Did 'Uncle Walter' Aid Vietnam Protesters?

Now this would be a shocker, huh? A high-profile media hack sympathizing with anti-war protesters? No wonder he's such an icon on the left.

Legendary CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite allegedly collaborated with anti-Vietnam War activists in the 1960s, going so far as to offer advice on how to raise the public profile of protests and even pledging CBS News resources to help pull off events, according to FBI documents obtained by Yahoo! News.

The documents, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, say that in November 1969, Cronkite encouraged students at Rollins College in Winter Park, Fla., to invite Maine Sen. Edmund Muskie to address a protest they were planning near Cape Kennedy (now known as Cape Canaveral). Cronkite told the group's leader that Muskie would be nearby for a fundraiser on the day of the protest, and said that "CBS would rent [a] helicopter to take Muskie to and from site of rally," according to the documents.

The claims are contained in an FBI memo recounting a confidential informant's report on a November 1969 meeting of a Rollins College protest group called Youth for New America. The group was planning rallies near Cape Kennedy on Nov. 13 and 14 — the latter being day of the Apollo 12 launch from Cape Kennedy, which President Nixon would be attending — as part of a nationwide Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam. That protest action culminated in a huge march on Washington on Nov. 15.

According to the informant, the group's leader (whose name is redacted in the documents) told the attendees that during a visit to a local CBS News station to drum up publicity for the protests, he ended up in a 45-minute phone conversation with Cronkite.

Just nine months before, Cronkite had delivered his famous on-air judgment that the "bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate." Even so, such tight collaboration between a news organization and the anti-war movement — particularly the offer of CBS News resources to help ferry a sitting senator and future presidential candidate around in opposition to the war — was highly unusual and would presumably have been explosive if known widely at the time. It's unclear whether Muskie ever actually attended the event.

Considering his successor helped try and derail the re-election of George W. Bush by using phony documents on the air, nobody should be all that shocked. The only difference between Cronkite and today's media is they're much more out in the open with helping the enemies of America.

Hot Air and Verum Serum link. Thanks!