[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 120 (Friday, September 14, 2001)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9461-S9464]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
NOMINATION OF JOHN NEGROPONTE TO REPRESENT THE U.S. AT THE UNITED
NATIONS
Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I rise this afternoon at this late hour on
Friday at the close of a terrible week--a week which has seared itself
into our very being for the rest of our lives--to object to the
approval of John Negroponte to serve as U.S. Ambassador to the United
Nations.
I understand an agreement was reached that this nomination be passed
on a voice vote today. It has been made, and certainly I will honor and
respect the agreement. However, I believe this nomination deserves a
full debate on the Senate floor and a full look into the record of this
individual who is about to represent all of us in the United Nations.
I understand and I agree that America needs a U.N. ambassador. We do
need someone there, especially given the terrorist attacks on our
Nation this week, in terms of an international dialog and international
response to this terrorist attack. But I believe it is also important
that all Senators be given an opportunity to vote on this controversial
nomination and to debate it.
Why is Mr. Negroponte's nomination so controversial? Why did the
Baltimore Sun, in April of this year, devote a five-part series just on
this one nominee? Well, I think there are two considerations that stand
out in my mind, and I will explain why I oppose his nomination.
First of all, Mr. Negroponte showed a callous disregard for human
rights abuses throughout his tenure as U.S. Ambassador to Honduras
between 1981 and 1985, during which time I traveled to Honduras and, in
fact, went out to one of the contra camps with the Ambassador at that
time. Quite frankly, in my conversations at that time in Honduras, and
with the later revelations of what was going on with Battalion 316,
which was supervised and basically trained by our CIA and our military
personnel--when a lot of these issues came to light, it became clear to
me that during my trip there I was misled and, quite frankly, not given
the correct information that I sought.
Secondly, I believe Mr. Negroponte knowingly misinformed the U.S.
State Department about gross human rights violations in Honduras and
throughout Central America during the height of the so-called contra
war in Central America in the 1980s.
That action, in turn, resulted in the Congress being misled as to the
scope and nature of gross human rights violations that were being
committed by the contras and by the Honduran military and, in
particular, Battalion 316 in the Honduran military.
In a letter to The Economist in 1982, then-Ambassador Negroponte
wrote:
It is simply untrue that death squads have made appearances
in Honduras.
Yet from 1981 to 1984 over 150 people disappeared, including one
American priest, Father James Carney, whose body has never been
recovered.
All indications are it was Battalion 316 that took custody of and had
control over Father Carney. There had been reports that they
interrogated him, that he was severely tortured and killed--he was an
American citizen, an American priest--during the time of Mr.
Negroponte's ambassadorship.
I am not saying in any way he was responsible. I do not want anyone
to get that wrong. All I am saying is as Ambassador at that time, there
is a lot of evidence to show he just turned a
[[Page S9462]]
blind eye and a deaf ear to the human rights abuses at that time in
Honduras.
The 1997 CIA Inspector General's report and other official records,
as well as extensive research published in numerous books and articles,
have implicated Mr. Negroponte personally in condoning and covering up
egregious human rights violations during his service in Honduras in the
1980s. Read the five-part series that was in the Baltimore Sun in 1995
and later amplified this year. That lays out the case quite clearly.
Is he really the best nominee President Bush could find to represent
our Nation at the United Nations? I think not. I guess what bothers me
more than anything else is, as we move ahead seeking to get other
nations to support us in our efforts to uphold human rights around the
world, he does not bring clean hands to this critically important and
senior diplomatic post.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the following articles be
printed in the Record at the end of my remarks: An April 16, 2001, Los
Angeles Times editorial headlined ``Hard Questions for U.N. Nominee'';
a Sunday, April 8, 2001, editorial written by Frank Del Olmo, associate
editor of the Los Angeles Times; a Thursday, April 19, 2001, editorial
written by Father Joseph Mulligan, a Jesuit priest from Detroit who has
been working in Central America since 1986; an April 2, 2001, editorial
from In These Times of the Institute for Public Affairs, and a list of
150 people who disappeared in Honduras from October 29, 1981, to May
30, 1985.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
(See Exhibit 1.)
Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I understand agreements were made. I wish
we had a fuller debate on this nominee. I want the record to show if,
in fact, there was a record vote on this nominee, this Senator from
Iowa would have voted no.
I thank the President, and I yield the floor.
Exhibit 1
[From the Los Angeles Times, Apr. 16, 2001]
Hard Questions for U.N. Nominee
Under normal circumstances, President Bush's nomination of
a veteran U.S. diplomat like John D. Negroponte to be
ambassador to the United Nations would be a routine matter.
Negroponte is well regarded in the State Department and close
to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell. Senate approval would
be all but certain.
But while Negroponte's 37-year career in the foreign
service has admittedly been an impressive upward arc of
increasingly important ambassadorships, it was not routine.
It would be a mistake for the Senate, and particularly for
the Committee on Foreign Relations, to treat Negroponte with
kid gloves.
To be sure, Negroponte's diplomatic career has been marked
by noteworthy accomplishments. He handled sensitive embassy
posts quite effectively, most notably Mexico City in the
years leading up to the North American Free Trade Agreement
and Manila following the collapse of Philippine dictator
Ferdinand Marcos' regime. But Negroponte's career also
includes some troubling activities that took place in
Honduras during his tenure as ambassador there, between 1981
and 1985.
Those were the years when President Ronald Reagan ordered
the CIA to launch covert activities against the Sandinista
government in neighboring Nicaragua. The key element of
Reagan's anti-Nicaragua strategy was a guerrilla war waged by
a puppet army based in Honduras and known as the Contras. It
was composed largely of former soldiers of Nicaraguan
dictator Anastasio Somoza, whom the Sandinistas had ousted.
With such unseemly allies, the Contra war was immediately
controversial, and Congress imposed limits on how the CIA
could wage it.
Among other things, Congress insisted that before a small
nation like Honduras received massive increases in military
aid (from $4 million a year to $77 million during
Negroponte's tenure alone) that the U.S. Embassy there had to
verify that the notoriously corrupt Honduran army would use
the money properly. The Honduran security forces were not,
for instance, to use the money to pursue political dissidents
or otherwise violate the human rights of their fellow
citizens. Congress even required annual human rights reports
on Honduras to ensure that its mandate was being carried out.
The human rights reports that Negroponte signed off on
during his tenure in Honduras need to be carefully reviewed
by the Senate. For while he routinely reported few violations
by the Honduran government, it has since become public
record, through declassified government documents and
reputable reports in the U.S. and Honduran press, that the
Honduran military was indeed engaged in some very brutal
activities in support of the Contras and U.S. policy.
Honduran officials have documented the disappearance of as
many as 184 Honduran citizens, not just political dissidents
but innocent civilians who may have been mistaken for
dissidents, during that period. Most of these kidnappings and
murders were carried out by a secret, CIA-trained Honduran
army unit known as Battalion 316. The Senate should probe
deeply regarding how much of this activity Negroponte was
aware of and whether he hid what he knew from Congress.
The Contra war was an ugly and inconclusive affair--but
brush-fire wars usually are. And no one is suggesting that
Negroponte bears all, or even most, of the blame for whatever
excesses may have taken place in Honduras. But he had a legal
obligation to truthfully inform Congress of what was
happening in Honduras in support of U.S. policy. If
Negroponte did not live up to that obligation, it calls into
question his suitability for an important post at the United
Nations.
The Senate must not approve Negroponte's nomination without
asking him some very tough questions and putting his tenure
in Honduras under renewed and thorough scrutiny.
____
[From the Los Angeles Times, Apr. 8, 2001]
Is Negroponte Clean Enough for the U.N?
(By Frank Del Olmo)
We're eyeball to eyeball with the Chinese, talking tough to
the Russians and not talking to North Korea at all. It's back
to the Cold War.
Call me parochial, but what has me shivering after a brief
but chilly visit to Washington is how the Bush administration
is reviving the old U.S.-Soviet standoff in a part of the
world where I spent my crazy youth as a correspondent:
Central America. And if you loved how the Bushies tossed
those alleged Russian spies out of the country, wait until
you see what's for dessert. Warmed over Contras!
