John Negroponte -- ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985 - is expected to be replace Paul Bremer as head man in Iraq. In Honduras, Negroponte "made sure that news of torture, disappearances and killings by the U.S.-trained Honduran military didn't make it back to Congress or the American people, where it might discourage funding for the covert wars. The CIA trained and financed a Honduran army unit known as Battalion 316, which kidnapped and tortured hundreds of people... A CIA document declassified in 1998 and made available by the nonprofit National Security Archive, acknowledged that the Honduran military had committed abuses which were politically motivated and officially sanctioned." (For an in-depth expose, see the Baltimore Sun series: http://www.baltimoresun.com/search/ and put in "Negroponte" -for articles by Ginger Thompson and Gary Cohn.)

"Negroponte has a reputation, even among some U.S. diplomats who served with him, both for 'doggedly defending U.S. interests overseas' and for 'making sure human rights don't get in the way.' According to a four-part series in the Baltimore Sun [1995], reporters Gary Cohn and Ginger Thompson detailed the activities of a secret CIA-trained Honduran army unit, Battalion 316 [during Negroponte's 1980s tenure in Honduras] that used 'shock and suffocation devices in interrogations. Prisoners often were kept naked and, when no longer useful, killed and buried in unmarked graves.' Former official Rick Chidester, who served under Negroponte, says he was ordered to remove all mention of torture and executions from the draft of his 1982 report on the human rights situation in Honduras."