Talk:John Negroponte/Archive 1

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Archive 1

Roadblock

I have removed the following from the article:

=== Negroponte and the Calipari and Sgrena shootings ===

On March 4, 2005 Italian intelligence officer Nicola Calipari was killed at a temporary American roadbloak at an on-ramp to route Irish, the expressway to Baghdad International Airport, while on a rescue mission for Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena, who was being held hostage. Ms Sgrena was also injured.

Initial press reports explained that the temporary roadblock was in place to keep the route clear of traffic so it would be safe for the use of a "diplomatic VIP". That "diplomatic VIP" was subsequently identified as Ambassador Negroponte.

When the American Military Report was accidentally released in unredacted form it was revealed that Mr. Negroponte's trip left the soldiers providing security for him exposed several times longer than was safe. The Americans don't try to keep route Irish safe at all times. There are too many highrises that overlook the route, where snipers, or artillery spotters can be stationed. So the procedure is to shut it down, without warning, only when necessary. The procedure is to leave the soldiers manning the roadblocks exposed for a maximum of fifteen to twenty minutes, to prevent the resistance forces having time to organize an attack.

The report of the Calipari/Sgrena incident revealed that the American soldiers manning the roadblock made several calls to their headquarters, seeking clarification as they were left exposed long past the amount of time they expected. at the time of the shooting Ambassador Negroponte's trip had left them exposed for almost an hour and a half.


This doesn't seem to belong in the article: it is a really specific story and has only a tenuous relation to Negroponte's career. If there was, say, a pattern of abuses like this, the entire story might merit a single paragraph, but as it is, there is not much here. I say this as a critic of Negroponte and his human rights record.

"Contra Attacks"

I have removed:

" He is also accused of inciting Contra attacks on civilians."

from the page. I've never heard of this before, and there seems to be no external source for it. I have also removed:

"He is accused of sponsoring terrorism for supporting the Contra insurgency against the left wing Sandinistas, the first ever democratically elected government of Nicaragua."

The allegations are that Negroponte was involved in suppressing information about human rights abuses and that he turned a blind eye to the activities of the Contras and the CIA. I have not seen any credible evidence that Negroponte 'sponsored' terrorism, meaning provided funds for. If anything, perhaps it might be said that he "aided the US government's sponsorship of the Contras..." Anyway, to say that Negroponte went out and sponsored the terrorists on his own is incorrect.

Iraq Extrajudicial killings?

Ferkelparade, Wizzy et al. -- following your complaints, I've moved my earlier contribution to this page. Those who wish to use it as a reference for expanding the section on Negroponte in Iraq are welcome to do so. I do believe that the wiki is an excellent place to consolidate information on Negroponte in Iraq -- a difficult task that the media is probably unwilling to do. But I don't want to violate NPOV.

On July 14th, 2004, The Sydney Morning Herald reported claims by two witnesses that Iyad Allawi, the new Prime Minister of Iraq, had pulled a pistol and executed as many as six suspected insurgents at a Baghdad police station [1]. The Herald established that at least thirty other people were witnesses to the extra-judicial killings, including US soldiers who were providing Allawi with security at the time. Negroponte, in his new role as US Ambassador to Iraq, refused to comment on the allegations while at the same time asking that the case be closed in a direct echo of his work to minimize and deny US-sanctioned human-rights abuses in Honduras. Negroponte's office replied to the Herald in an e-mail:
If we attempted to refute each [rumour], we would have no time for other business. As far as this embassy's press office is concerned, this case is closed.

How about this ? However, Negroponte was not there himself - just (as I read it) four of his bodyguards. How may does he have ? So, while I initially just wanted the Honduras comment removed, I am not sure it belongs here at all. I first read it that Negroponte was there.

On July 14th, 2004, The Sydney Morning Herald reported claims by two witnesses that Iyad Allawi, the new Prime Minister of Iraq, had pulled a pistol and executed as many as six suspected insurgents at a Baghdad police station [2]. Negroponte's office replied to The Herald that they would not be persuing the matter.

