Remembering Edward M. Kennedy and his KGB connection
The death of US Senator Edward M. “Teddy” Kennedy this week is the reason for different recollections about his character. Online magazine Human Events recalls that Ted Kennedy who, by any measure, led an extraordinary life, was also willing to use US arch enemy’s secret police to harm his political enemies.
Kennedy’s private outreach to the KGB Soviet intelligence agency in attempts to undermine first President Jimmy Carter then President Ronald Reagan speaks about Edward Kennedy as about the man who appeared to have no moral restraints whatsoever on his personal pursuit of raw political power, according to Human Events.
It marks that documents found in Soviet archives after the fall of the Iron Curtain revealed a great deal about Ted Kennedy. One of the KGB reports to bosses in the USSR Communist Party Central Committee, revealed that “in 1978, American Sen. Edward Kennedy requested the assistance of the KGB to establish a relationship” between the Soviet apparatus and a firm owned by former Senator John Tunney (D-Ca.). KGB recommended that they be permitted to do this because Tunney’s firm was already connected with a KGB agent in France named David Karr. This document was found by the knowledgeable Russian journalist Yevgenia Albats.
Another KGB report to their bosses revealed that on March 5, 1980, John Tunney met with the KGB in Moscow on behalf of Sen. Kennedy. Tunney expressed Kennedy’s opinion that “nonsense about ‘the Soviet military threat’ and Soviet ambitions for military expansion in the Persian Gulf… was being fueled by [President Jimmy] Carter, [National Security Advisor Zbigniew] Brzezinski, the Pentagon and the military industrial complex.”
Kennedy offered to speak out against President Carter on Afghanistan and shortly thereafter he made public speeches opposing the President on this issue. This document was found in KGB archives by KGB officer Vasily Mitrokhin who copied documents from the files and then defected to the West.
Tim Sebastian from the London Times found contemporaneous KGB documentation and published a story in February, 1992, of an additional communiqué by Ted Kennedy to the Soviet intelligence agency through Tunney. This time it was President Reagan in Kennedy’s crosshairs as he attempted to arrange a meeting between Kennedy and General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Yuri Andropov.
In the May 14, 1983, letter written by the then KGB head Viktor Chebrikov to his boss Yuri Andropov, Chebrikov explained that Kennedy blamed poor American-Soviet relations on President Reagan. According to Chebrikov’s letter, Kennedy said he wanted to stop Reagan’s re-election effort in 1984.
Chebrikov’s letter claimed that Kennedy himself had offered to travel to Moscow to meet with Andropov if he would extend an invitation. Kennedy also suggested the Soviets reach out specifically to Barbara Walters and Walter Cronkite to counter in the American media what he said Kennedy considered Reagan “propaganda,” Human Events adds.

Published Commentaries
Posted in Published Commentaries on August 30, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
To Hell with Ted Kennedy
By Jerry A. Kane
If Dante Alighieri were alive today, to which of the four regions of Circle 9—the circle of treachery—would the thirteenth-century poet assign Ted Kennedy?
In Dante’s Inferno the regions of Caina, Antenora, Ptolomea, and Judecca are distinguished from one another by the particular offenses committed by the souls who inhabit them. The designated region for politicians who betray their country is Antenora, tailored to suit the offenses committed by the departed leftist lion Democrat.
Although it has become commonplace for Massachusetts’ senior senator to provide aid and comfort to America’s enemies and to accuse her President of secretly plotting and then deliberately starting an unnecessary war in Iraq, the earl of the waitress sandwich went a wee bit over the top when he collaborated with the Soviet KGB at the height of the Cold War to undermine a sitting President.
“In May 1983, the KGB … reported to their bosses on a discussion in Moscow with former Sen. John Tunney. Kennedy had instructed Tunney, according to the KGB, to carry a message to Yuri Andropov, the General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party, expressing Kennedy’s concern about the anti-Soviet activities of President Ronald Reagan.
The KGB reported ‘in Kennedy’s opinion the opposition to Reagan remains weak. Speeches of the President’s opponents are not well-coordinated and not effective enough, and Reagan has the chance to use successful counterpropaganda.’
Kennedy offered to ‘undertake some additional steps to counter the militaristic, policy of Reagan and his campaign of psychological pressure on the American population.’
Kennedy asked for a meeting with Andropov for the purpose of ‘arming himself with the Soviet leader’s explanations of arms control policy so he can use them later for more convincing speeches in the U.S.’
He also offered to help get Soviet views on the major U.S. networks and suggested inviting ‘Elton Rule, ABC chairman of the board, or observers Walter Cronkite or Barbara Walters to Moscow.’”
Reporter Tim Sebastian discovered the Viktor Chebrikov [KGB] memo to Andropov in the Soviet archives and wrote about his discovery in an article titled, “Teddy, the KGB and the top secret file” in the London Times February 2, 1992.
In the book, The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism, Paul Kengor also refers to the KGB memo and Kennedy’s proposed partnership to undermine President Reagan’s foreign policy and re-election efforts.
According to Kengor, Kennedy proposed a public relations plan that would cut through Reagan’s propaganda and connect Andropov and other senior Soviet officials with the mainstream media to help the Soviets present their peaceful intentions to the American people. Andropov died suddenly, and with his death Kennedy’s plan to undermine Reagan.
Clearly, Kennedy was not a double agent, nor was he a KGB pawn who did not understand what he was doing. He collaborated with the KGB solely to advance his own political aspirations and agenda. Kengor thinks that Kennedy wanted to stop Reagan’s “aggressive defense policies, which then ranged from the Pershing IIs to the MX to SDI, and even his re-election bid.” Kennedy saw Reagan, not Andropov, as the hindrance to peace.
Mary Jo’s Teddy was also a major contributor in creating and passing the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that imposed surveillance restrictions on the FBI and CIA, which “were so tight that when the FBI arrested Zacarias Moussaoui (the so-called 20th highjacker) in August 2001, they could not get permission to download his computer since FBI headquarters understood that they did not have enough evidence to get a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.”
Kennedy’s traitorous collaboration with the Soviet KGB and his deliberate disregard for the dangers of hostile foreign powers personify a progressive ideologue with a political agenda that supersedes the good of the country and the safety of its people.
The Inferno is a deep place where the sun is silent. Dante assigns the treacherous to Circle 9—the lowest of the 9 concentric circles of hell—and the treasonous to its second region. To hell with Ted Kennedy, a more deserving patron Antenora would be hard pressed to find.
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