Untitled Document
Why does Negroponte conveniently forget his own extensive
record of human rights violations whenever he accuses Venezuela?
One of the most outspoken critics of Venezuelan President Ch?vez on human rights
is John Dimitri Negroponte. At a first glance, this diplomat seems to be just
another regular, official mouthpiece of the US Empire. However, after investigating
this individual’s antecedents and not-so-distant past, one quickly understands
that Negroponte is a criminal that hides his deeds through well-planned and
fabricated lies.
Born in 1939, Negroponte was a diplomat for the Foreign US Service (1960-1997),
ambassador for the US at the UN (2001-2004), ambassador of the US in Iraq (2004-2005)
and today he is the director of the United States National Intelligence.1
From 1981 to 1985, Negroponte was ambassador of the US in Honduras. Amongst
his “achievements” in the area of human rights throughout his career,
the most prominent ones are:
1) From 1971 to 1973, Negroponte was the official in charge
of the National Security Council (NSC) for the Vietnam section. At this time
he received direct orders from another war criminal, Henry Kissinger. Negroponte
worked for the US embassy in the now defunct South Vietnam. As we all know,
during those years the US government waged a neo-colonial war against the people
of Vietnam. The NSC worked hand in hand with the CIA and the National Security
Agency (NSA); the job of these “intelligence” organizations was
completely linked one to the other and they collaborated in all of their main
proyects. Curiously, when Negroponte entered as head of the CSN for the Vietnam
section in 1971, the Phoenix Operation began to reach ever higher levels of
brutality and bloodlust. Operation Phoenix was a CIA paramilitary proyect aimed
at inflicting terror upon all suspected Vietnamese communist collaborators.
Amongst other common tactics used in Operation Phoenix by the US-created paramilitaries
was the slow death through dantesque tortures of would-be communist sympathizers,
followed by dismemberment of the corpses and hanging what was left of the bodies
in public places in order to maximize the horror effect upon anyone thinking
about joining the anti-occupation resistance. At one given point, the CIA-trained
paramilitary army in South Vietnam assassinated 1800 civilians a month. Information
gathered from the pro-US South Vietnam government, it was estimated that over
40 thousand vietnamese civilians were killed overall by the CIA paramilitaries
in Operation Phoenix alone. Note: there were many other such operations throughout
the war. To the CIA, Vietnam was an experimentation camp where several operations
involving diverse methods in torture, genocide and paramilitary warfare were
carried out. This experience that Negroponte gained during his Vietnam years
in using paramilitary armies to inflict terror upon a population, would later
help him further on down the line in Central America as well as present-day
Iraq and Colombia. 3, 5, 15
2) Negroponte supervised the creation and maintenance of 3000
hectare base named El Aguacate in Honduras, where CIA forces trained Contra
terrorists during the decade of the 1980’s. Those same Contras later crossed
the border into neighboring Nicaragua where they massacred suspected Sandinista
sympathizers. In addition to that, the Contras played a role in inflicting terror
and murdering peasants in Honduras itself. Such is the case that the Presidents
of America Watch and Helsinki Watch affirmed the following: “based on
what we have seen and what we have heard that the Contras are carrying out a
well-planned terrorist strategy all along the Honduran border”; in those
same declarations, they furthermore said “the US can no longer evade taking
responsibility for these atrocities. These declarations were published in the
Wall Street Journal in April of 1985. The base of El Aguacate became a concentration
camp in Honduras during the 80’s where a whole variety of abuses and crimes
were committed on a routine basis. The victims of these abuses were student
leaders who were active in leftist politics, members of labor unions, farmers
and anyone who could remotely be considered a leftist. In 2001 excavations at
the El Aguacate base revealed common graves where more than 185 corpses where
uncovered. The remains of the victims showed extreme signs of physical abuse.
