By Ion Mihai Pacepa
Seen from my vantage point, the four-page FISA abuse memo authored by Rep. Devin Nunes is proof that former president Barack Obama and Democratic Party leaders wanted to transform the U.S. into a Russian-style intelligence dictatorship — and the FBI into a KGB-style instrument for rewriting American history by smearing its capitalist politicians.
They say that history repeats itself. If you have lived two lives, as I have done, you have a good chance of seeing a re-enactment with your own eyes.
Forty years ago, I paid with two death sentences from my native Romania. I had publicly revealed that Ceausescu’s highly praised independence from Moscow was in fact an undercover intelligence dictatorship, designed to transform Romania into a monument to him by annihilating his critics and enemies. “I’ll give you a name, and you’ll build a criminal record for him,” Ceausescu used to tell the head of the Securitate — his Marxist version of the FBI. For him, lying was the first step toward stealing and killing.
In July 1978, Ceausescu gave such a name to my foreign intelligence service, the DIE, and that was the last straw for me. In an open letter to the captive daughter I had to leave behind, repeatedly broadcast by Radio Free Europe after my defection, I explained:
I got the order to organize the assassination of Noel Bernard, the director of Radio Free Europe’s Romanian program, who had infuriated Ceausescu with his commentaries. Knowing you, Dana, I was firmly convinced that you would prefer no father to one who was an assassin.
I spent my next 30 American years under five presidents — some better than others — but the joy of being a part of this magnanimous land of freedom was surpassed only by the joy of simply being alive.
In 2008, however, I suddenly had the feeling of watching Ceausescu’s ghost haunting my adoptive country.
“We are the ones the world is waiting for,” proclaimed Barack Obama during his campaign, while his spiritual adviser Jeremiah Wright was caught on video screaming “God damn America.” The Democratic Party put the icing on the cake, proclaiming Obama an American Messiah. The senator agreed. On June 8, 2008, during a speech in New Hampshire, Obama stated that his presidency would be “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet to heal.” Earlier, an indiscreet video showed a picture of communist idol Che Guevara hanging on a wall behind Obama.
Our media and our political sages regarded Obama’s outrageous rhetoric as just millennial generational talk. For me, it was thinly veiled Ceausescu talk. My former boss’s version usually was: “A man like me is born only once every five hundred years.” Ceausescu also kept a picture of Che in his office.