John Negroponte

John Dimitri Negroponte (; born July 21, 1939) is an American diplomat. In 2018, he was a James R. Schlesinger Distinguished Professor at the Miller Center for Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. He is a former J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Professor of International Affairs at the George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs. Prior to this appointment, he served...

John Dimitri Negroponte (; born July 21, 1939) is an American diplomat. In 2018, he was a James R. Schlesinger Distinguished Professor at the Miller Center for Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. He is a former J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Professor of International Affairs at the George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs. Prior to this appointment, he served as a research fellow and lecturer in international affairs at Yale University's Jackson Institute for Global Affairs, United States Deputy Secretary of State (2007–2009), and the first ever Director of National Intelligence (2005–2007). Negroponte served in the United States Foreign Service from 1960 to 1997. From 1981 to 1996, he had tours of duty as United States ambassador in Honduras, Mexico, and the Philippines. After leaving the Foreign Service, he subsequently served in the Bush administration as U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations from 2001 to 2004, and was ambassador to Iraq from June 2004 to April 2005. Early life and education Negroponte was born in London on July 21, 1939, to Greek parents Dimitrios Negrepontis (1915–1996) of the Negroponte family and Catherine Coumantaros (1917–2001). His father was a shipping magnate and alpine skier who competed in the 1936 Winter Olympics. Negroponte attended the Allen-Stevenson School and The Buckley School and graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy in 1956 and Yale University in 1960. He was a member of Fence Club (Psi Upsilon fraternity), alongside William H. T. Bush, the brother of President George H. W. Bush, and Porter Goss, who served as Director of Central Intelligence and Director of the Central Intelligence Agency under Negroponte from 2005 to 2006. Career Negroponte joined the United States Foreign Service in 1960. He served at eight different Foreign Service posts in Asia (including the U.S. Embassy, Saigon), Europe and Latin America, and he also held important positions at the State Department and the White House. As a young Foreign Service officer—one of the few men in Washington who dared to openly disagree with Henry Kissinger's secretive handling of the Vietnam peace talks—Negroponte attempted to convince his superior that any peace agreement negotiated without the consent of South Vietnam's leader Nguyen Van Thieu would fail. Seymour Hersh claims in his book The Price of Power that Kissinger never forgave Negroponte, and, upon becoming Secretary of State, exiled him to Quito, Ecuador. This was to be the beginning of Negroponte's long distinguished career as an ambassador. In 1981, he became the U.S. Ambassador to Honduras. From 1985 to 1987, Negroponte held the position of Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs. Subsequently, he served as Deputy Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, from 1987 to 1989; Ambassador to Mexico, from 1989 to 1993; and Ambassador to the Philippines from 1993 to 1996. As Deputy National Security Advisor to President Ronald Reagan, he was involved in the campaign to remove General Manuel Noriega from power in Panama. From 1997 until his appointment as ambassador to the U.N., Negroponte was an executive with McGraw-Hill. Ambassador to Honduras (1981–1985) From 1981 to 1985, Negroponte was the U.S. ambassador to Honduras. During this time, the US began to maintain a significant military presence there, with the goal of overthrowing the revolutionary Sandinista government of Nicaragua, which had overthrown the Somoza dictatorship in a civil war. Military aid to Honduras grew from $4 million to $77.4 million a year. Honduras also received over $200 million in economic aid. In 1995, The Baltimore Sun published an extensive investigation of U.S. activities in Honduras. The investigation found that Negroponte was aware of human rights abuses being committed by Battalion 3–16, but these were deliberately omitted from reports submitted to Congress. Speaking of Negroponte and other senior U.S. officials, an ex-Honduran congressman, Efraín Díaz, was quoted as saying: "Their attitude was one of tolerance and silence. They needed Honduras to loan its territory more than they were concerned about innocent people being killed." Substantial evidence later emerged to support the contention that Negroponte knew serious violations of human rights were being committed by the Honduran government, yet did not recommend ending U.S. military aid to Honduras. Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, on September 14, 2001, as reported in the Congressional Record, aired his concerns on the occasion of Negroponte's nomination to the position of UN ambassador: Based upon the Committee's review of State Department and CIA documents, it would seem that Ambassador Negroponte knew far more about human rights abuses perpetrated by the Honduran government than he chose to share with the committee in 1989 or in embassy contributions at the time to annual State Department Human Rights reports. Dodd cited a 1985 cable sent by Negroponte that made it clear that Negroponte was aware of and urged for reform to address the threat of "future human rights abuses" by "secret operating cells" left over by General Gustavo Álvarez Martínez, the chief of the Honduran armed forces, after he was forcibly removed from his post by fellow military commanders in 1984. The cables reveal that Negroponte repeatedly urged for updates to the Honduran criminal code and justice system to replace arbitrary measures taken by the Honduran government after events such as the destruction of the nation's main power plant at Tegucigalpa and the abduction of the entire business establishment of San Pedro Sula, Honduras' second largest city, in 1982. The previous