Bush's man at the UN: a slice of Negroponte's "career"

NEW RIPPLES IN AN EVIL STORY
by Sister Laetitia Bordes, s.h.

John D. Negroponte, President Bush's nominee as the next ambassador to
the United Nations?  My ears perked up.  I turned up the volume on the
radio.  I began listening more attentively.  Yes, I had heard correctly.
Bush was nominating Negroponte, the man who gave the CIA backed Honduran
death squads open field when he was ambassador to Honduras from 1981   to
1985.

My mind went back to May 1982 and I saw myself facing Negroponte in his
office at the US Embassy in Tegucigalpa.  I had gone to Honduras on a
fact-finding delegation.  We were looking for answers.  Thirty-two women
had fled the death squads of El Salvador after the assassination of
Archbishop Oscar Romero in 1980 to take refuge in Honduras.  One of them
had been Romero's secretary.  Some months after their arrival, these women
were forcibly taken from their living quarters in Tegucigalpa, pushed
into a van and disappeared.  Our delegation was in Honduras to find out
what had happened to these women.  John Negroponte listened to us as we
exposed the facts.  There had been eyewitnesses to the capture and we
were well read on the documentationthat previous delegations had gathered.
Negroponte denied any knowledge of the whereabouts of these women.  He
insisted that the US Embassy did not interfere in the affairs of the
Honduran government and it would be to our advantage to discuss the
matter with the latter. Facts, however, reveal quite the contrary.
During Negroponte's tenure, US military aid to Honduras grew from $4
million to $77.4 million; the US launched a covert war against Nicaragua
and mined its harbors, and the US trained Honduran military to support
the Contras.

John Negroponte worked closely with General Alvarez, Chief of the Armed
Forces in Honduras, to enable the training of Honduran soldiers in
psychological warfare, sabotage, and many types of human rights
violations, including torture and kidnapping. Honduran and Salvadoran
military were sent to the School of the Americas to receive training in
counter-insurgency directed against people of their own country. The CIA
created the infamous Honduran Intelligence Battalion 3-16 that was
responsible for the murder of many Sandinistas.  General Luis Alonso
Discua Elvir, a graduate of the School of the Americas, was a founder and
commander of Battalion 3-16. In 1982, the US negotiated access to
airfields in Honduras and established a regional military training center
for Central American forces, principally directed at improving fighting
forces of the Salvadoran military.

In 1994, the Honduran Rights Commission outlined the torture and
disappearance of at least 184 political opponents.  It also specifically
accused John Negroponte of a number of human rights violations. Yet, back
in his office that day in 1982, John Negroponte assured us that he had
no idea what had happened to the women we were looking for.  I had to
wait 13 years to find out.  In an interview with the Baltimore Sun in1996
Jack Binns, Negroponte's predecessor as US ambassador in Honduras, told
how a group of Salvadorans, among whom were the women we had been
looking for, were captured on April 22, 1981 and savagely tortured by
the DNI, the Honduran Secret Police, before being placed in helicopters
of the Salvadoran military. After take off from the airport in
Tegucigalpa, the victims were thrown out of the helicopters.  Binns told
the   Baltimore Sun that the North American authorities were well aware
of what had happened and that it was a grave violation of human rights.
But it was seen as part of Ronald Reagan's counterinsurgency policy.

Now in 2001, I'm seeing new ripples in this story.  Since President   Bush
made it known that he intended to nominate John Negroponte, other people
have suddenly been "disappearing", so to speak.   In an article
published in the Los Angeles Times on March 25 Maggie Farley and Norman
Kempster reported on the sudden deportation of several former Honduran
death squad members from the United States.  These men could have provided
shattering testimony against Negroponte in the forthcoming Senate
hearings.   One of these recent deportees just happens to be General Luis
Alonso Discua, founder of Battalion 3-16.  In February, Washington revoked
the visa of Discua who was Deputy Ambassador to the UN.  Since then,
Discua has gone public with details of US support of Battalion 3-16.

Given the history of John Negroponte in Central America, it is indeed
horrifying to think that he should be chosen to represent our country at
the United Nations, an organization founded to ensure that the human
rights of all people receive the highest respect.  How many of our Senators,
I wonder, let alone the US public, know who John  Negroponte really is?

Sister Laetitia Bordes, s.h.