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John Negroponte speaks to reporters after a Security Council vote at United Nations headquarters in New York that authorized peacekeeping forces in Liberia, Aug. 1, 2003. (AP Photo/David Karp)
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INDEPTH: U.S. SECURITY
U.S. intelligence czar: John D. Negroponte
CBC News Online | February 17, 2005
The first national intelligence director of the United States has spent more than four decades in the foreign service as a diplomat. But there are a lot of question marks around a few of those years in the 1980s, when John Negroponte was posted to Honduras.
Negroponte was U.S. ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985, around the time President Ronald Reagan was knee-deep in his efforts to oust Nicaragua's Sandinista government. Negroponte is said to have played a key role in that effort from his post in Tegucigalpa.
QUICK FACTS
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John Dimitri Negroponte
Born: July 21, 1939, London
Education: BA, Yale University, 1960
Served as ambassador to: Honduras (1981-85), Mexico (1989-93), Philippines (1993-1997), UN (2001-04), Iraq (2004-05)
Brother: Nicholas Negroponte, founder and director of MIT's innovative Media Laboratory
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The Honduran government – run by a military dictatorship – was a key ally of the Reagan administration and it was part of Negroponte's job to help cultivate that relationship.
Dozens of the government's opponents were disappearing in ways strikingly similar to political disappearances in other Latin American dictatorships. There were rumours of death squads – and human-rights activists accused Negroponte and his political masters in Washington of turning a blind eye to it.
At the time, Negroponte denied that death squads were active in Honduras.
American presidents have turned to Negroponte to take on key positions in problem areas. In 1989, he was appointed ambassador to Mexico, as the Mexican government tried to deal with Zapatista rebels in Chiapas state. In 1993, he was named ambassador to the Philippines. It was a year after the Americans closed their last military base there – and anti-American sentiment was running high.
Negroponte took a break from the foreign service between 1997 and 2001. He took a job in the private sector as a vice president with the publishing company, McGraw Hill.
But in 2001, with a Bush back in the White House, the call for service came once again. Negroponte was headed to the United Nations as the American ambassador to the world body. It took six months for politicians to confirm him to that post, mainly because of concerns over his tour of duty in Honduras. Opponents wondered how he could effectively berate countries like China or Cuba for human rights abuses when he was accused of condoning abuse in Honduras.
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Negroponte looks on as Secretary of State Colin Powell addresses the UN Security Council Feb. 5, 2003. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola)
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While at the UN, Negroponte helped win unanimous approval of a Security Council resolution that demanded Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein comply with UN mandates to disarm. He also worked to expand the role of international security forces in Afghanistan after the overthrow of the Taliban government.
His next stop was Iraq in June 2004, hours after the United States handed over political control of Iraq to an interim government. It's been his job to transform the role of the United States in the eyes of Iraqis from occupier to adviser.
As director of national intelligence, it will be Negroponte's job – as President George W. Bush put it – "to stop the terrorists before they strike. We must ensure that our intelligence agencies work as a single, unified enterprise.''
Creating the job was a key recommendation of the commission that investigated the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The commission's report cited a lack of communication between the 15 different U.S. intelligence agencies and recommended a major overhaul of the system.
The intelligence chief will give Bush his daily intelligence, a job previously handled by the director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
It could be a tough road ahead for Negroponte. He'll likely face problems similar to those confronted by the Department of Homeland Security, which was also created in response to the Sept. 11 attacks and which has struggled to combine several different government agencies.
Bush has said the intelligence chief will have power over the sometimes competing spy agencies and would have authority to order the collection of new intelligence and ensure information-sharing. At the same time, Bush has assured the Pentagon – known to gather its own intelligence – that it will still be able to get its job done.
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