TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — In a 37-year foreign-service career, John D. Negroponte has glided through sticky episodes with such aplomb that U.S. diplomats call him "the Teflon Ambassador." But there is one thing he can't seem to shake: his tenure in Honduras in the 1980s.
Now that Negroponte is the Bush administration's nominee for the prominent post of ambassador to the United Nations, questions from that era are again being raised. And this time, with new material and declassified documents available for his confirmation hearings, some of those hard questions may be harder to answer.
Back then, Negroponte helped oversee one of the most sensitive operations of the Cold War, a mission to contain the spread of communism in Central America. Under his ambassadorship, Honduras became a base for a covert military operation to unseat the leftist Nicaraguan government next door.
In the process, Negroponte had to protect the reputation of Honduras as a democratic ally, even as its government used violent means to silence its political opponents. That balancing act led the embassy, under his leadership, to conceal the truth from an already skittish U.S. Congress that could have easily withdrawn its financial support.
Negroponte failed to report human rights violations in the early 1980s in Honduras, including one U.S.-backed operation that resulted in the execution of nine prisoners and the disappearance of an American priest, according to interviews--including ones based on newly discovered Honduran military correspondence--and declassified documents obtained by The Times.
Negroponte quashed a U.S. Embassy report on the executions for fear it would alarm Congress, according to a CIA inquiry. And embassy staffers of the time say they were told to downplay reports of a CIA-backed death squad called Battalion 316 that has been implicated in the torture and disappearance of nearly 200 political opponents.
In the CIA's 1997 inquiry into whether the embassy covered up human rights violations in the 1980s, one embassy official told investigators that information about rights abuses was suppressed for political reasons. "Reporting murders, executions and corruption," he said, "would reflect negatively on Honduras and not be beneficial in carrying out U.S. policy."
The 1997 investigation also found that the embassy was aware of Honduran military involvement in death squad activities and that inadequacies and inconsistencies in reporting obscured the scope of human rights abuses in the country.
Overall, the declassified documents and interviews suggest that Negroponte consistently acted to protect the brutal actions of a military whose high command was bent on swiftly crushing any possibility of leftist revolt. Battalion 316, also referred to as the "Special Unit," was only one tool.
Negroponte, however, describes himself as a champion of human rights in the country, citing two high-profile cases in which he intervened to free victims. He has also said the abuses he was aware of in Honduras paled compared with atrocities in neighboring countries.
But critics of Negroponte's nomination to the U.N. say he subordinated human rights to U.S. strategic policy--and that a U.N. ambassador must have a stronger, prouder record on an issue so prominent at the world body.
"When you say 'Negroponte,' it causes terror here for everyone in our generation," said Bertha Oliva, director of a Honduran group representing the families of those who disappeared. "For Honduras, it's a humiliation. It's offensive that the U.S. would name a man like this to the United Nations."
But Negroponte, called out of retirement for the U.N. post by his longtime colleague and mentor, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, also has strong defenders. Former Secretary of State George P. Shultz has started a letter-writing campaign on his behalf.
Thomas R. Pickering, a career ambassador himself who served as the envoy to El Salvador while Negroponte was in Honduras, said the attitude toward human rights questions then was to report only what could be substantiated. "I think there was more effort in those days in trying to sift through before reporting a question rather than reporting it quickly and then sifting through," he said.
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher, addressing concerns about the ambassador's past, said, "We're confident that he can be a forceful and effective advocate for human rights at the United Nations."
Negroponte declined to comment on the record for this story because, under Senate protocol, nominees are strongly discouraged from talking to the media before their confirmation hearings. His hearing has not been scheduled.
Negroponte was known during his 1981-85 tenure as "the Proconsul," a title implying that Honduras was his fiefdom. The saying at the time was that three people ran the country: Negroponte, military chief Gen. Gustavo Alvarez Martinez and the president--and the president didn't matter.
