The Propaganda War:  The CIA's Domestic Surveillance Operations in the United States, by wakeupmag.co.uk wrote:

Center for International Studies, MIT:

Academic institutions also played an important role in promoting CIA interests in African affairs. The CIA funded the joint Harvard/ MIT Center for International Studies (MIT-CIS) and developed its African Research Programme through a network of academic agents. Max Milllikan, former director of the CIA's Office of National Estimates, was appointed director of MIT-CIS. He in turn appointed State Department official Arnold Rivkin to head the African programme. Together, the two supervised the centre's African studies for the CIA's use. For instance, Milllikan commenced Project Bushfire to study the political, psychological, economic and sociological factors leading to "peripheral wars." A 1958 CIA report stated that the Agency would need "a constant level of … seventy people specializing in the African area; they particularly desire those who have training in economics, geography or political science."

CIA-backed professors at MIT-CIS and Cornell launched projects to train an elite group of Indonesian military and economic leaders at the Centre for South and Southeast Asian Studies at the University of California in Berkeley. These trainees would later be christened "the Berkeley Mafia." They went back to Indonesia and became the impetus behind the coup that brought General Suharto to power, which resulted in the massacre of 500,000 to one million Indonesians during the CIA-backed coup.

Durwood Lockard, assistant deputy to the CIA's Near East Division, became assistant head of MIT-CIS's Middle Eastern Studies Department in 1957. From that period onwards, several officials and faculty members of the Harvard Business School founded and helped to administer front organisations for the CIA. They published a number of books in two versions: one classified for CIA reading and the other unclassified and released to the general public.

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The Book of Honor, by Ted Gup wrote:

Richard Mervin Bissell:

[Richard Mervin] Bissell was a wunderkind who would go on to teach economics at Yale and MIT and helped forge the Marshall Plan for Europe's recovery. He joined the CIA in February 1954 with the vague title of Chief of Development Projects Staff.  Soon after, he sired the U-2 spy plane, revolutionizing intelligence efforts. By July 1956 his eye-in-the-sky was flying over the Soviet Union, providing a long-denied view of that country's bomber, missile, and submarine production. Next he oversaw development of the sleek SR-71 Blackbird, a titanium spy plane that flew at two thousand miles an hour at a staggering 85,000 feet above the earth. In an hour its cameras could sweep 100,000 square miles of the planet's surface. And finally Bissell had a major hand in the Corona satellite project, which ushered in a whole new era in reconnaissance.

The Book of Honor, by Ted Gup wrote:

Douglas Mackiernan:

Easily distracted in school, Mackiernan was delighted to see class end, even if it meant pumping gas at his father's filling station. His father was a stern and somewhat formal man who, even when he pumped gas, wore a felt hat and tie. In the evenings, Doug Jr. would often lose himself in elaborate science experiments. In September 1932, Mackiernan, then nineteen, went off to MIT to study physics. There, too, the routine did not agree with him. One year was enough. He never did get his degree -- too much bother. But his grasp of the materials was enough to impress his professors. From 1936 to 1940 he worked as a research assistant at MIT. In 1941 he served as an agent for the U.S. Weather Bureau.

That was the year Mackiernan, then twenty-eight, introduced himself to Darrell Brown. They met on a train and discovered they were both headed for a skiing trip. Later, on the slopes, they met again. Darrell had taken a spill. As Mackiernan whooshed by, he said, "You are going to have to do better than that." He then returned to help her to her feet.

They were married on July 19, 1941, in St. John's By-the-Sea Episcopal Church in Old Orchard Beach, Maine, amid sprays of ferns, white gladioli, and delphinium. On November 6 of the next year they had a daughter, Gail. But the marriage was frayed from the beginning.  Shortly after the declaration of war, Mackiernan virtually vanished.

He had early on demonstrated an invaluable gift for codes and encryption, as well as an encyclopedic interest in history and foreign cultures. By 1942, not yet thirty, he was named chief of the Cryptographic Cryptoanalysis Section at Army Air Force Headquarters in Washington. But he was often away on assignment. Through most of the next year he was plotting weather maps, on temporary duty in Greenland and Alaska, in charge of the Synoptic Map Section. In November 1943 he was assigned to the 10th Weather Squadron in China. There he was to oversee communications and train personnel in the use of radios and codes. One of his primary jobs was to intercept and break encrypted Russian weather transmissions.

