Talk:John Negroponte

"He is accused of sponsoring terrorism for supporting the Contra insurgency against the left wing Sandinistas, the first ever democratically elected government of Nicaragua."

The allegations are that Negroponte was involved in suppressing information about human rights abuses and that he turned a blind eye to the activities of the Contras and the CIA. I have not seen any credible evidence that Negroponte 'sponsored' terrorism, meaning provided funds for. If anything, perhaps it might be said that he "aided the US government's sponsorship of the Contras..." Anyway, to say that Negroponte went out and sponsored the terrorists on his own is incorrect.

Iraq Extrajudicial killings?

Ferkelparade, Wizzy et al. -- following your complaints, I've moved my earlier contribution to this page. Those who wish to use it as a reference for expanding the section on Negroponte in Iraq are welcome to do so. I do believe that the wiki is an excellent place to consolidate information on Negroponte in Iraq -- a difficult task that the media is probably unwilling to do. But I don't want to violate NPOV.

On July 14th, 2004, The Sydney Morning Herald reported claims by two witnesses that Iyad Allawi, the new Prime Minister of Iraq, had pulled a pistol and executed as many as six suspected insurgents at a Baghdad police station [1] (http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/07/16/1089694568757.html?oneclick=true). The Herald established that at least thirty other people were witnesses to the extra-judicial killings, including US soldiers who were providing Allawi with security at the time. Negroponte, in his new role as US Ambassador to Iraq, refused to comment on the allegations while at the same time asking that the case be closed in a direct echo of his work to minimize and deny US-sanctioned human-rights abuses in Honduras. Negroponte's office replied to the Herald in an e-mail:

If we attempted to refute each [rumour], we would have no time for other business. As far as this embassy's press office is concerned, this case is closed.

How about this ? However, Negroponte was not there himself - just (as I read it) four of his bodyguards. How may does he have ? So, while I initially just wanted the Honduras comment removed, I am not sure it belongs here at all. I first read it that Negroponte was there.

Now it looks like News, not Encyclopedia ? Wizzy 12:20, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I am disappointed that my addition to this page, covering Negroponte's office's response to extrajudicial killings was removed. It could certaintly stand editing for NPOV, but wholesale removal strikes me as clearly out of the spirit of the wiki. Why should this be included? It is a major human rights scandal in Iraq committed while Negroponte was amabassador to the country. His embassay's non-response is an important fact. I don't think that we should include every press release; I do think that this scattered material should be consolidated at some point as we get a better picture of how Negroponte is running the show. But if material similar to that which I contributed gets deleted, future editors will not be able to perform such a consolidation.

I don't think the paragraph in question is too POV (that's not why I deleted it), and I don't want to question its factual accuracy - it merely seemed to me to be a bit too detailed for a biography article, and the paragraph doesn't really make clear why the event is important for a Negroponte biography. Major news events deserve their own article anyway, which could then be linked from here...maybe the paragraph could be shortened to something like "Negroponte recently came under attack for tacitly accepting Ahmed Allawi's alleged extrajudicial killing of insurgents". Anyway, that's my opinion...I'm willing to discuss. -- Ferkelparade 00:31, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Hi Ferkelparade, thanks for taking this to the discussion. I definitely think the encyclopedia entry should be more than just a biography, and that the article is a good place to consolidate information about the activities of the current US Embassy in Iraq -- I don't know of a better place on the wiki. This is essentially what others have done re: Honduras. I see the article as always "in development": as we learn more about what the embassy is doing, this stuff can be consolidated. So, in essence -- make it as short as you like but (I think) keep the following bits: a reference to the news source (SMH), hyperlink to article, and the quote of the embassy's response. I would want to contextualize it by reference to N's role in Honduras, OTOH, that's maybe going into NPOV territory; if we can't find a quote from someone attacking Negroponte, we probably shouldn't write "recently came under attack."

Hmm, but that's exactly the point: so far, nobody has attacked Negroponte over this issue, and the killings by Allawi themselves are still disputed - this information should definitely be in the Allawi article, but at this point, it seems a bit premature to have it here... -- Ferkelparade 12:32, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Pheonix Program in Vietnam?