Or, to be more precise, a warmed-over Contra paymaster,
John D. Negroponte, who has been nominated to be ambassador
to the United Nations.
You remember the Contras--the CIA-funded guerrillas who
waged a futile war to overthrow the revolutionary Sandinista
government in Nicaragua, until the Nicaraguan people simply
voted the Sandinistas out of power. Even those poor Central
Americans, it turned out, know how democracy works. But more
on the Contras later.
It is no longer news that most of the men (doesn't National
Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice know any women she can
suggest for some of these jobs?) President Bush wants to put
in key positions on his foreign policy team are Cold Warriors
from the days of presidents Reagan and Bush the First. But
some of the guys being hauled out of cold storage have
worrisome histories that Congress needs to revisit before
punching their tickets. We can start with Negroponte.
During his 37-year career with the State Department,
Negroponte has held several sensitive embassy jobs in Asia
(Vietnam, during the war, and the Philippines in the 1990s)
and Latin America (Mexico, in the years leading up to the
North American Free Trade Agreement, and Honduras, during the
start of the Contra war against neighboring Nicaragua). It is
Negroponte's tenure in Honduras, from 1981 to 1985, that the
Senate needs to consider.
I traveled all over Central America in those days, knew
Negroponte and members of his staff and have no illusions
about anyone who was involved in those brush-fire wars. Some
ugly things were done on both sides in the same of national
security--from assassinations to wholesale massacres. It was
quite literally a bloody mess, and Negroponte was in it up to
his elbows.
Just how deep we don't know because Negroponte's
involvement in convert U.S. activities in Honduras has never
been fully investigated by Congress, even when the Mexican
government protested Negroponte's 1989 appointment to run
the U.S. Embassy there. Former Mexican President Carlos
Salinas de Gortari wanted NAFTA so badly that he probably
would have accepted any U.S. ambassador. Knowing that,
Congress stamped Negroponte's passport after some token
questions about Honduras.
Since then, however, much more has become public, largely
because of an excellent, but insufficiently recognized,
series of articles published by the Baltimore Sun in 1995.
Through interviews with former Honduran soldiers and some of
the people they kidnapped and tortured, the articles laid out
in gruesome detail the activities of a CIA-funded death squad
run by the Honduran military during the Contra war.
Those articles also made a credible case that Negroponte
knew about the Honduran death squad, officially known as
Battalion 316, and other covert operations taking place under
his nose, and he ignored them. Worse, he may have lied to
Congress about what he knew.
The Sun documents the fact that embassy staffers knew about
human rights violations and duly reported them to their
superiors in the embassy (including Negroponte) and
Washington. Yet their annual human-rights reports to Congress
did not reflect what they knew was going on all around them.
In just one of the less egregious cases (no one was killed),
the 1982 year-end report to Congress asserted there had been
``no incident of official interference with the media'' that
year. Yet in June 1982, Negroponte had personally intervened
with the Hondurans to free a prominent journalist, Oscar
Reyes, who had been arrested and tortured by Battalion 316
for a week. The ambassador did so at the behest of his
embassy's press spokesman, who
[[Page S9463]]
warned Negroponte: ``We cannot let this guy get hurt. . . .
It would be a disaster for our policy.''
The Sun series should be reread by every member of the
Senate before Negroponte comes before them for confirmation
later this spring. Better yet, the Foreign Affairs Committee
should move beyond what one gutsy newspaper did and
thoroughly review any and all still-classified documents that
might shed light on just what Negroponte knew about Battalion
316 and the wider Contra war, and when he knew it.
Negroponte is, after all, the guy Bush wants in New York to
lecture the Chinese and Cubans about human rights. We ought
to be sure they won't have reason to laugh in his face when
he does.
____
[From the Los Angeles Times, Apr. 19, 2001]
What Did Negroponte Hide and When Did He Hide It?
