Jean Kirkpatrick, Vernon Walters, Thomas Pickering, John Negroponte and other US government representatives sent clear signals that the local military in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala were to be allowed a free hand by the United States government to murder tens of thousands of civilians and anyone who spoke out against the slaughter. Perhaps the defining climax to the sickening murder campaign came in 1989 when the Salvadoran army killed six Jesuit academics and two of their domestic staff at the University of Central America in San Salvador. These crimes were made possible because the United States government consistently tried to conceal its institutional role in funding, training and supporting the military and paramilitary perpetrators. The Iran-Contra scandal was the culmination of that sustained program of regional deceit.
Where is Herr Negroponte now? See, below the fold:
John D. Negroponte is a Brady-Johnson Distinguished Fellow in Grand Strategy and Senior Lecturer in Global Affairs at the Jackson Institute. He co-teaches the year-long “Studies in Grand Strategy” seminar and also offers a seminar of his own in the Spring term on "Current Issues in American Diplomacy and National Security."
Prior to coming to Yale, Mr. Negroponte had a distinguished career in diplomacy and national security, followed by a number of years in the private sector. He held government positions abroad and in Washington between 1960 and 1997 and again from 2001 to 2008. He has been U.S. ambassador to Honduras, Mexico, the Philippines, the United Nations, and Iraq. He served twice on the National Security Council staff, first as director for Vietnam in the Nixon Administration and then as deputy national security advisor under President Reagan. He also held a cabinet level position as the first director of national intelligence under President George W. Bush. While in the private sector from 1997 to 2001, Mr. Negroponte was executive vice president of the McGraw-Hill Companies, with responsibility for overseeing the company’s international activities. During those years he was also chairman of the French-American Foundation. Ambassador Negroponte also serves as chairman of the Council of the Americas/Americas Society and as a trustee of the Asia Society.
Isn't that totally sweet?
Herr Negroponte has a cozy little post at Yale U. while innocent little kids from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras are fleeing from the violence, chaos and blood baths he engendered.
So, how many nuns did you assassinate today, Herr Negroponte?
In 1981, a couple of decades before Rachel Corrie was murdered, the bodies of four women were found in a shallow grave in a rural district not far from San Salvador, El Salvador's capital. They had been raped and shot dead by members of the Salvadoran army on the orders of senior officers. In the context of the time, the atrocity would hardly have merited reporting. But the women were United States citizens. Two were religious sisters of the New York based Maryknoll order, Ita Ford and Maureen Clarke. One was an Ursuline Sister, Dorothy Kazel, the fourth a lay missioner, Jean Donovan. By virtue of their nationality, the story did make the news, just--the back page of the New York Times, to that paper's eternal shame.
Those four women had helped defend Salvadorans from the terror unleashed against their own people by the Salvadoran government with support from the United States administrations of Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. They gave their lives working alongside vulnerable people and communities in El Salvador. The murders followed the assassination in 1980 of Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero. The women's deaths were manipulated by the US government and its ever-pliant news media. The full facts took years to emerge. US ambassador to the UN, Jean Kirkpatrick, falsely accused the women of having supported the Salvadoran armed opposition, the FMLN. In fact, the four women were passionate advocates of non-violence, accompanying the rural villagers they served while caught up in a violent civil war.