Soviet Human Rights Activists Believed Lozansky Worked With Russian Intelligence
Part 7 of a 10 part series: the Grand Old Putin Party
Dr. Edward Lozansky emigrated to the United States as a “dissident” and setup the Andrei Sakharov Committee to advocate for the release of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning physicist.
Strikingly, his work has always been highly political and intensely focused on America’s right-wing politics.
Even the President of Stanford University publicly admonished Lozansky for politicizing his group in 1984.
Both Yelena Bonner — Andrei Sakharov’s wife — thought that his activities were unusually slanted towards right-wing causes in 1986.
And in documents we uncovered from a university archive, we discovered that Yelena Bonner never heard of Edward Lozansky or his efforts, until she arrived in America six years after the Professor founded the Andrey Sakharov Committee.
A naval think tank Lozansky worked with drew the same conclusions in 2000.
Furthermore, Lozansky has drawn accusations of being a spy for both Russia and the United States, all while maintaining a very public profile for 40 years.
Even Lozansky himself disclosed on a Russian language website, that Sakharov’s late wife Yelena Bonner believed he “was KGB” or affiliated with Russian intelligence.
The Doctor also says he’s been accused of being CIA.
Part of the truth about Lozansky lies in the heart of the University of Rochester, where the physical copies of the Sandy Gradinger Archives remain today, which we photographed for the publication of this story.
Minutes of the Sakharov Institute from 1986 unveil a group basically paralyzed between the desires of Dr. Lozansky to fight the Soviet Union on the side of the Republican Party and the representatives of Sakharov himself who only seemed to want to help the refusenik movement.
University of Rochester is where we found what we consider the smoking gun memo.
Yelena Bonner’s thoughts were recorded in a 1986 letter to the board of the Sakharov Institute. (complete documents below)
The most important part of this key source document is confirming that Edward Lozansky had absolutely no personal connection to the physicist Dr. Sakharov until his wife arrived in the United States, nor did they know of his activities until 1986.
In addition to complaints about using the Sakharov name in vain, Bonner’s scathing four page letter says that she was told numerous unfavorable stories about Lozansky’s operation of the group.
Bonner was also upset about his membership on the board of the “Center for Democracy” conflicting with his position at the Sakharov Institute.
Notably, Bonner criticized his politicization and polarization of the group by affiliating with right-wing American political forces.
But most tellingly, Bonner mentioned Lozansky pursuing something that NO normal human rights activist would do.
Lozansky was pursuing projects with the Pentagon.
One would imagine that politically, that a dissident working with the Defense Department, would not engender cooperation from the Soviet Union as you petition for the release of that nation’s leading nuclear scientist — and bomb maker.
Lozansky told a 2009 interviewer that he didn’t meet Sakharov until 1988, but claimed to have seen him speak at Universities.
This revelatory information about Yelena Bonner’s surprise over Lozansky’s activism fits with the broader picture, of Lozansky creating an astro-turf human rights movement, similar to those the Soviet Union created in the Vietnam peace movement, as part of their “active measures.”
Active measures psychological warfare was and is a program run by Russia’s GRU, their military intelligence department.
Is Lozansky A GRU Plant? One Report Says “Yes” But Look At The Source… However, It Could Be True.
A 1984 report by Executive Intelligence Report — a LaRouche publication — accuses Lozansky of being a Soviet GRU plant, tasked with penetrating United States military intelligence.
After numerous follow up emails, the LaRouche publication wrote back to me disclaiming everything and refusing to answer any questions about their story accusing Mr. Lozansky of GRU ties.
My first call to the LaRouche publication was answered by a helpful and talkative individual who bragged that they “had everything.”
They replied later by email after I made a few follow up calls, to label me a “McCarthyite” which is right-wing speak for investigative journalist, or anyone who believes the blatantly obvious facts that Donald Trump has a lot of connections to Russia.
Due to the extremely volatile source of the information — a LaRouche Publication printed on November 20th, 1984 — we cannot assess this report as credible at this time. However, it’s worth sharing because of one potentially credible statement about Dr. Lozansky’s associations to the Soviet state and intentions.
