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.
The late CBS Evening News anchorman Walter Cronkite is named in a just-released FBI document from 1986 as being targeted in a Soviet "active measures" campaign against President Reagan's anti-communist foreign policy. Cronkite is named as a possible member of a U.S. delegation that would sign a pro-Soviet "People's Peace Treaty."