Robert White was a scintillating star and a hero among the United States’ career diplomats.

As a supporter of the prestigious Center for International Policy, this writer had the opportunity to meet personally with Mr. White on several occasions but a most memorable one occurred as a result of an invitation to a lunch at the Rayburn House building during the Iran-Contra hearings, to join the former legendary Ambassador White as well as distinguished and brilliant former career diplomat Dr. Wayne Smith, who was the Chief of the U.S. Interest Section in Havana, Cuba.

Robert White was an principled, courageous, outspoken critic of the horrific assassinations by right-wing death squads and massacres of labor organizers and tens of thousands of native Indians which were carried out in El Salvador and Guatemala with American-trained units and weaponry and, in the case of Guatemala, where about 80,000 were killed, with Israel providing armaments and helicopters for the genocide.  Guatemalan dictator Rios Montt was sentenced to life in prison recently by a truth commission and tribunal in Guatemala.

President Reagan, incredibly, had not only no problem with the genocidal atrocities in Central America, to boot this insanity, he and his administration and other sinister undue influence lobbyists, in fact supported these heinous crimes against humanity in that region.

President Ronald Reagan who bizarrely came to be propagandized mostly by the uncritical  mainstream media as a memorable president while in terms of historical facts, his presidency was bereft of any basis for such a laudatory  characterization of his presidency, decided to have Robert White removed from his post for his criticism of the murderous activities of the Arena party’s authoritarian leader Roberto D’Aubuisson who was linked to the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero and to the murder of four American women who were members of the Maryknoll church, not to mention countless others.

Reagan’s Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig as  President Reagan himself,  were supportive of both murderous leaders, dictator Rios Montt of Guatemala and D’Aubuisson of El Salvador, and later  President Reagan became a supporter of the Contra terrorists in Nicaragua to the point that he proudly displayed a T-shirt given to him by Contra leader Rodolfo Callero which said ” I Am a Contra Too”.  Eventually the International Criminal Court condemned he U.S. for its support of the Contras, particularly for the mining of the port of Corinto in Nicaragua.

The removal of one of our most inspiring, courageous, brilliant, humanist career diplomats from the foreign service was a criminal disservice to our nation and in direct opposition to its best interests.

Nevertheless, Robert White went on to dedicate the rest of his long and creative and productive life to enrich academia with his teachings and to contribute immeasurably to such prestigious organizations as the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and the  prestigious Center of International Policy, as its President.

Pamela Constable, of The Washington Post, wrote a comprehensive and eloquent obituary  for this noble giant of a diplomat who will be dearly missed by so many.   Ms. Constable thereby not only wrote an excellent obituary honoring this noble man, but she contributed  to further disseminating aspects of historical reality which unfortunately most Americans are hardly aware of in view of what has seemed liked a veritable conspiracy of silence for decades by those responsible for educating and informing the American public objectively and precisely.

Both, Pamela Constable and The Washington Post deserve kudos for the January 15, 2015 obituary article.

As a final statement, this writer wishes to add an addendum.

Being a German-Brazilian immigrant, this writer emigrated to the United States in 1964 when,  during that dark era in the history of U.S. – Latin American relations, the U.S. supported the overthrow of the João Goulart President.

The democratically elected presidency of João Goulart was crushed by a military coup after President Goulart returned from a trip to the People’s Republic of China at a time when such a trip was exploitable to artificially draw the absurd inference that this President had Communist leanings.

Sadly and incomprehensibly, the United States became involved and supported the overthrow of democracy in Brazil, something which plunged that nation into two decades of a terrorizing and torturing right wing extremist military dictatorship.  General Vernon Walters at the time was ready to dispatch an aircraft carrier to the U.S. naval base off the northeast coast of Brazil, called Fernando de Noronha, in order to then intervene military in Brazil’s internal affairs, should the military coup against the democratically elected President João Goulart have failed.

What ensued after the coup were two decades of a most repressive regime which incarcerated countless Brazilians without charges and carried out targeted assassinations and practiced torture.  Today’s President Dilma Rousseff was one of those countless Brazilians who were tortured.

On 9/11 (of 1973) Similarly a U.S. supported democratically elected leader was overthrown.  This time the overthrown leader was democratically elected Dr. Salvador Allende.

With the active support of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, the CIA and ITT corporation,  democracy in Chile was violently crushed.   The turning point of this barbaric event came to Chileans in the form of another 9/11 attack by two airplanes, the bombing of the Moneda Palace which involved the killing of the Social Democratic President Allende.

The military dictator installed by this U.S. supported destruction of freedom and democracy was the Nazi admiring Secretary of Defence of Chile, General Augusto Pinochet.   Again, thousands were “disappeared” and/or tortured .

Augusto Pinochet finally was held accountable.  Henry Kissinger to this day not only has not been held accountable for his criminal involvement in these atrocities, but continues to be invited as some kind of a “pundit” to present his views in mainstream media publications, and worse, at times, by academic institutions as a commencement speaker.  When this writer’s son graduated at Boston University, Kissinger was invited to speak, the result was that significant numbers of the studentry as well as of the faculty, stood up and turned their backs to Kissinger.  These were the students and teachers who had awareness of the criminal nature of Kissinger’s decisions and activities.  Most to this day, remain ignorant of that historical reality.

Peter Konrbluh, a distinguished scholar and author,  found a copy of a memo at the National Security Archives written by Henry Kissinger and addressed  to dictator Augusto Pinochet wherein he indicated to Pinochet to not fret about what he hears as regards to our Congressional criticism of  the human rights of Chileans by Pinochet’s regime, adding further that “…we like what you are doing down there…”.    This adds a new dimension to that expression “adding insult to injury”, literally and metaphorically.

The rest is history and unfortunately, as a direct result of our cadre of misleaders and the largely invisible actors which augment their political agendas, we have not learned any lessons as a result of the lack of political will on often a bipartisan basis by the power structures to hold the unindicted  criminals accountable, and this presents a grave threat to our present and future generations as we continue to embark on perpetual wars for perpetual conquests while our homeland base is falling apart, infra structurally, ethically, educationally, and public health wise.

Point in case, Mr. Dick Cheney declarations that as regards to torture, he would do it anytime again, and furthermore that he is not much worried about the innocents who have been tortured as about the guilty who have not.