Ion Mihai Pacepa
Encyclopedia
Ion Mihai Pacepa is the highest-ranking intelligence official ever to have defected from the former Eastern Bloc
. He is now a United States
citizen, a writer, and a columnist
.
During July 1978, Pacepa was a two-star Romanian Securitate
general
who simultaneously had the rank of advisor to President
Nicolae Ceauşescu
, acting chief of his foreign intelligence service and a state secretary of Romania’s Ministry of Interior. He defected to the United States
after President
James Carter
's approval of his request for political asylum.
Subsequently, he worked with American intelligence
in various operations against the former Eastern Bloc. The Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA) described his cooperation as "an important and unique contribution to the United States".
at the University Politehnica of Bucharest, but just months before graduation he was drafted by the Securitate, and got his engineering
degree only four years later. Between 1957 and 1960 he served as chief of the Romanian intelligence station in West Germany
, and, between 1972 and 1978, he was Ceauşescu's adviser for national security and technological development and the deputy chief of the Romanian foreign intelligence service. He claims that during the 1960s he was involved with the establishment of a Romanian automobile industry.
Romanian army colonel Titus Simon who directed the military intelligence bureau in West Germany during Pacepa's stint there alleged in his book "Quo Vadis Pacepa" that during those years Pacepa had been recruited by American intelligence.
Pacepa defected during July 1978 by walking into the American Embassy in Bonn
while in Germany, where he had been sent by Ceauşescu with a message to Chancellor Helmut Schmidt
. He was flown secretly to Andrews Air Force Base
near Washington, D.C.
, in a United States military airplane.
During September 1978, Pacepa received two death sentences from Communist Romania
, and Ceauşescu decreed a bounty of two million US dollars
for his death. Yasser Arafat
and Muammar al-Gaddafi
set one more million dollars reward each. During the 1980s, Romania’s political police tasked Carlos the Jackal
to assassinate Pacepa in America in exchange for one million dollars. Carlos was unable to find Pacepa, but on February 21, 1980, he bombed a part of Radio Free Europe
's headquarters in Munich
, which was broadcasting news of Pacepa's defection.
On July 7, 1999, Romania’s Supreme Court
Decision No. 41/1999 canceled Pacepa’s death sentences and ordered that his properties, confiscated by Ceauşescu's orders, be returned to him. Romania's government refused to comply. During December 2004, the new government of Romania restored Pacepa’s rank of general.
and various American conservative
publications, such as National Review Online, The Washington Times
, Internet conservative blog site PJ Media, and the online newspaper FrontPage Magazine. During 2010, for an article entitled "The Truth About Illegals", published by Pacepa in the conservative
U.S.
monthly magazine
The American Spectator
, he also included a unique recent photograph of himself.
, arousing "huge interest among Romanians". On December 25, 1989, during the last part of the Romanian Revolution
, Ceauşescu and his wife, Elena
, were sentenced to death at the end of a trial where most of the accusations had been publicized by Red Horizons.
The next day, the book began being serialized in the new official Romanian newspaper Adevărul
, which published that the book had "played an incontestable role in overthrowing Ceauşescu" (according to the text on the back cover of the book’s second edition, published during 1990). Red Horizons was subsequently republished in 27 countries, and is still in print.
During 1993, Pacepa published The Kremlin
's Legacy, in which he tried to wean his native country away from its continued dependency on a Communist-style police state. During 1999, he authored the trilogy The Black Book of the Securitate, which has become a bestseller in Romania.
, who told him about "ten international leaders the Kremlin killed or tried to kill": László Rajk
and Imre Nagy
from Hungary; Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu
and Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej
from Romania; Rudolf Slánský
and Jan Masaryk
from Czechoslovakia; Mohammad Reza Pahlavi
, the Shah of Iran; Palmiro Togliatti
from Italy; US President John F. Kennedy
; and CCP Chairman
Mao Zedong
. Pacepa provides some additional details, such as an alleged plot to kill Mao Zedong with the help of Lin Biao
organized by the KGB.
