Even long-time Bush watchers were surprised when former President Bush presented an award to Sen. Edward Kennedy (D.-Mass.) at a time when the far-left senator was involved in a full-scale series of attacks on our current President. Teddy Kennedy's bizarre attack on President Bush shocked even some of his supporters. With rhetoric reminiscent of "conspiracy nuts," Kennedy accused the President of deliberately getting us into an unnecessary war in Iraq, a war that was planned in Texas. Remember that the senator's brother, Jack, was assassinated in Texas almost 40 years ago. While the tone was hysterical, it was not unusual for Sen. Kennedy to attack an American president and give aid and comfort to our country's enemies. There are some important reports found in Soviet archives, after the collapse of the communist dictatorship, that provide an interesting insight into the character of the senior Senator from Massachusetts. One of the documents, a KGB report to their bosses in the Soviet 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. 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 and published in Moscow's Izvestia in June 1992. 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. Shortly thereafter he made public speeches opposing President Carter on this issue. This document was found in KGB archives by Vasiliy Mitrokhin, a courageous KGB officer, who copied documents from the files and then defected to the West. He wrote about this document in a February 2002 paper on Afghanistan that he released through the Cold War International History Project of the Woodrow Wilson Center. In May 1983, the KGB again 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." Tunney also told the KGB that Kennedy was planning to run for president in the 1988 elections. "At that time, he will be 56 years old, and personal problems that have weakened his position will have been resolved (Kennedy quietly settled a divorce suit and soon plans to remarry)." Of course the Russians understood his problem with Chappaquiddick. While Kennedy did not intend to run in 1984, he did not exclude the possibility that the Democratic Party would draft him because "not a single one of the current Democratic hopefuls has a real chance of beating Reagan." This document was first discovered in the Soviet archives by London Times reporter Tim Sebastian and a report on it was published in that newspaper in February 1992. Sen. Kennedy played a major role during the 1970s in crafting the restrictions that made it so difficult for the FBI and CIA to do the job of protecting the American people. One of the most pernicious restrictions was the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) passed in 1978. President Franklin Roosevelt, in 1940, had ordered the FBI to wiretap Nazis and Communists because they were operating in the United States on behalf of hostile foreign powers. Every President after him used the inherent power of the president to order wiretapping for national security purposes. Kennedy told the Senate Intelligence Committee in 1976 that "For the last 5 years I and others in the Senate have labored unsuccessfully to place some meaningful statutory restrictions on the so-called inherent power of the Executive to engage in surveillance." When Congress discussed legislation to require a court warrant to wiretap enemy agents and terrorists, Kennedy and the ACLU began a campaign to raise the barriers as high as possible. Kennedy introduced the concept in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Bill that required evidence that someone was providing classified information to a foreign intelligence service. Someone who "only" had a clandestine relationship with a foreign intelligence officer and carried out covert influence operations for a foreign power could not be wiretapped. When we see the KGB reports we can understand why Kennedy would want this provision in the law. Kennedy was not a KGB agent. He also was not "a useful idiot" who was used by the KGB without understanding what he was doing. Kennedy was a collaborationist. He aided the KGB for his own political purposes. The restrictions that Kennedy successfully put in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act 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. After 9/11 when they did download his computer they found, among other interesting things, information on the air currents over New York. After 9/11 Kennedy and other demagogues in the Congress blamed the FBI and CIA for the intelligence failure. The slogan was "they didn't connect the dots." There was no way to connect the dots when they weren't allowed to collect the dots. Inquiring minds want to know why the first President Bush should present any kind of an award to the anti-American Senator who spends so much time attacking the current President Bush.