1, 2, 3, 8
3) During Negroponte’s mandate as ambassador to Honduras,
human rights in the region were violated with impunity. Even though the Honduran
government was supposed to be democratic, dissapearances of leftist sympathizers
occurred constantly. Amongst the paramilitary terrorist groups created by the
CIA with the complete approval and knowledge of John Dimitri Negroponte was
the death squad named Batallion 3-16 also known as Batallion 316. The leaders
of this death squad were Billy Joya and General Luis Alonso Escua Elvir, both
involved in the direct and cold-blooded kidnapping, torture and assassination
of hundreds of people within Honduras. While this went on, Negroponte chronically
lied to the US Congress in Washington saying that no human rights was being
violated in Honduras. A clear example of Negroponte’s lies to Congress
was the case with Rick Chidester, a young US official at the embassy in Honduras.
Chidester was assigned to write the human rights reports regarding Honduras
for the US Congress. When the report was finished, he was given a direct order
by Negroponte before sending it off to Washington: erase the vast majority of
paragraphs containing details about human rights violations from the report,
especially those paragraphs involving the US’s covert operations in Honduras.
Chidester gave a lengthy and detailed confession of these events to The Sun
newspaper. One example of a torture case, ocurred to Rene Velasquez a honduran
lawyer. He was arrested on June 1st of 1982 in front of his office in the capital
Tegucicalpa and was taken to a torture center. I shall quote Velazquez’s
own words on what he went through: “they undressed me, they tied my hands
and proceeded to put a mask on my face and humilliated me...then they put on
my body some sort of paste that attracted hordes of flies and other insects.
They beat me all the time, on the ribs, the stomach...the pain was unbearable.”
2, 4, 7, 10, 18
4) One of the ways in which the death squads in Central America
were financed was through drug trafficking. US Senator Kerry demonstrated before
the Senate that the State Department had paid 800 thousand Dollars to four cargo
plane companies belonging to well known Colombian drug lords. The cargo airplanes
carried weapons to the groups that Negroponte organized and supported in Honduras.
Under oath, the pilots of said airplanes gave their testimony, confirming Senator
Kerry’s statements. The US press itself through its own investigations
affirmed that Negroponte had been involved in the weapon and drug traffick from
1981 to 1985. Through the income generated from drug sales, the CIA and the
US embassy in Honduras obtained weapons illegally, which in turn would be given
to the death squads. 18
5) Another chronic lie that Negroponte repeatedly said to
the US State Department while he was ambassador to Honduras was the following:
“in Honduras there is complete liberty of expression for labor union members”.
Nothing could be further from the truth since during the 80’s in Honduras
anyone remotely being associated to the labor movement or the left was kidnapped,
tortured and generally assassinated by the CIA paramilitary army. The summit
of Negroponte’s hypocrisy came about when in 1989 during the Foreign Relations
Committee of the Senate he was asked if he knew anything about the abuses comitted
by Batallion 316; Negroponte answered: “I have never seen any evidence
that they were involved in death squad activities.” That is, the co-founder
of Batallion 316 said before the Senate Committee that he knew nothing of the
role this group of trained murderers undertook. Negroponte’s lies were
so blatant and ludicrous at all levels regarding human rights in Honduras that
some US diplomats noted that the human rights reports coming from Honduras looked
as though they were from Norway instead. In 1982, Negroponte wrote to The Economist
magazine saying yet another lie: “it is simply false that death squads
ever existed in Honduras”. It is to be noted that just in 1982, the Honduran
press reported over 318 cases of kidnappings, torture and assassination at the
hands of the CIA’s paramilitary army and the Honduran army. Numerous US
officials have come forth revealing Negroponte’s extensive involvement
in the organization and often times unsuccessful cover-ups of these crimes.
Just to refresh Mister Negroponte’s memory regarding the existance of
death squads in Honduras I shall now cite the case of Florencio Caballero. Caballero
was a Honduran, trained by the CIA in US soil and specializing in torture techniques.