Dear Wikipedia,

Thank you for your excellent work. Here is a question regarding Mr. Negroponte that I haven't found addressed anywhere, I hope you can help:

When John Negroponte was named U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, I felt it was an announcement to world of international diplomacy that the George W. Bush administration was asserting its intention to use the dirtiest methods of "counter-insurgency" at all levels of international policy implementation.

There was extensive reporting in the Baltimore Sun in 1995 on Negroponte?s role in covering up human-rights abuses in Honduras during the Contra war against Nicaragua. However, I remembered hearing Mr. Negroponte's name connected with the Phoenix Program in Vietnam. The most I have been able to ascertain was that he served as chief political officer at the U.S. embassy in Saigon during the war. At the time, it seemed to be common knowledge that he supervised the program, which has been characterized as one of torture and summary execution of possibly thousands of Vietnamese believed to be supporters of the Vietnamese National Liberation Front.

If you could verify or refute these charges it would be of undoubted service to the world's right to know the truth about those who speak in our name - especially now with Mr. Negroponte being appointed ambassador to a nominally sovereign Iraq.

Thank you very much,

Carl Glenn

Hi, welcome to wikipedia. If you are certain about a fact, you yourself can edit the article and put it in - read Wikipedia:Welcome,_newcomers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Welcome%2C_newcomers#Editing) about this. I too have seen some sources on the web stating that he was a "political officer" at the Saigon embassy, albeit a junior one. It would be nice to at least know the time span which he spent there.

As to the charges in connection with the Phoenix Project, you could try and post your question at wikipedia's Reference desk. Please be aware that some topics such as U.S. atrocities during the Vietnam war can be highly controversial, so if you make edits try to follow wikipedia's Neutral point of view (NPOV) policy. High on a tree 00:42, 2 May 2004 (UTC)

POV

This article is a pretty-straightforward example of POV writing. Virtually all the cites are to left-wing or far-left (the Guardian or Common Dreams) articles....

Is it really so POV though? I guess it would be good to also have more comprehensive sections about his later career as a diplomat, but the sections that exist now are all of well documented events, which Negroponte is accused of knowing about and ignoring --Jacobolus 11:44, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

John Negroponte

Is this supposed to be factual or a fact-salted conjectural hit-piece? "...he is accused of....", "...possible involvement in....", "...critics say..., critics charge....", etc. In the intrest of fact or at least pretense of fact, the following whole sections of this article should be removed or, perhaps, separated under the sub-heading "Detractor's viewpoint": Ambassador to Honduras, What did Negroponte Know, and Appointment to the UN. The rest of the article seems straight forward; these dections of obvious detraction seem to have been added as the styles are disjointed.

If you have a problem with a particular paragraph, you should quote it in full and explain why. In all cases, the people quoted in this article who critical of Negroponte are "real" sources: Congressmen, Human Rights investigators, etc.. If you want to talk about other aspects of Negroponte's work, you are welcome to do so.

Negroponte in Iraq

"..in a direct echo of his work to minimize and deny US-sanctioned human-rights abuses in Honduras."

Should go. Wizzy 16:52, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC)

NPOV concerns

I tend to agree with the NPOV concerns of some comments here. They seem to be more along the lines of what is *not* included than what is. To be fair, a google search returned far more of the 'critical' sources than any other. Now that he has been named National Intelligence Director, these concerns are of particular significance.

However, I was able to make a minor edit I regard as an improvement. I replaced one Guardian article, "Iran contra men return to power" with another from the same publication, the "Negroponte: Amercia's voice of experience" article.

I believe the former article is redundant to many of the others, and as the least specific to Mr. Negroponte is the least relevent. The latter article I believe balances the collective tone of the references, and does not omit mention of the Honduras accusations.

However, I have retained the old article here:

"Iran-contra men return to power" (http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4241959-103681,00.html)(from The Guardian)

If anyone sees the need to restore it.

- stancollins

question

Why is... "carrying out the covert strategy of the Reagan administration to crush the Sandinistas government in Nicaragua." ...in quotes?

