The U.S. adventures in Central America in the 1980s were my first real engagement with the news, so that's why the mystery of James Francis Carney's disappearance in Honduras in 1983 had a special resonance. My Sunday column was the first time a Star Tribune staffer revisited the story since 1998.
I also found it interesting that the CIA put its correspondence with Sen. Paul Wellstone on its FOIA page. That was all declassified in September 2001, probably coinciding with the confirmation hearings of John Negroponte, the former ambassador to Honduras, as George W. Bush's ambassador to the United Nations. I did call the CIA media relations line for comment, but I never got a call back.
That left me with the afore-mentioned letter and the heavily redacted 1997 CIA Inspector General report, which you can read below:
