God Help Us
washingtonpost.com
GOP Senators Look to Shift Spy Management From CIA
By Walter PincusWashington Post Staff WriterSaturday, October 1, 2005; A09
Republicans on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence want to strip from the CIA its primary role as manager of overseas collection of human intelligence, suggesting that Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte take over that responsibility.
The CIA's Directorate of Operations, the agency's clandestine arm, which now coordinates spying overseas by all U.S. intelligence agencies, in the past "did not effectively exercise the authorities of the national HUMINT [human intelligence] manager often focusing instead on its own structure and operations," the committee majority said in its report on the fiscal 2006 intelligence authorization bill released late Thursday.
Citing past failures in averting the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and in overstating Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, the Republican majority said U.S. spying operations "have lacked strong leadership and effective mechanism to resolve conflicts."
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The Patriot Act, post 911, collects information but the same kind of information was collected pre-911 and Bush and Cronies ignored it, which resulted in the events of 911. Then they used the events of 911 to create the "Patriot" Act to spy on U.S. citizens, and to take away our rights as defined by The Bill of Rights. What do these folks think we're smoking?
___________________________________________________________________
The Republicans, led by Sen. Pat Roberts (Kan.), the panel chairman, urged Negroponte "to directly manage and oversee the conduct of HUMINT operations across the intelligence community," saying the need is "imperative" because the Pentagon and the FBI are placing "greater emphasis" on spying.
Democrats on the committee opposed the suggestion, calling it in their section of the report a "misguided solution" and noting that the CIA has recently reached agreements with the FBI and Pentagon to "avoid confusion and ensure smooth coordination" of spying operations at home and abroad. They also noted that the DNI -- a position created by Congress last year to oversee and coordinate the government's intelligence community -- "was not established as a new bureaucracy to assume the responsibility for day-to-day intelligence operations."
The Republican call for change comes as a plan by CIA Director Porter J. Goss to create a CIA coordinator for all human intelligence carried out abroad by U.S. agencies, including the Pentagon and FBI, sits in Negroponte's office awaiting his approval. Though the proposal originated with the President's Commission on Intelligence, there is no timetable for Negroponte to make that decision, an official in Negroponte's office said yesterday.
The majority report accompanies the Senate version of the intelligence authorization bill, which carries about $44 billion for the 15 agencies and Office of the Director of National Intelligence. It will now go to the Senate Armed Services Committee and later to the Senate floor for a vote. The report explains various sections of the bill and includes a broad committee review of the intelligence community, its weaknesses and strengths. The House has already passed its version of the measure. The Democrats' remarks were carried as "additional views" in the report.
The report includes two additional indications of the Pentagon's sharply increasing activities in the intelligence field at home and abroad.
While the CIA is waiting for DNI approval of its plan for coordinating intelligence activities overseas, the Pentagon has created a Defense Humint Management Office to coordinate increased spying activities by the Defense Intelligence Agency's human intelligence section, as well as clandestine operations by the separate services, area commanders and counterintelligence arms. One role for this office, which will be run under the supervision of Undersecretary for Intelligence Stephen A. Cambone, will be to "deconflict" intelligence operations, meaning to ensure that activities by various Pentagon groups do not overlap or interfere with each other, a Pentagon official said.
The committee report recommends that the new office have authority to direct and control all Defense Department collection of information from human sources -- as opposed to technical sources such as electronic intercepts -- in the United States and overseas.
Another proposal reflected increased Pentagon interest in intelligence operations in the United States involving American citizens. The proposal included in the bill would give a "limited" exemption to defense intelligence personnel, allowing them to recruit sources and collect personal information on U.S. citizens clandestinely, without disclosing they worked for the government, when "significant" foreign intelligence is being sought. They would have to coordinate such collection with the FBI.