Now it looks like News, not Encyclopedia ? Wizzy 12:20, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

  • I am disappointed that my addition to this page, covering Negroponte's office's response to extrajudicial killings was removed. It could certaintly stand editing for NPOV, but wholesale removal strikes me as clearly out of the spirit of the wiki. Why should this be included? It is a major human rights scandal in Iraq committed while Negroponte was amabassador to the country. His embassay's non-response is an important fact. I don't think that we should include every press release; I do think that this scattered material should be consolidated at some point as we get a better picture of how Negroponte is running the show. But if material similar to that which I contributed gets deleted, future editors will not be able to perform such a consolidation.
I don't think the paragraph in question is too POV (that's not why I deleted it), and I don't want to question its factual accuracy - it merely seemed to me to be a bit too detailed for a biography article, and the paragraph doesn't really make clear why the event is important for a Negroponte biography. Major news events deserve their own article anyway, which could then be linked from here...maybe the paragraph could be shortened to something like "Negroponte recently came under attack for tacitly accepting Ahmed Allawi's alleged extrajudicial killing of insurgents". Anyway, that's my opinion...I'm willing to discuss. -- Ferkelparade 00:31, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • Hi Ferkelparade, thanks for taking this to the discussion. I definitely think the encyclopedia entry should be more than just a biography, and that the article is a good place to consolidate information about the activities of the current US Embassy in Iraq -- I don't know of a better place on the wiki. This is essentially what others have done re: Honduras. I see the article as always "in development": as we learn more about what the embassy is doing, this stuff can be consolidated. So, in essence -- make it as short as you like but (I think) keep the following bits: a reference to the news source (SMH), hyperlink to article, and the quote of the embassy's response. I would want to contextualize it by reference to N's role in Honduras, OTOH, that's maybe going into NPOV territory; if we can't find a quote from someone attacking Negroponte, we probably shouldn't write "recently came under attack."
Hmm, but that's exactly the point: so far, nobody has attacked Negroponte over this issue, and the killings by Allawi themselves are still disputed - this information should definitely be in the Allawi article, but at this point, it seems a bit premature to have it here... -- Ferkelparade 12:32, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Pheonix Program in Vietnam?

Dear Wikipedia,

Thank you for your excellent work. Here is a question regarding Mr. Negroponte that I haven't found addressed anywhere, I hope you can help:

When John Negroponte was named U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, I felt it was an announcement to world of international diplomacy that the George W. Bush administration was asserting its intention to use the dirtiest methods of "counter-insurgency" at all levels of international policy implementation.

There was extensive reporting in the Baltimore Sun in 1995 on Negroponte?s role in covering up human-rights abuses in Honduras during the Contra war against Nicaragua. However, I remembered hearing Mr. Negroponte's name connected with the Phoenix Program in Vietnam. The most I have been able to ascertain was that he served as chief political officer at the U.S. embassy in Saigon during the war. At the time, it seemed to be common knowledge that he supervised the program, which has been characterized as one of torture and summary execution of possibly thousands of Vietnamese believed to be supporters of the Vietnamese National Liberation Front.

If you could verify or refute these charges it would be of undoubted service to the world's right to know the truth about those who speak in our name - especially now with Mr. Negroponte being appointed ambassador to a nominally sovereign Iraq.

Thank you very much,

Carl Glenn


Hi, welcome to wikipedia. If you are certain about a fact, you yourself can edit the article and put it in - read Wikipedia:Welcome,_newcomers about this. I too have seen some sources on the web stating that he was a "political officer" at the Saigon embassy, albeit a junior one. It would be nice to at least know the time span which he spent there.
As to the charges in connection with the Phoenix Project, you could try and post your question at wikipedia's Reference desk. Please be aware that some topics such as U.S. atrocities during the Vietnam war can be highly controversial, so if you make edits try to follow wikipedia's Neutral point of view (NPOV) policy. High on a tree 00:42, 2 May 2004 (UTC)

POV

This article is a pretty-straightforward example of POV writing. Virtually all the cites are to left-wing or far-left (the Guardian or Common Dreams) articles....

  • Is it really so POV though? I guess it would be good to also have more comprehensive sections about his later career as a diplomat, but the sections that exist now are all of well documented events, which Negroponte is accused of knowing about and ignoring --Jacobolus 11:44, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

John Negroponte

Is this supposed to be factual or a fact-salted conjectural hit-piece? "...he is accused of....", "...possible involvement in....", "...critics say..., critics charge....", etc. In the intrest of fact or at least pretense of fact, the following whole sections of this article should be removed or, perhaps, separated under the sub-heading "Detractor's viewpoint": Ambassador to Honduras, What did Negroponte Know, and Appointment to the UN. The rest of the article seems straight forward; these dections of obvious detraction seem to have been added as the styles are disjointed.

