In a recent AT essay, I wrote of the warnings of Ion Mihai Pacepa, a former high-level Romanian intelligence officer who defected to the U.S. in 1978.  He warned about the potent Russian, communist intelligence, disinformation, and espionage projects around the world focused on destroying Western societies, an effort that was well funded, well organized, worldwide, and unrelenting

Pacepa just last week at PJ Media provided more insight and commentary that deserves our attention with some in-depth discussion of the first American president to be an avowed and committed communist.  He says recent intel abuse is reminiscent to him of the work in the commie apparatus when he was in Romanian intel, and the evidence now is that the Democratic Party and the Bamster administration were dead set on seditious destruction of the fabric of American government and civil society, intent on creating a socialist totalitarian intelligence dictatorship that would destroy democratic government in the U.S. and replace it with an arrogant, domineering leftist elite.

Last week, Clifford May wrote an ominous and compelling commentary on how the Putin disinformation project is at full speed and Putin can't help but be pleased with the disruption and disturbance of American politics.  May is president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, with master's degrees from Columbia in international affairs and journalism.  He is formerly a journalist with Newsweek, PBS, and the New York Times and even was the chief of the NYT West Africa bureau.  He is also an advocate for a robust national security strategy.

May writes:

What this column is about: dezinformatsiya, the Russian word that gave birth, in the 1980s, to the English neologism "disinformation."  Understand that disinformation is not a synonym for misinformation.  The later implies information that happens to be wrong.  The former implies an attempt to deceive public opinion for strategic purposes.

May describes a longtime effective effort by thousands of Soviet propagandists and espionage agents to spread dezinformatsiya around the world.  He doesn't stop there, but points out how today the commies use social media and other internet strategies to run a disinformation program far beyond Stalin's wildest dreams.

Every information and news source is subject to the disinformation project – the commies hire professional trolls; utilize fake tweets and other internet entries; and multiply the impact with robotic internet "commenters," fake organizations, and fake movements, and advocacy groups.  The goal is the polarization and demoralization of America – the better to allow commie conquest.

The projects of the commies include "Kremlin-oriented social media accounts," "troll farms," "fake personas," and "fake organizations."  President Putin, they've concluded, is attempting to undermine, destroy, and support disruption and revolutionary conflict.  A natural result is the destruction of civility in the United States, the goal of the espionage and subterfuge project.  Along the way, the leftist-communist project intends to poison the policy debates that citizens of a mature republic should be able to conduct in a civil manner.

Why would we be surprised if the commies tried to compromise U.S. citizen confidence in the electoral process?  Why would we be surprised that they would finance the racialist agitators?  The Russian-commie project on disputes is raising the noise level, decreasing the confidence of the public in the order and civility of society.  On every dispute, raise the noise and heat levels. Make the citizenry uncomfortable and demoralized.

On a different front, any doubts in the reader's mind about the Russian stake in promoting opposition to fracking?  Or pipelines to get gas to the markets?  Any doubt about the nature of the fanatic enviros and their political allies and funding sources?

Why is Vladimir Putin involved in such subversive actions?  Pretty simple: Putin intends to win and restore Russia's flagging fortunes, the power Russia lost when the Soviet Union collapsed.  He believes in totalitarianism and authoritarianism, so he wants to destroy governments by the people.  What could be better for Putin than compromising confidence in America's political system, its future, economically and politically?

The most important thing the left-Marxist-progressive-commie people do is attack and accuse.  The game of moral equivalency is played by the left everywhere, since the reality is and the evidence shows that communism is a cruel and merciless system that kills and suppresses its subjects.  The failure to fight back and oppose every leftist-commie lie is not what Western liberal thought trains people to do.  Toughness and meanness are the product of the cruel and harsh environments of countries that produce fanatic commies.

We in the West need stop pretending communism is just a different point of view – and that disinformation is a delusion of the fanatic anti-communists.  Such thinking hobbles movements in support of civil rights and representative government everywhere and will enable the evil of totalitarians.

The United States has no interest in ruling the world, but you can damn sure bet that the Muslims and the commies have that as their goal.  "Know the enemy" is the vital advice of Sun Tzu.

The United States does have a vital interest in preventing authoritarians from ruling the world, and you can bet, the experts above will avow, that Putin and the commies are quite happy when we in Western civil societies are in continued destructive conflict.

To add to our reasons for concern about the bellicose and aggressive Marxists, Nigel Farage, who successfully advocated for the "Brexit" departure of the U.K. from the European Union, wrote Friday at Breitbart News of the ongoing efforts of George Soros, money man and puppet master for the commie movements around the world, including continued efforts to stop Brexit.  

Farage points out that the opponents of Brexit claim that it was financed by outside forces.  Here we have, instead, Farage's indictment of Soros and leftist influences to prevent Brexit.

Farage says:

But I have felt for some time – in fact, I've felt for the last six, seven years – that there was one major global influence[.] ... I'm talking about one massive attempt by a very rich man to change the politics across the whole of the West of the world, and I spoke about this in the European Parliament as recently as last November.

I'm arguing we need to have a proper debate about the role of George Soros, not just in this country, or America, but right across the European Union and the Western world.

Farage described how he was subjected to a wave of anti-Semitism accusations when he first broached the topic of Soros's political influence – a slur he had not previously experienced in twenty years of slurs for his long campaign to leave the European Union.

"I think the reason some on the Remain side and the left are throwing this tag of anti-Semitism is they're scared of what's going to be uncovered over the next two weeks," he predicted.  "I'll make you one promise: this £400,000 that's been given to Gina Miller's campaign to keep us in the European Union, you will know in a few days, is literally [sic] the tip of the iceberg."

"Many other organisations will appear in the next few days; you'll even find out about former prime ministers who have very close relationships with a man whose organisation boasts 42 meetings with the European Commission [in 2016]," he predicted.

There is plenty to consider in these times of influence-peddling, manipulation, and disinformation.

John Dale Dunn, M.D., J.D. is an emergency physician; inactive attorney; and resident of Brownwood, Texas.