(By Joseph E. Mulligan)
Managua, Nicaragua.--As the Senate considers the nomination
of John D. Negroponte to be the U.S. ambassador to the United
Nations, it is important to look at charges that, as
ambassador to Honduras, Negroponte suppressed information
about the Honduran military's human rights violations. This
is a serious matter. What is the evidence?
According to a 1997 CIA inspector general's report, U.S.
officials in Honduras were aware of serious violations of
human rights by the Honduran military during the 1980s but
did not adequately report this to Congress. A heavily
redacted version of the report notes particularly that the
U.S. Embassy suppressed sensitive data during Negroponte's
time there.
I am especially concerned about the disappearance of two
U.S. citizens--Father James ``Guadalupe'' Carney and David
Arturo Baez Cruz--during Negroponte's tenure. Carney had come
to Honduras in 1983 as a chaplain to a revolutionary group,
which include Baez Cruz, a Nicaraguan American who had served
in the U.S. special forces. The group was captured by the
Honduran army, and Carney ``disappeared'' along with nearly
all of the 96 members of the group.
U.S. officials eventually gave Carney's chalice and stole,
turned up by the Honduran army, to his relatives. But the
army never explained the circumstances of the priest's death,
suggesting only that he probably starved in the mountains.
Five years later, in 1988, the New York Times reported that a
former officer of the Honduran army sad he personally had
interrogated Carney. Carney's body has not been found, and
the people responsible for his death have not been
identified. Whether any U.S. agents or officials were
involved in his disappearance remains an open question.
In a section with repeated references to the capture and
execution of Jose Maria Reyes Mata, the political leader of
the group, the CIA inspector general's report cited a source
whose name has been blacked out who ``believes that the
embassy country team in Honduras wanted reports on subjects
such as this to be benign to avoid Congress looking over its
shoulders.''
Reporting murders, executions and corruption, says the
source, would ``reflect negatively on Honduras and not be
beneficial in carrying out U.S. policy.'' The embassy seemed
particularly sensitive to reports about the operation in
which the two U.S. citizens disappeared, the report said,
quoting another source as recalling ``a discussion . . .
circa 1983 wherein the latter indicated that unspecified
individuals at the embassy did not want information
concerning human rights abuses . . . to be disseminated
because it was viewed as an internal Honduran matter,'' This
is corroborated by an Aug. 19, 1985, handwritten memo
declassified by the State Department ``Fr. Carney case . . .
is dead. Front office does not want the case active. . . . We
aren't telling that to the family.''
The CIA report cites another person whose name has been
deleted as explaining ``the basis for no further reporting on
the prisoner executions--the event had been reported
previously and there was concern on the part of Negroponte
that over-emphasis would create an unwarranted human rights
problem for Honduras.'' Among his conclusions, the CIA
inspector general states: ``The ambassador was particularly
sensitive regarding the issue and was concerned that earlier
CIA reporting on the same topic might create a human rights
problem for Honduras. Based on the ambassador's reported
concerns, [blacked out] actively discouraged [blacked out]
from following up the information reported by the [blacked
out] source.''
It was up to members of Congress to determine whether
Honduras had a human rights problem. But Negroponte denied
the facts needed for their judgment.
____
[From the Institute for Public Affairs in These Times, Apr. 2, 2001]
In From the Cold War; Bush's Pick for U.N. Ambassador Has Some Spooky
Stuff on His Resume
(By Terry J. Allen)
Like spooks from an abandoned B-Movie graveyard, officials
of the Reagan-Bush era are merging from the dirt and showing
up inside the George W. Bush administration. The latest
resurrection is John Negroponte, whom Bush recently nominated
as ambassador to the United Nations.
As U.S. ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985,
Negroponte abetted and covered up human rights crimes. He was
a zealous anti-Communist crusader in America's covert wars
against the leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua and
the FMLN rebels in El Salvador. The high-level planning,
money and arms for those wars flowed from Washington, but
much of the on-the-ground logistics for the deployment of
intelligence, arms and soldiers was run out of Honduras. U.S.
military aid to Honduras jumped from $3.9 million in 1989 to
$77.4 million by 1984. So crammed was the tiny country with
U.S. bases and weapons that it was dubbed the USS Honduras,
as if it were simply an off-shore staging ground.