If you have a problem with a particular paragraph, you should quote it in full and explain why. In all cases, the people quoted in this article who critical of Negroponte are "real" sources: Congressmen, Human Rights investigators, etc.. If you want to talk about other aspects of Negroponte's work, you are welcome to do so.

Negroponte in Iraq

"..in a direct echo of his work to minimize and deny US-sanctioned human-rights abuses in Honduras."

Should go. Wizzy 16:52, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC)

NPOV concerns

I tend to agree with the NPOV concerns of some comments here. They seem to be more along the lines of what is *not* included than what is. To be fair, a google search returned far more of the 'critical' sources than any other. Now that he has been named National Intelligence Director, these concerns are of particular significance.

However, I was able to make a minor edit I regard as an improvement. I replaced one Guardian article, "Iran contra men return to power" with another from the same publication, the "Negroponte: Amercia's voice of experience" article.

I believe the former article is redundant to many of the others, and as the least specific to Mr. Negroponte is the least relevent. The latter article I believe balances the collective tone of the references, and does not omit mention of the Honduras accusations.

However, I have retained the old article here:

If anyone sees the need to restore it.

- stancollins

question

Why is... "carrying out the covert strategy of the Reagan administration to crush the Sandinistas government in Nicaragua." ...in quotes?

I believe it's a direct quotation from the NYT, but it should be found and attributed --Jacobolus 10:56, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

edit for NPOV

Major problems with the wording of this article and a complete lack of balance...took a stab at it. Also removed far-out wacko sources...the World Socialist Network website anyone?

News Articles to think about

I'm not sure that some of what was edited is necessarily POV... from the NYT 1 November 1982:

"The United States Ambassador to Honduras is 'overseeing' a covert campaign to arm, train and direct thousands of Nicaraguan exiles in Honduras to 'harass and undermine' Nicaragua's three-year-old Marxist Sandinist Government, according to an article in Newsweek magazine.
"In its Nov. 8 issue, Newsweek quoted an unidentified 'Washington insider' as having said that the Ambassador, John D. Negroponte, had been sent to Honduras by former Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig Jr. and Thomas O. Enders, the Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, as the 'spearhead of the clandestine operation.'"

--Jacobolus 10:59, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

From NYT, 5 June 1988:

"In 1982, with strong American encouragement, Honduras's newly-elected civilian President, Roberto Suazo Cordova, promoted Alvarez to general and named him commander of the army. Even before his promotion, Alvarez was organizing a new army intelligence unit with C.I.A. support, which would be known as Battalion 316. Sgt. Florencio Caballero, who had already received American training, says he was among the first of those recruited to serve in the new unit."
...
"In Texas, said Mr. Caballero, the Americans 'taught me interrogation, in order to end physical torture in Honduras. They taught us psychological methods - to study the fears and weaknesses of a prisoner. Make him stand up, don't let him sleep, keep him naked and isolated, put rats and cockroaches in his cell, give him bad food, serve him dead animals, throw cold water on him, change the temperature.
"'When I returned to Honduras, I was trained in assaults, bombs and explosives by Americans, Chileans and Argentines,' Mr. Caballero recalled. 'Then I joined an intelligence unit as an interrogator. We seized and investigated subversives.'"

Jacobolus 11:21, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Washington Post, 28 November, 1993

"The nightmare began for Honduras in August 1980. Twenty-five Honduran army officers were flown from Central America to a desert air strip in the southwestern United States, according to the sworn testimony in international court of one Honduran intelligence officer who participated. They spent six months learning interrogation techniques from a team of CIA and FBI trainers. Florencio Caballero, the Honduran officer, says that the U.S. instructors taught different methods of eliciting information from uncooperative prisoners without resorting to violence.
"When the officers returned to Honduras, the courses continued. The American trainers were joined by instructors fresh from the 'dirty wars' in Argentina and Chile in which thousands of suspected leftists were abducted and executed by security forces. These sessions, according to Caballero, focused on surveillance and techniques for following suspects and rescuing kidnap victims. This group of officers went on to become a secret division of Honduran military intelligence known as Battalion 3-16.
"That Battalion 3-16 engaged in a systematic program of disappearances and political murder from 1981 to 1984 is beyond question. In 1981, the U.S. State Department, in its annual report on human rights practices, noted some 60 'mysterious' disappearances in Honduras, whereas none was reported in previous years. By March 1984, 100-150 students, teachers, unionists and travelers had been picked up and secretly executed by plainclothes squads. These squads, according to a judgment of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights issued in July 1988, belonged to Battalion 3-16."