A similar exemption was sought last year and dropped from the bill because of opposition in the Senate Armed Services Committee, said a senior congressional staff member. This year the committee said, "Current counterterrorism and other foreign intelligence operations highlight the need for greater latitude to assess potential intelligence sources, both overseas and within the United States." The panel noted the limited exemption is similar to that enjoyed by the CIA "when assessing and recruiting sources."
The committee said it "will closely monitor the DoD's [Defense Department's] use of the authorities provided."
In other areas, the panel approved establishment of a DNI inspector general with authority to investigate matters in any of the 15 agencies that make up the intelligence community. That person would be nominated by the president and subject to Senate confirmation.
Another proposal would require that the deputy director of central intelligence be a civilian and not an active-duty military officer, as is now the case. The committee said Vice Adm. Albert M. Calland III could continue to serve until President Bush nominates a successor or he retires.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
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This is a very dangerous man, this Negroponte. Sad to say, this is the first time I’ve taken note of the man or his potential to devastate my country and her ideals. This whole issue is bigger than one old woman spouting opinions on the internet. Won’t someone please, someone who has the balls and the authority, please take on these issues and stop these people who are destroying my country?
When I went searching Google for quotable information on Negroponte I found that his name is hot on sites like Al-Jazeerah and extreme ‘hollerin’ sites rife with ‘Zionist’ hints and I chose this article from Al-Jazeerah because it was written by a nun, a sister, and would appear to be simply straight reporting of events.
I have no desire to find myself on the hysterical side of the reporting of events, but rather to react to reported events as a reasonable American citizen. The more I learn and the more I read, the more I realize that any reaction at all is hysterical reaction because the events that are occurring are so untenable that the only possible reaction is hysteria.
All this is way beyond what the average American can change. It may be too late for my country. God help us.
___________________________________________________________________
John D. Negroponte, the Next US Ambassador to Iraq
By Sister Laetitia Bordes, s.h.
Al-Jazeerah, April 22, 2004
Editorial Note: Al-Jazeerah.info reprints this background article about Ambassador John D. Negroponte following his appointment by President Bush as the next US Ambassador to Iraq, starting from July 1, 2004. The article appeared first in 2001.
John D. Negroponte, President Bush's nominee as the next ambassador to the United Nations? My ears perked up. I turned up the volume on the radio. I began listening more attentively. Yes, I had heard correctly. Bush was nominating Negroponte, the man who gave the CIA backed Honduran death squads open field when he was ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985.
My mind went back to May 1982 and I saw myself facing Negroponte in his office at the US Embassy in Tegucigalpa. I had gone to Honduras on a fact-finding delegation. We were looking for answers. Thirty-two women had fled the death squads of El Salvador after the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero in 1980 to take refuge in Honduras. One of them had been Romero's secretary. Some months after their arrival, these women were forcibly taken from their living quarters in Tegucigalpa, pushed into a van and disappeared. Our delegation was in Honduras to find out what had happened to these women.
John Negroponte listened to us as we exposed the facts. There had been eyewitnesses to the capture and we were well read on the documentation that previous delegations had gathered. Negroponte denied any knowledge of the whereabouts of these women. He insisted that the US Embassy did not interfere in the affairs of the Honduran government and it would be to our advantage to discuss the matter with the latter. Facts, however, reveal quite the contrary. During Negroponte's tenure, US military aid to Honduras grew from $4 million to $77.4 million; the US launched a covert war against Nicaragua and mined its harbors, and the US trained Honduran military to support the Contras.
John Negroponte worked closely with General Alvarez, Chief of the Armed Forces in Honduras, to enable the training of Honduran soldiers in psychological warfare, sabotage, and many types of human rights violations, including torture and kidnapping. Honduran and Salvadoran military were sent to the School of the Americas to receive training in counter-insurgency directed against people of their own country. The CIA created the infamous Honduran Intelligence Battalion 3-16 that was responsible for the murder of many Sandinistas. General Luis Alonso Discua Elvir, a graduate of the School of the Americas, was a founder and commander of Battalion 3-16. In 1982, the US negotiated access to airfields in Honduras and established a regional military training center for Central American forces, principally directed at improving fighting forces of the Salvadoran military.
