Ion Mihai Pacepa - Defection

Defection

Pacepa defected during July 1978 by walking into the American Embassy in Bonn while in Germany, where he had been sent by Ceauşescu with a message to Chancellor Helmut Schmidt. He was flown secretly to Andrews Air Force Base near Washington, D.C., in a United States military airplane.

In a letter to his daughter, Dana, published in the French newspaper Le Monde in 1980 and broadcast over and over by Radio Free Europe, Gen. Pacepa explained the reason for defecting: "In 1978 I got the order to organize the killing of Noel Bernard, the director of Radio Free Europe’s Romanian program who had infuriated Ceausescu with his commentaries. It was late July when I got this order, and when I ultimately had to decide between being a good father and being a political criminal. Knowing you, Dana, I was firmly convinced that you would prefer no father to one who was an assassin." In 1981, Noel Bernard was killed by the Securitate.

Gen. Pacepa's defection totally destroyed the intelligence network of Communist Romania, and through the revelations of Ceausescu's activity, it affected the latter's international credibility and respectability. An article published by The American Spectator in 1988 summed up the devastation caused by Gen. Pacepa's "spectacular" defection: "His passage from East to West was a historic event, for so carefully had he prepared, and so thorough was his knowledge of the structure, the methods, the objectives, and the operations of Ceausescu’s secret service, that within three years the entire organization had been eliminated. Not a single top official was left, not a single major operation was still running. Ceausescu had a nervous breakdown, and gave orders for Pacepa’s assassination. At least two squads of murderers have come to the United States to try to find him, and just recently one of Pacepa’s former agents--a man who had performed minor miracles in stealing Western technology in Europe at Rumanian behest--spent several months on the East Coast, trying to track down the general. Happily, they have not found him."

During September 1978, Pacepa received two death sentences from Communist Romania, and Ceauşescu decreed a bounty of two million US dollars for his death. Yasser Arafat and Muammar al-Gaddafi set one more million dollars reward each. During the 1980s, Romania’s political police tasked Carlos the Jackal to assassinate Pacepa in America in exchange for one million dollars. Documents found in the Romanian intelligence archives show that the Securitate had given Carlos a whole arsenal to use in "Operation 363" for assassinating Gen. Pacepa in the U.S. Included were: 37 Kg. plastic explosive EPP/88, 7 submachine guns, one revolver Walther P.P. serial 249460 with 1306 bullets, 8 revolvers Stecikin with 1049 bullets, and 5 hand grenades UZRG-M.

Carlos was unable to find Pacepa, but on February 21, 1980, he bombed a part of Radio Free Europe's headquarters in Munich, which was broadcasting news of Pacepa's defection. Five Romanian diplomats in West Germany, who had helped Carlos the Jackal in this operation, were expelled from the country.

On July 7, 1999, Romania’s Supreme Court Decision No. 41/1999 canceled Pacepa’s death sentences and ordered that his properties, confiscated by Ceauşescu's orders, be returned to him. Romania's government refused to comply. During December 2004, the new government of Romania restored Pacepa’s rank of general.