Chris Hardie's Blog

Wednesday night I attended a screening of The Ambassador, a documentary about John Dimitri Negroponte, currently the U.S. Director of National Intelligence and formerly U.S. ambassador to Honduras, the United Nations and Iraq. Negroponte has been a controversial figure due to his involvement in the Iran-Contra Affair and human rights violations in Honduras, and the film took on those controversies by documenting Negroponte's career as a diplomat, his public and private statements about the accusations made against him, and the forces that influenced his path all along.

The production value of the film itself not very impressive, with some choppy editing and non-intuitive choices about how to segment the material. But it was a great look at Negroponte's "legacy" and the turmoil in those South American countries -- especially for me, who only had peripheral knowledge of the matter before. The film was presented by organizer Andrés Thomas Conteris, an Earlham grad who has consistently worked to speak out during the Senate confirmation hearings for Mr. Negroponte's various positions. It was interesting to hear about those experiences and the press he's gotten, and added a more personal connection to the movie's screening.