Did the Media Hide Democratic Collusion with Russia in the Face of a U.S. Election?

 Did the Media Hide Democratic Collusion with Russia in the Face of a U.S. Election?

BY DEBRA HEINE JANUARY 15, 2019

CHAT 31 COMMENTS

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), left, meets with Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze in Moscow, Feb. 5, 1986. Man at center is a Russian interpreter. (AP Photo/Boris Yurchenko)

Long before Trump was ever accused of colluding with the Russians, a powerful Democratic senator conspired with the Kremlin to undermine a sitting American president -- and there are KGB documents to prove it.

My favorite part of the whole RussiaGate farce has always been the newfound patriotism of the former pro-Soviet Democrats. It was only a few years ago that a left-wing president and his cheer squad in the media and comments sections scoffed at the idea of Russia as a serious geopolitical foe.

But thanks to the deep state's baseless allegations that President Trump colluded with the Russians, Democrats are now the most Russia-phobic people on earth.

Leftists in the Trump era think it's cute and clever to call the president "Putin's Puppet" and his supporters traitorous "comrades." Countless articles have been written accusing people in Trump's orbit of having "suspicious links" to Russia. As recently as yesterday Democrats were accusing the president of working with Putin because he "suspiciously" didn't answer Fox News' Judge Jeanine Pirro directly when she asked him if he was working with Russia. Trump replied, “I think it’s the most insulting thing I’ve ever been asked. I think it’s the most insulting article I’ve ever had written.”

That proved to the Russiaphobes in the media that he was working with the Russians. During a Q&A with reporters Monday morning, Trump clarified: “I never worked for Russia,” and added that the question was “a disgrace.”

This is rich because not too long ago folks on the left were Russia's biggest apologists and enablers. For instance, President Obama in 2012 famously whispered to then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that he would have more flexibility to negotiate about missile defense after the U.S. election that November. [Fact Check: TRUE]

Not surprisingly, the MSM has always been conspicuously uninterested in that story.

Obama also mocked Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee for president in 2012, for saying during a debate that Russia is our number one geopolitical foe.

"The '80s are calling," Obama scoffed. "They want their foreign policy back."

"LOL, mic drop!" roared the MSM in approval.

But when it comes to colluding with Russians, now deceased Senator Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) takes the prize. The "Lion of the Senate" actually conspired with the KGB to undermine President Reagan during the height of the Cold War.

We only know about this because author and professor of political science Paul Kengor wrote about the disgraceful affair in his 2006 book, The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism.

The year was 1983 and the odious Yuri Andropov -- known for brutally cracking down on dissidents -- was the leader of the USSR.

During the run-up to the 1984 presidential election, Viktor Chebrikov, the head of the KGB, relayed in a letter to Andropov an offer from Sen. Kennedy to help the Soviet leadership "stop" President Reagan at the height of the Cold War. Kennedy’s friend and law-school buddy John Tunney, a former Democratic senator from California, presented the offer to the Soviets.

The letter was released from the Central Committee archives of the former USSR by Boris Yeltsin in 1991 when he took over Russia. Tim Sebastian, a reporter from the London Times and BBC, found the Kennedy document and first reported it in a February 2, 1992, article in the Times titled, “Teddy, the KGB and the top secret file.”

The entire document is printed in the Kengor's book with authentication and can also be viewed on the internet.

Russ Miller@RussMiller12

Isn't this collusion?
Text of KGB letter on Sen. Ted Kennedy - WND http://po.st/lKdOhn  via @worldnetdaily

11:52 PM - Jan 13, 2019

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Text of KGB letter on Sen. Ted Kennedy - WND

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According to Chebrikov's letter, Kennedy was upset about the deteriorating relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union, which he believed was leading us to a nuclear confrontation. Kengor explained in an interview with FrontPage Magazine in 2008:

Kennedy, according to Chebrikov, blamed this situation not on the Soviet leadership but on the American president---Ronald Reagan. Not only was the USSR not to blame, but, said Chebrikov, Kennedy was, quite the contrary, "very impressed" with Andropov.

