America’s long history of collusion

                      <strong>ANALYSIS/OPINION:</strong>






                  Robert Mueller testified last week before two House committees about his investigation into charges that the Trump campaign conspired with Russia during the 2016 presidential election and that the president engaged in obstruction of justice by trying to impede the FBI’s efforts to learn the truth about those charges.












                  Mr. Mueller found that the Russian government interfered in the 2016 election. Hackers with ties to Russian intelligence used fake accounts on social media to sow false rumors about candidates, leaked emails, and tried to influence campaign officials. 












                  Whether one believes that Donald Trump, his relatives or people in his campaign knew about or colluded with these efforts or dismisses them as part of a partisan witch hunt, it is not the first time that Russia engaged in such activities. 




































                  In the 1930s and 1940s, the Soviet Union used the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA) to do its bidding in the United States. In obedience to Soviet directives, it indirectly supported Franklin Roosevelt’s election in 1936 and opposed him in 1940. It furiously campaigned on behalf of Henry Wallace in 1948 in a vain attempt to defeat Harry Truman. 












                  And, in the 1970s, the U.S.S.R. used an American asset, millionaire businessman David Karr, to infiltrate the presidential campaigns of Sargent Shriver, Scoop Jackson and Jerry Brown. Karr, described in a KGB memo leaked in 1992 as “a competent KGB source,” also served as a go-between to connect Sen. Ted Kennedy with Soviet leaders.

Kennedy made three remarkable efforts to derail American foreign policy by secretly offering to collaborate with the Soviet Union. The story of his collusion with the Soviet Union is supported by documents that were released after the collapse of the U.S.S.R. But, the mainstream American media has largely ignored the revelations. They demonstrate that collusion has no partisan boundaries.

                  After the U.S.S.R. invaded and occupied Afghanistan in 1979, former Sen. John Tunney, an old friend of Kennedy, visited in March 1980 (Karr had died the previous year) and conveyed to Soviet leaders Kennedy’s views. He feared President Jimmy Carter’s hardline response endangered detente and threatened to stoke anti-Soviet feeling.












                  Insisting that elements in the State Department opposed the administration position, Kennedy wanted the Soviets to know that he would push for de-escalation, withdrawal of Soviet troops and eventual Afghan neutrality. He hoped that Leonid Brezhnev and the U.S.S.R. would respond favorably to such proposals. 












                  Kennedy was not just a leading Democratic politician; he was challenging Mr. Carter for the Democratic nomination for president and the Soviet leadership could not have missed the point that he would pursue far less punitive policies than either Jimmy Carter or the eventual Republican nominee, Ronald Reagan.














                  In May 1983, Victor Chebrikov, head of the KGB, wrote a memorandum to Soviet leader Yuri Andropov. Tunney had been back in Moscow, charged by Kennedy to warn about his fears about Reagan’s harsh rhetoric about the U.S.S.R. and American military build-up. 










                  Anxious to see Reagan defeated, Kennedy offered to work with Andropov to develop disarmament positions likely to appeal to American citizens and “undertake some additional steps to counter the militaristic policy of Reagan.”

                  In March 1990, with the Soviet Union in terminal decline, Kennedy himself met with Mikhail Gorbachev. A report by a high-ranking Soviet official noted that the senator had complained that the results of the Geneva Summit had enabled Reagan “to slow down” the negotiation process and expressed his conviction that it was “important to keep increasing pressure on the administration from different sides, both from abroad and at home,” but complained that “so far Reagan is winning.”

                  Both Tunney and Kennedy denied the truth of these allegations, but the memos speak for themselves. None of this proves that or suggests that Kennedy was a Soviet agent or asset or even that he was insincere. His hostility to Mr. Carter’s policies and Reagan’s policies were no doubt heartfelt and based on a different evaluation of what would benefit the United States.

                  But, to further his political and personal goals, he was willing to collaborate with Karr, a shadowy figure with connections to Soviet intelligence, and to collude with America’s major international and ideological rival to undercut the administration in power — whether it was Democratic or Republican.

                  There is no hard evidence about how the U.S.S.R. reacted to Kennedy’s overtures and it probably had little impact on either American or Soviet policy. The U.S.S.R. supported domestic opposition to the American military build-up of the 1980s, including the nuclear-freeze movement.

                  And it encouraged Communist parties in Europe to oppose deployment of American missiles to counter Soviet threats. Had Kennedy never contacted Soviet leaders, they would have done the same thing. But we should not pretend that collusion was invented in 2016.

                  <em>• Harvey Klehr is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor Emeritus of Politics and History and former chairman of the political science department at Emory University. His most recent book is “The Millionaire Was A Soviet Mole: The Twisted Life of David Karr” (Encounter).</em>












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