Peter Kornbluh - Böcker

The product of research and investigation by a team of sixteen authors, Reagan versus the Sandinistas is the most comprehensive and current study to date of the Reagan administration's mounting campaign to reverse the Sandinista revolution. The authors thoroughly examine all major aspects of Reagan's "low-intensity war," from the U.S. government's attempts at economic destabilization to direct CIA sabotage and the sponsorship of the contras or freedom fighters. They also explore less-public tactics such as electronic penetration, behind-the-scenes manipulation of religious and ethnic tensions, and harassment of U.S. Nicaraguan specialists and "fellow travelers." The book concludes with a consideration of the impact of these activities and their implications for international law, U.S. interests, U.S. polity, and Nicaragua itself. Reagan versus the Sandinistas is designed not only for courses on Latin America, U.S. foreign policy, and international relations, but also for students, scholars, and others interested in understanding one of the most massive, complex efforts—short of direct intervention—organized by the United States to overthrow the government of another country.

The product of research and investigation by a team of sixteen authors, Reagan versus the Sandinistas is the most comprehensive and current study to date of the Reagan administration's mounting campaign to reverse the Sandinista revolution. The authors thoroughly examine all major aspects of Reagan's "low-intensity war," from the U.S. government's attempts at economic destabilization to direct CIA sabotage and the sponsorship of the contras or freedom fighters. They also explore less-public tactics such as electronic penetration, behind-the-scenes manipulation of religious and ethnic tensions, and harassment of U.S. Nicaraguan specialists and "fellow travelers." The book concludes with a consideration of the impact of these activities and their implications for international law, U.S. interests, U.S. polity, and Nicaragua itself. Reagan versus the Sandinistas is designed not only for courses on Latin America, U.S. foreign policy, and international relations, but also for students, scholars, and others interested in understanding one of the most massive, complex efforts—short of direct intervention—organized by the United States to overthrow the government of another country.

History is being made in U.S.-Cuban relations. Now updated to tell the story behind the stunning December 17, 2014, announcement by President Obama and President Castro of their move to restore full diplomatic relations, this powerful book is essential to understanding ongoing efforts towards normalization. Challenging the conventional wisdom of perpetual conflict and aggression between the United States and Cuba since 1959, Back Channel to Cuba chronicles a surprising, untold history of bilateral efforts toward rapprochement and reconciliation. William M. LeoGrande and Peter Kornbluh here present a remarkably new and relevant account, describing how, despite the intense political clamor surrounding efforts to improve relations with Havana, negotiations have been conducted by every presidential administration since Eisenhower's through secret, back-channel diplomacy. From John F. Kennedy's offering of an olive branch to Fidel Castro after the missile crisis, to Henry Kissinger's top secret quest for normalization, to Barack Obama's promise of a new approach, LeoGrande and Kornbluh uncovered hundreds of formerly secret U.S. documents and conducted interviews with dozens of negotiators, intermediaries, and policy makers, including Fidel Castro and Jimmy Carter. They reveal a fifty-year record of dialogue and negotiations, both open and furtive, that provides the historical foundation for the dramatic breakthrough in U.S.-Cuba ties.

“On the news at this time is the question of the hostages,” then vice president George Bush noted in his secret diary on November 5, 1986, two days after a Lebanese newspaper broke the first story of the Reagan administration’s efforts to trade arms for hostages with Iran. “I’m one of the few people that know fully the details,” Bush continued. “This is one operation that has been held very, very tight, and I hope it will not leak.”But the illicit arms-for-hostages deals did leak, and eventually U.S. citizens discovered that the Reagan administration had been selling munitions to Iran, using funds from those sales for an illicit operation to resupply the Nicaraguan Contras, and systematically deceiving Congress, the press, and the public about these actions. More than six years after the Iran-Contra operations were revealed, we continue to learn more about the scandal that rocked the Reagan White House and haunted George Bush’s presidency, and about its implications for our system of governance.The Iran-Contra Scandal: The Declassified History provides the 101 most important documents on the policy decisions, covert operations, and subsequent cover-up that created the most serious constitutional crisis of modern times. Drawing on up-to-date information such as the recently discovered Bush diaries, this reader features once top secret, code-word White House memoranda, minutes of presidential meetings, pages from Oliver North’s and Caspar Weinberger’s personal notebooks, back-channel cable traffic, and investigative records, among other extraordinary materials. To enhance this documentation, the editors provide contextual overviews of the complex components of the Iran-Contra operations, as well as glossaries of the key players, and a detailed chronology of events.The result is a unique guide to the inner workings of national security policy making and the shadowy world of clandestine operations—a singular resource for understanding the Iran-Contra affair and the gravity of the governmental crisis it spawned. The documents, writes noted Iran-Contra scholar Theodore Draper in the Foreword, give the reader “an intimate sense of how the president and his men manipulated the system and perverted its constitutional character.” This volume “allows the facts to speak for themselves.”

Thirty-six years after the Cuban Missile Crisis, these declassified documents stand as testament to just how dangerously close the world came to nuclear destruction in 1962, and challenge the official history of the event as a model of crisis management. This collection of formerly secret records includes: correspondence between John F. Kennedy, Nikita Kruschev, and Fidel Castro; intelligence reports; minutes; cables; and documents released since the publication of the hardback edition. The editors have provided a document-by-document account of the most important superpower confrontation of the 20th century.

For decades, the CIA's top secret postmortem on the April 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion has been the holy grail of historians, students, and survivors of the failed invasion of Cuba. But the scathing internal report on the worst foreign policy debacle of the Kennedy administration, written by the CIA's then–inspector general Lyman Kirkpatrick, has remained tightly guarded—until now.Dislodged from the government through the Freedom of Information Act, here is an uncompromising look at high officials' arrogance, ignorance, and incompetence, as displayed in their attitude toward Castro's revolution and toward the Cuban exiles the CIA had organized to invade the island. Including the complete report and a wealth of supplementary materials, Bay of Pigs Declassified provides a fascinating picture of the operation and of the secret world of the espionage establishment, with stories of plots, counterplots, and intra-agency power struggles worthy of a Le Carré novel.Includes: the complete text of the CIA report; a critical introduction; the newly declassified response to the report from Richard Bissell, who masterminded the operation; the first joint interview with the managers of the invasion, Jacob Esterline and Colonel Jack Hawkins; a comprehensive chronology; and biographies of the key participants.

The Pinochet File reveals a record of complicity with atrocity by the U.S. government. The documents, first declassified for the original edition of the book, formed the heart of the campaign to hold Gen. Pinochet accountable for murder, torture and terrorism. The New York Times wrote of the original 2003 edition, 'Thanks to Peter Kornbluh, we have the first complete, almost day-to-day and fully documented record of this sordid chapter in Cold War American History.' With this 40th anniversary edition, the record is even more complete and up-to-date.