Director of Fear
 

The recent appointment of John Negroponte to the post of Director of National Intelligence represents another link in a series of appointments by President Bush that together represent an affront to the traditions this nation was founded on.  As with many of Bush´s selections, Negroponte has shown throughout his career that he is willing to deceive the nation in order to further the political goals of extremist elements in the Republican party.  Negroponte had served in a variety of posts during his long career at the foreign service, yet perhaps his most controversial position was Ambassador to Honduras during the period 1981 - 1985. 

During this period the US became embroiled in the Contra scandal in Nicaragua, with much of the money for the Contras being funneled through Honduras.  Honduras also served as a military base for the Contra fighters, who in their battle to overthrow the Sandinista government of Nicaragua were receiving covert US financial support, in violation of the 1983 Boland Amendment  passed by the US Congress.  During this time Negroponte successfully lobbied for increased military assistance to Honduras, with the end result that annual US military support increased from $4 million to $77 million.  The indirect funneling of these resources to training exercises and financial support for the Contras, through tacit agreements between the Honduran government and officials such as George H.W. Bush and Negroponte, was an act that, in addition to violating the spirit of US law, resulted in enormous suffering for the people of Nicaragua subjected to the ravages of a US sponsored insurgency.
 

However, the Contra episode was only part of the larger crime that Negroponte was overseeing.  During his tenure repressive elements of the Honduran military carried out atrocities against progressive elements of society that were in opposition to the government.  The CIA trained an infamous brigade, more aptly described as a governmental death squad, called Battalion 3-16, that was responsible for the torture and murder of hundreds of Honduran citizens during Negroponte´s ambassadorship.  During this time Negroponte was in close contact with both the CIA and the Honduran generals later implicated in the wave of repression.  Negroponte himself was involved in the establishment of a military base called El Aguacate where Contra soldiers were trained and dissidents were interrogated by military officials who used the full variety of torture methods that were at their disposal.  In 2001 185 bodies were exhumed from this base, remains of those who had dared to speak out against the Honduran government that Negroponte so eagerly supported.  During this time of severe human rights abuse, which was later documented by the Honduras Commission on Human Rights, Negroponte declined to support investigations into the crimes and directed his staff to downplay such abuse in mandatory reports to Congress for fear that US military aid would be cut off.  The embassy´s efforts in this regard were later documented by the CIA in a 1997 report on its own Honduran activities, and have been corroborated by former embassy staff who served under Negroponte.
 

In light of the systematic abuse of prisoners undertaken at military installations in Iraq such as Abu Ghraib, perhaps Negroponte was the logical choice as Ambassador to Iraq in 2004 given the desire of Bush and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld to present a benign view of state sponsored torture.  His appointment as Director of National Intelligence in the US should make Americans wonder to what end the powers of the intelligence services will really be directed.

June, 2005