GI-Jean-Guy Allard: CIA, from Cent. Am to Iraq, Negroponte and his US Gang for Dirty War

[magbana]

"THE CIA, FROM CENTRAL AMERICA TO IRAQ

Negroponte and his U.S. gang for the dirty war

BY JEAN-GUY ALLARD — Special for Granma International —

“MISTER Bob” Seldon Lady is a former chief of the CIA station in Milan, where he was in charge of the 26 agents who were tried in Italy for kidnapping, torturing and then disappearing Muslim cleric Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, in that city in 2003.

To get a better idea of him, we should recall that Seldon Lady was in Central America in the 1980s: he was a key element in the same network, along with John Negroponte, Félix Rodríguez, Colonel James Steele and Luis Posada Carriles, that sowed death and terror among the Sandinistas.

This 52-year-old American, who was born in Honduras and participated along with his own father in CIA operations in the dirty war organized by the CIA in Central America during the Republican administration of Ronald Reagan, became part of a Middle East version of Operation Condor after 2001.

Characterized by kidnappings, secret prisons, torture and disappearances, the operation has now culminated in the appointment of John Negroponte, former ambassador in Baghdad and former U.S. intelligence czar, as deputy secretary of state overseeing the Iraq dossier.

The 26 CIA agents who will go on trial June 8 in Italy also include the former CIA chief in Rome, Jeff Castelli, and Betnie Medero, a woman currently supposed to be based in Mexico, who led the commando; as well as a mysterious official with the U.S. State Department, Monica Courtney Adler.

This trial is the first criminal case in the world regarding the “extraordinary deliveries” authorized by George W. Bush after September 11.

Abu Omar was kidnapped from a Milan street in February 2003, taken to the Guerzoni military base, and after being placed into a windowless vehicle, was then transferred to the U.S. air base in Aviano, from where he was taken to Ramstein, Germany, with the collaboration of that country, and from there to Cairo, where he was tortured in the presence of Robert “Mister Bob” Seldon Lady himself.

Among the commando members that carried out the kidnapping is the particularly interesting case of Betnie Medero.

That 33-year-old woman was the second secretary of the U.S. embassy in Rome.

She arrived in Italy in August 2001 with diplomatic credentials, and according to the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, directed the kidnapping on the ground and ensured the victim’s transportation to the U.S. base in Aviano, northern Italy. It is now believed that she was transferred to Mexico, where she is associated with the U.S. embassy, according to the same newspaper.

Monica Courtney Adler, another defendant in the case, was the State Department official who years before, under the Clinton administration, attended to banker Jorge Castro Barredo, a Cuban-born Venezuelan who contributed financially to Democratic Party election campaign funds and was involved in cases of fraud and money-laundering.

Seldon Lady, the ringleader of a group created in Tegucigalpa, is an illustration of the dirty operations of the U.S. spy agency.

The son of William “Bill” Lady, a former CIA agent based in Honduras, managed together with Manuchar Ghorbanifar, an Iranian businessman, the secret sale of weapons to Iraq, which along with drug-trafficking operations directed from within El Salvador by Félix Rodríguez Mendigutía and Luis Posada Carriles, turned into the biggest scandal to rock the Reagan administration.

Seldon Lady carried out his dirty work under the orders of U.S. Marine Colonel Oliver North, who also directed the operations at the Ilopango military base for illegally providing weapons to the Nicaraguan Contra forces.

His activity in Honduras coincided with the presence in that country of John Negroponte, notorious for his support as ambassador to the bloody operations carried out by Battalion 316, which tortured, massacred and disappeared hundreds of Hondurans.

“Mister Bob” Seldon Lady was still active in Central America in 1994 when spy Aldrich Ames uncovered him by revealing his name to Soviet intelligence forces, according to U.S. media reports.

His name was associated with the “Nigergate” scandal, the disinformation operation for justifying the occupation of Iraq under the pretext – completely false – that Saddam Hussein was seeking to buy uranium from Niger. For that maneuver, his old buddy Manuchar Ghorbanifar came to his aid, along with Larry Franklin, an American sentenced last year for spying for Israel.

