[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 20 (Thursday, February 5, 2015)]
[Senate]
[Pages S818-S820]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 REMEMBERING AMBASSADOR ROBERT E. WHITE

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, on January 13 of this year, our country 
lost one of its most courageous diplomats--Ambassador Robert E. White. 
Ambassador White was 88 years old.
  I knew Bob White, who graduated from my alma mater, Saint Michael's 
College in Vermont, in 1952, just 9 years before I did. But I would 
have admired him greatly no matter what college he went to because he 
had the qualities every American diplomat should possess--outstanding 
intellect, unimpeachable integrity, great courage, and a devotion to 
the ideals and values of this country.
  In the 1980s, during the civil war in El Salvador, the United 
States--in what most historians now know was a tragic mistake--
steadfastly supported the Salvadoran Army despite abundant evidence 
that some of its elite units were operating as death squads, 
arbitrarily arresting, torturing, and murdering civilians suspected of 
supporting the FMLN rebels.
  Unlike some other U.S. officials who turned blind eyes to the heinous 
crimes that were being committed in the name of fighting communism, 
Ambassador White refused to remain silent. He publicly condemned the 
Salvadoran military and their rightwing backers who were implicated in 
atrocities such as the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero, who 
just days ago was put on the path to sainthood by Pope Francis, and the 
massacre of four American churchwomen.
  For speaking out on behalf of the victims of those crimes, Bob White 
paid dearly. He was ridiculed by some in Congress and he was summarily 
removed from his job by then-Secretary of State Alexander Haig.
  A January 15 obituary in the Washington Post describes Bob's life and 
career. As I was reading it, I could not help but wonder how things 
might have turned out differently if the powers-that-be during the 
1980s had listened to him. My wife Marcelle and I talked about that. We 
asked ourselves: How many lives might have been saved if the Reagan 
administration, instead of firing Bob in 1981, had recognized the truth 
of what he was saying and supported negotiations to end the war in El 
Salvador.
  Instead, the war dragged on for another decade, costing the lives of 
tens of thousands of people, mostly civilians. The tide only started to 
turn in 1989 after the cold-blooded murder of the six Jesuit priests, 
their housekeeper and her daughter, at the University of Central 
America. It was a

[[Page S819]]

horrific crime that top-ranking army officers tried to cover up.
  It was thanks to the late Congressman Joe Moakley and his then-staff 
aide, now Congressman Jim McGovern, Bob Woodward, and Salvadoran 
investigator Leonel Gomez, whom I also came to know and respect, that 
the plot was uncovered and the killers identified.
  During this time I talked often with Bob and I learned even more 
about those who were involved. After talking with him I went to El 
Salvador. The Salvadoran officials wanted me to see how they were 
investigating what had happened. They knew I had prosecuted murder 
cases, and they arranged for me to meet with the country's chief 
investigator. As he described the so-called investigation it just 
confirmed Ambassador White's suspicions. I told the Salvadoran 
investigator, and I told the press who were there, that they were 
conducting an obvious cover-up. Anybody who saw what they were calling 
an investigation would realize what they were doing.
  As I left El Salvador, it was so obvious that rather than shamelessly 
removing Ambassador White from his post how much better things might 
have been if the State Department had recognized him for the true 
patriot he was and treated him as an example of what other U.S. 
diplomats should emulate.
  Bob didn't stop when he left the Foreign Service. He went on to head 
the Center for International Policy where he continued his advocacy for 
human rights, defending the ideals and championing the causes he 
believed in right up to his death.
  I like to think that all of our Foreign Service Officers aspire to 
follow in the footsteps of Ambassador Robert White. I hope they will 
learn from his example. If they do, the United States will be better 
served and the world will be a better place.
  I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the Washington 
Post obituary, and an article about Ambassador White by Margaret 
O'Brien Steinfels in Commonweal magazine.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

               [From the Washington Post, Jan. 15, 2015]

     Robert E. White, Who Criticized Policy on El Salvador as U.S. 
                         Ambassador, Dies at 88

