Peter Kornbluh

Peter Kornbluh ...

Nicaragua visit

When the $14 million aid package for the contras came up in spring 1985, Congress initially voted it down. Many congressmen said that, besides the PACCA report, reports of human rights violations had influenced them. . .Just forty-eight hours before the vote, Sens. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and John Kerry (D-Mass.) traveled to Nicaragua. Their celebrated meetings with Sandinista junta leaders, which captured the headlines and helped sway Congress, were arranged by Peter Kornbluh, a fellow at Institute for Policy Studies. Within a week the Sandinista president, Daniel Ortega, flew to Moscow and secured $200 million in Soviet aid. Shocked and embarrassed, Congress reversed gears and granted $27 million in humanitarian aid to the contras.

Institute for Policy Studies

In 1993 Peter Kornbluh was listed among "former fellows, project co-ordinators and staff" of the Institute for Policy Studies, Washington DC.

"Cuba and the United States: Historical Perspectives, Political Prospects"

September 26, 2008, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Institute for the Study of the Americas, convened a panel titled “Cuba and the United States: Historical Perspectives, Political Prospects.”.

Panelists including former State Department Chief of Staff Lawrence Wilkerson, former American Interests Section Director in Havana and Center for International Policy Senior Fellow Wayne Smith, National Security Archive Latin America project director Peter Kornbluh, Lissa Weinman of the World Policy Institute, Kirby Jones of the US-Cuba Trade Association, Phil Peters of the Lexington Institute, Geoff Thale of the Washington Office on Latin America, William LeoGrande at American University, Sarah Stephens of the Center for Democracy in the Americas, Al Fox of the Alliance for Responsible Cuba Policy Foundation, and others.

Letelier-Moffitt selection panel

The Institute for Policy Studies' 33rd Annual Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Awards, were awarded, Thursday, October 15, 2009.

Members of the selection panel were;

• Sarah Anderson, Institute for Policy Studies
• Fred Azcarate, AFL-CIO
• Marie Dennis, Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns
• Joe Eldridge, Chaplain, American University
• Jill Gay, Activist
• Adam Isacson, Center for International Policy
• Peter Kornbluh, National Security Archive
• Isabel Morel de Letelier
• E. Ethelbert Miller, Howard University
• Joy Olson, Washington Office on Latin America
• Barbara Shailor, AFL-CIO
• Joy Zarembka, Institute for Policy Studies

Rapprochement With Cuba

In April 2013, the Center for International Policy recently partnered with the Alliance for Responsible Cuba Policy to host Rapprochement With Cuba: Good for Tampa, Good for Florida, Good for America. Representative Kathy Castor (D-FL) provided the opening remarks at the Friday evening cocktail event in Tampa, FL and welcomed the panelists. The panel included Wayne Smith, Al Fox, Colonel Larry Wilkerson, Counselor Llanio Gonzalez-Perez, Peter Kornbluh, Dan Whittle and Mike Mauricio. The following day, the panelists discussed the Obama Administration’s Cuba policy, the State Department’s list of terrorist states, the Cuban-American vote, the U.S. Congress’s Cuba policy, doing business in Cuba, deep water oil drilling in Cuba’s terrestrial waters and travel to Cuba at the Historic Cuban Club.

Cuban Embassy soiree

It was remarkable how many non-Cubans knew the Cuban national anthem well enough to sing along July 2015 as the flag was raised over the newly re-established embassy on 16th Street NW. Then they joined in the delirious shouts of "Viva Cuba!"

"It's an amazing moment," said Phyllis Bennis, a fellow with the progressive think-tank, Institute for Policy Studies. "In the decades-long effort to normalise relations with Cuba, to stop the US attacks and hostility toward Cuba, we have not had so many victories. Suddenly we have a victory. The flag going up - that's huge."

"For those of us who were committed to the values and the aspirations of the Cuban revolution, the flag, as Fidel said in April 1959 when he was in this building, was a reflection of Operation Truth," said James Early, a Cuba specialist who recently retired from the Smithsonian. Raising that flag again "is a recognition of Cuba's right to sovereignty and self-determination... and to more freely deal with its own internal self-criticism, its failures, its errors, in the context of its extraordinary achievements."

Peter Kornbluh, who runs the Cuba Documentation Project at the National Security Archive, was carrying around a book he co-authored, Back Channel to Cuba, about the twisted secret history of outreach between the nations. "I wouldn't miss this for the world," he said. "It's a flag flying in the winds of change."