Released to this journalist through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the Cronkite documents include an FBI cover letter, dated June 25, 1986, which designates an attached internal memorandum from the “Campaign for a People’s Peace Treaty” as part of a “Soviet active measures” campaign. The document is addressed to the FBI director and the attention of the bureau’s intelligence division.
While many questions remain about the nature of this secret influence operation and its ultimate success, the documents provide absolute confirmation that the Soviets were targeting major figures in the U.S. media. Other targets were talk-show host Phil Donahue, Harrison Salisbury of the New York Times, David Brinkley of ABC News and Bill Moyers of CBS News and later with public television.
The “Campaign for a People’s Peace Treaty” was a project of the Soviet front National Council of American-Soviet Friendship and was designed to create public and international pressure to undermine Reagan’s U.S. conventional and nuclear arms buildup.
Assistant Director for Intelligence of the FBI Edward J. O’Malley testified before Congress in 1982 that the National Council of American-Soviet Friendship was founded in 1943 by the Communist Party USA and served Soviet interests.
Cronkite, who retired as CBS Evening News anchorman in 1981 but continued to speak publicly about current events, was a natural target of the Soviets and their agents because he was already considered sympathetic to their cause. In 1979, he had given an interview to the Soviet magazine, Literary Gazette, and told Vitaly Kobysh that the “Soviet threat” was “most likely...a myth.” According to the magazine, Cronkite went on to say that “I will never believe in a ‘Soviet threat.’”
Shortly after the interview was published, the Soviets invaded Afghanistan.
We now know, because of documents discovered and released after the Soviet collapse, that Senator Ted Kennedy made an offer to the Soviets to help organize opposition to Reagan’s pro-defense policies. Kennedy was the leading congressional sponsor of the “nuclear freeze” campaign to prevent deployment of U.S. nuclear weapons in Europe to counter the Soviet threat.
At Columbia University in 1983, a young Barack Obama wrote sympathetically about groups involved in the “nuclear freeze” campaign and the dangers of “militarism” but expressed the hope for total disarmament. As President, he is pursuing the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons, which many experts say is unverifiable, and just signed a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with Russia that he wants ratified by the U.S Senate. Obama is opposed to modernization of the U.S. nuclear deterrent.
Cronkite and the other media personalities were included in a list of “possible members of the US delegation to sign the treaty.” A left-wing organization, the Center for Defense Information, is named as being in the position of providing a “military person” to sign the document.
In the area of industry, a first name, “Armand,” is listed, an apparent reference to Armand Hammer, the late chairman of Occidental Petroleum who was a family friend of Al Gore and a Soviet agent.
'Most trusted man', Walter Cronkite, was named a Soviet target by the FBI