August 31, 2009

The KGB, Kennedy, and Carter

By James Simpson

Edward Moore Kennedy, whose memory was endlessly praised in the mainstream media over the weekend, conspired with our Cold War enemy, the Soviet Union, against the interests of the United States Government. The effort was to thwart the national security goals being championed by the President of the United States, Ronald Reagan, as historian Paul Kengor reviews today on AT.


What is not generally known is that Kennedy collaborated with the Soviets well before Reagan was elected, and had a direct hand in crafting the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. As a result of his efforts -- which appear in retrospect to have been crafted to prevent detection of his seditious activities -- the FBI was prevented from accessing critical intelligence that could have warned of 9-11.

This story has been brought to light in an article, Treason and Ted Kennedy: The Story the Media Won't Tell by Herb Romerstein, a veteran investigator for the U.S. House of Representatives. Mr. Romerstein is probably the foremost expert on subversive activities in the United States during the period in question.

According to KGB archives, Kennedy used lifelong friend and former fellow senator John Tunney (son of famed heavyweight boxer, Gene Tunney) as a go-between with the Soviet KGB. In 1978 Kennedy requested that the KGB establish a relationship with Tunney's firm, which they apparently had already done through one of their agents in France.

In another KGB report, Romerstein relates that:

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. (Emphasis mine.)

So Kennedy had been having conversations via an intermediary with the Soviets well before Reagan took office and even worked against his own party. But he had laid the groundwork for this treasonous activity even before this.

According to Romerstein:

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. (Emphasis mine.)

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.

It seems plain to me that Kennedy introduced The Foreign  Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) legislation to cover himself for his later seditious activities. Now here is the final kicker:

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."

It is worthwhile to reflect that while Republicans and Democrats alike lionize the fallen "Lion of the Senate," with their silence they implicitly condone potentially seditious activities that may have contributed to the loss of 2,998 American lives, the most costly single attack on American soil in U.S. history.