Make no mistake about it: We are facing the devastating danger of nuclear terrorism that could end American life as we know it, and yet neither our media nor our politicians seem to be paying any attention to it.
On March 16, 2014, Moscow state TV announced that Russia could turn our country into "radioactive ash."
This should not be taken as an empty threat. Over the years, the KGB killed 94 million people within the Soviet empire alone. That same KGB – with new nameplates on the door – is now sitting in the Kremlin and possesses an EMP (electromagnetic pulse) bomb that could be launched by ISIS terrorists using an old Soviet Scud missile from a fishing boat off our East or West Coast. Our Congressional EMP Commission has predicted that up to 90 percent of the U.S. population could perish from starvation, disease and societal breakdown within 12 months of an EMP attack.
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A couple of months ago, Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress that Russia posed an existential threat to the United States. And just a few days ago, the Kremlin announced it had developed a new, unstoppable "Satan 2" stealth nuclear weapon capable of wiping out an entire nation the size of France in a couple of minutes.
Our leaders in the White House, the Pentagon and Congress are debating how we could most effectively use our diplomatic and military powers to defeat these new threats. No one, however, seems to be paying attention to the power of intelligence, a shamefully neglected weapon that once proved decisive in helping us win wars, both cold and hot.
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Fortunately, this vacuum is now highlighted by Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn and Michael Ledeen, who introduce us to the contemporary world of intelligence with an illuminating book titled "The Field of Fight: How to Win the Global War Against Radical Islam and Its Allies."
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Having once managed a Soviet bloc espionage service, I am on solid ground when I say this book should be read by every American who believes in American exceptionalism, every European who loves his country, and every Russian who wants to free his motherland from the historically Russian samoderzhaviye, under which a feudal lord rules the country with the help of his political police.
"The Field of Fight" is a superbly written testimony to the unseen but devastating power of intelligence. Let me explain.
In 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. Today's history books correctly credit President Kennedy for averting the disaster. Lost in that euphoria, however, is the crucial role played by the initial intelligence source, a courageous Soviet military intelligence officer named Col. Oleg Penkovsky. It was he who gave us the tip that the Soviets were secretly planning to install nuclear weapons in Cuba, and it was his intelligence that enabled us to decipher the images that our U-2 planes were then able to record. Penkovsky was later caught and executed by the Soviets, but his sacrifice and Kennedy's sustained reliance on our intelligence community protected Americans from a nuclear catastrophe.
In Iraq, 4,487 American soldiers died and 32,021 were wounded because we did not have an Iraqi Penkovsky to tell us that Saddam Hussein did not have nuclear weapons. In my experience, as former head of an enemy espionage service and now a devoted American, two things are vital for acquiring a Penkovsky. One is the need to earn the trust of such potential defectors or agents in place, in spite of the vitriolic anti-American climate under which they may be living. The other is the need to build international trust in our intelligence community.
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Trust is the most valuable asset of any espionage service, no matter its nationality or political flavor. Unfortunately, trust is not a main subject of the 585-pages of "The 9/11 Commission Report." Most likely, no member of that prestigious commission had ever been involved in gaining the trust of high-ranking intelligence adversaries.
"The Field of Fight" shows what must be done. This breathtaking book is written by two people who have dedicated their lives to protecting the U.S. against the destructive plague of terrorism. Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn spent 30 years in the military intelligence business, rose to its top, and then turned against its own political bureaucracy when he realized it was endangering his country's very existence – as I did 38 years ago, when I was the top spy in the Soviet Empire's Romania. Michael Ledeen, now our foremost expert on Iranian terrorism, holds the Freedom Scholar chair at the Foundation for Defense of Democracy.
Full disclosure: Michael Ledeen is also a friend of mine. It all started on April 15, 1986, when he was an adviser for terrorism in the Reagan administration. Ledeen showed me proof that Libyan dictator Gadhafi was behind the bombing of the La Belle discotheque in West Berlin, where two American soldiers had been killed, and he told me that President Reagan was asking me to provide a minute description of Gadhafi's huge tent, where I had often met the Libyan dictator. I gave Ledeen my best recollection. The next day, U.S. warplanes attacked the Libyan cities of Tripoli and Benghazi, in the process also destroying the tent of Libyan leader Gadhafi and reportedly killing his adopted daughter. According to media reports, Gadhafi had left that tent just minutes before the U.S. attack. It was a long time before he again showed his face to the world or challenged the U.S.
