Venezuela: US Spy Chief ( John Negroponte) Warlike

Caracas, Mar 2 (Prensa Latina) Venezuela responded to attacks by US Department of National Intelligence chief John Negroponte Wednesday, denouncing that his accusations are attempting to create a climate favorable for aggression.

Venezuelan Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel said by displacing US foreign policy from the State Department to the Pentagon or the head of all 15 US espionage services has very serious consequences for democracy in the hemisphere.

Negroponte accused Venezuela of interfering in the domestic affairs of other countries of the region and "suffocating" the Venezuelan opposition.

Rangel implied that playing "hot potato" with attacks on Venezuela (referring to statements by US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and now Negroponte) "reflects a victory for the hawks in US policy," and a sign of a "fascist trend" advancing in North America.

Recalling Negroponte´s lies to the US Congress over his tacit approval of torture and assassination during his stint as ambassador to Honduras (1981-1985) Rangel said the US official isn´t morally qualified to judge a democratically elected government.

WHO IS THIS SCUMBAG NEGROPONTE?

For starters, John Negroponte is a multi-millionaire who has made a lot of money off of owning stock in companies that benefit directly from the war and occupation of Iraq. In Iraq, he has been linked to a proposal where US-funded Central American-style death squads or the so called "Salvador option" has been put forward as a way to quell the Iraqi insurgency against the US occupation.

Negroponte has denied this, but his record indicates that his support for such a plan is not at all far-fetched. During his 41-year career with the US State Department, or as some have called it "Death Squads Inc.," he and his cronies shepherded a murder machine from Vietnam to Iraq. Negroponte worked as a political officer at the US embassy in Vietnam from 1964-1968 ... a period during which there was increased involvement of the government in the war and thousands of executions of civilians and human rights abuses, including the massacres by the infamous "Tiger Force" of the US Army's 101st Airborne Division.

As US ambassador to Honduras from 1981-1985, he was in charge of the Command Center set-up to stop and overthrow all the emerging national liberation movements taking place in Central America. Military budgets grew in Honduras alone from US$4 million to $77 million dollars and the CIA agents stationed there increased tenfold. Money was no object legality or illegality to fight the insurgencies. He lied to Congress about the CIA-created "Battalion 316" Honduran death squad and covert operations that occurred. He supervised the building of the "El Aguacate" air base and other regional military training centers for the Central American Forces, the Contras, and the Salvadorean military. These bases were also secret detention and torture centers and were used to launch the covert war against the Sandinista government of Nicaragua and the mining of their harbors.

But we must remember that Negroponte did not act alone, he got his marching orders from Ronald Reagan and William Casey and all the U.S. embassies in the region worked together to put down these revolutionary movements. In El Salvador, one player stands out from the rest, the current ambassador to Venezuela, William Brownfield. He played a decisive role along with John Negroponte as a political officer in the embassy cover-up of US involvement in the assassination Archbishop Oscar Romero. He also worked to cover up the murder of the four American Maryknoll nuns and other nuns escaping the violence there. Brownfield also played a key role in directing the death squads and El Salvadorean military, who butchered tens of thousands of trade unionists and members of the FMLN. The death squads did not just kill these people, but in a lot of cases they dismembered them and placed their heads on poles as a warning to the rest of the population.

This is the type of person the US government makes responsible for carrying out US policy around the world -- under both Republican and the Democratic administrations.

The interests of the US imperialists are defended, while the revolutionary aspirations of working people are drowned in blood.

Our task is to build a new society in which death squads, the Negropontes and the capitalist system that creates and nurtures them are consigned to the dust bin of history.