Bill Goodfellow

Bill Goodfellow executive director

Common Defense Campaign

Email: wcg@ciponline.org
Phone: (202) 232-3317

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William Goodfellow was one of the founders of the Center for International Policy in 1975 and has been its executive director since 1985. Goodfellow oversees fundraising, program development and the day-to-day operations of the Center. During the late 1970s, Goodfellow and his colleagues at the Center successfully lobbied for legislation that requires the executive branch to consider a country’s human rights record before providing economic and military aid.
In the 1980s, Goodfellow promoted negotiations to end the civil wars in Nicaragua and El Salvador. He worked closely with Costa Rican President Oscar Arias and championed the Arias/Contadora peace process in the United States. He attended every Central American summit meeting and spoke and published articles about the peace process, which silenced the guns in Central America and earned President Arias the Nobel Peace Prize in 1987. From 1972 to 1975, Goodfellow was an associate with the Indochina Resource Center, a Washington-based non-profit that provided the anti-war movement with academic research about Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.