                         (By Pamela Constable)

       In 1980, when El Salvador was erupting in guerrilla war and 
     military violence, the Carter administration sent a little-
     known Foreign Service officer into the maelstrom as its new 
     ambassador, hoping he could help the U.S.-backed government 
     there find a reformist middle ground and prevent a full-scale 
     revolution.
       Instead, Robert E. White became a controversial and 
     outspoken critic of assassinations and massacres being 
     carried out by American-trained military units and private 
     right-wing death squads. His views cost him his diplomatic 
     career but earned him the respect of many Salvadorans and, 
     ultimately, the vindication of history.
       Mr. White, who had previously served as U.S. ambassador to 
     Paraguay, died Jan. 14 at a hospice in Arlington, Va. He was 
     88. The cause was bladder and prostate cancer, said a 
     daughter, Claire White.
       His brief tenure in San Salvador was marked by atrocities 
     that became synonymous with right-wing violence during an era 
     of ideological conflicts in Central America: the 
     assassination of Catholic Archbishop Oscar Romero in March 
     1980 while he was saying Mass in the national cathedral, and 
     the abduction and killing that December of four American 
     women church workers: Maryknoll sisters Ita Ford and Maura 
     Clark, Ursuline Sister Dorothy Kazel and lay missioner Jean 
     Donovan.
       Mr. White, who once said he was inspired to join the 
     Foreign Service by a ``quotient of idealism,'' worked to 
     promote human rights, economic reforms and political 
     negotiations between leftist rebels and El Salvador's civil-
     military junta. But he soon found himself at loggerheads with 
     the rightist military and land-owning establishment, which 
     had powerful allies in Washington and Miami.
       Unable to keep silent as security abuses mounted, Mr. White 
     began denouncing them in diplomatic cables, then in 
     interviews and congressional testimony. He famously called 
     rightist political leader Roberto D'Aubuisson a 
     ``pathological killer'' and charged that he had orchestrated 
     the execution of Romero.
       Mr. White also accused the Salvadoran national guard of 
     murdering the Maryknoll women--two of whom he had dined with 
     the night before their disappearance. He was there when the 
     women's bodies were dug up, and he was quoted as vowing 
     angrily, ``This time the bastards won't get away with it.''
       ``Bob was transformed by those events, especially the 
     killings of the Maryknolls, from a diplomatic functionary 
     into a person whose ethical and moral convictions conflicted 
     with his job,'' said Francisco Altschul, the current 
     Salvadoran ambassador to the United States, who was a leftist 
     political activist at the time. ``It took a lot of courage 
     and integrity to say what he did and to face the 
     consequences.''
       Mr. White's outspoken posture drew praise from human rights 
     groups but death threats in El Salvador. His wife once 
     described being warned by her security guard in their 
     affluent San Salvador enclave that ``your neighbors would 
     like to kill you.''
       The ambassador also faced strong opposition from powerful 
     Washington hawks including Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), who had 
     been annoyed with Mr. White's earlier human rights activism 
     in Paraguay and compared his posting to El Salvador to ``a 
     torch tossed in a pool of oil.''
       By 1981, after the election of Ronald Reagan as president 
     ushered in a new era of anticommunist fervor in Washington, 
     Mr. White's days as ambassador were numbered. After coming 
     into conflict with Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig Jr., 
     Mr. White was removed from his post less than two weeks after 
     Reagan took office. He soon retired from the Foreign Service 
     after a 25-year career, claiming that he had been forced out 
