The KGB, Kennedy, and Carter
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.
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.)
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.
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."