--Jacobolus 11:36, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

  • If the Post says it's "beyond question", then adding lots of "alleged"s seems just as POV (if not more so) than omitting them. Leaving out nasty details of US past history in the name of NPOV seems just misleading. --Jacobolus 11:39, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

POV sites?

removed hardcore POV sites (the World Socialist Website, Noam Chomsky and The Guardian are not news sources).

Wikipedia's job is to direct readers to relevant commentary, and sometimes that commentary is located at sites which are clearly POV, but still add value. For the same reason I could remove links to the white house from George Bush's page, claiming that it is POV. OF COURSE it is POV, but Wikipedia aims only to maintain POV on its own site, not necessarily on all links. Furthermore, the Guardian is a respected British newspaper, certainly credible as a source. --Jacobolus 12:37, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I second the above and would like add that while the World Socialist Website has an obvious ideological agenda, it publishes excellent reporting. The same goes for, of course, the Economist or the Wall Street Journal. -- Viajero 13:27, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)
if you put WSW in the same category as mainstream publications as the Economist and the WSJ I am going to have a hard time taking you seriously. J. Parker Stone 09:24, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

NPOV Problems

this page needs major cleaning-up.....lots of NPOV selection of material....both sides of the aisle seem to consider him to be highly competent...why only stuff from his detractors on here?

Add some stuff about his competence. His brutal history is certainly relevant. If you know more about good things he's done, speak up. --Jacobolus 12:47, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

that you think the the Guardian is respected and credible as well as your comment as to "brutal history" shows your innate NPOV issues.....since you are so personally invested with this topic perhaps you should switch to other topics to write on.

backatcha. don't just delete, give us something to explain your point of view. If you don't like the external links, give us some that counter their viewpoint. don't delete the ones that are there. RickK 20:25, Feb 21, 2005 (UTC)
I haven't done really any editing or adding to this article... I just put things back in that had been deleted with no reason given or discussion. I think it is fair to say that death squads in Honduras were "brutal," and equally fair to say that the Guardian does excellent reporting, with careful fact checking, even if they are to the left of the American press. I agree that I am POV. So are we all. I still would appreciate to hear of the good things that Negroponte has done. Wikipedia is a reference and a source of information, and I seek for it to be as complete as balanced as possible. That doesn't mean pulling punches about well-documented events. --Jacobolus 02:39, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Controversial, or despised?

Cut from article:

He is a controversial figure because he was involved in covert funding of the Contras in Nicaragua (see Iran-Contra Affair) and knowingly denied human rights abuses carried out by CIA-trained operatives in Honduras in the 1980s.

Shouldn't this say He is opposed by X because he was involved in funding the Contras - whom X hoped would be wiped out by the Sandinistas. Or, Z blames him for human rights abuses in Honduras, in its battle against Y - again, Z was hoping for a takeover by Q, etc.

In otherwords, don't say "he is controversial because" as a polite way of saying A opposes him because of B.

We need to know WHY he is opposed, and WHO opposes him. Don't hide it behind nice-sounding language.

Also, is it a FACT that he helped covertly fund the Contras? If so, we should document this, so our readers will be taught the truth (re-educated? ;-) and if it's NOT an undisputed fact, then we STILL need to document it (but as a claim rather than the truth) - along with the claims of the other side. -- Uncle Ed (talk) 16:19, May 13, 2005 (UTC)

any chance of neutrality here?

Okay, I took a stab at it. Mostly, re-organizing the section headings. But I also rewrote the 2 intro paragraphs.

basicly, the critics hate him because they wanted the Communists to win in Central America. To me, this means they don't give a hoot in hell about human rights. Everyone knows that Communisits are the world's worst violators of human rights. They make Hitler look good, if you measure purely be the magnitude of the genocide they've done.

Even China's PRC government admits that Mao murdered 20 million people. That's three times worse than the Jewish holocaust.

The usual argument, when someone tries to stop tyranny, is that the "violate human rights" of the tyrant's supporters. Or, for the unsophisticated, they downplay the "tyrant" angle and just paint the good guys as "killing people right and left". But think about it, why would Honduras just go around killing its own people, especially nuns? Random murder is pretty rare. And goverments usually just want to stay in power, so I figure they must have THOUGHT that the dead folks were in league with the commies. (Not that this justifies them.)

Buried in the article is the fact that the US tried to reform Honduras, to wean it away from torture for example and use less extreme (but still rough) methods of interrogation.