In an exclusive New York Times interview done years after the actions he describes,
Caballero described to the NYT what his job was like in Honduras. In the interview,
Caballero describes how he was a member of the CIA paramilitary army and how
he tortured to death dozens of political prisoners. Another name that may ring
a bell to Negroponte is Inés Murillo, one of the few survivors of a paramilitary
concentration camp created by the CIA in Honduras. The torture she endured at
that camp included: extreme sexual abuse, bestial beatings, routine electric
shocks in diverse areas of her body, amongst others. Mrs. Murillo had to endure
this hell for 80 days while she was a prisoner of the CIA’s death squad
in Honduras. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 11
6) In the summer of 1983 a Jesuit priest named James F. Carney
disappeared in Honduras. Carney was known to extensively help the poor while
doing his missionary work amongst the peasants. Carney’s family has repeatedly
said that Negroponte did everything he could in his power as ambassador to interfere
in investigations regarding the priest’s disappearance. It is presumed
that the priest disappeared while in the company of guerrillas. In 2003 investigators
sent by the local courts found the remains of 10 people in an area of Honduras
bordering Nicaragua. All of the skulls at the site had bullet holes. The investigation
on whether one of those bodies was that of Carney continues. This is just an
example of the many people that disappeared and Negroponte prevented investigations
into these dissapearances and actively went out of his way to conceal the truth
to the public. 7, 8, 9, 10
7) Sister Laetitia Bordes explains how in May of 1982, 32
women disappeared in Honduras. When she went to the US embassy to ask for help
in the investigation to know the whereabouts of these missing women, Negroponte
was evasive and gave bogus answers such as: “the US embassy doesn’t
get involved in Honduran affairs”. Borders affirms that what Negroponte
stated to her was false since she knew of his close work with the Honduran armed
forces and its chief commander, General ?lvarez. Bordes furthermore states that
Negroponte was a pioneer in introducing new elements of psychological warfare
and torture into the Honduran army. The Sister’s testimony is also corroborated
with the fact that the US’s “aid” to the Honduran military
increased from 4 million to 77.4 million dollars, almost all of it directed
to the creation of the new paramilitary armies. In 1994 the Commission for Human
Rights of Honduras found John Dimitri Negroponte guilty of hiding information
to the public about the disappearances that were done by paramilitaries and
the Honduran army. The Commission also found Negroponte guilty of violating
human rights for having helped in the organization of the paramilitary armies
in Honduras. 7, 10, 12, 18
8) In September of 2001, Bush named Negroponte as ambassador
of the US to the UN. His term lasted until March of 2003 when the invasion of
Iraq occurred. Indeed, Negroponte was the most outspoken mouthpiece in favor
of a military aggression against Iraq. The US ambassador before the UN affirmed
time and time again the now well-known lie that Saddam represented a menace
and that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Such weapons were never found
and Saddams supposed links to terrorist groups were equally false. Through intimidation
and open threats against other countries, Negroponte achieved the diplomatic
objectives that Bush needed. In addition, Negroponte was the only representative
at the UN who boycotted in a rude manner the speech given by the exambassador
of Iraq to the UN, by walking impulsively out of the hall where the speech was
taking place. Once his mission at the UN was complete and the fake justification
for war was bought by a lot of bullied nations, Negroponte was ambassador of
the US for Iraq from June 2004 until april 2005. It is during this time period
that sectarian violence increased exponentially to what we have today, an all
out civil war. The paramilitary organization called Badr Brigade are the main
perpetrators of such violence. This terrorist group is characterized by a decidedly
pro-US stance and their practice includes kidnapping, torture and assassination
of anyone that is an outspoken critic of the puppet Iraqui government or the
US. Sunni Muslims, homosexuals and those who have criticized the occupation
have also been victims of the Badr Brigade. “Curiously”, the torture
techniques used by the Badr Brigade have been the same as those used used by
Batallion 316 in Honduras—this is known from the signs of torture found
on the victims’ bodies. In January of 2005 the US began in Iraq an operation
named “The El Salvador Option”. Said operation was the training
of “squads that would act in favor of US interests”, as stated by
US military public relations bureau. Members of such squads were chosen from
fanatical elements of the Badr Brigade and the Kurdish Peshmerga (a group with
strong ties to the Central Intelligence Agency). In today’s Iraq, these
paramiitary terrorist organizations working in US black operations are literally
the law: they do what they want, when they want, and to whomever they want.