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http://web.media.mit.edu/~nicholas/ wrote:

Nicholas Negroponte: [Translation:  "Devil Black Bridge"]

Nicholas Negroponte is a founder and the director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s uniquely innovative Media Laboratory. The ten-year-old Media Lab, an interdisciplinary, multi-million dollar research center of unparalleled intellectual and technological resources, focuses exclusively on the study and experimentation of future forms of human communication, from entertainment to education. Media Lab research is supported by Federal contracts and by more than one hundred and fifty corporations worldwide. He has delivered hundreds of presentations, including the prestigious Murata "People Talk" address in Kyoto in 1990. In addition, he consults to both government and industry, serves as an active member on several corporate boards of directors and is a special general partner in a venture capital fund dedicated to new technologies for information and publishing. Negroponte was senior columnist for WIRED magazine (available online through HotWired) and is the author of the book Being Digital, published by Alfred A. Knopf.

***

Nicholas Negroponte is the Wiesner Professor of Media Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and founding chairman of MIT's Media Laboratory.

Professor Negroponte studied at MIT and has been an MIT faculty member since 1966. He was the founder of MIT's pioneering Architecture Machine Group, a combination lab and think tank responsible for many radically new approaches to the human-computer interface. In 1995, he published The New York Times bestseller Being Digital, which has been translated into over 40 languages.

In the private sector, Professor Negroponte serves on the board of directors for Motorola, Inc., and as a special general partner in a venture capital firm focusing on technologies for information and entertainment. He was a founder of WiReD magazine and has been an "angel investor" for over 40 start-ups, including three in China. Professor Negroponte helped to establish, and serves as chairman of, the 2B1 Foundation, an organization dedicated to bringing computer access to children in the most remote and poorest parts of the world. Most recently Professor Negroponte has launched a new program to develop a $100 laptop—a technology that could revolutionize how we educate the world's children.

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http://archives.obs-us.com/obs/english/books/nn/nnbio.htm wrote:

Nicholas Negroponte

Nicholas Negroponte is a founder and the director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's uniquely innovative Media Laboratory. The ten-year-old Media Lab, an interdisciplinary, multi million dollar research center of unparalleled intellectual and technological resources, is focused exclusively on study and experimentation with future forms of human communication, from entertainment to education. Programs include: Television of Tomorrow, School of the Future, Information and Entertainment Systems, and Holography. Media Lab research is supported by Federal contracts as well as by more than seventy-five corporations worldwide. Negroponte is also co-founder and back-page columnist for Wired magazine.

Negroponte studied at MIT, where as a graduate student he specialized in the then-new field of computer aided design. He joined the Institute's faculty in 1966, and for several years thereafter divided his teaching time between MIT and visiting professorships at Yale, Michigan, and the University of California at Berkeley.

In 1968 he also founded MIT's pioneering Architecture Machine Group, a combination lab and think tank responsible for many radically new approaches to the human-computer interface. In 1980, he served a term as founding chairman of the International Federation of Information Processing Societies' Computers in Everyday Life program. Two years later, Negroponte accepted the French government's invitation to become the first executive director of the Paris-based World Center for Personal Computation and Human Development, an experimental project originally designed to explore computer technology's potential for enhancing primary education in underdeveloped countries.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Negroponte wrote:

Nicholas Negroponte

Nicholas Negroponte (born 1943) is a Greek-American computer scientist best known as founder and director of Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab. Thanks to his personal charisma and his aura of a technological visionary, he has been very successful at attracting corporate sponsors for the Media Lab, a skill for which he is greatly admired. He is the brother of United States Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte.

Born the son of a Greek ship owner on New York City's Upper East Side, Negroponte studied at MIT, where as a graduate student he specialized in the field of computer-aided design. He joined the faculty of MIT in 1966. For several years thereafter he divided his teaching time between MIT and visiting professorships at Yale, Michigan, and the University of California, Berkeley.

In 1968 he also founded MIT's Architecture Machine Group, a combination lab and think tank which studied new approaches to the human-computer interface.

In 1985, Negroponte piloted MIT's Media Lab into existence. It developed into a famous and generously-funded computer science laboratory for new media and a high-tech playground for investigating the human-computer interface.

In 1992, he became involved in the creation of Wired Magazine as a minority investor. From 1993 to 1998, he contributed a monthly column to the magazine in which he reiterated a basic theme, his credo "Move bits, not atoms."