Pacepa said that "among the leaders of Moscow's satellite intelligence services there was unanimous agreement that the KGB had been involved in the assassination of President Kennedy", and that KGB fingerprints are all over Lee Harvey Oswald
and his killer Jack Ruby
. Pacepa has since had a book published on the topic, "Programmed to Kill: Lee Harvey Oswald, the Soviet KGB, and the Kennedy Assassination," in which he asserts that Soviet Premier
Nikita Khrushchev
ordered Kennedy's assassination. Khrushchev is said to have annulled the plan, but Soviet agents were unable to reach Oswald before Khrushchev's annullment order could be executed.
According to author Joseph Goulden in The Washington Times, Pacepa's belated account "rests rather flimsily on circumstantial evidence and supposition." In a review of Pacepa's book published in Human Events, Michael Ledeen
, former adviser for terrorism to President Reagan, writes: "A new book from General Ion Mihai Pacepa is cause for celebration, because he is among a tiny handful of people who know a lot about the intelligence services of the Soviet Empire, and because he writes about it with rare lucidity, always with an eye to helping us understand our world. His first book, 'Red Horizons,'is indubitably the most brilliant portrait of a Communist regime I've ever read. 'Programmed to Kill' is equally fascinating. Pacepa painstakingly takes us through the documentary evidence, including invaluable material on Soviet bloc cyphers that throws new light on Oswald's letters to KGB officers in Washington and Mexico City. … No novelist could have written a more exciting story, made all the more compelling because of Pacepa's first-hand involvement in the Russians' efforts to hide their Oswald connection."
, by portraying Pope Pius XII
as a coldhearted Nazi
sympathizer."
to disarm Iraq. In opposition, large anti-war demonstrations
were held in cities across the world. Pacepa contends that these protests were contrived and "anti-American", which Russia
assisted. Pacepa wrote during October 2003 that it was "perfectly obvious to me" that the Russian GRU
agency helped Saddam Hussein to destroy, hide, or transfer his chemical weapons prior to the American invasion of Iraq during 2003. To this end, he claims that an operation for the removal of chemical weapons ("Operation Sarindar") was prepared by the Soviet Union for Libya
, and that such a plan existed and was implemented in Iraq
. Subsequently, the Iraq Survey Group
did not find any significant holdings of weapons of mass destruction
in Iraq that were present in the country decades earlier. It issued its findings in the Duelfer report during September 2004.
Eastern bloc
The term Eastern Bloc or Communist Bloc refers to the former communist states of Eastern and Central Europe, generally the Soviet Union and the countries of the Warsaw Pact...
. He is now a United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
citizen, a writer, and a columnist
Columnist
A columnist is a journalist who writes for publication in a series, creating an article that usually offers commentary and opinions. Columns appear in newspapers, magazines and other publications, including blogs....
.
During July 1978, Pacepa was a two-star Romanian Securitate
Securitate
The Securitate was the secret police agency of Communist Romania. Previously, the Romanian secret police was called Siguranţa Statului. Founded on August 30, 1948, with help from the Soviet NKVD, the Securitate was abolished in December 1989, shortly after President Nicolae Ceaușescu was...
general
General
A general officer is an officer of high military rank, usually in the army, and in some nations, the air force. The term is widely used by many nations of the world, and when a country uses a different term, there is an equivalent title given....
who simultaneously had the rank of advisor to President
President of Romania
The President of Romania is the head of state of Romania. The President is directly elected by a two-round system for a five-year term . An individual may serve two terms...
Nicolae Ceauşescu
Nicolae Ceausescu
Nicolae Ceaușescu was a Romanian Communist politician. He was General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party from 1965 to 1989, and as such was the country's second and last Communist leader...
, acting chief of his foreign intelligence service and a state secretary of Romania’s Ministry of Interior. He defected to the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
after President
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
James Carter
Jimmy Carter
James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr. is an American politician who served as the 39th President of the United States and was the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, the only U.S. President to have received the Prize after leaving office...