The captain of this ship, Negroponte was in charge of the
U.S. Embassy when, according to a 1995 four-part series in
the Baltimore Sun, hundreds of Hondurans were kidnapped,
tortured and killed by Battalion 316, a secret army
intelligence unit trained and supported by the Central
Intelligence Agency. As Gary Cohn and Ginger Thompson wrote
in the series, Battalion 316 used ``shock and suffocation
devices in interrogations. Prisoners often were kept naked
and, when no longer useful, killed and buried in unmarked
graves.'' Members of Battalion 316 were trained in
surveillance and interrogation at a secret location in the
United States and by the CIA at bases in Honduras. Gen.
Gustavo Alvarez Martinez, the chief of the Honduran armed
forces who personally directed Battalion 316, also trained in
the United States at the School of the Americas.
Negroponte tried to distance himself from the pattern of
abuses, even after a flood of declassified documents exposed
the extent of U.S. involvement with Battalion 316. In a
segment of the 1998 CNN mini-series Cold War, Negroponte said
that ``some of the retrospective effort to try and suggest
that we were supportive of, or condoned the actions of, human
rights violators is really revisionistic.''
By the time Negroponte was appointed ambassador by
President Reagan in 1981, human rights activists in Honduras
were vocally denouncing abuses. Former Honduran congressman
Efrain Diaz Arrivillage pleaded with Negroponte and other
U.S. officials to stop the abuses committed by the U.S.-
controlled military. ``Their attitude was one of tolerance
and silence,'' Diaz told the Sun. ``They needed Honduras to
loan its territory more than they were concerned about
innocent people being killed.''
Negroponte ignored such protests, and annually filed State
Department reports from Honduras that gave the impression
that the Honduran military respected human rights. But in an
interview with In These Times, Negroponte's predecessor as
ambassador, Carter appointee Jack Binns, tells a different
story: ``Negroponte would have had to be deliberately blind
not to know about human rights violations. . . . One of the
things a departing ambassador does is prepare a briefing
book, and one of those issues we included [in our briefing
book] was how to deal with the escalation of human rights
issues.''
Binns considered the U.S. support for Alvarez and Battalion
316 ``counterproductive'' to the declared objective of
``establishing a rule of law.'' This lack of enthusiasm,
Binns says, led to ``my being cut out of the loop'' by the
Reagan administration, which he served for several months
before Negroponte took over. In the summer of 1981, Binns
recalls, ``I was called unexpectedly to Washington by Tom
Enders, the assistant secretary of state. He asked me to
stop reporting human rights violations through official
State Department channels and to use back channels because
they were afraid of leaks.''
As Binns explains, back-channel messages ``don't officially
exist. The message is translated over CIA channels, decrypted
and hand-carried from Langley, one copy only. No record.''
Binns did not agree to use back channels and when he
returned to Honduras, he received no further reports of human
rights violations from the CIA. ``I was deliberately lied
to,'' says Binns, who later found out that Reagan
administration had been working behind his back.
Honduras was only one of many hot spots where Negroponte
served. He spent four years as a political officer in the
U.S. Embassy in Saigon during the height of the Vietnam War.
As an aide to then National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger
at the Paris Peace Talks, he fell out of favor with his boss,
wrote Mark Matthews in a 1997 article in the Sun, ``by
arguing that the chief U.S. negotiator was making too many
concessions to the North Vietnamese.'' Negroponte also served
in the Philippines, Panama and Mexico, where he was a strong
booster for NAFTA.
Rumored to have been Colin Powell's pick for the job of
U.N. ambassador, Negroponte has a reputation as a loyal
bureaucrat and efficient fixer. He also has a Cold War
mentality characteristic of many of the old Reagan-Bush
people surrounding the new president.
The lessons Negroponte has learned from the past may shed
light on what kind of U.N. ambassador he will be if his
nomination is approved by the Senate. When he appeared in
1981 before a Senate committee for confirmation as envoy to
Honduras, he said, ``I believe we must do our best not to
allow the tragic outcome of Indochina to be repeated in
Central America.''
