Michael Reagan Says Ted Kennedy Offered To Help KGB Oust His Dad
Former President Ronald Reagan’s son Michael Reagan highlighted how the late Sen. Ted Kennedy sought to collude with the Soviet Union, with a plan to employ the main stream media to influence the outcome of the 1984 presidential race.
The circumstances surrounding Kennedy’s infamous 1983 overture via the KGB to then Soviet General Secretary Yuri Andropov were further discussed on Fox News’ “Life, Liberty, & Levin” over the weekend.
In a 2017 piece for Newsmax, weeks after Robert Mueller was named special counsel over the Russia investigation, Reagan wrote about Kennedy’s eagerness to work with the Soviet Union to thwart his father’s re-election chances in 1984.
His story was based on a communication between the then-head of the KGB Victor Chebrikov and Andropov. The document, dated May 14, 1983, was first reported by the London Times in February 2, 1992 following the collapse of the Soviet Union, but received scant coverage by the main stream media in the U.S.
It was later published in historian Paul Kengor’s book, “The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism” (HarperCollins 2006).
Pulling actual language from the document, Reagan noted that Kennedy wanted to “counter the militaristic policies” of his father and “undermine his prospects for re-election” in 1984.
Kennedy’s plan, according to the document, was to arrange media interviews between Andropov and top U.S. media personalities to push the narrative that Ronald Reagan was undermining U.S.-Soviet relations and thereby jeopardizing the safety of the world.
“Kennedy was so confident of having the media in his pocket that he said he could persuade then nationally known anchors Walter Cronkite and Barbara Walters to travel to Moscow to do softball interviews with the Soviet premier,” wrote Michael Reagan.
According to the document, the Massachusetts senator sent his former law school roommate and one-term U.S. Senator John Tunney from California to Russia to discuss his proposed media blitz.
“(I)n 1983, there was collusion with the Russians to influence the U.S. presidential race only this time the collusion wasn’t imaginary,” Reagan argued. “It was Democrat Sen. Ted Kennedy offering to work with the KGB to defeat Ronald Reagan.”
“Wait! What am I thinking? There was no investigation of Kennedy,” he went to observe. “No trial. No public humiliation. He got more bad press for drunkenly chasing coeds in Florida than he did for attempting to subvert a presidential election.”
The former first son concluded: “You know I don’t often agree with President Trump. But I do think he’s right when he talks about a ‘rigged’ system in Washington, D.C.”
Former Reagan administration top Justice Department official and Fox News personality Mark Levin agrees with this assessment.
During an interview with Kengor on “Life, Liberty, & Levin,” which aired on Sunday, the conservative commentator asked, “Can you imagine if Donald Trump or Donald Trump’s camp had done one-tenth of one percent of this?”
Kengor agreed, saying there was “self-censorship” in the main stream media during Kennedy’s lifetime, and since, regarding his attempt to collude with Russia.
The Grove City College professor said after his book “The Crusader” was published in 2006 and while Kennedy was alive and one of the most prominent figures in the Senate, no media outlets were interested in interviewing the author on the topic, save one regional cable news network, CN8 out of Philadelphia.
CN8 reached out to Kennedy’s office for a response, and, according to Kengor, his team did not deny that the senator had been in dialogues with the Soviets as chronicled in the document, but in a terse statement argued it was out of concern for U.S. relations with Moscow.
Levin contended that what Kennedy did was an “abomination,” and he was “up to his eyeballs in colluding not with the Russians, with the Soviets” during the height of the Cold War.
By contrast he continued, “Here we have a president of the United States today. We’ve had investigation for two years, we’ve had thousands of so-called journalists and others trying to pin on some collusion with the Russians.”
He argued the same media that is trying desperately to draw illicit connections between Trump and Russia — through the Democrat paid-for so-called Trump dossier and other flimsy evidence — could have cared less about the documented proof that Kennedy was colluding with the KGB in an attempt to change the outcome of a presidential election.
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