's approval of his request for political asylum.
Subsequently, he worked with American intelligence
United States Intelligence Community
The United States Intelligence Community is a cooperative federation of 16 separate United States government agencies that work separately and together to conduct intelligence activities considered necessary for the conduct of foreign relations and the protection of the national security of the...
in various operations against the former Eastern Bloc. The Central Intelligence Agency
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...
(CIA) described his cooperation as "an important and unique contribution to the United States".
Biography
Pacepa studied industrial chemistryChemistry
Chemistry is the science of matter, especially its chemical reactions, but also its composition, structure and properties. Chemistry is concerned with atoms and their interactions with other atoms, and particularly with the properties of chemical bonds....
at the University Politehnica of Bucharest, but just months before graduation he was drafted by the Securitate, and got his engineering
Engineering
Engineering is the discipline, art, skill and profession of acquiring and applying scientific, mathematical, economic, social, and practical knowledge, in order to design and build structures, machines, devices, systems, materials and processes that safely realize improvements to the lives of...
degree only four years later. Between 1957 and 1960 he served as chief of the Romanian intelligence station in West Germany
West Germany
West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....
, and, between 1972 and 1978, he was Ceauşescu's adviser for national security and technological development and the deputy chief of the Romanian foreign intelligence service. He claims that during the 1960s he was involved with the establishment of a Romanian automobile industry.
Romanian army colonel Titus Simon who directed the military intelligence bureau in West Germany during Pacepa's stint there alleged in his book "Quo Vadis Pacepa" that during those years Pacepa had been recruited by American intelligence.
Pacepa defected during July 1978 by walking into the American Embassy in Bonn
Bonn
Bonn is the 19th largest city in Germany. Located in the Cologne/Bonn Region, about 25 kilometres south of Cologne on the river Rhine in the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, it was the capital of West Germany from 1949 to 1990 and the official seat of government of united Germany from 1990 to 1999....
while in Germany, where he had been sent by Ceauşescu with a message to Chancellor Helmut Schmidt
Helmut Schmidt
Helmut Heinrich Waldemar Schmidt is a German Social Democratic politician who served as Chancellor of West Germany from 1974 to 1982. Prior to becoming chancellor, he had served as Minister of Defence and Minister of Finance. He had also served briefly as Minister of Economics and as acting...
. He was flown secretly to Andrews Air Force Base
Andrews Air Force Base
Joint Base Andrews is a United States military facility located in Prince George's County, Maryland. The facility is under the jurisdiction of the United States Air Force 11th Wing, Air Force District of Washington ....
near Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
, in a United States military airplane.
During September 1978, Pacepa received two death sentences from Communist Romania
Communist Romania
Communist Romania was the period in Romanian history when that country was a Soviet-aligned communist state in the Eastern Bloc, with the dominant role of Romanian Communist Party enshrined in its successive constitutions...
, and Ceauşescu decreed a bounty of two million US dollars
United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
for his death. Yasser Arafat
Yasser Arafat
Mohammed Yasser Abdel Rahman Abdel Raouf Arafat al-Qudwa al-Husseini , popularly known as Yasser Arafat or by his kunya Abu Ammar , was a Palestinian leader and a Laureate of the Nobel Prize. He was Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization , President of the Palestinian National Authority...
and Muammar al-Gaddafi
Muammar al-Gaddafi
Muammar Muhammad Abu Minyar Gaddafi or "September 1942" 20 October 2011), commonly known as Muammar Gaddafi or Colonel Gaddafi, was the official ruler of the Libyan Arab Republic from 1969 to 1977 and then the "Brother Leader" of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya from 1977 to 2011.He seized power in a...
set one more million dollars reward each. During the 1980s, Romania’s political police tasked Carlos the Jackal
Carlos the Jackal
Ilich Ramírez Sánchez , better known as Carlos the Jackal, is a Venezuelan pro-Palestinian currently serving a life sentence in France for shooting to death two French secret agents and a Lebanese informer in 1975....
to assassinate Pacepa in America in exchange for one million dollars. Carlos was unable to find Pacepa, but on February 21, 1980, he bombed a part of Radio Free Europe
Radio Free Europe
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty is a broadcaster funded by the U.S. Congress that provides news, information, and analysis to countries in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and the Middle East "where the free flow of information is either banned by government authorities or not fully developed"...
