Disinformation — strategic deception to undermine the Church, the West and the United States as revealed by Romanian Defector Ion Mihai Pacepa by Miguel A. Faria, MD
Disinformation is a revealing exposé of evil Soviet history as well as a treatise on the use of propaganda and disinformation in contemporary international relations and national politics. The title and especially the descriptive subtitle fulfill their promise and aptly deliver the goods: Lt. Gen. Pacepa and Professor Rychlak describe in eloquent prose and enthralling narrative how the Soviets used disinformation to undermine freedom, attack religion, promote hatred, and incite terrorism that has taken a life of its own since the cold war and continues to this day propagated by left-wing radicals who hate Western civilization in general and the Catholic Church and America in particular. The authors possess impressive credentials: Lt. Gen. Pacepa is the highest ranking defector ever to come over to the United States from the intelligence services of the Eastern-Soviet bloc, and Professor Rychlak is a Professor of Law at the University of Mississippi and a noted expert on both the Catholic Church and the life of Pope Pius XII.
At the time of his defection in 1978, Lt. Gen. Pacepa was chief of communist Romania’s espionage service and the top advisor to dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.
According to Lt. Gen. Pacepa, disinformation has a very long tradition in Russia, but was developed to a deadly science by the communist leaders of the USSR and both the Soviet and the subservient Eastern bloc intelligence services during the 70 years of the Cold War. Pacepa notes that disinformation (dezinformatsiya), which the Russians also called “framing,” can be so effective that it can denigrate an entire nation or create a new man: It can “glorify the guilty or frame the innocent.” In the affairs of nations, it can smear a great country such as the United States by the accumulation of deceitful but believable propaganda, including artfully created forgeries or outright propagating mendacity.
Among the disinformation operations well documented and eloquently exposed in the book, we find:
The assault on the Catholic Church that began during the period of Soviet-Nazi 1939 Non-Aggression Pact and continues to this day. The attack against religion reached a crescendo under Joseph Stalin In time, the Orthodox Church’s highest officials would all virtually be co-opted by the KGB.
The Baltic States — which Stain had acquired as territorial rewards from the secret protocol of the Non-Aggression Pact of 1939 signed with Nazi Germany— were a problem. These Baltic nations— i.e., Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania were largely Catholic countries, and harder to control than the subservient Russian Orthodox Church in the Soviet Union. Unfazed, Stalin sent in his henchman and former executioner, Andrey Vyshinsky (1883-1954), to deceive those countries using disinformation. Betrayed and militarily crushed, Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania were subdued and annexed to the USSR. General Ivan Serov (1905-1990), then used the Soviet military to force the Russification and suppress Catholicism in these formerly independent nations. Stalin would not permit Catholicism to compete with state religions — Soviet communism and Stalinism.
To destroy the Catholic Church elsewhere, Stalin and his successors, and their Eastern bloc minion counterparts, attempted to “frame” Catholic prelates in various countries as having being pro-Nazi before and during World War II; this was accomplished with various success. Maligned and framed were Cardinal Aloysius Stepinac, Archbishop of the Roman Catholic Church of Croatia; Joszef Mindszenty, Roman Catholic Archbishop and primate of Hungary; Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski of Poland; Cardinal Josef Beran of Czechoslovakia; and Archbishop Josef Slipuj of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. All of these prelates had been staunch opponents of both Nazism and communism and during the holocaust had been protectors of the Jews throughout Europe. Yet all of them were methodically framed as Nazi collaborators because after the war they all had also been ardent anti-communists. The campaign of disinformation, framing, and the savage treatment, both mental and physical, suffered by these prelates is discussed in graphic detail in the book, and is worth reading not only as to correcting the historic record, but also as understanding disinformation methodology.
Another disinformation operation was the “Framing” of Pius XII as “Hitler’s Pope,” a campaign ordered by Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev (1894-1971). The campaign initially failed. Pacepa notes that in their own lifetime Pius XII and some of the other “framed” prelates could not be successfully calumniated (although some suffered mental and physical anguish and sometimes torture and incarceration) because of their well-known saintly lives and documented opposition to Nazism and communism.
And it’s no wonder that the Soviets wanted to frame Pope Pius XII with a huge disinformation campaign. Pacepa and Rychlak wrote Pope Pius XII was at war with the Soviets, and that he “placed the Vatican and Catholicism on a war footing with communism.” President Harry Truman felt that Catholicism was the greatest weapon he could wield against the perverse ideology of communism, and the American President allied himself with the Vatican, seeking the help of Pope Pius XII in containing communism.
The dezinformatsiya operation against Pius XII was ineffective during the pope’s lifetime because the world knew the truth — that Pius XII had fought Nazism and then communism vigorously — but later generations did not. Pius XII was framed as ‘Hitler’s Pope,” precisely because he condemned communism as much as he condemned Nazism. He went as far as calling communism an evil philosophy and excommunicated Catholics who registered as members of the Communist Party.
