Negroponte Becomes
The Spy Chief
By Bill Van Auken
19 February 2005
World
Socialist Web
President
Bushs nomination Thursday of John Negroponte as US director of
national intelligence serves as another warning that his second term
will be marked by an escalation of military aggression abroad and attacks
on democratic rights at home.
The new post is
supposed to centralize and coordinate the work of 15 separate civilian
and military intelligence agencies in the war on terrorism.
Its creation marks the most sweeping change in the laws governing national
intelligence since the onset of the Cold War more than half a century
ago.
Negropontes
qualifications for this position include his involvement in the covert
operations of the CIA when, as US ambassador to Honduras, he was a central
organizer of the contra war that claimed tens of thousands
of lives in neighboring Nicaragua. He was implicated as well in the
operations of death squads in Honduras itself. More recently, as US
ambassador to the United Nations, he pushed for the passage of Security
Council resolutions based on false intelligence that paved the way for
the US invasion of Iraq.
In June 2004, Negroponte
took over the American embassy in Baghdad, as the US wound up its Coalition
Provisional Authority and installed a puppet Iraqi regime under an interim
prime minister, the long-time CIA asset Iyad Allawi. While remaining
largely behind the scenes, Negroponte played the role of colonial proconsul,
overseeing the occupation of Iraq during a period that saw a steady
escalation of US violence, including the destruction of Fallujah.
Bush made the announcement
at a White House briefing that lasted more than half an hour. After
praising Negroponte for his unique set of skills, he declared,
If were going to stop the terrorists before they strike,
we must ensure that our intelligence agencies work as a single, unified
enterprise.
The White House
press corps responded to the announcement with its habitual subservience,
ignoring Negropontes past and passing over the significance of
the reconfiguration of the vast US intelligence apparatus as a unified
enterprise.
Most coverage has
been limited to questioning whether the creation of a new intelligence
czar can overcome the bureaucratic turf interests of the multiple
agencies involved and, in particular, whether it will have any effect
on the massive intelligence operations of the US military. There has
been speculation that the new office could face much the same fate as
the Department of Homeland Security, which exerts little real control
over the various agencies that it formally incorporated.
According to the
official story in Washington, the creation of the national intelligence
director (NID) post is part of a shakeup within US intelligence in a
response to the events of September 11, 2001, and is aimed at preventing
future terrorist attacks.
Establishing the
new post was one of the central recommendations of the bipartisan commission
formed by the administration to investigate the September 11 attacks.
The commissions findings were based on the premise that 9/11 attacks
were the result of a failure of intelligence, and, in particular,
a lack of coordination between the CIA and the FBI.
However, information
that emerged in the course of the panels investigation and subsequently
has exposed the falsity of the administrations claims that it
had no warning of threatened terrorist attacks within the US and that
no one had contemplated the possibility that hijacked planes would be
used as missiles. What the commission failed to probe was why these
warnings were ignored and why the countrys security forces were
effectively demobilized on the day of the attacks. It never even considered
the most salient question arising from September 11: did elements within
the administration or the intelligence apparatus allow the attacks to
happen in order to create the pretext for already planned wars of conquest
in the oil-rich regions of Central Asia and the Persian Gulf?
The supposed remedy
to September 11 amounts to giving more power to conspiratorial agencies
whose own role in the events of that day is far from clear.
The new NID post
will supposedly have budget-setting power over the various civilian
and military agencies, and will oversee a National Counterterrorism
Center, which will be empowered not only to collect intelligence, but
also to order covert operations.
The fundamental
change embodied in this unification of intelligence agencies is the
abrogation of the legal prohibition against the CIA and military intelligence
engaging in domestic spying and covert operations. This ban was put
in place as part of the National Security Act of 1947, amid warnings
by both Democrats and Republicans that the newly formed CIA could turn
into an American Gestapo.
Now, under Negroponte,
the framework is being erected for precisely such an all-encompassing
secret police apparatus, with extraordinary powers and resources to
spy on and suppress anyone seen as a threat to the American ruling elite
and its government.
