Pacepa vs. Obama

The expensive launch of Pacepa Mihai's* work on the subject of disinformation has been extremely useful. For those who were ecstatic about the “heroic” gesture of defection on the part of the spy chief, the movie, which synthesizess the book, shown 35 years to the day since the Securitate general's arrival in Washington, already using a different identity, has enough elements of reflection to warrant new evaluations. At the same time, those that have had more information on “the Pacepa case” and have classified the officer's escape from the communist prison camp under “treason” have reaffirmed their belief. I think that largely “Disinformation” brings to Pacepa and to those who planned the action a loss of credibility, raising questions about the final message of the book.

For whom was this book really written? Who do the authors wish to convince by presenting events which span almost a century of tumultuous history of mankind in a simple and excessively partisan fashion?

These history “lessons,” extracted from a manual of anti-communist sayings and theses, make for a heavy-to-digest menu for a generation that has not known the horrors of anti-Nazi war, or the restrictions of the communist regimes in Europe. The disarming, simplistic fashion of the exposition calls to mind the authors of propaganda movies from the Stalinist era, who didn’t even have the television production capabilities of the Golden Age. The churning in the pot of history, with arguments given by a member of the Securitate with the rank of general, who has dutifully led secret operations in direct service of the KGB and then played Moscow's games, could not put forth information possible to digest.

Two-thirds of the movie is bits of propaganda against anti-Stalinist dictatorship and the general’s visceral hatred toward Ceauşescu. Romania from 1965 to 1989 is, in the opinion of the authors, a catapult that fights perversely toward bringing down the West through espionage and a “poisoned pawn” served up by the Soviet Union to extract NATO secrets. Thus, the message is just according to the KGB strategy to demonize Ceauşescu and Romania, who were, in fact, distinct, independent voices, in the Warsaw Pact. Not by chance, on July 25, 1978, on the very day that Pacepa was surrendering to German espionage in the public restroom beneath the Dome of Cologne, Honecker and Brezhnev were calling Ceauşescu a “traitor,” according to the record of the meeting of the two communist leaders in Crimea.

In 1978, when Pacepa was leaving “the deck,” Ceauşescu was being welcomed with high honors at the White House and Buckingham Palace and the regime had not slipped into anti-democratic manifestations. It was, however, the exact year in which the KGB had received heavy blows in Romania through revealing General Nicolae Militaru as a Soviet agent and the landing of Doicaru at the head of the Foreign Information Directorate.

The third part of the propaganda movie no longer targets the Romanian audience. “Disinformation” aims for Obama’s Democratic administration and reveals the “betrayal” of U.S. interests by liberal intellectuals and the mass media in the United States. Obama is shown as an anti-capitalist, filmed with posters and symbols of the Communist Party in the background. He is an evil spirit that fuels Islamism and encourages world terrorism. The colleges and campuses, the artistic world of Hollywood, Robert Redford, Barbara Streisand and Oliver Stone, are all promoters of evil who twist the minds of American youths and have revived the sense of doom which fueled the real America in its battles in Vietnam. The slogans from the McCarthyism period are reheated and sent toward a confused audience, in Romania at least. I didn't know that Tismăneanu is fighting the White House, or that the general is using his anti-communist aura to serve the most extremist voices of the Republican Party and secret service reservists. Commentators of the movie in Bucharest have, in confusion, gone around the electoral messages of General Pacepa Mihai, who, behold, has not reconciled with the authorities in Bucharest, but is in open conflict with President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry.

What if Pacepa defects from the United States? The movie “Disinformation” announces, perhaps, a new crossing of borders for the general. Will he end up, eventually, in Moscow?

Let's follow his moves!

*Translator’s Note: Ion Mihai Pacepa is a former two-star general in the Securitate, the secret police of Communist Romania, who defected to the United States in July 1978. He is the highest-ranking defector from the former Eastern Bloc, and has written several books and news articles on the inner workings of the communist intelligence services.