's headquarters in Munich
Munich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
, which was broadcasting news of Pacepa's defection.
On July 7, 1999, Romania’s Supreme Court
High Court of Cassation and Justice
The High Court of Cassation and Justice is Romania's supreme court, and the court of last resort. It is the equivalent of France's Cour de cassation and serves a similar function to other courts of cassation around the world...
Decision No. 41/1999 canceled Pacepa’s death sentences and ordered that his properties, confiscated by Ceauşescu's orders, be returned to him. Romania's government refused to comply. During December 2004, the new government of Romania restored Pacepa’s rank of general.
Writings and political views
Pacepa occasionally writes articles for The Wall Street JournalThe Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal is an American English-language international daily newspaper. It is published in New York City by Dow Jones & Company, a division of News Corporation, along with the Asian and European editions of the Journal....
and various American conservative
American conservatism
Conservatism in the United States has played an important role in American politics since the 1950s. Historian Gregory Schneider identifies several constants in American conservatism: respect for tradition, support of republicanism, preservation of "the rule of law and the Christian religion", and...
publications, such as National Review Online, The Washington Times
The Washington Times
The Washington Times is a daily broadsheet newspaper published in Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States. It was founded in 1982 by Unification Church founder Sun Myung Moon, and until 2010 was owned by News World Communications, an international media conglomerate associated with the...
, Internet conservative blog site PJ Media, and the online newspaper FrontPage Magazine. During 2010, for an article entitled "The Truth About Illegals", published by Pacepa in the conservative
American conservatism
Conservatism in the United States has played an important role in American politics since the 1950s. Historian Gregory Schneider identifies several constants in American conservatism: respect for tradition, support of republicanism, preservation of "the rule of law and the Christian religion", and...
U.S.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
monthly magazine
Magazine
Magazines, periodicals, glossies or serials are publications, generally published on a regular schedule, containing a variety of articles. They are generally financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by pre-paid magazine subscriptions, or all three...
The American Spectator
The American Spectator
The American Spectator is a conservative U.S. monthly magazine covering news and politics, edited by R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. and published by the non-profit American Spectator Foundation. From its founding in 1967 until the late 1980s, the small-circulation magazine featured the writings of authors...
, he also included a unique recent photograph of himself.
Red Horizons
During 1987, Pacepa published a book, Red Horizons: Chronicles of a Communist Spy Chief, which was serialized on Radio Free EuropeRadio Free Europe
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty is a broadcaster funded by the U.S. Congress that provides news, information, and analysis to countries in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and the Middle East "where the free flow of information is either banned by government authorities or not fully developed"...
, arousing "huge interest among Romanians". On December 25, 1989, during the last part of the Romanian Revolution
Romanian Revolution of 1989
The Romanian Revolution of 1989 was a series of riots and clashes in December 1989. These were part of the Revolutions of 1989 that occurred in several Warsaw Pact countries...
, Ceauşescu and his wife, Elena
Elena Ceausescu
Elena Ceaușescu was the wife of Romania's Communist leader Nicolae Ceaușescu, and Deputy Prime Minister of Romania.-Background:She was born Elena Petrescu into a peasant family in Petrești commune, Dâmboviţa County, in the informal region of Wallachia. Her family was supported by her father's job...
, were sentenced to death at the end of a trial where most of the accusations had been publicized by Red Horizons.
