The Collapse of Communism: The Untold Story
Ion Mihai Pacepa
Contemporary political memory seems to be conveniently afflicted with some kind of Alzheimer’s disease. In the early 1970’s, the Kremlin established a “socialist division of labor” for persuading the governments of Iraq and Libya to join the terrorist war against the US. KGB Chairman Yuri Andropov told me that either of the two countries could inflict more damage on the Americans than could the Red Brigades, the Baader-Meinhof group and all other terrorist organizations taken together. The governments of those Arab countries, Andropov explained, not only had inexhaustible financial resources (oil), but they also had huge intelligence services that were being run by “our rozvedka advisors” and could extend their tentacles to every corner of the earth.
PLO was dream up by the KGB. The National Liberation Army of Bolivia was created by KGB in 1964, National Liberation Army of Columbia in 1965, Democratic Front of the Liberation of Palestine and Secret Army for Liberation of Armenia in 1975. In 1964 the first PLO Council, consisting of 422 Palestinian representatives handpicked by the KGB, approved the Palestinian National Charter—a document that had been drafted in Moscow.
The whole foreign policy of the Soviet-bloc states, indeed its whole economic and military might, revolved around the larger Soviet objective of destroying America from within through the use of lies. The Soviets saw disinformation as a vital tool in the dialectical advance of world Communism. KGB priority number one was to damage American power, judgment, and credibility. As a spy chief and a general in the former Soviet satellite of Romania, I produced the very same vitriol Sen. Kerry repeated to the U.S. Congress almost word for word and planted it in leftist movements throughout Europe. KGB Chairman Yuri Andropov managed anti-Vietnam War operation.
When I met general Sakharovsky at his Lubyanka office he pointed to the red flags pinned onto a world map hanging on his wall. “Look at that,” he said. “Airplane hijacking is my own invention,” he boasted. Each flag represented a plane that had been downed. The hijacked airplane became an instrument of Soviet foreign policy—and eventually the weapon of choice for September 11, 2001. Sakharovsky’s subordinates are now reigning in the Kremlin. Until they fully disclose their involvement in creating anti-American terrorism and condemn Arafat’s terrorism, there is no reason to believe they have changed.
In the 1970s, when I last met him, Andropov's elongated, ascetic fingers always felt cold and moist when he shook my hand. "We are replacing all those so-called professional diplomats, who do nothing but sit around drinking and gossiping, with deep-cover KGB officers," Andropov began. His habit of plunging directly into the subject of a meeting without introductory remarks was legendary among intelligence chiefs. In his soft voice, Andropov laid out the historically Russian roots of his new technique, for he was a Russian to the marrow of his bones. Some two hours later, the KGB chairman concluded our meeting as abruptly as he had started it. "Our gosbezopasnost" had kept Russia alive for the past five hundred years, "our gosbezopasnost" had made her the strongest military power on earth, and "our gosbezopasnost" would steer her helm for the next five hundred years, he concluded, looking me straight in the face.
Andropov was also a dependable prophet. Thirty five years later, his gosbezopasnost is still running Russia.
