Negroponte to the State Department

It looks like David Corn will need to resurrect his old Negroponte article at least one more time.

The New York Times reports that Negroponte appears set to take the number two job at the State Department. Another shift of the deck chairs on the ever-sinking Titanic where he will have a closer hand at formulating Iraq war policy and, as Corn reminds us, Negroponte's past must once again be taken into consideration if that move is made although it is highly unlikely that even a Democratic-controlled confirmation process will cause even the slighest headache for him once again.

Not only has Negroponte declined to acknowledge the obvious; when he was ambassador, the State Department rigged its Honduras human rights reports to Congress. As a 1995 Baltimore Sun series noted, "A comparison of the annual human rights reports prepared while Negroponte was ambassador with the facts as they were then known shows that Congress was deliberately misled." The Sun reported, "Time and again...Negroponte was confronted with evidence that a Honduran army intelligence unit, trained by the CIA, was stalking, kidnapping, torturing and killing suspected subversives." But this didn't make it into State Department reports. Had Honduras been found to be engaging in systematic abuses, it could have lost its US aid--thwarting the Reagan Administration's use of Honduras to support the contras.

Negroponte has claimed "there was no effort to soft pedal" abuses in Honduras. Yet in public statements he repeatedly conveyed a misleading appearance, and in the years since he has held tight--in the face of compelling evidence--to the view that the abuses that did occur were merely unfortunate exceptions.

It's clear that Negroponte is shifted around to different administration positions when there's a need for his neocon perspective, although he certainly didn't get much practice at that as director of national intelligence. It seems he'd be a bit more comfortable back in the role of globetrotter:

On many a workday lunchtime, the nominal boss of U.S. intelligence, John D. Negroponte, can be found at a private club in downtown Washington, getting a massage, taking a swim, and having lunch, followed by a good cigar and a perusal of the daily papers in the club’s library.

“He spends three hours there [every] Monday through Friday,” gripes a senior counterterrorism official, noting that the former ambassador has a security detail sitting outside all that time in chase cars. Others say they’ve seen the Director of National Intelligence at the University Club, a 100-year-old mansion-like redoubt of dark oak panels and high ceilings a few blocks from the White House, only “several” times a week.

Negroponte is one work horse who should have been put out to pasture years ago.

Related: SourceWatch backgrounder on Negroponte.