Robert White (ambassador)

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Robert White served as U.S. ambassador under different administrations. In 1980-81, he was posted in El Salvador during the first years of that country's brutal 12-year civil war. He was harshly critical of the Salvadoran government and accused the military and paramilitaries (widely alleged to have close ties) of committing widespread atrocities against civilians, many of which were later factually confirmed. He once called prominent military figure Roberto D'Aubuisson as a "pathological killer". D'Aubuisson was widely suspected of collaboration with death squad killings including the assassination of Archbishop Óscar Romero.

He was dismissed by the new Reagan administration in 1981. He claims that Secretary of State, Alexander Haig, pushed for his removal because he did not favor a military solution to the Salvadoran situation.

After retiring from the Foreign Service in 1981, White served as a Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. In 1989, he joined the Center for International Policy as the President and has presided at conferences, led delegations to several Latin American and Caribbean countries and published numerous studies regarding U.S. policy towards the region. Additionally, White led an ongoing effort to reform U.S. intelligence agencies.

[edit] 1978 cable concerning operation Condor

On March 6, 2001, the New York Times reported the existence of a recently declassified 1978 cable from Robert White, at the time the U.S. ambassador to Paraguay. Professor J. Patrice McSherry of Long Island University described the discovery as "another piece of increasingly weighty evidence suggesting that U.S. military and intelligence officials supported and collaborated with Condor as a secret partner or sponsor".

In the cable, Ambassador White relates a conversation with General Alejandro Fretes Dávalos, chief of staff of Paraguay's armed forces, who told him that the South American intelligence chiefs involved in Condor "keep in touch with one another through a U.S. communications installation in the Panama Canal Zone which covers all of Latin America". This installation was "employed to co-ordinate intelligence information among the southern cone countries". White, whose message was sent to Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, was concerned that the US connection to Condor might be revealed during the then ongoing investigation into the deaths of Orlando Letelier and his American colleague, Ronni Moffitt. "It would seem advisable", he suggests, "to review this arrangement to insure that its continuation is in US interest".

Robert White is president of the Center for International Policy and currently resides in Alexandria, Virginia.