Robert E. White, who criticized policy on El Salvador as U.S. ambassador, dies at 88

[Judi Lynn]

Robert E. White, who criticized policy on El Salvador as U.S. ambassador, dies at 88
By Pamela Constable January 15

In 1980, when El Salvador was erupting in guerrilla war and military violence, the Carter administration sent a little-known Foreign Service officer into the maelstrom as its new ambassador, hoping he could help the U.S.-backed government there find a reformist middle ground and prevent a full-scale revolution.

Instead, Robert E. White became a controversial and outspoken critic of assassinations and massacres being carried out by American-trained military units and private right-wing death squads. His views cost him his diplomatic career but earned him the respect of many Salvadorans and, ultimately, the vindication of history.

Mr. White, who had previously served as U.S. ambassador to Paraguay, died Jan. 14 at a hospice in Arlington, Va. He was 88. The cause was bladder and prostate cancer, said a daughter, Claire White.

His brief tenure in San Salvador was marked by atrocities that became synonymous with right-wing violence during an era of ideological conflicts in Central America: the assassination of Catholic Archbishop Óscar Romero in March 1980 while he was saying Mass in the national cathedral, and the abduction and killing that December of four American women who were Maryknoll church workers.

More:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/robert-e-white-who-criticized-policy-on-el-salvador-as-us-ambassador-dies-at-88/2015/01/15/0c504738-9c29-11e4-96cc-e858eba91ced_story.html

[Judi Lynn]

1. Robert White vs. the Death Squads

Weekend Edition January 16-18, 2015

The Death of American Ambassador Extrordinaire

Robert White vs. the Death Squads

by MELVIN A. GOODMAN


The death of Ambassador Robert E. White is a reminder of what an American envoy can do to advance our principles and to guide our foreign policy. As an ambassador to Paraguay and El Salvador in the 1970s and 1980s, White demonstrated a commitment to social justice and human rights. Sadly, he was dismissed from the Foreign Service in 198? by Secretary of State Alexander Haig because the Reagan administration had decided on a policy of militarism in Central America.

Bob White was the ambassador in El Salvador in December 1980 when four American churchwomen were raped and murdered by the armed forces of the U.S.-backed Salvadoran government. The evening before their murders, two of the women had dinner at White’s home to discuss the problems that relief workers were having in El Salvador. At the grave site for two of the women, White repeated over and over again that “This time they are not going to get away with it.”

White took what started as a clandestine assassination attempt and turned it into a full-fledged international incident. He filed cables to the Department of State and testified to the Congress. Secretary of State Haig suppressed White’s cables from El Salvador, and FBI Director William Webster refused to release any documents related to the murders. The Reagan administration made sure that the efforts of the families of the murdered women could get no access to documents from the State Department, the FBI, and the CIA.

In 1989, the CIA even relocated to Miami the Salvadoran defense minister complicit in the murder of the American nuns. Until very recently, White was active in testifying in Florida in the trials of those involved in the murders.

Nine months before the murder of the nuns, Ambassador White informed the State Department that El Salvador’s leading right-wing politician, Robert D’Aubuisson had ordered the assassination of the Archbishop of San Salvador, Oscar Arnulfo Romero. In this case, the CIA knew exactly who pulled the trigger to kill Romero, but failed to inform the congressional intelligence committees. The CIA’s deputy director for intelligence, Robert Gates, suppressed all intelligence on the killing, part of the Agency’s effort to bury many of the truths of American policy toward Latin America in the 1980s.

More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/01/16/robert-white-vs-the-death-squads/

[roody]

2. knr