"If confirmed by the Senate, Negroponte, 65, will assume a post created by legislation aimed at overhauling the nation's intelligence system. . . . "As DNI [director of national intelligence], John will lead a unified intelligence community and will serve as the principal adviser to the president on intelligence matters," Bush said in making the announcement. He said Negroponte would have authority over budgets and that the CIA director would report to Negroponte. Bush also said that Negroponte would be "my primary briefer" on intelligence on a daily basis and would have regular access to the president, although he would not work in the White House. . . . The new director will oversee agencies with combined budgets of more than $40 billion, and Bush made clear that Negroponte would have considerable authority over setting those budgets and other matters. Negroponte "will have the authority to order the collection of new intelligence, to ensure the sharing of information among agencies, and to establish common standards for the intelligence community's personnel," Bush said. "It will be John's responsibility to determine the annual budgets for all national intelligence agencies and offices and to direct how these funds are spent. Vesting these in a single official who reports directly to me will make our intelligence efforts better coordinated, more efficient and more effective." Bush said that while CIA Director Porter J. Goss would report to Negroponte, the CIA would "retain its core of responsibilities for collecting human intelligence, analyzing intelligence from all sources and supporting American interests abroad at the direction of the president."

"Intelligence Battalion 3-16 was also created in the early 1980s with the help of the CIA. Together with the DNI, Battalion 3-16 is blamed for the repression, capture, interrogation and disappearance of about 180 people, generally popular movement leaders.

" Barrera . . . recalled how he nearly suffocated people with rubber masks, how he attached wires to their genitals and shocked them with electricity, how he tore off a man's testicles with a rope. "We let them stay in their own excrement," he said, his gold front tooth reflecting the dim lamplight. "When they were very weak, we would take them to disappear."

"“I responded to the Economist, I also responded to the committee in 1989, in good faith and to this day, I did not believe that death squads were operating [in Honduras]."

"A former commander of Battalion 316, General Luis Alonso Discua Elvir, might have made an informative witness at Negroponte's confirmation hearing, but although he has lived in Florida for several years, he is suddenly unavailable. He left the United States in February after his residence visa was canceled . . . When an American reporter asked about the notorious battalion, he demurred, saying he wanted no more "problems with the United States" because "your country is too powerful."