Amongst their proud achievements are the placing of bombs in public places and
killing of dozens of innocent civilians with such bombs and quickly afterwards
make media campaigns in their radios blaming such attacks on the Iraqui Resistance
in order to wear out its support amongst the population. For example the case
of the Mosque of the Golden Dome bombing. In that incident, religious leaders,
some even friendly to the US have blamed the US’s local paramilitary lackeys
for that terrorist attack. The head of Human Rights of the UN, John Pace, publicly
denounced these pro-US paramilitary organizations as well as the US government
itself for supplying intelligence, training, organization and weapons to these
terrorist groups. John Pace’s declarations were given to Amy Goodman in
the public TV program called Democracy Now. Amongst the highlights of the program
where when Amy Goodman asked Pace if there were paramilitary death squads in
Iraq. Pace replied: “They do exist. My observations have led me to the
conclusion that the massacres perpetrated by these groups bear the same resemblances
as those that occurred in countries such as El Salvador.” El Salvador,
like Honduras, was another country where the CIA installed hundreds of political
persecution centers throughout the 80’s. 6, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17
Note: I would include a point 9) regarding Negroponte’s
connections to the Colombian death squads (the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia)
but such a work would be beyond the scope of this article. Let it simply be
known that since Negroponte became chief of US National Intelligence in April
of 2005, Venezuela has struggled to contain the influx of AUC terrorists backed
by the Uribe-ruled Colombian state and the current US regime. Thousands of peasants
have been massacred by the AUC in the last year alone both in Colombia and Venezuela,
this being the tip of the iceberg. The AUC may have existed long before Negroponte
came along, but never before had it undergone a resurgence like now. The entire
campaign by the Uribe regime to stage a “disarmament” was the joke
of the year and a well-polished public relations move rivaled by few in history.
The simple fact of the “disarmament”: AUC paramilitaries gave in
their old weapons and traded them for modern and brand new ones, all made in
USA. Again, like in Central America and modern-day Iraq, Negroponte has made
emphasis in expanding Colombian death squads to further present-day US interests.
Still we find that Negroponte dares to speak out against Venezuela in the area
of human rights. In February of 2006 Negroponte stated that Venezuela was involved
in actions that destabilized other governments in Latin America through terrorist
groups. The US diplomat also affirmed that Venezuela violated human rights and
that it wasn’t cooperating with the war on drugs. One wonders what new
dizzying height of hypocrisy Negroponte will reach next. After having understood
the facts behind this international criminal’s life achievements one can
only conclude that Negroponte should be one of the last people on the face of
the planet with the moral authority to speak of human rights. The creation of
paramilitary death squads, having chronically lied about their activities, having
actively meddled in the internal affairs of numerous countries and having been
behind the murder of thousands of people across the world isn’t enough
for Negroponte: his new compulsion is to chronically lie and to attack Venezuela,
accusing that country of the same crimes he is guilty of. Let the facts be known:
Negroponte is a professional criminal by career whose cynicism and bloodthirsty
mind will not rest until Venezuela is once again a pawn of US political and
economic policies. One of the worst things that could happen to Latin America
in recent times just materialized: this war criminal has now at his fingertips
the entire US intelligence apparatus with the full support of the US State Department,
thus being a direct threat to Venezuela’s sovereignty. Venezuela’s
government has based the bulk of its income in drastically improving the education,
health care, and standard of life of its citizens. Venezuela has a mixed market
economy based on social justice with a completely democratic system where elections
and referendums to impeach the President occur at the will of the people when
they deem it appropriate; such a country inevitably seems to be a problem for
the Bush administration which aspires to have complete dominion in what used
to be the US’s backyard and thus acquire new oil reserves close to home.