"The thrust of the letter is that Reagan had to be stopped, meaning his alleged aggressive defense policies, which then ranged from the Pershing IIs to the MX to SDI, and even his re-election bid, needed to be stopped," the Grove City College professor added.

As far as the Democrats were concerned, it was Ronald Reagan, not America's number one geopolitical foe, who was the hindrance to peace.

According to Kengor, "That view of Reagan is consistent with things that Kennedy said and wrote at the time, including articles in sources like Rolling Stone (March 1984) and in a speeches like his March 24, 1983 remarks on the Senate floor the day after Reagan’s SDI speech, which he lambasted as 'misleading Red-Scare tactics and reckless Star Wars schemes.'”

Even more interesting than Kennedy’s diagnosis was the prescription: According to Chebrikov, Kennedy suggested a number of PR moves to help the Soviets in terms of their public image with the American public. He reportedly believed that the Soviet problem was a communication problem, resulting from an inability to counter Reagan’s (not the USSR’s) “propaganda.” If only Americans could get through Reagan’s smokescreen and hear the Soviets’ peaceful intentions.

So, there was a plan, or at least a suggested plan, to hook up Andropov and other senior apparatchiks with the American media, where they could better present their message and make their case. Specifically, the names of Walter Cronkite and Barbara Walters are mentioned in the document. Also, Kennedy himself would travel to Moscow to meet with the dictator.

Kengor said he learned about the document from a man whose father survived Stalin’s 1930s genocide in the Ukraine. "He apparently had spent years trying to get the American media to take a look at the document, but, again, our journalists simply weren’t intrigued," the professor explained.

When Kengor's book was published with this information in 2006, he expected it to send shock waves throughout the media. But outside of the conservative echo chamber, it was crickets. No one wanted to know.

"I prepared myself to be pilloried by the liberal mainstream media, figuring I’d be badgered with all kinds of hostile questions from defenders of Ted Kennedy," he said in the interview with FrontPage two years later. "I still, at this very moment, carry photocopies and the documentation with me in my briefcase, ready for access at a moment’s notice. I’ve done that for two years now. The pages may soon begin to yellow."

Said Kengor: "I need not have bothered with any of this prep, since the media entirely ignored the revelation. In fact, the major reviewers didn’t even review the book. It was the most remarkable case of media bias I’ve ever personally experienced. I couldn’t get a single major news source to do a story on it. CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC. Not one covered it."

Kengor was blown away by the media's bias. "I now understand that that blackout by the American media was the result of liberal bias," he said. "At first I didn’t think our media could be that bad, even though I knew from studies and anecdotal experience that our press is largely liberal, but now I’ve learned firsthand that the bias is truly breathtaking."

Conservative talker Mark Levin interviewed Kengor for Sunday night’s episode of “Life, Liberty & Levin” on Fox News.

“Ted Kennedy was colluding with, conspiring with, working with the Kremlin to defeat the re-election of President Ronald Reagan. This is never discussed on national television,” Levin said.

Kengor elaborated that Kennedy's outreach to the Soviets was "couched within the context of the 1984 presidential election."

He noted that there is actually a paragraph in the letter where the Soviets agreed that "Reaganomics is working," and wondered what they could do to stop him in 1984. The Democrats and their Soviet allies agreed that a vulnerable issue for Reagan would be issues of war and peace.

"So Kennedy offers to the Soviets to help them to communicate to the American voters and the American public their peaceful intentions as he perceived it," he explained.

Kengor said that when he first published the book, he called Kennedy's office on Capitol Hill for comment and they disputed the interpretation of the letter. But it had been painstakingly vetted and there was no question about what it said.

"So Kennedy is prepared in essence to be a PR surrogate for Moscow," Levin quipped.

"I think that's a fair way to put it," Kengor answered.