Seldon Lady fled suddenly from Italy in June 2005 when he discovered that he was wanted in that country for the kidnapping of Abu Omar. Warned, his wife erased all of his computer files, but police experts were able to recuperate most of the material.

The reconstructed documents included several photographs of the victim, taken in the street 33 days before the crime, and Internet searches for the shortest route between the kidnapping scene and Aviano Airport.

Different sources affirm that Seldon Lady is currently on his way back to Central America, where he can take care of CIA work related to Cuba, Venezuela and other progressive governments in the region.

Argentine writer Stella Calloni recently compared the illegal CIA operations in Iraq with a “larger, more sophisticated Operation Condor.”

This was illustrated by the case of James Steele, who created the death squads patronized by John Negroponte, who participated in the supply operations for the Nicaraguan counterrevolutionary forces from the Ilopango air base in El Salvador, directed by Félix Rodríguez y Posada Carriles.

The unexpected exposure of the actions carried out by Seldon Lady and his troop in Italy, with complete disdain for that European nation’s sovereignty, shows once again how — according to imperialist intelligence — the dirty war has no borders.

It is the same CIA gang that has carried out dirty work in Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas — who knows how widespread. That gang features John Negroponte, the recently-appointed No. 2 man to Condoleezza Rice in the State Department. What can be expected of him?
"
http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2007/marzo/vier16/12imperial.html

[EFerrari]

1. "The dirty war has no borders" -- verdad.

The other day I saw a shot of Powell at the UN, with Tenet sitting behind him. Look who's with Tenet:

[magbana]

2. I remember this scene well. Downright creepy. n/t

[Judi Lynn]

3. Great information collected carefully by Allard. Worth keeping.

He shows old names associated with deep criminality made legal. What a shame there are people who have chosen to live like this. What they have done to this world is unforgivable, almost insurmountable, as well, in creating fear and suffering.

http://john-negroponte.navajo.cz.nyud.net:8090/john-negroponte-2.jpg http://www.soundonsight.org.nyud.net:8090/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/nosferatu-4.jpg

http://www.cyberphobias.com.nyud.net:8090/Nosferatu_door_in_the_castle-vampire.jpg

[Judi Lynn]

4. Just discovered some of Negroponte's death squad guys moved here!

The Miami Herald
April 16, 2001
Alleged death squad returns to spotlight

BY ALFONSO CHARDY

When the CIA trained Battalion 3-16 in the 1980s, the Honduran army unit's main mission was to gather intelligence to protect its national security as U.S. forces deployed to support rebels fighting the Sandinistas in neighboring Nicaragua.

But today, Battalion 3-16 is remembered as a veritable death squad -- blamed for the abduction and assassination of at least 184 leftist guerrillas, sympathizers and other political foes.

Though long since disbanded, the group's legacy lives on in a West Palm Beach federal courtroom and in the stories of men such as Juan Angel Hernández Lara and other Honduran officers believed to be hiding in South Florida and elsewhere in the nation.

On Friday, Hernández Lara, 38, pleaded not guilty in West Palm Beach to charges he returned illegally to the United States after being deported Jan. 17 over allegations he participated in the torture of some of the battalion's victims.

His trial later this year may shed more light on the activities of 3-16 and refocus attention on a legacy from the Cold War: the role the Reagan Administration might have played in training the unit's operatives, as well as their subsequent alleged involvement in abductions and assassinations.

The questions have assumed new relevance as the Senate considers President Bush's nomination of John D. Negroponte as ambassador to the United Nations. Negroponte was ambassador in Honduras at the time Battalion 3-16 operated. He has denied condoning human rights violations, insisting he worked in favor of improving respect for human rights in Honduras.

The now infamous Battalion 3-16 was formed in 1981 by Gen. Gustavo Alvarez, a former chief of Honduran armed forces. Alvarez first recruited Argentine intelligence experts to train Battalion members. But as the Reagan administration built up an anti-Sandinista rebel force in Honduras, it became interested in 3-16.