In 1994, the Honduran Rights Commission outlined the torture and disappearance of at least 184 political opponents.
It also specifically accused John Negroponte of a number of human rights violations. Yet, back in his office that day in 1982, John Negroponte assured us that he had no idea what had happened to the women we were looking for. I had to wait 13 years to find out. In an interview with the Baltimore Sun in1996 Jack Binns, Negroponte's predecessor as US ambassador in Honduras, told how a group of Salvadorans, among whom were the women we had been looking for, were captured on April 22, 1981 and savagely tortured by the DNI, the Honduran Secret Police, before being placed in helicopters of the Salvadoran military. After take off from the airport in Tegucigalpa, the victims were thrown out of the helicopters. Binns told the Baltimore Sun that the North American authorities were well aware of what had happened and that it was a grave violation of human rights. But it was seen as part of Ronald Reagan's counterinsurgency policy.
Now in 2001, I'm seeing new ripples in this story.
Since President Bush made it known that he intended to nominate John Negroponte, other people have suddenly been "disappearing", so to speak. In an article published in the Los Angeles Times on March 25 Maggie Farley and Norman Kempster reported on the sudden deportation of several former Honduran death squad members from the United States. These men could have provided shattering testimony against Negroponte in the forthcoming Senate hearings. One of these recent deportees just happens to be General Luis Alonso Discua, founder of Battalion 3-16. In February, Washington revoked the visa of Discua who was Deputy Ambassador to the UN. Since then, Discua has gone public with details of US support of Battalion 3-16.
Given the history of John Negroponte in Central America, it is indeed horrifying to think that he should be chosen to represent our country at the United Nations, an organization founded to ensure that the human rights of all people receive the highest respect. How many of our Senators, I wonder, let alone the US public, know who John Negroponte really is?
___________________________________________________________________
GOP Senators Look to Shift Spy Management From CIA
By Walter PincusWashington Post Staff WriterSaturday, October 1, 2005; A09
Republicans on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence want to strip from the CIA its primary role as manager of overseas collection of human intelligence, suggesting that Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte take over that responsibility.
The CIA's Directorate of Operations, the agency's clandestine arm, which now coordinates spying overseas by all U.S. intelligence agencies, in the past "did not effectively exercise the authorities of the national HUMINT [human intelligence] manager often focusing instead on its own structure and operations," the committee majority said in its report on the fiscal 2006 intelligence authorization bill released late Thursday.
Citing past failures in averting the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and in overstating Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, the Republican majority said U.S. spying operations "have lacked strong leadership and effective mechanism to resolve conflicts."
_____________________________________________________________________
The Patriot Act, post 911, collects information but the same kind of information was collected pre-911 and Bush and Cronies ignored it, which resulted in the events of 911. Then they used the events of 911 to create the "Patriot" Act to spy on U.S. citizens, and to take away our rights as defined by The Bill of Rights. What do these folks think we're smoking?
___________________________________________________________________
The Republicans, led by Sen. Pat Roberts (Kan.), the panel chairman, urged Negroponte "to directly manage and oversee the conduct of HUMINT operations across the intelligence community," saying the need is "imperative" because the Pentagon and the FBI are placing "greater emphasis" on spying.
Democrats on the committee opposed the suggestion, calling it in their section of the report a "misguided solution" and noting that the CIA has recently reached agreements with the FBI and Pentagon to "avoid confusion and ensure smooth coordination" of spying operations at home and abroad. They also noted that the DNI -- a position created by Congress last year to oversee and coordinate the government's intelligence community -- "was not established as a new bureaucracy to assume the responsibility for day-to-day intelligence operations."