     for political reasons.
       ``In El Salvador, Bob believed the authoritarian regime was 
     morally repugnant and needed to change, but he worked very 
     hard to avoid the escalation of war and negotiate a 
     solution,'' said William M. LeoGrande, a professor at 
     American University and author of ``Our Own Backyard: The 
     United States in Central America, 1977-1992.''
       ``The tragedy was that U.S. policy changed, El Salvador 
     became a Cold War proxy, and another decade of conflict 
     followed,'' LeoGrande said.
       Once free of the constraints of diplomacy, Mr. White spent 
     much of the next three decades speaking his mind on U.S. 
     policy and official abuses in Latin America, while holding a 
     series of jobs, including a professorship at Simmons College 
     in Massachusetts and a senior associate position at the 
     Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.
       He was a sarcastic critic of Washington's Cold War-era 
     policies in Latin America, particularly what he called the 
     ``primitive anti-communism'' that produced the U.S. embargo 
     against Fidel Castro's Cuba and support for hemispheric 
     dictators such as Gen. Augusto Pinochet in Chile and Gen. 
     Alfredo Stroessner in Paraguay. He accused the Reagan 
     administration in 1984 of covering up its knowledge of 
     D'Aubuisson's role in the Romero assassination. 
     Administration officials denied the allegations.
       In 1989, Mr. White was named president of the Center for 
     International Policy, a liberal think tank in Washington, and 
     held that position at the time of his death. He also visited 
     numerous countries, from Haiti to Afghanistan, with 
     delegations to monitor elections and human rights.
       Robert Edward White was born Sept. 21, 1926, in Melrose, 
     Mass. He served in the Navy as a radio operator in the 
     Pacific during World War II. He attended Saint Michael's 
     College in Vermont on the G.I. Bill, graduating in 1952, and 
     completed a master's degree in 1954 at Tufts University's 
     Fletcher School in Medford, Mass.
       He joined the Foreign Service in 1955 and served in a 
     variety of positions related to Latin America. He was posted 
     in Colombia, Ecuador, Honduras and Nicaragua, served as 
     regional director of the Peace Corps and was a U.S. 
     representative to the Organization of American States. He was 
     ambassador to Paraguay from 1977 to 1980, when he was 
     transferred to El Salvador.
       Survivors include his wife of 59 years, Maryanne Cahill 
     White of Alexandria, Va.; three children, Chris White of 
     Manassas, Va., Claire White of Cambridge, Mass., and Mary Lou 
     White of Evanston, Ill.; a brother, David White of 
     Alexandria; and three grandchildren.
       A son, Kevin White, died in 2009; a daughter, Laura White, 
     died in 2014.
       Mr. White always described himself as a diplomat and a 
     democrat rather than a leftist or moral zealot.
       ``I don't go out looking for windmills to joust,'' he told 
     an interviewer from Commonweal magazine in 2001. ``And the 
     idea that I'm some sort of martyr? Well, I'm not.''
       He argued that to avoid ending up on the wrong side of 
     history or in Vietnam-style military quagmires, the United 
     States needed to seek negotiated solutions to all conflicts, 
     maintain a moral component in its dealings with all regimes 
     and respect the will of local populations.
       ``The military dictators of the world fear democracy more 
     than anything else,'' he told the Fletcher Forum, a 
     publication of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, in 
     1981. ``U.S. policy toward Latin America can be summed up in 
     three words: fear of revolution. Because we feared 
     revolution, we consistently opposed the forces of change 
     while uncritically supporting dictatorships and small 
     economic elites. We blinked at repression and participated in 
     the perversion of democracy throughout the hemisphere.''
                                  ____