Only through a strong investment in defence and counter-intelligence will Venezuela
be able to survive the relentless interferences of US imperialism and the state
terrorism that Negroponte continues to unleash upon this South American country.
18, 19, 20
References:
1) John Negroponte, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Negroponte,
Wikipedia, accedido el 30 de Marzo del 2006.
2) John Dimiti Negroponte, http://www.derechos.org/nizkor/negroponte/,
Equipo Nizkor Derechos Humanos, con acceso el d?a 28 de Marzo del 2006.
3) Roppel, Estados Unidos: Intervenciones del Poder Imperial
en Cuarenta Paises del Mundo, Ediciones Aurora, Colombia, 2005.
4) Cohn, Ginger, A Carefully Crafted Deception, http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bal-negroponte4,0,7719532.story,
The Baltimore Sun, 18/6/1995.
5) John D. Negroponte, http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=John_D._Negroponte,
Source Watch, con acceso el d?a 28 de Marzo del 2006.
6) Sweet, Frederick, Deja Vu: Negroponte to Vietnamize Iraq?,
http://www.interventionmag.com/cms/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=717,
accedido Abril 14 del 2006.
7) Kinzer, Stephen, Our Man in Honduras, http://www.nybooks.com/articles/14485,
The New York Review of Books, Volume 48, Number 14, 20/11/2001.
8) New Evidence Opens Up History of Dirty War, http://isla.igc.org/PubHighlights/CurrentEvts/199910.html,
Isla Information Services Latin America, accedido Abril 14 del 2006.
9) Gonz?lez, Remains May Be American Priest’s, http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B07EEDB1F39F933A05752C0A9659C8B63&n=Top%2
fReference%2fTimes%20Topics%2fOrganizations%2fR%2fRoman%20Catholic%20Church%20,
New York Times, accedido Abril 14 del 2006.
10) John Negroponte, http://www.mayispeakfreely.org/index.php?gSec=doc&doc_id=137,
May I Speak Freely? Media for Social Change, accedido el 29 de Marzo del 2006.
11) Kornbluh, The Negroponte File, http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB151/,
National Security Archive Briefing Book No. 151, Part 1 and 2, 12/4/2005.
12) Hermana Laetitia Hoardes, New Ripples in an Evil Story,
http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_07/issue_09/opinion_01.html,
The Panama News, 2001.
13) Hassan, Who is Negroponte?, http://www.countercurrents.org/iraq-hassan030604.htm,
Counter Currents, accedido el 15 de Abril del 2006.
14) Sadeq, Iraq Leaders Praise Group Accused of Killings,
http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/06/08/iraq.badr/index.html,
CNN, accedido el 15 de Abril del 2006.
15) Dahr Jamail, Negroponte’s “Serious Setback”,
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0603/S00076.htm,
Scoop Independent News, accedido el 15 de Abril del 2006.
16) http://www.islammemo.cc/main.asp,
Mafkarat al-Islam.
17) Hassan El Najjar, http://www.aljazeerah.info/,
Al Jazeerah.
18) Eduardo Cornejo Deacosta, En EEUU Gobierna Una Narcobanda,
Los Papeles de Mandinga, A?o 2, #36, 7 de Marzo del 2006.
19) Horacio Duque, Rumsfeld, Negroponte y Condoleezza Con
Plan Para Aplastar Revoluci?n Bolivariana, Diario Vea, #888, 20 de Febrero del
2006.
20) Bush, el Pent?gono y la CIA Mueven sus Peones en el Tablero
Criollo: Arranc? Campa?a Electoral Escu?lida, Los Papeles de Mandinga, A?o 2,
#36, Marzo 7 del 2006.
Written on: 14th of April, 2006
Translated to English and expanded: June 23, 2006.
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