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Ted Kennedy was a fan of foreign interference in American elections

By J.P. Freire

While Democrats are busy accusing conservative-oriented political fundraisers of funneling foreign money into American elections, they forget that their own “liberal lion,” the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., had no compunction about enlisting the help of the Soviet Union against both Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. In fact, Kennedy didn’t ever disclose it himself — instead it was tucked away in the KGB archives:

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Here’s the letter in which Kennedy enlists Soviet leader Yuri Andropov to help him undermine Reagan:

Kennedy believes that, given the current state of 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 and his campaign to psychologically burden the American people.
[…]

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 president of the board of directors of ABC, Elton Raul and 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.

That’s right, Kennedy was enlisting the help of the press and the Soviets against Reagan. Lest we forget, Andropov was a pretty big proponent of crushing the Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia, mainly because he was a fan of crushing pretty much any other dissenting group. He was the longest serving head of the KGB to boot, and this is the man to whom Kennedy reached out.

And look at what he did for Carter:

During that meeting, Tunney articulated Kennedy’s position 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, according to the documents, offered to speak out against President Carter on Afghanistan.

President Obama today continues to refuse to answer to questions about possibly allowing foreign donations to his campaign. From the Washington Post:

At the heart of the RNC complaint is a federal fundraising rule that lets campaigns accept donations under $200 without itemizing the names and addresses of the donors on its campaign finance reports. The rule was intended as a matter of practicality — it did not seem reasonable to ask a campaign to gather that information from every five-dollar donor.
But the Obama campaign has raised more than $200 million this way, a staggering sum for donations that will not be subjected to outside scrutiny.

It’s a long tradition.

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