The late Senator Ted Kennedy, who was memorialized as the Lion of the Senate, once asked the Soviets, our sworn enemies during the Cold War, to intervene in the 1984 election to help Democrats defeat Ronald Reagan, according to KGB records opened up by reformer Boris Yeltsin.
Documents unearthed by Yeltsin in 1991 exposed the betrayal of the American electorate to the Soviets. Ted Kennedy is said to have pleaded with the Russians to interfere in the 1984 election and “eagerly” awaited their reply.
Information gleaned from Soviet reports showed Ted Kennedy not only sent secret messages to the Soviets, he begged them to intervene to overthrow President Reagan. There is no hyperbole in that statement.
People need to understand that Russia was far more dangerous at that time than they are even now. The Cold War was so serious that nuclear war was legitimately on the table.
As it happened, when events unfolded during his presidency, Ronald Reagan defeated the Soviet Union.
Kennedy’s secret communique to the communists, our avowed enemies, was hidden so well that we didn’t find out it existed until 1991, eight years after Kennedy engaged in what can only be labelled an act of treason. Boris Yeltsin opened up the files that Tim Sebastian, a reporter for the London Times, exposed, Forbes reported.
A 1983 memorandum composed by Victor Chebrikov, the top man at the KGB and addressed to Yuri Andropov, the top man in the entire USSR, listed the subject as Senator Edward Kennedy. In the memo, Kennedy’s communique was described and discussed:
“On 9-10 May of this year,” the May 14 memorandum explained, “Sen. Edward Kennedy’s close friend and trusted confidant [John] Tunney was in Moscow.” (Tunney was Kennedy’s law school roommate and a former Democratic senator from California.) “The senator charged Tunney to convey the following message, through confidential contacts, to the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Y. Andropov.”
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The offer was for a quid pro quo. In exchange for the Soviet leader lending the Democrat Party a hand in interfering in the U.S. election to defeat Reagan, Kennedy would work with the Soviets to improve their image in the United States.
Kennedy was quoted as saying Reagan would make the relations between the two nations worse by deploying new middle range missiles in Western Europe. He also let the Russians know that there were economic indicators that suggested a possible economic crisis which would help the Democrats but that might happen. Kennedy was disappointed at Reagan’s successes because it meant they couldn’t defeat him.
“The only real potential threats to Reagan are problems of war and peace and Soviet-American relations,” the memorandum stated. “These issues, according to the senator, will without a doubt become the most important of the election campaign.”
He is said to have told the Russians that Reagan would misquote, silence or whimsically discount Russian officials who speak of disarmament. To counter Reagan’s alleged militaristic policies, he wanted the Russians to cooperate with him in cheating Reagan out of victory – “in the interest of peace”.
Demeaning the American people was also part of the memorandum. “While arguments by Russian officials are in the newspapers, it is important to note the majority of Americans do not read serious newspapers or periodicals,” it reads.
Kennedy offered the following to Andropov in return for their efforts:
- Kennedy said he would visit Moscow to help Soviets deal with Reagan. He would tell them how to improve their propaganda. “The main purpose of the meeting, according to the Senator, would be to arm Soviet officials with explanations regarding problems of nuclear disarmament so they may be better prepared and more convincing during appearances in the USA.”
- Another offer was to allow Andropov a few interviews on American television. “A direct appeal … to the American people will, without a doubt, attract a great deal of attention and interest in the country. … If the proposal is recognized as worthy, then Kennedy and his friends will bring about suitable steps to have representatives of the largest television companies in the USA contact Y.V. Andropov for an invitation to Moscow for the interviews. … The senator underlined the importance that this initiative should be seen as coming from the American side.”
Kennedy would rig the interviews to make them look like honest journalism.
It received little or no attention, however, until the publication of Paul Kengor’s book “The Crusader – Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism.” But even then the actual text of the letter (which is in the book’s appendix pp 317-320) has gotten short shrift. That’s because our media has been corrupt for a very long time.
The text of the letter can be found here and below.
Truth or Fiction said the story is true and left-wing Politifact said it was false, quoting Tunney himself as calling it “Bullshit”. Tunney is hardly a good source.
In 1992, a Boston Herald reporter reached Kennedy spokesman Paul Donovan who said it is KGB fiction. Another unreliable source.
In the Reagan years, Kenneth Adelman served as deputy U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. and then director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. Politifact asked Adelman what he made of the KGB memo, and he dismissed it.
He had no idea if an overture might have been made, but even it had, Adelman said it didn’t matter.
“We knew senators were doing this sort of thing all the time and we ignored it,” Adelman said. “We didn’t think it was important, and it wasn’t. The administration didn’t care about it.”
If this doesn’t matter, why even bother investigating Paul Manafort? Senators were doing this sort of thing all along. Perhaps that’s the most damning thing in this entire report.
Text of KGB Letter on Senator Ted Kennedy on Scribd
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