. Bush chose him for the job last April and he went to Baghdad hours after the handover of sovereignty to Iraq's interim government in June.

Michigan Sen. Carl Levin, ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, questioned the decision to pull Negroponte out of Iraq. He said he is concerned "about the message we are sending to Iraq and the rest of the world by removing our ambassador to Iraq so soon after he took office and at such a critical point in the transition to a democratically elected Iraqi government."

Negroponte has also been ambassador to the Philippines, Mexico and Honduras.

According to one well-informed administration official, former CIA director Robert Gates was Bush's first choice but Gates and some other candidates declined the post. They worried that the legislation establishing the intelligence job was too vague in outlining its authority, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

But White House Chief of Staff Andy Card denied reports that the White House had had a difficult time in finding someone to accept the new position. "I'm impressed with how much bad information people have - that people have been offered the job and turned it down," Card said. "It's just not true."

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.

The director of national intelligence will hold a pre-eminent role in U.S. national security affairs and coordinate the work of all 15 U.S. intelligence agencies.

In a statement, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Republican Pat Roberts of Kansas, said he was pleased by the selection of Negroponte and Hayden.

"We will hold the ambassadors' confirmation hearing as soon as his duties in Iraq are completed," Roberts said.

Roberts spokeswoman Sarah Little said Negroponte told the senator he would need to return to Iraq to tie up issues there. Little said that Roberts believes the confirmation may be weeks away.

As ambassador to the United Nations, Negroponte helped win unanimous approval of a Security Council resolution that demanded Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein comply with U.N. mandates to disarm. Negroponte worked to expand the role for international security forces in Afghanistan after the overthrow of the Taliban government.

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.

In the past year, the intelligence community has been faced with a series of negative reports, including the work of the Sept. 11 commission and the Senate Intelligence Committee's inquiry on the flawed Iraq intelligence.

Kolo · February 17th, 2005, 12:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by wallyburger

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.

What happened in Honduras (especially) and other parts of Latin America during the Reagan administration may not have been pretty, but the policy of democratization from without was noble, and the results ultimately beneficial to the country (and greatly beneficial to most of the region).

Sound familiar?

(And I know there's a debate to what extent Reagan's intervention drove the rise of democracies in Latin America, just as there's debate as to what effects Reagan's SDI initiative and the MX, etc... had on the Soviet collapse. I'm a conservative, so I give Reagan all the credit.)

wallyburger · February 17th, 2005, 01:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hugh Jass

What happened in Honduras (especially) and other parts of Latin America during the Reagan administration may not have been pretty, but the policy of democratization from without was noble, and the results ultimately beneficial to the country (and greatly beneficial to most of the region).

Sound familiar?

(And I know there's a debate to what extent Reagan's intervention drove the rise of democracies in Latin America, just as there's debate as to what effects Reagan's SDI initiative and the MX, etc... had on the Soviet collapse. I'm a conservative, so I give Reagan all the credit.)

Confusing. Beneficial to what country?

justAndy · February 17th, 2005, 01:43 PM

The 80,000 - that's right, 80,000 peasants killed by those US backed death squads were worth it.
Yeah - in El Salvador, 5 - yes 5, families owned most of the farmland, over 1/2 of El Salvadorans were landless sharecroppers. It was VERY important for us to help the oligarchy there keep THAT system in place....
Our history of involvement in Central America was good for United Fruit and Dole and kept pineapple and banana prices low for us - VERY crucial to the security of America.
This is what makes self styled "conservatives" proud?

Kolo · February 17th, 2005, 02:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by andikrist

The 80,000 - that's right, 80,000 peasants killed by those US backed death squads were worth it.
Yeah - in El Salvador, 5 - yes 5, families owned most of the farmland, over 1/2 of El Salvadorans were landless sharecroppers. It was VERY important for us to help the oligarchy there keep THAT system in place....
Our history of involvement in Central America was good for United Fruit and Dole and kept pineapple and banana prices low for us - VERY crucial to the security of America.
This is what makes self styled "conservatives" proud?

