Know Your Enemy

The topic of discussion for this Freedom Friday is the importance of knowing as much as possible about the enemy because we are engaged in a great war between good and evil. There is much unrest across the world but mainly in the Middle East and northern Africa, and there are protesters marching in many of the capital cities of the United States. Much of the unrest shown by the foreign crowds as well as members of employee unions is actually being encouraged and supported by Communists, socialists and radical Islamists who have stated their goal to be destruction of the American way of life.

It is important that we know our enemy because knowledge is power. It is not enough for those who are currently in leadership positions to know the enemy because individual citizens need to study and learn as much as possible in order to stay on the side of truth and right. All Americans need to study about Communists, socialists, radicals, Islamists, etc. in order to be able to avoid deception and go over to the "dark side."

One of the best ways to gather information and gain knowledge is a personal study of books, magazines, newspapers, blogs, etc. As part of my self-education, I recently read Red Horizons: Chronicles of A Communist Spy Chief by Lt. General Ion Mihai Pacepa. I am currently reading a second book by General Pacepa entitled Programmed To Kill: Lee Harvey Oswald, the Soviet KGB, and the Kennedy Assassination.

General Pacepa was the former chief of the DIE (the Romanian equivalent of the CIA or the KGB), and he worked very closely with the Communist regime of Romania's President Nicolae Ceausescu. General Pacepa is one of the highest ranking officials of the Soviet bloc countries to ever defect, and his defection to America caused the entire DIE operation to collapse. By the time General Pacepa arrived in America, he had a brand new name and identity. General Pacepa was debriefed daily for three years by the CIA/FBI to glean the information he had to offer. Romanian attempts to locate and destroy General Pacepa continue to surface periodically.

In his introduction to Red Horizons, Pacepa wrote: "With the passage of time, however, I have come to understand that the nature and purpose of devious Communist influence operations are often incomprehensible to the Western mentality….
"It took me many years before I could look back on my previous boss and his Communist system with the eyes of an American. It took me even longer to realize that individual Communist influence operations are not particularly worrisome to a Westerner unless he can visualize the whole, three-dimensional setting in which they occur. This book represents an attempt to provide that setting, in the form of a diary covering several weeks in 1978 when I was constantly at Ceausescu's side. It contains the story of my day-to-day life with a Communist leader who, during more than 20 years of absolute power, has built the most orthodox Marxist domestic policy in Eastern Europe and has clearly designated democracy as his number one enemy…" (xvi-xvii).

General Pacepa reveals the ruthlessness and depravity of Ceausescu as well as the depth of Romania's and other Communist country's involvement in international terrorism. This book reveals that PLO leader Yasser Arafat and Libya's Colonel Gadhafi are some of Ceausescu's closest allies and that Romania. "Pacepa recounts Ceausescu's chilly relationship with [Russia's] Leonid Breznev, his brilliant manipulation of Jordan's King Hussein and maniacal contempt for Jimmy Carter" (front jacket).

Red Horizons describes how Romania maintains an unbelievable, worldwide, network of spies and "agents of influence." These spies and agents range from ambassadors to archbishops in America, and they hold positions in our government. It also details the surveillance under which every citizen in Romania is subjected to and how the most private conversations and intimated acts are recorded and revealed to government leaders. I was shocked to read that every building in the nation is bugged and monitored. All the property in Romania is owned by the government and nearly all rooms are bugged. Public buildings are also bugged. Centerpieces in restaurants hold microphones so that the government can listen in on conversations. In an effort to control Romanian citizens, the government wants to know what every person in the country thinks, says and does. In order to completely control Romanians, Ceausescu ordered handwriting samples from the entire population (including children), licensing of typewriters, and the decree that every Romanian family have four children. (See back cover.) Ceausescu was able to control his citizens because he knew everything that was happening. If anyone got too far out of line, they would simply disappear.

I am currently in the process of reading Programmed to Kill. I remember well the day that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated and the concern I felt about why he was killed and who was really behind the murder. I selected this book because I wanted to learn more about what happened. After reading Red Horizons and gaining a little insight into how the Communist countries operate, I have found this book very interesting also.

General Pacepa had direct knowledge of the connection between the KGB and Lee Harvey Oswald, and he spent fifteen years as part of the Communist intelligence effort of casting the blame for the death of President Kennedy on someone in the United States. Communist propaganda pointed fingers at President Lyndon B. Johnson, CIA, mafia, and others.

This book is about how General Pacepa examined "the documents on the Kennedy assassination published by the U.S. government, to see if I could find facts to support what I knew from Romania. As I tried to sift the wheat from the chaff in going through the stacks of reports, I became increasingly fascinated by the wealth of Soviet operational patterns visible throughout the material on Oswald that had been turned up by U.S. government investigators - who had not recognized them as such, owing to their lack of an insider's familiarity with Soviet intelligence operations" (p xiii).

Pacepa's investigation of the Kennedy assassination took a back seat to his efforts to rid Romania of Ceausescu and protect his daughter, but he eventually embarked on the project, which took many years. "… when I finished I was amazed at the wealth of information that dovetailed with Soviet operational patterns. In fact it was a perfect fit - to a point. As I will demonstrate, everything suggests the Soviet recruitment of Oswald when he was assigned as a young Marine in Japan. In the available documents I also uncovered clear evidence that his mission upon his return to the United States was to assassinate President Kennedy…." (xiv).

Since I always like to know the "why" of any situation, I was very much interested in General Pacepa's explanation for a motive as to why the USSR wanted President Kennedy dead. He revealed that Moscow was afraid that Richard Nixon would continue the Eisenhower policies and so the "Soviet propaganda machinery let the world believe that the handsome young Kennedy would bring fresh air into the tense standoff between the two countries" (xvii). Khrushchev was so pleased with the election of Kennedy in 1960 that he released two American reconnaissance pilots. Khrushchev was not so pleased when Kennedy insisted in 1961 that "the freedom of West Berlin was not negotiable" and started "a rapid buildup of American combat troops in Europe. Khrushchev was forced to erect the Berlin Wall" (xvii-xviii).

Khrushchev was humiliated by Kennedy again in the Bay of Pigs incident when the USSR was forced to withdraw nuclear missiles from Cuba in 1962. Pacepa wrote that Khrushchev had the "habit of solving political matters through political assassinations…" (xxii); therefore, it seems plausible that he would order the assassination of Kennedy. Oswald was trained and dispatched, but other circumstances forced Khrushchev to cancel the orders. Oswald went ahead with the plan and completed the mission, probably hoping for a hero's welcome in the USSR. Pacepa found evidence that Oswald was planning to return to Moscow after completing the job and had requested a reentry visa to return to the Soviet Union. Moscow was afraid that Oswald would reveal the Communist plan and therefore arranged to silence him forever. That is where Jack Ruby, another Communist agent, came into the picture.

Pacepa found Communist fingerprints all over the assassination of John F. Kennedy even though the Warren Commission and a House of Representatives investigation failed to do so. He also states that both the USSR and the United States "were vitally interested in hiding the truth" (front jacket flap). It seems that the USSR wanted to avoid a nuclear war, and President Johnson was interested in being elected to a term of his own.

I found both of these books fascinating in the details of how easily foreign nations can obtain information, technology, and recognition from the United States and how gullible and easy to fool Americans are. Both of these books are good examples of how absolute power corrupts absolutely. They also give a good understanding of how socialists, communists, and radical Islamists work to destroy our democratic republic. I gained an even greater appreciation and gratitude for the freedoms I enjoy from these books.