Ion Mihai Pacepa

Ion Mihai Pacepa (28 October 1928–- 14 February 2021) is a former two-star general in the Securitate, the secret police of Communist Romania, who defected to the United States in July 1978 following President Jimmy Carter's approval of his request for political asylum. He is the highest-ranking defector from the former Eastern Bloc. At the time of his defection, Pacepa simultaneously had the rank of advisor to President Nicolae Ceauşescu, acting chief of his foreign intelligence service and a state secretary of Romania's Ministry of Interior.

Quotes

• Throughout my years in Romania, I always took my KGB bosses with a grain of salt, because they used to juggle the facts around so as to make Soviet intelligence the mother and father of everything.
  • Moscow’s Assault on the Vatican (January 25, 2007)

• History often repeats itself, and if you have lived two lives, as I have done, you have a good chance of seeing the reenactment with your own eyes.
• Each society reflects its own past. Down through the ages, everyone who has sat on the Kremlin throne — autocratic tsar, Communist leader, or democratically elected president — has been preoccupied with controlling all expressions of religion that might impinge on his political ambitions. When Ivan IV — the Terrible — had himself crowned in 1547 as Russia’s first tsar, he also made himself head of the Russian Orthodox Church. Tsarism and Communism may have been swallowed up by the sands of time, but the Kremlin continues this tradition.
  • The Secret Roots of Liberation Theology (April 23, 2015)