Yep--don't you already know we conservatives love killing peasants, contaminating drinking water, melting glaciers, polluting the air and lining our pockets?

And on the question above (and I'm no expert on Latin America), the most direct CIA oversight of torture and murder in Latin America I know of occurred in Honduras, and I meant to say Nicaragua was ultimately better off as a result. And it does make me a bit queasy that CIA ops supervised the popping of eyeballs out of their sockets--but hey, those eyeballs might have belonged to commies (or opposed the Honduran government, or disagreed with our policies in the region generally).

(I hope you know I'm being facetious--though the policy is right, sometimes application of the policy is misguided or even murderous. Not everything that occurred in Latin America under Reagan was clean and pure, but the policy which drove the administration's actions was, and I think the region is better off today as a result.)

nidan · February 17th, 2005, 03:08 PM

The end does not always justify the means

SunCardfan · February 17th, 2005, 03:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by nidan

The end does not always justify the means

but sometimes it does.. I'd take torture and dieing if it meant the better well being of man kind..not everything is black and white in this world..and the more we try to make it that way the more opportunities we give the opposition to hurt us...

wallyburger · February 17th, 2005, 03:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hugh Jass

Yep--don't you already know we conservatives love killing peasants, contaminating drinking water, melting glaciers, polluting the air and lining our pockets?

And on the question above (and I'm no expert on Latin America), the most direct CIA oversight of torture and murder in Latin America I know of occurred in Honduras, and I meant to say Nicaragua was ultimately better off as a result. And it does make me a bit queasy that CIA ops supervised the popping of eyeballs out of their sockets--but hey, those eyeballs might have belonged to commies (or opposed the Honduran government, or disagreed with our policies in the region generally).

(I hope you know I'm being facetious--though the policy is right, sometimes application of the policy is misguided or even murderous. Not everything that occurred in Latin America under Reagan was clean and pure, but the policy which drove the administration's actions was, and I think the region is better off today as a result.)

Unbelievable.

Kolo · February 17th, 2005, 06:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by wallyburger

Unbelievable.

And if we had simply let the commies overrun the southern half of the Korean continent, 1,000,000 people's lives would have been spared. What a stupid thing to do, allow people to get whacked (and whack a few hundred thousand ourselves) to combat the spread of Communism.

I'm no fan of Joe McCarthy, but American intervention to stem Soviet expansion (when we took it seriously) not only served America's strategic interests, it made the lives of those who survived far better. Would el Salvador and Chile and Argentina and Nicaragua and Grenada be effectively Cuban if we hadn't done some unpleasant things to weaken the Soviets' influence in the region? Who knows. But it's not like we could have simply invaded to overthrow governments hostile to our country and w/in spitting distance. So Reagan could either take his chances that the Western Hemisphere would become increasingly hostile, or deal w/ some bad guys to cause harm to our real (not imaginary) enemy. Like I said, parts of it make me queasy, and we certainly could have done certain things differently. But the policy was right, and 20 years down the road things are generally better than they would have been with a Latin American policy of strict appeasement.

Kennedy had the right idea re: the Bay of Pigs--he just didn't have the balls to take a political hit and do the job right.

I know it's not what's commonly taught by leftist history professors (and even many conservatives), but it's what I think.

wallyburger · February 18th, 2005, 04:11 AM

Capital Games
Negroponte's Dark Past
02/17/2005 @ 1:43pm
E-mail this Post

How many times can I write the same piece about John Negroponte?

