Kennedy reportedly suggested doing so by helping the Soviet leader set up interviews with American TV news anchors Walter Cronkite and Barbara Walters, among others. Andropov died later that year, and didn’t get a chance to act on Kennedy’s advice with regard to the 1984 election.

Kennedy’s outreach and Tunney’s trips are documented in the Mitrokhin papers filed with the Cold War International History Project of the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington. The papers are named for Vasili Mitrokhin, a former KGB agent who defected to Britain from the Soviet Union in 1992.