No doubt. From the Kincaid article:
“The term “active measures” in the FBI document carries special significance, since it designates Soviet intelligence operations to damage the United States and further the interest of Soviet foreign policy. The most common were political influence operations in which high-profile U.S. and Western political and public figures were used to promote Soviet objectives.
Released 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.”
(snip)
“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” and 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.
The “Labor” designation includes a reference to the ACTWU, the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union.
The memorandum says that Alan Thomson will take the signed “peace treaty” to Moscow and present it to the Soviet Peace Committee. Thomson was the executive director of the National Council of American-Soviet Friendship.”
(snip)
“Meanwhile, the National Council on American-Soviet Friendship turned its collection of pro-Soviet films over to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. “The films provide a fascinating window into a country and political system which no longer exist, and give viewers a way to see the Cold War from another perspective,” the academy says.
While the Soviet political system may not exist, the Russians have continued many of the old Soviet-style intelligence and influence operations. The book, Comrade J, based on the revelations of a Russian master spy, Sergei Tretyakov, identified former Clinton State Department official and now Brookings Institution head Strobe Talbott as a dupe of Russian intelligence.
Talbott had been a columnist for Time magazine, where he wrote about the need for world government, a cause also embraced by Walter Cronkite.”