Negropante knew- plus he might be the one planning it.
John Negropante is a career diplomat.
In early January 2007, President George W. Bush nominated John Negroponte to be deputy secretary of state, the number two position at the State Department behind Condoleezza Rice. The move amounted to a demotion for Negroponte, who since 2005 was director of national intelligence (DNI), a Cabinet post created by Congress after 9/11 to improve coordination between the country's various intelligence agencies. (Negroponte was a career Foreign Service diplomat who has also served as ambassador to Iraq and the United Nations during the Bush presidency.) The previous deputy secretary of state, Robert Zoellick, stepped down in mid-2006 to take up a post at Goldman Sachs. Rice reportedly had difficulty finding a replacement, which according to a Los Angeles Times editorial was rumored to be because “her choices have either declined to sign up for a stint likely to be best remembered for the debacle in Iraq or have been vetoed as too liberal by the White House” (January 5, 2007). Negroponte was apparently “the only person acceptable to both Rice and [Vice President Dick] Cheney.
After 9/11 Negropante qas our ambassador to the UN:
The fear and passionate patriotism that followed the 9/11 attacks likely spared Negroponte from an intense grilling in his Senate confirmation hearings for his UN ambassadorship, which had already stalled for several months due to the Senate's request for documents. At the UN he led the Bush administration's drive for war, and tried to persuade the Mexican and Chilean governments to recall their UN ambassadors when they did not agree to support the planned invasion. According to news reports, Negroponte authorized wiretaps and other audio surveillance of both allies and critics at the UN in the run-up to the Security Council vote and the invasion (see COHA Memorandum to the Press 04.20, April 27, 2004; CounterPunch, June 9, 2004; and “Nomination of John Negroponte,” Congressional Record, September 14, 2001).
In Honduras:
During Negroponte's tenure as anbassador to Honduras, US military aid to Honduras grew from $4 million to $77.4 million; the US launched a covert war against Nicaragua and mined its harbors, and the US trained Honduran military to support the Contras.
John Negroponte worked closely with General Alvarez, Chief of the Armed Forces in Honduras, to enable the training of Honduran soldiers in psychological warfare, sabotage, and many types of human rights violations, including torture and kidnapping. Honduran and Salvadoran military were sent to the School of the Americas to receive training in counter-insurgency directed against people of their own country. The CIA created the infamous Honduran Intelligence Battalion 3-16 that was responsible for the murder of many Sandinistas. General Luis Alonso Discua Elvir, a graduate of the School of the Americas, was a founder and commander of Battalion 3-16. In 1982, the US negotiated access to airfields in Honduras and established a regional military training center for Central American forces, principally directed at improving fighting forces of the Salvadoran military.
In 1994, the Honduran Rights Commission outlined the torture and disappearance of at least 184 political opponents.
It also specifically accused John Negroponte of a number of human rights violations.
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This is a man who should probably be in jail instead of a high ranking position in our government. But the Bush plan of un-stabalizing the Shiite power base needs someone who is not afraid of playing dirty.
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