Today George W. Bush named him to the new post of Director of National Intelligence. Previously, Bush had hired Negroponte to be UN ambassador and then US ambassador to the new Iraq. On each of those earlier occasions, I noted that Negroponte's past deserved scrutiny. After all, during the Reagan years, when he was ambassador to Honduras, Negroponte was involved in what was arguably an illegal covert quid pro quo connected to the Iran/contra scandal, and he refused to acknowledge significant human rights abuses committed by the pro-US military in Honduras. But each time Negroponte's appointment came before the Senate, he won easy confirmation. Now that he's been tapped to lead the effort to reorganize and reform an intelligence community that screwed up 9/11 and the WMD-in-Iraq assignment, Negroponte will likely sail through the confirmation process once again.

His previous exploits, though, warrant more attention than ever. He has been credibly accused of rigging a human rights report that was politically inconvenient. This is a bad omen. The fundamental mission of the intelligence community is to provide policymakers with unvarnished and valuable information-even if it causes the policymakers headaches. But there's reason to believe that Negroponte did the opposite in tough circumstances. If that is the case, he would not be the right man to oversee an intelligence community that needs solid leaders who are committed to truth-finding. Rather than rewrite my previous work on Negroponte, I am posting below the article I did after Bush named him the viceroy of Baghdad. It's more relevant today than when it first appeared. But I doubt Negroponte's dark history will finally trigger a confirmation debate within the Senate. He has skated in the past; he'll likely do so again.

Bush's New Iraq Viceroy

by DAVID CORN

May 10, 2004 issue

Like dirty money, tainted reputations can be laundered, as the Administration fervently hopes in the case of John Negroponte. Now UN ambassador, Negroponte has been chosen by George W. Bush to be the first ambassador to post-Saddam Iraq. When Bush selected Negroponte to be his UN representative in 2001, Negroponte was one of several Iran/contra figures being resurrected by the Bush crowd. As Honduras ambassador in the early 1980s, Negroponte, a career diplomat, participated in a secret and possibly illegal quid pro quo in which the Reagan Administration bribed the Honduran government with economic and military assistance to support the contras fighting the socialist Sandinistas of Nicaragua. Perhaps more significant, while Negroponte served in Honduras, he denied or downplayed serious human rights abuses by government security forces. This past threatened his confirmation as UN ambassador. But 9/11 rescued Negroponte. At the time of the attack, his nomination was pending, and the Senate moved quickly to approve him.

******

These days Negroponte's tenure in Honduras is old news. The Washington Post's front-page story on his nomination did not mention his stint there. Senate staffers say that his record in Honduras won't be a focus of the confirmation hearings. But his tour of duty there is worth scrutiny, for it raises questions about his credibility and his ability to handle tough situations and inconvenient truths. While he was in Honduras and for years afterward, Negroponte refused to acknowledge the human rights abuses. In a 1982 letter to The Economist he said it was "simply untrue to state that death squads have made their appearance in Honduras." The next year he maintained, "There is no indication that the infrequent human rights violations that do occur are part of deliberate government policy." And during his 2001 confirmation he stated, "I do not believe then, nor do I believe now, that these abuses were part of a deliberate government policy. To this day, I do not believe that death squads were operating in Honduras." How then does he account for a 1997 CIA Inspector General investigation that concluded, "The Honduran military committed hundreds of human rights abuses since 1980, many of which were politically motivated and officially sanctioned" and linked to "death squad activities"?

Not only has Negroponte declined to acknowledge the obvious; when he was ambassador, the State Department rigged its Honduras human rights reports to Congress. As a 1995 Baltimore Sun series noted, "A comparison of the annual human rights reports prepared while Negroponte was ambassador with the facts as they were then known shows that Congress was deliberately misled." The Sun reported, "Time and again...Negroponte was confronted with evidence that a Honduran army intelligence unit, trained by the CIA, was stalking, kidnapping, torturing and killing suspected subversives." But this didn't make it into State Department reports. Had Honduras been found to be engaging in systematic abuses, it could have lost its US aid--thwarting the Reagan Administration's use of Honduras to support the contras.

