Comment E-mail Print Bio Archives

A top official of the AFL-CIO is stonewalling questions about her participation in an illegal 1970 trip to Communist Cuba organized by Weather Underground terrorist Bernardine Dohrn.

Karen Nussbaum, the executive director of Working America, the community affiliate of the AFL-CIO, was asked about her visit to Cuba after speaking at a panel at a "progressive" public policy conference in Washington, D.C. on Monday. Nussbaum was apparently stunned by the fact that someone had uncovered an aspect of her background that has been carefully omitted from her official biography. She refused to answer and walked away. Obviously embarrassed, she also pretended that she didn't hear the follow-up questions about her trip as a young radical to the communist-controlled island.

But according to one account of her trip, she declared that she "learned about revolution in Cuba" and praised Castro for providing "free health and educational care to every person in society..." She also declared, "I was part of the Black Panther Support Committee" and said she was a member of the "Draft resistance movement" opposing the Vietnam War.

Nussbaum's "Working America" AFL-CIO affiliate claims to represent "10 million union men and women and millions of workers without the benefit of a workplace union..." One of its current campaigns is congressional passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, in order to make it easier for the AFL-CIO to obtain members.

Nussbaum was Director of the Women's Bureau of the U.S. Department of Labor under President Clinton and is a contributor to the Huffington Post. Her trip to Cuba was sponsored by the Venceremos Brigade, a group run by the Cuban intelligence service, the DGI, which included several members of the communist terrorist Weather Underground. Young people on the trips were indoctrinated in the communist philosophy and given training in terrorism.

"We were in Cuba for a couple of months," she said.

According to declassified intelligence information, the Venceremos Brigades (VB) were created in 1968 by Cuban Communist officials to bring members of the New Left to Cuba ostensibly to cut sugar cane but actually for training and brainwashing. "The arrangements for the VB were made by future Weathermen Julie Nichamin and Bernardine Dohrn who had numerous contacts with officials at the CMUN [Cuban Mission to the United Nations], including officials who were suspected members of the DGI," one government document says.

Nussbaum founded the organization, 9 to 5: The National Association of Women Office Workers, which led to Jane Fonda, also known as "Hanoi Jane" because of her support of the Communist Vietnamese, making the film "9 to 5." Fonda's website features a photo of Fonda, Nussbaum and her husband, a former official of a group called Citizen Action who became a public relations executive in such firms as Fenton Communications. Citizen Action was implicated in a fundraising scandal in 1997 and was forced to close.

Nussbaum had just completed a speech on a panel at the "America's Future Now!" conference which on Tuesday night will honor her boss, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, as one of several "Progressive Champions." Another award winner is Rep. Barbara Lee, herself a recent visitor to Cuba and apologist for the Castro regime.

>> Continued -- Page 1 2 3