John Negroponte

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John Negroponte (2007)

John Dimitri Negroponte (born July 21, 1939 in London ) is a former American diplomat and politician ( Republican Party ). He was Vice Secretary of State of the United States from 2007 to 2009 . Negroponte was born in London, but his father was a Greek-American shipowner. His brother Nicholas Negroponte is a professor at MIT in Massachusetts and the founder of the MIT Media Lab .

Diplomatic career

The professional diplomat John Negroponte served in the United States' Foreign Service from 1960 to 1997. In the 1970s he worked as an assistant to Henry Kissinger in the negotiations for the "elimination" of the Vietnam War . From 1981 to 85 he worked as the United States Ambassador to Honduras , where he supported the counter- rebels in their fight against the Sandinista in Nicaragua in the service of the then US government . He later also worked as ambassador to Mexico , where he paid great attention to the crackdown on the Zapatista uprising, and to the Philippines , where the United States had military bases ( Clark Air Base and United States Naval Base Subic Bay ) and the government was involved in the fight support communist and Islamist insurgents. In the meantime, he served from July 1985 to November 1987 as Secretary of State for Marine, Environment and Science Affairs ( Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs ) in the US State Department . He then held the post of Deputy National Security Advisor until 1989 . He was the successor to Colin Powell and the predecessor of Robert Gates .

Negroponte left the diplomatic service in 1997, but was appointed United States Ambassador to the UN by US President George W. Bush in 2001 . Negroponte was the ambassador to Iraq between June 2004 and February 2005 . As ambassador to Iraq, he was currently the largest US diplomatic institution in the world.

John Negroponte at the Military Camp in Honduras (April 1984)

Negroponte is a controversial figure for its involvement in covert funding of the Contras ( Iran-Contra affair ) and the cover-up of human rights abuses by the Honduran death squads trained by the CIA . Under the presidency of Ronald Reagan (1981-1989) he is said to have suppressed reports of kidnappings, torture and murders by death squads trained by the US intelligence service CIA in order not to endanger US military aid to those in power. Negroponte is also said to have carried out secret government contracts as ambassador in Tegucigalpa and to have initiated the illegal financing of the contra militias via Honduras. Between 1979 and 1989, numerous people disappeared in Honduras in the course of CIA operations. Negroponte supervised, among other things, the establishment of the air base "El Aguacate", on which Contras were trained. In August 2001 185 bodies were unearthed on the site of the base. Honduras government human rights officer Ramon Custodio said that hooded prisoners were shocked and beaten with electric batons. The British newspaper "The Guardian" reported that in Iraq used torture came from an old manual of the CIA for Honduras.

On February 17, 2005 Negroponte was nominated by US President George W. Bush for the office of Director of National Intelligence (director of all 15 US American intelligence services ). After confirmation by the Senate, he was sworn into this office on April 22, 2005. On January 5, 2007, George W. Bush appointed Negroponte as Deputy Secretary of State under Condoleezza Rice . He held this office until the end of Bush's term in January 2009.

Since 2011 he has been a member of the Leadership Council of Concordia in New York, a US public-private partnership with a network of consultants that holds an annual summit.

See also

Web links

Commons : John Negroponte  - collection of images, videos and audio files
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personal data
SURNAME Negroponte, John
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Negroponte, John Dimitri (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American politician and diplomat
DATE OF BIRTH July 21, 1939
PLACE OF BIRTH London , UK