Negroponte has claimed "there was no effort to soft pedal" abuses in Honduras. Yet in public statements he repeatedly conveyed a misleading appearance, and in the years since he has held tight--in the face of compelling evidence--to the view that the abuses that did occur were merely unfortunate exceptions. Negroponte's confirmation hearing will provide senators a chance to probe Bush's plans (or lack thereof) in Iraq. But if Negroponte's record as an abuse denier is not questioned, as seems likely, he will once again be able to escape his haunted past.

wallyburger · February 18th, 2005, 04:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hugh Jass

And if we had simply let the commies overrun the southern half of the Korean continent, 1,000,000 people's lives would have been spared. What a stupid thing to do, allow people to get whacked (and whack a few hundred thousand ourselves) to combat the spread of Communism.

I'm no fan of Joe McCarthy, but American intervention to stem Soviet expansion (when we took it seriously) not only served America's strategic interests, it made the lives of those who survived far better. Would el Salvador and Chile and Argentina and Nicaragua and Grenada be effectively Cuban if we hadn't done some unpleasant things to weaken the Soviets' influence in the region? Who knows. But it's not like we could have simply invaded to overthrow governments hostile to our country and w/in spitting distance. So Reagan could either take his chances that the Western Hemisphere would become increasingly hostile, or deal w/ some bad guys to cause harm to our real (not imaginary) enemy. Like I said, parts of it make me queasy, and we certainly could have done certain things differently. But the policy was right, and 20 years down the road things are generally better than they would have been with a Latin American policy of strict appeasement.

Kennedy had the right idea re: the Bay of Pigs--he just didn't have the balls to take a political hit and do the job right.

I know it's not what's commonly taught by leftist history professors (and even many conservatives), but it's what I think.

Allende , Pinochet, Somoza, Peron, et al ???????????

Kolo · February 18th, 2005, 06:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by wallyburger

Allende , Pinochet, Somoza, Peron, et al ???????????

Che, Castro, Mao, et al.???????? Not everybody the Left cuddles up to is a saint, either. And from what I remember (from A.S.U. 15 yrs. ago), we ousted (killed?) Allende from Chile because he was a Marxist. I could be wrong. And on Pinochet, yeah, I guess we did allow a whole lot of innocent Chileans to get butchered. Our bad.

The "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" truism causes us to get close to some bad people (arming Saddam w/ mustard gas in the 80's comes to mind--it's great for Iranians, bad for the Kurds, but oh well), and we make mistakes along the way. I see it as a political reality, and I think many on the Left do not.

justAndy · February 18th, 2005, 06:58 AM

was a DEMOCRATICALY ELECTED marxist.
So "for their own good" we helped a Fascist dictator take over.
There is no justification for this other than a percieved benefit to the USA.
The majority of Chileans paid the price - for decades.
I love how rightwing dictators are our buddies, but leftwing ones are our enemy. Except China...

wallyburger · February 18th, 2005, 08:18 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hugh Jass

Che, Castro, Mao, et al.???????? Not everybody the Left cuddles up to is a saint, either. And from what I remember (from A.S.U. 15 yrs. ago), we ousted (killed?) Allende from Chile because he was a Marxist. I could be wrong. And on Pinochet, yeah, I guess we did allow a whole lot of innocent Chileans to get butchered. Our bad.

The "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" truism causes us to get close to some bad people (arming Saddam w/ mustard gas in the 80's comes to mind--it's great for Iranians, bad for the Kurds, but oh well), and we make mistakes along the way. I see it as a political reality, and I think many on the Left do not.

Oh yes. Che, Castro , Mao et al are the evil doers? And who were their counterparts? Pinochet, Batista,Chiang Kai- shek and the War Lords ?????? You seem aligned with the butchers. I'm a political vegetarian so obviously our palates will be diametrically opposed.

P.S. How Huge is it ?

justAndy · February 19th, 2005, 09:40 AM

Mao killed plenty.
Che never had the power - he would have killed plenty.
ALL dictators kill - it just seems we like the ones that are in the pocket of big business. Somehow Americans don't mind the right wing butchers - only the left wing ones.