What do Walter Cronkite, John Kerry, Maxine Waters and Jimmy Carter have in common? Read on for the whole list

This is the first in a weekly series of exclusive interviews with Dr. Paul Kengor, professor of political science at Grove City College in Grove City, Pennsylvania, who has just released a major book revealing how the far Left—most notably, communists—has long manipulated America’s liberals/progressives. Dupes: How America’s Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century, is based on an unprecedented volume of declassified materials from Soviet archives, FBI files, and more, and is being hailed as groundbreaking. Herb Meyer, special assistant to the CIA director from 1981-87, says that Dupes “alters our understanding of the 20th century.” Big Peace’s own Peter Schweizer calls it the “21st century equivalent” to Whittaker Chambers’ classic Witness.

Each week at Big Peace, Professor Kengor will profile one of his book’s Big Dupes. We kick-off with this introduction.

Big Peace: Okay, what’s a dupe?

Kengor: A dupe is someone who has been deceived or misled by opponents of the United States, for the purpose of serving the interests of those opponents. The dupe is an active but unwitting participant. The word has been used since the founding of the republic; George Washington warned about dupes in his Farewell Address. The duping process, however, accelerated exponentially when the Bolsheviks took Russia in 1917, as they launched a systematic effort to target America’s liberals/progressives, with their allies in the American Communist Party carefully aiding the process.

Big Peace: Your focus, then, begins in the 1910s?

Kengor: Yes, particularly with the founding of the Communist Party in the United States in September 1919. The book features actual original documents from that founding, delivered by the American comrades to their pals at the Soviet Comintern—sent directly from their convention in Chicago.

From there, the book moves through the Stalin period. During the Cold War, the duping was done on a remarkable scale, with impressive craftsmanship by communist propagandists. The communists had amazing success with liberals/progressives—successes that shocked the communists. Bolsheviks handlers were astounded at how easily they managed and misled these Americans, especially elites from major universities. This is quite clear from the archives, particularly Soviet Comintern Archives on Communist Party USA (CPUSA).

Big Peace: Who are the dupes in your book?

Kengor: For starters: Ted Kennedy, John Dewey, Jimmy Carter. I should pause to note that Carter graces the cover, kissing Soviet dictator Leonid Brezhnev, a fitting metaphor. There’s also FDR, duped by Stalin himself, and possibly duped by his most trusted adviser, Harry Hopkins, who some now claim may have been a Soviet spy (“Agent 19”). Also, John Kerry, Dick Durbin, “Baghdad Jim” McDermott, Arthur Miller, Dr. Benjamin Spock, Jane Fonda, Upton Sinclair, George Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells, Howard Zinn, Walter Cronkite, Helen Thomas, John Murtha, Maxine Waters, Pete Stark, Barbara Lee, the late Claude “Red” Pepper. That’s merely a sample. This book covers 600 pages, but I was forced to hold back, so target-rich is the environment. This could be a multi-volume set.

Big Peace: What about Frank Marshall Davis, Obama’s mentor?

Kengor: Initially, I struggled to determine if Davis was a dupe or duper. I can now say he was a duper. Frank Marshall Davis was a longtime communist, an actual Communist Party member. No question. Shame on the liberal “journalists” and Obama biographers refusing to dig deeper and present that obvious conclusion. I lay this out in careful detail, with page after page of documentation. I’ll share some of that here when we profile him. Come back in a couple weeks and I’ll give Davis’s actual Communist Party card number.

Mind you, this was the literal mentor of our current president.