Kerry, the Sandinistas, and the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS)

Hi, all--long-time lurker trying to post my first thread here, so please bear with me if I screw up the formatting or post this in the wrong place :) I've seen threads discussing Kerry's pro-Sandinista stance during the Reagan administration, but didn't notice this particular piece of information, which I thought worth passing on. This is from S. Stephen Powell's "Covert Cadre", an expose of the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), a pro-Soviet/pro-Cuban think tank founded in the 1960s which was funded by the KGB and linked to the Black Panthers, the leaking of the Pentagon Papers, the Church Committee, etc. Here is something Powell mentions about John Kerry's role in promoting the IPS' pro-Sandinista lobbying efforts during the Reagan administration:

From Chapter 14 of S. Steven Powell, "Covert Cadre: Inside the Institute for Policy Studies", with introduction by David Horowitz, Ottawa, Illinois: Green Hill Publishers, Inc., 1987, ISBN 0-915463-39-3:

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 IPS. 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.

IPS often acts as the ideological center and hub of activism of the autonomous groups in the [pro-Sandinista "CISPES"] Latin network. For instance. . .in early 1985 IPS brought together various players in the Latin network to compile "the Reagan record of deceit and illegality on Central America." "In Contempt of Congress" was a mishmash of contradictory data and not particularly persuasive. But then it was not intended to persuade, but to confuse and sow distrust of the Reagan administration. As with the PACCA report, it got wide circulation in Congress. Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) offered his praise for it and Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) called it "essential reading for every American who remembers Vietnam or Watergate." [Footnote cites: "In Contempt of Congress" (Washington, D.C.: Institute for Policy Studies, 1985), p. 70.]

Might be interesting if someone could dig up a copy of "In Contempt of Congress" and see if Kerry's mentioned or quoted there.

While I'm on this subject I'll mention two possibly-related pieces of info I've been looking into but haven't had a chance to write into a good summary for posting yet. One is Kerry's relationship at Yale with Harvey H. Bundy III. Bundy was a relative of an earlier Harvey Bundy, a close associate of Chief Justice Felix Frankfurter, who played a key role during the FDR/Truman years in setting up the Communist Party apparatus in Washington and in advancing the career of Soviet agent Alger Hiss. Harvey's son William--apparently Harvey H.'s uncle, from what I've gathered--contributed to Hiss' defense fund (and recently wrote a book attacking Nixon's foreign policy, "A Tangled Web: The Making of Foreign Policy in the Nixon Presidency"). William's brother McGeorge, who worked on the NSC under Kennedy and Johnson, had an aide named Marcus Raskin who co-founded the IPS at about the same time Harvey H. was rooming with Kerry at Yale. Kerry's website describes how he met Harvey H. and mentions, "One summer, Kerry and Bundy went to Europe, one trying hard to keep up with the irrepressible other. They drove all night to visit an acquaintance in Switzerland, arriving at dawn with hours to kill." (http://www.johnkerry.com/pressroom/clips/news_2003_1009e.html) Other sites describe how the Bundy family influenced Kerry's descision to go to Vietnam. It might prove enlightening to explore what role the Bundys and IPS may have played in this early stage of Kerry's career before he went to Vietnam. I'm particularly curious who Kerry and Bundy went to visit in Switzerland--their trip reminds me of Bill Clinton's college visit to Europe. . .

Also in relation to IPS, Kerry is quoted prominently in an old left-wing book attacking the Contras, Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall, "Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in Central Ameria" (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991, ISBN 0-520-07312-6 (alk. paper) /0-520-07781-4 (ppb.), which has some passages implying a close link between Kerry and the Christic Institute, a Cuban intelligence front linked to IPS. I'm in the process of reviewing this; if I find anything noteworthy I'll post it.

61 posted on 03/21/2004 11:23:25 PM PST by NotJustAnotherPrettyFace (Michael <a href = "http://www.michaelmoore.com/" title="Miserable Failure">"Miserable Failure"</a>)

> It's from a book I found at a used bookstore that appears to have had limited distribution.

I've known the publisher for many years. I'll go remind him of this information and see what I can get stirred up :-)

Backhoe is a good guy to know on this forum. He's got stuff bookmarked and crosslinked enough to keep me reading, well, like, forever! :-]

Oh, definitely! :)

I've known the publisher for many years. I'll go remind him of this information and see what I can get stirred up :-)

Oh, good! :) If you do talk to them, please encourage them to consider reissuing the book in an updated edition. I've found it to be an invaluable research tool, and there's so much that could be added since it was published, especially by crossreferencing it with things that have been released since then like the Venona files, KGB files, the transcripts of McCarthy's Senate hearings, biographies of various Hollywood and political figures incorporating information from FOIA files, etc.; plus everything that's been posted here at FR about the Clintons, Gore, and Kerry. A publisher could get a lot of mileage out of all that if they were so inclined.

The publisher tells me that the book is out of print, but that it sold well for such work (10,000+). No reissue is under consideration, but copies can be found in used book outlets.

He wonders, btw, how you picked the name "Fedora"? That is, if it's not confidential. Some such character showed up in Soviet espionage. I don't remember where, but it might have surfaced in Venona.

He wonders, btw, how you picked the name "Fedora"? That is, if it's not confidential. Some such character showed up in Soviet espionage. I don't remember where, but it might have surfaced in Venona.

Your publisher friend is correct :) I was having trouble picking a good screen name when I signed up for FR, so I tried to think of something appropos to the subject, and I remembered Fedora:

http://www.markriebling.com/golitsyn.html

The first of the FBI's two new sources was forty-year-old Scotch-loving Aleksei Isidorovich Kulak, nicknamed "Fatso" by his Bureau handlers and officially code-named Fedora. . .

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.