Also on Capitol Hill, the Senate will open confirmation hearings today for John Negroponte — President Bush’s nominee to become the country’s first national intelligence director. Negroponte’s tenure as US ambassador to Honduras 20 years is back in the news. The Washington Post reports today that newly declassified cables and memos from the early 1980s shed new light on Negroponte’s connection to the Iran Contra scandal that saw the Reagan administration secretly arming contra rebels in Nicaragua to overthrow the Sandinista government. In July 1983, the House voted to halt all aid to the anti-Sandinista contras. Negroponte responded by sending a cryptic message to the president’s national security adviser and the CIA Director urging them to keep the secret arms deal alive. Later the arms deal would publicly come to light as the Iran-Contra scandal. Negroponte wrote in July 1983: “Hondurans believe special project is as important as ever.” At the time Honduras was secretly being used as the logistical base for as many as 15,000 U.S.-backed anti-Sandinista rebels known as the Nicaraguan Democratic Force.