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For five decades, the official U.S. policy on Cuba was one of silence. But the real U.S. relationship with Havana involved secret negotiations that started with President Kennedy in 1963, even after his embargo against the island nation, say the authors of the new book Back Channel to Cuba. In fact, nearly every U.S. administration for the past 50 years has engaged in some sort of dialogue with the Cuban government, they say.

Back Channel to Cuba

The Hidden History of Negotiations Between Washington and Havana

by William M. Leogrande and Peter Kornbluh

Hardcover, 592 pages | purchase

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Co-authors Peter Kornbluh of the National Security Archive and William LeoGrande of American University outline these relationships based on recently declassified, or otherwise obtained, documents dating back to the Kennedy administration.

The documents reveal a series of secret meetings that took place in hotels, airport lounges and restaurants from New York to Paris to Guadalajara and involved intermediaries like the chairman of Coca-Cola, who served as President Jimmy Carter's representative, to Carter himself.

Kornbluh and LeoGrande sat down with Morning Edition's Steve Inskeep ahead of the book's release to discuss their findings.

Interview Highlights

On why the talks were secret

Kornbluh: [Officials] were worried that either the Soviets would be spying on their telephone conversations or the U.S. NSA would be spying on their conversations, so they worked out a way to communicate with each other without anybody else knowing. ... This is a theme that runs through the entire history that we've recorded. Cuba issues are so sensitive that when high-level policymakers wanted to have a dialogue, they wanted to keep it secret from other parts of the bureaucracy that might object.

On Henry Kissinger's secret negotiations and contingency plan

Kornbluh: Henry Kissinger really was the secretary of state who secretly, I think, really pushed hard to create a window of opportunity for normalizing relations with Cuba. ... He told his emissaries that he was using the same kind of modus operandi to approach the Cubans that he had used with Chairman Lai in China. And, for a period of 18 months, there was a series of secret meetings, culminating in an actual negotiation session, a three-hour session in room 727 of the Pierre Hotel in New York.

Eventually, the political sensitivities about Cuba came back to haunt this effort. The Cubans had sent 36,000 troops into Angola, and for Kissinger that made things not only politically untenable, but for his strategic view of the world, he could not believe that this small country would disrupt the superpower kind of equilibrium as he was trying to play it. He was so angry; he actually ordered a set of contingency plans to attack Cuba if Cuba expanded its presence in Africa.

On the use of intermediaries and informal channels

LeoGrande: Peggy Dulany, David Rockefeller's daughter, carried a message from Fidel Castro to George Shultz during the Reagan administration, in which Fidel said he was willing to be constructive in trying to help settle the conflict in southern Africa. ... And we actually have a Cuban document in which Fidel is talking to the president of Angola and explaining why he used Peggy Dulany, as opposed to just going through normal diplomatic channels. And he says to the president of Angola, "You know, when you send a message through the [diplomats] it takes months before you hear anything back, and sometimes you never hear anything at all."

With fewer than five weeks until election day, the political landscape continues to be tilted against President Obama and his party. The battle for control of the Senate — the biggest prize this year — remains close and could tip either way.

Likely voters were asked, "Do you approve or disapprove of the job being done by Barack Obama as president?" and, "Do you approve or disapprove of the way (Named Incumbent) is handling his/her job as a member of the U.S. Senate?" NPR/Democracy Corps/Resurgent Republic poll hide caption

itoggle caption NPR/Democracy Corps/Resurgent Republic poll

Those are the findings of NPR's latest bipartisan poll of likely voters, conducted by Republican Whit Ayres of Resurgent Republic and Democrat Stan Greenberg of Democracy Corps.

The poll concentrated on the Senate battleground — the 12 states that will determine control of the Senate next year. It found an electorate where nobody likes anybody. The president, the Republicans and the Democrats were viewed with equal disgust — their favorability ratings all in the low 40s. This is a disgruntled group of voters, says Ayres, which this year happens to be good news for his party.

"The direction of the country is overwhelmingly perceived to be in the wrong direction. Barack Obama is exceedingly unpopular in the Senate battlegrounds," he says. "The generic party preference for a Senate candidate favors the Republicans by three points. So the playing field still tilts strongly to Republicans in these 12 battleground states."