I believe it's a direct quotation from the NYT, but it should be found and attributed --Jacobolus 10:56, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

edit for NPOV

Major problems with the wording of this article and a complete lack of balance...took a stab at it. Also removed far-out wacko sources...the World Socialist Network website anyone?

News Articles to think about

I'm not sure that some of what was edited is necessarily POV... from the NYT 1 November 1982:

"The United States Ambassador to Honduras is 'overseeing' a covert campaign to arm, train and direct thousands of Nicaraguan exiles in Honduras to 'harass and undermine' Nicaragua's three-year-old Marxist Sandinist Government, according to an article in Newsweek magazine.

"In its Nov. 8 issue, Newsweek quoted an unidentified 'Washington insider' as having said that the Ambassador, John D. Negroponte, had been sent to Honduras by former Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig Jr. and Thomas O. Enders, the Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, as the 'spearhead of the clandestine operation.'"

--Jacobolus 10:59, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

From NYT, 5 June 1988:

"In 1982, with strong American encouragement, Honduras's newly-elected civilian President, Roberto Suazo Cordova, promoted Alvarez to general and named him commander of the army. Even before his promotion, Alvarez was organizing a new army intelligence unit with C.I.A. support, which would be known as Battalion 316. Sgt. Florencio Caballero, who had already received American training, says he was among the first of those recruited to serve in the new unit."

...

"In Texas, said Mr. Caballero, the Americans 'taught me interrogation, in order to end physical torture in Honduras. They taught us psychological methods - to study the fears and weaknesses of a prisoner. Make him stand up, don't let him sleep, keep him naked and isolated, put rats and cockroaches in his cell, give him bad food, serve him dead animals, throw cold water on him, change the temperature.

"'When I returned to Honduras, I was trained in assaults, bombs and explosives by Americans, Chileans and Argentines,' Mr. Caballero recalled. 'Then I joined an intelligence unit as an interrogator. We seized and investigated subversives.'"

Jacobolus 11:21, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Washington Post, 28 November, 1993

"The nightmare began for Honduras in August 1980. Twenty-five Honduran army officers were flown from Central America to a desert air strip in the southwestern United States, according to the sworn testimony in international court of one Honduran intelligence officer who participated. They spent six months learning interrogation techniques from a team of CIA and FBI trainers. Florencio Caballero, the Honduran officer, says that the U.S. instructors taught different methods of eliciting information from uncooperative prisoners without resorting to violence.

"When the officers returned to Honduras, the courses continued. The American trainers were joined by instructors fresh from the 'dirty wars' in Argentina and Chile in which thousands of suspected leftists were abducted and executed by security forces. These sessions, according to Caballero, focused on surveillance and techniques for following suspects and rescuing kidnap victims. This group of officers went on to become a secret division of Honduran military intelligence known as Battalion 3-16.

"That Battalion 3-16 engaged in a systematic program of disappearances and political murder from 1981 to 1984 is beyond question. In 1981, the U.S. State Department, in its annual report on human rights practices, noted some 60 'mysterious' disappearances in Honduras, whereas none was reported in previous years. By March 1984, 100-150 students, teachers, unionists and travelers had been picked up and secretly executed by plainclothes squads. These squads, according to a judgment of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights issued in July 1988, belonged to Battalion 3-16."

--Jacobolus 11:36, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

If the Post says it's "beyond question", then adding lots of "alleged"s seems just as POV (if not more so) than omitting them. Leaving out nasty details of US past history in the name of NPOV seems just misleading. --Jacobolus 11:39, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

POV sites?

removed hardcore POV sites (the World Socialist Website, Noam Chomsky and The Guardian are not news sources).

