Over the last few days, Glenn has been talking about a fascinating book he has been reading by Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa, the highest-ranking Soviet bloc intelligence official ever to defect to the West, and historian and law professor Ron Rychlak. Disinformation: Former Spy Chief Reveals Secret Strategies for Undermining Freedom, Attacking Religion, and Promoting Terrorism exposes some of the most significant and largely unknown disinformation campaigns of our lifetime, and Rychlak joined Glenn on radio this morning to talk about some of the most eye-opening information shared in the book.
Read TheBlaze Books Cheat Sheet on Disinformation
“I spent some time this weekend reading a book called Disinformation. It is by Ion Mihai Pacepa and Ron Rychlak. General Pacepa… came over in 1978 and defected… and Jimmy Carter wouldn't listen to him. Instead he decided to listen to all the Soviets,” Glenn explained. “And then Ronald Reagan got into office and started listening to the good general, and that changed the course of history… Now we have another Jimmy Carter in office. When you read this book… it will change your perspective on just about everything that you think you know in history.”
The Soviets perfected the “science” of disinformation, and General Pacepa witnessed it first hand during his time as a leader of communist Romania’s equivalent of the CIA. General Pacepa has remained in the United States, living undercover, since his defection. As Rychlak explained, “he watched and he saw from the inside how they built up the false leadership and false greatness.”
The danger of disinformation is that it comes from within, which disrupts cultural norms and trust in a way that is irreparable. During the Cold War, the Soviets worked to infiltrate ‘trusted’ sources around the world to begin to plant those seeds of doubt.
“The worst harm is implanting false ideas. You implant doubt, cause people to question their values, their beliefs by tearing down Western values, you create a vacuum that allows Marxist thought to expand,” Rychlak told Glenn. “When you know it is coming from your enemy, you don’t trust it. If they can get it to come from the United States, if it comes from Washington, if it comes from The New York Times or one of those sources, people tended to believe it. We are starting to be suspicious of those [sources] today, but they tried to intentionally implant false ideas into trusted sources [at the time].”
One such example is the how Pope Pius XII transformed from being considered someone who personally saved Jewish people during the Holocaust to being considered a Nazi sympathizer.
“I had written books about Pope Pius XII. He was people during World War II, recognized as a hero during the war, after the war, at the time of his death… a concert was played at the Vatican by the symphony from Israel as thanks of everything he had done… That was not really doubted until the 1960s,” Rychlak explained. “And in the 1960s, there was an active campaign, a play was at the heart of it, but the play wasn't the only thing. There were books, lectures, speakers, and articles implanted. It's not because they cared about the Pope. It's because they cared about Western values. For example you take down a
Pope, associate a pope with the Nazis – how can you trust that church? How can you trust Christianity itself? How can you really trust religion at some level?”
In order to take control of the Catholic-dominated European countries, the Soviets needed to fracture the Catholic Church. More broadly, they needed to fracture religion in general.
“It is absolutely fascinating because it opens your eyes,” Glenn said.
In the book, Rychlak and General Pacepa explain that disinformation is alive and well under the Obama Administration, and Rychlak explained why the aftermath of the September 11, 2012 terrorist attack on our consulate in Benghazi is an example.
“Disinformation begins within a nation, and it is all about building up the current leader and criticizing the previous leader. You have to control the flow of information to do that, and you implant false ideas,” Rychlak explained. “Benghazi, what do we have? We have a false story coming from our government, coming from a trusted source. They cared about this video. I was teaching a course on terrorism and the law when this all happened. I came into my class next morning and said, ‘Let's pull up the video.’ In 30 seconds I said, ‘Turn it off. This isn't it’… It was a preposterous show, and my students knew that. We all knew this couldn't be it. That's the lie we got from our government. A trusted source, pushing us in a different direction, so we don't notice in fact what is happening.”
Rychlak will also be joining Glenn on tonight’s Glenn Beck Program to further discuss some of the more recent examples of disinformation in our country. Don’t miss the Glenn Beck Program, Tuesday at 5pm ET only on TheBlaze.
Watch the full interview below:
