Dupes

by Paul Kengor

  Mary McGrory of the Washington Post, who was frequently quoted in the Soviet press, boarded the “Buck Rogers” battleship right away. She called SDI “lunacy” and scoffed that the president had presented “a Buck Rogers plan to transfer the arms race to outer space.”26 The claim about an arms race in space was no small accusation, as we shall see.

  Representative Barbara Boxer, today a U.S. senator from California, mocked SDI as the president's “astrological dream.” The zany ex-actor, Boxer said, envisioned “‘ garages’ in orbit.”27

  This line of derision trickled up to liberals in the scientific community, including astronomer Carl Sagan, bestselling author of Cosmos, which became a popular documentary series on PBS. Sagan mocked Reagan at scientific gatherings, typically to howls of laughter among assembled kindred spirits. “In the foreground comes a very attractive laser battle station,” Sagan said condescendingly, “which then makes a noise like bzzzt … bzzzt … bzzzt.”28

  The intelligentsia was having a terrific laugh at the expense of Reagan's so-called Tinseltown fantasy. This was exactly what Moscow needed to attack Reagan's powerful idea.

  Herb Meyer was in the rarest of positions, able to observe simultaneously the Soviets’ private response to SDI and the Democrats’ public denouncements. He recalls the jarring contrast between the Kremlin's frightened reaction and Kennedy's dismissive caricature. “I had Kennedy saying that on my radio,” says Meyer, “and on my desk [I had] the report from Moscow showing the Soviet leadership saying, effectively, ‘Oh, no, it's over.’”29

  Although the Soviets’ behind-the-scenes response was spot-on, Kennedy's assessment would dominate discussion of missile defense throughout the Reagan administration. “Star Wars” became the epithet of choice to ridicule SDI, to the delight of the Kremlin.

  Ted Kennedy's Russian Romance

  Before considering the full impact of the gift that Ted Kennedy had unwittingly bestowed on the USSR, we must consider the larger context of what Kennedy was doing. For whatever reason, Senator Kennedy liked the Soviets, and he thought they liked him—when, in fact, they used him, wining and dining and duping him.

  An eyewitness to this was Yuri Bezmenov, a journalist and editor for Novosti, the Soviet press agency (where he also worked for the KGB), before he defected to the West in the 1970s.30 Among Bezmenov's chief duties was to handle Western visitors through propaganda and misinformation. This entailed other responsibilities. “One of my functions,” recalled Bezmenov in a 1984 television interview, “was to keep foreign guests permanently intoxicated from the moment they landed at Moscow airport.” He would “accompany groups of so-called ‘progressive intellectuals’—writers, journalists, publishers, teachers, professors of colleges.… For us, they were just a bunch of political prostitutes to be taken advantage of.”31

  Bezmenov had come to see the rotten totalitarianism of the Soviet system, and was quite bothered that these Western progressives could not discern the obvious. “I did my job,” he lamented, but “deep inside I still hoped that at least some of these useful idiots [would catch on].”

  Among the worst of them, said Bezmenov, was Senator Ted Kennedy.32

  Pointing to a photo that he said showed Ted Kennedy dancing at a wedding at Moscow's Palace of Marriages (see page 406), Bezmenov stated, “Another greatest example of monumental idiocy [among] American politicians: Edward Kennedy was in Moscow, and he thought that he's a popular, charismatic American politician, who is easygoing, who can smile, [who can] dance at a wedding at Russian Palace of Marriages. What he did not understand—or maybe he pretended not to understand—is that actually he was being taken for a ride.” Bezmenov noted that Kennedy, in this particular instance, was participating in a “staged wedding used to impress foreign media—or useful idiots like Ed Kennedy. Most of the guests there [had] security clearance and were instructed what to say to foreigners.”33 Bezmenov himself worked these weddings. He noted that Kennedy “thinks he's very smart,” but “from the viewpoint of Russian citizens who observed this idiocy,” he was “an idiot,” a “useful idiot,” participating in “propaganda functions like this”—a so-called wedding that was really a “farce,” a “circus performance.”

  The Soviets saw Ted Kennedy as someone they could entertain and manipulate. And for the senator from Massachusetts, the Russian romance was ongoing.34 In March 1983 he reciprocated whatever wedding prize Soviet handlers gave him with a gift of his own: ridicule of Ronald Reagan's self-described “dream” of missile defense. Around this same time the Massachusetts senator also made an extraordinary private bequest to the Kremlin—and he did so quite consciously.

  As we now know from a highly sensitive KGB document, the liberal icon, arguably the most important Democrat in the country at the time, so opposed Ronald Reagan and his policies that the senator approached Soviet dictator Yuri Andropov, proposing to work together to undercut the American president.

  This episode was stunning—indeed, truly “misleading” and “reckless,” which is how Kennedy had described Reagan's SDI. Had Americans known of Kennedy's overture to the Soviets at the time, it would have been a scandal. To this day it has not received the attention it demands.

  I first reported on this KGB document, which was pulled from the Soviet archives in early 1992 before the file was resealed, in my 2006 book, The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism, where I discussed it at length in the text and endnotes. The document is republished here in its entirety. (See Appendix A, pages 497–505.)

  The KGB report is dated May 14, 1983, less than two months after Kennedy first ridiculed SDI. KGB head Viktor Chebrikov sent the memo with “Special Importance,” under the highest classification, directly to General Secretary Andropov. The subject line read: “Regarding Senator Kennedy's request to the General Secretary of the Communist Party Y. V. Andropov.” It concerned a “confidential” Kennedy offer to Andropov.

  According to the KGB memo, Senator Kennedy had conveyed his message to the Soviets through his “close friend and trusted confidant” John Tunney—the same go-between he had used in approaching the Kremlin in March 1980, according to Vasiliy Mitrokhin. Chebrikov said that Kennedy was “very troubled” by “the current state of Soviet-American relations,” which the senator attributed not to Andropov and the Kremlin but to “Reagan's belligerence,” especially his defense policies. “According to Kennedy,” reported Chebrikov, “the current threat is due to the President's refusal to engage any modification to his politics.” Reagan's political success, said the letter, had made the president more dangerous, since it led him to be even surer of his course, and more obstinate—and reelectable.

  Chebrikov said that the Democratic senator held out hope that Reagan's 1984 reelection bid could be thwarted, “which would benefit the Democratic party.” This seemed unlikely, of course, given Reagan's undeniable political successes and popularity. Where was the popular president vulnerable? Kennedy provided an answer for his Soviet friends. In Chebrikov's words, “The only real threats to Reagan are problems of war and peace and Soviet-American relations. These issues, according to the senator [Kennedy], will without a doubt become the most important of the election campaign.”

  These threats were very fresh in Soviet memory, given the Reagan salvos fired back in March: first the evil empire remark, then the news of NSDD-75, and finally the SDI announcement. Such “problems of war and peace and Soviet-American relations” seemed to be the chink in the president's armor.

  At this point in the memo, Chebrikov conveyed the U.S. senator's precise offer to the USSR's general secretary: “Kennedy believes that, given the state of current affairs, and in the interest of peace, it would be prudent and timely to undertake the following steps to counter the militaristic politics of Reagan.” Step number one, according to the document, would be for Andropov to invite the good senator to Moscow for a personal meeting. Said Chebrikov: “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 would be better prepared and more convincing during appearances in the USA.”

  Kennedy recommended that he bring along Senator Mark Hatfield of Oregon, probably the most liberal Republican in the Senate, and a surefire target for duping. It seems the Democrat felt that the appearance of bipartisanship would “have a strong impact on Americans and political circles in the USA.”

  The second step of Kennedy's plan, the KGB head informed Andropov, was a strategy to help the Soviets “influence Americans.” Chebrikov explained: “Kennedy believes that in order to influence Americans it would be important to organize in August–September of this year [1983], televised interviews with Y. V. Andropov in the USA.” The media-savvy Massachusetts senator proposed to the Soviet dictator that he seek a “direct appeal” to the American people. “Kennedy and his friends,” explained Chebrikov, were willing to help, and even named television reporters Walter Cronkite and Barbara Walters as good candidates for sit-down interviews with the dictator.

  Cronkite in particular would have been a choice suitable to both sides. Frequently hailed as “the most trusted man in America,” Cronkite actually had some critics, including many conservatives who suggested that his on-air editorializing against the Vietnam War undermined the American war effort. Recall, too, that in March 1981 Cronkite openly questioned Reagan about his “hard-line” anti-Soviet statements and Kremlin “name-calling.” Privately, the CBS anchor also questioned Reagan's policies. On that, an FBI document originally classified “secret” has just emerged that suggests the Communists targeted Cronkite—along with four other journalists, including Phil Donahue and Bill Moyers35—as a potential member of a U.S. delegation that would sign the pro-Soviet “People's Peace Treaty.” This Moscow propaganda campaign was pushed by the Communist front group the National Council of American-Soviet Friendship, which CPUSA founded in 1943 as an offshoot of Corliss Lamont's old Friends of the Soviet Union.36 The newly declassified June 25, 1986, FBI report listing Cronkite was obtained via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by journalist Cliff Kincaid.37 (See page 410.) The document does not indicate Cronkite's response to the attempt to enlist him on this occasion, just as the May 1983 document does not indicate his response to the attempt by the Soviets and Senator Kennedy to enlist him to interview Yuri Andropov.

  And Ted Kennedy wanted more than just Andropov to conduct a PR campaign through the American media. According to the KGB memo, the senator also urged “lower level Soviet officials, particularly from the military,” to do interviews with the press in the United States. Kennedy indicated that he could help organize this media blitz, since he wanted Soviet military and government officials to “have an opportunity to appeal directly to the American people about the peaceful intentions of the USSR.”

  Apparently, Ted Kennedy viewed Yuri Andropov, that notorious KGB disinformation master who had become arguably the Soviet Union's dirtiest leader since Stalin, as an honest broker, a potential partner against the supposedly dangerous anti-Communist Ronald Reagan. As Chebrikov noted, “Kennedy is very impressed with the activities of Y. V. Andropov and other Soviet leaders,” admiring “their commitment to heal international affairs” and to “improve mutual understandings between peoples.” Senator Kennedy was approaching the Soviets with this proposal because they could “root out the threat of nuclear war,” “improve Soviet-American relations,” and “define the safety for the world.”

  The memo concluded with a discussion of Ted Kennedy's political prospects, mentioning that the senator “wants to run for president in 1988” but also “does not discount that during the 1984 campaign, the Democratic party may officially turn to him to lead the fight against the Republicans.” Chebrikov also reported that Kennedy “underscored that he eagerly awaits a reply to his appeal.”

  So according to this confidential memo from the head of the KGB to the leader of the Soviet Union, Senator Ted Kennedy had secretly approached a foreign government—an abusive regime with which the United States had been engaged in a Cold War for nearly forty years—in an effort to “counter” the policies of the president of the United States and to weaken that president's political standing. This is shocking.

  It is not clear what happened after Andropov digested the memo. Sadly, reporters never attempted to fill in the blanks by asking some basic questions of Kennedy. American journalists flatly refused to cover the story in the two decades since the Times of London first mentioned the KGB document in February 1992,38 in the several years since the entire document was published in my 2006 book, and in the period since Kennedy's death in 2009. That remained the case even though Kennedy's office never denied the legitimacy of the document.39 That remained so even though, as we saw in Chapter 18, it appears this was not the first time Kennedy approached Moscow making such an offer.40 The partisan American press chose not to report on an episode that would embarrass a politician frequently hailed as “the Senate's last lion.”41

  As for Andropov's ability to respond, the despot was slowed later that year by his health—he died only months after receiving this memo—and by his attempts to cover up the shooting down of KAL 007, the South Korean commercial airliner. That dirty deed, which Andropov and his cronies initially denied, claimed the lives of 269 civilians, including 61 Americans. It is unlikely that this activity “impressed” Senator Kennedy.