Yet another campaign was Operation Dragon, the framing of the CIA as the culprit in the JFK Assassination. It claimed that the CIA killed JFK with the support of the military-industrial complex; Oswald was only a patsy, a CIA plant. The KGB wasted no time propagating the JFK assassination disinformation hoax. The book, Oswald: Assassin or Fall Guy? came out in 1963 in record time, written by Joachim Joesten, a German Communist Party operative, and published by Italian communist Carlo Aldo Morgani — both KGB agents, also exposed in the Mitrokhin Archives. Not leaving anything to chance, the first review of Oswald: Assassin or Fall Guy? was also done by a Soviet agent, the American traitor, Victor Perlo, who was an associate of another paid KGB agent, the author and journalist, I.F. Stone, who use his writings to help propagate this and various other disinformation campaigns for the Soviets. “Operation Dragon” was astonishingly successful. The purported cause for the conspiracy was that JFK wanted to cut back military spending and reach out to the Soviets. The military-industrial complex, of course, wanted power and profits, what else? All of this material was grist for the conspiracy mill and numerous books were published using pieces from the disinformation machinery. The disinformation campaign reached a zenith in 1991 with the production of Oliver Stone’s movie, JFK — “the most successful KGB dezinformatsiya in Soviet history.”
The Deputy a play defaming Pope Pius XII and Oswald: Assassin or Fall Guy?, smearing the CIA, were so successful that both disinformation operations are still believed by many people all over the world, including the United States. Pope Pius XII was purportedly Hitler’s Pope, and Oswald was the patsy in the JFK assassination. New lies continue to be added to the original framing and the old disinformation stories continue to propagate themselves — as we shall see, just as Soviet leader Andropov would later described them, and as having lives of their own.
According to Lt. Gen. Pacepa, for disinformation to be effective, calumniation to stick and strategic deception to deceive in the long term, the framing must be propagated by “respectable” Western media sources.
The disinformation campaign of hatred against the United States and the West fomented by the Soviets in the Third World (to include the simmering Islamic East) continues to cause protracted and catastrophic damage to the West. This strategic vilification disinformation operation against the West was perfected by Yuri Andropov (1914-1984), the KGB Chairman (1967-1982) and later head of the USSR (1982-84). And despite the fall of the Soviet Union, the KGB-inspired hatred of the West and the U.S. fomented by disinformation has not only persisted but grown exponentially, fed by new lies concocted by a variety of leftist sources and die-hard Marxists, many of them in Western institutions and media outlets. This hatred has given rise to such events as the tragic 9-11 attack and al Qaeda, the War in Afghanistan and the Taliban, and the war in Iraq and Syria and the terrorists of the Islamic Caliphate.
These are only some of the disinformation operations discussed in the book. There were many others. Lt. Gen. Pacepa also exposes the disinformation campaigns generating and maintaining liberation theology; communist front organizations —e.g., The World Peace Council (WPC), The World Council of Churches (WCC), The Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), etc. — still functioning today in the West and the U.S.; the orchestration of anti-America demonstrations; the fomenting of hatred in the Third World; and the incitement of Islamic terrorism against the West and the United States.
Disinformation — Former Spy Chief Reveals Secret Strategies for Undermining Freedom, Attacking Religion, and Promoting Terrorism (2013) by Lieutenant General Ion Mihai Pacepa and Professor Ronald J. Rychlak is a revealing and eloquent book that requires greater dissemination and should be required reading by sober citizens of every civilized nation. To better understand the perilous world in which we live today, get this book and read. Note: This book review is extracted from a much longer essay written by the author and posted at his website.
Miguel A. Faria, M.D. is a retired clinical professor of neurosurgery and long time medical editor. He is the author of Cuba in Revolution — Escape From a Lost Paradise (2002).
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THE NAKED TRUTH ITSELF
The Truth Itself. It's easy to be absolutely sure, when you're an observer - Seeker of the Truth, researcher on a deep and highest level and an intelligence analysator from the Top of the Elite of Bulgarian "Post"-Communist Secret Services within the Freemasonry in Bulgaria, Eastern Europe, which has been secretly Reactivated by trained to do it, as absolute atheists - Secret "Post"-Stalinists Agents, who won the Trust of one of the German Regular Freemason's Grand Lodges and received Light by the Germans.As so as, for 27 years after the fallen of the Berlin Wall - and I suppose, the same has happened in all the post-communist countries including Russia itself - The Old Soviet (KGB) Secret Services control the Freemasonry in all deeply influenced by Russia and their local KGB branches "Post"-Stalinist - now Private Secret Services, which, by default are ATHEISTIC, MATERIALISTIC AND DARWINISTIC IN IT'S GENESIS...GOD BLESS AMERICA AND THE OLD AND ACCEPTED SCOTTISH RITE OF FREEMASONRY WITH MOTHER LODGE IN WASHINGTON! #SMIB
Top reviews from other countries
- kloseReviewed in India on January 16, 2024
One of the best book on Disinformation during Cold war
During COVID-19, when social media was a major source of disinformation in India, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book.One of the best book on Disinformation during Cold warklose
Reviewed in India on January 16, 2024
Some of the topics like Glasnost, The Deputy are very written and even coincides with Indian politics and cult leader image...
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K-D-UReviewed in Germany on September 10, 2018
Sehr informativ, gut belegt und hochaktuell
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