Ion Mihai Pacepa: Old woes revisit Romania
Michael Yared
Ion Mihai Pacepa
Anti-Semitism is erupting in Romania, for the first time since the fall
of communism.
On Feb. 22, the prestigious German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung
devoted a long feature story to the ugly business, and 20 days earlier, the
Anti-Defamation League, B'nai B'rith International and The American Jewish
Committee asked the new Romanian president, Ion Iliescu, to stop
rehabilitating Nazi-era leaders.
It was an unusually tough letter: Statues as well as plaques and
street-namings in honor (of the infamous anti-Semite Marshal Ion Antonescu),
represent official homage to one of the darkest periods in Romania's past.
Permit us to add that it would be wholly inconsistent with Romania's
chairmanship of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe
(OSCE) for it to be the only country in Europe to honor the memory of a
World War II fascist leader.
The new anti-Semites are none other than the old communists, once
again in the majority in Parliament, and who are using rabid nationalism and
vicious anti-Semitism to distract attention from their own past and from the
ongoing social and political crisis of the country. To be sure, there is
nothing new about communists embracing nationalism, and anti-Semitism was
cynically used by Nicolae Ceausescu, as by so many other dictators before
him.
These old traditions have been reinforced by the suffering of the
people: Since 1990, the Romanians have tried to cope with state-controlled
capitalism run by old communist bureaucrats, and now they fear a
Western-style market economy would make their lives even more miserable. The
nationalists are perceived as the last barrier against the rapacity of the
new capitalists and Romania's economically expanding neighbours.
One of the communist parliamentarians who rechristened themselves as
nationalists is Tudor Corneliu Vadim, once a court poet to the Ceausescu
family. Mr. Vadim leads Romania's most anti-Semitic party, Romania Mare,
which in November became the second-largest in the country's Parliament.
The vice-president of the Senate, Gheorghe Buzatu, is another: A
former communist historian, he is now flooding the country with writings
aimed at reviving the Iron Guard, Romania's wartime fascist party, and at
rehabilitating its bloody leaders.
Constantin Florescu, one of the authors of Ceausescu's mini-cultural
revolution, has recycled himself as an anti-Semitic and anti-Hungarian
activist and is now another leading member of the Parliament.
These old Ceausescu loyalists are working hard to place the country's
most important legislative and executive positions in the hands of former
officers of the dreaded communist Securitate (the Romanian KGB), and to
resurrect their control over society.
Two of these efforts are especially telling. Ristea Priboi, who worked
for communist Romania's espionage service when I was at its helm, has become
chairman of the committee responsible for supervising the country's foreign
intelligence operations.
On Feb. 7, Mr. Priboi solemnly swore he had never been connected with
former communist intelligence organizations, but the media revealed that in
the 1970s he served as a spy under diplomatic cover in England, and that in
the 1980s he was deputy chief of the foreign intelligence department in
charge of operations against Radio Free Europe.
If the last revelation is correct, Mr. Priboi must have played a role
in the bloody terrorist operations carried out by this department against
Radio Free Europe after I defected: the 1981 terrorist attack against its
Munich headquarters carried out with help from Carlos the Jackal, in which
eight people were wounded; the assassination attempt on Emil Georgescu, one
of the station's political editors, who was stabbed 22 times in that attack;
and the assassination attempt in Paris against the internationally known
dissident writer Paul Goma, which was so vicious that French President
Francois Mitterrand postponed an official visit to Bucharest and called the
Romanian espionage service a band of murderers.
The appointment of retired Gen. Tudor Tanase to head Romania's
electronic monitoring system is another very bad sign. He was also at one
time my subordinate in communist Romania's espionage service. According to
his just published official biography, after I broke with communism, Gen.
Tanase was transferred to the Securitate's electronic monitoring department,
where he rose to the position of deputy chief, and he was sent to the
reserves in 1987, when Romania's crypto-communist government was ousted from
power.
In 1990, I suggested that Romania's post-Ceausescu leaders open the
enormous electronic monitoring and mail censorship centers to the public, as
they had done with Ceausescu's palaces, and that they transform them into
museums of freedom. This was not done, and it seems instead that they are
again being used for spying on the general population.
These communists now dressed in chauvinist clothes could make life
miserable for Romania's population, but what might happen in that small
country could hardly threaten world peace.
On the other hand, Romania occupies a geographically strategic
position, and its pre-World War II democratic traditions do provide reason
to believe it could be brought back into the Western world.
It will take some doing, both in Washington and Romania. Last
December, former President Clinton, who went out of his way to help the
Romanian communists return to power, sent them a letter promising full
support from the United States. It was a terrible thing to do: Such people
should not be supported in any way.
Nevertheless, I truly believe President Bush should help the Romanians
see how ugly their government looks to civilized men and women. There is
plenty of evidence people can change, if they see the truth.
Under communism, I held governmental positions that were just as high
as those held at that same time by President Iliescu, and I did change. The
prime minister of Romania, Adrian Nastase, belongs to the same generation as
my daughter, who is much more interested in the future than in the past.
President Bush seems to have a magical talent for changing the
American people's minds. He should try his hand abroad as well.
Ion Mihai Pacepa, the highest-ranking intelligence officer to defect to the
West during the Cold War, was the chief of the Romanian Intelligence
Service. He is the author of "Red Horizons."