If you're wondering (not that it's really any of you business), I don't support ANY human rights violations by ANY side in the cold war. I'm just saying, let's not magnify one side's violations as a way of making the other side look good - especially when the other side is ten times worse.

In any case, the solution does not lie in the application of military force. But that's another story. -- Uncle Ed (talk) 16:52, May 13, 2005 (UTC)

The death squads murdered innocents to terrorise the people. A few deaths pour encourager les autres. I would like to add that even if nuns are communists, killing them should at the very least be frowned on. Grace Note 01:59, 14 May 2005 (UTC)
If you can prove that (1) the people the death squads killed were innocent and/or (2) that the motivation for the killings was to create terror amoung "the people", please add that fact, with a source, to the article. Or if it's not a fact, but a charge or claim, still it should go in the article (properly sourced).
We should also put in any evidence we can find that the Sandinistas or other Marxist groups murdered and terrorized the people. The documentary Nicaragua Was Our Home contains eyewitness testimony about this. -- Uncle Ed (talk) 21:31, May 16, 2005 (UTC)
One reminds you that we are talking about nuns.
It's rather illuminating of your commitment to neutrality that you think that mention of what the Sandinistas or other "Marxist" groups did has to do with an article on Negroponte's encouragement of terrorism. Grace Note 04:17, 17 May 2005 (UTC)
Don't mind Grace Note, he's of the mindset that anything and everything anti-American is automatically noble and just. (and again, Marxists can't admit that Marxists are Marxists -- they have to put quotes around them)
BTW, I never heard about nuns being killed in Honduras. I did hear about them being killed in El Salvador by an extremist political faction that opposed the PDC, the government the U.S. was supporting. J. Parker Stone 21:44, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

Specific article flaws

Okay, I'm done with my rant. Here are some specific article flaws.

Later, the Honduras Commission on Human Rights accused Negroponte himself of human rights violations. According to The New York Times, Negroponte was involved in "carrying out the covert strategy of the Reagan administration to crush the Sandinistas government in Nicaragua." Critics say that during his ambassadorship, human rights violations in Honduras became systematic.

This paragraph accuses Negroponte of human rights violations. It consist of three sentences, of which the 1st and 3rd merely assert that Negroponte is to blame for (un-mentioned) human rights violations.

The second sentence, which would have been an excellent place to mention at least one violation, complains that Negroponte supported Reagan's anti-Communism strategy. This conflates anti-communism with "violation of human rights".

I can only suppose that this is a deliberate POV tactic. Communists routinely accuse their opponents of all sorts of things, to discredit and undermine them and NOT because the Communists have any real concern about those things. Here, however, in a paragraph devoted to HR violations we find (thrown in for the bargain) a complaint that Negroponte was anti-Communist!

Either this means that being anti-Communist is in itself a HR violation, or more likely the writer just wanted to list the reasons which (in his opinion) JN is "bad". Both are unacceptalbe to Wikipedia's NPOV policy. -- Uncle Ed (talk) 19:18, May 13, 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps you could have waited for discussion before inserting your POV? Just a thought. Grace Note 02:01, 14 May 2005 (UTC)

Ed, I am having trouble separating the wheat from the chaff in all the verbiage above.

To begin with, you changed this:

He is a controversial figure because he was involved in covert funding of the Contras in Nicaragua (see Iran-Contra Affair) and knowingly denied human rights abuses carried out by CIA-trained operatives in Honduras in the 1980s.

to this:

He has come under harsh criticism from Bush administration opponents, primarily because of his support of anti-Communist movements and governments in Central America. Much of the criticism alleges that he aided or covered up human rights abuses. See "controversy", below.

I object to this because

  1. it implies that he is critisised because of partisan politics (Bush opponents)
  2. there is substantial evidence, such as declassified cables, all well documented in the article, that he did in fact cover up abuses. No need, at this point in time, to be coy about it and say "alleges".

You object to this text:

Later, the Honduras Commission on Human Rights accused Negroponte himself of human rights violations. According to The New York Times, Negroponte was involved in "carrying out the covert strategy of the Reagan administration to crush the Sandinistas government in Nicaragua." Critics say that during his ambassadorship, human rights violations in Honduras became systematic.

saying:

The second sentence, which would have been an excellent place to mention at least one violation, complains that Negroponte supported Reagan's anti-Communism strategy. This conflates anti-communism with "violation of human rights".