U.S. ambassador to Honduras, Jack Binns, who was appointed by President Jimmy Carter, made numerous complaints about human rights abuses by the Honduran Army under the government of Policarpo Paz García. Binns later acknowledged that the Honduran Army was supported by military assistance from the Argentine junta and the CIA during the Carter administration, and that neither the Honduran government nor the CIA kept the embassy informed of what it was doing. The scale of the carnage in Honduras was limited to less than 300 'disappearances' during the five years of the Negroponte and Binns ambassadorships as compared with 70,000 lost lives as a result of civil war and repression in El Salvador, notwithstanding that Honduras was involved in a low-level civil war punctuated at times by invasions of its territory. In April 2005, as the Senate confirmation hearings for the National Intelligence post were held, hundreds of documents were released by the State Department in response to a FOIA request by The Washington Post. The documents, cables that Negroponte sent to Washington while serving as ambassador to Honduras, indicated that he played a more active role than previously known in managing US efforts against the leftist Sandinista government next door in Nicaragua. According to the Post, the image of Negroponte that emerges from the cables is that of an: exceptionally energetic, action-oriented ambassador whose anti-communist convictions led him to downplay human rights abuses in Honduras, the most reliable U.S. ally in the region. There is little in the documents the State Department has released so far to support his assertion that he used "quiet diplomacy" to persuade the Honduran authorities to investigate the most egregious violations, including the mysterious disappearance of dozens of government opponents. The New York Times wrote that the documents revealed: ... a tough cold warrior who enthusiastically carried out President Ronald Reagan's strategy. They show he sent admiring reports to Washington about the Honduran Army chief, who was blamed for human rights violations, warned that peace talks with the Nicaraguan government might be a dangerous "Trojan horse" and pleaded with officials in Washington to impose greater secrecy on the Honduran role in aiding the contras. The cables show that Mr. Negroponte worked closely with William J. Casey, then director of central intelligence, on the Reagan administration's anti-Communist offensive in Central America. He helped word a secret 1983 presidential "finding" authorizing support for the Contras, as the Nicaraguan rebels were known, and met regularly with Honduran military officials to win and retain their backing for the covert action. Negroponte was opposed to early drafts of peace settlements on grounds that they would have left undisturbed the threat of expansion of the Nicaraguan armed forces with Soviet and Cuban aid. Negroponte also tried to undermine efforts by Costa Rican president Oscar Arias's Contadora peace initiative (for which Arias won a Nobel Prize). In his tenure in Honduras, Negroponte steered a middle course between State Department and journalists who favored a policy of nonresistance to the militarization of the Sandinista regime to power Nicaragua and its aid to rebel movements in Honduras and El Salvador and 'hard line' persons within the Reagan administration who would have involved the United States in Central America through actions such as blockades, bombing of Nicaraguan airfields, provision of offensive weapons, and installation of permanent military bases. However, a study of American policy has noted that: the United States had a great deal to do with the preservation of Honduran stability. Had it not been for U.S. enticements and pressures, elections probably would not have been held in 1980 and 1981. The perpetuation of the military dictatorship would have undermined the legitimacy of the political order, making it far more vulnerable to revolutionary turmoil. By the same token, strong North American opposition to President Suazo's attempt to remain in power in 1985 helped preserve the fragile legitimacy that had been built over the preceding five years ... massive economic aid prevented the economy's collapse ... without the United States, it might well have disintegrated into chaos. Following Bush-Gorbachev meetings beginning in 1986, both the U.S. and the Soviet Union ended military support for 'proxy wars' in Central America, and free elections in Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador followed. Senator Bill Bradley regarded the whole episode as "a minor issue--the supply of arms to the Nicaraguan contras, a policy that took on monumental proportions inside the Beltway and upon those liberals who saw another quagmire in every exercise of military power." Assistant Secretary for Environment, Oceans and Fisheries (1985–1989) In this posting, Negroponte together with Ambassador Richard Benedick negotiated the Montreal Protocol on Ozone, the most successful modern environmental treaty, overcoming opposition from Europe, Russia, and China and from some Reagan administration officials. He also fostered scientific cooperation with the Soviet Union, clashing with 'hard liners' like Richard Perle, as well as two treaties relating to cooperation in dealing with nuclear accidents in the wake of the Chernobyl disaster. Ambassador to Mexico (1989–1993) During Negroponte's tour as US Ambassador to Mexico, he was instrumental in persuading the Bush administration to respond to a Mexican initiative by negotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) despite initial opposition by the U.S. Office of Trade Representative. His tenure in Mexico was thus the most consequential of any modern American ambassadorship. Another commentator noted the subsequent proliferation of Negroponte's vision in other free trade agreements. He officiated at the embassy where he liberalized visa practices. Ambassador to the UN (2001–2004) President George W. Bush appointed Negroponte to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in February 2001. There was substantial opposition to his nomination from Senate Democrats, and Negroponte was