Negroponte expanded many of the ideas he wrote about in his Wired columns to a bestselling book Being Digital (1995), in which he surveyed the recent history of media technology, his now rehashing well-known forecast that the interactive world, the entertainment world, and the information world would eventually merge.

Being Digital sold well and was translated into some twenty languages. However, critics faulted his techno-utopian ideas for failing to consider the historical, political, cultural realities with which new technologies should be viewed. In the years following dot-com bust, the book dated quickly. Yet one can still appreciate the unique quality of the author's vision, and draw inspiration from the sense of speculative possibility that washes over the reader.

References

Negroponte, N. (1995). Being Digital. Knopf. (Paperback edition, 1996, Vintage Books, ISBN 0679762906)

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Negroponte wrote:

John Negroponte

John Negroponte, a career diplomat, was named by President George W. Bush to be the first national intelligence director to coordinate the work of all 15 intelligence agencies of the United States. He is awaiting confirmation of the U.S. Senate. America's first post-handover ambassador to Iraq, Negroponte also served as the U.S. Representative to the United Nations, from September, 2001. From 1997-2001, Negroponte had been Executive Vice President for Global Markets of The McGraw-Hill Companies. A member of the Career Foreign Service from 1960 to 1997, Negroponte served at eight different Foreign Service posts in Asia, Europe and Latin America; among these posts, he was Ambassador to Honduras (1981-85), Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs (1985-87), Deputy Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs (1987-89), Ambassador to Mexico (1989-93), and Ambassador to the Philippines (1993-96). Negroponte is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the American Academy of Diplomacy. He is former chairman of the French-American Foundation.

Negroponte's appointment to the UN post met with some controversy because of his involvement in covert funding of the Contras and his covering up of human rights abuses in Honduras in the 1980s. He is accused of sponsoring terrorism for supporting the Contra insurgency against the left wing Sandinistas, the first ever democratically elected government of Nicaragua. He is also accused of inciting Contra attacks on civilians.

Born July 21, 1939, in London, England, Negroponte speaks five languages. He graduated from Yale University in 1960. Negroponte is married and the father of five children.

***

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Negroponte wrote:

John Negroponte:

John Dimitri Negroponte (born July 21, 1939) is the current United States ambassador to Iraq and the nominee as the first U.S. Director of National Intelligence. A career diplomat who served in the United States Foreign Service from 1960 to 1997, Negroponte served as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations from September of 2001 until June 2004. As ambassador to Iraq, Negroponte oversees the largest American diplomatic facility in the world.

He is a controversial figure partly because of his involvement in covert funding of the Contras in Nicaragua (see Iran-Contra Affair) and his alleged covering up of human rights abuses carried out by CIA-trained operatives in Honduras in the 1980s.

Biography

Negroponte was born in London. His father was a Greek shipping magnate. He graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy in 1956 and Yale University in 1960. He later served at eight different Foreign Service posts in Asia, Europe and Latin America; and he also held important positions at the State Department and the White House. From 1997 until his appointment as ambassador to the UN, Negroponte was an executive with McGraw-Hill. Negroponte speaks five languages (Greek, Spanish, French, English, Vietnamese). He is the brother of Nicholas Negroponte, founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab.

Ambassador to Honduras

From 1981 to 1985 Negroponte was the U.S. ambassador to Honduras. During his tenure, he oversaw the growth of military aid to Honduras from $4 million to $77.4 million a year. At the time, Honduras was ruled by an elected but heavily militarily-influenced government. According to The New York Times, Negroponte was allegedly involved in "carrying out the covert strategy of the Reagan administration to crush the Sandinistas government in Nicaragua." Critics say that during his ambassadorship, human rights violations in Honduras became systematic.

Negroponte supervised the construction of the El Aguacate air base where Nicaraguan Contras were trained by the U.S., and which some critics say was used as a secret detention and torture center during the 1980s. In August 2001, excavations at the base discovered 185 corpses, including two Americans, who are thought to have been killed and buried at the site.

Records also show that a special intelligence unit (commonly referred to as a "death squad") of the Honduran armed forces, Battalion 3-16, trained by the CIA and the Argentine military, kidnapped, tortured and killed hundreds of people, including U.S. missionaries. Critics charge that Negroponte knew about these human rights violations and yet continued to collaborate with the Honduran military while lying to Congress.

