Roger Noriega
| Roger Noriega | |
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| Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs | |
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In office July 31, 2003 – October 6, 2005 |
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| President | George W. Bush |
| Preceded by | Otto Reich |
| Succeeded by | Thomas A. Shannon, Jr. |
Roger Francisco Noriega (born 1959, Wichita, Kansas) is a U.S. diplomat and policy maker specializing in Western Hemisphere Affairs. He is a visiting fellow at the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute. He was ranked one of "Newsmax's 50 Most Influential Latino Republicans" in 2016.
Born in Wichita, Kansas, he attended Washburn University in Topeka where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1982.
Noriega has been involved in Latin American policy since the 1980s, when he worked in the Ronald Reagan administration’s U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). According to the Texas Observer, while at USAID Noriega oversaw "non-lethal aid" to the Contras, which led to uncomfortable questions about Noriega's work during investigations into the Iran-Contra scandal.
The Observer reported: "In subsequent investigations, unseemly associations surfaced. For example, a Miami-based money launderer with ties to the Medellin cartel testified to a Senate committee that he personally had cleaned up $230,000 by cycling it through a bank account used for non-lethal Contra aid. While at USAID, Roger [Noriega] also steered a $750,000 grant to the Thomas A. Dooley Foundation, headed by Verne Chaney, a close colleague of retired General John Singlaub, who, in turn, helped Oliver North run the illegal arms supply network to the Contras during the U.S. aid cutoff. For his part, Chaney did a survey of the Contras' medical needs in 1985 together with Rob Owen, who was subsequently nailed as Ollie North's bag man. When this all blew up into televised hearings, special prosecutors, threatened indictments, and jail terms, Noriega found it convenient to lie low."
Noriega served as the Senior Policy Advisor and Alternate U.S. Representative at the U.S. Mission to the OAS from 1990 through 1993, and as Senior Advisor for Public Information at the OAS from 1993 to 1994.
From 1994 to 1997, Noriega returned to Capitol Hill as a senior staff member New York Congressman Benjamin Gilman for the House Committee on International Relations. Subsequently, he became a senior staff member of Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC) for the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. In 1996, Noriega co-authored the Helms-Burton law which tightened the 40-year-old embargo on Cuba.
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