Ted Kennedy's Soviet Gambit

[The Brain]

Hey, stop ganging up on me!
It ain't funny, and it ain't right.

I have read the constitution, I had to study it to become a citizen, I know what it says, and I raised my hand and spoke the words.

So shove it.

I have spoken those exact words many times but I'm still not a US citizen. What gives?

[DontSayBanana]

I'm choosing to ignore this. "Not denied" is not the same as "confirmed." On one hand, if true, it would look bad on Kennedy, but on the other hand, if untrue or half-true, it would be light-years from the first time the Russians either distorted the truth or lied outright to create problems for government officials in other countries.

At this point, only two people (Andropov and Kennedy) could reliably confirm the story, and they're both dead.

[The Minsky Moment]

The document in question can be found in the internet.  It is a very strange document in a number of respects, but reading it full gives a decidedly different impression than the spin given by the commentator posted at top.  For example, the notion that the message was a "simple" and "unabashed quid pro quo" does not come through.  It makes Kennedy sound more like a naive idiot out of his depth more than a machivellian schemer treating with the enemy.