No it doesn't. It simply implies that human rights violations occurred in the course of activities undertaken on behalf of Reagan's anti-Communism. As for mentioning the violations, that occurs in the subsequent paragraphs which you have unhelpfully separated with a subheading. As for the second sentence, I think it should be moved to another position. -- Viajero 13:41, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

Wheat and chaff

Viajero, I value our working relationship far above any one article. And I appreciate your wheat from the chaff remark. I'm not going to let this turn into an edit war; I've used up my one and only revert on this article for the week!

Just one point, and I'll turn it over to you, trusting in your fundamental honesty and ever-present good judgment.

There's a difference between:

  • opponents object to his appointment because of X, Y and Z; and,
  • opponents (or people generally) "consider him controversial" because of X, Y and Z

The controversy is betwen those who favor and those who oppose his appointment.

I wish I had more time for this, but I gotta go. Bye! -- Uncle Ed (talk) 17:19, May 18, 2005 (UTC)

Turned a blind eye to vs. Cover up

OK, i think it's pretty well-established that there are serious questions about what Negroponte knew and whether he intentionally shut himself up about it because the Honduran government was an ally. that's all well and good. but i have not seen evidence that he intentionally tried to cover up evidence of military misconduct. there is a difference. J. Parker Stone 05:57, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Will an admin PLEASE either tag this article for POV, or else edit it to neutrality?

I am neither a Wiki admin, nor a particular fan of Negroponte's. I don't know the man, and have not spent years researching his activities in Honduras or elsewhere. That said, however, I consider myself to be both rational and neutral, and I find this article to be highly POV, verging on character assassination. Indeed, the fact that a small but determined group of anti-Negroponte activists continues its campaign of layering on one-sided attacks, means that in the absence of Negroponte partisans (is there some rule that says every article needs champions as well as detractors?) this article represents a low point of Wikipedia, and a great example of the kind of stuff that Wiki-detractors point to with glee. "Good Article"? You've got to be kidding! [sigh] Yorker 23:23, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

I have not spent years researching Negroponte either but I don't think the article is a hatchet job. It appears to report accurate and sourced information that is consistent with my memory of this material. There may be exculpatory material in the public record that you should include if you know of it, but I certainly never saw it in the 1980s when I read about him in mainstream newspapers. There are definitely places in the article where citations would be helpful, but I don't think this is made up or just a bunch of baseless attacks. If you think something is incorrect, by all means look it up and correct it!--csloat 05:19, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Edited for NPOV/Reverted/Tagged

This article, as discussed in the archived peer review, is highly biased and inappropriate for Wikipedia. I removed the whole swath of attack detail, ALL of which is amply referenced in the external links, as well as the mention (which Kiaparowits had correctly questioned) about Skull & Bones, and re-edited the article back to neutral facts, which is what this is alll supposed to be about. As it is, there are four times as many negative external links as there are positive ones. 23 December 2005 NOTE: For procedural reasons, an Administrator reverted these edits, but has acknowledged the obvious bias of the article (and its clearcut violation of Wikipedia's Neutral Point of View rules) by tagging it with a warning. Readers without an axe to grind are invited to continue editing the article to return it (or, more accurately, bring it for the first time) back to a Wikipedia-appropriate, objective piece. 31 December 2005

Ummm...reality check here?

I just happened across this page in search for some background information about Negroponte, and I must say that I'm surprised that there hasn't been more discussion or 'peer review' of this article. I've never met the guy, have no axe to grind, and don't know much about him (which is why I came here in the first place), but I can certainly tell a hatchet job when I see one. This article is so completely biased, and so obviously unfair, that it clearly violates the Wikipedia NPV guidelines. Frankly, I'm almost tempted to rewrite the whole thing from scratch as a community service! Isn't there someone around who knows something about this subject who could do a decent editing job on this piece of blatant character assassination? 28 November 2005

Skull and Bones

Some anon IP just added the following info to the :

At Yale, he was, like many members of the Bush family, a member of Skull & Bones.