Democrat Greenberg doesn't try to sugarcoat the outlook for his party. But he points out that although not that much has changed since we last polled the Senate battleground in June, the president is a little more popular today, mostly because the public supports his military action against ISIS.

Likely voters were asked, "What are the most important issues when deciding whom to vote for in the election for U.S. Senate?" NPR/Democracy Corps/Resurgent Republic poll hide caption

itoggle caption NPR/Democracy Corps/Resurgent Republic poll

"The mood is bleak, the president's not popular," Greenberg says, "but it's not entirely stable. That is, we're looking at a president that is slightly improved. ... The Democratic candidates, incumbents, are a net positive in their own personal favorability and their job approval. And so they're clearly withstanding the trend that we're talking about."

There's another phenomenon this year that shows up in the poll. In the battleground, Democrats and Republicans are equally energized, highly likely to vote, and they are not up for grabs. Big majorities of both parties say their minds are made up.

"But these elections are still within a point or two, and so despite this consolidation, the campaigns matter and can still impact both on preference and on turnout," Greenberg says.

Ayres says he agrees. "Democrats are locked in, the Republicans are locked in, and that's why it's so important the independents prefer a generic Republican by 53 percent to 37 percent — 16-point preference," he says.

Rebecca Janes from Arkansas describes herself as an independent and a home-schooler mom. She plans to vote for Republican Rep. Tom Cotton for Senate. She says she wants to send a message to Obama. "I will try to check and balance our current administration at every point I am able to with my vote," she says.

Janes says Obamacare is her most important issue, and across party lines Obamacare is still among the top three issues for voters this year. Jobs and the economy are No. 1, of course.

But the poll also shows that Democrats have been successful at driving an agenda aimed at their top targets — female voters. Democrats in our poll rank a candidate's position on women and women's issues just behind the economy.

Gwen Clements, a registered Democrat and out-of-work dental assistant from Kentucky, plans to vote for Alison Lundergan Grimes for Senate. Or rather, she plans to vote against the incumbent Republican Mitch McConnell.

"For one, I'm a woman," she says. "And he has voted against everything for women — the fair pay, the violence."

Republicans need to pick up six Senate seats to win control, and the NPR poll shows the 12 battleground Senate races continue to tilt to the right. But there's no sign yet that a big electoral tsunami is coming, the way it did to help Democrats in 2006 or Republicans in 2010.

"The definition of a wave is when one party wins many seats by one or two percentage points, where every close race goes their way," Ayres says. "The overall environment is very promising for Republicans now, but there's not yet evidence of a wave comparable to 2006 or 2010. But one could easily develop. It's like on a hot, muggy summer day, you know the environment is right for thunderstorms even if none are yet visible on radar, but you'd better keep an eye out for them."

Greenberg says in election after election, "we've watched ... Republicans expecting to win control at the Senate, and it's broken at the end for the Democrats, winning almost all the competitive Senate races. That could happen here too. Republican party is very unpopular, president's not very popular, I recognize. Both are at work, but it could tilt one way or the other."

And that's the suspense of this election. History and the number of red states voting tells us that the GOP should win the Senate. But Republicans have fallen short of expectations in the past two cycles. This year, things look very good for a Republican Senate takeover, but the battleground races are still too close to call to make that guarantee.

Note on Methodology: This survey was conducted from September 20-24, 2014 using a list of 2006 voters, 2010 voters, and new registrants. The survey is of 1,000 likely 2014 voters in the most competitive Senate races across the country, conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research for Democracy Corps, Resurgent Republic, and NPR. Unless otherwise noted, the margin of error for the full sample is = +/- 3.10% at 95% confidence.

There has been a crowded docket in our preeminent sport. Let's take just three cases. The defendants: the NFL, Roger Goodell and football itself.

The NFL first. If American banks, which nobody likes, are too big to fail, then the NFL, which everybody likes, is too popular to fail. Probably too big by now too. Despite all the negative news recently, has it really been damaged? Why, one of its smallest franchises, the Buffalo Bills, just drew a record price. Do you see any indication that fans have, in disgust, turned to Gilligan's Island reruns Sunday afternoons? Not to mention Thursday, Sunday and Monday nights.

Long ago Walter Winchell used to address his radio audience: Mr. and Mrs. America and all the ships at sea. Well, Mr. and Mrs. NPR and all the planes in the air: Do you have any friends who have sworn off watching NFL games? Have you?

