[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.
____________________