Now, given the subject, this affiliation is certainly possible, but the Skull and Bones article has no mention of him. Does anyone have a reference to his membership? Also, the phrase "like many memebers of the Bush family" seems unneccessary. Thoughts? Kiaparowits 16:32, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

POV tag

I added the {{npov}} tag because this article is too criticism-heavy. The Skull and Bones bit is completely irrelevant, and at least a couple of paragraphs do not have anything to do with Negroponte, but rather with the Honduras incidents. Titoxd(?!? - help us) 20:37, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Whether something is relevant or not is a POV, isn't it? I agree that criticism shouldn't be in articles unless it relates opinions/critisms of credible sources. --Rebroad 16:49, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Re: "reality check" and this article being "too criticism-heavy"

Aside from the Skull and Bones issue, none of the claims are refuted, are they? Officially denied maybe, but not refuted. Negroponte had a significant role in worsening the human rights situation in Central America, particularly Honduras, in the 1980s. Should we leave that out? It seems to me we are aiming for balance when the facts are clearly not in Negroponte's favor. What if balance means leaving out enough facts so he seems like not quite such a bad guy? While Negroponte is not quite a Hitler or a Stalin, it makes me wonder if similar objections about neutrality would arise if someone were to tell the truth about those two individuals. What if the truth of Negroponte is as bad as this article or worse? Should we strive to moderate the article because the truth seems too extreme? Please tell me if I misunderstood the issue. - Ron Leighton, <email removed>

That is not my complaint. The Neutral point of view policy states that articles should not present any sort of accusatory bias, which this article has. Here's a relevant quote:
  1. An encyclopedic article should not argue that corporations are criminals, even if the author believes it to be so. It should instead present the fact that some people believe it, and what their reasons are, and then as well it should present what the other side says.
I'm not asking for the article to be "moderated" by removing all criticism; I'm saying that a response to the criticism should be included in this article. Also, the article must not have any posture on the controversial issues; we're just reporting what happens, not taking a stance on it. Titoxd(?!? - help us) 07:51, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
If the critism is from credible sources it should stay. If you are aware of rebuttals to the critism also from credible sources, then please feel free to add these to the article. --Rebroad 16:52, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
I'm re-adding the {{npov}} tag until at the very least the uncited material is removed, e.g. He is sometimes considered... - brenneman(t)(c) 23:19, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
So we have tried and failed to disprove that JN was all mobbed up with the death squads. Why is that a problem? A wiser course might be to explain why death squads and other forms of US intervention in other nations is so widely cherished by many Americans.

I think that what "Tito" (ironic name here, dude) wants is for us to include Rich Lowry's defense of the guy. But a point to note is that even Lowry doesn't deny that he was closely linked to the human rights abuses, Lowry just argues that though he was closely linked, he was neutral, and that such measures may have been necessary to defeat communism.--User:Zaorish

Skull & Bones Links

I just heard that he was in Skull & Bones on the radio and came here looking for the years to find fellow members. It is a left wing show, The Randi Rhodes Show, which I know has used Wikipedia to research in the past; so it could have used as its source the disputed line.

I don't think that the original author of the sentence: "At Yale, he was, like many members of the Bush family, a member of Skull & Bones." meant to show bias. It can be useful in drawing conclusions about how he was linked to people like the Bushs and Reagan. The wording comes across as expressing a POV, so that problem must be fixed before even thinking about putting it back into the text. Denis Diderot II 04:18, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

'death squads'?

Any of y'all know wtf the newly added 'death squad' section is about? I have no idea or context, and am mulling its deletion, unless it gets cleaned up. --moof 07:27, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

I removed it. Wikipedia is not a place for such apologetics. If Negroponte made such a statement somewhere, it is likely quotable here, but it is neither necessary nor desirable for wikipedia editors to make up arguments that we think Negroponte should have said.--csloat 07:48, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

"irrelevant miscellany"

Unfortunately, my commit comment got accidentally truncated. If documents that previously weren't released have actually been released, please cite such, rather than just removing a big hunk of text. --moof 09:43, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Failed GA

The article has no references and is not set out in wiki style which I personally feel makes it hard to follow.--Childzy 12:39, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

"Secret prisons" claim

Time magazine claimed that Negroponte

  • confirmed the existence of CIA "secret prisons" [3]

However, this was a case of creative misquoting, context manipulation and extrapolation. Actually, the interview cited as "confirming" the existence of the alleged "secret prisons" didn't mention them at all.

The journalists asked about some prisoners, and Negroponte refused to say where they were being held. Logically, this means either:

  • they are being held in regular (non-secret) prisons, i.e., prisons whose existence is on record - but Negroponte just won't say which ones!
  • or secret prisons exist, and that's where the prisoners are (the journalists' conclusion)

The following is clearly a misquotation by Time:

  • "Exclusive: John Negroponte says accused Al-Qaeda members will remain in secret prisons as long as 'war on terror continues.'"