Wikipedia's job is to direct readers to relevant commentary, and sometimes that commentary is located at sites which are clearly POV, but still add value. For the same reason I could remove links to the white house from George Bush's page, claiming that it is POV. OF COURSE it is POV, but Wikipedia aims only to maintain POV on its own site, not necessarily on all links. Furthermore, the Guardian is a respected British newspaper, certainly credible as a source. --Jacobolus 12:37, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I second the above and would like add that while the World Socialist Website has an obvious ideological agenda, it publishes excellent reporting. The same goes for, of course, the Economist or the Wall Street Journal. -- Viajero 13:27, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

if you put WSW in the same category as mainstream publications as the Economist and the WSJ I am going to have a hard time taking you seriously. J. Parker Stone 09:24, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

NPOV Problems

this page needs major cleaning-up.....lots of NPOV selection of material....both sides of the aisle seem to consider him to be highly competent...why only stuff from his detractors on here?

Add some stuff about his competence. His brutal history is certainly relevant. If you know more about good things he's done, speak up. --Jacobolus 12:47, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

that you think the the Guardian is respected and credible as well as your comment as to "brutal history" shows your innate NPOV issues.....since you are so personally invested with this topic perhaps you should switch to other topics to write on.

backatcha. don't just delete, give us something to explain your point of view. If you don't like the external links, give us some that counter their viewpoint. don't delete the ones that are there. Rick K 20:25, Feb 21, 2005 (UTC)

I haven't done really any editing or adding to this article... I just put things back in that had been deleted with no reason given or discussion. I think it is fair to say that death squads in Honduras were "brutal," and equally fair to say that the Guardian does excellent reporting, with careful fact checking, even if they are to the left of the American press. I agree that I am POV. So are we all. I still would appreciate to hear of the good things that Negroponte has done. Wikipedia is a reference and a source of information, and I seek for it to be as complete as balanced as possible. That doesn't mean pulling punches about well-documented events. --Jacobolus 02:39, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Controversial, or despised?

Cut from article:

He is a controversial figure because he was involved in covert funding of the Contras in Nicaragua (see Iran-Contra Affair) and knowingly denied human rights abuses carried out by CIA-trained operatives in Honduras in the 1980s.

Shouldn't this say He is opposed by X because he was involved in funding the Contras - whom X hoped would be wiped out by the Sandinistas. Or, Z blames him for human rights abuses in Honduras, in its battle against Y - again, Z was hoping for a takeover by Q, etc.

In otherwords, don't say "he is controversial because" as a polite way of saying A opposes him because of B.

We need to know WHY he is opposed, and WHO opposes him. Don't hide it behind nice-sounding language.

Also, is it a FACT that he helped covertly fund the Contras? If so, we should document this, so our readers will be taught the truth (re-educated? ;-) and if it's NOT an undisputed fact, then we STILL need to document it (but as a claim rather than the truth) - along with the claims of the other side. -- Uncle Ed (talk) 16:19, May 13, 2005 (UTC)

any chance of neutrality here?

Okay, I took a stab at it. Mostly, re-organizing the section headings. But I also rewrote the 2 intro paragraphs.

basicly, the critics hate him because they wanted the Communists to win in Central America. To me, this means they don't give a hoot in hell about human rights. Everyone knows that Communisits are the world's worst violators of human rights. They make Hitler look good, if you measure purely be the magnitude of the genocide they've done.

Even China's PRC government admits that Mao murdered 20 million people. That's three times worse than the Jewish holocaust.

The usual argument, when someone tries to stop tyranny, is that the "violate human rights" of the tyrant's supporters. Or, for the unsophisticated, they downplay the "tyrant" angle and just paint the good guys as "killing people right and left". But think about it, why would Honduras just go around killing its own people, especially nuns? Random murder is pretty rare. And goverments usually just want to stay in power, so I figure they must have THOUGHT that the dead folks were in league with the commies. (Not that this justifies them.)

Buried in the article is the fact that the US tried to reform Honduras, to wean it away from torture for example and use less extreme (but still rough) methods of interrogation.

If you're wondering (not that it's really any of you business), I don't support ANY human rights violations by ANY side in the cold war. I'm just saying, let's not magnify one side's violations as a way of making the other side look good - especially when the other side is ten times worse.

