Books in Brief: Red Horizons

Red Horizons: Chronicles of a Communist Spy Chief, by Ion Mihai Pacepa (Regnery Gateway, 446 pp., $19.95)

Americans to whom Rumania is known mainly for its vampires will not be disappointed by Red Horizons: in the role of Count Dracula’s reincarnation, Nicolae Ceausescu adds ideological sophistication, indeed genius, to the legendary medieval figure’s cruelty. If this book were fiction, it would have to reside in the category of “horror, Gothic.” For Ceausescu, the self-proclaimed “Brother” of both Libyan strongman Muammar Qaddafi and PLO Chairman Yasir Arafat, uses the latest available technology—including cancer-causing radiation—to liquidate those who criticize him, both within and outside Rumania, and to steal Western technology to feed his obsessive lust for power. The blood he drains is simultaneously that of his own people and that of the West, Which has been duped into complacency regarding this allegedly independent Soviet colony. It is in explaining Ceausescu’s successful deception of the West that Red Horizons is most devastating. The phrase “Red Horizons” is actually a code, standing for a secret disinformation operation of the DIE (Rumania’s KGB). General Pacepa should know: as deputy chief of the DIE and personal advisor to Ceausescu from the early Sixties until his defection to the United States in 1978, he saw it all happen. His long-awaited testimony touches on the most spectacular tip of the iceberg that took him over three years to reveal, painstakingly, to the CIA. Pacepa describes Ceausescu’s fascination with the Libyan leader, and their intimate friendship following a visit to Tripoli in the early 1970s. The year 1974 marked the beginning of intensive cooperation between the two security forces, the exchange of foreign passports (stolen or counterfeited) becoming its most important aspect. Pacepa also describes the joint venture of the Cega, a Rumanian-Libyan tank named after its godfathers, “Ceausescu-Gadafi,” to be built on the model of NATO’s Leopard II with West German knowhow. Rumania’s theft of the Leopard engine is detective-story material, illustrating DIE’s multifaceted techniques for obtaining high technology from the West. But surely one of the most important commodities Rumania has obtained from West Germany—and from Israel —is hard currency, as payment for Germans and Jews allowed to emigrate. “Oil, Jews, and Germans are our best commodities,” Ceausescu used to say. Treating people as commodities is perhaps endemic to the ideology that Ceausescu, having learned it in Moscow in the mid 1950s, has never abandoned. Intensively instructed by Nikita Khrushchev in the use of the microphone for security purposes, Ceausescu introduced the most ubiquitous surveillance system in the Communist bloc. And Ceausescu follows surveillance with action. Faced with popular rebellion, as in 1977 when some 35,000 miners asked for a semblance of freedom and a better life, Ceausescu retaliates brutally, throwing the leaders into psychiatric hospitals and destroying the strikers and their families—while making sure, above all, that the West knows as little about any of this as possible. In manipulating Western perceptions, Ceausescu is truly a master. In exchange for supplying Western theorists of Eurocommunism with the illusion of independence from Moscow, Rumania obtained “most-favored nation” status from the U.S., and with it the political legitimacy that further enhanced its espionage capabilities. General Pacepa keeps himself in the background of this book, but from certain scenes, a portrait does emerge, of a man who during many of his years in this infernal organization prayed secretly, daily, to the God Who would some day save him. His daughter, Dana, an artist, is now subjected to constant harassment by the secret police. The book is dedicated to her and her husband, in the (probably vain) hope that they too might one day join him in freedom.

JG

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Juliana Geran Pilon

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Red Horizons: Chronicles of a Communist Spy Chief, by Ion Mihai Pacepa (Regnery Gateway, 446 pp., $19.95)

Americans to whom Rumania is known mainly for its vampires will not be disappointed by Red Horizons: in the role of Count Dracula’s reincarnation, Nicolae Ceausescu adds ideological sophistication, indeed genius, to the legendary medieval figure’s cruelty. If this book were fiction, it would have to reside in the category of “horror, Gothic.” For Ceausescu, the self-proclaimed “Brother” of both Libyan strongman Muammar Qaddafi and PLO Chairman Yasir Arafat, uses the latest available technology—including cancer-causing radiation—to liquidate those who criticize him, both within and outside Rumania, and to steal Western technology to feed his obsessive lust for power. The blood he drains is simultaneously that of his own people and that of the West, Which has been duped into complacency regarding this allegedly independent Soviet colony. It is in explaining Ceausescu’s successful deception of the West that Red Horizons is most devastating. The phrase “Red Horizons” is actually a code, standing for a secret disinformation operation of the DIE (Rumania’s KGB). General Pacepa should know: as deputy chief of the DIE and personal advisor to Ceausescu from the early Sixties until his defection to the United States in 1978, he saw it all happen. His long-awaited testimony touches on the most spectacular tip of the iceberg that took him over three years to reveal, painstakingly, to the CIA. Pacepa describes Ceausescu’s fascination with the Libyan leader, and their intimate friendship following a visit to Tripoli in the early 1970s. The year 1974 marked the beginning of intensive cooperation between the two security forces, the exchange of foreign passports (stolen or counterfeited) becoming its most important aspect. Pacepa also describes the joint venture of the Cega, a Rumanian-Libyan tank named after its godfathers, “Ceausescu-Gadafi,” to be built on the model of NATO’s Leopard II with West German knowhow. Rumania’s theft of the Leopard engine is detective-story material, illustrating DIE’s multifaceted techniques for obtaining high technology from the West. But surely one of the most important commodities Rumania has obtained from West Germany—and from Israel —is hard currency, as payment for Germans and Jews allowed to emigrate. “Oil, Jews, and Germans are our best commodities,” Ceausescu used to say. Treating people as commodities is perhaps endemic to the ideology that Ceausescu, having learned it in Moscow in the mid 1950s, has never abandoned. Intensively instructed by Nikita Khrushchev in the use of the microphone for security purposes, Ceausescu introduced the most ubiquitous surveillance system in the Communist bloc. And Ceausescu follows surveillance with action. Faced with popular rebellion, as in 1977 when some 35,000 miners asked for a semblance of freedom and a better life, Ceausescu retaliates brutally, throwing the leaders into psychiatric hospitals and destroying the strikers and their families—while making sure, above all, that the West knows as little about any of this as possible. In manipulating Western perceptions, Ceausescu is truly a master. In exchange for supplying Western theorists of Eurocommunism with the illusion of independence from Moscow, Rumania obtained “most-favored nation” status from the U.S., and with it the political legitimacy that further enhanced its espionage capabilities. General Pacepa keeps himself in the background of this book, but from certain scenes, a portrait does emerge, of a man who during many of his years in this infernal organization prayed secretly, daily, to the God Who would some day save him. His daughter, Dana, an artist, is now subjected to constant harassment by the secret police. The book is dedicated to her and her husband, in the (probably vain) hope that they too might one day join him in freedom.