What he actually say was:

  • "... These people are being held, they're bad actors, and as long as the situation continues, the situation with the war on terror continuing, I'm not sure I can tell you what the ultimate disposition of those detainees would be." [4]

Can someone help me go through Wikipedia and make sure the Liberal POV that there are "secret prisons" is not inserted "as fact", but is labelled the POV of Time or whoever it was who chose to interpret Negroponte's statement that way? --Uncle Ed 15:00, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Are you saying that they don't exist? Can you show where Negroponte criticized Time's interpretation of his statement? Surely he would be all over such a blatant distortion of his words, if that's what it was? I haven't been following this closely enough to get involved here, but based on what I have seen in the media and what Ed Poor has pointed out here, I don't think it would be incorrect to infer that they do exist. Isn't there a whole section on them in James Risen's book? Has the Administration ever denied their existence?--csloat 19:31, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
No, and no. You'll note that I haven't edited the article based on the AIM report. I wanted to get a little discussion going first.
Perhaps what the article needs is a mention of the dispute over whether Negroponte confirmed the existence of the "secret prisons". By the way, is the a CIA secret prisons article? --Uncle Ed 14:40, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Negroponte witnessed Kissinger Secret Beijing Meet

John D. Negroponte is listed as a NSA staffer in attendance of a secret meeting between Herny Kissinger and Zhou en-Lai, June 20, 1972, in Beijing. the NSA archives recently released a transcript of the meeting.

"Memorandum of Conversation with Zhou Enlai, 20 June 1972". (3.13 MB PDF File)

In the meeting, Kissinger laid out a proper timeline for a Decent Interval between US disengagement from Vietnam, and the North's continuation of hostilities.

Negroponte has been mum on this for over three decades.

--216.193.1.4

Criticism external links?

Wait, what? Do we really need this? I could understand a criticism section but not a whole area devoted for links. Can somebody just add a section with the links as citations? - JWhitt (talk) 00:16, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Battalion 316

An anon IP user deleted the wikilink to Battalion 316 in the see also section. I just restored it. Negroponte's links to the US support of Battalion 316 has come up repeatedly at his various Senate confirmation hearings and is frequently cited in media coverage. A simple google search of Negroponte Battalion 316 shows many solid sources discussing Negroponte's relationship with the Battalion.Notmyrealname (talk) 20:33, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Plagiarism?

While trying to clean up some of the citations of sources which seem to be so confusing in this article, I discovered that a big chunk of text from "Ambassador to Honduras (1981–1985)" down through "Ambassador to the UN (2001–2004)", seems to have been borrowed from a salon.com article. I question the correctness of this wholesale "borrowing" and hope somebody who is more knowledgeable than I will take a look at the situation.

DutchmanInDisguise (talk) 23:00, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Career during the Nixon administration

The section on Negroponte's career information during the Nixon administration is much too scanty. It should cover such details as:

" Negroponte quickly ascended from political officer in Vietnam to an aide to former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger by the end of the decade. In 1968, Negroponte became the liaison officer between the U.S. government and North Vietnam's delegation at the Paris peace talks. In late 1970, he became head of the Vietnam office of the National Security Council (NSC) staff. In February 1973, he broke with NSC Advisor Kissinger over the peace negotiation process, which Negroponte said did not guarantee the security of the government of South Vietnam."

http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/coldwar/interviews/episode-16/negroponte3.html

Family? Nicholas NEGROPONTE from the OLPC One Laptop Per Child initiative?

I'm contributing to an article. Anybody can help finding this out? Thy.--SvenAERTS (talk) 23:17, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

POV tag?

The POV tag has been on this page for several months, but the explanation given for why it is here offers no specific suggestion for improving the page. "Too much criticism" is not a good reason for the tag -- couldn't we say the same of this page or this one? NPOV should not mean that we balance every "bad" comment with a "good" one. I think we should remove the tag unless someone can articulate a clear suggestion about what can be done to improve the POV issue.--csloat 07:53, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

I think you're mostly right, but not totally. For example, look at the "Ambassador to the U.N." section. It contains criticism, which looks pretty accurate. But there is one thing that cannot be denied: It contains Zero information on what JN did as amb. to the UN. --User:Zaorish

For positive facts and perspectives, let's try to add from this article: http://www.pwhce.org/negroponte.html

--User:Zaorish

One important member of the US diplomatic delegation against Vietnam?

Was Negroponte one important member of the US diplomatic delegation against Vietnam during the Vietnam war ( 1965-1975) ?

Thanks,

--Redflowers 19:03, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

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