About Ion Mihai Pacepa
Ion Mihai Pacepa (Romanian pronunciation: [iˈon miˈhaj paˈt͡ʃepa]; 28 October 1928 – 14 February 2021) was a Romanian lieutenant general in the Securitate, the secret police of the Socialist Republic of Romania, who defected to the United States in July 1978 following President Jimmy Carter's approval of his request for political asylum. Pacepa was the highest-ranking defector from the former Eastern Bloc, and wrote books and articles on the inner workings of Communist intelligence services. His best-known works are the books Disinformation and Red Horizons. He was also a columnist for the Internet conservative blog site PJ Media. He also wrote articles for The Wall Street Journal and American conservative publications, such as National Review Online, The Washington Times, and the online newspaper FrontPage Magazine, and the far-right WorldNetDaily. At the time of his defection, Pacepa simultaneously had the rank of advisor to President Nicolae Ceaușescu, acting chief of his foreign intelligence service, and a parliamentary undersecretary at Romania's Ministry of Interior. Subsequently, he worked with the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to bring down Communism for more than 10 years. The CIA described his cooperation as "an important and unique contribution to the United States". In the 1980s, there were rumors that Romania's Securitate enlisted Carlos the Jackal to assassinate Pacepa in the United States in exchange for $1 million. Regnery claimed that, after his defection, Pacepa received two death sentences from communist Romania, and Ceaușescu decreed a bounty of US$2 million for his death, with Yasser Arafat and Muammar Gaddafi allegedly setting a further $1 million each.
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