The next day, the book began being serialized in the new official Romanian newspaper Adevărul
Adevarul
Adevărul is a Romanian daily newspaper, based in Bucharest. Founded in 1871 and reestablished in 1888, it was the main left-wing press venue to be published during the Romanian Kingdom's existence, adopting an independent pro-democratic position, advocating land reform and universal suffrage...
, which published that the book had "played an incontestable role in overthrowing Ceauşescu" (according to the text on the back cover of the book’s second edition, published during 1990). Red Horizons was subsequently republished in 27 countries, and is still in print.
During 1993, Pacepa published The Kremlin
Moscow Kremlin
The Moscow Kremlin , sometimes referred to as simply The Kremlin, is a historic fortified complex at the heart of Moscow, overlooking the Moskva River , Saint Basil's Cathedral and Red Square and the Alexander Garden...
's Legacy, in which he tried to wean his native country away from its continued dependency on a Communist-style police state. During 1999, he authored the trilogy The Black Book of the Securitate, which has become a bestseller in Romania.
Alleged assassinations by the KGB
In a 2006 article, Pacepa describes a conversation he had with Nicolae CeauşescuNicolae Ceausescu
Nicolae Ceaușescu was a Romanian Communist politician. He was General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party from 1965 to 1989, and as such was the country's second and last Communist leader...
, who told him about "ten international leaders the Kremlin killed or tried to kill": László Rajk
László Rajk
László Rajk was a Hungarian Communist; politician, former Minister of Interior and former Minister of Foreign Affairs...
and Imre Nagy
Imre Nagy
Imre Nagy was a Hungarian communist politician who was appointed Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the People's Republic of Hungary on two occasions...
from Hungary; Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu
Lucretiu Patrascanu
Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu was a Romanian communist politician and leading member of the Communist Party of Romania , also noted for his activities as a lawyer, sociologist and economist. For a while, he was a professor at Bucharest University...
and Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej
Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej
Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej was the Communist leader of Romania from 1948 until his death in 1965.-Early life:Gheorghe was the son of a poor worker, Tănase Gheorghiu, and his wife Ana. Gheorghiu-Dej joined the Communist Party of Romania in 1930...
from Romania; Rudolf Slánský
Rudolf Slánský
Rudolf Slánský was a Czech Communist politician. Holding the post of the party's General Secretary after World War II, he was one of the leading creators and organizers of Communist rule in Czechoslovakia...
and Jan Masaryk
Jan Masaryk
Jan Garrigue Masaryk was a Czech diplomat and politician and Foreign Minister of Czechoslovakia from 1940 to 1948.- Early life :...
from Czechoslovakia; Mohammad Reza Pahlavi
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi
Mohammad Rezā Shāh Pahlavi, Shah of Iran, Shah of Persia , ruled Iran from 16 September 1941 until his overthrow by the Iranian Revolution on 11 February 1979...
, the Shah of Iran; Palmiro Togliatti
Palmiro Togliatti
Palmiro Togliatti was an Italian politician and leader of the Italian Communist Party from 1927 until his death.-Early life:...
from Italy; US President John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....
; and CCP Chairman
Chairman of the Communist Party of China
The Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China was the head of the Communist Party of China . In 1982, it was succeeded by the General Secretary of the Central Committee.-History and functions:...
Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong, also transliterated as Mao Tse-tung , and commonly referred to as Chairman Mao , was a Chinese Communist revolutionary, guerrilla warfare strategist, Marxist political philosopher, and leader of the Chinese Revolution...
. Pacepa provides some additional details, such as an alleged plot to kill Mao Zedong with the help of Lin Biao
Lin Biao
Lin Biao was a major Chinese Communist military leader who was pivotal in the communist victory in the Chinese Civil War, especially in Northeastern China...
organized by the KGB.
