From 1981 until 1988 was the President of the Committee for Democracy in Central America (PRODEMCA), which criticized Marxist–Leninists in Central America, especially the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and the FMLN in Central America; PRODEMCA was also referred to as "Friends of the Democratic Center in Central America". Beyond criticizing revolutionaries, Kemble lobbied Congress to support the Christian Democratic President of El Salvador José Napoleón Duarte, during the Salvadoran Civil War; he also argued that Congress should fund the Nicaraguan Contras, then engaged in an armed campaign against the Sandinistas, to pressure the Sandinistas to negotiate a peace treaty with more guarantees for the civic opposition. In his support of Congressional funding of the Contras, Kemble was one of the "Gang of Four" of prominent social-democrats or opponents of the Vietnam War; a second was a former antagonist during the Vietnam War, Bruce Cameron, and the others were Robert S. Leiken and Bernard W. Aronson. The Gang of Four differed from the Reagan Administration on some questions. For example, they supported efforts to transfer control of Contra funding from the CIA and Department of Defense to the Department of State's USAID; they also supported negotiations opposed by Reagan Administration "hard-liners" who wished to defeat the Sandinistas, according to Cameron. Kemble's 1980s Central American politics were unpopular among liberals and democratic socialists in the Democratic Party.