Sweetness And Light

The Washington Football Team That Must Not Be Named

Verdict: guilty on all counts. As punishment, by popular demand, we sentence the NFL to more playoff games for us to watch.

Next up for trial: Roger Goodell. He, the boyish blond, with a shoeshine and a smile; lifetime league functionary, promoted to a $40 million-a-year position thanks to the Peter Principle. Back more than a year ago I said here that he wasn't up to the job. It's only become more obvious since. Long before he was "ambiguous" about what might have happened to Ray Rice's fiancee on that elevator, he was disingenuous about his sport's dangers, ignorant of team bullying and team bounties. He doesn't even have the courage to tell the owner of the Washington franchise that his team's nickname is racist.

Sweetness And Light

Deford: Is Goodell Good Enough To Lead The NFL?

Verdict: guilty on all counts. The court hereby orders the NFL to hire someone from outside the football family of stature, honor and sensitivity to be the new commissioner.

And lastly on trial this morning: football itself. A new study shows that almost one-third of NFL players will suffer long-term cognitive problems. Granted, that's professionals, but obviously younger brains are at jeopardy on all gridirons. What mother or father can any longer willfully allow a son to play such a game with such odds?

Verdict: Football is dangerous to your brain.

The court orders that some brave college conference with high academic standards — like the New England Small College, the Midwest, the North Coast, the Southern California IAC — have the courage to lead the way and drop football.

That's called a no-brainer.

Roger Goodell

Football

NFL

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

Novelist Nicholas Sparks has been accused of racial and religious discrimination, in a federal lawsuit brought by a former employee on Thursday.

Saul Hillel Benjamin, the ex-headmaster of the Epiphany School of Global Studies, a North Carolina private school co-founded and funded by Sparks and his wife, Catherine, states that he discovered a hostile environment while working at the school and The Nicholas Sparks Foundation.

Among other allegations, Benjamin's complaint says the best-selling author sought to block the recruitment of black students and teachers, supported the bullying of LGBT students and questioned Benjamin's own Jewish background and Quaker faith.

And the complaint isn't short on incendiary language. The Guardian reports that the lawsuit accuses Sparks of endorsing students who "sought to enact a 'homo-caust' against a group of gay students," of having publicly claimed that Benjamin suffered from Alzheimer's disease and, according to The Associated Press, of generally fostering "a veritable cauldron of bigotry toward individuals who are not traditionally Christian, and especially those who are non-white."

Sparks' attorney denied the accusations, according to the AP, and his publicist released a statement from Sparks' entertainment lawyer, Scott Schwimer, that reads: "As a gay, Jewish man who has represented Nick for almost 20 years I find these allegations completely ludicrous and offensive."

Writers Group Pulls For Amazon Probe: The Authors Guild, a century-old professional society of more than 8,500 published writers, went public Thursday with its attempts to invite government scrutiny of Amazon's business practices. According a statement on its website, last summer the Guild — not to be confused with Authors United, another writers' advocacy group seeking investigations of Amazon — "prepared a White Paper on Amazon's anticompetitive conduct, circulating it to the United States Department of Justice and other government entities." The group says it met with members of the Justice Department on Aug. 1 to make their pitch in person.

The news comes as Amazon's pricing dispute with Hachette Book Group roils on, and as Authors United prepares a letter of its own to the DOJ.

Bots Plot Conquest, Libraries First: Robots, the imminent overlords of Earth (give it 50 years or so), are lulling us into a false sense of security with yet another blatant ploy: playing librarians. Say hello to Nancy and Vincent, the humanoid bots coming to Connecticut's Westport Library. No word yet on when, precisely, they'll become self-aware.

Citizen Can't: "If this were a domestic tragedy, and it might well be, this would be your fatal flaw — your memory, vessel of your feelings," writes Claudia Rankine, in "Citizen," a devastating prose poem out now in Granta.

Whoops, My Dear Watson: Anthony Horowitz, the man behind an upcoming James Bond novel, has a few issues to sort out with Sherlock Holmes first. Sarah Lyall reports in the New York Times that advance reading copies of Horowitz's Sherlock novel Moriarty contain some not-so-subtle clues to his writing process. Notes to his copy editor have been mistakenly left in, littering the text in all-caps — including this frank assessment: "I'M NOT CHANGING THIS."

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