Our research includes a review of some of Mr. Sakharov’s known KGB files which the CIA has summarized here.
It must be stressed, that based upon our extensive research, WE DO NOT IN ANY WAY BELIEVE that the Nobel Peace Prize winning physicist Andrei Sakharov was in any way knowingly or willingly connected to the GRU or Soviet military intelligence — which is part of the allegations of this report.
However, an assessment that Mr. Lozansky is part of the Russian GRU is possibility today, only because of the facts which have recently emerged connecting his “university” to the Kremlin’s Vladislav Surkov.
Here’s some of the reasons why the LaRouche commentary on Lozansky could be credible:
- General Michael Flynn was the head of the DIA until President Obama fired him in 2014. He did in fact turn towards representing foreign powers and obtained a top US national security role while doing so.
- Lozansky did become deeply involved with the US Military think tank establishment, and General Flynn was the head of US Military intelligence — and was severely compromised by his work as a Turkish and purportedly a Russian agent — it has kind of been borne out by events.
- Lozansky did travel into the highest circles of American military intelligence establishment by the year 2000, when the Navy-backed, federally funded CNA Corp. sponsored his World Russia Forum one year. (Their report is on Harvard’s website.)
- It’s not impossible that the Soviets used Sakharov’s exile to setup Lozansky with a human rights cause as covert cover — or even improbable — especially in light of his totally improbable emigration and love story.
- We reviewed Lyndon LaRouche’s seminal biography “Lyndon LaRouche and The New American Fascism” which reveals that the group had extensive CIA contacts and even regular contact with Reagan’s National Security Council members from its Virginia headquarters. It’s a November 20th, 1984 report, just after an election in which they effectively partnered with the Republican President to help politically damage Democrats, which means that there was a lot of intermingling between camps at that point.
- The LaRouche group was not only closely allied with the Reagan Administration on its far right-wing, but they gained fame that very year for being the creators of the President’s Strategic Defense Initiative also known as “Star Wars.” Lozansky himself claims to have had a role in SDI to this day in his byline, increasing the likelihood that he was in contact with the LaRouche group: “He was one of the founding members of the Science and Engineering Committee for a Secure World to support President Reagan’s SDI program together…”
A list of reasons why the LaRouche report is not credible could be written just as long, but sufficed to say that their reputation is sullied by a great many falsities. However, they have been known to have some factual reports as well.
LaRouche sued NBC and lost a multimillion dollar judgement back then, and was later convicted of financial crimes in 1986.
His organization survives today, and incidentally the LaRouche organization earned a mention in the Trump Russia dossier, as an organization invited to RT’s 10th Anniversary Gala — the very event which General Flynn was paid to attend — and which Green Party Presidential candidate Jill Stein also appeared, both sitting at Putin’s table.
Ultimately, the reason for skeptically sharing this unconfirmed information is the actual events we have documented.
Edward Lozansky did reach into the highest levels of America’s military intelligence establishment, getting the Navy’s CNA Corp. to sponsor one of his World Russia Forums in 2000.
General Flynn was co-opted by Russia-linked forces, paid by and paraded on the propaganda service Russia Today (RT) television, hired by both Kaspersky the computer security firm, and an airline which the Pentagon fired from handling covert ops, which was ostensibly trying to determine the contents of a secret report which caused its termination.
In retrospect, it’s conceivable that that Flynn was targeted for quite some time by Russian intelligence, leading to his seeking the protection of the 5th Amendment against self-incrimination this week.
Confirmed reports also indicate that the GRU Russian military intelligence service’s Fancy Bear cyber war regiment was responsible for hacking the DNC and Russian hackers pilfered Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta’s emails during the 2016 election, along with — some speculate — the Democratic Party’s data and that of its Congressional campaign arms.
While there’s no way we can determine the ultimate validity of the 1984 report about Lozansky’s ties to the GRU, we can confirm that US military intelligence was compromised just as the LaRouche report predicted.
And Lozansky named Flynn as Donald Trump’s most important foreign policy advisor long before the campaign named anyone as a foreign policy advisor.