  The “Star Wars” Effect

  After making his private effort to undermine Reagan, Ted Kennedy continued his public campaign against the president's policies. In March 1984—the year Reagan was up for reelection—Kennedy wrote an article for Rolling Stone magazine in which he again denounced Reagan's “Star Wars schemes,” which was now standard rhetoric for Kennedy. He dubbed Reagan “the best pretender as president that we have had in modern history.” As if those criticisms were too mild, Kennedy then charged—not for the first time42—that Reagan and his advisers were “talking peace in 1984 as a prelude to making war in 1985.” What kind of war? The most inconceivable and worst of all: “winnable nuclear conflict.”43

  Ironically, as that edition of Rolling Stone hit newsstands, the Senate Armed Services Committee conducted a hearing on Soviet treaty violations. The hearing provided still more confirmation of the Soviets’ ongoing mendacity. Senator Kennedy was a member of the committee, but unfortunately he was absent that day.44

  Of course, Kennedy was focused on warning the world not about the USSR but about the hazard that was Ronald Reagan. By this point he had a lot of allies in his campaign—many of whom had adopted his “Star Wars” phrase to portray an actor-turned-president whose make-believe world had been fabricated by Hollywood.

  The New York Times is a good example. As noted, the paper immediately used the phrase in a March 25 headline. Then on March 31, a week after Reagan's announcement, the Times claimed that the SDI proposal was “Mr. Reagan's answer to the film ‘Star Wars.’”45 This line was in a news story, not an opinion piece. A term of ridicule seemed to have become an item of (unsubstantiated) fact at the offices of the vaunted Gray Lady.

  The rest of the media joined in, too. White House reporters like Helen Thomas happily embraced the new name for Reagan's initiative. Incredibly, when the president asked reporters to call SDI by its actual name rather than by the politically motivated slang term, they responded as if the very thought were outrageous. In one such exchange, at a press conference, Thomas asked: “Mr. President, if you are flexible, are you willing to trade off research on Star Wars … or are you against any negotiations on Star Wars?” Reagan replied, “Well, let me say, what has been called ‘Star Wars’—and, Helen, I wish whoever coined that expression would take it back again, because it gives a false impression of what it is we're talking about.”46 Despite Reagan's plea, Thomas continued: “May I ask you, then, if ‘Star Wars’—even if you don't like the term, it's quite popular.…”

  Of course, the term was “quite popular” because journalists like her, who shaped public perception and
opinion, used the term; they were making it popular.47

  Other members of the White House press corps ignored the president's request as well, opting for the term of mockery. At the same press conference where Reagan and Thomas went back and forth on “Star Wars,” reporter Chris Wallace followed up by saying, “I'm a little confused by your original answer on, if you'll forgive me, ‘Star Wars’—if we can continue to use that term.”48

  “False Impression”: War amid the Stars

  Reagan was concerned about the “Star Wars” label not because it suggested he was a dimwit or a delusional actor: he was accustomed to the sniping at his intellect and had an extraordinary ability to shrug it off.49 What troubled Reagan was what the term “Star Wars” seemed to imply to the USSR—or at least how the Soviets publicly interpreted the term. It was here that American liberals created serious damage—quite obliviously.

  The Soviets ditched the formal “SDI” and used the term of derision in almost every reference to the Reagan administration's missile-defense plan. But to Moscow the nickname was more than just a swipe at Reagan's allegedly addled mind; the Soviets used it to suggest that the president had grim motives with the program. Specifically, whereas liberal journalists capitalized “Star Wars” to laugh off the idea as pure Hollywood, the Kremlin keyboards struck a lower-case “s” and “w” to suggest that SDI was Reagan's new vehicle to launch an actual war in space. This was perfect for the Soviets: another tool to portray Reagan as a nuclear warmonger, or, in Senator Kennedy's words, a man itching for a “winnable nuclear conflict.”