In any case, the solution does not lie in the application of military force. But that's another story. -- Uncle Ed (talk) 16:52, May 13, 2005 (UTC)

The death squads murdered innocents to terrorise the people. A few deaths pour encourager les autres. I would like to add that even if nuns are communists, killing them should at the very least be frowned on. Grace Note 01:59, 14 May 2005 (UTC)

If you can prove that (1) the people the death squads killed were innocent and/or (2) that the motivation for the killings was to create terror amoung "the people", please add that fact, with a source, to the article. Or if it's not a fact, but a charge or claim, still it should go in the article (properly sourced).

We should also put in any evidence we can find that the Sandinistas or other Marxist groups murdered and terrorized the people. The documentary Nicaragua Was Our Home contains eyewitness testimony about this. -- Uncle Ed (talk) 21:31, May 16, 2005 (UTC)

One reminds you that we are talking about nuns.

It's rather illuminating of your commitment to neutrality that you think that mention of what the Sandinistas or other "Marxist" groups did has to do with an article on Negroponte's encouragement of terrorism. Grace Note 04:17, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

Don't mind Grace Note, he's of the mindset that anything and everything anti-American is automatically noble and just. (and again, Marxists can't admit that Marxists are Marxists -- they have to put quotes around them)

BTW, I never heard about nuns being killed in Honduras. I did hear about them being killed in El Salvador by an extremist political faction that opposed the PDC, the government the U.S. was supporting. J. Parker Stone 21:44, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

Specific article flaws

Okay, I'm done with my rant. Here are some specific article flaws.

Later, the Honduras Commission on Human Rights accused Negroponte himself of human rights violations. According to The New York Times, Negroponte was 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.

This paragraph accuses Negroponte of human rights violations. It consist of three sentences, of which the 1st and 3rd merely assert that Negroponte is to blame for (un-mentioned) human rights violations.

The second sentence, which would have been an excellent place to mention at least one violation, complains that Negroponte supported Reagan's anti-Communism strategy. This conflates anti-communism with "violation of human rights".

I can only suppose that this is a deliberate POV tactic. Communists routinely accuse their opponents of all sorts of things, to discredit and undermine them and NOT because the Communists have any real concern about those things. Here, however, in a paragraph devoted to HR violations we find (thrown in for the bargain) a complaint that Negroponte was anti-Communist!

Either this means that being anti-Communist is in itself a HR violation, or more likely the writer just wanted to list the reasons which (in his opinion) JN is "bad". Both are unacceptalbe to Wikipedia's NPOV policy. -- Uncle Ed (talk) 19:18, May 13, 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps you could have waited for discussion before inserting your POV? Just a thought. Grace Note 02:01, 14 May 2005 (UTC)

Ed, I am having trouble separating the wheat from the chaff in all the verbiage above.

To begin with, you changed this:

to this:

He has come under harsh criticism from Bush administration opponents, primarily because of his support of anti-Communist movements and governments in Central America. Much of the criticism alleges that he aided or covered up human rights abuses. See "controversy", below.

I object to this because

it implies that he is critisised because of partisan politics (Bush opponents)
there is substantial evidence, such as declassified cables, all well documented in the article, that he did in fact cover up abuses. No need, at this point in time, to be coy about it and say "alleges".

You object to this text:

Later, the Honduras Commission on Human Rights accused Negroponte himself of human rights violations. According to The New York Times, Negroponte was 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.

saying:

No it doesn't. It simply implies that human rights violations occurred in the course of activities undertaken on behalf of Reagan's anti-Communism. As for mentioning the violations, that occurs in the subsequent paragraphs which you have unhelpfully separated with a subheading. As for the second sentence, I think it should be moved to another position. -- Viajero 13:41, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

Wheat and chaff

Viajero, I value our working relationship far above any one article. And I appreciate your wheat from the chaff remark. I'm not going to let this turn into an edit war; I've used up my one and only revert on this article for the week!

Just one point, and I'll turn it over to you, trusting in your fundamental honesty and ever-present good judgment.

There's a difference between:

opponents object to his appointment because of X, Y and Z; and,
opponents (or people generally) "consider him controversial" because of X, Y and Z

The controversy is betwen those who favor and those who oppose his appointment.

I wish I had more time for this, but I gotta go. Bye! -- Uncle Ed (talk) 17:19, May 18, 2005 (UTC)

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