Soviet Legacy

It has been fairly well known that one of the Soviet Union's activities was the organization and financing of terrorism against Israel, especially after the Six Day War. Ion Mihai Pacepa, the former leader of Romania's intelligence service, details the extent of Soviet involvement and its continuing effects.

Today'’s international terrorism was conceived at the Lubyanka, the headquarters of the KGB, in the aftermath of the 1967 Six-Day War in the Middle East. I witnessed its birth in my other life, as a Communist general. Israel humiliated Egypt and Syria, whose bellicose governments were being run by Soviet razvedka (Russian for "foreign intelligence"”) advisers, whereupon the Kremlin decided to arm Israel'’s enemy neighbors, the Palestinians, and draw them into a terrorist war against Israel.

General Aleksandr Sakharovsky, who created Communist Romania's intelligence structure and then rose to head up all of Soviet Russia's foreign intelligence, often lectured me: "In today'’s world, when nuclear arms have made military force obsolete, terrorism should become our main weapon."”