Ironically, while
Negroponte is ostensibly tasked with unifying the disparate intelligence
agencies, he has been accused of launching his own rogue intelligence
operation in Iraq. The US think tank Stratfor, which has close links
to US military and intelligence circles, reported that Negroponte ran
his own parallel intelligence service in Iraq, because he
did not trust the CIAs Baghdad station chief.
There has been a
proliferation of such informal intelligence services, Stratfor noted,
most famously the Pentagons counter-terrorism evaluation
group, created to substantiate the bogus claims of ties between
the Iraqi regime and Al Qaeda.
The spread of such
off-the-books operations, Stratfor noted, sets up the new national
intelligence director (NID)yet to be appointedfor failure
As long as government agencies and on-the-side intel projects undermine
each other, the NID will not be able to bring all intelligence efforts
under one umbrella. The proliferation of small, separate intelligence
groups also hurts collection efforts by impeding the governments
ability to paint a clear picture of the realities on the groundin
Iraq and elsewhere.
Negropontes
objective was just thatto counteract the assessment of the CIA,
whose station chief filed an end-of-the year report giving a bleak assessment
of the US occupation and warning that resistance could spiral out of
control. Negroponte answered the assessment with a lengthy dissenting
report of his own, painting a far rosier picture of what is widely seen
as a debacle, not only in the CIA, but within the State Department and
military as well.
As national intelligence
director, Negroponte will doubtless continue along these lines, pressing
the CIA and other intelligence agencies to tailor their assessments
to meet the political needs of the administration. In this regard, he
will be aligned with the new director of the CIA, Peter Goss, who issued
a memo to the intelligence agencys employees last November warning
them not to identify with, support or champion opposition to the
administration or its policies.
Before Iraq, Negropontes
formative experience in matters of intelligence was his stint as US
ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985. He was sent to take over the
embassy in Tegucigalpa after his predecessor failed to heed warnings
to keep quiet about the growing wave of assassinations, disappearances,
jailings and torture carried out by the military-dominated regime.
Negroponte not only
halted any reporting of human rights violations, he oversaw their escalation
during his four years in the country. He secured a 20-fold increase
in US aid to the Honduran militaryfrom $4 million a year to nearly
$80 million. He also presided over a vast expansion of CIA activities
in the country, with the local station becoming the agencys largest
anywhere in the world.
The CIAs operations
included the organization, training and equipping of a military unit
known as Battalion 3-16, which carried out the abduction, illegal detention,
torture and murder of thousands of Hondurans, including journalists,
union activists, student leaders and others perceived to be opponents
of the military and of US policy in the region. Those who survived reported
being brutally beaten, shocked with electrodes, subjected to sexual
abuse and kept naked in cells with little or no food or water. Many
also testified that they were interrogated by US personnel during their
captivity.
Throughout this
period, Negroponte issued regular reports praising Honduras as a model
democracy, while he actively suppressed attempts by embassy staff to
issue written memos on human rights abuses.
Honduras was crucial
to US policy in the region, functioning as a military base for Washingtons
covert war against Nicaraguaa war that would claim some 50,000
lives, mostly as a result of terrorist attacks by the CIA-organized
contra army. Negroponte served as a key link between the
contras and the illegal network formed by the Reagan administration
under Lt. Col. Oliver North to provide covert funding after Congress
had voted to end US aid to the mercenary force.
The Nicaraguan government
went to the World Court to demand an end to the US sponsored aggression.
The ruling from The Hague found Washington guilty of unlawful
use of forcea legal term for state terrorism. Much of this
terrorism was launched from bases in Honduras that were constructed
and maintained under the supervision of Negroponte. Washington responded
by rejecting the courts authority.
Whatever ultimate
authority is invested in the post of national intelligence director,
the elevation of Negroponte to titular chief of all US civilian and
military intelligence agencies is an unmistakable signal that Washington
intends to escalate a criminal policy that has already produced unprovoked
wars, assassinations and the widespread use of torture. The integration
of the CIA, FBI, military intelligence and other agencies under his
leadership increases the danger that these same criminal methods will
be turned against those who oppose this policy within the United States
itself.