Richard Stolz, then CIA deputy director for operations, told Congress in 1988 the agency trained battalion members in the use of psychological pressure in interrogation techniques -- not physical abuse. The testimony was reported in The (Baltimore) Sun, which in 1995 published a series of articles on Battalion 3-16 based on declassified documents.

In 1984, Alvarez was ousted in a barracks coup. After his departure, Battalion 3-16 began to disband and its members left for the United States and Canada.

Alvarez himself spent time in Miami, but he returned to Honduras in 1988. On Jan. 25, 1989, gunmen shot and killed him in Tegucigalpa.

Hernández Lara fled Honduras in 1988. He told the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service before his Jan. 17, 2001, deportation that he had personally tortured at least four people who were ultimately murdered.

``He provided details of his actions, which involved kicking, punching, placing pins under the fingernails and plastic bags on the heads of four victims who were later killed,'' said an INS statement.

COMING BACK

Back in Honduras following his deportation, Hernández Lara said he made up the torture stories to bolster his asylum claim with the INS -- though he did admit having belonged to Battalion 3-16.

Within a week of the deportation, Hernández Lara made his way back to West Palm Beach, where he had lived for 11 years laying bricks and building driveways.

INS agents nabbed him March 28, acting on a tip from South Florida human rights activist Richard Krieger whose organization -- International Educational Missions -- advocates detaining and deporting foreign nationals accused of torture or war crimes.

At his bond hearing in federal court two weeks ago, Hernández Lara's attorney said her client returned illegally because he fears being killed in his homeland.

``It's clear he doesn't want to go back to his native country,'' Assistant Federal Public Defender Celeste Higgins told U.S. Magistrate Linnea Johnson. ``If he returns, his life would be in danger.''

Johnson denied bond after Assistant U.S. Attorney Rolando García called Hernández Lara a ``flight risk'' and ``danger to the community.'' García said Hernández Lara was not only a suspected human rights violator in Honduras but also an illegal alien with a criminal record in the United States. According to García, Hernández Lara's criminal convictions include a prior deportation in 1988, shoplifting in 1991 and battery on his wife in 1992.

Hernández Lara was the first alleged human rights violator deported from the United States under a new INS program targeting ``persecutors'' -- people accused of kidnapping, killing or torturing political foes of regimes abroad. At least 14 other alleged persecutors from Angola, Haiti and Peru have been detained and some have been deported after Hernández Lara was first arrested in June.

MORE 3-16 MEMBERS

Hernández Lara is the second alleged Battalion 3-16 member forced to leave the United States. Gen. Luís Alonso Discua, a former Honduran armed forces chief and former commander of the unit, left Miami Feb. 28 after the State Department revoked his diplomatic visa.

He had been secretly living in northwest Miami-Dade and managing an export-import business. The State Department said that was in violation of his diplomatic visa, which required he live in the New York area where he was assigned to the Honduran mission to the United Nations.

Discua and Hernández Lara may not be the last 3-16 members in the country. A former Honduran military officer said at least one other former member is believed to be living in South Florida: Col. Juan Evangelista López Grijalva.

López Grijalva was once head of the Honduran secret police and a key operative. U.S. officials said López Grijalva entered the United States in the 1980s on a diplomatic visa.

Law enforcement sources said several former members may have sneaked in from Canada after officials there enacted a law last year providing for prosecution of human rights violators. A similar bill was introduced in the U.S. Congress this past week by Reps. Mark Foley, R-Fla., and Gary Ackerman, D-N.Y.

The Anti-Atrocity Alien Deportation Act would amend the Immigration and Nationality Act making illegal aliens who have committed torture or war crimes abroad inadmissible and deportable.

``If you don't do something to show these people they are unworthy to live in society and be accepted in society, all you're doing is saying to other potential perpetrators `It's all right to do it again,' '' said Krieger, a former Nazi hunter. ``The goal is to prevent future atrocities. The message is never again.''

http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/honduras/3-16.htm

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Damned creepy to outfit, train these filthy clowns, have them terrorize their fellow citizens and their innocent families, then actually allow them to live here when it looks as if they're no longer wanted at home, when the tide reverses and the good people start gaining power again, and could be dangerous to them.