Remembering Robert White: Ambassador and Human Rights Advocate
President Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski stated in his book “Power and Principle: Memoirs of a National Security Advisor” that a commitment to human rights would demonstrate the values of a democratic republic to people in developing nations and make the United States more appealing than our adversity at the time, Soviet Russia. The national security advisor made three basic propositions in a speech in 1978 at the 13th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
“The first is that human rights is the genuine, historical inevitability of our times,” he said. “The second is that human rights is a central facet in America’s relevance to this changing world. And the third is that there has been progress in the effort to enhance the human condition insofar as human rights are concerned.”
Ambassador Robert White held a similar commitment to human rights and spent his Foreign Service and post-Foreign Service career working for the idea. He worked for the State Department in the Foreign Service (1955-1981). Before his diplomatic career, White served in the Navy from 1944 to 1946 and graduated from St. Michael’s College in 1952. After graduating from Fletcher’s School of Law and Diplomacy in 1954, White went to work for State and spent much of his career in posts in Latin America – Columbia, Ecuador, Honduras, and Nicaragua. From 1968 to 1970, he served as the Peace Corps regional director and then regional director for the Latin American Region. In 1977, he was nominated by President Carter to be Ambassador to Paraguay.
In a 1978 cable declassified 18-years-ago, Ambassador White discussed the United States’ involvement in Operation Condor – a political operation that involved political repressions, state terror, and the assassination of state opponents – with Paraguay General Alejandro Fretes Davalos. Davalos told White that South American intelligence officials keep in touch with those involved in Condor through a U.S. communications installation in the Panama Canal Zone. White sent a message to Secretary of State Cyrus Vance that expressed concern that the U.S. connection to Condor could be revealed in an investigation into the death of Chilean Diplomat Orlando Letelier.
White was the Ambassador to El Salvador from 1980 to 1981 during the country’s brutal 12- year civil war. He was very critical of El Salvador’s military and accused them of committing atrocities against the country’s civilians, an accusation that was factually confirmed. White called military figure Roberto D’Aubuisson a “pathological killer” D’Aubuisson was widely suspected of death squad killings, including the killing of Archbishop Oscar Romero. White was dismissed by President Ronald Reagan’s Administration in 1981. He wrote after his dismissal:
“In 1981, as Ambassador to El Salvador, I refused a demand by Secretary of State Alexander Haig that I use official channels to cover up the Salvadorian military’s responsibility for the murder of four American churchwomen (Four Catholic missionaries that were murdered by El Salvador’s National Guard),” White said. “I was fired and forced out of the Foreign Service.”
After his forced retirement, White continued to fight for the causes he believed in. He served as a senior associate for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and was also a professor of International Relations at Simmons College in Boston. He also served as an election observer in Haiti’s 1987 general election and as president of the both International Center for Development Policy and the Center for International Policy, an organization that promotes “cooperation, transparency and accountability in global relations and threats to the planet such war, corruption, inequality and climate change.” In 1999, White made his thoughts on our country’s Central America policy clear.
“In the name of anticommunism, U.S.-supported armies suppressed democracy, free speech, and human rights in El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama,” he said. “Torture and assassination of democratic leaders, including presidential candidates, journalists, priests and union officials became commonplace.”
Ambassador White passed away in 2015 due to bladder and prostate cancer. In an era where the concept of human rights is threatened by the rise of authoritarian democracy, and leaders like Trump, where is a Robert White?
