Arrest of Spy Chief Casts a Long Shadow
“Ex-Spy Chief Back in Peru as Prisoner” (June 26), on the arrest of Vladimiro Montesinos, touched only timidly on Americans’ real concern in this matter. This is not just about corruption overseas or the role of the FBI in this manhunt, but how we as a people will learn about how the CIA conducts its affairs with the spy chiefs in Latin America as a whole. Such insight is pertinent to our assessment of current Bush nominations of such individuals as John D. Negroponte for ambassador to the United Nations or Otto J. Reich for assistant secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere.
Negroponte, ambassador to Honduras in the early ‘80s, and Reich, who systematically distorted media releases to the American people in the same period, were deeply complicit with Contra death squads and our shared genocidal actions against thousands of indigenous people in Nicaragua. It is time for the establishment of a national truth committee to ferret out the shadow of American foreign relations and to guard against the covert manipulators of today becoming the U.S. dignitaries of tomorrow.
Bradley A. TePaske
Pacific Palisades
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