Abnormal Interests

I will take these questions up in reverse order. He is well educated, Yale. He speaks five languages, unusual to today's ambassador level diplomat. Negroponte was never been found to be directly involved in anything that would besmirch him professionally or personally. But he has sure been on the fringes of some truly nasty stuff. He was Ambassador to Honduras during the Iran-Contra affair and was accused of looking the other way with regard to gross human rights violations (at a minimum,). Some would even accuse him of direct involvement.

Answers.com puts it somewhat diplomatically,

Negroponte's appointment to the UN post met with some controversy because of his involvement in covert funding of the Contras and his covering up of human rights abuses in Honduras in the 1980s. He is accused of sponsoring terrorism for supporting the Contra insurgency against the left wing Sandinistas, the first ever democratically elected government of Nicaragua. He is also accused of inciting Contra attacks on civilians.

Equipo Nizkor, a human rights watchdog group, put it bluntly in 2001,

John Negroponte was ambassador to Honduras from 1981-1985. As such, he supported and carried out a US-sponsored policy of violations to human rights and international law. Among other things he supervised the creation of the El Aguacate air base, where the US trained Nicaraguan Contras during the 1980's. The base was used as a secret detention and torture center, in August 2001 excavations at the base discovered the first of the corpses of the 185 people, including two Americans, who are thought to have been killed and buried at this base.

During his ambassadorship, human rights violations in Honduras became systematic. The infamous Battalion 316, trained by the CIA and Argentine military, kidnaped, (sic) tortured and killed hundreds of people. Negroponte knew about these human rights violations and yet continued to collaborate with them, while lying to Congress.

Human Rights Watch remembers his role in the Bush administration's campaign to derail the International Criminal Court (ICC) is Security Council Resolution 1422 while UN Ambassador,

The Security Council adopted Resolution 1422 on July 12, 2002, following an intense debate on the U.N. Peacekeeping Mission in Bosnia-Herzegovina (UNMIBH). In an extraordinary step two weeks earlier, United States UN Ambassador John Negroponte vetoed the mission's renewal. In addition, Bush administration officials threatened to veto the renewal of all peacekeeping operations, if council members did not agree to the text of Resolution 1422. Eager to preserve peacekeeping operations, Security Council members adopted the text despite its serious flaws.

Whatever the facts of the matter, the impression throughout the world is that Negroponte condones a wide array of human rights abuses including torture. In a time when Americans recently (if not continuingly) engaged in torture and our newly appointed Attorney General could not define torture and argued, none-the-less, that there were cases where it was OK, do we really need another symbol of want so many think our country has become.

Working our way back words through the questions, does he have management experience with a large and far from fully integrated high budget organization? CBS News gave a partial answer this on this evening's news.

However, as CBS National Security Correspondent David Martin reports, colleagues say Negroponte has one glaring weakness: he knows very little about the government's Byzantine budget process. Yet he will now be responsible for a multi-billion dollar budget stretching across 15 different intelligence agencies. But, notes Martin, as a five-time ambassador, he has a world of experience in the nitty-gritty of foreign relations.

I think that means, no, but... These issues go well beyond "Byzantine" multi-billion dollar budgets. To fulfill the requirements set down by Congress and the "9/11 Commission Report", the new director will have to pull some fifteen different agencies together into a unified working whole. These agencies have a history of active, sometimes fierce, competition. While Negroponte is smart, dedicated and willing to take up a major challenge, there is nothing in his background that would make me think he can do this. Running an embassy is nothing compared to what he will face with this bunch of potentially loose canon agencies. I worry that we will still be having agency wars four years from now and that is something we can ill afford.

On my first question, has he had meaningful experience in the spy business? There is no way of knowing. In his ambassadorial positions, he, no doubt, interacted closely with various CIA section chiefs and military liaisons. While there are those who think he did more than that in Honduras, I view those possible activities as negatives rather than positives. He was likely a recipient of intelligence. And as such, he likely has first hand knowledge of what part of the user community wants and needs. That is a plus.

On balance, I think there must have been a stronger choice. I think of Colin Powell is one. But he would likely turn down the opportunity. Even Tommy Franks would be stronger. Notice, I didn't say Wes Clark, but I thought it. After some posturing from the Democrats, Negroponte will be confirmed. I sure hope Congress gets their own act together so it can fulfill its oversight obligation but I see little hope for that. Like the agencies themselves, Congress has too much built-in, self-serving, inertia.

Update: The Daily Kos provides an interesting discussion of Negroponte making the points I made plus a few more. Also interesting is the article, Veteran of dirty wars wins lead US spy role by Duncan Campbell in the Guardian Unlimited. Check them both out.