Pacepa said that "among the leaders of Moscow's satellite intelligence services there was unanimous agreement that the KGB had been involved in the assassination of President Kennedy", and that KGB fingerprints are all over Lee Harvey Oswald
Lee Harvey Oswald
Lee Harvey Oswald was, according to four government investigations,These were investigations by: the Federal Bureau of Investigation , the Warren Commission , the House Select Committee on Assassinations , and the Dallas Police Department. the sniper who assassinated John F...
and his killer Jack Ruby
Jack Ruby
Jacob Leon Rubenstein , who legally changed his name to Jack Leon Ruby in 1947, was convicted of the November 24, 1963 murder of Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged assassin of President John F. Kennedy. Ruby, who was originally from Chicago, Illinois, was then a nightclub operator in Dallas, Texas...
. Pacepa has since had a book published on the topic, "Programmed to Kill: Lee Harvey Oswald, the Soviet KGB, and the Kennedy Assassination," in which he asserts that Soviet Premier
Premier of the Soviet Union
The office of Premier of the Soviet Union was synonymous with head of government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics . Twelve individuals have been premier...
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964...
ordered Kennedy's assassination. Khrushchev is said to have annulled the plan, but Soviet agents were unable to reach Oswald before Khrushchev's annullment order could be executed.
According to author Joseph Goulden in The Washington Times, Pacepa's belated account "rests rather flimsily on circumstantial evidence and supposition." In a review of Pacepa's book published in Human Events, Michael Ledeen
Michael Ledeen
Michael Arthur Ledeen is an American specialist on foreign policy. His research areas have included state sponsors of terrorism, Iran, the Middle East, Europe , U.S.-China relations, intelligence, and Africa and is a leading neoconservative...
, former adviser for terrorism to President Reagan, writes: "A new book from General Ion Mihai Pacepa is cause for celebration, because he is among a tiny handful of people who know a lot about the intelligence services of the Soviet Empire, and because he writes about it with rare lucidity, always with an eye to helping us understand our world. His first book, 'Red Horizons,'is indubitably the most brilliant portrait of a Communist regime I've ever read. 'Programmed to Kill' is equally fascinating. Pacepa painstakingly takes us through the documentary evidence, including invaluable material on Soviet bloc cyphers that throws new light on Oswald's letters to KGB officers in Washington and Mexico City. … No novelist could have written a more exciting story, made all the more compelling because of Pacepa's first-hand involvement in the Russians' efforts to hide their Oswald connection."
Alleged Soviet role in Palestinian and Islamic terrorism
In a 2006 article written during the Second Lebanon War, Pacepa says the Soviet Union spread anti-Semitic propaganda across the Middle East to increase hatred for the Jews, and by extension Israel and America. Pacepa writes that Soviet propagandists described America as a "Jewish fiefdom" and spread the idea that Israel planned to make the Islamic Middle East into a "Jewish colony." Furthermore, he describes Russia's alleged role in propagating and funding terrorist groupsAlleged Soviet campaign against the Vatican
Pacepa alleged that the Soviet Union tried to discredit the Papacy. In a 2007 article, he stated "In my other life, when I was at the center of Moscow's foreign-intelligence wars, I myself was caught up in a deliberate Kremlin effort to smear the VaticanHoly See
The Holy See is the episcopal jurisdiction of the Catholic Church in Rome, in which its Bishop is commonly known as the Pope. It is the preeminent episcopal see of the Catholic Church, forming the central government of the Church. As such, diplomatically, and in other spheres the Holy See acts and...
, by portraying Pope Pius XII
Pope Pius XII
The Venerable Pope Pius XII , born Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli , reigned as Pope, head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of Vatican City State, from 2 March 1939 until his death in 1958....
as a coldhearted Nazi
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
sympathizer."
