A lot of political revelations in the US last night. Bryan reports at Hot Air about a plan Kennedy seemed to have in 1983 to defeat Reagan during the US Presidential elections. Quote:
There’s a new book on Ronald Reagan making the rounds, The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism. Its author, Paul Kengor, unearthed a sensational document from the Soviet archives. That document is a memo regarding an offer made by Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts via former Senator John Tunney, both Democrats, to the General Secretary of the Communist Party, USSR, Yuri Andropov, in 1983. The offer was to help the Soviet leadership, military and civilian, conduct a PR campaign in the United States as President Ronald Reagan sought re-election. The goal of the PR campaign would be to cast President Reagan as a warmonger, the Soviets as willing to peacefully co-exist, and thereby turn the electorate away from Reagan. It was a plan to enlist Soviet help, and use the American press, in unseating an American president.
I received a review copy of The Crusader on Wednesday. The book first references the Kennedy plan on page 206, and includes the complete Soviet memo, dated May 14, 1983, in the Appendix. It’s an eye opener.
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 interview. Specifically, the board of directors of ABC, Elton Raul and the television columnists Walter Cronkite or Barbara Walters could visit Moscow. The senator underlined the importance that this initiative should be seen as coming from the American side.
– If true, Dan Riehl’s assessment of the situation is quite an understatement: “This is freaking outrageous,” he wrote. If this is true, it is not just outrageous, it is a US Senator working with the enemy of his country to make sure that a US President will not be re-elected. That is dangerously close to something called treason. I would say, let someone carry out an investigation into the nature of these accusations. Of course, it could all be part of some smear campaign but if it is not, if it is true, I do not see how Kennedy could be a Senator any minute longer. I will leave it up to the American legal experts to speculate about possible legal consequences.
And oh, guess who is suspected of leaking the NIE (National Intelligence Estimate) information. Larry Hanauer: an aide to… Harman.
In a letter to Hoekstra dated Sept. 29, committee member Rep. Ray LaHood, R-Ill., said a committee staff member — identified by FOX sources as Hanauer — requested the document from National Intelligence Director John Negroponte three days before the Times story appeared.
“I have no credible information to say any classified information was leaked from the committee’s minority staff, but the implications of such would be dramatic,” LaHood said in the letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press. “This may, in fact, be only coincidence, and simply ‘look bad.’ But coincidence, in this town, is rare.”
– Of course I cannot possibly know whether or not Hanauer is the one who leaked the NIE (and how much Harman knew about it if true). But… this has the potential to hurt the Democrats tremendously and if true those involved should be held accountable… including Jane Harman.
Others blogging:
The American Thinker
The Jawa Report
Jeff Goldstein
USS Neverdock
UPDATE
James Joyner points out:
Several rather important caveats apply here. First, we don’t know the authenticity of the letter. Why the KGB would fake such a memo and then not use it is unclear but it could certainly happen. Second, Kengor is a rabid partisan. He’s the author of God and Ronald Reagan, God and George W. Bush, and several other books praising contemporary Republican presidents. He’s also the director of The Center for Vision & Values which “embrace[s] the wisdom of Western Civilization that biblical truth is the foundation of freedom.� His scholarship is very much informed by his ideology. Third, 1983 was hardly “the height of the Cold War.�
He is very much right about all of that. This is – of course – captured in my ‘if’: I repeat, it could all be a smear campaign, but if not…
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