Ambassador to Honduras
From 1981 to 1985 Negroponte was the U.S. ambassador to Honduras. During his tenure, he oversaw the growth of military aid to Honduras from $4 million to $77.4 million a year. At the time, Honduras was ruled by an elected but heavily militarily-influenced government. According to The New York Times, Negroponte was allegedly involved in “carrying out the covert strategy of the Reagan administration to crush the Sandinistas government in Nicaragua.” Critics say that during his ambassadorship, human rights violations in Honduras became systematic.
Negroponte supervised the construction of the El Aguacate air base where Nicaraguan Contras were trained by the U.S., and which some critics say was used as a secret detention and torture center during the 1980s. In August 2001, excavations at the base discovered 185 corpses, including two Americans, who are thought to have been killed and buried at the site.
Records also show that a special intelligence unit (commonly referred to as a “death squad”) of the Honduran armed forces, Battalion 3-16, trained by the CIA and the Argentine military, kidnapped, tortured and killed hundreds of people, including U.S. missionaries. Critics charge that Negroponte knew about these human rights violations and yet continued to collaborate with the Honduran military while lying to Congress.
In May 1982, a nun, Sister Laetitia Bordes, who had worked for ten years in El Salvador, went on a fact-finding delegation to Honduras to investigate the whereabouts of thirty Salvadoran nuns and women of faith who fled to Honduras in 1981 after Archbishop Óscar Romero’s assassination. Negroponte claimed the embassy knew nothing. However, in a 1996 interview with the Baltimore Sun, Negroponte’s predecessor, Jack Binns, said that a group of Salvadorans, among whom were the women Bordes had been looking for, were captured on April 22, 1981, and savagely tortured by the DNI, the Honduran Secret Police, and then later thrown out of helicopters alive. It is unclear when or how Mr. Binns received this information and when it was known at the embassy.
In early 1984, two American mercenaries, Thomas Posey and Dana Parker, contacted Negroponte, stating they wanted to supply arms to the Contras after the U.S. Congress had banned further military aid. Documents show that Negroponte brought the two together with a contact in the Honduran armed forces. The operation was exposed nine months later, at which point the Reagan administration denied any U.S. involvement, despite Negroponte’s introductions of some of the individuals. Other documents allegedly detailed a plan of Negroponte and then-Vice President George H. W. Bush to funnel Contra aid money through the Honduran government.
During his tenure as U.S. ambassador to Honduras, Binns, who was appointed by President Jimmy Carter, made numerous complaints about human rights abuses by the Honduran military and claimed he fully briefed Negroponte on the situation before leaving the post. When the Reagan administration came to power, Binns was replaced by Negroponte, who has consistently denied having knowledge of any wrongdoing. Later, the Honduras Commission on Human Rights accused Negroponte himself of human rights violations.
Speaking of Negroponte and other senior U.S. officials, an ex-Honduran congressman, Efrain Diaz, told the Baltimore Sun, which in 1995 published an extensive investigation of U.S. activities in Honduras:
“Their attitude was one of tolerance and silence. They needed Honduras to loan its territory more than they were concerned about innocent people being killed.”
The Sun’s investigation found that the CIA and U.S. embassy knew of numerous abuses but continued to support Battalion 3-16 and ensured that the embassy’s annual human rights report did not contain the full story.
The question of what John Negroponte knew about human rights abuses in Honduras will probably never be answered definitively, but there is a large body circumstantial evidence supporting the view that Negroponte was aware that serious violations of human rights were carried out by the Honduran government, with the support of the CIA, if perhaps not with its direct approval. Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, on 14 September 2001, as reported in the Congressional Record (http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2001_cr/s091401.html), aired his suspicions on the occasion of Negroponte’s nomination to the position of UN ambassador:
“Based upon the Committee’s review of State Department and CIA documents, it would seem that Ambassador Negroponte knew far more about government perpetuated human rights abuses than he chose to share with the committee in 1989 or in Embassy contributions at the time to annual State Department Human Rights reports.”
Among other evidence, Dodd cited a cable sent by Negroponte in 1985 that made it clear that Negroponte was aware of the threat of “future human rights abuses” by “secret operating cells” left over by General Alvarez after his deposition in 1984.
Appointment to the UN
When President Bush announced Negroponte’s appointment to the UN shortly after coming to office, it was met with scattered protest. Some critics asserted that the administration intentionally arranged the deportation from the United States of several former Honduran death squad members who could have provided damaging testimony against Negroponte in his Senate confirmation hearings.
One of the deportees was General Luis Alonso Discua, founder of Battalion 3-16. In the preceding month, Washington had revoked the visa of Discua who was Honduras’ Deputy Ambassador to the UN. Subsequently, Discua asserted to a left-wing website his portrayal of U.S. support of Battalion 3-16. [1] (http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/0325-03.htm)