Iraq & WMD
Ion Mihai Pacepa has supported United States military action2003 invasion of Iraq
The 2003 invasion of Iraq , was the start of the conflict known as the Iraq War, or Operation Iraqi Freedom, in which a combined force of troops from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Poland invaded Iraq and toppled the regime of Saddam Hussein in 21 days of major combat operations...
to disarm Iraq. In opposition, large anti-war demonstrations
Protests against the Iraq War
Beginning in 2002, and continuing after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, protests against the Iraq War were held in many cities worldwide, often coordinated to occur simultaneously around the world...
were held in cities across the world. Pacepa contends that these protests were contrived and "anti-American", which Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
assisted. Pacepa wrote during October 2003 that it was "perfectly obvious to me" that the Russian GRU
GRU
GRU or Glavnoye Razvedyvatel'noye Upravleniye is the foreign military intelligence directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation...
agency helped Saddam Hussein to destroy, hide, or transfer his chemical weapons prior to the American invasion of Iraq during 2003. To this end, he claims that an operation for the removal of chemical weapons ("Operation Sarindar") was prepared by the Soviet Union for Libya
Libya
Libya is an African country in the Maghreb region of North Africa bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to the east, Sudan to the southeast, Chad and Niger to the south, and Algeria and Tunisia to the west....
, and that such a plan existed and was implemented in Iraq
Iraq
Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....
. Subsequently, the Iraq Survey Group
Iraq Survey Group
The Iraq Survey Group was a fact-finding mission sent by the multinational force in Iraq after the 2003 invasion of Iraq to find the alleged weapons of mass destruction alleged to be possessed by Iraq that had been the main ostensible reason for the invasion. Its final report is commonly called...
did not find any significant holdings of weapons of mass destruction
Iraq and weapons of mass destruction
During the regime of Saddam Hussein, the nation of Iraq used, possessed, and made efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction . Hussein was internationally known for his use of chemical weapons in the 1980s against Iranian and Kurdish civilians during and after the Iran–Iraq War...
in Iraq that were present in the country decades earlier. It issued its findings in the Duelfer report during September 2004.
Published books
- Red Horizons: Chronicles of a Communist Spy Chief, 1987. ISBN 0-89526-570-2
- Red Horizons: the 2nd Book. The True Story of Nicolae and Elena Ceauşescu's Crimes, Lifestyle, and Corruption, 1990. ISBN 0-89526-746-2
- The Kremlin Legacy, 1993
- Cartea neagră a Securităţii, Editura Omega, Bucharest, 1999. ISBN 9-73987-454-1
- Programmed to Kill: Lee Harvey Oswald, the Soviet KGB, and the Kennedy Assassination, 2007. ISBN 978-1-56663-761-9
Selected articles
- The KGB’s Man, 2003
- Khaddafi's "Conversion", 2003
- Ex-spy fingers Russians on WMD, 2003
- From Russia With Terror, March 1, 2004
- No Peter the Great, September 20, 2004
- Putin's Duality, August 5, 2005
- Left-Wing Monster: Ceausescu, February 10, 2006
- Who Is Raúl Castro? A tyrant only a brother could love., August 10, 2006
- Russian Footprints, August 24, 2006
- Tyrants and the Bomb, October 17, 2006
- The Kremlin’s Killing Ways, November 28, 2006
- Propaganda Redux , August 7, 2007
- Programmed to Kill: Lee Harvey Oswald, the Soviet KGB, and the Kennedy Assassination., October 3, 2007
- What I Learned as a Car Czar, June 2, 2009
See also
- Active measuresActive measuresActive Measures were a form of political warfare conducted by the Soviet security services to influence the course of world events, "in addition to collecting intelligence and producing politically correct assessment of it". Active measures ranged "from media manipulations to special actions...
- List of conspiracy theories
- List of Eastern Bloc defectors
External links
- Ion Mihai Pacepa at FrontPage Magazine
- Ion Mihai Pacepa at National Review OnlineNational ReviewNational Review is a biweekly magazine founded by the late author William F. Buckley, Jr., in 1955 and based in New York City. It describes itself as "America's most widely read and influential magazine and web site for conservative news, commentary, and opinion."Although the print version of the...
- Ion Mihai Pacepa at OpinionJournalOpinionJournal.comOpinionJournal.com was a website featuring content from the editorial pages of The Wall Street Journal. It existed separately from the news content at wsj.com until January 2008, when it was merged into the main website....
- E-book: Red Horizons on Google Books