In May 1982, a nun, Sister Laetitia Bordes, who had worked for ten years in El Salvador, went on a fact-finding delegation to Honduras to investigate the whereabouts of thirty Salvadoran nuns and women of faith who fled to Honduras in 1981 after Archbishop Óscar Romero's assassination. Negroponte claimed the embassy knew nothing. However, in a 1996 interview with the Baltimore Sun, Negroponte's predecessor, Jack Binns, said that a group of Salvadorans, among whom were the women Bordes had been looking for, were captured on April 22, 1981, and savagely tortured by the DNI, the Honduran Secret Police, and then later thrown out of helicopters alive.

In early 1984, two American mercenaries, Thomas Posey and Dana Parker, contacted Negroponte, stating they wanted to supply arms to the Contras after the U.S. Congress had banned further military aid. Documents show that Negroponte brought the two together with a contact in the Honduran armed forces. The operation was exposed nine months later, at which point the Reagan administration denied any U.S. involvement, despite Negroponte's introductions of some of the individuals. Other documents detailed a plan of Negroponte and then-Vice President George H. W. Bush to funnel Contra aid money through the Honduran government.

During his tenure as U.S. ambassador to Honduras, Binns, who was appointed by President Jimmy Carter, made numerous complaints about human rights abuses by the Honduran military and claimed he fully briefed Negroponte on the situation before leaving the post. When the Reagan administration came to power, Binns was replaced by Negroponte, who has consistently denied having knowledge of any wrongdoing. Later, the Honduras Commission on Human Rights accused Negroponte himself of human rights violations.

Speaking of Negroponte and other senior U.S. officials, an ex-Honduran congressman, Efrain Diaz, told the Baltimore Sun, which in 1995 published an extensive investigation of U.S. activities in Honduras:

Their attitude was one of tolerance and silence. They needed Honduras to loan its territory more than they were concerned about innocent people being killed.

The Sun's investigation found that the CIA and U.S. embassy knew of numerous abuses but continued to support Battalion 3-16 and ensured that the embassy's annual human rights report did not contain the full story.

The question of what John Negroponte knew about human rights abuses in Honduras will probably never be answered definitively, but there is a large body circumstantial evidence supporting the view that Negroponte was aware that serious violations of human rights were carried out by the Honduran government, with the support of the CIA, if perhaps not with its direct approval. Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, on September 14, 2001, as reported in the Congressional Record, aired his suspicions on the occasion of Negroponte's nomination to the position of UN ambassador:

Based upon the Committee's review of State Department and CIA documents, it would seem that Ambassador Negroponte knew far more about government perpetuated human rights abuses than he chose to share with the committee in 1989 or in Embassy contributions at the time to annual State Department Human Rights reports. http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2001_cr/s091401.html

Among other evidence, Dodd cited a cable sent by Negroponte in 1985 that made it clear that Negroponte was aware of the threat of "future human rights abuses" by "secret operating cells" left over by General Alvarez after his deposition in 1984.

Appointment to the UN

When President Bush announced Negroponte's appointment to the UN shortly after coming to office, it was met with scattered protest. Some critics asserted that the administration intentionally arranged the deportation from the United States of several former Honduran death squad members who could have provided damaging testimony against Negroponte in his Senate confirmation hearings.

One of the deportees was General Luis Alonso Discua, founder of Battalion 3-16. In the preceding month, the U.S. government had revoked the visa of Discua, who was Honduras's Deputy Ambassador to the UN. After returning to Honduras, Discua stated that, in 1983, he had been brought to the United States to spend two months organizing Battalion 3-16. http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/0325-03.htm

Negroponte in Iraq

On April 19, 2004, Negroponte was nominated by U.S. President George W. Bush to be the U.S. ambassador to Iraq after the June 30 handover of sovereignty. He was confirmed by the United States Senate on May 6, 2004, by a vote of 95 to 3, and was officially sworn in on June 23, 2004, replacing L. Paul Bremer as the U.S.'s highest ranking American civilian in Iraq.

In the months Negroponte spent as U.S. Ambassador to Iraq he received plaudits, even from Bush administration critics such as Fred Kaplan, for his removal of corruption, graft and sycophants from the U.S. civilian presence in Iraq. [2]

National Intelligence Director nominee

On February 17, 2005, President George W. Bush named Negroponte as the first Director of National Intelligence, a position created due to recommendations made by the 9/11 Commission completed late in 2004. As with many presidential appointments, Negroponte must be confirmed by the Senate.