Red Horizons; Chronicles of a Communist Spy Chief

Washington DC: Regnery Gateway, 1987. First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. xvii, [1], 446 pages. Illustrations. Several pages creased. Business card laid in. The former head of Romania's secret police, offers an inside look at the policies of Ceausescu, and chronicles abuses of power in that regime. Ion Mihai Pacepa (28 October 1928 - 14 February 2021) was a Romanian two-star general in the Securitate, the secret police of Romania, who defected to the United States in July 1978 following President Jimmy Carter's approval of his request for political asylum. He was the highest-ranking defector from the former Eastern Bloc, and wrote books and articles on the inner workings of communist intelligence services. His best known works are the books Disinformation and Red Horizons. At the time of his defection, Pacepa simultaneously had the rank of advisor to President Nicolae Ceau escu, acting chief of his foreign intelligence service, and a state secretary of Romania's Ministry of Interior. Subsequently, he worked with the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in operations against the former Eastern Bloc. The CIA described his cooperation as "an important and unique contribution to the United States". In 1987, Pacepa wrote Red Horizons: Chronicles of a Communist Spy Chief. In 1988, Red Horizons was serialized on Radio Free Europe, arousing "huge interest among Romanians". On 25 December 1989, Ceau escu and his wife, Elena, were sentenced to death. Pacepa claimed that most of the accusations came almost word-for-word out of Red Horizons President Ronald Reagan reportedly called "Red Horizons" his "Bible" for dealing with dictators. A former chief of Romania's foreign intelligence service reveals the extraordinary corruption of the Nicolae Ceausescu government of Romania, its brutal machinery of oppression, and its Machiavellian relationship with the West. An in side story of how Communist Party leaders really live. In 1987, Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa, the highest ranking defector ever from the Eastern bloc, published RED HORIZONS, his expose of the unchecked power and corruption of Nicolae Ceausecu, then the Romanian President and Romanian Communist Party General Secretary, and his wife, Elena. Pacepa's intention was to bring down the Ceausescu regime and liberate his daughter, whom he had to leave behind in Romania. When Ceausescu was told of Pacepa's defection, he suffered a nervous breakdown and ordered Pacepa killed. Ceausescu's murder squads never succeeded in tracking down Pacepa, who remained in hiding in the U.S. Not long after the publication of RED HORIZONS, Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty began their campaigns to broadcast the book into Romania.
On Christmas Day, 1989, Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu were executed by military forces who had joined the Romanian people in a spontaneous revolt against one of the most oppressive regimes in the world, bringing an abrupt end to 24 years of Communist tyranny.
On December 26, 1989, Truth, the Romanian daily newspaper which had declared itself free, began printing excerpts from RED HORIZONS. The editors' preface to these excerpts said: "What can be read in the pages of this book appears to be the fruit of a sick fantasy and yet, every word is true. The publication of this book played an uncontested role in revealing in all its hideousness the true face of a dictatorship, which with diabolical cunningness had managed to outfox a part of the world."