Lozansky’s Highly Right-Wing Partisan Approach Caused Practical Problems
Interestingly, Lozansky encountered IRS problems with the Sakharov Committee due according to an early 1984 report in the Globe and Mail by Gary Marchant, because the Nobel Prize winning Russian physicist withheld permission for Lozansky to use his name:
Contrary to the opinion expressed in your editorial Absurdly By The Rules (July 23), I, for one, am relieved that the federal Government has refused to grant tax-free status to the so-called Sakharov Institute because it uses Andrei Sakharov’s name without his permission. Mr. Sakharov is a great humanitarian and an advocate of peace, freedom and international co- operation and understanding.
It would be a shame to see his name abused by being applied to an institute dedicated to fostering cold-war attitudes and international hatred.
During the September 1984 meeting of what later became the World Russia Forum, one name stuck out aside from all of the members of the Sakharov Institute.
Walter Raymond Jr.
He’s listed as a member of the Reagan administration’s National Security Council which is true.
But Raymond Jr. is also an infamous spy — with his own section at the Reagan Library — a man who had his hand in both the Iran-Contra scandal and Operation Mockingbird.
Plainly, Lozansky’s brash style upset more people than just Yelena Bonner — as she duly noted — and our research in California turned up similar conclusions.
By November 1984, Lozansky had personally angered Stanford University president Donald Kennedy by attempting to use the Sakharov Institute to spread American right-wing propaganda in the Soviet Union.
And just like Yelena Bonner, Stanford believed his group to be heavily partisan.
Unlike Bonner, the university president went public
Even Harvard’s President was stunned:
A reported plan by group with ties to Stanford University to smuggle books into the Soviet Union in an effort to “democratize” that country has angered the school’s president, a newspaper said Sunday.
“I don’t know if I want to be involved in a group whose primary objective is to exert outside influence to magnify or foment dissidence in the Soviet Union,” Stanford President Donald Kennedy told the San Francisco Examiner.
Kennedy said he was angered because the institute uses his name on its letterhead but did not check with him or three other Stanford professors on its advisory board about the “highly political agenda” of a conference it held on his own campus Sept. 14–15.
Stanford Emeritus Professor Ronald Hilton called Lozansky’s ideas a “grandiose scheme for influencing Soviet opinion.”
“It’s sort of crazy. It’s the kind of thing that’s going to create an uproar in the Soviet Union and backfire.”
In 1985, Lozansky’s close friend in western New York, Sandy Gradinger, made a very telling statement about Edward Lozansky’s skilled manipulation of media narratives.
Indeed.
Edward Lozansky utilizes the media as a weapon.
Lozansky’s Naval Think Tank Sponsors Notice a Decidedly Republican Bent to Russia’s Right-Wing Parties
Edward Lozansky’s 2000 World Russia Forum — the 19th edition — was co-sponsored by the Russian Union of Right Forces Party — then headed by Kiriyenko and Arkady Murashev — and by the highly respected Center for Naval Analysis Corporation’s Russia studies program.
CNA, is a nonprofit research and analysis organization located in Arlington, VA and funded by our federal government.
The CNA’s analysis highlighted “one of the most striking things to emerge from the conference was the sense that the Russian pro-democracy movement has largely limited its contacts in the US to the right-wing.”
They concluded that the World Russia Forum participants had virtually no contacts with the Clinton Administration, which is even more unusual because they were in office for eight years by that point in time.
Eerily, the CNA’s comments echo Yelena Bonner’s conclusions in 1986 about Lozansky’s exclusive devotion to the right-wing of American politics.
Lozansky co-hosted a forum in 2000 with the Free Congress Foundation in which Heritage Foundation co-founder Paul Weyrich advocated for a better relationship between the Americans and Russians on the grounds that we can fight terrorism together.
It’s a narrative that Lozansky is pushing to this very day, as is Donald Trump and the majority of pro-Putin Russia supporters.
A series of investigative reports The Grand Old Putin Party — co-authored by Grant Stern and Patrick Simpson.
Author’s note: Florida has an anti-SLAPP statute that protects the 1st Amendment right of journalists to publish and to gain expedited dismissal of frivolous lawsuits filed about published works.