We are now at war with different but similarly fanatical terrorists, and I have good reason to believe we can also win this war by using the same power of intelligence. As one of the leaders of the Soviet bloc's Cold War efforts, I know for a fact that, in spite of the press coverage given to the nuclear competition, the Free World won that war thanks to the power of intelligence. Let me cite only the crucial role of defining the enemy – the core part of "The Field of Fight" – and of publicly exposing the truth about its tyrannical goals.
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In 1950, President Truman signed NSC 68/1950. That 58-page top-secret report of the National Security Council did not blame videos or books for the Cold War. That down-to-earth document described the challenges facing the United States in realistic terms. "The issues that face us are momentous," NSC 68/1950 stated, "involving the fulfillment or destruction not only of this Republic but of civilization itself." Therefore, NSC 68/1950 focused on positively influencing the world with an approach centered on American liberal-capitalist values, and contained a two-pronged political strategy: superior military power and an intelligence "Campaign of Truth," defined as "a struggle, above all else, for the minds of men." Truman argued that the propaganda used by the "forces of imperialistic communism" could be overcome only by the "plain, simple, unvarnished truth." The Voice of America, Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberation (soon to become Radio Liberty) became part of Truman's "Campaign of Truth."
"The Field of Fight" is, in my view, an extended contemporary form of President Truman's NSC68, adapted to our current war against terrorism. This book defines today's enemy and calls for an intelligence truth campaign aimed at exposing the enemy's barbarism to the rest of the world.
"The Field of Fight" also documents the crucial need to restore public trust in our intelligence community, our first line of defense against terrorism and nuclear proliferation. Our ability to recruit human assets able to see what satellites cannot has been gradually eroded by endless congressional investigations, mostly motivated by petty politics.
Mine is a case in point. By 1975, I had screwed up my courage and definitely decided to defect to the CIA, but before I could jump, I was hit in the face by the Rockefeller Commission report describing the CIA as a rogue organization. The following year, the Senate's Church Commission published 14 more reports portraying the CIA as a criminal organization. Those reports froze me in place. If the U.S. government did not trust its own CIA, how could I? It took me two more years to rebuild my trust in the U.S. intelligence community.
Trust in our intelligence services is vitally necessary. This is another strong message found in "The Field of Fight" – and one more reason for me to highly recommend it.
America's current enemy: ISIS or refrigerators?
One more thing: Just few weeks ago, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told the world that refrigerators and air conditioners were now as big a danger to the United States as ISIS, because they were emitting "a gigaton of carbon dioxide equivalent pollution into the atmosphere annually." An utterly crazy statement, but for Kerry, par for the course.
Indeed, back in 2004 when he was the Democratic candidate for the White House, Kerry stated in an internationally televised interview with PBS's Jim Lehrer: "Well, let me just say quickly that I've had an extraordinary experience of watching up close and personal that transition in Russia, because I was there right after the transformation. And I was probably one of the first senators ... to go down into the KGB underneath Treblinka Square and see reams of files with names in them. It sort of brought home the transition to democracy that Russia was trying to make."
If the Democratic contender for the White House did not know that Treblinka was a Nazi death camp in Poland, whereas the KGB headquarters was, and still is, the Lubyanka, what should we suppose he learned about terrorism from seeing all those KGB files – written in a language he could not read? And what does he know about what constitutes the greatest danger to our country?
I assure you, with our current Democratic presidential candidate, nothing has changed.
This is another reason for me to strongly recommend "The Field of Fight". This book deals with real life, not with refrigerators and illusionary trust in people like Russia's foreign minister Sergey Lavrov, a graduate of the KGB-sponsored Institute of International Relations.
In 1978, I put my life in the hands of the U.S. intelligence community because I fully trusted it. Trust and confidence in our intelligence services – not endless criticism, bureaucracy and reliance on luck – will make America safer. This is another strong message of "The Field of Fight".
Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa is the highest-ranking Soviet bloc intelligence officer who defected to the U.S. In 1989, Romania's tyrant Nicolae Ceausescu was executed for genocide at the end of a trial whose accusations came out of Gen. Pacepa's book "Red Horizons." His last book, "Disinformation," co-authored with professor Ronald Rychkak, is now being made into a major Hollywood movie.