The tragedy to which he referred, of course, was the defeat
of the United States, not the devastation and death caused by
U.S. intervention.
[[Page S9464]]
____
Disappearances in Honduras During Amb. Negroponte's Tenure, October 29,
1981-May 30, 1985
1981
Eduardo Anibal Blanco Araya, November 14, 1981; Yolanda del
Carmen Solis Corrales, December 11, 1981; Francisco Fairen
Garbi, December 11, 1981; Alfredo Duarte, December 20, 1981;
Jose Frech Guiterrez, December 20, 1981; Jose Francisco
Rivera Miranda, December 22, 1981; Victor Hugo Alas Herrera,
December 24, 1981.
1982
Maria Ediltrudis Montres Giron, January 24, 1982; Julio
Cesar Zavala Mendez, January 24, 1982; Samuel Perez, January
24, 1982; Enrique Lopez Hernandez, January 24, 1982; Nelson
Mackay Chavarria, February 21, 1982; Guadalupe Carillo
Coleman, June 11, 1982; Eduardo Coleman Martinez, June 11,
1982; Reynaldo Coleman Martinez, June 11, 1982; Amado
Espinoza Paz, June 12, 1982.
Adan Villanueva, June 12, 1982; Hans Albert Madisson Lopez,
July 8, 1982; Jose Saul Godinez Cruz, July 22, 1982; Jose
Eduardo Becerra Lanza, August 1, 1982; German Perez Aleman,
August 18, 1982; Teresa de Jesus Sierra Alvarenga, August 31,
1982; Rafael Antonio Pacheco, September 1, 1982; Hector
Hernandez, December 24, 1982; Jose Celestino Medina, December
24, 1982.
1983
Casimiro Castellanos, Exact day unknown, 1983; Pedro Jose
Amador Meza, January 22, 1983; Maria Martha Ventura Garcia,
February 17, 1983; Dolores Geraldina Garcia Zelaya, February
25, 1983; Melba Caceres Mondragon, March 15, 1983; Jose
Martinez Vasquez, March 17, 1983; Filiberto Flores Zuniga,
April 13, 1983; Victor Manual Torres Lopez, April 13, 1983;
Luis Alonso Romero Ortiz, April 24, 1983; Daniel Velasquez
Nunez, May 4, 1983.
Jose Eloy Torres Barahona, June 1, 1983; Victor Manuel
Ramos, June 10, 1983; Jose Amilcar Mardiaga, July 1, 1983;
Marco Antonio Marin Aguilar, August, 1983; Ramon Adonay
Bustillo Jimenez, September 9 1983; Pablo Roberto Munguia,
September 28, 1983; Mario Mejia Mateo, October 1, 1983; Jose
Melanio Valle Alvarado, October 1, 1983; James Francisco
Carney (Father Guadalupe), December, 1983; Juan Batista
Canales H., December 15, 1983.
1984
Marcelino Moncada Bustamante, February 18, 1984; Gustavo
Adolfo Morales Funes, March 18, 1984; Rolando Vindel
Gonzalez, March 18, 1984; Francisco Garcia, July 9, 1984;
Francisco Osorto, July 9, 1984; Alberto Garcia, July 9, 1984;
Elsa Marina Perdomo, August 12, 1984; Juan Alberto Villeda,
September 25, 1984; Luis Ramon Blandon Zeas, September 28,
1984.
Elman Luis Cortes Seiza, September 28, 1984; Marcia
Mercedes Chamorro Morales, October 5, 1984; Estanislao
Vasquez M., October 22, 1984; Joaquin, October 22, 1984;
Reynaldo Caceres Lopez, October 28, 1984; Estanislao Martinez
Lopez, October 31, 1984; Maritza Cubillo Molina, November 4,
1984; Jose Isabel Salgado, November 20, 1984; Jose Eduardo
Lopez, December 24, 1984.
1985
Rose Nelly Matamoros, January, 1985; Jesus Reyes Escobar,
March 24, 1985.
____________________