The Republican call for change comes as a plan by CIA Director Porter J. Goss to create a CIA coordinator for all human intelligence carried out abroad by U.S. agencies, including the Pentagon and FBI, sits in Negroponte's office awaiting his approval. Though the proposal originated with the President's Commission on Intelligence, there is no timetable for Negroponte to make that decision, an official in Negroponte's office said yesterday.
The majority report accompanies the Senate version of the intelligence authorization bill, which carries about $44 billion for the 15 agencies and Office of the Director of National Intelligence. It will now go to the Senate Armed Services Committee and later to the Senate floor for a vote. The report explains various sections of the bill and includes a broad committee review of the intelligence community, its weaknesses and strengths. The House has already passed its version of the measure. The Democrats' remarks were carried as "additional views" in the report.
The report includes two additional indications of the Pentagon's sharply increasing activities in the intelligence field at home and abroad.
While the CIA is waiting for DNI approval of its plan for coordinating intelligence activities overseas, the Pentagon has created a Defense Humint Management Office to coordinate increased spying activities by the Defense Intelligence Agency's human intelligence section, as well as clandestine operations by the separate services, area commanders and counterintelligence arms. One role for this office, which will be run under the supervision of Undersecretary for Intelligence Stephen A. Cambone, will be to "deconflict" intelligence operations, meaning to ensure that activities by various Pentagon groups do not overlap or interfere with each other, a Pentagon official said.
The committee report recommends that the new office have authority to direct and control all Defense Department collection of information from human sources -- as opposed to technical sources such as electronic intercepts -- in the United States and overseas.
Another proposal reflected increased Pentagon interest in intelligence operations in the United States involving American citizens. The proposal included in the bill would give a "limited" exemption to defense intelligence personnel, allowing them to recruit sources and collect personal information on U.S. citizens clandestinely, without disclosing they worked for the government, when "significant" foreign intelligence is being sought. They would have to coordinate such collection with the FBI.
A similar exemption was sought last year and dropped from the bill because of opposition in the Senate Armed Services Committee, said a senior congressional staff member. This year the committee said, "Current counterterrorism and other foreign intelligence operations highlight the need for greater latitude to assess potential intelligence sources, both overseas and within the United States." The panel noted the limited exemption is similar to that enjoyed by the CIA "when assessing and recruiting sources."
The committee said it "will closely monitor the DoD's [Defense Department's] use of the authorities provided."
In other areas, the panel approved establishment of a DNI inspector general with authority to investigate matters in any of the 15 agencies that make up the intelligence community. That person would be nominated by the president and subject to Senate confirmation.
Another proposal would require that the deputy director of central intelligence be a civilian and not an active-duty military officer, as is now the case. The committee said Vice Adm. Albert M. Calland III could continue to serve until President Bush nominates a successor or he retires.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
___________________________________________________________________
This is a very dangerous man, this Negroponte. Sad to say, this is the first time I’ve taken note of the man or his potential to devastate my country and her ideals. This whole issue is bigger than one old woman spouting opinions on the internet. Won’t someone please, someone who has the balls and the authority, please take on these issues and stop these people who are destroying my country?
When I went searching Google for quotable information on Negroponte I found that his name is hot on sites like Al-Jazeerah and extreme ‘hollerin’ sites rife with ‘Zionist’ hints and I chose this article from Al-Jazeerah because it was written by a nun, a sister, and would appear to be simply straight reporting of events.
I have no desire to find myself on the hysterical side of the reporting of events, but rather to react to reported events as a reasonable American citizen. The more I learn and the more I read, the more I realize that any reaction at all is hysterical reaction because the events that are occurring are so untenable that the only possible reaction is hysteria.
All this is way beyond what the average American can change. It may be too late for my country. God help us.
___________________________________________________________________
John D. Negroponte, the Next US Ambassador to Iraq
By Sister Laetitia Bordes, s.h.
Al-Jazeerah, April 22, 2004
Editorial Note: Al-Jazeerah.info reprints this background article about Ambassador John D. Negroponte following his appointment by President Bush as the next US Ambassador to Iraq, starting from July 1, 2004. The article appeared first in 2001.
John D. Negroponte, President Bush's nominee as the next ambassador to the United Nations? My ears perked up. I turned up the volume on the radio. I began listening more attentively. Yes, I had heard correctly. Bush was nominating Negroponte, the man who gave the CIA backed Honduran death squads open field when he was ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985.
My mind went back to May 1982 and I saw myself facing Negroponte in his office at the US Embassy in Tegucigalpa. I had gone to Honduras on a fact-finding delegation. We were looking for answers. Thirty-two women had fled the death squads of El Salvador after the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero in 1980 to take refuge in Honduras. One of them had been Romero's secretary. Some months after their arrival, these women were forcibly taken from their living quarters in Tegucigalpa, pushed into a van and disappeared. Our delegation was in Honduras to find out what had happened to these women.
John Negroponte listened to us as we exposed the facts. There had been eyewitnesses to the capture and we were well read on the documentation that previous delegations had gathered. Negroponte denied any knowledge of the whereabouts of these women. He insisted that the US Embassy did not interfere in the affairs of the Honduran government and it would be to our advantage to discuss the matter with the latter. Facts, however, reveal quite the contrary. During Negroponte's tenure, US military aid to Honduras grew from $4 million to $77.4 million; the US launched a covert war against Nicaragua and mined its harbors, and the US trained Honduran military to support the Contras.
John Negroponte worked closely with General Alvarez, Chief of the Armed Forces in Honduras, to enable the training of Honduran soldiers in psychological warfare, sabotage, and many types of human rights violations, including torture and kidnapping. Honduran and Salvadoran military were sent to the School of the Americas to receive training in counter-insurgency directed against people of their own country. The CIA created the infamous Honduran Intelligence Battalion 3-16 that was responsible for the murder of many Sandinistas. General Luis Alonso Discua Elvir, a graduate of the School of the Americas, was a founder and commander of Battalion 3-16. In 1982, the US negotiated access to airfields in Honduras and established a regional military training center for Central American forces, principally directed at improving fighting forces of the Salvadoran military.
In 1994, the Honduran Rights Commission outlined the torture and disappearance of at least 184 political opponents.
It also specifically accused John Negroponte of a number of human rights violations. Yet, back in his office that day in 1982, John Negroponte assured us that he had no idea what had happened to the women we were looking for. I had to wait 13 years to find out. In an interview with the Baltimore Sun in1996 Jack Binns, Negroponte's predecessor as US ambassador in Honduras, told how a group of Salvadorans, among whom were the women we had been looking for, were captured on April 22, 1981 and savagely tortured by the DNI, the Honduran Secret Police, before being placed in helicopters of the Salvadoran military. After take off from the airport in Tegucigalpa, the victims were thrown out of the helicopters. Binns told the Baltimore Sun that the North American authorities were well aware of what had happened and that it was a grave violation of human rights. But it was seen as part of Ronald Reagan's counterinsurgency policy.
Now in 2001, I'm seeing new ripples in this story.
Since President Bush made it known that he intended to nominate John Negroponte, other people have suddenly been "disappearing", so to speak. In an article published in the Los Angeles Times on March 25 Maggie Farley and Norman Kempster reported on the sudden deportation of several former Honduran death squad members from the United States. These men could have provided shattering testimony against Negroponte in the forthcoming Senate hearings. One of these recent deportees just happens to be General Luis Alonso Discua, founder of Battalion 3-16. In February, Washington revoked the visa of Discua who was Deputy Ambassador to the UN. Since then, Discua has gone public with details of US support of Battalion 3-16.
Given the history of John Negroponte in Central America, it is indeed horrifying to think that he should be chosen to represent our country at the United Nations, an organization founded to ensure that the human rights of all people receive the highest respect. How many of our Senators, I wonder, let alone the US public, know who John Negroponte really is?
___________________________________________________________________
posted by FancyRage at 10:07 AM
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