The Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador, based in Washington, D.C., is a national activist organization with chapters in various cities in the United States.
A story about the diary made its way into a John Birch Society publication Review of the News and a Republican House of Representative staffer passed a copy on to the FBI.
[4] Only a few months after Handal's trip in May 1980, during which he did meet with Pollack, according to her biography published by the US Peace Council,[5] CISPES came into being by way of two founding conferences in which various Salvadoran rebels participated.
But, in the end, the FBI could not authenticate the diary and found no other verifiable evidence to prove direct control of CISPES by a foreign entity or to warrant further investigation.
By March 1983, the FBI had received what it considered to be sufficient information to open a full investigation into whether CISPES was providing financial and other types of aid in support of FMLN and FDR terrorist activities.