               [From Commonweal Magazine, Jan. 19, 2015]

                       Robert E. White, 1926-2015

                    (By Margaret O'Brien Steinfels)

       Robert White, who spent a quarter century in the U.S. 
     Foreign Service and was ambassador to El Salvador at the 
     beginning of its civil war, seems never to have forgotten 
     anything. Among the things he never forgot

[[Page S820]]

     were the murders of Jean Donovan and Sisters Dorothy Kazel, 
     Maura Clarke, and Ita Ford. White was present when their 
     bodies were recovered from shallow graves on December 4, 
     1980. He returned to the embassy as angry as his wife, 
     MaryAnne, had ever seen him. It changed him, she told me in 
     2001, when I interviewed her for a profile of Bob I wrote for 
     Commonweal. Indeed, his refusal to cover up Salvadoran 
     military involvement in their murders--and those of thousands 
     of Salvadorans, including Archbishop Oscar Romero--led to his 
     resignation from the Foreign Service in 1981. He continued 
     his work for democratic reforms and human rights in the 
     Caribbean and Latin America at the Carnegie Endowment for 
     Peace and the Center for International Policy.
       Bob, who died on January 13 at the age of eighty-eight, was 
     a great interview; in 2001 I left his Washington office with 
     tapes full of details. He could summon conversations from 
     years past and recount policy details lost in the fog of 
     diplomatic maneuvering. Not only did he remember names and 
     details of long-past events, he was also forthcoming in his 
     analysis of U.S. foreign policy. He had joined the Foreign 
     Service in 1955; after President John Kennedy announced the 
     ``Alliance for Progress,'' he requested assignment in Latin 
     America. Designed to encourage democracy and human rights, 
     the new policy was a turn away from, as White put it, doing 
     the work of ``the colonial office.'' That derogatory title 
     summed up the tangled political and economic relationship 
     between the U.S. and its neighbors to the South. Even when 
     support in Washington faltered after Kennedy's assassination, 
     White tried to keep the policies of the Alliance in play. 
     Full-blown Cold War policies had returned in 1968 with 
     Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, coloring White's years in 
     Honduras, Nicaragua, Columbia, Paraguay, and El Salvador. 
     While serving as U.S. representative to the Organization of 
     American States, he faced down Kissinger, whose statements 
     supporting Pinochet were contrary to U.S. policy. This 
     brought White to the edge of dismissal; he won the battle and 
     stayed on to serve in his final post, El Salvador.
       A long history of interventions and exploitation of the 
     continent's natural resources made the United States the 
     imperial power that both democratic reformers and Marxists 
     loved to hate. White saw in the reformers the path to more 
     democratic governments and respect for human rights. 
     Washington, focused on Soviet threats and Fidel Castro's 
     support for guerrillas, increasingly favored the dictators 
     and caudillos. Secret agreements were struck between U.S. 
     military and intelligence agencies and their Latin 
     counterparts. This often put the Department of State, though 
     the official representative of the United States, on the 
     margins of both policy and practices. Jimmy Carter's victory 
     in 1976 pressed U.S. policy once again into a human rights 
     agenda; that ended with Ronald Reagan's election in 1980.
       White had long found himself the middleman in many of the 
     struggles between Latin American governments and reformers as 
     well as with his own government. His job was to work with 
     each country's political leaders, notwithstanding their anti-
     democratic policies. While they might tolerate his cajoling 
     and plain speaking about land reform, fair elections, and 
     human rights, they usually had a U.S. military representative 
     or CIA agent to turn to for direct contact with Washington 
     (often someone on the ambassador's own embassy staff). At the 
     same time, White made it his business to seek out and get to 
     know sympathetic academics, journalists, labor leaders, 
     clergy, and reformers in the Christian Democratic tradition. 
     He understood the central role the Catholic Church, 
     especially its cardinals and bishops, played among the social 
     and political elites. His friendship with some and parrying 
     with others gave him behind-the-scenes influence; his 
     attendance at Mass could be the occasion for a pointed homily 
     on topics a prelate might otherwise avoid. If White was 
     regarded with suspicion and contempt, especially by 
     Salvadoran politicians and military, his reputation among 
     Americans (and American Catholics) opposed to their endemic 
     violence and abuse was hardly better. The U.S. ambassador was 
     seen to be compromised by his position and not to be trusted.
       After his resignation, White more than any U.S. official 
     exposed the hidden ties between U.S. military and 
     intelligence and their Latin American counterparts. He 
     testified against Salvadoran military for their complicity in 
     torture and murder, especially of the American churchwomen. 
     He never ceased pressing for better political and economic 
     conditions in Latin America, termination of sanctions against 
     Cuba, and an end to human rights abuses not only by 
     dictatorships but also by democracies. Bob's work as an 
     ambassador--from the United States at its best--never really 
     ended.

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

                          ____________________